Rock Sugar And Pear Stew

Chapter 22 - The third time (Translated by Xing and edited by Souhi)

The inline skating club members quickly dispersed the crowd and cleared the tracks.

Both sides agreed to skate five rounds on the running track. Whoever reached the finishing point first would win.

Tang Xue changed into the skates and a helmet, and positioned herself at the starting line. Skull Head did the same.

90% of the surrounding crowd were either RCU students or teachers trying to blend in with the students. All of them were silently looking at the two people on the track.

The air was laden with tension and the atmosphere momentarily took a solemn turn.

Liao Zhenyu quietly asked Li Yubing, "Do you think my boss can defy the odds?"

By asking this, Liao Zhenyu only wanted to hear some casual rea.s.surance. Instead, Li Yubing took one look at Tang Xue"s back view and muttered, "That scoundrel."

Liao Zhenyu: = =

Xia Menghuan was standing on Liao Zhenyu"s other side. She soothingly said, "I don"t see why not. Anything is possible."

This was the right way to rea.s.sure someone. Liao Zhenyu instantly felt that Xia Menghuan was an angel.

The inline skating club president was on the gra.s.s with his hand raised.

Inline skating originated from ice skating, but there is a difference in the skates" friction, manoeuvring technique and other factors. As such, it is not possible to do figure skating and artistic roller skating interchangeably. It was because of this that Tang Xue said that the club president had made a blunder trying to get help from the school"s figure skating team.

However, this was not the case for inline speed skating and ice speed skating. The two sports were so similar that an inline speed skater could practice by ice speed skating, and vice versa. Practice venues for ice skating were scarce, and Tang Xue had subst.i.tuted ice skating with roller skating for practice in the past.

In other words, if a person could skate fast on ice, they could skate just as equally fast on ground.

From primary 2 to high school year 1, Tang Xue had practiced ice skating for eight years. In the beginning, she only ice skated as recreation but in the later years, she trained with the intention of becoming a professional sports athletic. It was only that she herself did not preserve in this endeavour.

Despite so, it was still not a problem for her to now race with an ordinary person.

That was right, an ordinary person. In her eyes, Skull Head was only a recreational skater. After researching on their inline skating club, she discovered that the better ones in the team were all artistic roller skaters. They did not have any member who specialized in inline speed skating.

Therefore, among their entire group, all of them were scrubs[1] in Tang Xue"s eyes. Head over to teafragrance[dot]wordpress[dot]com if translator"s notes are missing or if you simply want to read without ads.

After counting down, the club president sharply swung down his arm and blew the whistle.

The sharp whistle pierced the air and penetrated everyone"s ears. The two on the tracks were like two missiles that had received orders to launch. "Swoosh." Both of them took off in a blur.

The odds-defying moment that Liao Zhenyu was hoping for did not appear.

This was because right from the very start, Tang Xue was in the lead.

The crowd was hushed.

Previously, the silence rose from pessimism. Now, the silence came from their astonishment.

The strange silence continued for some time until someone finally let out a shout. "Dafaq."

Then, other exclamations from the audience followed. "Dafaq", "awesome", and "go for it" The place was flooded with similar cries of encouragement.

Liao Zhenyu"s hands were red from clapping. "Boss, go for it!"

Tang Xue bent her waist, her eyes fixed on the track in front of her. She alternated the force exerted by each leg, her body and arms moving in synchronized and controlled swings that maximized her speed and the efficiency of her turns. In order to minimize the air resistance, she were a tight-fitting tracksuit. At this moment, her two legs were especially eye-catching. They were long and firm with a healthy and beautiful shape.

She finished one round and as she pa.s.sed by the crowd, they erupted with screams and cheers. Tang Xue was completely unaffected. She methodically continued with a burning gaze.

Li Yubing saw her eyes.

It was like an eagle on its first hunt—calm, focused, guileless and br.i.m.m.i.n.g with confidence in her own ability.

Even though there were five rounds to skate, it was ultimately only a few minutes" work. When Tang Xue pa.s.sed the finishing point, the crowd let out a huge cheer. Exhilarated from her victory, she reduced her speed and U-turned, stretching her hands out to hi-five the crowd. She hi-fived everyone regardless of whether she knew them.

The surrounding crowd was also quite accommodating. All of them stretched their palms out and fought to meet her hi-fives.

Li Yubing really had to give props to Tang Xue for being able to blow this tiny and inconsequential fight into what seemed to be a compet.i.tion of Olympics scale.

Tang Xue was not done basking in the attention when she suddenly stumbled over someone"s feet. Moving on skates was originally something that was not too stable. Tang Xue was caught off-guard and lost her balance. A fall seemed imminent.

At this crucial moment, someone held a hand out to stabilize her. The person tightly gripped her hand and pull her back with some force. Tang Xue returned his grip and took the chance to readjust her posture and right herself.

Having been sent into a panic, she took a light breath.

She then raised her eyes towards the hand"s owner.

Her line of sight unexpectedly met a pair of doe-like eyes.

This was the third time……

Tang Xue was dumbfounded for a moment before breaking into a grin.

He grinned as well. His light pink lips were opened in a wide and unguarded smile, revealing two tidy rows of gleaming white teeth and deepening the dimple on his left cheek. As he smiled, he gave her a wink. With his jet-black eyes, his gaze was like the moving dews drops blown across a lotus leaf, bright and lively. If you see this, this translation has been reposted without permission from teafragrance[dot]wordpress[dot]com.

He moved. Tang Xue looked down and it was only then that she realized that she was still gripping his hand. Embarra.s.sed, she quickly let go.

He released his hand as well and fished something from his bag.

Then, Tang Xue found herself holding a bottle of soy milk.

Tang Xue was tickled. She thought that this person was pretty amusing.

She was about to speak with him when the crowd rustled. Waves of continuous cries quickly followed. "STREAK, STREAK, STREAK!……"

Oh, Skull Head was back.

Skull Head was quite unfortunate. Earlier, he had even tripped as he was too anxious. He had finally reached the finishing point while withstanding the mental stress. At the finishing point, not only did no one cheer for his perseverance, but everyone was waiting for him to streak.

It was completely different from how things usually played out on dramas.

Tang Xue skated over to Skull Head. She smirked. "Convinced?"

Skull Head"s expression was ghastly and he stood there without saying a word.

Grey Hair was still relatively calm and asked Tang Xue, "Just who are you?"

"An autobot[2]."

Grey Hair was stunned.

"Cut the c.r.a.p." Tang Xue crossed her arms and looked at Skull Head. "Hurry up with streaking, everyone wants to head off for dinner."

Her words were immediately accompanied by sounds of agreement.

Paying a losing bet was nothing to be praised. However, if those people were going to leave after losing, they might as well stop calling themselves men. Therefore, Skull Head still ultimately chose to pay the losing bet. If you are not reading this at teafragrance[dot]wordpress[dot]com, this translation has been reposted without the consent of the translator.

He closed his eyes and took off his clothes layer by layer, until he was only left wearing a pair of briefs.

Underneath Skull Head"s clothes hid a pair of SpongeBob SquarePants briefs.

Well, who would have thought……

Since he had already started, he might as well went all the way. Wearing his briefs, Skull Head walked a distance on the track and even struck a pose. As his back was facing the crowd, his walking motions affected his b.u.t.t muscles. The SpongeBob on his b.u.t.t seemed to be alive, animatedly moving its face and eyes, and making faces at the audience.

That day, the majority of onlookers were somewhat traumatized. All of them felt like they had been teased by a pair of briefs.

After the streak, Grey Hair took the initiative to make peace with the club president. A wise man recognized and adapted to the circ.u.mstances. Students tended to be more self-conscious of their image and were easy to coax. It was still possible to play on flattery and resolve this in a quicker and more peaceful manner, minimizing the damage to their club image in the process.

Things had finally ended and the crowd gradually dispersed as well.

Tang Xue grasped the bottle of soy milk. She scanned the crowd for some time but ultimately did not find him.

"I still don"t even know his name," She mumbled to herself.

While she was distracted, Li Yubing took chance to swipe the bottle of soy milk in her hands. By the time Tang Xue realized, he had already swiftly twisted the cap off and drank a mouthful.

He really did not see himself as an outsider at all.

"Hey!" Tang Xue was a little annoyed.

The mouthful of soy milk bulged the sides of Li Yubing"s cheeks. He lowered his eyes and distinctively swallowed.

Gulp.

There was even a d.a.m.ned sound effect.

Tang Xue clenched her teeth. "You——" After saying this one word, she fell silent.

Li Yubing"s sight landed on her face. He intently met her eyes, his gaze clear and searching. Tang Xue had never seen him looking so serious before.

Tang Xue was originally going to swear. However, she was thrown off by his behaviour and did not end up doing so. She tightly said, "What?"

"Why did you stop skating?" Li Yubing asked.

Tang Xue was startled. She immediately turned her face away, her tone frustrated. "What does it got to do with you?"

Translator"s Notes:

[1] Scrub is a slang for someone insignificant or not good at something (e.g. video games or sports). It"s a pretty common slang that people throw around when gaming. The reason why I didn"t use "noob" or "amateur" was that the original phrase used was 辣鸡 (là jī), which literally translates to "spicy chicken", but is meant to be a pun/h.o.m.onym on the words 垃圾 (lā jī), which means "trash".

[2] "Autobots are a team of sentient mechanical self-configuring modular robotic lifeforms from the planet Cybertron led by Optimus Prime, and the main protagonists in the universe of the Transformers" - Source: Wikipedia (FYI cause I didn"t know either. Well, at least not the Chinese term.)

Admit it, you guys thought this story was going to be all fluff, didn"t you? This was two very lovely chapters.

A huge thank you to Souhi for this chapter"s edit. There was quite a few sentences that I couldn"t manage to translate smoothly no matter how I tried and several facepalm-worthy errors.

Case in point: I originally translated "Skull Head"s expression was ghastly" from 骷髅头脸色很难看 (kū lóu tóu liǎn sè hěn nán kàn) to "Skull Head"s face was ugly" because 难看 (nán kàn) has the immediate meaning of "ugly". I didn"t realize that anything was wrong till she WTF me in Google Docs.