“Art is all about personal taste anyway. Maybe your painting isn’t better than my dad’s, but I like it better, so to me, it’s better than Shen Jiaru’s.” Shen Mo explained.
“You even call your dad by his full name, show some respect, you, the filial son,” Hua Jie teased with a smirk.
Shen Mo glanced at Hua’s father, who hadn’t said a word, pursed his lips, and left the living room to help Hua’s mother with the dishes.
He had become quite skilled at this now, definitely not the kind to drop a bowl.
“Why doesn’t this kid ever stay at home, and his dad doesn’t seem to care much?” Hua’s father, seeing Shen Mo busy outside and out of earshot, asked quietly.
“Teacher Shen is fully immersed in his painting, indeed he doesn’t pay much attention to him,” Hua Jie replied.
“…” Hua’s father glanced at his daughter, noting her natural expression and posture, mentioning Shen Mo without any shy, girlish behavior, he thought for a moment and then said:
“That boy has skilled hands and is smart, he would do well learning carpentry with me.”
“Come off it, dad, he’s the future top scholar of the province. Extremely clever, learns anything fast, not just carpentry. Better let him focus on his studies,” Hua Jie said a bit too forcefully as she kneaded.
“I’m just saying, why get so worked up?” Hua’s father gave her a look.
“…” She was just worried he might really lead Shen Mo onto the path of carpentry, and Teacher Shen would have a word with him.
“Dinner’s ready,” Shen Mo called out.
“Oh.” Hua’s father replied, stood up, patted his daughter on the forehead with a meaningful look, but said nothing.
Hua Jie touched her forehead, puzzled.
Dinner was large buns; Shen Mo ate six in one go, plus a large bowl of tomato and vermicelli soup.
Hua Jie noticed that Shen Mo seemed to have grown taller recently, undoubtedly thanks to her mother’s cooking.
Shen Mo came to eat here every week, had a great appetite, and visibly grew taller and stronger in just over a month.
She, however, had grown only 1 cm, which was annoying.
After dinner, as Shen Mo prepared to leave, Hua’s mother didn’t let him go right away, worried that he might sweat after eating and catch a cold riding his bike home.
He wandered around the house to digest and cool off.
When he reached Hua Jie’s room, he peeked in curiously.
After feeding the dog, Hua Jie saw him and laughingly asked, “Ever been in a young lady’s room?”
“A young lady’s room? Your room isn’t even as tidy and exquisite as mine,” Shen Mo responded indifferently, with a dismissive air.
“Isn’t my room pink enough?” Hua Jie pointed out. Ever since she got a pink down jacket and a pink backpack, her parents were convinced she liked pink, so they changed her bedsheets and curtains to pink, leaving her feeling so sweetly overwhelmed it almost hurt her teeth.
After letting the painting dry, she prepared to peel off the masking tape.
Shen Mo leaned against the doorway, stealthily peeking outside, and noticed that Hua’s parents were chatting by the stove.
“What are you doing?” he whispered to Hua Jie.
“Don’t just stand there like a door god, come in.” She sat on her bed and invited ‘little teacher Shen’ to sit on her chair.
“Are you becoming more and more casual with me now?” He glanced back again, noticing that Hua’s parents couldn’t see them, and promptly flicked her forehead without hesitation.
“If you flick my head again, I’ll scream that you hit me,” Hua Jie threatened in jest.
“You wouldn’t dare.” He softly threatened back, his bluff more apparent than real.
Hua Jie couldn’t help but laugh, and Shen Mo gritted his teeth.
The young man sat in a room suffused with a pink glow, faintly smelling a sweet fragrance—it was the girl’s subtle scent.
His cheeks suddenly felt hot, and his expression became somewhat unnatural.
Before entering, he had been very curious, but now that he was sitting down, he felt somewhat uneasy.
His study and bedroom were two separate rooms; whenever he tutored Hua Jie at his home, it was always in the study, and she had never entered his bedroom.
Now looking around, he suddenly realized this was where she slept. Every night after the lights went out, she would undress and crawl under the covers…
He shook his head to clear it.
Taking a deep breath, he again smelled the sweet scent, making his heart beat faster.
He pursed his lips and forcefully pulled his gaze away from aimlessly looking around to focus on her desk.
“Is this your drawing practice?” He picked up a notebook she had sewn together herself, filled with either scrap or blank newsprint… very thrifty.
“Yeah.” Hua Jie pulled a cardboard box from beside the desk, “All these are.”
“?” Shen Mo glanced at her, lifted the box onto his lap, and began to flip through one book after another.
There was a watercolor practice of a human skull, 30 on a page of A5 paper, page after page.
He flipped through one after another, the pages densely packed with skulls under various lighting, in different environmental colors, skulls of men, women, and children, one after another, page after page…
Then there were watercolor hands, watercolor feet, watercolor limbs, watercolor folds of clothing, watercolor shoes, watercolor facial features, watercolor faces, watercolor hair…
One notebook after another, an entire large cardboard box full of her practice from the past one or two months. Each sheet of paper was warped and uneven from being wetted with water, the swollen thickness now doubled from its original size.
As Shen Mo continued browsing through the sketches, a tingling sensation ran down his spine, and goosebumps sprang up all over his body.
She had meticulously completed such monotonous practice in a large cardboard box?!
He finally understood what she did every day and why his father occasionally mentioned her rapid progress and solid foundation in watercolors.
With such painstaking effort, how could she not be solid…
Shen Mo was smart and learned quickly, which meant he had rarely, if ever, needed to repeatedly drill a skill like this.
A surge of emotion welled up inside him, and he began to feel an uncontrollable admiration for the small girl sitting on the bed, which diluted the youthful romantic feelings he had just experienced.
It turned out that the rapid progress that enraged him to the point of crying out in protest, ‘Hua Jie is inhuman,’ stemmed from countless nights sitting alone at this small desk, diligently practicing in solitude.
Why did he suddenly feel a twinge of heartache?
He abruptly turned around, stretched his arm over her head, and, seeing that Hua’s parents couldn’t see them, took the liberty to ruffle her hair.
“What are you doing?!” As he withdrew his hand, the girl quickly smoothed her shoulder-length hair, which had grown longer over the several months since he had last noticed.
“I feel like you’ve grown taller somehow,” he sighed, looking at her thoughtfully.
“Pfft.” Hua Jie blushed at his compliment, sneaked a glance to make sure her parents weren’t looking, and then stretched out her leg to kick him.
The girl today was not the girl she used to be. She still looked up to the academic ace, but her awe of the idol had changed.
Look!
She now dared to kick him!
Shen Mo felt pain in his ankle and glared at her threateningly.
Hua Jie looked at him, wishing she had a mirror in her hand.
She really wanted to show him his expression; it wasn’t the least bit fierce.
A faint smile played on his lips paired with a feigned ferocious look in his eyes—it was almost like… a gangster dad playing with his kids, seeming a bit fierce but actually full of tenderness.
How could Shen Mo actually be such a person?
He had always seemed cool and distant, not much interested in interacting with others, and rarely made friends.
He was excellent in every respect but appeared like a deity on a high mountain, distant and hard to approach.
But entering his life, she suddenly discovered that he was almost completely different from the person she remembered from her past life.
His aloofness was just a facade; inside, he was a warm person.
Rich, three-dimensional, full of emotions—happy, sad, proud, boisterous, yet still green.
His youthful edges were sharp, sensitive and quick to anger, stubborn without knowing how to compromise, making people watch from a distance, unsure how to proceed, as if any attempt to reach out would be violently rejected.
But as she gradually became more familiar with him, she found everything about him so recognizable, almost transparent, all clearly visible to her.
Following his pointed features, she felt she could easily capture him.
Her heart suddenly softened. Even an outstanding person once had a childhood.
Everyone progresses step by step from fragility to resilience, from immaturity to maturity.
Even someone as exceptional as Shen Mo was no exception.
And now, he hadn’t fully grown up yet, perhaps just on the verge of metamorphosis.
The hard shell was just beginning to form, but in reality, he was still just a fifteen-year-old boy.
A boy who grew up independently, having lost his mother early and under the neglect of a father like Teacher Shen.
It’s remarkable that he turned out so well, not becoming twisted despite being wealthy and unsupervised.
Hua Jie blinked, feeling an immense warmth inside, as if even the speed of her blinking had slowed. She felt she must be incredibly gentle right now.
With eyes full of maternal love and recognition, she stared at him for a while, then stood up from the bed, stepped over to him, squatted down, and pulled another box from the other side of the table, looking up at Shen Mo seated in the chair:
“There’s more.”
She then patted the box, the solid, heavy sound echoing.
“Are these also drawings?” He looked surprised, suspecting that she really might not sleep.
“No.” She sat cross-legged next to his chair and lifted the lid of the box to show him:
“These are all the test papers I wrote in the month after the midterm exams.”
“Math, this is Chinese, this is English, Chemistry, Physics…”
“These are collections of errors from each subject, one notebook for each.” She patted the several notebooks on the desk and continued:
“The ones on top here are not finished yet; the ones in the box below are used up. When I get a chance to review them, they’ll all be recycled.”
“These are dictations of English and Chinese texts and various mnemonics, copied over and over, written from memory over and over. It’s a simple method, but it helps me remember well.”
“This—”
Her words were cut short as a large hand suddenly rested on top of her head, then gave a pat.
Looking up, she realized that she was sitting on the floor, while he was on the chair. As she rambled on, introducing him to the contents of the box, he reached out and patted her head…
Why did she feel like a dog?
Her face flushed red, and she abruptly stood up, pressing down on the box. But having sat cross-legged for too long, her legs had gone numb, and she staggered—
Hua Jie: !!!
Shen Mo: ???
She ended up sitting on his lap.
The girl sprang up quickly, limping towards the bed like a small wounded animal escaping.
She didn’t dare look back.
Shen Mo turned his head, facing her desk, staring at the notebooks spread out on it, suddenly conscious of her weight.
His ears began to heat up; the places on his face where her hair had brushed still itched, and his heart pounded rapidly!
Just then, his lips had brushed against her shoulder, and it seemed like there was still a fuzz from her sweater in his mouth.
He used his tongue to push the fuzz out, and discreetly plucked it off with his hand while turned away from her. There on the desk lay a light pink fuzz, the same color as her sweater.
That feeling of soft, fragrant warmth was overwhelming, too intense to be dispelled by any deep breaths.
His gaze lowered, and suddenly he noticed on the spread-out paper, there were two watercolor practices of Michelangelo’s David, completely bare.
His eyes inadvertently scanned a certain area, and a certain part of his body was instantly awakened, stirring restlessly.
Shen Mo, somewhat panicked, averted his gaze, leaning slightly forward, even appearing a bit stooped.
This was starkly different from his usual confident, imposing demeanor.
It was as if he could still hear her frantic, low panting and the sharp intake of breath from her alarm.
He was overwhelmed.
He felt like he was about to ascend to heaven.
Even more crucially, footsteps were approaching from not far away.
It was either Hua’s father or mother, getting closer, closer, closer…