My One And Only Love/ Exclusive Memory (Somewhere Only We Know) — 独家记忆 Chapter 2 Part 3

 Greetings, hello my dear readers! 

    Hello everyone! Finally back with me with a new MOAOL chapter!!! I am already perfectly healed~

    So, now we will know why Mu Chenghe asked Xue Tong to sing that song at the KTV that night... and look just how dumbfounded Xue Tong is ↓↓↓ *LOL*

Chapter 2 Part 3: Murong Cheng and Son VS Miss Rose 

Translated by Fei斐 & Proofread by Fei斐

    I was a person who liked singing. No matter Chinese, foreign, folk, popular Mandarin, Cantoneseㄧ I just love to hum along. After my careful comparison, the Shandong[1] folk song "Who Don't Say My Hometown Is Good" had several versions beside the original song sung by Ren Guizhen Laoshi[2]. Probably because the music was nice and famous, many people later covered it; and the version of Aunt Peng that Mu Chenghe let me listen to was indeed the most relaxing.

    After this exploration, I found that many folk songs used phonics, such as the "Flower Drums of Feng Yang"[3] that I used to listen to when I was a child. There was a line that went like this: "Left hand gong and right hand drum, with the gongs and drums in hand to sing. I can't sing any other song, I can only sing Fengyang song. Hey, Fengyang song, get the child when the floating one float, get the child when the floating one float..." Later, after a while, this technique was used in Jay Chou’s "Drifting"[4], which made all people at the street sang "so far as you go, so far as you go".

    One early morning in the autumn wind. I squinted my eyes and got up to brush my teeth. When I squeezed my toothpaste, I habitually sang the line: "Who doesn't say that my hometown is good, come on~come onー"

    I didn't realize it at first, until Bai Lin, who was washing her face next to me, looked at me in astonishment, "Xiao Tong, you're singing it again."

    I repeated "de er yo yi er yoー[5]" Although my tongue was not very flexible, the trembling sounds were still particularly noticeable in this cold morning.

    I screamed and hugged Bai Lin, "Xiao Bai, I succeeded, succeeded, I can finally not be looked down upon."

    Ecstatic, I was well aware about the truth of sailing against the current[6]. When I walked on the road, I kept shaking my head, "De er yo yi er yo", and the people who passed by me looked at me with weird expressions. Then, I followed the method Mu Chenghe gave me to remove the "de". After two or three days, I finally made a soothing [р], and even learned how to make a long turn[7] like him. Since then, I had played the song in the dormitory every day.

    As long as I met my classmates in the Russian department or the second foreign language Russian class, I would inevitably catch someone and try to play the "tounge-rolling letter [р]" game. No matter how long the game lasted, or the feeling of cadence, I won.

    In less than three days, I beat all the invincible players in the whole school.

Now, Bai Lin, who could only flick her tongue stiffly two or three times, finally couldn't help it and said bitterly to me, "Look at you, what a baddie!"

    I sat down, propped my chin, and sighed quietly, "Ohー it's so quiet like snow."

    On Monday, Zhao Xiaotang brought back a small glass fish tank and two orange-red goldfish with bulging eyesー probably given to her by her online friend.

    She was more serious than me. Even when she took her clothes to the laundry, she would still want to bring the creature with her.

    I looked at the two weak fishes, shook my head and said, "Can you still keep them alive? I'm sure you will make them dead within a week."

    Bai Lin opened the door and only heard the second half of the sentence. She shouted in surprise, "Who did you guys make dead?"

    Zhao Xiaotang glanced at her and said nothing.

    Song Qiqi said dumbly, "Xiao Tong, don't you use the verb 'make' in everything, OK?"

    In the afternoon, the four of us went to an extensive reading class with books in their arms. Only ten minutes later, the counselor knocked on the door to call out the extensive reading teacher. When he returned, he relayed the exciting news that the counselor wanted to tell us.

    "In the next two days, some leaders will come to our Foreign Languages ​​Department for inspection, and the school has notified classes to finish this afternoon for cleaning."

    As soon as the teacher's voice fell, we all cheered. What a surprise from heaven, I actually skipped two extensive reading classes just like this. In every extensive reading class, we were told to go preview, then everyone in class stood up to translate a paragraph, and the teacher corrected it. It's really boring.

    Bai Lin packed up her books excitedly and said, "Leaders, I love you!"

    The Extensive Reading teacher supported his glasses, "I say—"

    As soon as he spoke, we fell silent.

    "Classmates love labor so much?"

    We all smiled embarrassingly.

    He also smiled, "You don't love to work, but you also don't love to learn." 

    Seeing blood for a while.

    In the evening, the Russian class went on as usual.

    Before Mu Chenghe entered the classroom, the fellow Xiao Bai led a group of girls to flex their hands and move their elbow joints, as if they were competing to answer Mu Chenghe's questions today. As soon as the class started, Mu Chenghe was asking everyone to turn to the vocabulary list of the previous unit, and then said, "Which classmate would like..."

    "I do!" I raised my hand in a flash. His sentence was cut off by me.

    The fellow Xiao Bai next to me, who was determined to answer the question this time, poked at me unwillingly, "Classmate, you are so quick to react, please give others a chance."

    Mu Chenghe squinted his eyes. He motioned for me to stand up, and asked, "The class representative, are you already willing even before I finish talking?"

    "Yes." I nodded sincerely.

    Isn't it just reading a word? I finally learned how to pronounce it, of course I had to show it off in class. Otherwise, it would be a shame.

    "What I want to say is, which classmate is willing to help me clean the office after class as it is said that there will be an inspection tomorrow. This is good, thank you very much." The corner of his mouth bent slightly, smiling at me.

    "...Not reading words, but cleaning?" I asked unbelievably.

    "Every time I come, I always ask you to read words. It's boring. Teaching must be innovative. Innovation can arouse students' interest. Interest is the best motivation for learning, isn't it?" He smiled again.

    "Yes, Teacher Mu is right." The fellow Xiao Bai applauded first.

    Immediately, the whole room applauded after her.

    Mu Chenghe finally noticed fellow Xiao Bai, "The classmate sitting in front of the class representative, you're a student from the Department of Mathematics."

    The fellow Xiao Bai stood up flattered with happy expression on her little cheeks. Although she had said that she came in the class just to muddle along, she did not want to waste time being obsessed with Mu Chenghe and being an idiot at the same time, she had been studying earnestly all this time. But what made me wondering was why Mu Chenghe knew that she was from the Department of Mathematics.

    Mu Chenghe amiably said to her, "Classmate, please read the dialogue on page 55 again."

    After a long time, his so-called innovation in teaching was to change from asking a mathematics transfer student not to read words but to read conversations, and then make me, who finally got the courage to read words, changed to cleaning the office......

    If someone asked me at this moment, what kind of affection in this world was stronger than love and longer than family affection?

    I would answer without hesitation: It must be my hatred for Mu Chenghe.

♡    💜    ♡    💜    ♡    💜    ♡

[1] Shandong is a province in northeast China.

[2] 老师 lǎoshī一 "Teacher" in Chinese. But in this context, it is a honorific to call someone who is considered senior/professional in certain area. E.g. the music industry.

[3] 凤陽花鼓 Fèng yáng huāgǔー Fengyang Flower-drum, is a popular Chinese folk song popularized by Teresa Teng in 1967. Nowadays, this folk song is used as a New Year song during the Lunar New Year in Mainland of China. Here's the lyrics and translation: achinesesong.com (Click here to listen.)

[4] 漂移 Piāoyí, also known as Drifting, is Jay Chou's song published in 2013. Here's the lyrics and translation: achinesesong.com (Click here to listen.)

[5] This is the repeated part of "come on, come on" in the paragraph before☻

[6] 逆水行舟 Nì shuǐ xíng zhōu一 Sailing against the current, is an idiom; Learning is like sailing against the current: either you keep moving ahead or you fall behind.

[7] Turn = like a long tongue turn when you want to produce a 'R' sound into 'RRRR~'.

♡    💜    ♡    💜    ♡    💜    ♡

Bad news... just came into realization that my school schedule after the new year will be even more hectic than last semester because this is my last semester of high school, and I need to prepare for lots of coming exams (School, National, and University Entrance Examination!) (T_T) Therefore, the worst scenario is that: I will not be able to update regularly once a week every Saturday :(. I hope you can understand. But I will try my best to upload at least once a month. (^-^)v 

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