Lend Me Your Shoulder - Chapter 14
Chapter 14
On the podium, a game was being played, and the students sitting below were not idle either, their eyes shifting as the relay of words passed from one person to the next.
The students in the front row had a clear view of the whole clueless and uncoordinated game.
After the second person started guessing wrongly, the game took on an even more bizarre and unpredictable direction, causing the classroom below to burst into laughter.
Screams and cheers reached a climax right after Xu Yeyu took off her headphones.
She turned her head and saw Lu Yanbai writing three characters on the board.
The class monitor hugged the board tightly to maintain the mystery and asked, “Do you want to know what the professor’s final guess was?!”
The college classroom was filled with many students, and the collective voices created an imposing atmosphere.
“We want to! We want to!”
“Turn it around!”
“Professor Lu looks so confident, he must have guessed it right!”
But the class monitor’s appetite for suspense was big; he quickly flashed the board to the first few rows, and everyone laughed uproariously, clapping and cheering.
Xu Yeyu could only see the monitor’s back and had no idea what Lu Yanbai had finally guessed. Her heart was tickled by everyone’s laughter.
As the crowd was making a fuss, she decided not to just sit there and wait, slowly sliding her chair to sit beside Lu Yanbai.
She was quite curious whether Lu Yanbai would guess her own name… or, what kind of guess he would make.
Her eyes sparkled as if freshly washed, hands resting on the edge of the chair, she raised her head slightly and asked, “Professor, what was your final guess?”
Lu Yanbai, who was looking elsewhere, turned his gaze to her, who was eagerly watching him.
Feeling his response, she softly urged him with a nasal tone: “Hmm?”
Fearing he might have forgotten what she just said, Xu Yeyu blinked and said, “If you don’t remember, I can show you again.”
She silently mouthed the three characters “徐葉羽” (Xu Yeyu) for him.
Lu Yanbai narrowed his eyes slightly, his Adam’s apple rolling, his voice a bit cold and deep, like someone briefly pressing fingers on black and white piano keys.
“Little Codfish?”
“Li-Little Codfish?”
Xu Yeyu was stunned, feeling a current shoot through her ears and spread from her shoulder blades down her back in tiny ripples.
At first listen, those three words sounded very similar to her own name, like a special nickname that only an intimate person would call her.
Under the double assault of his gaze and his words, the heart Xu Yeyu was holding couldn’t stay still. Moreover, because he asked it like a question, he left the tail of the sound hanging, his face clear and cold, eyes still fixed on her—
It was like… someone she liked, seriously, attentively, and gently calling her nickname.
Having almost never had a nickname growing up, Xu Yeyu’s adolescent heart melted into soft crumbs like a peach cookie the moment she heard those three words.
She awkwardly looked away, blinking her long eyelashes rapidly, her hands tightening unconsciously, the corner of her mouth curling into a smile she dared not fully show, pressing it down.
Lu Yanbai saw her cheeks visibly redden.
He frowned, puzzled by her unusual reaction, wondering if he had said something ambiguous—
The next moment, Xu Yeyu pressed her lips together and nodded shyly, her voice soft and embarrassed as she accepted the nickname “Little Codfish”: “Yeah.”
Lu Yanbai: “…”
Right after she agreed, the class monitor began announcing.
“First, the referee’s word was ‘Xu Yeyu.’ What did the second person guess?”
The second person, holding back laughter: “Salt-baked.”
“The third?”
“Wild chrysanthemum.”
“The fourth?”
“Smoke washing…”
“The fifth.”
The fifth person couldn’t hold it anymore: “Anti-inflammatory rain… hahahaha!”
“The sixth?”
Xu Yeyu was surprised she guessed right: “I guessed it was ‘Xu Yeyu.’”
“Then,” the monitor hugged the board, “after many twists and turns, what did Professor Lu finally guess? Could he rewrite the ending based on that girl’s heroic save?”
“Cut the suspense! If I didn’t know better, I’d think this was some detective show,” someone shouted.
The monitor turned the board to face everyone: “Ta-da! Professor Lu wrote ‘Little Codfish’!”
A girl in the front row immediately covered her mouth: “Aww, so cute.”
The classroom became noisy again, filled with cheers and applause.
“Didn’t expect you to be like this, Professor Lu!”
“Although it’s really cute and everyone likes it,” the monitor said regretfully, “Professor Lu didn’t guess right…”
“He did,” Xu Yeyu suddenly interrupted with a serious look.
The monitor was stunned: “…What?”
Xu Yeyu raised her head: “He guessed right, because that’s my name.”
The class fell silent, waiting for her to finish.
She pointed at the board with a bright smile: “Just now, I decided to change my name—to the one Professor Lu wrote.”
When everyone caught on to what she meant, the atmosphere exploded. Someone whistled and stood up, shouting, “Well guessed!”
As the crowd cheered and pounded the desks, Xu Yeyu turned slightly and whispered softly, “Am I being too spoiled? Like a domineering CEO?”
“…”
After returning home, Xiang Wei was still talking to her about it: “Your body and hair come from your parents; you just changed your name like that. Does your mom know?”
Xu Yeyu thought for a moment, her smile returning to pure innocence: “Anyway, I’m going to change it eventually.”
Xiang Wei: ?
Xu Yeyu guided her: “You should ask me what I’m changing it to.”
Xiang Wei: “Oh yeah? To what?”
“Lu Yeyu,” Xu Yeyu envisioned the future, “using his surname before my name.”
Xiang Wei: “Get lost.”
After spending two days making up classes in the office, Xu Yeyu returned to her usual home-based work routine.
That morning, barely having washed her face and still wearing her headband, she received a flurry of chat windows shaking from Wanwan:
[Half a month has passed.]
[Director Ye, did your male and female leads celebrate Valentine’s Day?]
Xu Yeyu: …
Xu Yeyu: [Not sure. I’ll ask them in my dreams tonight.]
Wanwan: [Let’s be straightforward. Can I even see them finish the holiday before I die?]
Xu Yeyu: [Don’t be so pessimistic. They will definitely finish Valentine’s Day this year.]
Wanwan: [!]
Xu Yeyu: [But there’s Christmas, New Year, Dragon Boat Festival… all these holidays…]
Wanwan: [Got it, I’m going to off myself now. Knife to neck.jpg]
Xu Yeyu: [You’re making me want to eat zongzi. I’m going to cook some zongzi now, bye.]
Wanwan: [?????]
After solving her morning hunger, Xu Yeyu sat at her computer desk and opened the chat box, immediately flooded with numerous “fat cat crying” emojis from Wanwan.
She stopped joking and said: [Weren’t you asking a few authors to send you drafts? There should be page fees, right? And I even sent you an exclusive interview.]
Wanwan replied sincerely: [You are you, others are others. No one can replace you.]
Good grief. If she didn’t know this was a prompt for her to submit her draft, she’d almost be fooled.
Xu Yeyu: [Heh, women are always full of sweet words.]
Wanwan: [What about men?]
Xu Yeyu: [Men are always smooth talkers.]
Wanwan: […]
Wanwan: [Don’t think you can dodge the topic. If you don’t submit soon, I’ll come to your house!]
Xu Yeyu leaned on her head and slowly replied: [I’ll send a short story. I’ve written 3,000 words of a short story idea and will finish it in a few days. I wanted it to be a surprise, but you’re so impatient.]
Wanwan: [Men want it right now.]
Wanwan was a soft girl but often joked that being an editor was too tiring, carrying heavy stuff, almost becoming a man herself.
After a while, Wanwan messaged again: [Are you kidding me? Happiness comes so suddenly, I feel like I’ve fallen for a scumbag.]
Xu Yeyu: [Before I get stuck on the draft this time, I advise you not to curse me.]
Wanwan immediately retracted her message.
[Waiting for you!]
If there was a good thing about being an author, it was probably not having to get up early for a 9-to-5 job and being able to wake up naturally.
But having no working hours also meant no quitting time.
Their work was not as easy as imagined. Each new topic and profession required extensive research; writer’s block could last long; and to write better, sometimes they had to experience life.
For example, while other students worked part-time for pocket money, Xu Yeyu worked part-time to write.
She had worked at a milk tea shop and as a salesperson in a souvenir store. To write about porcelain, she once spent a whole day in a ceramic store.
Xiang Wei once teased her: “What kind of job lets you leave after a week, sometimes without pay? Writing is so hard, Ye Ye Xi is a real hero.”
Right now, because her short story involved video games and she hadn’t been to an arcade in a long time, to keep it authentic, at 2 pm, Xu Yeyu and Xiang Wei stood inside a mall arcade.
The coin machine spit out 200 coins worth of game tokens. Xu Yeyu packed two bags—one for herself and one for Xiang Wei.
Xiang Wei looked down and sealed her bag: “What are we playing today?”
Xu Yeyu scanned the arcade and was about to answer when she spotted a familiar figure.
“Xiang Wei, look! Isn’t that Lu Yanbai over there?”
Xiang Wei followed her gaze: “…Looks like him. Isn’t Professor Lu some reclusive scholar? What’s he doing in a place like this?”
Xu Yeyu shook her head: “Not sure. Let’s go check.”
Lu Yanbai was sitting in front of a piano-like arcade game, his slender fingers gliding over the interface, with a thick stack of ticket slips piled by his feet.
“Is he collecting tickets to exchange for prizes?” Xiang Wei asked.
Xu Yeyu glanced at the top right and saw he was logged in: “Maybe he’s here to break records.”
Every time she came to an arcade, she saw many players purely aiming to beat records.
Judging by Lu Yanbai’s skill, it wasn’t his first time playing.
Xu Yeyu quietly sat down at the machine opposite him. When his round ended, she challenged him.
Lu Yanbai didn’t suspect anything, thinking it was the system matching players automatically, and confirmed.
Music started, and Xu Yeyu followed the prompts, pressing the black and white keys in varying lengths. The beginning was manageable, but later it became a chaotic flurry. She could hardly see, let alone keep up.
The final score showed Lu Yanbai got every note right, scoring five times her points.
…
At the bottom of the score screen, several options appeared. Xu Yeyu thought for a moment and clicked one of the buttons.
Lu Yanbai glanced at his tickets, roughly calculating how many more Lu Wanyi would be satisfied with, then looked up unexpectedly to see a large friend request pop up on the screen:
[Little Codfish] wants to add you as a friend.
Xu Yeyu peeked out from beside his machine and winked at him: “Hello, Professor Lu, how have you been lately?”
Lu Yanbai: “…”