Waiting for the Stars to Fall - Chapter 1

Three minutes before the morning study hall, Zhu Xingyao followed Li Xixi into the classroom and felt a strange atmosphere. Just as she lifted her head, she heard Li Xixi’s surprised voice. “Ah, Jiang Tu is here for class!”

A boy sitting in the back row near the entrance suddenly lifted his head. His skin was pale white, and a pair of black-framed glasses rested on the bridge of his nose. Behind the lenses, his dark eyes gave off a cold stare.

Those who were caught peeking at him quickly looked away, including Li Xixi who also lowered her head.

For a moment, Zhu Xingyao was the only one standing and was still looking at him.

Their eyes met and she became flustered. If she looked away right then, it would have seemed way too intentional. Seemingly unsure of what to do, she tried her best to maintain eye contact, while her lips were lightly pressed together.

Jiang Tu silently looked at her for a few seconds only to look back down.

Zhu Xingyao felt relieved and returned to her seat with Li Xixi. She took out the homework for each subject from her bag and waited for the class representatives to collect them. Li Xixi leaned over and whispered, “I didn’t expect Jiang Tu to suddenly return to school, it scared me.”

Zhu Xingyao looked at her. “Why would you be scared? Returning to school is a good thing.”

When you mentioned Jiang Tu at Jiang Cheng No.1 High School, even if you had not met him in person, you would have heard of his name. Three days into the first year of high school, there was already a group of people standing outside the school gate with signs. They were loan sharks that demanding repayment for his usuries. How could a high school student owe so much money?  The school quickly got involved and found out that it was not him, but his father that owed the debt. The only reason those people had brought the issue to school was to pressure them into paying back the money.

The day after the incident, Jiang Tu started being absent from school. Up until now, it had been nearly two months, he returned just as he was rumoured to have dropped out of school.

“Did you not see him just now? He was so cold, so scary…” Li Xixi ducked and whispered more quietly, “Didn’t they say his dad has a gambling problem and abuses the family? His younger brother causes a lot of trouble, too. Experts have pointed out that children raised in toxic family environments are prone to emotional and behavioural damage. Just look at Jiang Tu — he seems so hard to get along with, he hardly speaks, and he is always so reclusive and detached.”

Zhu Xingyao thought back to Jiang Tu’s facial expression just now, it was alright?

As study hall hadn’t started, the class was still rowdy and filled the room with noise. Some were eating breakfast; others were just chatting. There were a couple of boys who were overly excited and started yelling at the top of their lungs. As they were shouting, their hands were dancing around as if they all had ADHD, just the liveliness that sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds are supposed to have.

A boy came rushing in, as he passed Zhu Xingyao’s table, he knocked over the books that she had just taken out.

The boy quickly helped her picked them up and scratched his head. “Sorry…”

Zhu Xingyao: “It’s alright.”

Li Xixi glanced at the pimple-faced boy who walked to the back row and sat next to Jiang Tu. After peeking at the boys, she turned back and said, “However, I think Jiang Tu has one advantage over that guy.”

Zhu Xingyao fully understood Li Xixi, the appearances of boys are so important to her. Without lifting her head Xingyao said, “Good looking?”

Li Xixi: “Yeah, don’t you think so?”

Because of the eye contact they made for a few seconds; Zhu Xingyao recollected his appearance. After she paused for a moment to think, she said, “He is alright, but I don’t really like guys who wear glasses.” She also didn’t like Jiang Tu’s reclusiveness and detachment. She believed that boys should have a brighter personality.

After a few moments, someone yelled, “Old Cao is here!”

At 7:40 a.m., the bell rang for the morning class.

Cao Shujun, their homeroom teacher walked into the classroom. Everyone called him “Old Cao,” but he was not old at all. This was his first time as a homeroom teacher. He was only about twenty-six or twenty-seven years old, just about ten years older than his students. He stood near the doorway and scanned the room, his vision stopped near Jiang Tu for a few seconds and said to the boys who were yelling: “Leave the chatter for after class, take out your books right now.”

After the morning class was over, Cao Shujun walked to the back and patted Jiang Tu’s shoulder. “Come to the office with me.”

Jiang Tu stood up and walked out.

The class representative for each subject began collecting homework. Zhu Xingyao also stood up to collect physics assignments. Zhu Yunping, her father was a physics professor at a university before resigning a few years ago to do business. She probably inherited her father’s good traits because she was very good at physics. During the physics entrance exam, she scored the second highest in her class, the first was Jiang Tu. She remembered during the high school entrance exams, even though Jiang Tu’s total score was average, he scored full marks on the physics exam. It was the only full mark in the whole school.

However, because Jiang Tu had been absent since the beginning of the school year, the role of physics class representative naturally fell on her.

After she collected all the homework, the English class representative, Zhou Qian was still standing near the back door, and hustling Jiang Tu’s deskmate. “Hurry up! If you are going to copy others, maybe you should have done so earlier!” She turned to look at Zhu Xingyao. “How is it that you are so fast when collecting homework?”

About four tables away, Li Xixi raised her hand. “I know the answer to this question, it’s because Xingxing is pretty.”

The boy who was copying homework vigorously added, “Yeah, she is our goddess, how can we make her wait?”

The other boys also echoed, “Exactly!”

Zhou Qian: “…”

She hit the boy in the head with the stack of homework. “Ding Xiang Hua (a nickname meaning Syringa), if you don’t shut up, I will kill you!”

The boy’s name was Ding Xiang, he often said the wrong words at the wrong time, thus everyone gave him a nickname — Ding Xiang Hua.

Zhu Xingyao thought it was funny, so she coughed to remind them, before she carried all the homework out of the classroom.

School had just started for a couple of months, however, each class already voted on who is the most good-looking girl/boy in each class/grade.  Ever since she was young, Zhu Xingyao has never lost. Someone once posted a video of her playing the cello on the school forum. In the video, she wore a white dress and sat under the stage light. With her eyes closed, she shone on stage as she was playing the cello. It was beautiful which made her quite famous within her school. Most of the boys, after seeing her play, have deemed Zhu Xingyao their goddess.

Within the physics office, there were only two teachers. Jiang Tu stood beside Cao Shujun’s table. He was rangy, even though he was only about sixteen or seventeen years old, he was already taller than 180cm, which was quite tall for his age.

Cao Shujun first gave him last month’s test papers, before he hesitated. Then he decided it was best to avoid talking about family problems, and only chose to discuss academics. “You missed a whole month of class, so you are a bit behind, make sure to borrow notes from your classmates and catch up. There is no need to think about anything else.”

Jiang Tu remained calm and nodded.

Cao Shujun sighed, “I already discussed with the school, you don’t need to worry about having to drop out. The more difficult your situation is, the more you should focus on studying, that way you’ll have a better future.”

Zhu Xingyao carried the homework books to the doorway and spotted them talking. She took a step back and waited beside the wall. She looked down at the floor, and was deciding whether she should go back first, only to see a pair of old and worn-out tennis shoes.

She immediately looked up, Jiang Tu was looking at her, and this made Zhu Xingyao a bit nervous. She wanted to say she wasn’t eavesdropping, but the boy already turned around and left. She gloomily handed in the homework and returned to class. She noticed that there were far more people in the hallway than normal, most people nonchalantly peeked into the classroom from the back door. Everyone was here to see what the infamous Jiang Tu looked like, and this continued for quite a while.

Jiang Tu did not seem bothered at all, his expression remained undisturbed and ignored the stares.

Li Xixi turned her head around once again and rested her chin in her hand as she said, “In some sense, he does seem stronger mentally compared to you. Even though he is being crowded by everyone, he still seems like he doesn’t feel anything. If it were you, you would probably blush or get angry.”

When her video was uploaded to the forum, everyone wanted to see what she looked like. Wherever she went, there were always people pointing at her –that is Zhu Xingyao over there.

She looked towards Li Xixi. “Weren’t you just saying earlier that he is emotionally traumatized?”

Li Xixi: “…”

Pow!

A bottle of soy milk suddenly landed on her desk. When Zhu Xingyao looked up, she saw Zhang Sheng, the P.E. class representative, smiling at her. “Zhu Xingyao, I bought this for you.”

Ever since she accepted a bottle of soy milk from Zhang Sheng during the school sports tournament, this guy has brought her a bottle a day. Looking at the bottle, unsure of what to do, Zhu Xingyao reiterated, “Thank you, but there is no need to bring me one next time.”

Li Xixi grabbed the bottle from her, smiled and said, “Don’t you know? If you drink too much soy milk, you will not grow as much.”

Zhang Sheng: “…”

Ding Xiang walked by, looked toward Li Xixi’s flat chest, and raised his eyebrows teasingly. “So did you drink too much soy milk?”

Li Xixi: “…”

Zhu Xingyao couldn’t resist laughing, her red lips and bright eyes dazzled everyone. Suddenly laughter erupted in the classroom, boys were uncontrollably pounding the table. “Seriously? I guess we should suggest that girls stop drinking soy milk.”

“Exactly!”

However, the girls stopped laughing.

Zhou Qian stared at the boys from the table behind. “Shut up!”

Li Xixi realized that she shot herself in the foot. She angrily stomped her foot on the ground and threw the bottle at Ding Xiang. “Ding Xiang Hua, go die!”

Ding Xiang hissed and caught the bottle. He sighed, “This morning Zhou Qian already told me to go die, I guess I already freaking died twice today.”

Li Xixi rolled her eyes in annoyance. “You deserved it, even if you died a thousand times, it still would not be enough to make it up.”

“Alright, I can be a zombie then.”

As the class bell rang, Ding Xiang shook his head and ran back to his seat. He even took the bottle of soy milk, which angered Zhang Sheng.

It was history class; the history teacher was an old man who is close to retirement. Rarely did anyone listen during class. Jiang Tu was still working on the test papers that Cao Shujun had given him.

Between classes, while Jiang Tu had gone to the bathroom, Ding Xiang counted the number of tests that he had completed. Geez, despite being crowded by the entire grade, Jiang Tu had completed seven math tests, eight physics tests and six chemistry papers. He had finished all the science papers that he missed during his absences.

Ding Xiang took the bottle of soy milk, put it next to him and coughed, “Dude, writing all those test papers isn’t easy, here is a bottle of soy milk for you.”

Jiang Tu’s pen paused for a second and glanced at the bottle of soy milk that had gone through the hands of five people. He indifferently responded, “No need, thank you.”

Ding Xiang awkwardly took back the bottle and quietly muttered, “I just cannot stand Zhang Sheng. Everyone knows that our goddess doesn’t like him getting her food, but he still gives her a bottle of soy milk every day, does he really think that our goddess is going to fall for him because of a couple of bottles of soy milk? Dumbass.”

His voice was very quiet, but Jiang Tu heard everything clearly. For the first time, he turned his head to observe his deskmate. There were a lot of pimples on Ding Xiang’s face, but his facial features were still decent, at least more so than Zhang Sheng. The number of times that he has mentioned Zhu Xingyao today was no lower than ten.

His staring made Ding Xiang uneasy, so he uncomfortably said, “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Nothing.”

Jiang Tu’s voice was plain, he pushed up the glasses on his nose bridge and returned to finishing his test papers.

After the class bell rang, Jiang Tu quickly pulled out a black backpack from his desk and was the first to leave the classroom.

Except for Ding Xiang, no one else saw.

When everyone turned back to look, Jiang Tu’s seat was already empty, almost as if he hadn’t been there at all. Some people were worried. “Why did Jiang Tu run off so fast today? Is it possible that he is not going to come back again?”

Ding Xiang immediately said, “Not possible, he finished more than ten test papers today.”

“For real? Wow, that is impressive!”

“Yeah, Old Cao gave him all the quizzes and monthly tests. The stack was about this thick! He completed all the science papers.”

“Awesome! But why did he run? He always seems to leave school in a hurry.”

Zhang Sheng laughed, “He is probably scared that the loan sharks are going to come to school again, so he escaped. Otherwise, are you expecting him to just wait around until he is pressured into dropping out?”

Zhang Sheng was filled with despise and disdain, his voice sounded almost as if he was laughing at Jiang Tu’s misfortune. There were also others who laughed. Ding Xiang frowned and said, “How can you guys talk like that? We are all classmates, why can’t you wish for something nicer?”

Zhu Xingyao picked up her backpack and looked back expressionlessly. Even though Zhang Sheng’s smile froze a little after seeing her, he still really liked her calm look. He shamelessly waved. “Goodbye, our goddess.”

Zhu Xingyao ignored him. “Xixi, let’s go.”

Li Xixi agreed and immediately followed her. After leaving the classroom, Xixi finally said, “Zhang Sheng is sometimes so annoying.”

Zhang Sheng had a good family background, plus his grades were decent, so sometimes he didn’t listen to others. He was difficult to deal with. If you put it nicely, he was very confident, however, if you put it badly, he was too arrogant and took himself too seriously. Zhu Xingyao frowned. “He is quite annoying.”

Li Xixi asked, “Jiang Tu should be coming back to school, right?”

Today was Friday, and there would be no class tomorrow. Zhu Xingyao recalled the words she heard in the office and nodded. “He will come back.”