Chapter 36: The Love Note

Jiang Mingyue was already exhausted after just one and a half laps. Fortunately, the 800-meter run in the PE exam had already been completed; otherwise, it would have been a repeat of the last time’s sit-up incident.

Her phone rang twice inside her bag. Jiang Mingyue took out the phone and checked it while walking. It was a message from Qi Ze.

Qi Ze: “Late?”

Where Moonlight Wanes and Weather Shifts: “Wuwuwu yes, got caught by the Disciplinary Dean, now being punished to run laps.”

Where Moonlight Wanes and Weather Shifts: “Have to run five laps, I’m gonna die【sobbing】”

Qi Ze: “……”

The Disciplinary Dean was sitting in the stands by the track, overseeing them. Upon seeing a few people walking, he said: “You over there walking, start running, quickly. You’ve only run one lap and already like this. It’s because you usually don’t exercise enough.”

“I can’t run anymore～ this is… going to kill us.” a chubby boy panted heavily, speaking weakly.

A girl responded: “Exactly, Director Wu really doesn’t care for us flowers of the motherland. So cruel.”

The sun at seven or eight in the morning during summer was already glaringly bright.

Jiang Mingyue trailed behind the two of them, trying to avoid the blinding sunlight. Listening to their complaints, she deeply resonated with them.

By the end of five laps, Jiang Mingyue was completely done for.

The sandwich she brought in the morning hadn’t been eaten yet, and now she was feeling dizzy and lightheaded, as if she was about to collapse and die on the spot.

Just as she felt herself about to fall, a pair of hands suddenly supported her.

A clean, pleasant scent enveloped her, and Jiang Mingyue felt assured enough to entrust her weight to the strong arms of the person.

“Don’t stop yet, I’ll hold you and we’ll walk slowly.” Qi Ze pulled her arm firmly, not letting her collapse on the spot.

Jiang Mingyue quickly shook her head and waved her hands, trying to break free to sit down.

“Ah? But I really can’t go on, I feel like throwing up right now.”

Qi Ze wouldn’t allow it. “You can’t lie down immediately after exercise. It’s bad for lung function recovery. Walking while regulating your breath will be better.”

“Alright then, you don’t need to hold me. Let me walk by myself.”

Jiang Mingyue walked slowly at a strolling pace. “Why did you come here? Aren’t you afraid a teacher might see you?”

Qi Ze lifted Jiang Mingyue’s backpack and walked beside her. “Morning reading session is over. The teacher already left. I just came to check if you’re still alive.”

Jiang Mingyue looked up, and sure enough, the Disciplinary Dean was gone. She started talking nonsense again.

“Actually, I’m already dead. What you’re seeing now is just my walking corpse.”

Qi Ze looked at her slumped appearance and said nothing.

“Do you feel a bit better now?”

“Much better.”

“Then have some water.” Qi Ze twisted open the cap of the water bottle he had been holding since earlier and handed it to her.

Jiang Mingyue drank half the bottle.

She hadn’t sweated much while running, but now that she had stopped, the sweat was pouring out.

Jiang Mingyue handed the water back to Qi Ze and asked him: “Do you have any tissues? I want to wipe my sweat.”

“I do.” Qi Ze took out a new pack of tissues and handed them to her.

Jiang Mingyue opened it, and a pleasant fragrance wafted out.

She pulled one out and sniffed it carefully. It smelled fresh and crisp, a bit like Qi Ze’s scent.

“These tissues smell really nice.” Jiang Mingyue held it up to her nose and sniffed again, then leaned in to smell Qi Ze.

Qi Ze immediately pressed a finger against her forehead and pushed her aside. “What are you doing?”

“Hehe, I’m sniffing your scent. I think you smell kind of like these tissues. It’s oddly pleasant.”

Jiang Mingyue tilted her flushed face upward, her moist eyes blinking playfully, grinning like a rascal.

Like a little hooligan.

“……”

“Let me smell you a bit more.”

“…It’s just the scent of body wash. If you like it, I’ll give you a bottle.”

“Really? But I don’t think it smells the same.”

“……”

Qi Ze didn’t know what to say for a moment. He turned and walked away, though his ears were a little red.

Jiang Mingyue wiped her sweat as she followed after him.

At the classroom door, Qi Ze handed the backpack to Jiang Mingyue.

Jiang Mingyue took it and went straight back to her seat, not noticing that a slip of paper had fallen to the floor.

Qi Ze picked it up and was just about to call out to return it to Jiang Mingyue.

But he accidentally caught sight of the words “love you” exposed on it.

He froze instantly.

After standing there in a daze for a moment, he still didn’t call out to Jiang Mingyue.

He took the note back to his seat, turned it over in his palm for a long time, and finally couldn’t resist opening it to read the entire content.

The more he read, the colder his expression became.

“Baby, if there’s something I didn’t do well, you can tell me. Please don’t suddenly ignore me like this, okay? You were clearly the one who chased after me, said you liked me, and now you suddenly say it’s over just like that. I can’t accept it. I really love you. Please, just meet me once, okay? I’ll always be waiting for you.”

At the end, it was signed: Yang Yaowen.

Although it was only a few short lines, it wasn’t hard to imagine the story of unrequited love behind it.

“Yang Yaowen… who’s that? When did she meet him?”

Qi Ze stared at it for a long time. In the end, he crumpled the paper into a ball, intending to throw it in the trash can.

But just as he was about to toss it away, he pulled it back at the last second and stuffed it into his pocket.

After the first class ended, Jiang Mingyue prepared to take the note to Li Ge.

But even after turning her backpack inside out, she still couldn’t find the note from that morning.

She stood up again to check her body.

But she only had one pocket on her uniform, and even when she turned it inside out, there was nothing there.

Liu Wenqi saw her like that and asked: “Did you lose something? What are you looking for?”

“A note. Did you see it?” Jiang Mingyue bent down to look under the desk and chairs.

“Haven’t seen it. What kind of note?”

“It’s… a piece of paper torn from a homework notebook.”

Liu Wenqi also helped her search on the floor. “When did you lose it?”

“I’m not sure. I remember I casually slipped it into my backpack, but now I can’t find it.”

“Then maybe it fell out somewhere else.”

“What should I do now?”

Qi Ze heard the commotion coming from Jiang Mingyue’s side and silently watched her anxious expression without saying anything.

Only his fingers unconsciously flipping the pages of his book betrayed the restlessness in his heart.

Just then, Jiang Mingyue, still searching in place, suddenly looked up and locked eyes with Qi Ze.

She remembered that Qi Ze had helped her carry her backpack that morning, so she quickly walked over to ask him.

“Qi Ze, when you helped me with my backpack this morning, did you see a note fall out? The kind of paper from a homework notebook, folded up.”

Qi Ze didn’t answer her question directly. Instead, he asked her in return: “Is it important?”

“Pretty important.”

Qi Ze: “……”

With that response, Jiang Mingyue naturally assumed he hadn’t seen it, so she left the classroom to check the hallway.

The hallway they had walked through that morning was only about seven or eight meters long. She looked down it at a glance but saw nothing.

Just as she was about to search the corridor, the class bell rang, so she had no choice but to give up.

The next period happened to be break-time exercises, so she could try looking around the track then.

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Lucia: I hope this misunderstanting will be cleared up soon!

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