Chapter 46: Gossip

Qiao Lan made it through to the afternoon final after playing in the morning heats.

At lunchtime, Hao Ying and a few other boys in the class asked them to join them for lunch. Bai Yu had a look on her face that I knew it and was about to encourage Qiao Lan, who immediately refused, saying that she had something to do back at the dormitory and she would let them go with her.

Bai Yu looked at Hao Ying, who was disappointed, and Qiao Lan, who didn't seem to be in a good mood, and decided to go back to the hostel with Qiao Lan.

When everyone else had left, Bai Yu asked Qiao Lan if he was in a bad mood.

"Neither," Qiao Lan said, just a little distracted.

Qiao Lan had not seen the Qiao Family for more than half a year, and when she suddenly ran into Qiao Yuan today, Qiao Lan could not help but feel annoyed. If not for the law, she would have wanted to move her household registration out of the Qiao Family's account book and never have any relationship with them again.

After chatting with Bai Yu for a while, the conversation turned to Tan Mo.

Bai Yu had only been in close contact with Tan Mo for a little while today and thought back to Qiao Lan and said, "It's true what you said, Tan Mo looks uncomfortable, but in fact it doesn't seem to be anything to be afraid of."

"Yeah," Qiao Lan laughed, "I just never understood what you were afraid of him for before, he's not scary looking."

"It's not scary, it's overly good looking, really. I've been looking at Tan Mo's face up close for a while today and I don't think it's any worse than Chen Yaoyang and Hao Ying's."

"It would have looked great and I'm surprised you only just noticed."

"It's not too late to find out", Bai Yu said, just suddenly sighing, "so suddenly a little sad, good-looking and so smart, I heard that the family is also in a very good condition, if there is no problem with the leg can stand up, the school girls chasing him will definitely line up. "

Qiao Lan's eyes dimmed at these words.

He would have been more popular than Chen Yaoyang and Hao Ying if he could have stood up and not had Asperger's syndrome.

Many people say that God is equal, but in reality there is no such thing as equality. Qiao Lan finds no trace of God's favour in Tan Mo, who is autistic, physically handicapped, grew up with divorced parents and lost his mother in a car accident, as if all the misfortunes had befallen him.

But what did Tan Mo do wrong.

No one knows better than Qiao Lan how good and simple Tan Mo is at heart.

It would be great if Tan Mo could receive treatment.

Bai Yu seems to be a big-hearted girl, but in fact she's still a very careful girl. When she saw Qiao Lan sounding a bit down, she remembered how Qiao Lan brought Tan Mo here this morning, and after holding her tongue for a while, she couldn't help but say, " Lan Lan Lan, I'm really curious, why are you so nice to Tan Mo? "

Qiao Lan's attitude towards Tan Mo was too close to her even when she looked at him, not to mention the usual way.

Even if he felt sorry for Tan Mo, he didn't have to go to such an extent. If Tan Mo was a normal person, Bai Yu had some doubts about the relationship between Qiao Lan and Tan Mo.

But Qiao Lan, hearing Bai Yu's words, asked her in return, "Do you think I'm good to Tan Mo?"

Without waiting for Bai Yu to say more, Qiao Lan continued, "But what I did was nothing compared to how good he was to me."

Not much

Bai Yu was confused, and only after a long time did he ask Qiao Lan, "What did Tan Mo do?"

What did Tan Mo do to get Qiao Lan to say such things?

What was done

Qiao Lan thought for a while about helping her earn money, giving her Christmas presents, deliberately not taking exams and giving her a scholarship, helping her with her daily lectures, showing up to take her in when she had nowhere else to go, and trusting her with all her heart.

"There are too many to count," Qiao Lan says, "and if I had to say something, it would be that if it wasn't for Tan Mo, I probably wouldn't have been able to study, I wouldn't have done so well, and my life would be in a mess."

Without Tan Mo, she would still be struggling to make ends meet with a full schedule, and without Tan Mo, she would probably still have to put up with the Qiao Family and continue to live in that suffocating environment in fear every day.

Bai Yu had never thought that Qiao Lan treated Tan Mo out of sympathy and pity, but he never imagined that so much had happened between them.

"Tan Mo, he's very important to you, isn't he?" Bai Yu said suddenly after a long time.

"Of course," Qiao Lan smiles, "it's very important."

Coming from a world where she had no family and no friends, Tan Mo was the first person who was truly kind to her and the best person in her two lifetimes in a family and a class that was so revolting.

Tan Mo is the one person in the world she cares about the most, the one person who matters the most.

The school sports day flowed quickly, with the heats having just been run in the morning and the finals in the afternoon.

After the run in the morning, Qiao Lan felt that something was not right. Apart from Bai Yu, several people in the dormitory and many others in the class mentioned Hao Ying's name in front of her.

Qiao Lan has a bit of a headache.

She had just finished her run and was surrounded by her classmates. When someone handed her water, she thought it was from the class for all the athletes, so she drank it without thinking.

She didn't even know it was Hao Ying who bought it.

Qiao Lan felt that something was wrong when Hao Ying often asked her questions and came to her side, but at that time Hao Ying was still quite subtle, so Qiao Lan didn't say anything, after all, we were very close friends and Qiao Lan felt that she could always make Hao Ying understand what she meant by remaining distant.

As a result of this, anyone who knows Hao Ying and knows her probably knows what she means, and not only that, they may have misunderstood something.

Qiao Lan felt that she had to speak to Hao Ying sometime and nip the seedling in the bud before it grew and too many people knew about it.

The last day of the sports day was the day before the November break, and since there were no classes and no evening classes, both classroom and dormitory management were much looser these two days. In addition, the girls' dormitory No. 1 had to be moved from No. 2 to No. 1 in the past two days, so the boys in the class were allowed to go in and out of the girls' dormitory to help the girls move their things in order to move faster.

Hao Ying took advantage of this opportunity to make a high-profile display of love.

On the evening of September 30th, in front of the dormitory, under the shocked eyes of the boys and the envious eyes of the girls, Hao Ying entered the girls' dormitory with a huge bouquet of red roses and delivered them to Qiao Lan's dormitory, amidst the shouts of the hostess aunt.

Such a blatant act of confession was already a hot topic, and since the main character was Hao Ying, it couldn't have been more explosive. Even the girls in Qiao Lan's dorm room were all envious, and even the girls in Qiao Lan's dorm room were madly exclaiming that Hao Ying was too brave.

Qiao Lan happened to be away that day and when she returned, the flowers were still on the table and all had become unexplained.

If Hao Ying's escorting was still a minor stir, by the time the flowers were delivered, the whole school knew that Hao Ying was chasing the stunning school beauty from the sports day and was boldly taking the initiative to make people's hearts flutter.

Even Tan Mo knows about it.

With repeated and increasingly high-profile displays of affection, Hao Ying makes Tan Mo understand the meaning of fondness and the intense and complex psychological stimuli that accompany it.

At last he could distinguish from the simplest irritation the layers of clearer feelings within it.

Anger.

Jealousy.

Madness.

When Tan Mo first understood what he liked, he felt the taste for the first time, and it was bitter.

When Qiao Lan returned from her November break, she was not waiting for her first monthly exam, but for her class teacher who had been holding her breath for a week.

Even the class teacher had heard of her student's sensational story and was furious when she heard that it was Hao Ying.

Qiao Lan and Hao Ying were called to the office by the class teacher when they returned from the November holidays.

The class teacher was very "snobbish" and her attitude towards students with good grades and those with poor grades was a million miles apart. After hearing Qiao Lan say that she had no intention of falling in love in high school, let alone with Hao Ying, she was satisfied to let Qiao Lan go.

Then when Hao Ying went, all the anger she had been holding all week exploded.

Almost the entire floor heard the class teacher's rant that day.

"Don't bring down my good students if you don't learn yourself."

After Hao Ying received a lecture in the morning, almost all the students in the class looked at Qiao Lan. A few friends in the class who were still close to Qiao Lan, and even Pei Ning, who was in class 28, sent out WeChats asking if Qiao Lan was with Hao Ying.

Qiao Lan is in a very bad mood.

This state of being at a loss for words annoyed her to no end.

She couldn't figure out what she had done wrong, whether she had given Hao Ying a hint that Hao Ying had misunderstood her, or whether Hao Ying was just too confident that no girl would reject him.

That's why they chose such a high-profile approach

There was so much gossip, and what bothered Qiao Lan even more was that many people believed it to be true.

Tan Mo had just arrived at the school when she saw a glum Hao Ying coming out of the office, who nodded as a greeting and went into the classroom.

Tan Mo looked at Hao Ying's back and suddenly remembered the way Hao Ying was running behind Qiao Lan, the picture someone took of Hao Ying striding into the girls' dormitory with flowers in her arms, and the "good match" comments from unknown students at the bottom of the picture.

The rose is fiery red and blindingly red.

Two simple words, but more piercing than a rose.

For a moment, Tan Mo suddenly didn't want to walk into that classroom.

He stopped in the hallway outside the classroom, half a day later, to see a sudden gasp of surprise from the students in the classroom he didn't want to go into, as Qiao Lan and Hao Ying walked out of the classroom, one after the other.

The crowd's shrieks and suppressed screams filled Tan Mo's ears.

Where they go, what they do and what they say

Tan Mo doesn't know, he doesn't dare to think.

He recalls Qiao Lan whispering that she found Hao Ying's daily visits to her annoying, but then recalls the chiselled words of the others.

"That's Hao Ying."

"Who can say no to Hao Ying."