"No need, no need, I'm too heavy." Ge Dongxu, who finally still was a boy from the mountains, wasn't as open as city people when it came to interaction between the sexes. He had never been so close to such a beautiful girl before. When Dong Yuxin suggested carrying him for a ride, his normally plain face couldn't help but turn red, and he quickly waved his hands.
At that moment, the usually composed and mature Ge Dongxu showed the nature of youth he should have at his age.
Having seen the cold and steady side of Ge Dongxu the day before, the sudden sight of his embarrassed panic made Dong Yuxin's eyes light up. She felt a sense of accomplishment and, for some reason, dismounted the bicycle, pushed it towards Ge Dongxu, and said, "Then you take me, this should be okay, right? Don't say you're too scared to carry a girl!"
As she spoke, Dong Yuxin's beautiful eyes looked at Ge Dongxu with a teasing smile.
Since the girl had already pushed the bicycle into his hands, asking him to carry her, Ge Dongxu had no reason to refuse, even though he wasn't used to being so close to a girl so suddenly. Moreover, Dong Yuxin's teasing gaze and tone made him feel slightly challenged.
"What's there to be scared of?" Ge Dongxu took the bicycle, mounted it, then suppressed the nervousness in his heart and pretended to be carefree as he patted the seat behind him and smiled, "Senior, get on."
When Ge Dongxu hopped on the bike and patted the seat behind him, inviting her to get on, it was Dong Yuxin's turn to feel her cheeks heating up and turning red.
To be honest, she had never ridden on a boy's bicycle before. She didn't know what had gotten into her; she first offered to carry him, then pushed the bike to him, and now she couldn't find the words to say no.
"I'll just ride. He's just a freshman, and I'm a senior. Am I afraid of him?" Dong Yuxin finally bit her lip, adjusted her hair to disguise her nervousness, then bravely sat down, gripping the back of the seat, and said delicately, "Hey, be careful, and don't let us fall!"
"Don't worry! Settle in." Ge Dongxu said, then started pedaling the bicycle, carrying Dong Yuxin along the street toward the school.
Dozens of meters away, Cheng Le Hao, who had been trailing far behind, watched Ge Dongxu confidently ride away with Dong Yuxin towards the school. His eyes widened as if he'd seen a ghost in broad daylight.
Dammit, no way, he's actually riding a bike with Dong Yuxin to school? That's Dong Yuxin, my goddess, the reigning beauty queen of Changxi No.1 High School, and he's just a freshman, a mountain boy from Baiyun Mountain!
How is that possible? God, this must be a hallucination in broad daylight!
"Crash!" Suddenly, the shocked Cheng Le Hao rode his bicycle straight into the curb and fell, exclaiming in pain as he clutched his backside.
After shouting a few times, Cheng Le Hao remembered Ge Dongxu was currently riding with Dong Yuxin to school. He quickly got up, picked up his bike, and hurried toward the school.
Ge Dongxu was naturally unaware that Cheng Le Hao had crashed his bicycle into the roadside cliff because of him. At the moment, he was riding his bicycle towards the school at an unhurried pace, facing the morning sun and enjoying the cool breeze, with Changxi's top school beauty sitting behind him.
Years of hard cultivation had kept his mind as calm as still water, but now, it felt as if a stone had been thrown into it, rippling through his calmness. His heartbeat unconsciously quickened. He wanted to say something to ease the barely-there awkwardness, but he didn't know what to say, which made him even more nervous and uneasy.
Dong Yuxin's mindset wasn't much better than Ge Dongxu's at this point. Initially, she thought Ge Dongxu, wearing plain clothes and apparently from the countryside and younger than her, posed no threat since he was also a freshman. She felt a condescending sense of superiority, thinking it would be no big deal to sit behind him as she believed it impossible to feel anything for him.
However, once she actually sat behind Ge Dongxu, her jade-like hands holding the bicycle's rear seat cushion, Dong Yuxin's cheeks unknowingly started to feel warm, and her heart began to beat faster.
But after all, Dong Yuxin was a senior two grades ahead of Ge Dongxu and a city dweller. Realizing something was amiss, she took the initiative to distract herself, "By the way, you're called Ge Dongxu, if I'm not mistaken?"
"You're not mistaken." Ge Dongxu replied, feeling his nervousness ease slightly.
Just as Ge Dongxu had relaxed a little, the bicycle started bumping along the road: the path to the school was in poor condition, full of pits and bumps.
"This part of the road is tough to ride, be careful." Holding on to the rear seat cushion wasn't very stabilizing, and as the bicycle jolted, Dong Yuxin felt unstable and instinctively let go of the cushion to grab Ge Dongxu's shirt at his waist to better steady herself.
Yet doing so meant that with every bounce of the bicycle, Dong Yuxin's jade-like hands inevitably touched Ge Dongxu through his clothes.
For sixteen-year-old Ge Dongxu, in the tender phase of youth and particularly sensitive to contact with the opposite sex, and with his sharpened senses from years of cultivation, the light touch of Dong Yuxin's hands through his clothes due to the jolting bicycle made him tense up. His mind wandered and he nearly missed seeing a large pothole ahead. He quickly braked and swerved, narrowly avoiding it.
But although he avoided the pothole, Ge Dongxu forgot that he was not alone. With his sudden braking and swerving, an unprepared Dong Yuxin reflexively tightened her grip around Ge Dongxu.
Dong Yuxin certainly hadn't expected that one day she would have such a close encounter with a boy. She was momentarily dumbfounded and forgot to let go of Ge Dongxu's waist.
"My goddess! What a beast!" Who'd raced up from tens of meters away, saw Dong Yuxin's jade-arm wrapped around Ge Dongxu's waist, and his eyes widened again as his heart wailed!
"Bang!" Once again, the bicycle crashed into the roadside cliff.
ps: Third update, another chapter at eight tonight, please help by favoriting and voting. I've also started a WeChat public account, do follow for occasional updates on novel progress and personal life snippets.