A Young Woman's Heart

"Probably..." Mo Xueyao muttered as she changed back into her own clothes, only to find Zhang Yumeng staring intently at her.

Zhang Yumeng was a little shorter than her, and she was between her and Hua Yinyin when they were queuing. Although they didn't interact much on a daily basis, they were often in front of and behind each other in line, so they were fairly familiar with each other.

This is a petite girl.

Hua Yinyin could be described as having baby fat, or as being slightly plump.

Wang Jiale can be described as petite, while Zhang Yumeng is truly petite.

She was as thin as a bamboo pole; if she rolled up her sleeves, you could clearly see the bones in her hands.

To describe him in four words, he was skin and bones.

Her face was also very thin; in any case, she wasn't considered pretty.

Being thin doesn't necessarily mean being beautiful. In fact, being this thin is somewhat frightening.

"Xiaoyao has a really good figure." Zhang Yumeng knew that Mo Xueyao had noticed her, so she smiled slightly at her.

"Uh...it's alright." If we're talking about good figures, Mo Xueyao thinks it's Hua Yinyin, but of course she can't say that, otherwise this guy will misinterpret it again.

Anyway, Hua Yinyin is someone who absolutely cannot take praise.

"Xiao Meng, eat more and you won't be so skinny." Cha Li smiled as she put on her swimsuit, then nervously covered her sides. "Uh... I shouldn't have gained weight, right?"

"No?" Mo Xueyao didn't notice at all.

"You've gained a little weight." Wang Jiale had a sharp eye.

"I've gained three pounds recently..." Cha Li sucked in her stomach. "Looks like I can't eat that much anymore."

"If you start gaining weight, it means your puberty is over," Mo Xueyao muttered. "I wonder when I'll start gaining weight..."

"Xiaoyao, she should still be able to grow taller, that's great..." Wang Jiale stood on tiptoe, "I want to grow taller too!"

"Are the girls ready yet?" Teacher Ye Ran, who was getting impatient, shouted at the door.

"Okay, okay!" Wang Jiale responded loudly and was the first to walk out of the dressing room, followed by the other girls.

Even after many swimming lessons, most of the boys still stared blankly at the screen.

"Today's swimming lesson is a bit rushed because most people aren't here, and it was a last-minute change. So, we won't be teaching much. If you want to learn, you can come here and learn freestyle. If you don't want to, just practice breaststroke on your own. Practice a lot. This isn't for anyone else; if something really happens, knowing how to swim can save your life." Ye Ran walked to the deep end and put his muscular thighs into the pool. "Especially for the girls, if you learn this, you won't have to put your husbands in a difficult position anymore, asking them, 'If your wife and mother fell into the water, who would you save first?' Don't always expect others to save you; we need to learn how to save ourselves. That's what modern women should be like."

"Chen Cheng~" Mo Xueyao, dressed in a very conservative school swimsuit, stood next to Chen Cheng.

Even in a very conservative swimsuit, you can still see her slender arms and her thighs with just the right amount of flesh.

"Hmm." Chen Cheng calmly withdrew his gaze.

"Aren't you afraid Lianlian will get jealous if you look at other girls during swimming class? Besides, you shouldn't be attending swimming class today! It's not mandatory anyway," Mo Xueyao said with a hint of teasing.

"...It's nothing to look at." Chen Cheng touched his nose, probably a little embarrassed. "Uh, don't tell Lianlian."

"Tsk, it depends on my mood."

"Haha, I know you're not that kind of person," Chen Cheng said, offering a roundabout compliment. "It's normal for guys to take a few glances at pretty girls."

"Yes, I understand." Mo Xueyao nodded, then suddenly her expression hardened, and she tiptoed behind Mr. Xue.

Mr. Xue's skin tone was almost as fair as hers; it wasn't that fair before.

This is a physique that countless girls envy.

However, if a boy is too fair-skinned, people will look down on him. Fortunately, Mr. Xue is capable and not afraid of being bullied. Speaking of which, so far, Mo Xueyao has not seen anyone bully Mr. Xue. Although everyone calls him Xiao Xue, everyone respects him.

Is this what they call personal charisma?

Mo Xueyao tried to hide her smile, then reached out and put her hand on Mr. Xue's shoulder, and suddenly exerted force, trying to push him into the water.

But in that instant, Mr. Xue suddenly grabbed her wrist and threw her over his shoulder, slamming her into the water.

Thank goodness we were in the water, otherwise we would have really gotten a concussion.

Even so, Mo Xueyao was still completely disoriented from the fall, and it was the first time she had ever felt that the water was so hard...

"Are you alright?" Mr. Xue immediately jumped into the water and anxiously supported her.

But this was in deep water, and Mo Xueyao couldn't even stick her head out of the water while standing on the bottom. She tried to stand on tiptoe, but only her eyes were visible.

In her panic, she even forgot how to swim.

"Are you alright?" A pair of strong hands scooped her up and carried her to the shore.

It wasn't Mr. Xue, but Ye Ran, the physical education teacher who was preparing to teach his students freestyle swimming.

"Xiaoxue, what's wrong with you? Why are you bullying girls?"

"I'm sorry." Mr. Xue immediately bowed his head in apology and asked sincerely, "Xiaoyao, are you alright?"

"Uh, it's nothing, it's nothing... It wasn't Xiaoxue's fault. I was trying to push him down, but I accidentally fell down myself..." Mo Xueyao quickly tried to exonerate Mr. Xue.

"It's my fault, it was a reflex just now, I'm sorry." Mr. Xue bowed slightly. "Is anything bothering you? There's no bleeding from your skin... Hmm, does anything inside you feel pain?"

"No, no!" Mo Xueyao waved her hand vigorously, "I just fell into the water, it's really nothing!"

“There is also a certain degree of danger,” Mr. Xue said seriously. “When it reaches a certain speed and height, hitting the water is no different from hitting a concrete surface.”

"But I was so close to the water just now, and I didn't use any particular force."

While Mo Xueyao was speaking, Li Wanyan was carefully tidying up her clothes. She had indeed been a bit embarrassed just now, and her full-coverage swimsuit was now somewhat disheveled.

"Okay, it's good that everything is alright." Mr. Xue smiled slightly, sat down again, and continued chatting with Gao Yuan beside him.

Zhou Yong, sitting next to him, stared blankly, then lowered his head dejectedly.

……

Chapter 269 Duanmu Ji's Past

"Yesterday, Vladimir Putin was officially sworn in as the second president of Russia. In his inaugural address, Putin pledged..."

The radio broadcasted news, and the setting sun cast its rays onto the tabletop, reflecting off its patina.

Duanmu Ji sat under the table and took out a thick picture book from the drawer.

With the development of technology, more and more people own cameras, and even those who cannot afford to buy a camera can still take a few photos.

Children born in this era are lucky because they can have photos taken from a young age, so they can look back at their past selves when they grow up.

Of course, for many poor people in this era, taking photos is still a very luxurious thing, and they may not take even one photo in a whole year.

Fortunately, Duanmu Bi is not only an excellent nude model, but also a professional in painting—especially sketching.

Duanmu Ji hadn't opened this picture book since junior high school. Today, on a whim, he was looking through his old things and found it in his drawer.

There were many more drawings in the album than I remembered. Some were simple sketches drawn with black pencils, while others were colored with colored pencils.

Although these paintings cannot record all the details like photographs, they have a more profound and nuanced quality than photographs.

Duanmu Ji had looked at the first page of the album many times.

As the cover, this page is also drawn with exceptional detail.

Although it only uses the colors on colored pencils, it records the colors of every detail like a photograph.

The picture shows a boy of about ten years old, wearing a set of tattered clothes, standing under the scorching sun, his clothes soaked with sweat.

A hand holding an ice cream cone reaches out from off-screen and hands it to him.

The little boy's eyes, however, were lifeless; he simply stared blankly ahead.

That year, Duanmu Ji was ten years old.

He wasn't called Duanmu Ji before.

However, he no longer needs to remember that old name.

He only remembered that the summer that year was exceptionally hot, and under the blazing sun, he didn't know where to go.

Having just escaped from the deep mountains, he felt lost and helpless in the face of everything in the city.

It was only when he was a little older that he heard from other people in the village that he was a child that the couple had bought from someone else.

Because the couple was already in their thirties at that time, but still had no children, they thought they couldn't be without offspring, so they bought an unwanted child from someone else.

It happened to be the time when the one-child policy had just been implemented, and many families secretly sold their extra children.

Unexpectedly, just two years after Duanmu Ji joined the family, the couple, who thought they would never get pregnant, became pregnant.

The couple's attitude toward their child, who was not their biological child, became increasingly worse.

But after all, they were his 'parents' who raised him. Even after Duanmu Ji received the truth from his parents, he still endured their unfair treatment of the two children and their terrible attitude towards him.

Unexpectedly, when he was ten years old, the couple sold him to work in the mines.

Duanmu Ji secretly escaped on the way.

And so I arrived in a completely unfamiliar city.

He wanted to find his biological parents, but he had no idea what they looked like.

Moreover, even if they were found, would their biological parents, who sold them to others, really accept them back?

They probably won't acknowledge him as their son at all.

At only ten years old, Duanmu Ji thought about far more things than his peers.

Originally, Duanmu Ji's life might have ended there; he might have starved to death on the streets, or been sent to an orphanage by kind people to spend a childhood without relatives before growing up.

Ten years old is still considered a child's age.

Fortunately, Duanmu Ji met her in the park that day.

That is, his current sister—Duanmu Bi.

"Hey, kid? Why are you standing here in the sun all by yourself? Aren't you hot?" Duanmu Bi, who was only seventeen at the time, asked with a loud laugh, bringing her face very close to examine the scars on his body.

The old ones were from being beaten by their adoptive parents, while the new ones were from being scratched by thorns on the road when they escaped.

Young Duanmu Ji took a few steps back and hid under the shade of a tree.

He had just drunk a lot of tap water from the tap outside the toilet, which temporarily relieved some of his dehydration symptoms, but he still didn't have much strength to move.