04 - She can't
When she said she was going to fall asleep, she really fell asleep.
Lin Mian slept peacefully. Her black fringe stuck to her face and her long eyelashes pressed down into a curved shadow. Her sleeping face was open and calm, as if the person who just apologised wasn’t her at all.
Her attitude toward admitting mistakes was always extremely good, and her determination to commit another crime was also very good, even a little arrogant.
After finishing the content of the section he was on, Que Qingyan's fingertips stroked slightly on the silver remote control pen, his movements paused, and he glanced at Lin Mian.
They were halfway through the class and in the back seat of the spacious and bright amphitheater, the SLR girls stared at Professor Que in the camera attentively.
He had just changed the slide on the projections, and the girl was about to grab a sneaky shot, when she saw that the person in the camera raised his hand and pinch the bridge of his nose, almost instantly bursting into laughter.
Lin Mian slept soundly, and when she woke up, the class had already finished.
There was no one in the theatre. She checked the time. It was nearly forty minutes after the class had ended and she had only just woken up.
Lin Mian slowly rubbed her drowsy face. She rested her forehead on the edge of the table and recalled what had happened before she fell asleep with difficulty.
It seemed she...
After a while, Lin Mian lifted her head from the table, picked up her notebook, and opened it.
She calmly finished reading the four pages, and finally turned back to the page that said ‘forty thousand word review’. She was silent for two minutes, then regretted so badly that she almost shed two lines of tears.
She had written this herself. The handwriting style was too obvious, and she showed it to Que Qingyan as if offering a treasure, he must have seen it too.
The 20,000 word review that was already too difficult to write had now doubled to 40,000, and it needed to be handed over to him next week.
"..." Lin Mian slowly tore off the piece of paper and crumpled it into a ball to comfort herself.
Destroy the evidence.
.
After leaving the classroom, Lin Mian didn’t go back to her apartment immediately, but instead diverted to stroll around the campus.
There were two or three kittens in the corner of the lawn next to the library. Lin Mian found the pet food bowl she’d hidden in the shrubs, lowered her head and dug out the cat food cans from her handbag, and squatted down.
A tabby cat basking in the sun noticed Lin Mian. Realising it was feeding time, it made a soft sounding meow, and several other cats gathered around.
Lin Mian often came here to feed the cats, ang those within a few hundred metres radius were already familiar with her. They came to rub her calves one after another, the soft fluff of the cats’ tails gently swept over her ankles, with arrogant flattery.
Halfway through feeding them, her phone vibrated.
"Mu Mian-lǎoshī," the editor called. She sounded like she was in a good mood, "I have good news and bad news. Which one would you like to hear first?"
Lin Mian fed the cats and refused very simply, "I won't listen, I won't listen, I won't listen."
"..." Her editor was accustomed to her behaviour, and just ignored her. She folded the feedback form in their hands and said, "The good news is that the editorial department has just met. The readers of The Love Letter have been responding very well recently so the individual novels are about to enter the planning stage..."
This sentence was too familiar, Lin Mian's heart jumped and interrupted her editor with a trembling voice, "Don't——"
Sure enough, the next sentence was, "So the bad news is that the new novels need additional colour pages for the theatre as usual, you have a week." The editor hummed a small tune, with countless joyful sounds in her tone, "Mu Mian-lǎoshī, draw and send it to me when you’re done, jiāyóu~"
Already, she had to write a 40,000 word review, and now there was another colour page theatre to draw...
Lin Mian didn't respond, she drew back the dried fish that was about to be fed into a cat's mouth, and bit down with an ashen face.
The kitten raised his head and gave a meow.
Her editor’s heart couldn't bear it, and she added, "By the way, the letters and gifts sent by fans are still in the editorial department. I’ll bring them to you when I have time someday..."
There was deathly silence on the other end, the editor looked at the phone, it was already hung up.
The editor, "……"
Lin Mian hung up the phone with shaking hands.
She was now squatting next to the cat bowl in the grass, with a few cats meowing around her feet. Her eyes happened to see Que Qingyan who wasn’t far away.
Seeing the direction he was going, he would be heading towards her direction and was bound to pass by her if she stuck around.
Lin Main was caught off-guard. The matter of her falling asleep in class before hadn’t been resolved yet, and now she’d been caught again. It was almost like sending a blank cheque to the door, and handing it to him bluntly, “Professor Que, I’ll write a review of as many words as you like."
Lin Mian was about to cry at the scene she had just imagined.
There was an old professor next to Que Qingyan, so he’d slowed his pace. He was tall and his legs wrapped in dark slacks were slender. Lin Mian looked up at him as he walked over, her emotions overrode her reason, and her thoughts of slipping away were killed in their infancy.
The two hadn't noticed someone was squatting next to the lawn, until the old professor gave a startled ‘ah’ and Que Qingyan followed his gaze.
Lin Mian sat five steps away from them, still holding canned tuna for the cats in her arms.
Her eyes flickered again with guilt, and she watched Que Qingyan for a long while, half to appear more pleasing and half to speak cautiously:
"……meow."
The old professor was overwhelmed by her ‘meow’ and said with a smile, "Little girl, are you feeding the cats?"
"Hi Professor." Lin Mian nodded, patted her skirt and stood up, and greeted respectfully, "Hi Professor Que."
Que Qingyan nodded, and looked over the cats who were still acting coquettishly by her feet. His eyelashes were low, and his eyes stopped on the food bowl, as he asked casually, "How long have you been feeding the cats?"
"It's been almost two months," Lin Mian had completely assumed the mindset of admitting to all mistakes, and with her voice soft she replied reflexively, "I only started feeding them this semester. They’re still small, so they don't eat much. They have been fed well. Sometimes I give them canned tuna and sardines, but they mostly eat cat food..."
After she finished speaking without stopping, she thought for a while, motioned to the canned cat food in her hand, blinked and asked, "Do you want to feed them?"
Lin Mian's ability to sell was first-rate, and when it came to Que Qingyan, she was even more coercive, and her eyes clearly read ‘I know everything you want to ask, I know.’
A few steps away, Que Qingyan was dumbfounded, his slender eyebrows arched, and his eyes were as deep as ink.
She walked on thin ice only because she felt she owed him a little, but in the eyes of the other party, she appeared to be trembling in the face of her tormentor.
For a long time, Que Qingyan taught only Masters and Doctorate students and he had become accustomed to the various challenges they provided. He hadn't taught undergraduates for a long time so when he caught Lin Mian sleeping in class he punished her with the 20,000 word review without thinking.
She was just a sophomore undergraduate, and he gave her the same punishment he would a Masters or Doctorate student, which may have been a bit harsh.
The old professor on the side asked, "Qingyan, is this your student?"
“Yes.”
"That's right, very good," the old professor was overjoyed, "I have a bunch of public law materials I’m dealing with, and I still lack people to screen the papers. I just wanted to ask you if I could borrow a student, may I..."
Have her sort out legal information...
Lin Mian was taken aback when she heard his words, and was just about to speak, when Que Qingyan's voice sounded low and deep, "She can't."
He helped her refuse.
Such a small statement held back the siege. Lin Mian was startled, and her little heart began to beat again.
She watched him take out his phone and start making a call. He glanced over at her and said, "I’ll lend you a PhD student. She’s too young."
She’s too young.
“……”
No matter how you heard this sentence, it felt like he was really saying, "She's too useless."
Giving everything that he’d witnessed, this thought was indeed very well-founded, making it impossible to refute.
Lin Mian lowered her head and stared at the cats spinning around her feet, suddenly feeling a little desolate and a little bit wronged.
The student who answered the phone happened to be at school, and within ten minutes, they were in sight.
It was a boy who was tall and thin, and when he walked over, the glasses on the bridge of his nose reflected the light. Lin Mian thought he looked a little familiar, but didn't recognise him until he approached...
The boy first greeted Que Qingyan and called him ‘lǎoshī’ affectionately. As soon as he turned, he saw Lin Mian next to him, and he opened his mouth in surprise and called out.
Seeing that the word ‘Lin’ was about to be blurted out, Lin Mian's scalp tightened and she responded quickly, interrupting him in time, "Shīxiōng!"
Shīxiōng? Who?
"..." She winked stealthily at Xu Zhu, who was stunned after being called shīxiōng. Fortunately, he reacted quickly enough and after exchanging a look with Lin Mian, he laughed, "Shīmèi, you’re here too?"
Lin Mian fell into character in a second, and said in a quiet voice, "I'm here to feed the cats."
She was still pretending to be Xu Tong, and she was almost exposed in front of Que Qingyan. Lin Mian suppressed her guilty conscience and thought, fortunately, he just glanced at her and didn't ask much.
Xu Zhu was recruited to help the old professor, and he left without saying another word to her, but turned his head with each step, his curiosity higher than the sky, as he tried to use his eyes to communicate with Lin Mian.
Lin Mian crossed the river and burned the bridge, her eyebrows pleasingly in place, without exposing anything to Xu Zhu as she directly hung up the spiritual exchange.
Que Qingyan was still beside her, Lin Mian thought through everything that had happened. He didn't seem to intend on mentioning her sleeping, did he plan to let her go...
After thinking about it, her confidence and courage were renewed, and she appeared more confident.
"Professor Que," Lin Mian raised her eyes suddenly to look at him, her eyes gleaming, "Are you going to go home directly after this?"
It was already dusk, Que Qingyan turned his face to look at the sky, his eyes and brows were plated with a gentle halo, and his usual indifferent expression seemed warm.
He didn't speak, so Lin Mian continued in a soft voice, "If you’re going straight home...I’ll go back with you."
Que Qingyan's eyes fell on Lin Mian.
The closeness in her words was too obvious.
The author has something to say:
Did Lin Xiaomian fall off the horse today? No.
Does Lin Xiaomian want face today? She doesn't.
