A Certain Someone ( The On1y One ) Chapter 30 – Shop’s Closed

He Said: Nothing Is Going Favourably Today.

Qi Jiahao did not return for a long time, even after the long break ended he remained nowhere to be seen.
After Li Yu attended the regular meeting for class monitors, she returned to the classroom with a notebook and a pen. Gao Tianyang, who was always on the lookout, called out from his seat: “Little Carp, what did they say at the meeting? Any good news?”
“Why are you so concerned over every little thing?” Song Sirui was seated right next to Li Yu. He himself was stretched over trying to take a look at Carp’s notebook, cutting remarks against Gao Tianyang still flowed out of his mouth nonetheless.

Li Yu had a good temperament, she really did report what was recorded on the notebook for Gao Tianyang’s benefit. “Something about residential stay, and the adjustment of night self-study when school officially reopens. Also, our class’ timetable will be slightly readjusted, Teacher He will probably brief us on that. The Tri-Quality Students of the City’s name list is also going up for submission too.”

Song Sirui aimed his words at Gao Tianyang as he said, “Either ways, none of your business.”
“Nah it’s my business! How could there be nothing.” Gao Tianyang jabbed his thumb in the direction of Sheng Wang and Jiang Tian, “Tri-Quality Students of the City’s name list has been taken up by at least two out of the three of us here, I’m in charge of sharing the honour.”
Song Sirui was incredulous. “How can someone as shameless as you exist in this world?”

Just as Gao Tianyang was about to retort, he felt his thumb being pressed back down by someone.
The someone was Sheng Wang.

“Keep it, don’t point at random,” Sheng Wang said, “my future is still unclear.”
“How could it be,” Gao Tianyang was completely unaware, “don’t be modest, even though your English scores this time round may be a little tragic, your improvement has to be the largest between the weeklies and the monthlies, there’s zero room for doubt!”

Sheng Wang then realised that he had never spoken a single word about the condition Big Mouth Xu gave him, about improving by 50 places.
Just as he was about to explain, as well as casually mention how his English results was nothing to be sorry about either, Li Yu approached with two pieces of paper.

“Didn’t you ask about staying in school before?” She settled a piece of paper on Sheng Wang’s desk. “There, this is the application form, all you need to do is to fill in your student info.”
“Thanks.” Sheng Wang gave her a quick smile, lowered his head and started reading the form. He started spinning a pen out of habit, as if he was about to fill it up at any moment.

Immediately after two spins, Jiang Tian’s low voice came from behind his ears: “You’re staying in school?”
Sheng Wang suddenly felt a little guilty.

“Hm?” He denied out of instinct, “No, I just casually asked the class monitor last time.”
Upon finishing his words he turned behind to look at Jiang Tian. Just like the last time he hid from Sheng Mingyang, he didn’t know what he had to feel guilty about, he only desperately wanted to know what Jiang Tian’s reaction was.

Jiang Tian’s gaze landed on his finger, Sheng Wang glanced at it along with him. He realised that his hand was still holding onto the pen. He was quiet for two seconds, and then threw the pen away with a smack.

Li Yu stood next to the table, feeling that there was a slight tension in the air.
Her sixth sense told her that now is not the best time to continue to talk to Sheng Wang about this matter. Therefore, she used the remaining piece of paper to cover half her face, silently moved a table forward until she was next to Jiang Tian’s, and carefully placed the paper on his desk.

Both Jiang Tian and Sheng Wang looked at her at the same time.
Li Yu suddenly regretted her actions a little, but she could not simply run away due to her responsibilities. As such, she gestured at the second form: “Um……Jiang Tian, you mentioned this to me before too, this is the form. You, uh, the two of you fill it up as you please, you just need to pass it to me on Friday that’s all.”

Sheng Wang’s gaze shifted onto Jiang Tian’s face.
Jiang Tian did not look up, his lowered eyelids were quite thin, the corner of his eyes formed a long and yet graceful curve. The way he looked at the surface of the table was especially serious.

Li Yu felt as if she accidentally stirred some major trouble, and scampered away.
The moment the outsider left, the mood became even stranger. A long while passed before Sheng Wang glimpsed at the form in Jiang Tian’s hand. “Are you filling in the form?”
Jiang Tian instantly put his pen down.
That action of his was nearly reflexive, the exact mirror of Sheng Wang’s earlier.

Sheng Wang suddenly felt that it was kinda funny. He pursed his lips, trying to look all serious for some moments before he finally couldn’t keep it up anymore, and started muffling his laughter as he leaned over the back of the chair.
“Stop laughing already.” Jiang Tian crooked his pointer finger and knocked on the back of his hand.
Sheng Wang’s eyes, crescent with laughter, shifted up. He saw Jiang Tian teetering on the edge of laughing and not laughing, and so his laughter got more hysterical.
“Enough already.” Jiang Tian lowered his voice, but when he reached the last word he finally completely gave up, and started laughing along.

Gao Tianyang was the face of confusion, why did the two people behind lose it all of a sudden?
“The hell? What are you two doing, why aren’t I invited?” It was the first time he has ever seen Jiang Tian laugh uncontrollably with his head looking aside. It was a little novel, but he was more bewildered than anything.

Jiang Tian gave a cough, by the time he turned back his expression was under control once more. Still, a trace of laughter remained at the corner of his eyes.
“None of your business.” He said.
Gao Tianyang sat back down feeling as if he was wronged. He wistfully sighed, how time flies and people become unrecognisable, 10+ years of childhood friendship changed like a fleeting thought.

His lament was too obvious, Sheng Wang felt the remorse of stealing his bro for some mysterious reason. Even though this remorse made zero sense at all, he went on to explain anyways: “It really wasn’t anything, just something kinda awkward.”
“Awkward?” Gao Tianyang couldn’t help himself, “You guys managed to laugh this hard over something awkward? Did you two eat something wrong?”
“Yeah yeah yeah, super wrong.” Sheng Wang waved him off, and turned around again.

Jiang Tian scanned the form that was still on his table, and abruptly asked: “Why did you want to stay?”
“When I asked the class monitor about this, I wasn’t exactly getting along with you.” Sheng Wang half jokingly said, “I was just scared that you get annoyed whenever you see me and launch a sneak attack on me at night. Who would have thought……”
Time barely passed, yet Jiang Tian somehow became the person he was closest to in Fuzhong.

That wasn’t exactly it either, “closest to” wasn’t the most accurate term. Gao Tianyang spoke to him more, joked around with him more, and when they messed around they were absolutely unbridled. They fit the traditional description of “close” even better, but that was just in school.
In other more private places, in the spaces beyond test papers and reports, where the classmates and teachers didn’t exist, Jiang Tian was still there.
If he had to define it, then it would only be “special”.
Jiang Tian was the most special person to him that he got to know in Fuzhong.

“Then do you still plan to apply?”
Sheng Wang snapped out of his thoughts, he briefly paused before he said: “Nope, can’t think of a new reason.”

When he grinned as he spoke he was the image of fresh and cool, unrestrained energy of youth flew off between his brows. He was like the birds that leapt around the tree branches during summertime, he always had the ability to make the people around him brighten up and become genial too.
Jiang Tian listened, and nodded after a while.

“You?” Sheng Wang asked, “You also asked the class monitor a long time ago?”
“Mn.” Jiang Tian grunted.
“Then do you still plan to apply?” Sheng Wang asked again.

This time round Jiang Tian did not immediately answer. As he lowered his eyes, staring at the form, the black pen on his table already made its way back within his fingers at some unknown time. His pointer finger shifted, and the pen spun one round without warning.
After what seemed like ages, he said: “It will probably be filled up at some point in the future.”

Someone left a window half opened in the classroom, the wind snuck in with the remnants of the summer heat, fiery and stiflingly hot. Sheng Wang’s throat was parched all of a sudden. He dug out a can of cola from the stomach of his desk, his head lowered, pulled open the can tab and took a drink.
When he bought it in the morning, there was even a layer of frost outside the can. Two periods of classes passed by, and the frost melted into water, dampening a good portion of the inside of the table. The ice cold drink was no longer ice cold, when he drank it it was neither exhilarating or thirst quenching, there was only a sticky sweetness.

Sheng Wang was momentarily silent as he held the aluminium can, and let out an “oh”.
*
Qi Jiahao only came back to class with his head hung low when the school bell rang for class to start. After that, he did not speak a single word to anyone for an entire morning. Gao Tianyang and co were all mystified, and their tongues wagged. Despite calling him “Old Qi” for a while, they did not manage to cheer him up.
The English paper came back in the afternoon, and it was then that they knew the reason behind Qi Jiahao’s low spirits. Out of the famous three bigshots of English in Class A, he was the only one who flunked so disastrously, to the point that other people didn’t even know where to start to comfort him.

“This is completely different from what I thought I’ll have to do.” Gao Tianyang said to Sheng Wang, “I’ve always thought that you’ll be the one who needs comforting, I freaking even planned my speech, and you’re telling me you scored 110?”
“OP!” Song Sirui admired him to the point of nearly prostrating before him.
“You didn’t even, fucking listen to listening compre, and your English score, is seriously 8 marks higher than mine?” Gao Tianyang received a giant blow. “Did I learn, my fucking English, with my feet?”
“You’re so OP!” Song Sirui said again.
“Screw off, scram, leave.” Gao Tianyang kicked him aside. “No wonder Old Qi wanted to shut himself down, who wouldn’t?”

With Sheng Wang’s score, anyone would have happily passed away with a smile, and yet out of all things, he was the face of calmness when he received his paper. Not only was he calm, he looked like……he wasn’t feeling particularly pleased.
It wasn’t only him who was acting unusual, Jiang Tian was acting off too. This person scored the highest for 4 out of 5 subjects out of the entire level, yet he looked like he came in behind everyone in the level.

The PE lesson in the afternoon was taken over by the homeroom teacher, He Jin, for the first official class meeting in September.
“How did it go? I see that everyone is looking a little down.” The moment He Jin entered, she could feel how dispirited the entire Class A was. She spreaded the notebook wide open on the teacher’s desk, and flattened it with her hand. “Pull yourself together a little, yeah? Theoretically, new term, new beginnings. Every bigshot here should be showing me, the homeroom teacher, a little face for my sake, right?”

Bits and pieces of laughter came from the class, and finally things looked a little lively again.

“Let me quickly go through some things.” He Jin said as she gave a quick glance at the notebook: “The first thing would be about the Olympiads, in this upcoming semester that just began——don’t give me this mocking look, I know you already had lessons for the past month or so, please try to play along.”

Song Sirui led by giving a round of applause, a bunch of boys said with a forced smile: “Yay, school finally started, I’m so happy. Teacher, please continue.”
“Shoo!” He Jin waved in annoyance. “Either way, this semester, the preliminary competition for math, chem and physics will all come one after another. Same old rules, our class is Class A after all, Class A is also known as the competition class, so every single one will be participating, that’s all. Those who make it past the preliminaries, there will be some training camps in the winter and summer breaks, winter camps summer camps and stuff. After the camp, you will be going to the semi finals.”

“According to past observations, the minimum requirement for application for advanced admissions into top schools would be the second prize. Remember, second prize. Don’t seriously listen to that student affair’s office’s Dean Xu run his mouth. It’s not that there aren’t schools with a minimum requirement of a third prize, it’s just few in numbers, and I figure that you guys wouldn’t happily settle for those either.”

The tall stage that Dean Xu built outside was completely dismantled the moment He Jin shut the classroom doors. Class A’s teachers were all individually someone to be reckoned with, they were all well known in the city, none of them was afraid of the school leadership.

She observed the looks on the students’ faces, then smiled as she said: “When I said that a second prize is the minimum, most people turned green. How about this, let’s talk about data——”

“I’ve been in charge of Class As for six years in total, if I recall correctly, for competitions on the provincial level every year, 90% of the students have gotten a second prize, 9.99% of the students got the first prize.”
The entire class was shocked for several beats, and commotion began to stir.

“Spot the problem now?” He Jin said, “That’s right, I’ve only ever seen two third places up till today. What does this imply? This means that after our series of training, scoring a third prize is much more difficult than scoring into Tsinghua and Peking U, whoever that manages it would be a clown.”
The whole of Class A guffawed, even Sheng Wang started laughing along.

He Jin winked at him in the midst of chaos, and retracted her gaze again as she said: “Therefore, youths, let’s work hard.”
“No problem.” Class A’s bigshots all dragged their voices in reply.

“These three Olympiads would be our class’ major task for year two. As such, from this semester onwards, every last lesson in the afternoon would change into pre-competition coaching. Monday-Tuesday: Physics. Wednesday-Thursday: Math. Friday-Saturday, Chem. We would arrange for some special teachers to help, I’ll pass out the timetable as well as the list of teachers in a while, so you will be prepared.”

“The second thing would be about the Tri-Quality Students of the City nominations.” She made five copies of the timetable, and got every student at the front to pass it behind. She then picked up a stack of blank slips and said: “I’ve said it before, one would be based on their grades, one from recommendations within the class committee, one from the degree of improvement, and one from a democratic election. Fill these up now, I’ll get the class monitor and the study rep to count later, and settle on the list today, ok?”

Actually, a democratic election would be super easily affected by the mood of the day, different days may produce different results.
Most students of Class A were relatively simple, but they actually brought a lot of factors into consideration:
There were plenty of people who generally got along with everyone in class, but Jiang Tian was nailed in the first place of the level, Sheng Wang was improving at a frighteningly speedy pace, Gao Tianyang, Li Yu, Song Sirui were under the rank of class comm members, a whole other battle altogether. Therefore, the votes of the democractic election would have to go to the people who belonged to neither three categories.

For example, Little Chilli, the bigshot unemployed person who was in touch with the common people, Small Mouth Xu who was a people pleaser, or even the person who made it in all the way from the normal classes, the somewhat smarmy but not unforgivably flawed person, Qi Jiahao.

The votes were mostly concentrated amongst these three people, and in the end, due to how pitiful Qi Jiahao was today, he won some sympathy votes, and defeated Small Mouth Xu by a small margin.
At this point, Qi Jiahao finally smiled for the first time that day.

“Ok, then the first Tri-Quality Students of the City has basically been settled.” He Jin led by clapping, “Then let us welcome our English rep, do you want to come up here and make a small speech?”
“No need, no need.” Qi Jiahao grinned as he frantically rejected, and yet he was sent out of his seat by a kick from Song Sirui beside him.

He stumbled, and managed to go onto the stage. He cleared his throat with his hands behind him and said: “Um, I didn’t think I’d get this slot either, thanks guys.”
When he got to that part, he revealed a trace of how pleased he felt at last. The score of 92 for English was left at the back of his mind, Yang Jing’s words went out of his ears. He scanned around; most people were happy for him, with the exception of two of them——

One was Sheng Wang. He lazily clapped his hands, but his eyes were on his table instead, like he was analyzing the timetable. What’s so good about that dumb timetable anyway.
The other one was Jiang Tian. This person did not even clap at all, he just coldly glared at him with his back leaning against the chair.

Qi Jiahao’s heart skipped a beat, the smile on his face turned stiff for a second before he quickly recovered from it.
No matter what, he got a nomination in this competition first. As for other matters? They all aren’t important.

He returned to his seat in a chorus of heckling. After He Jin finished going through some other matter, she finally started to give out the thing most students were the most concerned about: the monthly exam’s result slips.
The first student of each group took the slips, found their own and passed it behind.

Sheng Wang was analyzing the timetable. There would be two weeks of extended physics this semester, starting from next Monday onwards. The teacher’s name was labelled next to the timeslot. The teacher’s name was Zhao Xi, the exact same first and surname as the Boss Zhao from the BBQ shop, “In Those Years”.
Just as he was puzzling over it, Song Sirui let out a soft “ah” next to him.

“What’s wrong?” Sheng Wang looked up and asked.
Song Sirui passed the slip to him, saying: “Badass, your total score went up by 40+ marks, if you convert your score for physics and chemistry they should be A grade by this point, your level placement went up by 47.”

As Sheng Wang expected, the higher up he goes, the harder it would be to jump.

Song Sirui was still helping him do the math next to him: “If you didn’t miss English listening compre, you could have gotten 7 more marks……lemme think, I just saw Chen Cheng’s result slip, he scored 4 more points than you, and there was a equal sign next to his placement. I reckon that with your 7 marks, your placement could have gone up by 8-9 more.”

No such thing as ‘what-ifs’ in the world.
The reality was he spent an entire week busy working hard, and yet he did not meet Big Mouth Xu’s requirement of improving by 50 places. His nomination for the Tri-Quality Students of the City went up in flames.

He didn’t care for the nomination itself, he just didn’t particularly like the feeling of wasting his efforts all for nothing.

That night, Jiang Tian, who usually never bothers looking at friendship circles in WeChat, spotted a red dot in the early morning. He tapped on it for the first time ever, and the interface changed for a few seconds before it refreshed. At the very top, a new status appeared, coming from the person next door over, posted a minute ago.
He said: Nothing is going favourably today.

Jiang Tian tapped into the chat, the other person’s profile pic changed from a small red can to a patch of darkness. His WeChat name became ‘Shop’s Closed’.
Jiang Tian sent a question mark over. He waited for 20 minutes, but there wasn’t a single response.
The shop really was closed.

TO BE CONTINUED.