A Certain Someone ( The On1y One ) Chapter 014 – Alibi

Jiang Tian: I’ll be Home Late Tonight.

The rain was too strong, and half the corridor got wet. The students once loitering outside instantly vanished, and all went back to home base. Only Sheng Wang alone wanted to go out for a breath of fresh air.

He stayed on his seat, feeling like he was the newly imported monkey in a zoo. The tourists flocked around him in all directions, and surrounded him tightly.
Gao Tianyang was the tour guide, “It’s 150 questions, are you even still human?”
He sat on his own table. His voice automatically came with a loudspeaker, and he was noisy enough for the entire class to hear.

The group of people who indirectly copied his homework was on the frontlines, and joined in one by one, “Seriously, let’s not talk about all correct, I’m already happy if I get less than 10 wrong, really.”
“10 wrong answers are already asking too much from me, 20 it is. I’ll be exhilarated if I get less than 20 wrong out of 120.”
“How aspiring of you!”
“The cruel reign of English has caused the people to suffer for too long—as long as gaokao do away with English, Tsinghua and Peking U will both be fighting for me!”
“Bleh, go have your Spring and Autumn dream!”

Everyone in this group was more shameless than the last, they bragged till the point that the study rep Song Sirui could not bear to listen anymore. He pushed apart the crowd, squeezed in and started dragging people. After he dragged them he said to Sheng Wang, “Grass, let’s discuss something.”
Sheng Wang sneezed twice in a row. He took a piece of tissue and asked questiongly, “What are you cursing me for?”

Song Sirui was stumped by his words, and replied as if he did not know if he should laugh or he should cry, “No, the day you came I said Xu dug out a school grass and brought it here, when I call someone I usually use only a single character, so I called you that on a whim.”

Sheng Wang gave two dry laughs, “Your way of thinking is quite unique, can you change it?”
Song Sirui replied, “Sure, then Sheng it is.”
“Then I’m kidney!” Gao Tianyang gave him a slap, and sniggered, “You could call him Wang too.”
“Fuck off, you’re the one who’s a dog.” After Song Sirui cursed out Gao Tianyang, he looked woefully at Sheng Wang, “Why is your name like this?”
Sheng Wang was amused, “I’m so sorry, it’s too late now. You can make do with that.”

“Sheng-ge, Sheng-ge should be alright right?” Song Sirui said.
Sheng Wang was just chugging down water with his cup in his hand, after hearing that he grinned, “I’ll gett a little full of myself here if you’re like this.”
“First rule of Class A, whose grades are good who gets to be Ge, we do not care about where you came from,” Song Sirui casually pointed behind, “just like the one behind you, everyone has to call him Ge when they see him.”

Sheng Wang was leaning against his seat, he did not stop drinking his water, but his gaze shot towards the corner of his eyes.
The desk was as empty as can be as seen within his peripherals. Jiang Tian was off to god knows where. 20 minutes had already passed for the long break and he was nowhere to be found right from the start.

Song Sirui called him Ge a few times, and then continued to proper matters all naggingly, “Can you not give your paper to people like Gao Tianyang next time round? Our homeroom teacher said it before, telling me to keep an eye on everyone and put an end to the bad common practice of copying homework, every time I catch one I have to report one.”
“Then did you report?” Gao Tianyang’s laugh was especially wretched.
“I noted it all down, and I’ll report it on a quarterly basis, just you wait.”

Song Sirui was not tall, in any class he would be assigned to the first row. When he rolled up his sleeves and reprimanded people he looked especially much like a show poodle. Regardless of gender, people in Class A liked to tease him. He did not really put up false airs either, he never did go through with it every time he threatened to tell on someone.

He nagged at Sheng Wang for half a day, only to hear the other person reply with some ‘mm mm’, and then come back to himself and asked, “What did you just say?”
“……”
Song Sirui even felt like jumping off the building.

“Sheng-ge, are you messing with me?” he asked, on the verge of breaking down.
Sheng Wang retracted his gaze from the back, and sincerely apologised with his cup in his hand, “Sorry, I zoned out for a bit.”

Song Sirui’s butt plumped down onto Gao Tianyang’s chair, and gave a long sigh, “I can’t stay any longer in the study rep position, whoever wants to do it should do it. I’m resigning after this quarter.”
Sheng Wang’s face was full of remorse.
Gao Tianyang mouthed: It’s an old habit, just let him say it.

Song Sirui would make ruthless statements like this every few days, but when it came to a new round of elections, every student other than him would choose him, and forcefully trapped him in the position of study rep. He could not even escape.

Gao Tianyang had good relations with people, so did Song Sirui. They brought their pack of friends and chatted next to Sheng Wang for a good portion of the long break. As Sheng Wang listened he remembered Jing-jie’s words—the top class was both simple and complex.
He felt that from what he saw so far, this group of students were all quite simple.

When the long break was almost over, the people around Sheng Wang all dispersed.

He still felt dizzy, and his nose was agonizingly blocked. He did not want to do questions or read either. So, he just rested his forehead against the table, and his two hands remained hidden on the inside, playing the no-brainer games on his phone.

After two rounds, someone passed by his table.
He saw out of the corner of his eyes a familiar pair of shoes, next to it was a folded umbrella, dangling down. The rain drip dropped down as it followed the tip of the umbrella, forming a line of water on the floor.

Sheng Wang was still controlling the tiny person parkouring on his screen when he heard Gao Tianyang say, “Where did you go, Tian-ge? You still went outside with such a heavy rain?”
The pair of shoes stopped, Jiang Tian’s voice rang next to him, “Took a trip to the sick bay.”

Sheng Wang’s hands paused.
The sick bay???

He silently lifted his head, and saw Jiang Tian holding an umbrella in one hand, the other holding a plastic bag with the sick bay’s logo printed on it. The mouth of the bag was extremely narrow, he could not tell what was inside.

“Why did you go to the sick bay?” Gao Tianyang asked, baffled.
Yeah, why did you go to the sick bay?
Sheng Wang side-eyed that plastic bag, some very ridiculous thoughts started forming in his head.

Can’t blame him for thinking like this, it was mainly because Jiang Tian was all alive and hopping and definitely not sick, and he even talked about the sick bay with Gao Tianyang this morning. With these two factors, it was honestly a little too coincidental.

…………It can’t be?
Sheng Wang looked up at Jiang Tian.

Honestly, after interacting with him for the past two days he could tell that this person though appeared to have a shitty temperament on the surface, he was really quite soft on the inside, at least towards his mom.
Maybe……he was also like this to other people?
If, Sheng Wang thought so internally: If Jiang Tian really did go to buy medicine, next time Sheng Mingyang make him call him Ge, he could reluctantly give a little face.
Of course, it was limited to only that scenario.

Maybe he was bored from being sick, Sheng Wang’s thoughts were running extremely wild in his head. Just as he was setting up the scenario, he heard a rustling noise from the plastic bag. Jiang Tian let Gao Tianyang, who was overly curious, take a look, “My mom scalded her hand this morning, I went to get two jars of ointment.”

Sheng Wang gave the content of the plastic bag a scan, and just as expected there were two small dark green round jars inside the bag, the exact same ones as the one Auntie Sun applied on Jiang Ou this morning.
He was momentarily stunned, let out an ‘oh’ on the inside, and the scenario he imagined half way through was gone without a trace.

Gao Tianyang chatted a bit with Jiang Tian again, Sheng Wang did not really listen.
A short while later, Jiang Tian closed back the opening of the plastic bag, and turned back to return to his seat. The moment he lifted his foot, his line of sight mysteriously tilted for some reason, and met Sheng Wang’s.

The moment their gazes met, Sheng Wang lowered his eyes.
The tiny person in his phone had long since fallen to death. He tapped to restart, and his two thumbs slid back and forth on the screen.

The sky was pitch black outside, the cold white incandescent lights were switched on in the classroom, casting some square shaped bright spots on his phone. Half of the screen was occupied by the soundless jumps of the tiny person in between the jagged cliffs, the other half reflected the person beside him—
Jiang Tian maintained that position for two seconds before he returned to his seat behind.

For the rest of the day after this, Sheng Wang had pretty bad luck in gambling. He would also die in any no-brainer games the moment he played, he got pissed off to the point of shutting down his phone and tossing it into the most inner region of his bag.

Night self study still ended at 8pm, with another batch of students, the night became much more lively than before. The homeroom teacher, He Jin, entered the classroom as class ended on the dot, and hurriedly pasted the new school bus schedule. When she left, most people in year two block had already left.

Sheng Wang was done packing his bag and was about to stand up when Gao Tianyang suddenly tapped him, “Eh, are you free tonight?”
“I’m doing my papers, why?” Sheng Wang said.
“Anything other than doing papers? Nothing else?”
Sheng Wang nodded.

Gao Tianyang snapped his fingers, “Then follow me. Old Qi’s older brother opened up a barbeque store outside the school’s north gate, today is the first day of opening, and he planned to call a bunch of people to warm the place up a little. There aren’t that many papers tonight anyways, it’s so rare we get to relax a little. Are you going?”

Sheng Wang actually did not have any appetite due to being affected by the cold, but recently he was in the state of not exactly willing to go home. Today was especially bad, mostly because he did not want to meet Jiang Ou.
The other person’s gesture of goodwill made him feel a little helpless. He could not make himself to make other people look bad and not give any face, but to accept other people and to even get close to her, he could not make himself do it even more.

Therefore, he ran his options for a bit, and said to Gao Tianyang, “Sure, then let’s go. Who else?”
Gao Tianyang casually swept his hand, the people who were still dilly-dallying in class all grabbed their bags, “Me, you, study rep, class monitor, Old Qi, monkey, Big Flower—”
“Okay enough,” Sheng Wang said, exasperated, “even if you continued I still can’t match the names up.”

“There’s roughly 12 to 13 of us, just nice for a big table,” Gao Tianyang said.
Song Sirui wore his backpack properly on both his shoulders and came over, asking, “Are we leaving?”
“We are,” Gao Tianyang greeted, “Qi Jiahao and some went to the toilet, let’s walk from there and wait for them.”

Sheng Wang draped his bag onto his shoulder, and shot a glance at a certain empty seat, asking, “Aren’t you quite close to Jiang Tian? You’re not inviting him?”
Gao Tianyang said, “Not quite close, very close. The two of us are childhood friends.”
This was the first time Sheng Wang was hearing this, “Childhood friends?”
“Yeah, the same residential zone,” Gao Tianyang said. “He never participated in activities like this, he has too many things to be busy with.”

As he went on he also raised an eyebrow, “But the fact you actually asked about him, I’m rather surprised.”
“Surprised about what?”
“Didn’t the two of you have beef with each other the first day you arrived? For these two days, other than the time the two of you were forced to share the same paper, I didn’t really see the two of you talk. I thought that you aren’t familiar with him at all, and would wish more than anything that he wouldn’t go.”

Sheng Wang nodded, “We aren’t familiar indeed.”
Other than having to enter the same door every night, they really were not familiar with each other.

While he chatted with Gao Tianyang, he also switched on his phone. The moment the screen was unlocked, a few notifications popped out from WeChat. Gao Tianyang did not think too much, he stuck his head over and asked, “Do you want to inform your family first?”

Sheng Wang pursed his lips. He never did have to inform his family, he only needed to inform the chauffeur, Uncle Xiao-Chen.
Just as he opened WeChat and was about to look for Xiao-Chen, he saw a red dot from the chat at the top of the conversations list, indicating that there was a new message. The person’s remark was written as: Jiang Tian.

Sheng Wang opened it without thinking, and finally discovered that Jiang Tian sent him two messages, before night self study ended.

Jiang Tian: I’ll be home late tonight.
Jiang Tian: If there’s questions, just say that it’s supplementary for the olympiad.

It’s time for a celebration, certain people finally knew to get his cover story straight beforehand, and yet Gao Tianyang who was at the side was already spooked to death.

TO BE CONTINUED.