Chapter 43 (Part 1)

Fu Yangxi didn’t come back. Mingxi spent the night alone.

After turning off the lights, the whole room suddenly felt empty. Only a light blue lamp was left in the hallway, emitting a faintly shining light. Most of the other places were kept in darkness.

The 200 square meter apartment was originally big, and since it was without much furniture, it looked empty.

But now there was not even a sound, so it was completely deserted and silent, with a boundless feeling of bone-chilling cold.

This was different from what Mingxi thought.

She thought that the place where Fu Yangxi lived, considering his flamboyant and wanton personality, must be very lively, with a lot of noises and the love of his parents and friends.

But this was not the case.

Mingxi discovered that she knew very little about Fu Yangxi.

She stayed in the apartment by herself. As her heart was troubled, she did not fall asleep at night.

Mingxi couldn't help but to get up and go to the bar to pour a glass of water.

Although the owner was away and it would be a bad idea to explore this apartment alone, Mingxi couldn't help but look around.

She felt an itch in her heart. She was very curious about what movies Fu Yangxi would usually watch, so she went to the second floor and browsed through the vinyl and movies in the theater room. There were mostly niche science fiction films in the collection, and there were some covers in purely foreign languages, so she couldn’t distinguish what kind of genres they were.

What was surprising was that although Young Master Fu was as sharp as a blazing sun, he was not a messy person. The movies were all numbered.

Mingxi took a photo of these movie catalogs. She planned to choose the ones he hadn't seen when the two of them watched movies in the future.

Next, Mingxi, with her pajamas, went to another room on the second floor to take a look.

On the table lay the sweeping robot that was disassembled and half repaired. The gray and black parts were placed there casually. Mingxi subconsciously wanted to go over and take a look, but her upbringing made her feel that it was not good to touch other people's things at will. So she just looked at it from afar for a while.

After walking around the apartment, all the places gave Mingxi the feeling of only two words:

Vast and empty.

After so long, it was already past midnight.

It was late at night.

Mingxi quickly went downstairs to her room.

She looked at the ceiling and couldn't sleep, tossing and turning constantly. She couldn't help but to turn over the chat dialog with He Yang and stare at the 1,096 chat records with ‘Fu Yangxi’ in a daze.

The feeling of an unfamiliar itch reappeared in her heart.

What a mess. When Mingxi came back to her senses, she had already started searching on Baidu— How to judge whether I like someone or not.

Mingxi was startled and wanted to withdraw from the page on instinct. However, she licked her dry lips and still couldn't help but glance over the page with a stiff posture.

The first result was impressively: ‘When you can't help but understand the other person's preferences.’

Mingxi glanced at the photo she had taken of the movies and was immediately shocked.

She covered her face, buried her head in the pillow and took a few deep breaths.

After a while, after being mentally prepared.

Mingxi continued to scroll down.

The second one was: ‘When you can't help but stare at the other person and think that the other person looks good.’

Mingxi's blood had flown to her scalp, and her face became hot for some reason.

The third one was: ‘You can’t sleep because of the other person and worry about the other person.’

That was Mingxi's last straw.

She threw the phone aside and faced the ceiling. Then, she raised her legs and did a few kicks and cycling motions, trying to forget what she had just seen.

But Pandora's Box had been opened, and some things were uncontrollable.

After a while, Mingxi was still scratching her head and cheeks. She couldn't help but get up, grabbed the phone, swallowed her saliva and continued to look down.

She looked down one by one.

Then.

She found that she could relate to almost all of them.

Mingxi scrolled down to the last one. The last one was: ‘When you start to doubt whether you like the other person, open this test because of this and satisfy them one by one, then there is no need to doubt, the answer is ‘yes’.’

Mingxi: “...”

???

Mingxi couldn't sleep at all now.

She lost all sense of tiredness.

One sheep.

Two sheep.

Three Fu Yangxi.

…

Mingxi's heart was pounding as she lay on the bed. In the end, she didn’t get a wink of sleep all night.

Mingxi has always been a good sleeper. This was the first time that sleep had eluded her in so long.

The sky was turning white, and the Zhao Mingxi today continued to lie on the bed like a salted fish with her eyes open, very apathetic.

…

The next day.

Mingxi thought that Fu Yangxi would come back the next day. Because she couldn't sleep, she got up early and started cleaning. She pulled the sofa to the floor-to-ceiling window, unloaded the curtains and threw it in the washing machine. After the washing was done, she dried the curtains and used all her effort to hang it up again.

She was so busy that she was sweating all over. Just like that, the whole morning passed.

During the cleaning, Mingxi found Fu Yangxi's broken phone case.

She couldn't help but search through Taobao and ordered herself a phone case that was exactly the same as the original one.

Fu Yangxi did not come back at noon.

In the afternoon, Mingxi searched the Internet for a bunch of answers on ‘How to stop my elders from matchmaking me with someone I don’t like’. Then, she racked her brains to organize the words, deleted and edited it, before sending it to Aunt Dong. She wanted to clear things up about what happened at the western restaurant.

Next, she went to Professor Gao as usual to accompany his grandson and study.

When she came back at about eight o'clock in the evening and put in the password, for some reason, she was expecting to see Fu Yangxi sitting on the sofa, playing games.

But when she opened the door, everything on the bar was intact, the same as when she left.

Fu Yangxi still didn't return.

*

On Monday, Mingxi went to school in the cold wind. The seat beside her was still empty until the second period. It was just as it was when she left with Fu Yangxi last weekend.

She couldn't help turning her head to find out some news from Ke Chengwen in between classes.

However, Ke Chengwen was also confused. He held the basketball and said. “I don't know. Xi ge used to skip school all the time. The dean and Mr Lu are used to it. The fact that he attended classes every day last month was actually really surprising.”

"And if you don't know why he didn't come, how would we know? Didn't you go to his house this weekend?"

Speaking of which, Ke Chengwen couldn't help but speak with envy, “Although I know Xi ge’s address, I’ve never even gone through the door of his apartment before. How is it? How big is it? How is the life of a rich person living alone?"

Mingxi was too shy to tell Ke Chengwen that she not only went through the door, she also knew the password to open the door.

Because Fu Yangxi did not reply to the message, Mingxi was really upset. So she couldn't help but ask Jiang Xiuqiu in the afternoon, “Did something happen with his family? He hurried back on Saturday.”

While receiving another love letter, Jiang Xiuqiu took the time to raise his peachy eyes and glanced at Mingxi. Then, he said, “Don't worry about him, Little Mask. It shouldn't be anything bad. He has a cousin who returned to China not long ago and wants to transfer to our school. He may have gone back because of this.”

Ke Chengwen couldn't help but defend Fu Yangxi, “Xi ge said no one is allowed to call—”

Jiang Xiuqiu smiled and said, “He’s not here, isn’t he? So he can’t stop me.”

The two of them went off arguing. Mingxi returned to her seat and continued to write her homework thoughtfully.

Jiang Xiuqiu and Fu Yangxi have known each other for the longest time. If he says it's nothing, then there shouldn’t be anything serious.

Perhaps I was over-concerned.

Mingxi was somewhat relieved.

On the following Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, Mingxi moved out of his house and returned to the school dormitory.

Fu Yangxi never came.

Except her, all the students in the class were obviously used to it.

Only then did Mingxi understand what Ke Chengwen meant when he said that Fu Yangxi had a lackluster attitude.

No wonder he didn't remember the names of the homeroom teacher and classmates.

With the rate of his attendance, it would be surprising for him to remember anyone's name!

For three whole days, none of the young seedlings in Mingxi’s flower pot grew. She tried her best to make herself less disappointed, but some uncontrollable emotions broke out in her heart, unable to restrain its growth.

For example, Article 5 of ‘How to Determine Whether I Like a Person’— When you miss that person.

Mingxi bit her lip as she sorted out the papers that had been placed on Fu Yangxi's desk these days. She stuffed them into the drawer of his desk. The training camp was about to begin. The final day of the training camp was the preliminary round, so Mingxi didn't have time to think about anything else. She began to devote herself to practicing numerous sample questions.

In the second period on Thursday afternoon, Mingxi sorted out her homework and sent it to the office. When she walked towards the office, she saw a tall figure coming out of the dean's office at the end of the corridor and went downstairs in a flash. The figure looked very much like Fu Yangxi, but not so much— his short hair was pitch black.

Mingxi subconsciously crossed through the crowd in the corridor and hurriedly chased after him, but the other party had already come downstairs quickly. In the end, not even a corner of his shirt could be seen clearly.

The class bell rang in the academic building. Mingxi was stopped by Mr Lu, so she had no choice but to turn her head and enter the office.

The cold current hit more and more violently. The last leaf in the school turned yellow and withered in the blink of an eye.

There was heavy rain the next day.

There was stagnant water everywhere in the school.

Mingxi put on a thick coat, a scarf, tied her hair into a bun and packed her luggage. She packed a Tournament question book and a large stack of draft paper in her school bag. Then, she went to camp with 20 other people. A group of people came to the school gate in the cold wind, waiting for the school's rented bus. The cold air condensed into white snow.

Shen Liyao paused when he saw her. He walked towards her on his own initiative.

Mingxi was holding tightly onto the white phone case with a small mask painted on the back. She turned to look inside the school, wanting to see if Fu Yangxi was here today. After looking back, she found that Shen Liyao was standing beside her with a black suitcase. She frowned and moved a few places to the right.

Amidst the cold wind, Shen Liyao's face changed.

The other 19 people who participated in the training camp were a little surprised when they saw this scene.

The first surprise was that God Yao would take the initiative to stand beside Zhao Mingxi. The second surprise was that Zhao Mingxi refused to stand beside him, as if she did not want to stay with him.

—But this is Shen Liyao!

Six people from the Evergreen Class came, including Zhao Yuan and Pu Shuang. Three from the International Class came. Besides Zhao Mingxi, there were two students specializing in English. The remaining 12 places were all taken by the Gold Medal Class. In addition to the five from the School Representative Team, there were also seven people who were all from the Gold Medal Class.

Mingxi counted. There are a total of seven girls. When the time comes, I wonder how they're going to allocate us in the hotel.

While she was thinking about this, Pu Shuang couldn't help but whisper to Zhao Yuan, “They won't put us and Zhao Mingxi together in the hotel, would they?”

Zhao Yuan didn't say a word.

Ever since the incident with Zhao Zhanhuai’s company, she lost a lot of weight and did not look very good.

She quietly turned her head to look at Zhao Mingxi. She saw Zhao Mingxi standing alone against the cold wind at the end. Her white earlobes were becoming more and more pale from the cold. She had tied her hair up in a bun, revealing a slender swan-like neck. Several boys couldn't help but look at her.

Zhao Yuan clenched her fingers involuntarily and squeezed the suitcase tightly.

Doing more was a wrong move. Now, everyone in the family feels like I am competing with Zhao Mingxi.

——Zhao Mingxi only did well in that one exam. Maybe she was just lucky. Otherwise, why were her grades so bad before?

Zhao Yuan decided to do nothing first. She will wait for the results of the Tournament 10 days later to get rid of Zhao Mingxi completely.

In this group, except for Zhao Mingxi, the others were all veteran contestants.

They have participated in training camps year after year.

Zhao Mingxi was the only one who was suddenly squeezed in this year because of the spot given by Professor Gao.

20 people thus became 21 people.

It was conceivable that when a strange face suddenly appeared in a small circle, they would inevitably be excluded and questioned.

Zhao Mingxi's monthly test scores were good, but she was fortunate enough to get a chance to be ahead of others. Isn't it a bit unfair?

The crowd became clear about this fact quickly. So Zhao Mingxi was left alone.

Even the two people from the International Class were left out and stood in the corner.

Shen Liyao and the people on the School Representative Team wanted to be with her and help her blend in, but she walked away on her own.

Mingxi didn't care about this at all. The bus drove up and she was the last one to quietly get into the car with her luggage.