Because of You: Junping and Yuerong

Chapter Twelve: Changes

Things changed between me and Yuerong after that day. Or rather Yuerong changed. It's not something most people noticed, but I did, and his grandfather did as well.

Yuerong had always been the leader between the two of us. Despite the change in my student status, I was still tended to procrastinate, so Yuerong was the one who kept us on task. We still studied together and hung out together. He still took the lead in many of the competitions we did—whether in person or on online—so our teachers and the principal didn't notice any difference.

But the way he talked to me changed. Unlike the other kids, Yuerong had never approached me with any deference and wasn't put off by my sulky moods or cold attitude. Much of that was because he had the ability to erase my sulky mood just by his presence, and I never had a cold attitude with him. However, even when we were first getting to know each other, none of this bothered him.

After the street fight, he seemed to be hesitant around me. Before, I felt that he just said whatever he wanted when he talked me. He would use his middle-aged man tone when I was being lazy or he thought I wasn't working to my potential or I was trying to distract him from work. After that incident, he seemed to think more before he spoke. He almost never used the old tone with me, and he watched for my reactions as if he weren't sure what I was going to say.

Finally, one day, I asked him about it directly. We were supposed to be studying, but I was reading a manga while he was looking up some other practice math questions for an upcoming tournament. Before, he would have only let me take a fifteen-minute break before asking me if I had finished all my homework. I was deliberately dawdling, wanting him to ask me, so I could show him that I had gotten it all done. But he didn't.

I was at his house, and we were once again working at the dining room table. It was almost time for dinner, and he should have been asking me because the agreement we had was that I would try to finish most of my work before dinner. Still he said nothing.

I even started moving our papers, so the servants could begin putting out the dishes, and he still didn't look at me. I remember how crazed it made me feel.

"Yuerong."

"Hmm?" he said, not looking up from his screen.

"Yuerong!"

"What?" he frowned but still didn't look at me.

I stood up and slammed a book on table right as one of the servants started out of the kitchen. She immediately withdrew.

"YUERONG! Can't you even look at me when you're talking? What is happening? Are you mad at me? Did I do something wrong? You have to just tell me, so I know what I did."

I was so frustrated that my throat started to feel like I might cry. I am not a crier, and I wasn't then. I didn't know what was happening to me. I wondered how come I felt like I was starving because he wouldn't look at me anymore?

He finally looked up at me, and I didn't like what I saw. Why did he look at me with such fear and sadness?

"I'm not mad at you, Junping. I don't know why you would think that. I'm just busy right now trying to set this up before dinner."

He stood and started gathering our notes, too. But I felt as though that was just an excuse for him to not look at me anymore.

"But you won't look at me. You used to look at me when you talked to me, but now you hardly do that. In fact, you hardly talk to me at school at all. Today, you saw me in the hallway and then went in the other direction. What's was that about?"

"Nothing," he said, still not looking at me. He put a stack of papers on a side cabinet. "I just remembered that I forgot something in the classroom."