When Will My Childhood Sweetheart Marry Me?-Chapter 173: Everything is Ready, Just Missing You
At the top of the staircase, a gray iron door blocked the view of the rooftop landscape.
Jiang Shuyao tried to push it open, and to her surprise, she saw the door wasn’t locked; it was just tied shut with a thin piece of wire.
Her wrist was slender, perfectly able to reach through the crack to touch the wire outside.
It took her a few minutes, as the wire was tightly wound and at a tricky angle.
By the time she got to the final loop, she simply couldn’t untangle it any further.
Jiang Shuyao’s fingers were rubbed raw, and just as she was about to pull back to realign herself, a pair of eyes suddenly appeared through the crack.
She almost cried out in shock, then abruptly held her breath.
Zhong Yuan?
With a clang, the iron door opened.
Zhong Yuan looked at her impassively, slinging his guitar over his shoulder as he squeezed past her to head downstairs.
"Hey, wait a moment."
Jiang Shuyao involuntarily held her breath, thinking her call would be ignored, but surprisingly, the person at the bottom of the stairs actually stopped.
"What do you want," Zhong Yuan asked, his back still turned, his voice indifferent.
Upon reflection, she realized that from the start of the school year until now, they had exchanged fewer than ten sentences.
She looked at Zhong Yuan’s back, or more precisely, at the black guitar he was carrying, and spoke softly, "Let me go down first, please."
It was a nonsensical request, and even after spit it out, Shuyao found it odd and was going to explain herself, but then she saw his figure silently turn around.
Zhong Yuan’s eyes met hers steadily, and although they were usually indifferent, it seemed as if there was something else in his gaze.
Jiang Shuyao couldn’t understand it, so she just wiped past him and went down the stairs on her own.
At the entrance to dorm 618, two full buckets of sheets were left with nowhere to go.
He Shumiao saw her coming down and quickly rushed over, "How did it go, Yaoyao? Can we go up there?"
Jiang Shuyao shook her head.
"The gate is locked, and there’s a surveillance camera next to it."
Oh no!
He Shumiao let out a wail, as if she had died on the spot.
The two buckets of sheets might really start to stink if the weather gods weren’t kind.
The branches in the flowerbed downstairs were all taken, and if they extended any further, they would have to consider the small woods outside the teaching building.
But she couldn’t possibly hang the sheets outside the teaching building.
Her thoughts suddenly paused.
Come to think of it, that might actually work.
He Shumiao was decisive, quickly settling on a plan of action.
The trees in the small woods were tall, and it took half an hour for the three of them to barely manage to hang up a third of the sheets.
"It won’t work; the rest are too high, and we’re not tall enough."
Even if someone over two meters tall came along, it might not be possible to do it.
They understood this, but since they were already there, they had to try again.
"Yaoyao, could you ask your boyfriend to come help us, please, pretty please?"
In their class, it was Pei Yan’s height that stood out the most. Besides him, there was no one else. Truly, He Shumiao was at her wit’s end and couldn’t think of another solution.
Today was the weekend, and the two of them had plans to go out for lunch later.
Jiang Shuyao looked at her phone; it was half-past ten, which was just the right time to ask him to come.
After she sent the message, it took less than ten minutes for Pei Yan’s laid-back figure to appear at the edge of the woods.
He Shumiao’s eyes sparkled as she looked at those long legs from a distance, her confidence soaring.
As it turned out, hanging sheets had nothing to do with height.
Aside from Jiang Shuyao, who remained composed, the other two roommates had expressions that had gone stiff.
It took Pei Yan only ten seconds to ascend. The bare tree trunks seemed as effortless for him to climb as if he were merely walking up a staircase.
He was wearing casual pants and a T-shirt, squatting on a tree branch as thick as a wrist, lethargically hanging up the bedding piece by piece.
The sunlight filtered through the gaps in the forest, casting a fine pattern of light and shadow over his black hair tips.
No one could have imagined that the Pei family’s untamed Little Demon King would one day willingly do hard labor for a girl.
Jiang Shuyao stood under the tree, looking up at him with a gentle smile.
The tenderness shining through her bright eyes was even more moving than the autumn breeze among the woods.
After the task was accomplished, He Shumiao was extremely grateful, shamelessly saying she would treat them to a meal.
Jiang Shuyao teased, "Eat what?"
"Cafeteria on the second floor, dumplings."
As soon as she finished speaking, Fang Wei immediately grabbed the chattering He Shumiao beside her and dragged her away toward the edge of the forest.
"I haven’t finished yet, there’s not only dumplings but also—"
"Stop embarrassing us."
The guy was only hanging up the bedding for the sake of his girlfriend. Besides, would someone wearing sneakers from a globally limited edition really crave a meal of dumplings?
Fang Wei shook her head inwardly; many times, she truly wished she could be as blind as He Shumiao.
As their roommates left, Jiang Shuyao naturally took the arm of the person by her side.
"How’s your preparation for tomorrow’s base assessment?"
Pei Yan answered with a nonchalant tone, "Everything’s ready."
The two walked leisurely through the woods.
There was no follow-up.
"What’s missing?" She couldn’t help but ask out of curiosity.
The breeze swept through, rustling the leaves,
Pei Yan glanced at her carelessly, "You."
A shallow dimple appeared on the girl’s cheek, her steps lightening.
Not bad, pretty confident.
Only...
Jiang Shuyao thought of something, paused her step, and looked up at him, "If you get the chance to go in, try to get along well with the team members. There’ll be a lot of teamwork practices in the future. You can’t stand out from the crowd anymore, okay?"
Her tone was gently rising, as if coaxing a child.
She was thoughtful and could clearly feel that Pei Yan had become much more restrained and mature in both thought and conduct since starting university, far more than during his high school days.
On him, she could even detect the scent of potential awakening.
From childhood to adulthood, she had never underestimated his strength.
Even if he had wasted his high school years, Jiang Shuyao still believed that once her boy got serious, he would undoubtedly be the dark horse that would break out of this bizarre world.
On Sunday morning at nine o’clock, students from the Computer Science department, from freshmen to juniors, gathered in the largest multimedia classroom of Building D.
With nearly two hundred applicants, the base only had thirty slots available.
Distributed evenly across the grades, it meant that among the freshmen, only those ranked in the top ten in the assessment would have a chance to spar with the upperclassmen in the final round.
Initial round questions were relatively easy, and Class 1 had many promising students, claiming a full six spots.
Apart from Jiang Shuyao and Pei Yan, Jiang Xubai and three other boys were also on the list.
Looking around, the majority of those advancing were male students, with very few female competitors, even fewer among the new freshmen.
This made Jiang Shuyao particularly stand out.
The girl was beautiful with a pleasant demeanor, appearing quiet and tender as if without any fighting spirit, but when it came to the second round of ranking competition, many openly admitted defeat right there and then.
"This year’s freshmen are not to be underestimated."
A senior sighed, feeling both ashamed and shocked thinking about how he had just been soundly defeated by a rookie.
"They’ve only had two weeks of programming classes, how can they be so strong?"
Who knows.
Those who lost hung their heads in defeat, and those who lost to the freshers were even more despondent, wishing they could jump off a building.
