On Sunday afternoon, Madam Lu Mingzhu and Lu Luoluo accompanied Lu Ran to their family’s hospital and went through the fast-track channel for a full-body checkup.
The results showed that Lu Ran’s body had no abnormalities and that he was in excellent health.
Madam Lu Mingzhu finally relaxed a little, while on the way back to school, Lu Luoluo fired off a belated comment: “See, I told you. A divine cat would never harm my son.” She completely failed to mention that she herself had been just as tense earlier.
“Mom’s right,” Lu Ran said with a smile. “Da Ju would never harm me.”
The family said their goodbyes at the school gate, and by coincidence, they ran into Shen Rong again, or rather, Shen Rong with a different hair color.
Deep purple mixed with light purple, light purple blended into pure black, and within the black there was even white. It no longer looked like a sunset, but rather like lightning.
“Auntie, cousin,” Shen Rong greeted Madam Lu Mingzhu and Lu Luoluo, then glanced at his roommate and lifted his brows slightly. “Lu Ran.”
“You…” Lu Ran stared at his roommate’s hair for three seconds, then silently lowered this person’s level of suspicion in his heart.
He truly could not bring himself to believe that his biological father, when he was young, would have been like this.
“If you don’t know how to appreciate it, then shut up,” Shen Rong warned him with his eyes.
Madam Lu Mingzhu cleared her throat lightly and praised him. “Quite creative. A bit more low-key than last time.”
“Thank you, Auntie,” Shen Rong replied, returning to polite manners. After Madam Lu Mingzhu had reminded him the day before yesterday, he had looked in the mirror and realized that his hair really had faded a little.
In Shen Rong’s mind, strutting around in public with faded hair was one of those things that were absolutely intolerable, so naturally he had to dye it again.
When choosing hair dye that day, Shen Rong’s gaze lingered on the black box for a long time. After picking it up, he stared at it for quite a while longer, before finally selecting several other colors to accompany it.
Not even having internet to play games can make me bow my head, thought Shen Rong resentfully, having spent several days playing idiotic offline games.
He would absolutely not admit that he was deliberately using unconventional colors to remind himself of something.
“I don’t know how to appreciate it. How about next time you let me observe your creative process?” Lu Ran smiled, then waved to his grandma and mom, signaling that he and his roommate would head back to the dorm first.
“Observe what. You want to dye your hair too?” Shen Rong also nodded toward Lu Luoluo and Madam Lu Mingzhu, then frowned warily and said in a low voice, “Later your family will say I led you astray.”
Lu Ran did not insist. He just wanted to see if he could take advantage of helping out to pluck a few strands of hair to take for testing. If it did not work once, he would bring it up again next time.
A paternity test required clean, fresh hair, preferably pulled directly from the head within no more than two weeks, not fallen onto the ground and contaminated with dust, and the quantity had to be more than five strands. By that standard, ordinary shed hair could not be used, and Lu Ran did not bother wasting effort on that.
“The relationship between those two roommates seems pretty good,” Madam Lu Mingzhu said as she watched the two boys’ retreating figures.
“Seems like it,” Lu Luoluo replied. “A couple of days ago, my cousin even showed concern for Lu Ran.”
“Oh?” Madam Lu Mingzhu revealed an interested expression.
……
“Tomorrow, I’ll get up early and start a new life,” Lu Luoluo solemnly vowed to her best friend before going to bed that night.
After the setback of getting up early on Friday, the two of them returned on Saturday to their habit of waking up right on time and arriving at morning reading just in time.
The cursed instincts of the body.
Lu Luoluo resolved to defeat them.
“Tomorrow for sure,” Lu Luoluo declared with full confidence before sleeping on Monday.
“Tomorrow,” Lu Luoluo said on Tuesday night, her gaze firm.
“Tomorrow, I’ll try again…” On Wednesday night, Lu Luoluo’s eyes were calm.
“Forget it. Even though I get up late, my sleep quality has improved, and my problem-solving efficiency has also gone up these past few days. What do you think, Ming Nan?” Lu Luoluo said late on Thursday night to her best friend and most steadfast supporter.
Ming Nan nodded silently. “You’re right.”
The next day, Friday, they continued arriving right on the dot.
The difference was that on this day, Lu Ran finally cast a questioning look at his mother.
Even though they were both cutting it close, under the precise calculations of Lu Ran and Ming Bei, Lu Ran’s dorm always arrived one minute early, unhurried and orderly. Lu Luoluo and Ming Nan, on the other hand, looked rushed every few days.
Was there something they needed to take care of in the mornings? Lu Ran naturally thought so and asked exactly that.
He never even considered the possibility that they simply could not get up in the morning.
In Lu Ran’s mind, his mother was fundamentally different from his dormmates Shen Rong and Lu Qingjia.
His mom loved learning and was self-disciplined, smart and diligent. It was just getting up early, after all.
Did she not get up even earlier when she went for morning runs at home?
“After getting up, I read in the dorm and did not really pay attention to the time,” Lu Luoluo said with a dry smile, lowering her voice. “I thought about it, and it really would be better to move my reading time to the classroom. That way it would not be so rushed.”
Lu Ran nodded, taking her words at face value.
Lu Qingjia yawned, and in his drowsy eyes, everything was clear.
Ming Nan, sitting at the front desk, silently lowered her head. That really was said without any guilt at all.
For many days in a row after that, Lu Luoluo and her best friend no longer arrived right on the dot, but instead came to the classroom early.
The classmates in the surrounding seats noticed this, and without realizing it, their impressions of the two gradually changed.
“For this question, let’s ask—” the math teacher drew out his voice, scanning the crowd below as he searched for a target. After a moment, he made up his mind, smiled, and said, “Let’s have Student Lu Luoluo answer.”
Lu Luoluo resigned herself, put down her pen, and walked up to the podium.
For some reason, the frequency with which teachers from various subjects called on her by name had increased sharply lately, from almost never to nearly once every two classes. Ming Nan was about the same, just not as frequent.
Lu Luoluo could only work twice as hard, in case one day she was called to the front and could not answer, exposing herself in front of her son.
Lu Luoluo could not afford that kind of embarrassment.
After briefly reminiscing about games for a single night, she naturally set them aside, and she did not touch comics again either.
In the blink of an eye, it was already late December. It had been more than five weeks since her son Lu Ran had fallen from the sky and been mistakenly identified by Lu Luoluo as an illegitimate older brother in that farcical incident.
The final exams were scheduled for January tenth and eleventh, leaving Lu Luoluo with barely more than ten days to prepare.
And on top of that, on the eve of New Year’s Day, there was actually going to be some kind of gala.
Could they not just give everyone a break and let them go home to study?
Lu Luoluo, who had studied to the point of near obsession, thought this way, completely unaware that her mindset had already undergone a drastic change compared to before.
The closer it got to finals, the more Lu Luoluo wished she could split one minute into two and use them both. Ming Nan had no choice but to keep a constant eye on her best friend’s condition, afraid that one day she might get so absorbed in reading questions in the restroom that she would forget to come out.
But the New Year’s Day gala still had to be attended. There was no way to take leave. Besides, Ming Nan was determined to go. Her twin brother Ming Bei had an erhu solo, and Lu Luoluo had to show the loyalty expected of a friend.
Ming Bei was playing 《Butterfly Lovers》.
When the strings sounded, the entire venue fell quiet.
There was a saying that the fewer the strings, the greater the difficulty of playing. The erhu was not easy to learn, and even harder to master.
Lu Luoluo did not consider herself someone who understood music, but when the lingering melody rose, she truly sank into the emotions unique to the music.
Before her eyes, vague scenes belonging to the story of Butterfly Lovers seemed to unfold, and she even forgot about the math problem she had been pondering earlier.
From this alone, Ming Bei’s skill was undoubtedly impressive.
The sound of the erhu itself carried an inherent note of desolation, and Butterfly Lovers was a tragedy to begin with. Many emotionally sensitive audience members already had reddened eyes.
When the piece ended, the still somewhat slender youth bowed toward the audience, then left the stage expressionlessly, his profile refined and delicate.
From that very day on, Ming Bei gradually gained the title of school heartthrob at No. 1 High School.
Of course, for a short period of time, neither he himself nor the classmates around him were aware of this.
……
After the New Year’s Day gala, the school had a three-day holiday. Madam Lu Mingzhu had a business trip scheduled during the break and had informed Lu Luoluo and Lu Ran in advance.
Before his passing, Shen Jia had made thorough arrangements for the mother and daughter. Even if they did nothing at all, they would be able to live a lifetime without worrying about food or clothing. That, however, did not mean that Madam Lu Mingzhu truly did nothing.
As a holder of non-operational shares in a company, there were certain occasions she had to attend.
Lu Luoluo had already packed those three days full. Memorizing, doing problems, and mock exams, not a single one could be skipped.
She had even secretly arranged with the top student Lu Qingjia, without telling Lu Ran, to meet somewhere on the afternoon of the last day so that the top student could take a look at her current level and help her mark out key points. So when Lu Ran suggested going to the neighboring city for a stroll and taking a short trip, Lu Luoluo refused without hesitation, using a tactful excuse.
With a troubled expression, she said, “Ming Nan asked me to study together.”
In truth, being honest would not have been a big deal, but as the saying goes, the more one lacks something, the more one worries about it. Lu Luoluo was very afraid of appearing to lack the demeanor of a top student, so she always had to drag her best friend out as a shield.
“Alright then, Mom,” Lu Ran nodded without pressing the matter further. “I’ll go have a look around by myself. It’s not far anyway.”
Lu Luoluo quietly let out a sigh of relief.
Thinking of the hair with follicles from Shen Rong, sealed inside sterile vacuum bags and tucked away in his backpack, Lu Ran also secretly let out a sigh of relief.
The paternity test had to be done, but it could not be done at the Lu family’s hospital, nor could it even be done in City A, lest word leak out and be noticed by Madam Lu Mingzhu.
He could only go to a hospital in the neighboring city.
If his mother were to come along, Lu Ran would find a way to slip away, but that would be troublesome after all, and there was no guarantee it would succeed.
……
On the night they returned from the New Year’s holiday, Shen Rong inexplicably noticed that his roommate Lu Ran was much friendlier toward him.
He had been friendly before too. To be precise, Lu Ran was always friendly.
But Lu Ran’s friendliness was different from Ming Bei’s. Shen Rong did not know if it was an illusion born from finding Lu Ran unpleasant, but at times he felt that within Lu Ran’s friendliness there was a strange mix of scrutiny, pickiness, and dissatisfaction.
After one holiday break, however, it was different.
“Do not even think about touching my hair again.” When he took out hair dye once more and noticed the curious look drifting over from his roommate Lu Ran, Shen Rong warned him sternly. “I have not even settled the score with you for pulling out a handful last time.”
“Please rest assured,” Lu Ran said. He was simply curious.
What color was this one planning to dye it this time? First it had been burning clouds, then purple-black lightning. The color Lu Ran had helped dye last time, he had even given it a name in his mind, calling it “storm clouds gathering.”
No idea what it would be this time. Was it finally going to rain?
Having confirmed that Shen Rong had not the slightest relation to his biological father, Lu Ran’s mindset became incomparably tolerant.
“Dyeing your hair?” Lu Qingjia entered the dorm living room from outside, holding a stack of textbooks. “What kind of weather is it this time?”
Even a top student occasionally had the curiosity of an ordinary person.
Shen Rong tugged at the corner of his mouth, revealing a somewhat ferocious smile. “A violent storm.”
Lu Qingjia nodded in agreement. “Very consistent.” Then, without looking back, he carried the books into the bedroom.
The bedroom door automatically closed behind him.
With sharp eyes, Lu Ran noticed a sheet of scratch paper slipping out from the pile of textbooks Lu Qingjia was holding and falling onto the floor.
He stepped forward to pick it up, just about to knock on the door to return it to his roommate and deskmate.
After a single glance, Lu Ran realized that the handwriting on the scratch paper was extremely familiar. It did not belong to Lu Qingjia, but to his mother, Lu Luoluo.