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Chapter 8
“Ye Zhou, you’re really not going with us to pick up your brother?” Mother Ye had a glorious appearance today. Her face was painted with exquisite makeup that could rarely be seen in a lifetime. The clothes on her body were also bought in the mall two days ago. Before going out, she had also finished straightening out the collar in the mirror.
Father Ye was also not to be outdone: his shoes were polished brightly and he took off his usual comfortable jacket and wore a suit that was ironed until there wasn’t a single wrinkle. “Then in a while, take a taxi to the Fujin Hotel.”
Ye Zhou gave a half-hearted response. After the two people had left, Ye Zhou ran to their home window and waited for a moment, watching them drive out of the neighborhood. He immediately turned back to his bedroom and packed up the few luggage. Following their steps, he left home.
On the bus, Ye Zhou once again verified that there was a one-way ticket to A City still remaining. Once he got off the bus, he walked toward the ticket window.
Returning from his arduous struggle to grab the ticket, Ye Zhou had changed to the train at 10 o’clock this morning.
As he was sitting in the waiting room, he always felt like he had forgotten something. However, he opened his bag and flipped through it once. He was sure that he’d brought everything. Then what the hell was it?
It wasn’t until he got on the train and noticed that the girl in the neighboring seat was carrying a transparent bag showing their famous preserved fruit specialty that he remembered.
He actually forgot to bring the specialty product for his roommates!
Usually, boys didn’t like this kind of small snacks,  but miraculously, the people in their dorm all said it was delicious. D City’s preserved fruit not only retained the fruit’s fragrance, but it was also not too sweet and not too sour. Even their dorm’s Zhou Wendao, who never liked to eat snacks, was also taken captive. With the things in his hometown being recognized, Ye Zhou was very proud and didn’t think it was too troublesome to bring back a big bag every time he went home.
But this time…because things were too abrupt, he was inattentive and forgot.
The train slowly started. Ye Zhou estimated the time and guessed that his parents should be at the hotel greeting the guests. He dialed the phone and called them.
Sure enough, the other end of the phone was a little noisy. Mother Ye unhappily said, “Where are you? Why haven’t you come yet?”
“Mom, I’m sorry. I remembered wrong before. The ticket I bought was for this morning. I wanted to change the date, but the tickets after tomorrow are all sold out…” As if echoing Ye Zhou’s words, the train issued out a long whistle. Needless to say, Mother Ye also knew where Ye Zhou was now.
“You say, can you do anything properly? Dropping the ball at the critical moment,” Mother Ye said with displeasure. “Forget it, forget it. Ai, elder sister come over here, come sit in the private room…”
With that incoherent sound, Mother Ye hung up the phone.
Ye Zhou looked at the black screen and breathed a sigh of relief.
On the last two days of the holiday, the students came back to school one after another, except for those in Ye Zhou’s dorm room.
Ye Zhou’s roommates arrived on the last day.
Xu Yangjun tossed a large bag of luggage on the ground and looked at Ye Zhou, who was looking at his phone with his legs sticking up from the bed. He asked, “Zhou, you didn’t go home again?”
“Went home, but came back early.” Ye Zhou put down his cell phone and directly climbed down from the upper bunk. “With no one in the dorms, it’d suffocate me.”
Ye Zhou didn’t like quiet very much. It may be because the environment that his parents created for him when he was a child was too quiet, so this caused him to particularly like to plunge into the crowd, in a place where his parents couldn’t see him.
“Do you eat pomelo? It’s homegrown!” Xu Yangjun took out a volleyball-sized pomelo from his bag and patted it. The golden pomelo skin exuded a touch of fragrance, which seemed to be enticing the two to taste.
“Well, I’ll cut the skin.” Ye Zhou licked his lips and didn’t stand by courtesy. He took out a fruit knife and gently made several cuts on the pomelo skin without bruising the pulp and then peeled down the pomelo skin.
Xu Yangjun took the pomelo that had been stripped of its skin, broke it with his hands and succeeded in dividing the pomelo into two equal parts. Ye Zhou tore off a pomelo segment and removed the bitter skin outside. The flesh inside was red and looked fresh. Biting down, the juice filled every corner of the mouth. The taste wasn’t as sweet as it looked, with a hint of distinct bitterness.
“So sour!” Xu Yangjun’s whole face wrinkled. He threw aside the rest of the pomelo and gulped down a glass of water, but unexpectedly, this made the bitterness spread throughout his entire mouth. “Bitter!”
Ye Zhou resolutely finished a pomelo segment and said, “Do you have to go that far? I think it’s okay.”
“Zhou, quickly give me some dried mangoes!”
“You bought it?” After asking this, Ye Zhou realized that Xu Yangjun was talking about the dried mangoes from his hometown. At the university for more than a year, Ye Zhou had never forgotten to bring them the preserved fruit whenever he returned from home. “That…I was in a hurry and forgot this time. But I have cookies. You can use them to pad first.”
Xu Yangjun wheezed twice, ate several cookies in a row, and finished a glass of water. He sighed comfortably. Looking at the pomelo that he’d held all the way here like a baby, he said with a complicated expression, “What a loss.”
“I think it’s very good. Besides, it’s grown by your family, and it’s green and pollution-free.”
Xu Yangjun scratched his head and said, “If you like it, then it’s worth it.”
“Other people will certainly like it.” When the words just fell, Zhou Wendao pushed in. As soon as he entered the dorm room, he put his baggage down and wiped his face at the sink.
“Hot to death. Finally can relax.” Zhou Wendao wiped his face with a towel, looked intently at Xu Yangjun’s desk and stopped. “Pomelo! I love pomelo the most.”
He bluntly broke off a segment and took a big bite. “Sss, not bad.”
Ye Zhou laughed. “Our Junjun’s family grew it. How can it be bad?”
Zhou Wendao flatteringly took another segment to eat, eating while praising, “Delicious.”
Xu Yangjun’s depressed mood finally cleared up. Although it was his wishful thinking to bring something, but able to receive the approval of his friends, his hard work along the way wasn’t in vain. “Heheh, if you like it, I’ll bring it for you next time. I’m going downstairs to boil some water. Do you want to go?”
Ye Zhou pointed at his own water bottle and said, “I’ve already brought in a bottle in the morning.”
Zhou Wendao waved his hand. “Let me rest, then I’ll go again.”
When Xu Yangjun left, Zhou Wendao immediately rubbed his aching teeth and said, “Give me something to eat. So sour.”
Ye Zhou pursed his lips and smiled, placing before him the half packet of cookies that Xu Yangjun hadn’t finished.
Half an hour later, Xu Yangjun carried the water bottle up and gave Ye Zhou a meaningful look. “Tsk tsk tsk, Little Zhouzhou, you’re not honest.”
Ye Zhou’s whole face was stupefied.
Zhou Wendao, gossiping and snickering, gathered by Xu Yangjun’s side and said, “What? What?”
“I’ll just say it. How could the ‘considerate in all things’ classmate Ye Zhou make a careless mistake?” Xu Yangjun leaned against the wall with both arms crossed, striking a pose. He pulled down his fake glasses and said, “You actually didn’t forget to bring the preserved fruit.”
Ye Zhou suddenly had a bad feeling.
“It turns out that you brought a big bag of preserved fruit and gave it all to Shang Jin!” Xu Yangjun walked next to Ye Zhou and gave him a point of praise, “Chasing people should be like this! First capture his stomach, then capture the man!”
“What what what?” Zhou Wendao jabbered on beside him, “What do you mean?”
“I just had something to find Wen Renxu for, and then I saw a bag of preserved fruit on Shang Jin’s table, the kind that Zhou always brought us! A really big bag!”
Ye Zhou pried apart Zhou Wendao and Xu Yangjun who were blocking the doorway, and walked toward Shang Jin’s dorm room.
Of the four people in Shang Jin’s dorm, the other three were still unpacking things. Only Shang Jin was leaning on the chair with a dried mango in his mouth and a magazine in his hand.
The light in front of him suddenly darkened. Shang Jin raised his head and met head-on with Ye Zhou’s gaze that held an unclear meaning. He swallowed the dried mango and said, “It’s very delicious.”
Ye Zhou still didn’t have time to say anything when Shang Jin added, “Like what you’ve said before.”
This sentence was like writing a sequel to a TV series that was just about to end, once again whetting the appetite of the crowd.
Subjected to the surrounding gazes of passion mixed with curiosity, Ye Zhou felt that his and Shang Jin’s story ending still had a long way to go.