After she came inside, Yu Chen took out her phone. She messaged Xia, 'You there?'
He instantly replied, 'Yup.'
Chen: 'What are you doing?'
Xia: 'Having dinner with the vice principal of our school.'
Chen: 'Holy shit!! You cannot message while you are having dinner. And that too with professor Zhen.'
Xia: 'I can if you are texting me.'
Yu Chen blushed.
Chen: 'No, you can not. Focus on the dinner. It's bad manners.'
Xia: 'Only if you promise to call me tomorrow.'
Yu Chen felt like something warm had just spread through her heart. She replied, 'Okay. Bye.'
Xia: 'Bye.'
The next ten days were pretty uneventful. The four of them went to school the next day and were suddenly being treated like celebraties. Kio was obviously used to this, because it was just a tad more than the usual attention he got. Chen was handling it very well. She smiled and made small talk with everyone who approached her. It seemed like she was older than her years.
(Which she is, but no one knows that except us. *wink* *wink*)
Xi Hua seemed to love it. She loved being the centre of attraction and was like the queen of the computer branch. She was always ready to tell anyone who would listen about what had happened during the competition and how they were offered a training program. Huo Zenghai, on the other hand, seemed to hate the attention. He was unhappy that Hua was getting so much attention and he had less time to hang out with her. He always snapped and scolded anyone who asked him anything about the competition.
On the second day of school, Chen had told the principal all about the scholarship and how she planned to go to London. The principal was really happy and congratulated her. Then she asked for leave to visit her parents and he easily agreed.
Chen spent the next week at her parents. While there, she received a mail telling her that she would need to board the plane to London on 28th November, with an attached copy of her online ticket.
Upon reading the mail, Chen thought, "28th huh. That's around the time I'm going to have to jump back into the future. Well, at least I'll have time to set my affairs in order."
Chen returned back to the city by the morning bus. She went to her apartment and as soon as opened the door, Chen was shocked. Whole of her apartment was covered in do much dust that it looked like she had been gone for a century. Yu Chen sighed and begun cleaning. After she had finished, Chen just plopped down on her bed, too tired to do anything. It was already evening and she was debating about whether to heat up the food her mother had packed, when her phone rang.
She picked it up and Hua's voice rang through her ears, "Hey girl. Gang meet up in half an hour. My house."
Yu Chen: "Can't we just meet up tomorrow at school? I'm dead tired."
Xi Hua: "It's your choice, Si Xia is coming."
Yu Chen was silent. "Damn this girl has also understood how to make me do things!" she thought.