GBT Chapter 28
by VolareJiao Bai, with his hands in his pockets, lowered his head slightly to meet his gaze. “Don’t want to get up?”
Li Jue’s eyes grew redder, brimming with tears.
Jiao Bai subtly twitched the corner of his mouth. This child’s heart was probably collapsing.
Although Jiao Bai didn’t put on a stern face, and didn’t say anything particularly harsh, the effect was still “fierce” compared to the original Wang Chuqiu, who seemed afraid Li Jue would melt in his mouth.
Li Jue lowered his head and gently wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, several times.
He was crying.
He was still sitting on the ground, his legs bent, hiding his tear-streaked face. His shoulders trembled slightly, and even his little cowlick seemed to droop in a heartbroken and helpless arc.
More and more gazes surrounded them. Several young women and older ladies were overflowing with maternal love, wanting to help Li Jue up.
This was the treatment of a protagonist.
Jiao Bai’s head ached. Groups of protagonist lovers always referred to “mydarling” and “mybaby,” and he was the same. When following the comic, Jiao Bai stood on Li Jue’s side, completely identifying as his family, hating Shen Er An with clenched teeth. At the same time, he was excitedly gnawing on his blanket, thrilled by the buckets of melodramatic blood.
Now inside the comic, Jiao Bai had gone from being a papa fan to a tool character who was supposed to die. His mindset was completely different. His fatherly love for Li Jue was a thing of the past. Now he only had missions, studying, becoming a doctor, and living well.
“That person wearing the hat pushed him. He pushed the little brother down.”
“The one on the ground was trying to throw himself into the arms of the person next to the hat, so he pushed him.”
“That doesn’t mean he can hit him!”
“Exactly!”
“So speechless. Why is that person with the hat just standing there watching someone cry? What kind of person is that? Bullying the small with the big…”
“Two adults bullying a child.”
“…”
Several onlookers who had witnessed the process were whispering and pointing.
Jiao Bai’s teeth ached. When Li Jue wasn’t in school, he had to work on the farm, but he never tanned or got rough. His skin was snow-white and delicate, his face was palm-sized, his hair was black, his lips were red, and when he smiled, he had a row of pearly teeth and two small dimples. His features were very refined. He was thin and small, looking like a minor.
In reality, he was an adult. He had just turned eighteen the year he met Shen Er An.
The large and sturdy Shen Er An was the one who was a minor.
And Jiao Bai, not to mention that he wasn’t even eighteen when he died, and his soul was a teenager, this body was only nineteen years old. So young, and totally full of youthful spirit. But when he was framed together with Li Jue, he inexplicably turned into a weathered and mature big brother. Even though he had a pair of harmless, innocent, and extremely naive puppy eyes.
Li Jue’s protagonist halo was strong.
Throughout the comic, words like “small,” “little rabbit,” “well-behaved,” and “little one” were his exclusive terms. No other shou could use them.
More and more people gathered, affecting those who were in a hurry to see a doctor. Jiao Bai looked at Li Jue. “Let’s talk outside.”
He walked outside on his own, taking slow steps. Shen Er An supported him very carefully.
“Relax a little. Your hand is as stiff as pliers. You’re pinching me,” Jiao Bai said, wiggling his arm, which was being held by Shen Er An.
Shen Er An lessened his grip.
Jiao Bai gave a timely evaluation. “That’s much better.”
The muscles tensed in Shen Er An’s arm relaxed slightly.
Jiao Bai took small steps out of the hall, thinking that Li Jue’s persona was a pure, beautiful, kind, soft, housewife-like bottom. He wasn’t a b*tch, a green tea, a lotus, or scheming.
Suddenly, his jacket was grabbed by a force, accompanied by Li Jue’s timid voice. “Xiao Qiu gege, why are you ignoring me? Did I do something wrong?”
Jiao Bai: “…”
That flavor came on very suddenly.
There weren’t many people on the tree-lined path in front of the hospital, so Jiao Bai went there.
Li Jue looked around. He ran to a dense, shady spot under the trees, waving and beckoning. “Xiao Qiu gege, come here. The sun doesn’t shine here.”
Jiao Bai, who was looking up at the shade of the trees, paused. Li Jue remembered that his Xiao Qiu gege had dermatitis. He was really happy for the original owner.
Jiao Bai walked over.
You can’t work against yourself. That place was indeed the most comfortable spot for him on this road.
Shen Er An frowned slightly behind him and followed Jiao Bai.
Li Jue hugged the thermos in his arms, his hands clasped over it, his fingers interlaced and rubbing against each other. After a long time, he finally spoke, his voice as soft as a mosquito’s hum. “Xiao Qiu gege, I can’t get through to your cell phone.”
“I changed my number and my name because of some things. My name is Jiao Bai now, like the vegetable. Also called Gao Gua,” Jiao Bai said. His chin was hidden behind a mask, and his complexion was pale and sickly. “I forgot to tell you.” The truth was that he had been too carefree after leaving Qin Lin Garden. As soon as he got Zhang Zhen’s contact information, he wrote it down, snapped the card, and threw it in the trash. Then, he got a new card, bought a new phone, and put on an act. Afterwards, he couldn’t remember the number Li Jue had called him on, so he simply didn’t bother with it.
“It’s, it’s okay.” Li Jue shook his head hastily. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I was just worried about you. Nan City is too far from our hometown. You’re working here, and I don’t know your situation,” he said, his amber eyes reflecting a large patch of shadow, his voice soft. “It’s really too far.”
That was the unease and bewilderment that only people who left their hometown and went to other places had.
Jiao Bai looked at Li Jue, who was half a head shorter than him, and asked him the question he was concerned about: “Why are you here?”
Li Jue’s words were astonishing. “A philanthropist in Nan City has been sponsoring poor students. This year, the sponsorship program came to our place. I applied for a spot and moved here.”
Jiao Bai’s shoe stopped grinding the dead leaves on the ground. What was that? There was no such setting in the original story. He smelled the familiar scent of melodramatic blood.
Where the protagonist bottom was, there was melodrama.
That was an iron rule.
Jiao Bai steadied his breathing. “Which family?”
“Qi,” Li Jue said. “The Qi family.”
Jiao Bai could only say “F*ck” to express his feelings. The Qi family was headed by Qi Zi Zhi. Could it be that he was the one who sponsored Li Jue?
“What’s his name?” Jiao Bai took a step toward Li Jue. Shen Er An followed closely behind.
Li Jue’s eyelashes fluttered like butterfly wings in a field of spring flowers. “Mr. Qi Zi Zhi.”
Jiao Bai: “…” Okay, amazing.
Jiao Bai had guessed that the original owner hadn’t died, and that the protagonist shou would find a way to Nan City to meet his real gong, but he hadn’t expected that the location of their first meeting wouldn’t change, and that Qi Zi Zhi would be dragged in as well.
This branch of the plot was very subtle. After all, in “Broken Wings,” Qi Zi Zhi’s scenes were mainly focused on the line between Qi Shuang and Shen Ji, and he didn’t squeeze in between the protagonist gong and shou.
Jiao Bai glanced at Shen Er An beside him and found that he wasn’t interested in the content of this conversation. He had already made a model of an airplane with the colored paper in his hands.
It was a fighter jet.
Jiao Bai refocused his attention on Li Jue. “Then are you here in Nan City to go to school?”
Li Jue nodded gently. “Yes, everything’s settled.”
A guess formed in Jiao Bai’s mind. “Three Middle School?”
Although Li Jue didn’t answer, his face already had the words “How did you know?” written on it.
Jiao Bai was speechless, truly speechless. In the comic, after Li Jue fell in love with Shen Er An at first sight, he transferred to Nan City Three Middle School with sheer determination. The process had changed, but the result hadn’t. Li Jue still came to Three Middle School.
The new classmate still didn’t arouse Shen Er An’s curiosity. He was intently folding his paper airplane, only reaching out to steady Jiao Bai when he stumbled.
The east wind under the trees cooled Jiao Bai’s feverish forehead. He answered Li Jue, who was still waiting for an answer. “A guess, because I’m also at Three Middle School.”
Li Jue said blankly, “You’re still in school? That’s great.” He murmured, repeating, “That’s great…”
Studying wasn’t the only way out, but it was the safest and most reliable path for people from the mountains like them. It could also allow them to have more and wider paths to take in the future.
That’s why Li Jue didn’t understand why his brother had dropped out of high school and gone out to work when he was only in his first year.
Now that he knew that his brother was continuing to study, Li Jue was sincerely glad that he hadn’t given up on school.
Li Jue was both smiling and crying, and even jumped in place, even happier than when he had been admitted to college.
Jiao Bai thought that the original owner’s soul could rest in peace. It wasn’t for nothing that he had loved this white moonlight little brother so much when he was alive.
“Then we’re schoolmates?!” Li Jue’s little face was flushed with excitement. “I’m in class 8, what about you?”
Jiao Bai gave a short laugh. “Class 7.”
Class 8 was next door. Shen Er An’s crush was in that class. It was the same in the original story. His crush even became good friends with Li Jue.
Jiao Bai seemed to hear the sound of the gears of a melodramatic drama turning.
Click-clack—click-clack—melodrama is coming! It’s free, eat as much as you want, come, come, bottoms up!
Jiao Bai looked at Li Jue, who was already muttering about going to college together, his eyes full of longing. “Why were you at the hospital?”
The smile disappeared from Li Jue’s face, and he hugged the thermos in his arms, shrinking back. “My grandmother is seriously ill. They can’t treat her back home, so I brought her here…”
Jiao Bai’s scalp suddenly went numb.
That’s right! Li Jue had a grandmother! How could he have forgotten this character?
As a lover of melodramatic comics, Jiao Bai had some experience. It seemed that every shou in a scum-abuse story had a grandfather or grandmother, or parents, siblings, or sisters. Anyway, they had to have a relative who was very important to them, who got sick and needed money, a lot of money.
The relative would die, and the timing of their death would be very subtle, a major turning point in the plot.
Li Jue’s grandmother died…a year after he moved in with Shen Er An.
At that time, Shen Er An was already scummy.
When the old woman passed away, Li Jue was miserable. He was abused physically and mentally. Those few chapters made Jiao Bai cry a little hard, but he repeatedly read them over and over, and then revisited them from time to time, masochistically.
That’s what it was like to follow a melodramatic comic. You would cry with the plot, feeling hurt and great at the same time.
Jiao Bai was initially abused by his aunt, and he was so misanthropic that he didn’t want to live. It was only after being introduced to this type of comic by his friend that he changed his current situation. Tears could let him vent, giving him the strength to clear away the trash that fate and life were dumping on him.
He was a protagonist lover who could watch the protagonist get abused to death, and feel like he had died once himself.
I’m not very normal, I know, Jiao Bai said in his heart.
Watching your parents die in front of you when you were a child, you can be a little abnormal, right? Anyway, no one says anything to me, no one cares about me.
As long as I have BE melodramatic comics to read. I’ll have Shen Er An buy me some physical books online later.
Jiao Bai was spacing out, and the part of Li Jue revealing his grandmother’s condition brushed past his ears, becoming more and more vague, more and more distant.
It wasn’t until Li Jue finished talking about his grandmother and mentioned something else that Jiao Bai’s scattered thoughts came together. “Wait, what did you just say? Car accident?”
“A few days before I came to Nan City, I lost this on the way back from selling herbs,” Li Jue pointed to the old wool cover on the thermos, his lips turning pale. “I had it in my bag at the time. I realized it was missing when I got to the intersection. It was on the road. When I turned back to look for it, I ran into a truck. A brother saved me and lost a lot of blood…”
Jiao Bai frowned as he listened. “A wool cover is only worth a few dollars. If it’s lost, it’s lost. You dared to go on the road to look for it? What were you thinking?”
Li Jue stammered, “My grandmother knitted this for me.”
Jiao Bai: “…”
Li Jue whimpered, “My grandmother’s eyes don’t work well anymore, and she can’t hold a needle. This is the last thing she knitted for me.”
Jiao Bai: “…”
That’s why it’s called melodrama.
Jiao Bai sighed in his heart. He didn’t know how many changes there were in the original plot of this comic, but the essence of melodrama hadn’t changed.
It was a pity that he wasn’t a person reading a comic. He was also in the comic, and he couldn’t be so carefree and just enjoy it.
Li Jue’s fingertips were digging into the wool cover. “That brother’s family took him away, and I don’t know who he is. I can’t even find a way to repay his kindness.”
“My grandmother said that my grandfather is blessing me,” he sniffled, his eyes full of innocence. “I plan to go back to his grave and ask my grandfather to bless my savior too.”
Jiao Bai twitched the corners of his mouth. It’s not your grandfather who’s blessing you, it’s your protagonist halo.
At this moment, the image of several devoted male supporting characters appeared in Jiao Bai’s mind. He didn’t know which unlucky person had been targeted.