Chapter 16 (1/2)

The next morning, when Zhao Yuan got out of his tent, he discovered something unusual. “How come there are two holes in the tents? Did some mouses come to gnaw on the tent? But these holes are about one meter above the ground? How could mouses do that?”

He deliberately remained silent about that, and made a fire to cook noodles for everyone. The team had enough noodles but did not have enough sauce. In the end, among the seven bowls of noodles he cooked, only five had sauce. He went to ask Lin Wenxi to get up, but he still looked sleepy. He wiggled a little with a meaningful smile on his face.

“You brat…” Zhao Yuan thought and pinched his ear. Lin Wenxi finally got up while smiling.

After that, Zhao Yuan went to the other tents to wake up the others. Soon enough, nearly everyone got out of their tents and ruched toward the noodles. Although Chen Wanxin was a girl, she showed a raw energy like a man and quickly finished her bowl of noodles. In the meantime, Lin Wenxi was still slowly enjoying his noodles with some pickles on top.

When the other two girls wearily crawled out of their tent with dark circles around their eyes, they were disappointed to find out that there were only two bowls of plain noodles left for them.

“Did you two sleep well last night?” asked Zhao Yuan. He smiled slightly and added, “We don’t have enough sauce for everyone, so I hope you can enjoy your plain noodles. By the way, didn’t you get up quite early before?”

“Uhm, there were some very noisy bugs outside our tent last night. We’ll choose a good spot to put up our tent and have a good sleep tonight,” Shu Xiaoman said while massaging her waist. It was clearly not easy for her to swallow those plain noodles. Zhang An’an twitched her face, trying her best to force a smile. She whined a little and then snatched Lin Wenxi’s bowl from his hands to pour half of his soup into her bowl. Upon seeing that, Lin Wenxi put down his chopsticks. Zhang An’an smiled and said, “Ah, you don’t want to eat anymore?” With these words, she poured all his noodles and soup into her bowl. She even used her chopsticks to stir the food in his bowl to further disgust him.

“What? Do you think that you’re eating some two-flavor hot pot?” Wang Xiang twitched his mouth and said somewhat grumpily.

“Yes,” Zhang An’an nodded and replied.

Wang Xiang gave his bowl to her and said, “Add one more flavor to it. I still have some soup left in my bowl.”

Zhang An’an was irritated. After chasing after Wang Xiang quite a long time, she finally tucked his head into a backpack to punish him.

After the meal, they continued their journey. At about 10 p.m., they put up tents to take a rest again.

Before going to sleep, Zhao Yuan gave Lin Wenxi a black ball pen and two pieces of oval paper plates while saying, “Here you are. Draw my eyes on them.”

“What?” Lin Wenxi asked, his eyes widened in surprise.

“Don’t ask me why I know that you can draw. Didn’t you remember that I used to search all your closets and cases for facial masks?”

“Um,” Lin Wenxi replied nonchalantly.

“Come on, draw my eyes on them as fast as you can.” Zhao Yuan pressed the papers and the pen into Lin Wenxi’s hands. Lin Wenxi picked up the pen and asked Zhao Yuan to sit still. After quite a long time, Zhao Yuan felt that his legs became numb, but Lin Wenxi was still busy drawing on the papers. He could not help but ask while panting, “How long do I have to sit still?”

After a while, Lin Wenxi replied slowly, “Uhm, I just spend some time enjoy it.”

…

Zhao Yuan swallowed hard and then snatched the paper plates from Lin Wenxi. The eyes looked sharp and shiny, but they apparently did not look like Zhao Yuan’s eyes.

“They don’t look like my eyes,” Zhao Yuan said confusedly as he thought, “I’ve sat still and kept my eyes widely opened for such a long time. Did I do anything wrong?”

“Uhm, it’s dark here. I can’t see your eyes clearly, so I just drew what I wanted.”

“Lin Wenxi… Lin Wenxi…” Zhao Yuan was stuck for words. He had managed to keep still for such a long time for Lin Wenxi, but Lin Wenxi had just drawn something else without even telling him. He wondered, “Can I cut off all my meridians to explode myself together with this Lin Wenxi like the guys in kung fu fiction did?”

Right at this moment, Lin Wenxi took out a red pen and added something to the paper plates. A moment later, Zhao Yuan found out that the eyes were filled with blood and looked spooky and dreadful.

“You want to play, so let’s play hard,” Lin Wenxi smiled slightly and glanced at the two holes in the tent. Upon seeing that, Zhao Yuan made a thumb up sign to Lin Wenxi.

Late at night, someone screamed outside their tent and woke up nearly all the people around this place, including the young military instructor who was put in charge of the students’ safety. The military instructor crept all the way from his tent toward where the sound came from. When he was near to the place, he saw students in the neighboring tents all come out to hold two girls. When he got closer, he discovered that the two girls were trembling with fear while pointing their fingers at Zhao Yuan’s tent. One of them mumbled, “Oh my goodness! Eyes, big eyes, bleeding big eyes!”

No one could hear a sound from the tent.

“Oh no! Did something terrible happen to the students in the tent?” With this in mind, the military instructor immediately approached the tent from its back, opened it and turned on his magnesium flashlight. The next moment, he saw Zhao Yuan and Lin Wenxi sleep soundly together with their ears stuffed with cotton balls. Zhao Yuan smacked his lips in the sleep and then turned around, putting his thigh on Lin Wenxi’s waist.

The military instructor asked the students what was going on and then checked the two boys in the tent again to make sure that they were alright. After that, he left the place. The two girls who had screamed just now were Zhang An’an and Shu Xiaoman. They had planned to steal a glance at Zhao Yuan and Lin Wenxi tonight. Although now they did not want to get close to their tent anymore, they could not help but wonder why they had stuffed their ears with cotton balls. They also remembered that Zhao Yuan seemed to be smiling when the flashlight lit up his face.

Zhao Yuan and Lin Wenxi remained silent for quite a long time inside the dark tent after the incident. When everything quieted down outside, Lin Wenxi suddenly pinched Zhao Yuan’s arm and asked, “Did you feel happy by putting your thigh on my waist?”