Chapter 35: Forced Education

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Song Yu's life after college entrance exams wasn't much richer than before.

He still woke up early every day and carried his schoolbag to the library to stay there for the entire day. He returned back home for dinner, and when he had nothing to do at night, he would play games in his room. He didn't live at all like an eighteen year old boy.

A fifteen year old boy's interests and hobbies clearly ranged much wider, but Yue Zhishi didn't have the time to enjoy his life, his time all squeezed into studying. The high school entrance exams were inching closer, and the usually calm Yue Zhishi was also caught into everyone else's tension and nervousness.

The Song family was much more nervous about his entrance exams than compared to Song Yu's exams. In order to send him off well, a few days before the actual exams, Lin Rong familiarised herself with the way to the exam centre and plotted out the food menu for the few days of the exams, worried Yue Zhishi would get an allergic reaction or have an upset stomach.

Song Yu grudgingly finished all the food as Lin Rong experimented with the menu. His role as her true born son was to be a free lab rat for her younger son, and he wasn't allowed to resist.

The night before his exams, Yue Zhishi was released from school early. Lin Rong gave him a long list of things he needed to double check and told him he needed to follow the checklist one by one after he finished dinner, just in case he forgot to bring something. Yue Zhishi felt they were going a bit overboard, but even Song Jin, who was usually quite relaxed, felt this kind of worry was to be expected.

In the entire family, only Song Yu appeared to not care about Yue Zhishi's exams.

This sharp contrast made Yue Zhishi a bit frustrated.

He felt like Song Yu didn't care about him the way Yue Zhishi cared about him.

He was shooed upstairs to shower by Lin Rong after dinner. "You have to sleep early tonight, okay? It's not a joke if you don't sleep well."

Yue Zhishi stood up, nodding, and prepared to go upstairs when he heard Lin Rong tease Song Yu, "Xiao Yu, why are you going to the library every day? You're not going on a date with a girl you like, right?"

Song Yu said with his face devoid of any expression, "You can follow me."

"That's not interesting at all." Lin Rong placed the bowls and chopsticks into the dishwasher. "I'm just curious, you're an adult now. You really didn't like anyone during all those years at school?"

Song Yu stayed silent, but his face showed traces of disdain at her curious gossiping.

Lin Rong automatically took his silence as denial, so she said, sighing, "You're not like me at all. I started liking boys since elementary school."

Yue Zhishi dragged his feet up the stairs into his room, the pyjamas Lin Rong had washed for him lying on his bed.

He didn't know why, but the two questions Lin Rong asked Song Yu kept echoing in his head. A bit absentmindedly, he went into the bathroom, took off his clothes and showered, the water running down from his head and wetting his hair and eyelashes. Everything in front of his eyes was hazy — sometimes it'd be white, sometimes grey, and then he imagined a scene where Song Yu met a girl in the library. The plot he imagined was very standard: the two of them just happened to see each other in between the gaps in a bookshelf, just happened to like the exact same book and then just happened to reach out at the same time to get that book.

That kind of plot line seemed to often appear in shoujo manga, but Yue Zhishi didn't like shoujo.

He also didn't like the girl who impelled Song Yu to go to the library, even if she didn't exist.

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