Redemption from the Abyss: The School Beauty Insists on Pulling Me Out of the Mire

Early in the morning, the sound of students reading aloud in Class 1 of Senior Three (1) was deafening.

Xie Wang flipped through the Chinese textbook with one hand, while the other hand was under the desk, pinching Su Qinghe's fingers.

Su Qinghe was reciting "The Rhapsody on the Epang Palace," but Xie Wang wasn't looking at the book at all; his gaze was entirely fixed on her parting lips.

She wore a white turtleneck sweater with a loose-fitting school uniform jacket over it, giving her a clean and scholarly air.

"Read your book." Su Qinghe stopped reciting, turned his head and lowered his voice.

Xie Wang pinched her knuckles and shook them twice: "Let's see what you're memorizing, I'll copy you."

During the break between classes, Xie Wang's phone vibrated twice in his pocket.

When I took it out, I saw that it was a message sent by Lu Wen at 3:30 a.m.

Location: A flower shop in the old town of Jiangcheng that operates on a "slow pace".

Postscript: "This place is called 'Slow Half Beat,' located deep in an alley in the old town. The owner is a retired botany professor with impeccable taste. I ordered preserved flowers from them for Lin Lu's birthday last time; it cost 480 yuan without haggling, and it was worth it."

This was followed by twenty question marks and a line of text: "Have you finally figured it out, Xie Wang?"

Xie Wang ignored Lu Wen's teasing and saved the flower shop's address into the navigation.

School ends at noon.

"Lu Wen asked me to do something." Xie Wang greeted Su Qinghe and used Lu Wen as a scapegoat.

Su Qinghe nodded: "Come back early, there's a mock science test this afternoon."

Xie Wang rode a shared bicycle straight into the alley of the old town.

The "Slow Half Beat" flower shop is small and doesn't even have a decent sign.

Inside the glass sliding door, there are rows of dried flower specimens and hand-tied bouquets.

Inside the shop sat an uncle wearing reading glasses, carefully holding a dried blue-purple hydrangea flower in place with tweezers.

Xie Wang pushed open the door and went in; the wind chimes rang once.

The middle-aged man looked up and adjusted his reading glasses.

Xie Wang stood in front of the glass display case, looking at dozens of kinds of flowers with a serious expression.

"Young man, buying flowers as a gift?" The uncle put down the tweezers.

Xie Wang nodded.

"Who is it for? Your girlfriend?"

Xie Wang thought for a moment about Su Qinghe's usually picky taste: "Give it to someone with a rather perverse sense of aesthetics."

The middle-aged man chuckled: "Is 'perverted' a compliment or an insult?"

"Yes," Xie Wang replied readily.

The middle-aged man stood up and browsed the flower stand for a while: "Got it. Baby's breath as a base, topped with light pink dried roses, and a few eucalyptus leaves as embellishments. Wrap it in kraft paper, clean and simple."

Xie Wang mentally reviewed the scene in the shop window from yesterday and nodded: "Okay."

I paid 320 yuan by scanning the QR code.

The middle-aged man quickly wrapped the bouquet and handed it over, saying, "Here you go."

Xie Wangcai entered the classroom just before the first class in the afternoon, ten minutes before the start of the next class.

He stuffed the bouquet wrapped in kraft paper into his schoolbag, zipping it up halfway to reveal a few dry branches.

As soon as he sat down, Shen Hao leaned over and stared at the gap in Xie Wang's backpack zipper.

"Brother Wang, what's that? Why is grass growing in your bag?" Shen Hao reached out to pinch it.

Xie Wang didn't even turn his head, but thrust his elbow backward, hitting Shen Hao directly in the stomach.

"Ouch!" Shen Hao clutched his stomach and fell back into his seat.

Xie Wang stuffed his schoolbag deeper into the desk drawer: "You're the one who's overgrown with weeds."

Su Qinghe looked up from her test paper and glanced at his schoolbag: "What's in there?"

"A few technical reports," Xie Wang lied casually, spreading out a mock science test paper. "Do some practice questions, Old Li was glaring at me in the hallway just now."

The bell rang to signal the end of the last class in the afternoon.

The students in the classroom rushed to the cafeteria and were all gone in less than two minutes.

Su Qinghe was looking down as she stuffed several used red pens into her pencil case.

Xie Wang reached into the drawer of the table and pulled out the bouquet of flowers.

The brown paper bag had been in his schoolbag all afternoon, and the corners were slightly wrinkled. Xie Wang smoothed it out a couple of times with his hands and then placed the bouquet directly on Su Qinghe's desk.

Su Qinghe stopped zipping up his zipper.

She stared at the bouquet of baby's breath and light pink dried roses on the table for two seconds, stunned.

Xie Wang had his hands in his pockets, leaned back in his chair, and turned his head to look out the window, not looking at her.

Su Qinghe reached out and touched the edge of the eucalyptus leaf. His fingertips slid over the dried petals and paused when they touched the cotton branch.

She didn't ask why she was sending flowers.

Because she remembered that on her way home last night, she glanced at the same dried roses a few more times in the window of that closed flower shop.

The tips of her ears turned red little by little.

Su Qinghe picked up the flower and lowered his head to smell it.

The dried flowers didn't actually have much of a fragrance, just a faint scent of dried grass and wood, but she smelled them for a long time.

Xie Wang caught a glimpse of her movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to her: "I saw you staring at the flower shop window yesterday; you must have really liked it."

A series of hurried footsteps echoed down the corridor.

Xu You was holding two bottles of yogurt and was about to enter the classroom when she peeked inside through the back door.

The next second, she grabbed Lin Lu, who had just walked up the stairs, and rushed into the classroom.

"My God!" Lin Lu screamed at the top volume of the school radio, "Xie Wang sent flowers?!"

The sound was extremely penetrating.

In less than five minutes, the group chat for Senior Three (1) class had already exploded with excitement.

Shen Hao rushed back from the cafeteria with a steamed bun in his hand and saw the two of them showing off their affection.

Shen Hao took a bite of the steamed bun, then turned around in grief and indignation to seek comfort from Xu You.

Lu Yi slowly came up the stairs, carrying a thermos in his hand.

He passed by the classroom door, paused for three seconds, and glanced at the bunch of dried flowers.

"Baby's breath." Lu Yi took a sip of the goji berry water in his thermos, his tone dripping with smugness.

"The flower's meaning is 'willing to play a supporting role.' Xie Wang, you've finally realized your position in this relationship, which is good. It's valuable for a person to have self-awareness."

Xie Wang pointed at him: "Lu Yi, do you believe I'll post your Baduanjin practice photos in the group chat tonight?"

He turned around and left.

The bell rang for evening self-study.

Su Qinghe found an empty mineral water bottle, washed and dried it, put the bouquet of flowers inside, and placed it in the far left corner of the desk.

Xie Wang is doing a cloze test.

Every time he finished five questions and looked up to stretch his neck, he could catch a glimpse of those few light pink dried roses out of the corner of his eye.

Su Qinghe sat beside him, holding a red pen, and helped him correct the English reading he had just finished.

"You got one wrong on this one." Su Qinghe pushed the test paper over.

Xie Wang looked down and saw that Su Qinghe had drawn a flower.

Su Qinghe nudged him with her elbow: "Look at the question, what are you looking at?"

School ends at 10:30 pm.

There were only the two of them in the apartment building's elevator.

Su Qinghe held the mineral water bottle with dried flowers in one hand, while the other hand hung at his side.

Xie Wang leaned closer, hooked his fingers around hers, and held them in his palm.

"Put the flowers in your room." Xie Wang looked at the red numbers flashing on the elevator wall. "Remember to water them every day."

Su Qinghe turned to look at him, as if he were an idiot: "These are dried flowers; they'll get moldy if you water them."

"Really?" Xie Wang touched his nose and shamelessly replied, "Then don't water it. Just check on it every day and remember who gave it to you."

Su Qinghe didn't say anything, but raised the hand holding the bouquet and poked him in the chest with the hard corner of the brown paper bag.

The pressure was very light, almost like a tickle.

Room 1602.

After finishing the English reading test that Lao Li had given him that day, Xie Wang turned on his computer and logged into the internal server of Xinghuo Network.

Zhou Zixu sent me two technical reports this afternoon, but I haven't looked at them yet.

There was a building materials company in the old city area with an outdated system architecture.

In his report, Zhou Zixu wrote that the other party's database contained a serious injection vulnerability, but because the underlying code was written in a messy way, patching it could easily lead to data collapse, and the technical team was stuck for an entire afternoon.

Xie Wang glanced at the messy string of code.

He typed on the keyboard with one hand, wrote a script to filter special characters, and added a simple pre-compilation processing module.

Ten minutes later, the patch was applied, packaged, and sent back to Zhou Zixu.

An additional comment read: "This code looks like it was chewed by a dog. I'll pay more for this kind of work from now on."

Zhou Zixu didn't reply; he's probably still working overtime or fast asleep.

Everything is proceeding according to plan.

Xie Wang tossed his phone onto the table, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes, listening to the crunching sound of the cat chewing its food.

Tomorrow is the final exam. Once I get through this hurdle, it'll be time to meet Gu Nan.

These two idiots have been searching and searching but haven't found anything. They're probably on the verge of a breakdown.