CoP CH8

During all the time in between when class was over and everyone had left; including the three apologetic troublemakers; Sui Cannong had remained in a trance-like state. He was now left standing with a chill in his spine and the awareness of his heart that had already sunken beneath the oceania of his stomach. 

Ji Ling was a man who carried himself with an air of tranquillity, and such of which typically gave others the impression that he was a person quite detached from everyone else. This was the first time that Sui Cannong had ever realised that Ji Ling had a beautiful smile; akin to the melting of glaciers, of freshly fallen snow gracing the land. A breathtaking expression full of vitality. Sui Cannong had been taken aback. 

Why was he smiling? What’s so funny?  

He had been wounded, and this wound was one in particular which had not stopped its profuse bleeding even after much time had passed. Yet somehow, this made him happy? What sorts of elation could he possibly extract from this?

His smile…… it was as if Ji Ling had been pumped with euphoria. 

There was no rhyme or reason in this action that Sui Cannong could make sense of; for he had only superficial knowledge on Ji Ling’s personal life. He knew not of anything else, but he knew that Ji Ling had an extremely negative view on life. 

His intuition nagged him. His head flooded with absurd thoughts. 

It was not until the Japanese sisters, holding notebooks, stood at the door of the biology classroom and began to peek around that Sui Cannong suddenly looked up at the time and realised that it was almost time to go home.

Sui Cannong said to them, “come in.”

Sui Cannong’s biology classroom is a miniature ecological garden. At first, he just planted flowers and plants randomly. He thought that there should be some greenery in the biology classroom, which would be more convenient for chromatography analysis experiments.

Later on, Sui Cannong began to grow vegetables under the pestering of his students.

During the past two years, many of the visitors and parents who had come to visit their school for unrelated reasons had all found themselves drawn to this room which Sui Cannong had kept so many plants in. It was quite the sight so see such an expanse of greenery gathered in this place. One could call it an indoor greenhouse. 

The only factor that stopped Sui Cannong from adding even more plants to this collection was the fact that this room was almost entirely packed with plant life. 

However impressive the large number of  his flora were, Sui Cannong was aware that the true purpose of this room was that of a functional classroom, and thus he ended up transferring many of the potted plants away into other sections of the school. One by one, they were given away by him. Now finally, there was adequate space in his room and he and his students could now breathe a collective sigh of relief. 

Perhaps due to the impact of having lost that pot of Shichuan peppers; the two girls no longer dared to take lightly the art of gardening anymore. During after school hours, they have consistently been coming to water the tomatoes which they had planted.  It was nowadays that Sui Cannong could finally tell the two girls apart. One was named Shirley, and she had her hair braided into twin ponytails. The other had a single braid while her name was Cindy. 

He glanced at their notebooks discovering that their contents were entirely written in Japanese. There were beautiful sketches which accompanied the contents.

“This art ain’t bad,” he teased. “How come you girls don’t devote such attention to your homework?” 

The girls exchanged glances smiling. 

“Frankly, we focus mostly on the arts,” said Shirley. “It’s our papa who thinks it wouldn’t hurt for us to dabble in a bit of maths and sciences. That’s why we’re taking maths and physics. In terms of our academics, art certainly presides over our as our strongest ability.” 

Sui Cannong shook his head, “aha, it’s too bad that neither of you chose to take my biology class. I even drew pictures of little carrots and peppers for the classroom. I don’t know how I could be such a failure……” 

“It’s only because biology is all about memorization. It’s filled with too many different terms,” Shirley chirped. 

Cindy added, “and chemistry is also necessary in order to learn biology. That would be even more difficult to deal with.”

“Hold on, you two better stop talking,” Sui Cannong was about to burst with laughter. 

The little girls covered their mouths and giggled sneakily with him. 

“Thing is, science as a whole is pretty tough. Especially physics, but we were fortunate enough to be taught by Mr. Ji.”

Sui Cannong halted for a moment.

“How come?” He did his best to go about asking in a roundabout manner, “do you think of Mr. Ji as a good teacher?”

Once again, the girls nodded after having glanced at each other with notebooks gripped in hand.

“He really teaches very well,” Cindy chuckled, “but we still can’t understand because our brains have always been a bit slow to keep up.”

“At first, both of us were a bit afraid of Mr. Ji because he hardly spoke when he wasn’t teaching and he doesn’t smile much,” Shirley said. “Though I think that he’s really handsome and has a nice British accent, and—”

Seeing that Shirley was about to steer the conversation in the wrong direction, Cindy quickly intervened: “Yup, it’s true he’s an exceptionally responsible teacher.”

If these two girls were discussing any other teacher at school, Sui Cannong would have definitely stopped the conversation there.

But Sui Cannong was somewhat lost in thought and didn’t immediately intervene, so the two girls continued chattering away.

“Actually, by next year, we should be focusing all our energy on applying to art schools, and we won’t participate in the big maths and physics exams,” Shirley said. “So during classes, like in maths class, the teacher basically lets us do our own thing.”

“But Mr. Ji is different. He noticed that we hardly spoke in class and asked us if there was anything we didn’t understand,” Cindy said. “I made up some random question but then Mr. Ji explained it to us very seriously. It was to the point where I felt a bit embarrassed.”

“And after school, he even remembered it,” Cindy continued. “He found a lot of videos related to that topic and sent them to me, and they were all really fun videos, the kind you can actually get into. It was clear he had put a lot of thought into selecting them!”

“Mr. Ji makes me feel like I’m being valued,” Cindy said a bit shyly. “He’s very kind and responsible, so I really like him…”

Shirley chimed in, “Mainly because he’s really good-looking—”

Cindy blushed and reached out to cover Shirley’s mouth, and the two girls started play-fighting.

Sui Cannong snapped back to reality after a moment.

“Alright, alright, keep drawing,” Sui Cannong sighed, stood up, and said, “I’m going to run down to the printer for a few documents.”

Sui Cannong realised that his understanding of Ji Ling was even less than that of the two girls just now.

Why would someone who is so attentive and responsible towards students be like this towards her… Sui Cannong felt he couldn’t understand it at all.

All day long, Sui Cannong had been feeling anxious, and absurd speculations he had were of no help in easing his rumination.

The printer on the second floor was out of A3 paper, so he had to climb another flight of stairs to use the printer on the third floor. Standing at the stairwell with the printed materials, Sui Cannong’s steps hesitated, and he turned around, choosing a slightly longer route.

Sui Cannong felt it was necessary to confirm that Ji Ling’s arm injury was indeed okay.

He arrived at the physics classroom door and saw Ji Ling had already put on his jacket and was slowly erasing the formulas on the whiteboard, presumably getting ready to leave.

Hearing footsteps at the door, Ji Ling turned his face slightly and made eye contact with Sui Cannong.

Sui Cannong saw Ji Ling blink lightly.

Sui Cannong asked, “Is your hand any better?”

Ji Ling nodded.

Sui Cannong said, “I’d like to have a look at it.”

Ji Ling seemed to hesitate for a moment but still rolled up his sleeve, revealing his forearm wrapped in bandages.

“I found out that the adhesive bandages were used up,” Ji Ling explained to Sui Cannong seriously, “so I went to the infirmary for treatment. The area of this bandage is much larger than the actual wound.”

However, at this moment, the more relaxed and calm Ji Ling appeared, the more Sui Cannong felt that something was off when he casually mentioned he only had a minor injury.

Sui Cannong remained silent for a long time, and Ji Ling, feeling a bit confused, hesitantly asked, “Is something the matter, Mr. Sui?”

“Nothing, I just came to check on your hand.” Sui Cannong took a deep breath, feeling somewhat tongue-tied, and started to make small talk, “Tonight… What time are you available to go online?”

“I might come a bit later than usual today, is that alright?” Ji Ling looked at Sui Cannong and said hesitantly, “Because I’ll be out eating hotpot, and I reckon I’d be home at around eight-thirty today. Alright?”

Sui Cannong was taken aback for a moment.

“Which place are you going to?” Sui Cannong was quite knowledgeable about this topic, and after thinking for a moment, he guessed, “Is it the one next to Leyue City, the Haidilao?”

Ji Ling was surprised, seemingly not expecting Sui Cannong to guess it, and he nodded his head: “Yeah, that one.”

“Good choice, they’ve recently added a salted egg yolk shrimp ball to their menu.” Sui Cannong said with a smile, “If you like salted egg yolk, you can give it a try; I had it once before and thought it was pretty good.”

Ji Ling looked at him and nodded.

“As for hotpot…” Sui Cannong stared at Ji Ling’s wrist, then considered a bit more and said, “Just be careful with your hand; if it’s not possible, ask your friends to help you with the dishes, and it’s best not to let the steam bother you.”

Ji Ling paused for a moment and softly replied with an “mm.”

The air suddenly fell silent again. After a while, Sui Cannong realised that Ji Ling was actually in a state of preparing to leave, and he seemed to have overstayed his welcome in his classroom.

“Then… I’d better get going now.” Sui Cannong coughed lightly, stepped back a few paces, turned around, and walked to the classroom door, saying, “You should—”

“Mr. Sui.” Ji Ling suddenly called out to Sui Cannong.

Sui Cannong was taken aback. He turned his head and saw Ji Ling take two steps forward, standing in front of him.

Ji Ling’s coat was a bit big, and the sleeves were relatively long. Sui Cannong noticed he had tucked his fingers into the cuffs, like some kind of small animal that was very sensitive to the cold.

Ji Ling hesitated for a moment and said, “I’m not going with friends.”

Sui Cannong didn’t quite catch on: “Pardon?”

Ji Ling pressed his lips together.

“What I mean is,” he looked up at Sui Cannong and said, “actually, I was planning to go for a hotpot alone.