To Burn On Touch - CH 33

Translation checker: Rin

Editor: Junyans

“Miēmiē, the birthday gift from your parents has already been delivered this afternoon, I’ve put it in your room.”

Chu Mian responded and went to this bedroom and saw two beautifully wrapped boxes on the table, probably watches or headphones. His parents’ gifts were always expensive but ordinary, so Chu Mian put them aside for the time being and took out the few things given by his friends from his school bag.

He had left Yu Ran’s gift for the last. When he opened the wrapping paper that was neatly folded, he saw a white quill pen lying inside.

It didn’t come as a complete surprise, but it was a bit unexpected.

Probably because he usually called Yu Ran “Muggle” a lot, the other party thought he was a “Harry Potter” fan. Chu Mian took out the pen and dipped it in ink and tested writing with it. It was not smooth enough to be used in daily life, but it was not bad to be used as a decoration.

He put away the pen in his drawer to keep the white feathers from getting dusty.

Chu Mian flipped through the book full of birthday wishes, carefully seeing each page. There were even wishes from the students in the third year of senior high school. The number of participants was far larger than he had imagined. Even if they didn’t know Chu Mian, they didn’t skimp on kindness when they wrote him birthday wishes.

Chu Mian opened the middle page of the notebook and finally found Yu Ran’s handwritten words—

“To Chu Mian: Wait for me, one day, I will let the whole world wish you a happy birthday.”

“By: Anyway you know who I am so I won’t write my name.”

A smile pulled at the corners of his mouth as he read the two rows of crooked handwriting several times.

“Miēmiē, I bought you a cake, will you come out to eat?”

Chu Mian raised his head and shouted, “I ate one at school.”

“Oh, okay.” Now Chu Heng understood that her nephew was celebrating with his classmates, so she was naturally happy for him, and she ate the fresh cake with peace of mind.

As the schoolwork became more and more intense, the days passed by faster and faster. The cold air permeated everywhere in Ronggang, and 2012 was unknowingly coming to an end.

“Is the world really coming to an end? CCTV news reported that around 2 o’clock this afternoon, an asteroid named ‘God of War’ will come around 6.9 million kilometers away from Earth’s atmosphere, and it is flying at a speed of 35,000 kilometers per hour. It will take 197.14 hours to reach Earth, which is 8.214 days… that’s the early morning on December 21!”

On a sunny afternoon, users from all over the country could read this post as soon as they opened their QQ.

The students were the most active in reposting. Some people dismissed this kind of gimmick, saying that “Even if the end of the world is coming, what’s there to be afraid of?” and “If we die, then we die”. However, other people started to panic, and confessed their true feelings one after another to their relatives and friends, revealing their hearts, so that they would have no regrets after death.

Yu Ran was obviously the third type of person. He was afraid of the asteroid hitting the earth in a few days, but he also firmly believed that he could save his life through unremitting efforts, so he actively prepared for refuge before the official arrival of December 21.

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Yu Ran divided them up by days, and labeled them as dry food for his survival after the end of the world.

He didn’t forget to take out two Snickers and stuff them into Chu Mian’s school uniform pocket. Then, he told the other person solemnly, “Take them and use them for the day when there’s flood, and I’ll swim to find you.”

Chu Mian was working on a question. He tore open the chocolate wrapper and took a bite.

“Hey! It’s your lifeline!” Yu Ran shook Chu Mian’s shoulder anxiously. “Why did you eat it now?!”

Chu Mian was stirred up by him to be rebellious. He immediately took another bite and stuffed his cheeks.

Fang Zhao persuaded Yu Ran: “You rude monkey, stop being impolite. Have you finished writing the Physics optimization? There will be a random check in the evening-self-study.”

“It’s almost the end of the world, what kind of homework do you still need to do?” Yu Ran stretched out an index finger and swung it left and right. “I want to live freely these few days.”

However, the teachers would not let them live freely so easily. The amount of homework at the end of the year had increased again, making the students miserable. Many students gave up on themselves and hoped that the end of the world would really come, so that they could escape the exam.

Everyone regarded the prophecy of the Mayan civilization as an exotic story. After school on Thursday night, everyone talked about it with relish, teasing each other with “This is the last time we will meet”, “We must come to school alive tomorrow”, then quickly forgot about it.

Only Yu Ran was still very energetic at two o’clock in the middle of the night. If there was any rustle of leaves in the wind outside the window, he would vigilantly get up and lift the curtain to observe for a few minutes. Fortunately, there were no flames or meteors falling on the horizon, and the night was still peaceful.

Yu Jin was already sleeping beside him, grinding his teeth and kicking his legs. Yu Ran covered him with the quilt several times before he lay down and closed his eyes.

After the wind died down in the second half of the night, Yu Ran relaxed his vigilance and fell asleep slowly.

Early the next morning, Yu Ran was awakened by Yu Jin.

“Brother! It snowed last night!” Yu Jin excitedly knelt on Yu Ran’s lap and looked out the window. “The snow is so thick.”

Yu Ran raised his leg and kicked Yu Jin away, before turning over to continue sleeping. He vaguely remembered that today was the end of the world, suddenly opened his sleepy eyes, and bounced off the bed. “I’m still alive now.”

“Brother, look at the snow!”

Yu Ran turned to look, and his eyes were hurt by the white snow that covered his field of vision. He quickly narrowed his eyes and looked for clothes beside the bed.

He was glad that the world was temporarily safe. However, he was disappointed that he had to go to school today, and he was worried that the weather would change drastically at any time. His emotions were fluctuating and only became better when he reached school.

The classroom was as noisy as ever, and everyone was doing homework while chatting. “The end of the world” was a hot topic today. Recently, many people had changed their QQ avatar into the “tilted neck” cartoon. It was said that when everyone tilted their necks together, the earth would tilt, thereby avoiding the impact of asteroids.

“Make the earth tilt?” Yu Ran, who survived successfully until noon, was inspired by this idea. “Then if we all jumped up together, wouldn’t we be able to make the earth move farther away from the asteroid?”

Fang Zhao squatted on the ground and threw a small snowball at him. “What do you want to do now?”

“Come, let’s save the world.” Yu Ran exerted strength on his legs and jumped up. “Jump ah! Quickly jump! Jump—”

Chu Mian was squatted beside Fang Zhao. He built a palm-sized snowman, gently placed it on the ground, and made a wall to protect it.

Just as he was secretly very satisfied with this work, Yu Ran, who was jumping high behind him, suddenly let out an “ouch”.

Chu Mian followed the sound and saw Yu Ran fall to the ground due to an unstable center of gravity. He slid forward a short distance and kicked his legs straight towards the little snowman’s wall. In an instant, the snowman’s head broke and the snowman turned into two dumplings.

Chu Mian was more concerned about Yu Ran’s safety than the destruction of his improvised creation, and hurriedly stepped forward to help him.

After struggling to stand up, Yu Ran patted the snow off his clothes. He soon found that his hand was a little sore. He turned it over and saw that his palm was bruised and bleeding.

“I’ll take you to the infirmary.”

“It’s okay, I’ll just wash it.”

“Apply some medicine, so that it doesn’t get infected.” Chu Mian pushed Yu Ran’s shoulder and took him upstairs.

Yu Ran hadn’t cared about this small wound at first, but after the school doctor sprayed him with something, his palms became extremely sore and painful in an instant. The doctor said that it would get better quickly, but Yu Ran felt that his flesh and blood seemed to be dissolving little by little.

After the school doctor put a band-aid on him, Yu Ran made a request: “Please put another bandage on me.”

“No need, it’s not that serious.”

“Please.” Yu Ran stretched out his hand. “I want it to look serious.”

Chu Mian glanced at him from the side.

After Yu Ran’s hand was wrapped with the bandages, he returned to the classroom. He became active again, and showed his injured hand to the students around him: “This way, I don’t have to participate in the Dictation, I’m really witty! Oh, by the way, Great God—”

He called out to Xue Zifan, stepped forward and said with admiration, “Your last prediction was accurate. You had said that I’d have a bloody disaster today, and it really happened!”

“Oh please, Yu Ran. It was not a bloody disaster, you were asking for it by bouncing around in the snow,” Fang Zhao retorted. When he looked down, he was surprised to seeYu Ran’s hands wrapped tightly. “Didn’t you just fall? Why are you wrapped in so many layers?”

“Oh, this…” Yu Ran’s face became serious, and he looked at the palm of his hand melancholily. “I was worried that the magic power would be lost along with the blood, so I hastily suppressed it first.”

Then he frowned and said “ah” again, clenched his right wrist with his left hand and shook, smacked his tongue, and said, “Tsk, has that devil come to summon me again?”

As soon as the voice fell, the Language teacher’s stentorian voice came from the classroom door: “Yu Ran! Did you come to me to redo Dictation today? Huh? Hurry over!”

Yu Ran was caught off guard and his heart trembled, and the confidence he had just built dissipated without a trace.

He raised his hand bitterly: “Teacher Wang, my hand is injured and I can’t write…”

“Then come over and recite it for me!”

“Oh…”

No matter how divine the so-called end of the world prophecy was made into by the Internet, when the day really came, people would find that it was no different from the ordinary days of the past, as they still had to work laboriously from dawn to dusk, either at work or school. Their worries and busyness were not reduced by half, but the atmosphere today was obviously more lively.

In the afternoon, someone loudly announced in the class: “Good news! Since it’s snowing too much today, there will be no classes in the afternoon!”

The class exploded in an instant, but because of the fear of being happy for nothing, everyone questioned the authenticity of this matter one after another.

“Really, I had filled in my parent’s phone number with my own number. The homeroom teacher sent a text message to notify our parents just now. She will definitely come to the class to talk about it later.”

The whole class was overjoyed and cheered as they packed their bags.

Amid the noise in the classroom, Chu Mian asked Yu Ran, “Does your hand still hurt?”, but the other party didn’t hear it at all. He just stuffed the post-apocalyptic reserves into his school bag.

Chu Mian couldn’t help raising his voice. Even after asking twice, the other party still didn’t respond. He simply leaned over and called out Yu Ran’s name.

“Ah?” Yu Ran was startled by him.

“I’m asking you something.” Yu Ran was finally listening to him this time, but Chu Mian was inexplicably impatient. “Does your hand still hurt?”

“It hurts, but I’ve been enduring it,” Yu Ran answered honestly, and stretched out his hand in front of Chu Mian. “Why don’t you blow it for me?”

Chu Mian subconsciously avoided his gaze, lowered his head and absent-mindedly rummaged through his neatly arranged books.

Whether it was from a friend’s point of view or from a boy’s point of view, Chu Mian felt that Yu Ran’s casual request just now was… unusual. He could often feel the subtle differences between the way Yu Ran treated him and the way he treated the other boys. For example, Yu Ran would never say something like “Carry me”, “Listen to me”, etc. to Fang Zhao. However, in front of him, Yu Ran blurred the “boundaries” between boys from time to time.

This difference in treatment was strange, but Chu Mian was not disgusted by it, and often felt troubled about how to respond naturally.

“It really hurts.” Yu Ran got closer, and his voice gradually softened. “Just blow it, and I’ll get better soon.”

Chu Mian’s thoughts were completely in disarray. He had been in a state of hesitation a few moments ago but now he turned calm. However, the temperature of his profile was rising. He didn’t raise his head to look directly into Yu Ran’s eyes. His mouth slowly moved closer to the other party’s palm and he took a deep breath.

When he was about to exhale, he suddenly found two words written on the bandage on Yu Ran’s palm—

Chu Mian’s trumpet.

Chu Mian’s breath got stuck in his throat for a moment, and he coughed violently.

“Hahahahahahaha!” Yu Ran instantly broke down and burst out laughing, sat down, and slapped the table. “Chu Mian blew his own trumpet! Chu Mian blew his own trumpet!”

Chu Mian’s face turned scarlet from the bout of coughing. Out of anger, he grabbed the books on his desk and threw all of them at Yu Ran.