Chapter 12: Did Nothing
Huai Dan was momentarily speechless.
He paused and looked at Luo Jing.
Luo Jing met his gaze innocently for two seconds, then smiled to lighten the mood, saying casually, “Brother, I’m not joking.”
Huai Dan: “?”
Did he mishear the “not”?
Seeing him speechless, Luo Jing returned to his previous dejected state, resting his chin on the test paper, looking tired.
“School’s starting soon, were you too busy playing before?” Huai Dan asked.
“Yeah,” Luo Jing replied without any burden.
Huai Dan pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a sense of helplessness.
Ye Lin had many relatives, so he had to visit them every day, exchanging pleasantries, drinking tea, eating, and chatting. Almost all his time was spent on these things.
It was very boring, and it often felt endless.
In his rare moments of leisure, he would occasionally think of his friend, who was somewhere entertaining a child, and feel envious.
Thinking this, he put down his chopsticks, opened his phone, and sent a message to Huai Dan.
Ye Lin: [What are you doing, bro?]
Huai Dan replied after a while: [Doing homework.]
“Clang!” During the meal, as everyone at the table was chatting and laughing, a discordant sound suddenly came from a certain seat, causing everyone to stop talking and look over.
The boy in the seat looked a bit flustered, his eyes still wide with shock. After reacting, he looked up and gave everyone an awkward smile, then picked up his phone, which had slipped from his hand and fallen into his rice bowl, and wiped it with a napkin.
“You’re so old and still so clumsy,” his mother, sitting next to him, scolded lightly.
Ye Lin gave the woman an apologetic smile, then lowered his head and opened his phone again.
The minor incident passed, and everyone continued their previous conversation.
Only Ye Lin was still in shock.
Ye Lin: [???]
Ye Lin: [What homework? Are you still in high school?]
With someone helping him with his homework, Luo Jing seemed energized. His concentration and efficiency greatly improved. He stopped staring at the ceiling, stopped playing with the dog, and was filled with the satisfaction of not fighting alone.
And this was the first time someone had helped him with his homework. This feeling was novel and strangely exciting.
So Luo Jing was completely unaware of the fact that his accomplice’s speed of doing homework wasn’t actually very fast.
Huai Dan casually picked up a science test paper to work on.
He did the problems casually, at an incredibly slow pace, occasionally picking up his phone to check messages and reply.
The child beside him, after learning that he had agreed to help with his homework, first stared at him in disbelief, asking him several times “Really?” to confirm the truth. After receiving an affirmative answer, he showed unprecedented enthusiasm for the homework in front of him.
In short, he was much quieter.
While Huai Dan slowly filled out half a test paper, Luo Jing had already finished two, his efficiency impressive.
Having achieved his desired result, Huai Dan’s lips curled up as he continued his task of accompaniment.
H: [Helping a junior high student with his homework.]
Ye Lin: […]
Ye Lin: [Is he holding something over you?]
H: [No, I have nothing better to do.]
Ye Lin: [Is it the cute kid from your WeChat Moments?]
Ye Lin: [Whose kid is it anyway? A bunch of people are asking me]
H: [Mm.]
Huai Dan ignored his last question, clearly not wanting to reveal anything.
Ye Lin felt speechless.
Ye Lin: [What kind of spell did he cast on you? You were willing to get up before the chickens even crowed, in this freezing weather, to climb a mountain?]
Ye Lin: [When I saw your post this morning, I thought I was still dreaming, you know?]
Ye Lin: [And you’re helping him with his homework and playing games with him?]
Ye Lin: [I feel like my place in your heart is inferior to a kid you just met.]
Ye Lin: [Is your paternal instinct overflowing?]
Huai Dan, speechless: [You’re overthinking it.]
After replying, he put down his phone.
While they were chatting, Luo Jing had already turned over his third test paper.
Homework was boring, but knowing that someone was doing it with him made him unconsciously more focused.
Luo Feng suspected that her door had been enchanted with some kind of illusion-inducing magic today.
Otherwise, why was every scene she saw upon opening it so surreal?
She opened her mouth slightly, took a step forward in shock, and observed the scene downstairs carefully for more than half a minute before finally confirming that everything in front of her was real.
If she wasn’t mistaken.
Huai Dan.
Was helping that little devil.
With his homework.
She slowly walked downstairs, looking at their backs: “Is something wrong with me, or is something wrong with you two?”
Her voice was filled with complex emotions, including confusion and disbelief.
Luo Jing jumped, startled. His sister’s inherent authority over him was fully displayed at this moment. He suddenly felt like he had been caught red-handed by his parents while doing something mischievous with someone else.
So he instinctively slammed the draft paper in his hand onto the test paper Huai Dan was working on.
Seeing his action, Luo Feng also reacted instinctively: “Don’t think I didn’t see what you were doing, you two…”
“We weren’t doing anything!”
The pen Huai Dan was holding paused, then he slowly put it down, turned to look at Luo Feng, and echoed conspiratorially, “Mm.”
Luo Feng: “…”
Luo Feng: “Are you being blackmailed by my brother?”
As the New Year holidays neared their end, the vet clinic sent Luo Jing a text message reminding him to bring Plastic Bag for a checkup and the scheduled neutering—the checkup had shown that the puppy had been vaccinated before, and the doctor said it had likely been abandoned, having been a stray for some time.
After more than a week of forced rest, Plastic Bag’s leg should have recovered well.
Luo Jing, who had been locked up at home doing homework for a week, finally found an excuse to go out.
Strangely, although Huai Dan had been helping him with his homework, their progress wasn’t much different from when he was doing it alone.
Attributing this to the fact that a university student hadn’t done homework in a long time and was a bit rusty, Luo Jing sighed inwardly, accepting his fate of doing most of the work.
The old house and their usual home weren’t in the same city. The old house was located further north, where heavy snow fell throughout the winter, from before the New Year to after, only letting up slightly in spring.
Plastic Bag was also a bit listless from being indoors for so long. Luo Jing had been too busy catching up on his homework to play with it much, so the puppy was a little depressed and hadn’t even barked much.
Until today, when Luo Jing took out the familiar black carrier bag in front of it.
Plastic Bag instantly perked up.
When Luo Jing took it outside, both the person and the dog seemed to come alive the moment they felt the fresh air, their eyes showing the same joy.
“Brother, Plastic Bag is so happy to be going to get neutered!” Luo Jing said happily.
Huai Dan: “…”
He glanced at Luo Jing, then at the indeed very excited Plastic Bag, and after a while, replied, “Mm.”
Arriving at the vet clinic, the same receptionist greeted them and expertly guided them through the procedures.
The checkup showed that Plastic Bag had almost fully recovered and the bandage could be removed. Then, the receptionist asked Luo Jing to take the dog into the operating room.
Luo Jing suddenly put the dog in Huai Dan’s arms.
“Brother, you take it in,” he said.
Huai Dan, holding the dog that had suddenly appeared in his arms, was puzzled: “What’s wrong?”
“I’m afraid it’ll hate me.”
Huai Dan: “…”
Luo Jing hid behind Huai Dan, only his eyes peeking out, then pushed him towards the operating room, dog and all.
Huai Dan was forced to take two steps forward.
Plastic Bag in his arms seemed to sense something and looked up at him, its eyes no longer filled with joy, but with a heavy sense of suspicion.
Huai Dan met its gaze and felt an inexplicable pressure.
“Brother, just go with peace of mind,” Luo Jing said seriously.
Huai Dan, speechless, carried the dog into the operating room.
This scene, if one didn’t know better, looked more like sending someone off to war than taking a dog to get neutered.
While waiting for Plastic Bag’s surgery, Luo Jing, as usual, excitedly dragged Huai Dan to sit outside and play games.
After this period of ranked games, Luo Jing had finally led Wu Li (with Huai Dan’s help) to successfully surpass his deskmate’s game rank.
For a time, the two were incredibly popular among their friends, with countless requests to be carried. Their deskmate, in his frustration, told them not to get too cocky, claiming he would soon surpass them again. He even tried to attack their psychological defenses by saying they must have a ton of homework left since they were playing games all the time.
But to his surprise, not only was Wu Li self-disciplined, Luo Jing had also somehow finished most of his homework.
He still vividly remembered the past years when the two of them, as struggling brothers, would frantically catch up on their homework together at the end of the holidays, supporting each other. But this time, he was alone.
Their deskmate suddenly felt a sense of betrayal, anger, and panic, cursing as he hurriedly went offline to do his homework.
Their other friends were also amazed by Luo Jing.
At this moment, Luo Jing felt that all the hardship he had endured for his homework these past few days was worth it. He happily and indiscriminately went to Alipay and beat up his deskmate’s and Wu Li’s chickens that had snuck into his farm as a celebration.
Huai Dan watched the whole thing, finding the pitiful bumps on the chickens’ heads amusing.
“Where’s your chicken?” he asked.
“Oh.” Luo Jing tapped the signpost in the middle of the screen: “It went to someone else’s farm to steal food.”
The screen then switched to another friend’s farm, where a chicken with the words “Finger Lickin’ Good Chicken” on its head, wearing cool black sunglasses, was stealing feed.
Huai Dan: “…”
“Finger Lickin’ Good Chicken?”
Luo Jing said proudly: “Yes, that’s mine.”
For the third time, Huai Dan expressed his admiration for this child’s naming style.
