When they arrived at the classroom the next morning, and saw Shen Rong sprawled over his desk catching up on sleep, both Lu Luoluo and Lu Ran felt a little unsettled.
Lu Luoluo marveled at the fact that her cousin had actually shown up at school for two days in a row.
Lu Ran, meanwhile, was astonished by the riot of colors on the top of the other’s head. Orange-yellow streaked with broad swathes of red, red threaded with a few strands of purple, and purple mixed with several strands of pure black.
Even the fiery clouds at the horizon could hardly compare.
Or perhaps the color scheme had simply been copied from the evening sunset.
“Excuse me, could you move a bit? I need to get to my seat, Shen… ahem, Classmate Shen Rong.” Lu Ran heard Ming Bei’s voice behind him, carrying a trace of amusement.
Was he using that cough to cover up a laugh? Surely he was, right?
From behind came the sound of a chair scraping against the floor.
As the rest of the class filed in one after another, reading voices rose in succession, some energetic, some impassioned, others weak and listless.
As usual, the homeroom teacher made her rounds during morning reading. Her gaze swept around the room, and then, without warning, landed on a vividly colored head. In an instant, her expression became just as vividly colored.
Staring at the vividly colored head while wearing an equally vivid expression for a good half minute, the homeroom teacher let out a quiet sigh and stepped down from the podium.
…Straight to Lu Luoluo’s desk.
Lu Luoluo was reciting, “It was not that I delayed the time,” doing her best to carve the character “qian (delayed)” firmly into her memory.
Sensing a shadow drawing near, she looked up in confusion.
She had not done anything wrong, had she? She had been very well behaved lately. In the past, even when she slept or read comics, she did it in secret. She had never openly provoked a teacher.
“Luoluo, come with me for a moment,” the homeroom teacher said kindly.
Lu Luoluo put down her textbook and followed the teacher to the office, utterly puzzled.
To her surprise, and also to her relief, the homeroom teacher’s first question was about Shen Rong.
“It’s like this. Yesterday, I had a talk with Shen Rong’s mother, and she mentioned something in passing,” the homeroom teacher said after some consideration. “Luoluo, you and Shen Rong in our class are cousins, right?”
Luoluo more or less understood what this was about and nodded. “But we weren’t very close growing up.”
The homeroom teacher could tell as much, but she truly felt she had exhausted all her options.
Shen Rong had always skipped school and ignored school rules and discipline. It was not that she did not want to manage him, but that she simply had no way to do so.
If he did not come to school, there was no way to even find him. How was she supposed to manage that? On the rare occasions she managed to catch him and talk to him twice, he would not say a word to her face, only responding with perfunctory “mm” sounds, and afterward he would continue doing whatever he pleased.
She tried contacting Shen Rong’s father through the parent contact list. For two whole months, every call was answered by a so-called secretary, who would say the same line every time: “Hello, President Shen is in a meeting right now. Please contact us again later.” She finally lost her temper once. Only then did the man deign to personally take a call, offer an apology, and say that he truly could not get away, before giving her Shen Rong’s mother’s phone number.
When she finally got in touch with Shen Rong’s mother, the woman agreed to meet. Yet the very first thing she said upon meeting was, “Teacher, I’m really sorry, but I honestly can’t control this child.” Then she went on about how she was already divorced, living abroad, and that the child was not under her care, and so on.
The core message boiled down to a single sentence: do not look for me.
In the end, at least she managed to help arrange for him to live on campus. Otherwise, if he kept hanging around outside like this, the homeroom teacher truly worried that something might happen to him.
“So, Luoluo, what do you think… is there any way?” the homeroom teacher said, bracing herself.
After so many years as a homeroom teacher, having to ask a student to solve a problem really was a bit embarrassing. But what other choice did she have?
Lu Luoluo froze for a moment, then thought seriously before saying, “Contacting Grandpa might work. My cousin would probably listen to him. But Grandpa has some heart problems…”
If the elderly man suddenly learned that the grandson he thought was obedient was actually a fire-cloud-colored delinquent, he might get so angry that something went wrong. The homeroom teacher sighed. She did not dare bear the risk of an old man falling ill.
Lu Luoluo said hesitantly, “What about asking my mom to talk to him?”
The homeroom teacher hesitated, wanting to speak but stopping herself.
Although it had only been two months, she had already dealt with Madam Lu Mingzhu often enough to know her approach to indulging her child. Whenever she saw the report card, she would speak with worry and come to the teacher for a heart-to-heart talk. The moment the topic turned to the child reading comics or sleeping in class, she would say she would try to persuade her. Then, when one looked again later, Lu Luoluo was still exactly the same.
If asked again, Madam Lu Mingzhu would simply sigh and say she could not bear to be harsh.
What was there to not bear?
All of them were problematic parents.
Still, perhaps it was worth a try. As a teacher, she had to play some role after all.
The homeroom teacher decided to accept the suggestion.
Suddenly thinking of something, she asked, half out of concern and half as a probe, “Luoluo, you’ve been in pretty good form in class lately, haven’t you?”
Lu Luoluo blinked. “Have I? I guess so?”
“Keep it up.” The homeroom teacher did not say anything more and simply offered encouragement.
Privately, the homeroom teacher pondered it over. It seemed the change had started about a week ago.
The past week… Lu Ran was a relative of the Lu family. She had heard that his generation was one level junior to Lu Luoluo, and his enrollment procedures had been completed just last week.
Could there be some connection between the two? Was it a competitive mentality, or perhaps an adolescent’s desire to protect their pride and image?
*
“Live on campus?” During the break after morning reading, Lu Luoluo was a little surprised when she heard her friend’s decision. But after thinking about Ming Nan’s family situation, she understood.
“How are the dorm conditions? Will you be able to get used to it?” Lu Luoluo asked with concern.
“I heard the conditions are pretty good. There’s a private bedroom, and it’s very quiet. It’s just that the living room and bathroom are shared.” Ming Nan relayed her brother’s investigation from the night before word for word, then sighed. “There’s no way to stay at home anymore. As for the dorm, I guess I’ll get used to it?”
Ming Nan had never lived in a school dorm before and was afraid she might not adapt. But no matter what, it could not be worse than her home, right?
Seeing that her friend seemed a little uneasy as well, Lu Luoluo thought for a moment and said, “Do you want me to stay with you?”
At this age, boys and girls were always quick to make decisions, for a friend or for other reasons.
Ming Nan was so touched that her eyes welled up with tears. She decisively refused. “Your mom would definitely disagree. She’d be all alone at home. How lonely would that be?”
Lu Luoluo thought it over. “I’ll go home and talk it over first.” It was not necessarily impossible.
From the back row, Lu Ran, who had inadvertently heard every word of the two girls’ conversation: …
He had never heard of his mother living on campus when she was in high school. It probably would not work out, right?
But was Ming Bei going to live on campus? Lu Ran glanced behind him.
When he accidentally caught sight of Shen Rong’s fire-cloud-colored hair again, he silently turned his head away.
*
“Live on campus? Baby, have you grown up and decided you want to leave your mom?” Madam Lu Mingzhu widened her eyes, doing her best to put on a teary-eyed expression.
“I’ll still come home on weekends,” Lu Luoluo said seriously as she explained. “And it’s not entirely because I want to be with Ming Nan. This way, I can save the commuting time between school and home. It’s half an hour one way, an hour round trip. That’s enough time to finish a whole practice paper.”
After studying seriously for a week, Lu Luoluo increasingly felt that time was not enough, mainly because she had fallen too far behind earlier on.
Although the material she had missed did not have much impact on learning new content, it would still be tested in the final exams.
There were two months left, which meant eight weeks.
After carefully planning it out, Lu Luoluo felt the time pressure was very real.
And besides… if she lived on campus, she would not have to get up early to run every day.
Running in the cold wind every morning was indeed invigorating, but it was also genuinely painful. Morning runs plus between-class runs meant double the suffering.
“Then how about buying a place closer to school?”
Hearing Luoluo talk about saving time to do practice papers, Lu Mingzhu’s instinctive reaction was disbelief. Then she thought of the phone call she had received from the homeroom teacher earlier that day.
Her daughter really did seem to be making progress lately… Could her grandson’s influence be that strong?
But wouldn’t she still have to get up early to run?
And it would not even achieve the goal of keeping her friend company.
“Moving again would be too much trouble,” Lu Luoluo said. “And there’s no real need. I’ll still come home on weekends, and Mom can come see me on weekdays too, right?”
“Wait… see you?” Madam Lu Mingzhu caught onto something and looked over at Lu Ran. “Xiao Ran isn’t living on campus?”
Lu Ran thought for a moment. “If Mom lives on campus, then I’ll live there too?”
That would leave Grandma alone at home, which might be a bit lonely.
“All right.” Madam Lu Mingzhu pondered for ten seconds, then finally said with a look of disappointment, “You’ll all live on campus.”
“If we live on campus, it’ll be harder to arrange morning runs together,” Lu Ran paused, then said, “Or Mom, we could agree on a time to meet at the track every morning?”
Lu Luoluo: …!
Madam Lu Mingzhu blinked and looked at her precious daughter. So that was part of the plan too?
“Hahaha, there’s really no need for that,” Lu Luoluo said hastily, coming up with an excuse on the spot. “Ming Nan… I mean, if I live on campus, I’ll probably get up together with Ming Nan and have breakfast together. It wouldn’t be very convenient, and getting up too early might disturb others. The school already arranges runs during class breaks every day anyway. That’s exercise too, right?”
Lu Ran nodded regretfully. “All right, then.”
In his heart, Lu Ran could not help but sigh at how hard his mother was trying. She even wanted to save the one hour spent on the road every day just to do practice papers.
But if they lived on campus, wouldn’t that mean more contact with Ming Bei?
Maybe he could find an opportunity to obtain the other party’s genetic sample.
Eating together at school did involve contact, but doing it in public made it easy to expose one’s intentions, which was inconvenient.
At this moment, Lu Ran still did not know that Shen Rong would also be living on campus.
And so, the matter of Lu Luoluo and Lu Ran living on campus was settled just like that.
They would officially move into the school dormitory next week.
Lu Luoluo and Lu Ran were only responsible for making the decision. Madam Lu Mingzhu would contact the teachers and handle the procedures and dormitory arrangements.
From certain perspectives, Madam Lu Mingzhu truly doted on her children.
It was also a good opportunity, under the pretext of arranging the dormitory, to check on her nephew Shen Rong’s situation.
After Lu Luoluo and Lu Ran said good night to each other and returned to their own rooms, Madam Lu Mingzhu thought to herself.
The trace of loss and wistfulness on Madam Lu Mingzhu’s face vanished in an instant.
With the kids all living on campus, she would not have to get up early anymore!
From Monday to Saturday mornings, she could sleep in and would not need to get out of bed to have breakfast with the kids!
She had been looking forward to Lu Luoluo going to university for a very long time.