Chapter 161: The New Year's Eve Gala Has Auditions?!

"Do we still need to fill out application forms?"

The crop-haired boy voiced a question, causing the girl with the slightly red earlobes beside him to cast a glance in this direction as well.

Wang Haoran brushed aside the center-parted bangs blocking his vision and said, "Yeah, after all, it's a school-wide gala, different from before. Are you participating or not? If not, I'm taking this back."

"I'm in, give me two. Bai Qingxia is participating too."

Lu Yuanqiu pulled another form out from the stack Wang Haoran was holding.

"Seriously?"

Wang Haoran looked at Bai Qingxia with a surprised expression.

The girl's head was bowed low as she looked at the questions on the paper.

Lu Yuanqiu held the two application forms in his hand, glanced over them, and asked, "Why is it an application form?"

Wang Haoran pointed at the small print in the very last row. "Read it yourself."

Lu Yuanqiu lowered his gaze.

*Please bring your application form to the First Activity Room for an on-site audition. Only after passing the audition and getting it stamped can the performance act be finalized.*

"Huh? What the heck? You even need an interview just to put on a performance?"

Lu Yuanqiu exclaimed in disbelief.

Wang Haoran nodded. "Yeah, otherwise with so many people signing up from the entire school, do you really think they'd let everyone on stage to perform? They definitely won't let nonsense slide."

With that, he flicked his center-parted hair, gave Lu Yuanqiu a nonchalant glance, and walked over to the front row with the application forms to ask the students up front if they had any interest.

Lu Yuanqiu placed one of the application forms on Bai Qingxia's desk and said, "Fill this out. What do you say? Shall the two of us go to the activity room for the interview tomorrow?"

Holding the application form, Bai Qingxia's face showed a troubled expression.

Lu Yuanqiu reached out and poked her cheek, pressing out a tender, white dimple, and interrogated her, "You're not planning to back out at the last minute, are you?"

"...... No."

Though she said no, her answer was somewhat reluctant.

"The day after tomorrow..." Bai Qingxia deliberated for a moment before turning her head to look at him.

Considering she probably wanted a little time to prepare, Lu Yuanqiu nodded in agreement. "Alright, the day after tomorrow."

Just as he finished speaking, Lu Yuanqiu suddenly caught a foul stench wafting over from nearby. "Crap!"

Rainy days were already prone to making feet smell, combined with the biochemical constitutions of the Liu brothers...

Lu Yuanqiu turned his head and found that Chen Fei on the other side had become the first person who couldn't take it anymore. She picked up a book and smacked both Liu brothers on the head.

"Put your shoes on!! It stinks to high heaven!!"

Liu Buneng argued with full conviction, "My socks are wet, I'm airing them out!"

"Airing out your sister! Go air them out outside!"

Zheng Yifeng frowned. Having been sleeping, he was also reawakened by the stench and could only take off his jacket, burying his face inside it.

Too lazy to complain, Lu Yuanqiu skillfully fished a pack of tissues out of Bai Qingxia's pants pocket, tore it in half, and stuffed them into his nostrils.

Bai Qingxia shrank her legs slightly and cast a grievance-filled glance to the side. Lu Yuanqiu kept taking tissues from her pocket, and several times when she needed to use the restroom, she found she was out of paper.

However, when she was in real, urgent need, Lu Yuanqiu would also help her borrow tissues from everywhere...

She didn't understand why someone as rich as Lu Yuanqiu always seemed to find buying tissues such a difficult task.

At noon dismissal, the situation on campus was severe.

"Not looking good."

Lu Yuanqiu stood in the hallway downstairs of the freshman teaching building, gazing at the ground ahead.

The standing water on the ground was getting deeper, changing from ankle-deep yesterday to half-calf-deep now.

Today, many people even came to school wearing slippers and sandals.

Lu Yuanqiu was a bit worried.

He worried both that the midterm exams might be disrupted and that he would have to confess his love to Zheng Yifeng in front of the entire school.

"Let's go, I'll carry you," he said to the girl beside him.

Bai Qingxia, however, no longer trusted him. She stepped to the side, preparing to follow the example of some students who took off their shoes and socks, rolled up their trouser legs, and waded through the water to the cafeteria.

This was a method thought up by some clever students who had worn sneakers to school.

Seeing her bend down and prepare to take off her shoes as well, Lu Yuanqiu quickly pulled her back, lowered his head, and said sternly, "You can't take them off! What if someone sees your little feet?"

Bai Qingxia: "..."

Thinking of Lu Yuanqiu's foot fetish, she lowered her eyelids with a disdainful expression.

Lu Yuanqiu turned around, straddled his legs slightly, and bent over. "Get on!"

A soft mutter came from behind him: "I don't believe you, you're just going to carry me in your arms again."

"Definitely not this time," Lu Yuanqiu said with a serious expression.

"Fine..."

Bai Qingxia opened her arms and hopped onto his back.

~~

"Make way, make way! The child is hungry again!"

Lu Yuanqiu laughed mischievously, carrying Bai Qingxia in a bridal style as he sprinted toward the cafeteria, once again drawing the gazes of many people along the way.

The girl in his arms made not a sound, her complexion terrifyingly dark.

She shouldn't have trusted this scumbag Lu Yuanqiu.

From now on, never, never, never... ever trust this scumbag again.

"Huh? Xiao Kui, isn't that Senior Lu..."

Downstairs of the freshman teaching building, a girl turned her head and asked a double-tailed girl beside her in confusion.

"Didn't you say... Senior Lu doesn't have a girlfriend?"

The girl asked yet another soul-searching question.

The double-tailed girl called "Xiao Kui" was stunned for a moment, then gave a dry chuckle in response, "Senior Lu... Senior Lu is probably just being enthusiastic. Given his personality... this is probably pretty normal, right?"

"I suppose so. Senior Lu has a great personality and seems really good at mingling with girls."

Seeming to want to reassure the double-tailed girl, her good friend silently offered an explanation for Lu Yuanqiu.

Yet, the double-tailed girl had clearly seen just moments ago that the person Senior Lu was holding in his arms was none other than Senior Bai.

If the person being carried were anyone else, the double-tailed girl might have attributed it to Senior Lu being warm-hearted, thinking that his carefree personality allowed him to act that way with close female friends. But the person was Senior Bai... Senior Bai was so pretty, didn't Senior Lu have even the slightest bit of romantic affection for her?

Because she lived on campus, she wouldn't have her phone back until Friday, so the double-tailed girl had no way to communicate with Lu Yuanqiu online, and communication in real life was still a bit too embarrassing for her at the moment.

Night fell.

Xingfuli Residential Compound.

Listening to the sound of the rain outside, Lu Yuanqiu finished working through his study problems, took out the guitar from beside his bed, unzipped the gig bag, pulled the guitar out, and wiped the dust off its surface.

Plucking a chord gently to test the tone, Lu Yuanqiu turned the tuning pegs and began tuning each string.

"When I was young, during those rowdy and willful times~"

He strummed the guitar and sang a single line, but his voice abruptly cut off against the backdrop of the heavy downpour.

Lu Yuanqiu turned his head to look out the window at the pitch-black night sky, where a scene of swirling, fluttering snow slowly seemed to emerge in his vision.

Vaguely, he remembered that the snow falling that year looked very similar, soft and fluffy.

A dark night, the New Year's Gala...

At that instant, Lu Yuanqiu recalled the scene from his junior high school days when he sang for Uncle Bai at the school gates.

Yet, following that, he also muttered in confused self-questioning.

"How on earth would Bai Qingxia know about that?"

Could it be...

Lu Yuanqiu silently raised his head, his mouth slightly parted. In his memory, the imagery of that day from all those years ago spun into his mind. Could it be that on that day, beside the circular flower bed, behind the crop-haired boy and the silly uncle, there was also a girl sitting quietly off to the side, listening the whole time...?