A Certain Someone ( The On1y One ) Chapter 068 – 【Address】

The Simple Word Suddenly Became……Suggestive.

To be honest, Sheng Wang immediately regretted the moment he said that.
Sometimes ,when people start to get impulsive, nobody can stop them, not even themself. He didn’t know what the purpose behind what he said was, and neither did he figure out what kind of answer he wanted to hear from him.
He thought that Jiang Tian wouldn’t bother with this kind of joke at all, but Jiang Tian spoke up instead.

His emotions at the moment were simply ineffable. Sheng Wang’s mind blanked out for two seconds, and turned to ask, “Who?”
Jiang Tian did not speak, like a particular sort of self-reflection or simply regret. What happened just now was probably a moment of impulse on his behalf too. His hand went down, and he wrapped the white towel around his hand. “What do you mean who?”
“Didn’t you say not for sure?” Sheng Wang straightened up.

His current state was just like having chugged down three giant mugs of iced beer straight: coolness attacked his heart, but his blood and his brain were in a state of broil, like he was mildly tipsy. He didn’t know what kind of answer Jiang Tian would give, and he couldn’t tell if he was looking forward to it or upset either.

Jiang Tian glanced at him, and for a split second, it did seem like he was this close to saying something. However, all he did in the end was to turn around, and toss the towel that he wrapped around his hand into the washing machine.
“I was just casually refuting, that’s all. There’s no one.” He held onto the balcony door as he said to Sheng Wang, “Go in and sleep, the wind is getting stronger.”
Sheng Wang did not immediately answer.

Those few seconds of silence was slightly enigmatic, like a standoff with something rather suggestive behind it. A while later, Sheng Wang then finally walked into the house. When he passed by Jiang Tian, he grumbled, “What a way to brush me off, you even try to keep secrets from me.”
He walked two steps, and turned around again, “Do I know the person?”
Jiang Tian closed the door tightly shut behind him, and upon that, he said, not exactly pleased, “Are you ever going to stop?”

“Okay, alright, time to sleep.” Sheng Wang hung the jacket he wore after he showered on the clothing rack, and went to the upper bunk as he climbed the mini wooden flight of stairs. He quickly tunneled under his blanket.

Jiang Tian glanced upwards. The blanket with grey stripes formed a lump, at the top end was the back of Sheng Wang’s head. He walked to the wall and switched off the lights. The house instantly gave way to darkness, the only light came from the phone screen by the lump on the bed.

“Need me to shed some light for you?” the lump asked.
“I could see,” Jiang Tian said.
“Oh.”

Although Jiang Tian was the one who urged him to sleep, sleep did not find Jiang Tian at all. He rested against the head of the bed and used his phone for a while—
He mentioned a few things to Zhao Xi, replied to Gao Tianyang’s spamming style messages, flipped through his gallery, and entered WeChat once more. He initially wanted to keep going through some things with Zhao Xi, until he saw that the person at the top most of his chats had quietly changed his profile picture.

Jiang Tian paused, and tapped into Sheng Wang’s information page. He even made a post in the Moments.
Curiosity has gotten me by the throat. @someone
The picture attached was a can of Wangzai milk, crushed by a hand.
His new profile picture was this crushed can, and his nickname became: Recyclable.

There was already a chain of comments below this post.
Gao Tianyang: huh? you didn’t manage to catch all the gossip or are u stuck on a question?
Song Sirui replied to Gao Tianyang: dumbass, it has to be the former if you used your brain
Gao Tianyang replied to Song Sirui: ur the dumbass
Gao Tianyang: who’s the asshole who got you like this, Sheng-ge? we have to crack down on people who stop halfway through while spilling the deets
Song Sirui: we have to crack down on people who stop halfway through while spilling the deets
Wu Kai: we have to crack down on people who stop halfway through while spilling the deets
Li Yu: curiosity has now gotten me by the throat too
Zhang Qinglan: curiosity has now gotten me by the throat too
……
Class A people love to line up and be a repeater under the replies to posts in Moments, and the queue was simply endless. They took dumbassery to a magnificent level, until a person at the end of the queue came up to ruin the formation.
He said: The someone is waiting online too.

Someone: “……”
He lifted his hand to knock on the bed board above him, like he was knocking on the bedroom door or something. He wanted to repeat “There really isn’t anyone”, but what came out of his mouth ended up becoming “Why the sudden change in profile picture.”
Sheng Wang said, muffled, “Don’t knock anymore, I’m asleep.”
Jiang Tian’s face was ellipses brought to life.

His phone interface went back to a certain someone’s information page, his profile picture was much bigger than the picture posted in Moments. The squashed can was half bent over, the cartoon grin was a little deformed, the corner of the lips was downturned instead.

If it wasn’t for the post in Moments, it was hard to tell from the profile picture alone if he was joking or he was truly in a bad mood.
Jiang Tian looked at it monetarily, and his thumb caressed the screen; like he was patting someone’s head through the picture.

The person on the upper bunk tossed around, and after a long while, his breathing gradually became evened. He probably did fall asleep. Silence filled the dorm, and Jiang Tian tapped open Moments once more as the sound of his light breathing entered his ears. He wanted to say something, but what should he say? In the end, all he typed was a series of punctuation marks.

His ellipsis sank at the bottom of the post, different from the other people’s jokes and repetitions. It distantly echoed with the ‘@someone’ at the top, trailing behind the long queue of people. The simple word suddenly became……suggestive.

*
The timetable for the training camp wasn’t filled to the brim. In the morning, it was training in regards to grammar and linguistics. In the afternoon, it would be spoken language. There weren’t any compulsory activities held at night, the self-study room was open all day long, and there was no rest limit in the dorms.
The competition was just a gild on the lily, after all. Whether you are willing to gild, how far you are willing to gild, it is entirely your business. At least, nobody will be caring about you the same way your homeroom teacher would, everything is up to your own initiative.

Compared to other schools, the students of Yizhong were much more unbridled. They were relatively well-behaved the first day, they obediently stayed in the zone before the hill, they obediently went back to the dorms after dinner, and then everything changed on the second day.
The moment it was inter-class break, that group of people began to discuss where to go play at night as they sprawled over their desks.

Bian Chen, who started the discussion, had a stupidly loud voice. Thanks to him, everyone in the class knew that the school wasn’t as desolated as it seemed. There were some shops, and they were all gathered at the south gate at the area behind the hill. However, the services they provide were quite uniform, there was nothing else but food. In the middle, there were a couple of internet cafes as well as a tabletop gaming shop.

“I think there’s an escape room, apparently it just opened recently? It wasn’t there last year, the facilities should be decent,” a girl from Yizhong said.
“How about let’s go check it out tomorrow?” Bian Chen suggested.
He did not change his seat after moving to the back to apologise to Sheng Wang, and settled before Sheng Wang and Jiang Tian after dragging another friend to sit with him, and so that became his fixed seating.

After instigating Yizhong students, he turned around to ask the two behind him, “How does that sound, let’s go together?”
“I have something on tomorrow,” Sheng Wang rejected him quite frankly.
“What do you have to do?” Bian Chen asked and turned to the other person, “How about you, Jiang Tian?”
Sheng Wang silently turned and fixed his eyes on his Ge. His Ge tilted his head towards him, saying, “I’m together with him.”
Bian Chen shrugged at the people at his side, quite a few tables of girls looked away in disappointment and bashfulness.

“What do you have tomorrow, is it urgent?” Bian Chen tried his best, after he looked at Sheng Wang, he turned to face Jiang Tian again. “Ah? Tian-ge, to think we used to be classmates too.”
Jiang Tian did not have any intention to loosen up. He knew Sheng Wang’s birthday is the day after tomorrow, and logically speaking, he really did not have anything planned for tomorrow. Still, he could tell that Sheng Wang had no interest in going out with them at all, and personally, he didn’t exactly have much of a friendship with Bian Chen too. He barely spoke to him while he was in the same class with him, let alone after being in different schools for high school.

“Why aren’t you guys going today?” Sheng Wang asked offhandedly.
“How are we supposed to?” Bian Chen shook the two pieces of paper on the table after he grabbed it. “Bro, have you forgotten what they just gave us? Don’t you need to prepare tonight?”

The papers in his hand were given out in the first period of spoken language class today. There wasn’t anything about 1v1 competition arranged today, only some basic training, a mention of what one should take note of in public speaking, and then the announcement of the theme. The students have to prepare a speech centred on this theme, and from tomorrow, they will really enter PKmode according to their groups.

Bian Chen asked, seemingly joking, “We’ll be competitors tomorrow, how about you spill some details, and let me have some mental preparation? How is your spoken English?”
Sheng Wang thought, and answered, “Pretty good.”
Bian Chen: “……”

He was already prepared for both sides to display humbleness and then exalt the other person. After all, politeness can let the enemy underestimate you. Never would he have thought that before he could start exalting, the other person had already soared high up in the sky by himself.
Jiang Tian let out a laughter by his side, and Bian Chen finally recovered from the utter bafflement. He thought, I’m just asking? And you started bragging just like that? There really weren’t anyone who dared to truly say that their spoken language is good, Sheng Wang had opened up a new world to him.

Those who like to brag usually don’t have any self awareness of their actual capability. Bian Chen thought, guess tomorrow’s settled.

However, there were a lot of factors when it came to competing in public speaking with a script prepared in advance. Afterall, the speech itself was a test to the art of writing. Some people may only be so-so in their spoken language, but, with a well-written script, they could still score some points too. Bian Chen refused to give opponents the opportunity to score like this.
His written paper was only a mark lower than Sheng Wang’s, but this difference barely meant anything. He planned to really polish out a good script tonight, and then stun the other person with his spoken language tomorrow, achieving overwhelming victory.

The first impression made in this exam is quite important. If the beginning is already an irenic victory, then he wouldn’t need to worry about the other person’s comeback for the next few days afterwards at all. The PK scores for two weeks will be firmly in his grasp.
Competition worked like that: you can be friends outside the exam venue, but you gotta be more ferocious when it’s time to score. That was what Bian Chen told himself.

In the end, on the second day, he wanted to give himself a slap to the mouth.
The public speaking showdown happened in reverse order, starting from the group consisting of the 39th and 40th place. A total of five teachers would be scoring them, with a total score of ten. Victory would be determined by the average score. The group of teachers were only stringent and more stringent, and before the 14th and 15th place went up, literally none of the students scored above an 8.

The 15th place was Jiang Tian’s middle school classmate, Ge Hui. Compared to the others before her, her pronunciation was rather nice. But, when combined with the script, she only scored an 8.6 in the end. She was the first to barely make it past an 8.
There was instantly an uproar in the classroom, especially the group from Yizhong. Yesterday, they thought they could get a 9 for sure, but after waiting for so long, the first high score went to Fuzhong instead.

Jiang Tian’s scores were actually quite extreme.
A teacher outright stated that they liked his pronunciation and the cold quality to his style, and gave the highest score so far, 9.7. The other teacher had the opposite reaction instead, and felt that his expression of emotions was deserving of a negative score instead. It was his script that was outstanding, and reluctantly gave him an 8.6. Still, after tabulating the average from the five teachers, he scored a 9.3 nonetheless.

Sheng Wang seized the chance before Jiang Tian returned to his seat, and sent him a series of memes. There were those that called for a major celebration, banging gongs and drums, whipping the head back and forth rock and roll style etc…….until he clicked on the wrong thing and sent the one with two cats, with one hugging the other, peppering kisses and munches.

He froze. He looked up on instinct, and ended up meeting Jiang Tian’s eyes instead. The other person happened to have just left the stage, and was already on his way to his seat.
Sheng Wang’s finger rubbed the screen, and retracted the last meme with his eyes lowered. After removing, he felt that removing the last one alone only drew more attention to it, so he simply removed everything above too.

Therefore, as Jiang Tian sat down and read through his WeChat, in a chat with a certain person, that was a neat and tidy column of “the other person has retracted the message”.
“……”
Jiang Tian stared at the screen with a poker face, and he really couldn’t help but to turn to face Sheng Wang. This person, fully taking advantage of the fact that he retracted all the messages, left his phone screen out of the open with nothing to hide, entirely unafraid of anyone seeing it. That was how Jiang Tian saw his questionable alias.

“The emperor of acting in the jungle?” Jiang Tian frowned.
Sheng Wang internally swore, fuck, I’ve totally fogotten about this. He stole a glance at the person’s expression next to him, and immediately pacified, “I’m changing, okay, I’m changing it right now. It’s just for fun, Sheng Mingyang’s is even called ‘Encyclopedia for Healthy Living’, okay.”

As he spoke, he tapped into Jiang Tian’s information page, and deleted his alias, entering “Jiang Tian”. However, the other person was completely unmoved, and neither did the look on his face turn any happier.Sheng Wang met his eyes, and deleted the two words, entering “Ge”. The other person expression started showing some very mixed feelings, and he still did not look happy,
Sheng Wang deleted that box of text for the third time.

His finger hovered above the keyboard, and stopped for quite a while before he pursed his lips. He keyed in “Someone” out of some inexplicable reason. He intended to make a joke with what happened in Moments last night, but after keying it in, he felt like this address had a hidden meaning to it. Just like the deepest depth of the alley that always existed, but no one ever visited.
The speech performed by the student on stage happened to be reaching its end, the pitch becoming higher. Sheng Wang snapped out of it, and just as he planned to delete this alias, he saw Jiang Tian’s lowered eyes tremble a bit, and turn his gaze back to the lectern, like a silent acquiescence.

The tip of Sheng Wang’s heart violently throbbed. He followed along, casting his eyes ahead too. A long while later, he clicked on ‘confirm’ on the interface, and kept his phone.

For the last few speeches, Sheng Wang did not take a single word in. Only when Yizhong’s pupils burst out in a round of applause and whistles, then he realised that Bian Chen was done and it was his turn to go on stage.

Bian Chen kickstarted the second mini climax of the afternoon. His scores weren’t as extreme as Jiang Tian’s, every teacher had nearly the same remark. They all said he had a decent script, expressed them well enough, and his words were infectious. His final score was 9.3 too, reaching a tie with Jiang Tian was good enough for him. After all, the person steadily occupied the first place in combined exams year round. And after three years in middle school, he had a complete understanding of Jiang Tian’s level of spoken language, and was already long since mentally prepared.

There were still five people behind him. He knew the few from Yizhong very well. When it comes to spoken language, especially speech, if he claimed to be the second in class, no one else would dare to claim first. Therefore, he figured that the highest score could only get that high. He hit a tie with Jiang Tian; that was not bad already.
He even felt, if he slept much later last night, and polish up his script even more, his score might even go up to 9.5, and thus truly leaving everyone behind in the dust.

Even as Sheng Wang went up, he was still calculating the probability of scoring 9.5. However, by the time Sheng Wang was done, he was no longer in the mood for it.
His head was filled with two words: I’m screwed.

No wonder the other person dared to say “pretty good”. If this still has to go under freaking “not so good”, then there was no such thing as good in the class.
The five scoring teachers kept on heaping praises after praises, and then after they chatted with Sheng Wang, then Bian Chen knew that that guy mixed around with foreigners when he was super young.

While he was still calculating how to score 9.5, Sheng Wang had already left everyone else behind in the dust with a 9.7. What he said last night was a prophecy that came true. Competition worked like that: you can be friends outside the exam venue, but you gotta be more ferocious when it’s time to score…and he happened to be the one who had that ferociousness enacted on him.
The first impression is important, and the beginning has to be an overwhelming victory. For the ten plus days afterwards, he could basically give up.
His deskmate patted his shoulder. Bian Chen said, “What the hell can I do, I’m quitting…….”

After class, Yizhong pupils swarmed Bian Chen, and dragged him towards the south gate, saying that he needed some cheering up.
Sheng Wang, otherwise, was in a pretty decent mood. He held his bag, and saw that the day was still young. He said to Jiang Tian, “I wanna go out and eat today.”

TO BE CONTINUED.