A Certain Someone ( The On1y One ) Chapter 31 – Change

The Only Difference Was That He No Longer Came Over To Mooch Off The ‘Study Room’ Anymore.

Jiang Tian completed all the practice papers at 11.30pm, and finished 3 major questions each from maths, physics and chem olympiad questions. He then took out all the further extension papers, and went through his mistakes for the second time.
As he really barely made any mistake, this part only took less than 10 minutes.

12.40am, and he already had nothing left to do.

The neighbouring room remained dead quiet throughout.
Sheng Wang did not shuffle around in his slippers, nor did he show any signs of intending to buddy up to study. Last week, he even joked that Jiang Tian’s bedroom became a study room he took over by force. In the end, the moment the monthly exam ended, the ‘study room’ lost its purpose.

Jiang Tian stood in front of his bag, his fingers picking through its content. He already read everything he could read. After two rounds or so of picking through, he took out a thick book with a poker face, the cover had the words ‘A Guide to Lyrical Writing’ written on it.

He stared at the cover for a couple of seconds, it was hard to say if he was pondering over what exactly he was doing, or if he was pondering if there was any point in reading that.
Maybe there was a point after all, because he went to sit at the windowsill with it in the end.

This mini unit was talking about the clever use of parallelism in sentences, two minutes later, Jiang Tian already zoned out.

The White Horse Alley at this time didn’t have the particular type of tranquility found at 2am yet. People occasionally passed by the lane once in a while, casting fleeting shadows in between the walls. The main street in the distance also had some traffic, sometimes, it would be utterly quiet, and the other times, there would be the light sound of car tyres rolling past the surface of the road, like the sound of waves that the wind occasionally carried over.

His phone suddenly buzzed, and Jiang Tian retracted his gaze from outside the window. The lines of his lips and brows shifted on a miniscule level, like the moment he heard the vibration, they instantly relaxed a little.
He closed the guide that he couldn’t bring himself to read, and scooped over his phone——
It was Gao Tianyang’s message.
Jiang Tian: “……”

Boom: Are you still awake, Tian-ge?
Jiang Tian: Still am.
Boom: Great, have you seen the olympiad questions Old He sent in advance?
Jiang Tian: Yeah.
Boom: I just knew you won’t wait until next week,
Boom: I have 3 questions.
Jiang Tian: Speak.
Boom: May I ask
Boom: How do you do
Boom: The three questions
Jiang Tian: ……
Gao Tianyang sent several memes about life being rough, and explained that the questions this time round were much more troublesome than before, there was too little information given, and he didn’t know where to begin.

A portion of physics questions were all like this, at first look the question said nothing at all, they dared people to find an answer without any condition given.
Boom: The hell with answering, I can’t even list a damn formula.

Jiang Tian was already idle anyway, he dug out the practice paper he completed from his bag, and took a picture of the question. He used a black pen to underline 10+ parts.
He sent the picture to Gao Tianyang, and said: Just need to find all the hidden conditions.

Which term represents an additional force, which term represents that a certain state can be set at a certain value, which other term represents the limitations etc etc. They were all hidden in the parts he underlined.
He Jin mentioned before that at this stage, physics would be testing them on their attention to details. When they consider all given factors completely, one would be hard-pressed to even make a mistake. The three questions she gave this time were classic examples, they have to search for the conditions all on their own, managing to cause an entire class of students to nearly vomit over trying to find it.

Boom: There’s so many hidden conditions???
Boom: Fuck, I missed out 4, no wonder there’s something wrong no matter how I tried to calculate
Boom: Where did Old He find these questions
Boom: Speaking of which you’re acting quite abnormal today
Jiang Tian: What kind of abnormal?

Boom: Didn’t you usually skip the steps in your questions in the past? I can’t believe you seriously wrote all of them down today
Boom: This is literally the answer key holy shit
Boom: [buff guy covering his face]
Boom: Are you telling me you wrote it so completely on purpose? Just waiting for us butt citizens to ask? Touched.

Jiang Tian’s eyelid briefly lifted up. It remained dead quiet next door, who knew if he skipped doing these questions or he already finished them all with no trouble.

He typed a few words to remind Gao Tianyang: It’s already 1am.
Boom: Oh oh yeah right, it’s time for your normal bedtime
Jiang Tian hesitated, deleted the four words “screw off and do your work”, and changed it into a “Mn.”

If it wasn’t for Gao Tianyang he would have forgotten, other than having extra matters after night self study, 1am was his normal bedtime.
Boom: Then you should go sleep then, Imma tinker around with the questions
Jiang Tian: Sure

His words said ‘sure’, but when he quit WeChat he opened up ‘A Guide to Lyrical Writing’ again. Tonight, he spent a whole hour on the guide to composition writing, if Beckon Money knew she would die from joy……
Or possibly be scared to death too.

Six in the morning the next day, Jiang Tian was packing his bag after he washed up. He suddenly received two messages on his phone. Due to the fact that his phone was on his blanket, the vibration wasn’t particularly obvious. His screen only abruptly lit up twice, but he still spotted it instantly.
He pulled the zip on his bag all the way to the bottom in one shot, and his long arm reached over to grab his phone.
The person who was dead all night finally gave a reply.

Shop’s Closed: Accidentally fell asleep last night, just saw the message
Shop’s Closed: What’s wrong?

Jiang Tian looked at the screen next to his bed, his eyes lowered.
He already typed the answer out on the keyboard, but did not send the message.

He wanted to ask “Why did you change your profile picture and personal nickname out of the blue”, but he did know the actual cause all along. The question mark he sent last night fit the occasion, but overnight, it became meaningless.
And the first message in the chat always reminded him of the “Signal’s bad, just saw the message” that he replied Qi Jiahao with before the English Olympiad.

Jiang Tian was silent for a moment, and replied: Nothing, come out for breakfast.
He grabbed his bag and walked out of the bedroom. He started reading the news in English as he leaned against the staircase railing, waiting for the boy named ‘Shop’s Closed’ to get up.

*
Even though Sheng Wang changed his WeChat name, he acted the same as usual.
He would do the practice papers as he listened in class, and after class he would still banter and joke around with the people around him. When his pen ran out of ink, he would ask to borrow the ink refill from Jiang Tian, when he found something entertaining he would try to scam Jiang Tian into laughing along too, sometimes he would hide his phone inside the desk and complain via WeChat.

There was still five minutes before the last lesson in the morning ended. Jiang Tian sent a message to the deskmate in front of him: Let’s go to Beyond Parasol Tree for lunch?
Sheng Wang was busy with doing his chemistry paper. As his right hand speedily calculated, his left hand reached into his desk, grabbing hold of the lightly vibrating phone.

A while later, he finally took his phone out and looked down.
Boys at this age have wide shoulders, but they were of hardly any substance. Any minor movement would cause the fabric of the shirt to highlight the contours of the scapula.

Jiang Tian received a reply a couple of seconds later.
Shop’s Closed: Sure, I’m starving to death already.

The mute went to Xi Le to help out at noon, Boss Zhao took care of the meals. Jiang Tian initially thought that there would be only three people in that courtyard that day in Beyond Parasol Trees, he did not expect twice that number, not even in his dreams——
Just as they turned around the corner of the lane, they saw a mini truck parked in front of the empty space in front of Old Man Ding’s front door, a giant cardboard box as well as some foam packaging against the wall, like they just unpackaged a giant piece of furniture.

The moment Jiang Tian entered the house, he saw two people in dark blue jackets carrying a silver-white refrigerator into the hall, there was also a man in a similar uniform connecting the circuit boards.

Upon spotting him, Old Man Ding scurried over, and gave his arm a slap. “You bought this?!”
Jiang Tian shook his head. He wanted to say something, but the moment he opened his mouth he turned to look at Sheng Wang as if he abruptly remembered something, the old man followed along.

He hated owing people favours of any kind in his life the most, and he disliked receiving benefits from other people for no good reason at all. His temperament was as stubborn as a mule, even to the point that when Jiang Tian tried to give him something, he needed the excuse of “I can’t just freeload”, he wouldn’t even accept a single penny from other people at all.

Old Man Ding treated Jiang Tian like half a flesh and blood grandson, when he had no other choice he could use his hands. But that did not apply towards Sheng Wang, after all, that boy was a guest, and he seemed like he wouldn’t withstand a hit.
He asked Sheng Wang with a stern face: “You bought it?”
Sheng Wang copied Jiang Tian, he shook his head as he denied: “No.”
Old Man Ding’s eagle eyes were bulging as he ferociously glared: “Who else would dare to buy me this, say that again!”

The old man was enlisted as part of the army before, he had never lost to anyone in terms of aura. People like Gao Tianyang who were beaten up by him before, would dissolve into panic as soon as he glared at them. Yet, out of all people, the one who looked clean and tidy and unable to withstand a single hit, appeared to be thoroughly unintimidated by him.

Sheng Wang let out an “oh” and said: “Then……take it as I’m the one who bought it then.”
Old Man Ding internally said what kind of bullshit is this, but the person who spoke looked rather sheepish, he didn’t have the heart to be harsh with him.
The old man glared at him for a good while, before that aura of his deflated like a balloon and asked: “Why did you buy this for?”
Sheng Wang broke out into a smile: “You wanted to take care of my lunch right? I’m just contributing to food expenses.”

“What do you mean food expenses? I’m not keeping that!” Old Man Ding said, “I’m just providing food, that’s all, do I really need such a big fuss over it? Y-y-y-you get rid of it soon, send it back to wherever it came from.
Sheng Wang let out yet another “oh”, and said: “That’s fine, then I’ll be leaving with the fridge.”
“Wait!” Old Man Ding said.
“Sure, I’ll wait.” Sheng Wang lowered the hand that was about to wave the people over here, looking especially obedient.
The old man nearly spat out blood.

He walked in circles over and over again, downed two mouthfuls of cold tea, and then pestered Jiang Tian as he reached his wits’ end. “Are you gonna do anything about the classmate you brought over?!”
Jiang Tian: “……”
Sheng Wang was amused by that line, “Not even my dad can control me.”

Old Man Ding spat out the tea leaf bits and said: “What kinda temper a kid like you even has?”
“Mule temper, around the same as Yours.” After Sheng Wang said that, he covered half his face, the manner of someone who was defending himself from getting hit.
The old man was so angry that he laughed.

He put his hands on his waist and played the role of the obstinate mule in the courtyard. Several minutes of being obstinate later, he finally admitted defeat. He grumbled a “stinkin’ brat” under his breath, and entered the kitchen, reaching a compromise.

Old people have the same mentality as kids, they may say “I don’t want” for all they like, but when he actually kept it he was more happy than anyone.
Old Man Ding was too used to being hard headed, he couldn’t let go of his pride. He wanted to touch the fridge, but he was too embarrassed to. Therefore, he kept finding excuses. One moment he would say that it doesn’t appear to be functioning, the other he would say the powerboard was messy. With the effort of making a single lunch, he already went back and forth to the fridge 7-8 times.

The two younger people were well aware, neither of them exposed him.
Jiang Tian grabbed a stool out from the room in order to make sure everyone got a seat, and saw Sheng Wang leaning against the door, eyeing Old Man Ding as he played a game on his phone, laughter barely restrained at the corner of his lips.

Jiang Tian settled the stool next to the table, and walked towards him, asking: “When did you buy it?”
Sheng Wang didn’t look up from his game. “Just two days ago.”
He turned on the scope, sniped someone, and spoke again: “The day you said to take care of my meals.”

Jiang Tian’s fingers, dangling at the side of his body, lightly twitched.
Sheng Wang happened to finish one round, before he spoke he flexed the outcome of his battle in front of him. “Cool, right?”

He really appeared to not change at all on the surface. They went to school together, went to eat lunch and the convenience store together. If you treated him a little nicer, he would dig out something even better in repayment.
The only difference was that he no longer came over to mooch off the ‘study room’ anymore.

TO BE CONTINUED.