Rebirth: Growing Up Together

"What did you tell your teacher?"

"...I, I said I would think about it again."

"It's something you need to think about carefully."

The girl pursed her lips and timidly glanced at Xu Cheng beside her. This little action was immediately caught by Xu Cheng.

"Are you curious why I didn't give you any advice?"

Yu Yu neither nodded nor shook her head, her beautiful peach blossom eyes looking at the tip of her shoe with some melancholy.

She didn't answer, but Xu Cheng understood that after knowing each other for so many years, it was easy to see each other's inner thoughts from each other's actions.

"If, I mean if, you become an art student, what are your plans for your senior year?"

"...Hmm?" The girl was like a sleepy little lamb. She rubbed her eyes when she heard Xu Cheng's question, not knowing what he meant.

"Don't you know that art students are arranged differently from us cultural students?"

Xu Cheng looked at the girl helplessly. The words "ignorant" were written all over her face, and "non-aggressive" and "innocent" were interspersed in between the four words.

He immediately realized that Yu Yu probably didn't even understand the concept of an art student, and simply thought that he could continue to develop in the direction of art.

Not to mention Yu Yu, most students are basically like this. Even Xu Cheng only knew that the group of art students in the class had training sessions every morning and evening that they could not be seen. They sometimes appeared and sometimes disappeared, and they would find a time to take an art exam. Then some of them would continue to take the college entrance examination, while others would be admitted inexplicably.

"The class teacher has a reason to advise you. If you choose to be an art student, then your senior year will consume a lot of your time for intensive training. While training, you also have to rush to finish your manuscript. How can you balance studying? There will be trade-offs in the middle. Can you handle it?"

“…I can, I can take care of it…”, the girl muttered softly.

Xu Cheng sighed, and suddenly put his hand on the girl's shoulder, asking her to turn around like he was fiddling with a chicken.

Eyes facing each other.

The boy's eyes were clear, while the girl's eyes were evasive.

Yu Yu resisted slightly, but couldn't get away, so she turned her head away and looked elsewhere, with a slight blush on her cheeks.

"Not everyone is Yu Yu, a master of time management." Xu Cheng said earnestly.

"Master of time management...?"

"Ahem, you have been focusing on both studying and comics since a long time ago, but you have to know that human energy is limited. It is up to you to decide what to do."

"..."

The girl pursed her lips in a daze.

"If he's an art student... then it might be hard for us to meet... Never mind, don't think too much about it. There's a Love Day event this week to visit the elderly. Yu Yu, you can sign up and go too."

"Oh."

The girl nodded timidly.

It has been like this since she was a child. Once he asked her to do something, she would dare not refuse.

"It's almost time for evening self-study, let's go back." The boy let go of his hands, turned and walked towards the teaching building.

The corner of his clothes was gently tugged.

He turned around.

The timid girl clenched her fists beside her clothes and took a deep breath.

"Xu, Xu Cheng, what do you think...I should choose..."

The boy just looked at her.

"Why are you asking me?"

"..."

Why ask him?

The girl herself couldn't explain this.

No matter how big the difficulties were when she was young, it seemed like he always helped her solve them.

"Yu Yu, I heard someone say something before, do you want to listen to it? I think it's quite good."

The girl looked up at him, and at that moment she suddenly felt that the boy was just a silhouette in the beautiful watercolor sky behind her.

“In fact, life is here.”

“I don’t really need other people’s advice.”

"You won't understand..."

Chapter 316 I'm Really Not a Gangster

At dusk, the sunlight becomes particularly vivid, and the peach petals scattered on the ground are shining with golden light.

Xu Cheng stood there and stretched, "Let's go back first, it's almost time for self-study."

The girl was still thinking about what he had said before.

He nodded when he heard that and followed in small steps.

"Oh, right."

Xu Cheng turned his head and glanced at Yu Yu.

"You'll have to perform a show when you go to the nursing home, so remember to prepare one."

The girl was stunned, her beautiful peach blossom eyes filled with confusion.

"…Me? Preparing a show?"

"Yes, everyone needs to prepare."

"What...what show?"

"Usually they sing revolutionary songs, three-line verses, and quick-paced music. What are you going to do?"

This really stumped the girl.

Performance show?

Just thinking about the feeling of standing in the center of the stage, being stared at by countless eyes, made my legs tremble with fear.

What's more, singing and clapperboard sound like skills that cannot be mastered without two and a half years of practice. How could she know these?

"I...I...I can't do this..."

"But that's the rule. Everyone has to perform one." Xu Cheng looked troubled.

Yu Yu muttered quietly in his heart.

If she could choose not to go, then she could not perform, right?

only……

The girl glanced in the direction beside her, and seeing Xu Cheng's thoughtful expression, she didn't dare to say she didn't want to go.

"How about this, you can just perform a show with me, and then you can just stand by and do some exercise, is that ok?"

"...Yeah." The girl pursed her lips, thinking that this was okay, and agreed softly.

Anyway, it would be impossible not to go, so this proposal seemed to be the best.

And when she stood next to Xu Cheng, she always had a strange feeling. She couldn't describe it, but she just felt less afraid and dared to look other people in the eye.

"What are we going to perform, Xu Cheng..."

"Let's sing a red song. This one is a little simpler. Let's sing "Song of Farewell to the Soldiers". Go back and listen to this song briefly. Then stand beside me and hum it softly."

"Oh, Ten Farewells to Soldiers..." The girl nodded, repeated the name of the song several times, and memorized it very seriously.

Before evening self-study, the classroom was noisy as usual.

Xu Cheng coughed while standing on the podium, and the class quickly became quiet, with only whispers remaining.

Xu Cheng would not go so far as to write down the names of those who whispered, so he sat back in his seat and raised his hand to gently poke the girl's tender back.

"Lin Wan Porridge."

The girl sitting in the front row was thinking about a question. When her train of thought was interrupted, she turned around angrily, biting the mint candy in her mouth with her little canine teeth.

"what?"

"Ahem...are you going to the nursing home event?"

"What day?"

Xu Cheng told her the time, and the girl frowned and shook her head, "I don't have time that day. My mother happened to be on a flight back to China that day. My father and I had to go to the airport to pick her up, and then we had to have dinner..."

"That's fine, go pick it up."

Although the rules are dead, people are alive.

Lin Wanzhou's mother had been studying abroad for nearly a year, and the family was finally reunited. Of course, he couldn't destroy this hard-earned atmosphere.

"What are you eating?" He looked at the girl's rosy lips. There was obviously a small bulge behind her thin lips.

"Mint, what's wrong?"

"I want one too."

"No more, only one piece." The girl said and turned away.

Xu Cheng was busy deciding on the final list of volunteers when suddenly a pair of fair and delicate hands appeared in front of him, clenched into fists, and stretched out in front of the boy.

He raised his head and looked forward, and found that Lin Wanzhou in the front row did not turn around, so he could only see the back of his smooth neck.

She just held out her arm.

Just as Xu Cheng was puzzled, the girl opened her white fingers, revealing a crystal clear and moist candy in her palm.

"..."

Xu Cheng found that he really didn't understand girls. Sometimes they were so reserved that it drove you crazy, and sometimes they were so bold that it scared you.

But maybe that's why they are charming, cute and attractive.

At lightning speed, the boy twisted the candy in her palm with his fingertips and quickly stuffed it into his mouth.

The mouth is immediately filled with the fresh minty taste, mixed with the faint fragrance of flowers and plants, and a hint of sweetness. This sweetness seems to drip into the tip of the heart along with the saliva, truly refreshing.

Just as the boy was savoring it carefully, the girl's hand, which had been stretched behind her back, quickly retracted, as if she was afraid that he would catch her fingers and bite them.

She turned her head and glanced at Xu Cheng with a smile from between the gaps in the pile of documents on the table.

"Is it tasty?"

These three words were spoken by the girl with her lips, and the boy was able to understand them easily because he was familiar with her.

He nodded, opened his mouth and spoke to her with exaggerated lip movements.

"very delicious."

The straightforward answer made the girl blush for a moment, and then she muttered something.

"It just fell to the ground."

"???"

The muscles on Xu Cheng's face twitched a few times, and the girl looked at his deflated expression with satisfaction before turning away.

Of course the sugar didn't fall to the ground.

but……

Humph.

It was his fault for disturbing her while she was doing her homework just now.

She is extremely vindictive.

……

During the last few weeks of the second year of high school, there were often inexplicable holidays because of various major exams that occupied the classrooms.

Xu Cheng had made an appointment to meet Yu Yu to practice singing today, so he got dressed early in the morning and ran to Yu Yu's courtyard.

Due to years of lack of repair, the walls of the courtyard were covered with dark green moss. The boy was about to knock on the wooden door, but before he could knock he ran into his mother-in-law who was about to go out.