Dragon Clan: Lu Mingfei Returns from Japan

Chapter 706 IF Side Story: A Daily Romance Without Dragons (1)

I first met her in the summer when I was fifteen, by the Weiming Lake at Peking University.

The summer heat was oppressive, and even with a gentle breeze blowing by the lake, it was still quite hot.

The teacher leading the group stopped in the shade of a tree, fanning himself with a map while using a megaphone to remind us not to fall behind.

Before the teacher in charge could finish explaining the precautions, Lu Mingfei couldn't wait any longer and quietly left the group.

Standing on the shore of Weiming Lake, Lu Mingfei took in the beautiful scenery. Occasionally, a gentle breeze would blow, leaving shallow ripples on the lake's surface, which shimmered with an indescribable luster under the sunlight.

It was summer vacation, and there were many tourists at Weiming Lake. Some were students, some were parents bringing their children after exams, and others, like me, were participating in a summer camp organized by their school.

Lu Mingfei held up his DSLR camera to his eyes and slowly scanned the Weiming Lake. While adjusting the aperture, he carefully moved the lens, trying to find an angle where no one would be in the frame to photograph the lake.

I finally found a suitable angle that allowed me to capture the scenery of Weiming Lake without anyone in the frame. However, just as I was about to take the picture, a slender figure walked into the middle of his lens.

It was the back view of a girl, wearing a white dress, her long red hair tied up with an invisible white ribbon, the hem of the dress just covering her knees, neither too long nor too short, revealing her fair and straight calves below.

Perhaps because of the hot weather, the girl had taken off her shoes and socks and stood barefoot on the rocks by the lake, her toes slightly raised, revealing her fair soles.

The girl held the camera up to her eyes, seemingly engrossed in photographing some distant scenery, completely oblivious to everything else, including me standing right behind her.

Looking at the girl in the frame, I didn't feel annoyed or angry at all. Instead, I felt a strange throbbing in my left chest, and a wonderful feeling that I had never experienced before welled up in my heart.

With a thought, Lu Mingfei slowly zoomed in, found the right angle, selected continuous shooting mode, and pressed the shutter.

Just as Lu Mingfei was about to change angles and take another set of photos, a voice suddenly rang in his ear: "What are you taking pictures of?"

Before he could react, he felt something icy cold press against his face. He was so startled that he jumped to the side.

"Haha, Lu Mingfei, no matter how many times it's repeated, your reaction is still so funny!"

"This is a normal reaction, okay?" Lu Mingfei retorted, rubbing the side of his face that had been frozen.

The culprit—Liu Miaomiao—stood to the side, one hand outstretched in front of him, smiling at me, holding a half-frozen bottle of mineral water in her hand.

"Here you go." She smiled and handed over the water.

Lu Mingfei took the water from her hand without ceremony, opened the lid and gulped it down. The icy water slid down his throat, and the heat instantly dissipated.

"By the way, what exactly are you filming?" Liu Miaomiao took a step forward, pressed her body against his right arm, and curiously stretched her head over, completely disregarding the difference between men and women and the hot weather.

Lu Mingfei immediately put the camera away and said, "Don't pry into other people's privacy."

Just kidding, if that little brat saw that he had secretly taken a picture of a girl in his camera, and it was such an ambiguous back view, wouldn't that give her something to hold against him?
"Tch, so stingy." Liu Miaomiao pouted.

Seeing that Lu Mingfei remained unmoved, she could only sigh, turn around and leave, as if giving up.

Taking this opportunity, Lu Mingfei immediately found the card slot and planned to take out the SD card and replace it with a spare.

Just then, the camera in Lu Mingfei's hand was suddenly snatched away by someone. He turned around and saw Liu Miaomiao smilingly putting distance between them. It was too late to snatch it back.

Lu Mingfei sensed something was wrong and his mind raced. Just as he was wondering what reason to give her, the little girl looked at him with a puzzled expression and finally shoved the camera back into his hand.

"Huh..."

Lu Mingfei took the camera with some suspicion. The last photo on the camera showed only an empty Weiming Lake, but the girl in the white dress was nowhere to be seen. It seemed that Yi Ran had not seen her.

"I thought you were secretly taking pictures of some girl and were afraid I'd catch you, that's why you wouldn't show them to me. Turns out it's just scenery photos." Liu Miaomiao said this while revealing a relieved smile.

A woman's intuition is truly terrifying. Lu Mingfei thought this, but his face showed a completely different expression as he said, "How could that be?"

"Well, after all, it's you, Lu Mingfei. How could you possibly go and secretly take pictures of girls?"

Why does this sound so awkward? Lu Mingfei thought to himself.

As soon as Liu Miaomiao finished speaking, someone in the group waved to Yi Ran from a distance. Liu Miaomiao responded, then looked at Lu Mingfei and pointed in the direction of the crowd, indicating that she had something to do there. She then jogged towards the group.

Lu Mingfei breathed a sigh of relief, somewhat relieved that the little girl probably didn't know how to use a DSLR camera.

Scrolling back, in the previous photo, the girl was no longer in the center of the frame, but on the left side, seemingly about to leave. The photo happened to capture the girl bending down to put on her shoes and socks.

The girl bent slightly forward, a few strands of hair falling gently from her side, passing behind her ear and resting on her shoulder. The hot sun made her delicate face flushed, yet there wasn't a single bead of sweat on it.

She hung the camera around her neck, one hand holding onto a tree, and the other hand pulling on her white socks to slip them onto her slightly raised right foot. Strangely, even though she had been barefoot, the girl's feet remained as white and clean as porcelain, without a speck of dirt. Her delicate toes, white with a hint of pink, were gently curled, and the slightly sunken soles of her feet now had a few more wrinkles due to the curling of her toes, tinged with a faint pink.

But the girl was no longer in the last photo, presumably she had left. Nevertheless, Lu Mingfei still clung to a sliver of hope and looked towards the spot where the photo had been taken.

Of course, reality is cruel; the girl was no longer there. Lu Mingfei looked around with some regret, searching back and forth, but he could no longer see that beautiful, bright white figure. It was as if everything that had just happened was just his imagination, and only the photos on his camera could prove that it had truly happened.

He glanced again at the spot where the girl had disappeared, and a sense of loss suddenly washed over him.

……

At the start of the new semester, the once quiet and deserted campus became lively again.

Senior students from Shilan High School spontaneously made banners to welcome the new students. A girl next to them was asking a senior for directions. Lu Mingfei easily found the teaching building for Class 2 of Grade 1—his assigned class.

Although September is late summer, the weather is still hot. Along the way, many unfamiliar boys and girls pass by him chatting and laughing, their white school uniform skirts fluttering in the wind.

As he walked along, he unconsciously arrived at the door of Class 2, Grade 1. He glanced into the classroom and saw that there were less than twenty people. Most of them were not many, but they were all somewhat familiar faces. They looked like he had also come directly from the junior high school of Shilan Middle School to the senior high school.

He lifted his left foot and had just stepped inside, before he could even take his right foot out, when a voice so familiar it was almost unbearable rang in his ear: "Lu Mingfei, you're so late?"

Having familiar faces in the same class is usually a good thing, but at this moment, Lu Mingfei would rather there wasn't a single person he knew in the class. Because of the piano prodigy's shout, the dozen or so students in the classroom all turned to look in his direction.

"Here!" Liu Miaomiao waved.

He casually avoided Liu Miaomiao's gaze as he found his seat.

My seat was in the middle of Group Two, not a very conspicuous seat. I glanced at Liu Miaomiao's direction and found that she was also looking at me. When our eyes met, for some reason, her originally angry face turned red in an instant, and then she immediately looked away.

Lu Mingfei found it a bit strange, wondering what she was up to.

He put down his bag, sat down, and looked around. The only person present was a girl sitting to his right. Her hair was casually loose down her back, with only a few carefully highlighted strands falling in front of her chest. She rested one hand on her face, her expression indifferent. She was quite pretty, but her face was covered in makeup inappropriate for her age.

With such a beautiful girl sitting next to him, Lu Mingfei's eyes naturally and subconsciously turned to the side.

Suddenly, as if she noticed Lu Mingfei's gaze, the girl glanced at him with a cold look before turning her face away.

Lu Mingfei scratched his head and looked away, pretending not to know what was going on.

Just then, a girl in the row in front of him suddenly turned around. Lu Mingfei had no idea what she was going to do, but unexpectedly, the girl suddenly asked, "Are you Liu Miaomiao's boyfriend?"

"...Of course not. We were just classmates in junior high."

If any boy were to become Liu Miaomiao's boyfriend, he would probably become the enemy of the entire school, right?
The girl looked at me suspiciously, then leaned closer and whispered, "Before you arrived, the president of the second-year music club came to chat her up."

Music club?
Lu Mingfei: Of course, Liu Miaomiao started practicing piano from a young age. During her junior high school years, she represented Shilan Middle School and won the gold medal in the city's middle school piano performance competition.

Just as he was about to ask further questions, a man in a suit stood at the door and knocked. He seemed to be the homeroom teacher. By then, almost everyone in the class had arrived.

Lu Mingfei and the girl in front of him immediately sat up straight. Before the homeroom teacher could even enter, the girl seemed to remember something, turned around, and said to herself, "My name is Deng Zhuoyi."

Lu Mingfei smiled and replied, "I am Lu Mingfei."

……

Because it was the first day of school, the textbooks hadn't arrived yet. So the teacher only talked about some things like admission guidelines, followed by a freshman orientation meeting where freshman representatives and student council members would give speeches, and then school would be over. Other matters would be discussed after classes officially started tomorrow.

The freshman orientation was held in the multimedia hall. After lengthy speeches by the principal and vice-principal, it was time for student council officers and freshman representatives to speak. Finally, the dean of students gave a brief closing speech.

Freshman representatives are usually the students with the best academic performance in their class.

The freshman representative for Lu Mingfei's year seems to be a girl named Su Xiaoqiang, nicknamed Little Fairy. She came from Xunli Middle School, which is quite far from Shilan Middle School.

However, Lu Mingfei had heard of her name before. After all, she was the top scorer in the city's high school entrance exam, achieving perfect scores in five subjects, nearly thirty points higher than the second-place scorer. Moreover, she was said to be very beautiful.

Many people compare her to Liu Miaomiao because Su Xiaoqiang, the "little fairy," is the school beauty of Xunli Middle School's junior high division and has excellent grades; while Liu Miaomiao, who is both talented and beautiful, is a joke of Shilan Middle School's junior high division.

As the vice principal announced, "Now, please welcome Su Xiaoqiang, the representative of this year's freshmen, to the stage to speak," thunderous applause erupted from the audience.

A girl who had been sitting in the corner of the stage stood up and walked into the light. To his surprise, this girl was actually his classmate, the one who had sat to Lu Mingfei's right that morning.

The girl had already tied her hair into a neat ponytail, which swayed with her steps. Her eyelashes were slightly lowered, as if to cover her eyes, which were inexplicably filled with tears.

She walked lightly to the edge of the podium, bowed a perfect ninety-degree angle to the audience, her delicate features expressionless.

In stark contrast to her expression, her speech was delivered with great emotion and eloquence, as meticulously as a professional news anchor reading from a prepared script. When she finished speaking, the audience erupted in thunderous applause once again, even more enthusiastically than before.

Lu Mingfei's gaze unconsciously fell on the corner of her eye where she had applied eyeshadow, and he noticed that Su Xiaoqiang had wiped off her makeup, probably because she was going to give a speech on stage, and makeup was not really appropriate for a student's image.

He had just looked away when he saw Su Xiaoqiang glance at him again with sharp eyes, as if she had noticed him looking at her again.

This situation was rather awkward, so Lu Mingfei could only touch his nose and silently look away.

Following the freshman representative, it was time for the student council president and vice president to speak. The student council president was a girl with short, ear-length hair, which looked neat and efficient, fitting the image of a student council president. However, her sweet features seemed out of place with this image. I glanced at the name tag on her chest; the name appeared to be Susie.

Following the student council president, the vice president was supposed to speak. However, the vice president seemed unable to attend due to some matter, and the dean of students gave a concluding speech at the end.

This speech was nothing like the lighthearted affair of a freshman representative or student council member. Lu Mingfei didn't know exactly how long the dean of students spoke; it felt like half a century had passed, and he was starting to doze off.

Just as he was leaning back in his seat, almost falling asleep, he heard someone coldly remind him beside him: "Don't fall asleep."

Lu Mingfei groggily opened his eyes, only to hear the man continue, "You can sit next to the principal. If you're not afraid of dying, then keep sleeping."

This time, he finally heard clearly who was speaking. He turned to Su Xiaoqiang, only to see her still staring straight ahead with a blank expression. Lu Mingfei scratched his head, looking around, unsure of who she was talking to.

"No need to look anymore, I'm talking about you." Su Xiaoqiang's icy voice came from the side again.

This time, Lu Mingfei was certain she was talking to me. He straightened up and whispered to Su Xiaoqiang, "Thank you."

She did not reply.

……

(End of this chapter)