A Certain Someone ( The On1y One ) Chapter 067 – Push and Pull

“He Said, Does My Tian-ge Look Like the Type Who Would Fall for Someone?”

The staff residence in this school indeed had better conditions than the ordinary student dorm. Other than an independent bathroom, they even had a small kitchen, a mini fridge, as well as a sanitised washing machine. Even the so-called double decker bed was much more ‘luxurious’ than the average student’s. At the very least, it was wide enough, and the steps upstairs were wooden stairs, no need to climb up the metal rods.

Yang Jing brought the two students to the dorms as per her responsibility. She went around the room, and headed to the balcony—or more accurately—the patio. Since it was a residence meant for teachers, there weren’t so many strict precautions and protection set up. They even placed a pair of coffee chairs, as if people would come out here to enjoy the blast of icy wind coming at them or something.

The balcony faced the view of an extensive patch of autumn woods, surrounding the hill. Yang Jing tsked, and mumbled, “How quaint.”
Sheng Wang happened to be unpacking. Upon hearing that, he asked her, “Is it better than our school’s teacher condos?”
Yang Jing critiqued, “Smaller area, mine has a bedroom and living room. Still, the view is pretty decent here, there has to be a good thing about this place after all. Teachers don’t have it easy too you know. We keep having to mark your papers all day long, and suddenly oops, we get depression from all that anger.”
Sheng Wang said, completely void of any humility, “Meh, in any case I’m not the cause of anger for English.”

“Don’t spread your peacock feathers for now, pass me the room card,” Jiang Tian reached out to him as he said, directly after having settled down the now empty boxes.
“Okay.” Sheng Wang dug through his pocket without any fuss.
Yang Jing was slightly amused by that scene, and was curious enough to ask Jiang Tian, “Shouldn’t everyone have their own room card? Why are you taking his?”
Jiang Tian took away the card, and his thin eyelids were lifted, much like mockery. “Get him to say why himself.”
Sheng Wang kept a poker face. “Reporting, Jing-jie. Up till today, I have lost the school card thrice, the dorm keys twice, three rulers, and how many pens again?”
Yang Jing: “……How have you not lost your head yet?”

Sheng Wang thought, and said defensively, “But I swear I’ve changed recently, I haven’t been losing any more things for a while now.”
Jiang Tian’s fingers paused, and his eyes were lowered as he was momentarily silent. He quietly kept the school card in the side pocket of the bag.

Their doors weren’t closed, and there was suddenly a commotion outside the door. A huge wave of boys surged up from downstairs, half laughing and half jeering about.
“What’s the fuss about?” Yang Jing walked out of the door, and Sheng Wang and Jiang Tian followed.
The boys in the next dorms all sprawled around the corridor, discussing the timetable for the training camp with their heads put together. There were a sparse few who came up from the stairs, still marvelling, “Holy shit, this arrangement.”
Participating in training camps like this, students would more or less flock together; those from the same schools preferred to stay with each other. With this scale alone, it was obvious they were from Yizhong.

Throughout the years, Yizhong had occupied a good half of the slots for the English training camp. This group of students acted like they came home, free and given the green light. They even acted like they were the hosts.
Sheng Wang listened to their discussion for a while before he knew why the boys were all creating a disturbance: all training camp students, regardless of gender, stayed on the same block. The boys lived on this floor, the girls on the next floor.
Just as expected, there was soon a chorus of shocked gasps; the girls had realised too.

“Are they for real? Has the school gone insane?” Sheng Wang said, astonished.
Yang Jing shook her head. “Don’t just listen to the way they are acting up now, there’s a metal gate for every floor. They are open now only for the sake of moving in. When your classes start, the doors will be locked for a certain period of time. When I saw the arrangement, I already went to ask logistics. They said there will be dorm checks after the doors are locked. Yizhong managed to come here generation after generation, no way they wouldn’t already know.”
“Then what are they cawing about,” Sheng Wang didn’t know if he should laugh or cry.
“Don’t know,” Yang Jing said, annoyed.

Teenage years are filled with frissons of surprises; when a huge group of people are gathered together, seeing some things different from their usual lives would easily send them into fits of rowdiness and chaos. Soon enough, that group of boys began chasing each other around, a group of people crowded a boy against the wall. They were no different from Gao Tianyang, Song Sirui and the group of idiots.
Yang Jing pointed at the air in front of the two, “I’m warning you, don’t get infected by Yizhong’s foolishness with a trip to the training camp. Also, whether the people downstairs are boys or girls or the existence of the metal gate is none of your business, don’t go out there and provoke anyone. Got it?”

Just after she spoke, two pairs of eyes watched her in silence. Yang Jing mused, and figured that the two really aren’t the type to go flirt with girls for fun. Thus, she changed her wording, “Not even if the girls are the one who approached you first, don’t you dare pay any attention.”
The two pairs of eyes still watched her in silence, utterly wordless.
Yang Jing: “…..”
Yang Jing: “Whatever, treat it like I said nothing then.” Yang Jing’s stomach hurt every time she dealt with these two. She waved, “In any case, don’t let any distraction get in your way and secure the semifinals for me. I have to do pre-competition coaching if it’s the others, but you two with your mental state can do without it. I just have one request: do not hand in ahead of time. If I catch this happening, you better watch out.”

After settling them down, Yang Jing left with the arranged transport.
Sheng Wang pondered through her words, and felt that her worries were somewhat uncalled for. How would he go flirt with anyone? Even if he did, the person wouldn’t be from downstairs. As for the girls, they literally don’t know them? Who’s approaching who even.

However, he soon found out quickly enough that he likely miscalculated. There really were people who knew them.

There weren’t any lessons in the afternoon of the day they report in, only a camp opening ceremony. In its essence, it was no different from a class meeting; at the very most all they did was to give out some teaching materials and made speeches to get them going.
There was a printing room before the experiment block. Jiang Tian went to print the student info they were supposed to hand in, and Sheng Wang went to reserve seats in the classroom with Jiang Tian’s bag. Unexpectedly, the moment he stepped in he heard Jiang Tian’s name.

Sheng Wang shot a glance at the group of people chatting, and found a pair of seats next to the window at the back of the classroom. The conversation of the chat in front of him flowed into his ears with much clarity. He listened for a while before he figured out that out of the group of people from Yizhong, two were Jiang Tian’s middle school classmates, a guy and a girl.

The girl sat on the table, and wore a loose ponytail as well as a spacious jacket. She giggled non-stop as she held onto another girl’s arm. She was the one who started all the jokes, appearing to be even more bold and shrewish than Class A’s Chilli.
She probably had a more easygoing personality, and the group of people from Yizhong all used her as the topic of their jokes, going on about “Old deskmates can catch up with each other” or like “When Jiang Tian arrives later I’ll drag you to sit in front of him”.
The boy who started ribbing her had a very tanned skin, and wore a bright silver sports jacket. He was Jiang Tian’s ex-classmate.

Sheng Wang silently glanced at the empty seat before them, pulled out the chair and sent a message to Jiang Tian on WeChat.
Sticker: your old classmates are in Yizhong
When he typed the message, he felt that his tone was pretty normal, but after he sent it out, it started looking weird again, so he retracted the message.
However, in the very next second, Jiang Tian replied.

The Emperor of Acting in the Jungle: Who?
Sheng Wang: “……”

Aren’t you supposed to be printing? Why are you staring at WeChat for?
Sheng Wang roasted in his mind.
It would be fine if Jiang Tian didn’t see the message, but now that he replied, that line of “You have retracted the message” seemed sort of unnatural.

To be fair, Jiang Tian’s middle school was quite famous in the first place. Running into old classmates should come as no surprise at all. His Ge is this brilliant, it couldn’t be anymore normal for there to be people who liked him out of his old classmates. Sheng Wang didn’t particularly feel anything about this issue, but now with these few messages, it ended up painting him in a different light.

Sheng Wang couldn’t help but laugh as he stared at the chat, and figured he might as well keep talking.

Sticker: i don’t know the names
Sticker: a boy and a girl
Sticker: your middle school classmates i think
The Emperor of Acting in the Jungle: Didn’t notice
Sticker: you’ll know when you come to the classroom later

After Sheng Wang sent that message, the Yizhong students’ conversation took on a different topic. This time round it was surprisingly relevant to the competition.
“Apparently the training camp this time will be using the score from the preliminaries?”
“Oh no, I’m totally losing out then? I completely screwed up for the preliminaries,” someone said, upset.

“Scram already, jesus christ. Quit pretending, yeah? You’re in the first 10 and you’re still saying that you screwed up? I’ve gotten the same score as you, why didn’t I feel like I screwed up?” This was said by the one in bright silver.
“Exactly, all of you have the same score, you are all basically the 6th place. If this is called screwing up, then what about us?”
“Don’t even bring that up, 5th place is from Fuzhong, 11th is Jiang Tian, and we’re stuck in the middle. This is called ‘stuck between a tiger and a wolf’.”

Bright Silver continued, “Nothing to be goddamn scared of, for the semifinals, there’s public speaking and Q&A, they take up half of the score. Putting other factors aside, our school actually still has a pretty huge advantage when it comes to spoken English. With a bit of everything from here and there, we can totally leave them behind in the dust.”
“Is Jiang Tian’s spoken English bad?” someone asked.
Bright Silver laughed dryly, “Forget about him, his is better than mine.”
“Then what the crap are you going on about!”

“But, you can still surpass #5 though!” Bright Silver said, “Not like you haven’t seen the people from Fuzhong before, they are either idiots or braindead. They didn’t have top 40 for English before, so I figure, #5 is either a hardcore crammer who spams questions all the time. So, probably braindead.”

Sheng Wang: “……”

“Tone it down, oh my god, there’s other people in the class,” a student reminded him. The group of boys and girls from Yizhong all subconsciously scanned around, and when the girls’ eyes reached Sheng Wang, they briefly lingered. They turned around with a giggle, and continued their discussion at a lower volume.
Other than Sheng Wang, there were still a few students scattered all over the class. They were clearly from other keypoint schools of the province too.

Bright Silver waved, “Hello, are you dumb? The person is classmates with Jiang Tian, of course they’ll come here together. Jiang Tian isn’t in class yet, what are you scared of.”
“Oh, that’s true.” Other people felt that this made sense, and nodded along.

The moment after he said, Jiang Tian entered the classroom with a few copies of printed material.
Thanks to the two ex-classmates, the attention he received in Yizhong’s intensive focus class was not lower than what he received in Fuzhong. The moment he entered, the bunch of people who were chatting all turned around in unison.

Bright Silver pushed that girl teasingly, and then raised his hand, calling, “Jiang Tian!”
Jiang Tian paused in his steps and looked at him. “You’re here too?”
“Yeah, got a slot here by dumb luck, and also Ge Hui is here too.” Bright silver looked at his hand, and said, baffled, “You’re not even taking your bag? Only the material?”
“Bag’s over there.” Jiang Tian pointed, and walked towards Sheng Wang.

The group of people from Yizhong first stilled, and then slowly turned to face Sheng Wang as they followed Jiang Tian’s path. Their faces all turned green. The group of girls started laughing first, and Bright Silver’s skin turned from dark to red, cringing from embarrassment. He scampered over with his tail between his legs, and sat down on the seat before the two of them. He squeezed out two empty laughs at Sheng Wang, saying. “Um, about that, why didn’t you stop me when I was bullshiting?”
Sheng Wang thought, and answered, “If I stopped you immediately, you’ll probably feel more embarrassed.”
Bright Silver: “……”

“I’m usually quite mean-mouthed, so treat it as no discord, no concord, please?” Bright Silver introduced himself, “My name is Bian Chen.”

Bian ‘no discord, no concord’ Chen wasn’t exactly foolish, neither was he exactly smart, but this mouth of his was truly asking for it. Possibly out of guilt and remorse, he kept trying to make aimless small talk with Sheng Wang for the whole afternoon, attempting to get friendly with him. However, he kept touching his sore spots, to the point that the more he spoke, the more Sheng Wang’s face was expressionless, and so the grudge was formed.

The teacher said that for half of the time, the classes will be focused on spoken language training, and even the training itself has a certain degree of competitive element to it. The students will be grouped into twos, and for public speaking and Q&A, all will be practised via PK. Winning net them a score of 1, losing a 0. With two weeks of training camp, the accumulated score will be tabulated into the final score for the semifinals.

The grouping was based on preliminary scores, the 40 of them were grouped according to odd and even numbers. For example, as the 5th place, Sheng Wang would be grouped with the 6th place. This time, there were quite a few people all occupying the 6th place, and according to alphabetical order, it just so happened to be Bian Chen.

After dividing them into groups, the teacher gave them the training camp uniform as well as the teaching material, and so the event concluded for the day.
The person in charge of logistics had passed them the map of the school campus before. Sheng Wang and Jiang Tian picked the nearest route to the cafeteria from the map and went to have dinner. On the way back to the staff’s residence, they ran into the people from Yizhong again. The few girls all nudged and winked at the girl named Ge Hui, and buzzed about softly like the tide before they walked far away as they giggled. Nobody really dared to start poking fun at them.

Later, when they reached the dorm, the girls saw him and Jiang Tian chatting by the balcony, and all swarmed out to gawk like bees from a hive. After they saw them, they shrank back into the room, even their giggles and speech were hushed.

They all had the time of their lives poking fun, but when they actually came face to face with Jiang Tian, they all became bashful. Even Ge Hui, who was Jiang Tian’s deskmate for an entire year, stopped her interaction with Jiang Tian today at merely a ‘hello’.
It always seemed to be like this: the girls would swarm over, but would stop a step away due to Jiang Tian’s cold and aloof appearance. Sheng Wang had seen it too often to count.

The last girl downstairs went back in too, Sheng Wang scanned around once with lowered eyes and looked away again. He joked, “The balconies are all empty now, those who came out were burned away by your chill. There’s not a single person left.”
Jiang Tian just showered, a white towel rested around his neck. The night breeze blew his slightly damp hair up. His thumb flipped through the calendar and weather forecast on his phone before he turned his screen off, “The wind is the one that froze them out, what has it got anything to do with me?”
Sheng Wang tsked.

Sheng Mingyang happened to be sending him messages on WeChat then, asking him how he planned to spend his birthday that was approaching in two days. If there weren’t any limits placed by the training camp, he and Jiang Ou wanted to rush over here and treat them to a good meal.
Sheng Wang speedily typed, saying that there are limits here, parents aren’t allowed to visit. After he typed and tapped the send button, he then spoke, “Old Gao was right.”

“What do you mean by that?” Jiang Tian asked, perplexed.
“The sports carnival from before, a girl from Class 9 tried to get Old Gao to pass a love letter to you. Old Gao rejected her on the spot, and said something to the girl,” Sheng Wang said.

“What?”
“He said, does my Tian-ge look like the type who would fall for someone?” Sheng Wang mimicked Gao Tianyang’s tone, and ended up cracking up instead.

He clutched his phone, and lazily watched the hill in the distance.
In the darkness of the night, the autumn woods formed a swath of inky black, undulating, ever connected. Due to the lack of lights, some stars could be seen in the sky, shining brightly or barely noticeable to the human eye.

Sheng Wang evened the tilt at the corner of his lips, and said, seemingly jokingly, “You do look like the type who wouldn’t fall for anyone.”
Out of the corner of his eyes, Jiang Tian paused in the midst of drying his hair. A while later, he then ran his fingers through his messy hair, saying, “Not for sure.”

TO BE CONTINUED.