To Get Married - Chapter 26.1

Chapter 26.1

After the official start of school, Zhang Ziyun would buy a lot of snacks for the dorm every week and would share some with Lu Yudong each time.

Lu Yudong also once took out her jar of honey walnut kernels to share with Zhang Ziyun, but it was clear that, having eaten so many delicious snacks, Zhang Ziyun didn’t think much of the walnuts Lu Yudong offered.

Since Zhang Ziyun didn’t like them, Lu Yudong quietly ate them all herself in her free time.

The study atmosphere in high school was much more intense than in junior high, but students, no matter what, always counted the days from the first day of school, looking forward to the arrival of the winter break.

Lu Yudong and Zhang Ziyun were still deskmates in high school.

For them, junior high and high school were merely a change of classmates and teachers, but they themselves were constants.

Zhang Ziyun was cheerful and excellent at socializing. She had also grown prettier over the years and had studied piano and vocal music, so she was nominated by her classmates as the Arts and Culture Committee Member right after military training, responsible for all the class’s recreational and artistic activities.

The teachers liked her, and most classmates had a good impression of her.

Many people said Zhang Ziyun was the Class Beauty of Grade 1, Class 5, and if there were a contest for School Beauty, she might even win. Time after school started was neither fast nor slow; the weeks passed, and soon the long Mid-Autumn and National Day double holiday arrived.

Zhang Hao still liked to come and find Zhang Ziyun during break times, sometimes teasing her hair, sometimes joking with her, often making her angry, and then buying snacks to appease her.

Initially, Zhang Hao often said: “Lu Yudong isn’t a day student anymore. Should I bring breakfast for you? I can bring for both you and Lu Yudong.”

To this, Zhang Ziyun replied: “No need. The high school canteen’s breakfast is quite good.”

In fact, ever since Lu Yudong started boarding, Zhang Ziyun no longer cared about eating outside breakfast.

Was the food outside the junior high campus really that much better than the canteen? Honestly, there wasn’t much difference, and the canteen was cleaner and warmer.

The reason Zhang Ziyun didn’t want to eat breakfast in the canteen before was because she had no one to accompany her.

Now, things were better. Every day, after Lu Yudong finished tidying her personal space, she would wake Zhang Ziyun up. Then, while Zhang Ziyun brushed her teeth, washed her face, and combed her hair, Lu Yudong would fold her military blanket, clean the part of the dorm they were responsible for, and accompany her to the canteen for breakfast early.

With such a roommate, why would Zhang Ziyun need to trouble someone she didn’t particularly want to bother to bring her breakfast?

Unlike the popular Zhang Ziyun in class, Lu Yudong still disliked initiating communication with others. If there was any difference from before, it was probably that she no longer always buried her head, lowered her gaze, and looked perpetually unconfident.

In the eyes of her classmates, Lu Yudong was a quiet, gentle girl who always followed Zhang Ziyun, had above-average grades, was pretty and delicate-looking, but didn’t talk much.

In high school, good-looking girls were always easily targeted by boys.

Initially, some boys also tried to befriend Lu Yudong, but they failed.

The boy was named Gao Yangbo, another very loud and active boy in the class. He was tall and his looks were average, but he was self-confidently convinced he was handsome.

This guy was at the bottom of the class academically and had gotten in by paying a high fee. His family was rich, so he fooled around. His hair was never cut according to school regulations, and his school uniform was stained with juvenile, embarrassing drawings, looking dirty.

It’s unknown what was wrong with his head, but he ignored the Class Beauty and insisted on chatting with the Class Beauty’s “little follower,” even declaring that he would definitely pursue her.

However, he found that he simply couldn’t find a way to interact with Lu Yudong.

If he wanted to chat with Lu Yudong, they had almost no common topics. If he wanted to borrow her cup for water, add her on QQ or WeChat, or ask for a mutual follow on Weibo, he found that she was especially direct when saying “no,” and Zhang Ziyun nearby would also chase them away.

Lu Yudong’s cold attitude caused Gao Yangbo to be ridiculed by his roommates, making him extremely unbalanced and his attitude towards Lu Yudong grew increasingly poor.

Lu Yudong couldn’t care less about any of this. She just wanted to study quietly, focus on her studies during the day, and seriously cultivate/practice at night.

Although her nightly practice of meditating on her bed puzzled every roommate, they all got used to it and no longer questioned it, treating it as a strange person’s bedtime eccentricity, as long as it didn’t bother anyone.

Dorm 523 wasn’t a very cohesive dorm. There were five people, but they split into two groups: the two-person group of Lu Yudong and Zhang Ziyun, and the three-person group centered around Wu An’an, with Zhao Wen and Wang Yan.

Wu An’an wore glasses, but she was indeed quite pretty. She spoke softly, came from a good family, and had good grades, making her very likable.

Zhao Wen called herself a “tomboy,” speaking loudly and roughly, often swearing. Her grades were below average. She loved playing basketball and got along well with many boys in the class. If anyone told a joke in the dorm, she was always the one who laughed the loudest.

Wang Yan constantly fawned over these two. She liked to borrow things, and her catchphrase was always, “Hey, [name], lend me your [item] for a billion times.” (meaning for a very long time).

It was fortunate that Wu An’an and Zhao Wen could tolerate her; Zhang Ziyun always directly refused to lend anything.

Speaking of which, Wang Yan initially tried to curry favor with Zhang Ziyun, but Zhang Ziyun mostly ignored her. Thus, after she bonded with Wu An’an and Zhao Wen, the latter two seemed to intentionally or unintentionally distance themselves from Zhang Ziyun and Lu Yudong.

However, this distancing was not obvious on the surface. After all, they lived under the same roof and saw each other all the time, so maintaining surface peace was necessary.

People in the dorm rarely quarreled. Occasional arguments were about trivial matters, and after a few exchanges, they would sleep it off as if nothing had happened, even chatting together when they returned to the dorm the next night.

Time after school started was neither fast nor slow; the weeks passed, and soon the Mid-Autumn and National Day double holiday arrived.

Two days before the holiday, Gao Yangbo and a few other boys, while Zhang Ziyun was in the homeroom teacher’s office discussing the class’s Mid-Autumn Festival party, ran up to Lu Yudong during the long break to joke around.

Gao Yangbo: “Lu Yudong, Ban Xiangming was praising you in the dorm yesterday, saying he thinks you’re prettier than Zhang Ziyun. Do you want to date him?”

Ban Xiangming was a very introverted, quiet boy in the class, and a roommate of Gao Yangbo.

The school required students to wear uniforms during class, but Ban Xiangming’s family was poor, and he only bought one set of school uniform. No matter how dirty it was, he wore it for a week and only dared to take it off to wash on the weekend when there was no class.

Most classmates knew that he was bossed around by his roommates daily, fetching water, buying meals, and folding blankets for them, and was often mocked for being too sloppy.

The reason those classmates joked about Ban Xiangming and Lu Yudong was that they had heard from somewhere that Lu Yudong’s family was very poor, that she depended on Zhang Ziyun for everything, and that Zhang Ziyun often treated her to food and gave her many stationery items.

Why did Lu Yudong fetch water and fold blankets for Zhang Ziyun every day, following her around like a shadow? Wasn’t it just because she was afraid Zhang Ziyun would abandon her, the little shadow?

Moreover, it was rumored that Lu Yudong was a weirdo. Every day she returned to the dorm, she wouldn’t talk to anyone. After washing up, she would sit rigidly on her bed and stare into space, sometimes sitting there like a wooden dummy for half an hour after lights out, making her very antisocial.

Ban Xiangming and Lu Yudong were both poor, antisocial—one sloppy, the other strange—and both were always fetching water and folding blankets for others.

Suddenly, some malicious jokes started spreading in the class.

“Look, Lu Yudong and Ban Xiangming are such a good match!”

Lu Yudong had heard these jokes before but had never paid attention to them.

After all, ever since junior high, she had been following Zhang Ziyun, and she had heard countless similar remarks, so she was long used to them.

However, today these boys actually ran up to her to openly mock her, which reminded her of the guys three years ago who had mocked her loudly every day in class, fixating on Manzhu working in a bar.

They were truly grating on the ears.

Lu Yudong looked up at the leading boy, Gao Yangbo, with a very cold gaze: “Is it fun?”

Gao Yangbo: “Are you angry? Oh, you can still get angry, huh?”

“Mhm, I can get angry,” Lu Yudong nodded, stood up, and sneered. Pushing Gao Yangbo aside like a piece of trash, she quickly walked to his seat and picked up the Chinese textbook on his desk for a quick look.

“What are you doing?” Gao Yangbo smiled and leaned closer: “Going to tutor me?”

“No, just being careful not to hurt you accidentally,” Lu Yudong said plainly. She pulled Gao Yangbo’s school bag, whose zipper was still wide open, out of the desk cabinet. The books, snacks, and trash he hadn’t thrown away all tumbled to the floor.

“What are you going to do?” Gao Yangbo immediately lost his temper and reached out to grab her.

But in the next second, it’s unknown where Lu Yudong got the strength, but she pushed away the boy who was trying to block her path, grabbed the school bag upside down, and strode quickly toward the girls’ restroom on the first floor.

The contents of the school bag spilled all along the way. Gao Yangbo wanted to chase and stop Lu Yudong, but he had to pick up the items that fell out of the bag. So, he had to pick things up while loudly cursing, his expression and tone utterly exasperated, which immediately drew a crowd.

Lu Yudong walked all the way to the restroom and, like she was tossing garbage, threw the school bag onto the not-so-clean floor of the girls’ restroom.

“Holy f*ck!” Gao Yangbo chased her all the way, his hands clutching a stationery bag and a few books.

The moment he saw his school bag thrown into the girls’ restroom, he was so angry his voice rose several decibels: “Lu Yudong, what did you do!”

“I have eyes. Can’t you see what I did?” Lu Yudong stood by the sink, slowly washing her hands.

“You go in and pick it up! Clean it up for me! Otherwise, otherwise…” The exasperated boy wanted to hit her, but hitting a girl in front of so many people would be too embarrassing.

“Otherwise what? Don’t you have hands and feet? Go in and pick it up yourself.” Lu Yudong curved her eyebrows and smiled. Surrounded by the crowd, she walked past Gao Yangbo and headed back to the classroom without looking back.

Gao Yangbo gritted his teeth, turned, and grabbed Lu Yudong’s arm, both angry and at a loss for what to do: “Do you think I don’t dare… don’t dare to tell the teacher?”

A burst of laughter immediately erupted from the onlookers.

“Isn’t that Gao Yangbo from Class 5? I heard he even hit someone in the dorm last time.”

“Yeah, he’s bullying people again.”

“I feel like he’s met his match. He’s resorting to telling the teacher.”

The quiet discussion from the crowd made Gao Yangbo feel deeply humiliated. He grew anxious.

“You pick the stuff up for me! Don’t challenge my patience!”

Lu Yudong was indifferent: “Then go tell. Let’s see who is in the right. While you’re at it, tell the teacher how your dorm usually ‘takes care’ of Ban Xiangming. If I recall correctly, you proudly told people that he has to fetch three loads of hot water for your dorm every day, didn’t you?”

Gao Yangbo was choked with anger. He froze for a long time before gritting his teeth and threatening: “Do you think you’re the only one who can throw things?”

Lu Yudong looked up at Gao Yangbo, her eyes cold: “You can try.”

“Excuse me, excuse me, make way…” Zhang Ziyun had just returned to the classroom and was terrified when she heard that Lu Yudong and Gao Yangbo were fighting. She rushed to the girls’ restroom.

She thought she would see Lu Yudong being bullied with reddened eyes, and had already prepared comforting words in her mind. Instead, the moment she pushed through the crowd, she saw Gao Yangbo with reddened eyes and bared teeth.

Lu Yudong was two heads shorter than Gao Yangbo, but at this moment, she was twisting Gao Yangbo’s wrist, her eyes ferocious, unlike the gentle, quiet girl he usually was.

“Don’t think you’re all that. You paid a high fee to get in, but you don’t study. You just buy people off with treats to win hearts, find a few little followers, and bully people everywhere. Are you very proud?”

“Lu Yudong you, you… you lunch break…”

“I’m not leaving. I’ll wait for you,” Lu Yudong said, smiling as she pulled a water pen from Gao Yangbo’s half-open stationery bag.

In the next second, she placed the pen between her fingers, her thumb and ring finger at the bottom, index and middle fingers on top. With a slight squeeze of the four fingers, there was a snap, and the pen broke into two pieces.

“Don’t come, and you’re a grandson, oh,” Lu Yudong said. She shoved the broken pen back into Gao Yangbo’s stationery bag, turned, and pulled Zhang Ziyun back to the classroom.

Zhang Ziyun was bewildered. She looked behind her, then at Lu Yudong beside her, too shocked to say a word for a long time.

Just a few seconds after they returned to the classroom, the class bell rang.

Zhang Ziyun saw Gao Yangbo walk into the classroom with a dark expression, one hand clutching his books, the other carrying the dirty school bag retrieved from the restroom. She couldn’t help but lean into Lu Yudong’s ear and whisper: “When did you get so strong?”

“It’s just applied technique. My uncle taught me,” Lu Yudong whispered proudly. “I’m not afraid to tell you, I can even crush walnuts with my bare hands!”

Zhang Ziyun said fearfully: “You, you… you didn’t really join a gang with that bar uncle, did you?”

Lu Yudong: “How could I?”

Zhang Ziyun breathed a sigh of relief: “It’s good that you didn’t…”

As the two were talking, Gao Yangbo’s roommate, who was passing by their seats, happened to overhear them.

Soon, a juicy piece of news spread through Gao Yangbo’s roommates’ QQ group.

Bar, uncle, joined a gang—these three keywords were enough to let people imagine a whole movie.

— Lu Yudong’s uncle is a gangster. Don’t mess with her!

After reaching this consensus, Gao Yangbo and all four of his roommates, excluding Ban Xiangming, completely chickened out.

When school was dismissed that afternoon, Lu Yudong calmly packed her school bag. When she looked up, the people from Gao Yangbo’s dorm had all run off as if fleeing a ghost.

In the end, only Ban Xiangming, the boy who was bullied daily, was left from that dorm.

“A bunch of cowards,” Zhang Ziyun commented. Her phone vibrated. She looked down and checked the class group chat, and couldn’t help but burst out laughing.

Lu Yudong saw Zhang Ziyun secretly laughing and curiously peeked over her shoulder.

The class group chat had been completely silent all day; no one dared to discuss what happened during the long break.

Gao Yangbo was usually so domineering in class. He bullied a girl who looked small and thin, only to be perfectly counter-attacked, leaving countless people frantically trying to suppress their laughter.

At this moment, a brave soul finally posted a question in the quiet class group chat.

“Did Gao Yangbo forget he said he was going to look for trouble with Lu Yudong after school?”

After saying this, the brave soul also sent a particularly mocking panda emoji—”I’m gonna put my hands on my hips and watch you pretend for a bit.”