Proofreader: Jesse
Wu Han Ying fell asleep very late last night, in fact, he really did not know when he fell asleep; he kept on tossing and turning what felt like the whole night. In short, as long as he thought about riding back to school on Sunday in Professor Xia's car...his sleepiness would evaporate and then he just laid in bed wide awake. It was not due to excitement, more like feeling troubled...
When he opened his eyes the next morning it was already past 9 o'clock, since there wasn't a computer in his room and he didn't bring his laptop home, he could not think of things to do at home. He came to the conclusion that he would most likely end up watching TV and reading some books. So he decided to roll cover himself with the quilt and continue sleeping.
He did not get to sleep for even a few minutes more before he was awakened...
Wu Ning ran outside and as her bare-feet made contact with the wooden floor she made a loud "thump thump thump" sound. While she was running she started to scream in a loud voice; when she made it to his door she knocked "bang bang bang" onto the door and shouted, "Brother, get up! Come out and draw with me!"
Wu Han Ying was extremely thankful that he was smart enough to lock the door last night. He finally got up and went to wash up. When he pa.s.sed the door to the "landowner's" room he noticed it was still shut tight; Wu Ning's parents loved to sleep in during their off days, they would not wake up until it was noon. Their grandma was preparing lunch in the kitchen, while trying to coax Wu Ning.
"Ning Ning, your brother is up now, go out and play with your brother. You'll get burned if you stay in here. Eh! Don't touch the meat! Take her out and draw with her."
Wu Han Ying's mouth unconsciously twitched as he held the mouthwash cup and toothbrush in his hands; he replied nonchalantly and then went back to the bathroom to wash his face first.
He had just started brus.h.i.+ng his teeth when he heard Wu Ning banging loudly on the bathroom door, such a strong knock. Wu Han Ying pretended not to hear it as he bowed down to continue brus.h.i.+ng his teeth.
Outside, Wu Ning still knocked on the bathroom door, but it wouldn't open so she kept on knocking, "Open the door, open the door, draw with me!"
"I'm was.h.i.+ng my face, give me a minute." Wu Han Ying was quite annoyed at the loud banging as he replied from behind the door. The other side was also pretending to not hear and continued banging on the door.
Wu Han Ying accepted his unfortunate fate as he quickly washed his face and then wiped it in a flash. Wu Ning held up a bunch of plain white pieces of drawing paper in one hand, in her other hand she clutched onto a few boxes of drawing markers; some uncapped ones were precariously held outside the boxes. Once she saw him coming out, she immediately shoved them all at him.
Without thinking, Wu Han Ying reached out his hand to grab the items, during the exchange some of the pens clattered onto the floor; there was a red and green pen that was uncapped, he was unlucky enough to get their ink on his s.h.i.+rt.
He walked up to the small coffee table and dropped all the materials onto it and then let her start drawing. Honestly speaking, to accompany his younger cousin to drawing had always been a torturous ch.o.r.e, mainly you're not supposed to do anything at all. If you say you will draw a picture with her, she would reach out and take away your pen saying that you are only making a mess and then tell you to sit still to watch her draw. If you sit on the side just watching her draw, she would push a pen to you and tell you to draw with her...
{Translator's Words: Then what does this girl want?!!!! A beating? LOL just kidding, no violence towards children guys, but really...in the next couple of paragraphs you will feel like beating the h.e.l.l out of her, trust me, you won't be disappointed LOL}
Like usual Wu Han Ying got a pen shoved at him, he only took it to imitate the drawing posture because he had zero intentions of drawing anything. Actually, as he was watching Wu Ning draw a few lines back and forth with the pens on the paper, he couldn't help feeling bad because a dozen very expensive pieces of drawing paper had only two lines drawn on them before she threw it down and never touched it again. Next to her was box after box of colorful drawing markers and each box had more than 100 colors all of high quality. It was good if there was still half a box left, but on closer inspection most of the markers would be either uncapped or no pen in the box.
He also liked drawing when he was younger, but he was never lucky enough to get a set of 100 different color drawing markers like this, but somehow it looked kind of wasteful. (for having 100 colors but only using just a few of them)
Wu Han Ying sat on a small stool and vaguely answered "um um" when Wu Ning turned to ask him something. He was getting bored waiting on the side, so he took out his phone and casually looked through a few pages. He pressed on his phone and looked through the whole phone book, he didn't know what he should be doing.
"What are you doing!" Wu Ning suddenly called out.
Wu Han Ying was shocked as he felt a tingling pain in his hand; he looked and saw that his hand was now empty and sported a few claw marks. He couldn't believe she s.n.a.t.c.hed the phone from his hand.
"...give it back to me and then let's continue to draw." said Wu Han Ying, he was really getting frustrated as he stood up to take back the phone. Unbeknownst to him, the other side was unwilling to give up the phone as she randomly pressed b.u.t.tons. He really had no idea what she was trying to do.
"No!" Wu Ning pressed randomly as the phone screen flashed a few times. After seeing that Wu Han Ying wanted to s.n.a.t.c.h it back, she got rather happy and then clutched onto the phone while running "thump thump thump" away, "Not giving it back! Didn't you say you would accompany me to draw!"
Wu Han Ying tried to persuade her for a long time but it was all in vain; a few moments later the phone started to ring loudly, it was an incoming call.
"There's a phone call; hurry and give it to me."
"No! I'll answer the phone." Wu Ning grabbed the phone and pressed a few b.u.t.tons. She put the phone to her ear, "h.e.l.lo! h.e.l.lo! Looking for who?"
Wu Han Ying's face turned a darker color, this time he really wanted to grab her and give her a good beating; after Wu Ning shook the phone a few times, he was barely able to get a glimpse of the caller ID --- Professor Xia.
"Give it back." Wu Han Ying got angry as he reached out to pull her to him; he really wanted to grab his phone.
"I said no, which means no!" Wu Ning seemed to be even angrier than him as she held tight to his phone and shouted with all her might. She even scratched his hand with her nail really hard until his grip loosened, then she ran off.
Wu Han Ying inhaled trying to dispel his anger as his hand was bleeding from the scratch. However, when he had caught up to her later, he could no longer breath through his anger. After Wu Ning ran to the bathroom, she casually raised up her hand; the phone naturally followed the law of gravity and with a small "splash" fell into the toilet bowl. The once lit up screen was now completely black, two seconds in the toilet bowl and it was completely destroyed.
"Hm, see what happens if you dare to not accompany me to drawing!"
{Translator Input: Go ahead, tell me how much you hate this kid; I'm not going to stop any of you.}
"Get out." growled Wu Han Ying at the top of his lungs; he reached out his hand and pulled her to the side so he could fish out his phone from the toilet bowl.
"Hphm, you didn't draw with me and now you are even yelling at me. I'm going to tell grandma!" shouted Wu Ning as tears started to form in her eyes while running to the kitchen to complain.
The landowners were woken up and began to curse, "Why are you so loud this early in the morning! Want to get spanked huh."
Wu Han Ying cursed under his breath, as he fished out his phone; he tore a bunch of toilet paper to dab it, but it was obviously pointless. No matter how many times he pressed the power b.u.t.ton there was no response, he had no other choice but to take out the sim card.
In the kitchen, people had started to coax Wu Ning. They kept telling her to stop crying, they were also promising to take her out to play in the afternoon and they wouldn't take brother with them. He also heard something about grandma will discipline him later for daring to provoke our Ning Ning...
Wu Han Ying felt completely annoyed, he just simply slammed the door open and walked out; it was very noisy in the kitchen and no one asked him anything.
After he had walked out of the apartment into the hall, he realized he was wearing too little as a cold breeze brushed by causing him to s.h.i.+ver; he instinctively shrank his neck in to try and conserve a little heat. He walked slowly out of the building while thinking about looking for a telephone booth to make a call to Professor Xia so he could explain everything. The only flaw with this plan was that he didn't remember Xia Chen's number, all the numbers are in his phone and his phone is now broken...
Wu Han Ying was a little upset as he put his phone away and walked out of the building; once outside he was immediately accosted by the cold wind. He had not stepped down from the stairs before he heard a burst of "honk honk" horn sounds in front of him. He did not pay much attention to it and casually looked up; he was speechless as he stared at a black Mercedes-Benz...
"Xia, Professor...Xia..." Wu Han Ying was a bit surprised, he couldn't help wondering what twisted fate the two had.
"Big brother!" The pa.s.senger window rolled down and a small head popped out; despite being held back by the seat belt, the little bun leaned on the window and waved his hands at him.
Xiao Shang opened the door and jumped out of the car, Wu Han Ying just stood there and watched as he ran over to him and pulled on his hand, "big brother, why didn't you pick up my call? I wanted to invite big brother to the zoo with me and then after that let's have barbecue for lunch. Xiao Chen Chen doesn't want to see the animals with me, let's just ignore him."
"Get in first." Xia Chen stood outside of the car and made a gesture with his hand telling the other two to get in and then talk.
"Oh..." Wu Han Ying was dragged by Xiao Shang into the back of the car. After they were both settled, Wu han Ying looked beside him and saw Xiao Shang's small short legs couldn't even touch the car floor instead they were dangling in the air.
"Xiao Chen Chen hurry and drive, big brother agreed to go see the animals with me." Xiao Shang stood up and clung to Xia Chen's back then he patted it, "Then we can go eat barbecue; Little Uncle said we can eat buns at the barbecue place."
Xia Chen was a bit helpless, "You slept the whole morning away and it's now almost 10 o'clock, after we get out of the zoo there won't be any seats left in the restaurant. You can only pick one."
"Little Uncle said that you can call the restaurant to make a reservation," Xiao Shang said seriously, his face showed a "don't try to lie to a little child" look.
Wu Han Ying found the interaction between the two amusing, admitting defeat Xia Chen dialed the restaurant's number to make their reservation.
He didn't know where Xia Chen and Xiao Shang wanted to have barbecue, he only heard Xia Chen make a reservation for three people at 12:30. He didn't hear anything from the other line, but as Wu Han Ying watched the other man using the rear-view mirror, he saw Xia Chen make a deep frown and a crease formed between his eyebrows.
"Actually make it 6." With that said the other man waited for a while and then hung up.
"Why did you reserve 6 seats? There are only 3 of us; Xiao Chen Chen can't count." said Xiao Shang as he laid flat down on the backseat.
"You alone are equal to 3 people." Xia Chen casually said as he continued driving.
Xiao Shang made a "hum" sound, "Even if I am equal to 3 people it would only be 5 seats, Xiao Chen Chen really can't count."
Wu Han Ying felt completely 囧囧 as he absentmindedly listened to their argument, he decided to stare out the window and watch as the pretty scenery quickly pa.s.sed by while driving to their destination. While staring out the window he recalled hearing something about the zoo and it was like a bolt of lightning had hit him with the sudden comprehension that he is actually on the way to the zoo?! And then to go eat barbecue?!...=口= how could it be...
"Professor Xia, earlier when you called my younger cousin was playing with my phone..." Wu Han Ying paused for a moment; he really wanted to explain what happened since he hung up the call without reason, but then his situation was such a mess that he really did not know how to say it...
"I heard it." Xia Chen gave such a simple answer and looked at him through the rear-view mirror to give him a slight nod.
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End of Chapter 39
P.S: OMG! I finished like 4 chapters within this week already, wow!!! T.T I'm crying LOL
Another Note: Xiao Shang said that Xia Chen can't count, because if Xiao Shang is really equal to 3 people, then Xiao Wu and Xia Chen make 2, so that is only 5. Yet Xia Chen reserved table for 6; XDD I hope with this you will get the "subtle" joke here ^^ So basically, Professor Xia is being told by a little kid that he doesn't know how to count...a teacher being told by a kid that he is not smart, that's the funny part ^^ If you still don't get it, just read the part again many times slowly and it will reveal itself to you ^^