The Moon is Coming to Me

“Tao Xi! Your painting has been selected for the CAC preliminary round!”

When Tao Xi received Qiao Yitang’s call, he was packing Lin Qinhe’s luggage for the next day’s competition in Beijing. He squatted down on the floor holding his phone, and before he could open his mouth to say anything, his ears were filled with Qiao Yitang’s excited voice.

“Let me tell you, you are the only one shortlisted in our school this year. I guess you will become the number one public enemy of the art class haha!”

“But the most angry must be the female devil, Jiang Lei, none of her students were shortlisted.”

“If you win the award, you have to treat me to a meal. After all, I’m also half your valued friend, right?”

…

Tao Xi stood up from the ground and thanked her seriously after Qiao Yitang’s excitement was over. Qiao Yitang listened to his calm tone and sighed: “How do you become more and more like Lin Qinhe? It’s good news and you’re still calm. it’s not a pretense, ba.”

Tao Xi thought that Lin Qinhe was always calm, and couldn’t hold back his joy. After talking to Qiao Yitang, he hung up the phone.

Lin Qinhe put down the luggage he was packing and came over, asking: “You’re a finalist in the preliminary round?”

Tao Xi nodded, but there was no joy on his face. He said: “It’s still far from winning the prize. After all, there are many finalists in the preliminary round.”

The CAC competition was divided into two rounds. Due to the large number of participants, in the first round, 100 paintings would be selected to be publicly displayed on the competition’s official website for the public to vote, but in fact the voting was only to increase the interactivity of the competition. The impact of the voting results was minimal, the final award was still judged by the most professional judges, and most of these judges were long-established and prestigious artists.

Tao Xi went to the CAC website on his computer and saw that his work was No. 82 in the exhibition area. After midnight, the voting channel would be officially opened.

He turned off the computer, walked to the black luggage that had just been put away by Lin Qinhe, sitting on it holding the trolley bar and sliding his legs in front of Lin Qinhe. He raised his head to look at Lin Qinhe eagerly and said, “I don’t want to go to school anymore, you can pack me up tomorrow and take me away.”

Lin Qinhe thought about it and said seriously: “I’ll ask for a leave for you. It’s still not too late to buy a ticket.” After finishing speaking, he really took out his mobile phone, wanting to buy a ticket.

Tao Xi was shocked and hurriedly pulled Lin Qinhe’s hand and said with wide eyes, “I’m just kidding, I don’t want to miss class.”

But Lin Qinhe took it seriously. He raised his eyebrows and looked at Tao Xi, and suddenly pushed the luggage. Tao Xi was so scared that he hugged the lever, but Lin Qinhe just pushed him around the living room, like pushing a child’s car.

Tao Xi suddenly found it very interesting and pestered Lin Qinhe to push himself a few more turns.

The next day Tao Xi took a taxi to school alone, because Lin Qinhe had to catch a morning flight, the two only had time to eat breakfast together.

Towards the end of the term, the atmosphere in the entire school became tense. The large and small exams smashed the students into confusion. Except for the students in the art class who were suffering from failing to enter the CAC, the non-art classes like Class 1 had almost never heard of CAC, but the head teacher Zhou Qiang found out about it from the art class teacher and went to Tao Xi at noon to congratulate him and encourage him.

Tao Xi was hungry but was dragged by Zhou Qiang to speak for 20 minutes, and his ears were full of “you are great”, “good boy”, and “promising” until his stomach was so hungry that he cried out. Zhou Qiang suddenly realized that Tao Xi hadn’t eaten yet, so he quickly let go.

Tao Xi rushed to the cafeteria, and when he entered the cafeteria, he ran into Yang Duole and Xu Ziqi who were coming out. Yang Duole glanced at him, but there was no expression. Xu Ziqi’s eyes were a little evasive, and the two quickly missed each other and walked away.

Tao Xi looked back at the back of the two people and took his meal card to go for dinner. After a quick meal, he returned to the classroom and walked towards the last row of seats as usual, but keenly sensed that there was something wrong with the atmosphere in the class——

Several classmates were looking at him quietly, and quickly lowered their heads after meeting his gaze. A few familiar students like Li Xiaoyuan and Bi Chengfei saw him and gathered around with anxious faces.

“Xi ge, what’s the matter with that CAC competition of yours?” As soon as Bi Chengfei came over, he grabbed Tao Xi and walked to the corridor outside the classroom, without his usual playful smile, both eyebrows were almost knotted together.

“What’s the matter?” Tao Xi was staggered by Bi Chengfei and frowned.

After Li Xiaoyuan looked around for a few times to confirm that there was no one, he handed his mobile phone to Tao Xi and whispered: “Look at this Weibo. Now it has been forwarded a lot.”

Tao Xi took the phone and looked at it.

This was a long Weibo. It was published dozens of minutes ago. The publisher was a yellow V. The ID was “Things about Wenhua Academy of Fine Arts”. It was obviously a Weibo submission platform.

The Weibo title was very eye-catching: “CAC Preliminary No. 82 works plagiarize the first prize of the Golden Cup competition’s work”.

Tao Xi squinted his eyes and continued to look down. The text first released the comparison between his work and the first prize of the Golden Cup that he had never heard of. The two paintings were almost the same; except for the slight difference in color, the line composition and creativity were almost the same. If it weren’t for the two paintings to have different sources of competition, it was guessed that many people who didn’t know how to paint would think that the two paintings were just adjusted by software.

The anonymous poster did not directly name the authors of the two paintings, but only used the acronyms TX and FYD, and compared the publication time of the two paintings with the platform. Obviously, the Golden Cup announced the winning results last week, while CAC only announced the preliminary results yesterday. From the time of publication of the works, there was a significant time difference between the two paintings.

Then the contributor, as an alumnus from the same university as FYD, described in a provocative manner how FYD came from a poor background, and how he was excellent in character and academics, and how difficult it was for him to win the first prize of the Golden Cup this time.

Tao Xi didn’t read the whole nonsense that followed, and turned directly to the Weibo comment sections. There were thousands of comments. Those who had good things had already picked up the information and wrote the names of the two authors directly, FYD was Feng Yadong.

“Are my eyes wrong? This is not plagiarism, this is simply copy and paste, right?”

“How can a competition as big as CAC pass this kind of work and still let it be shortlisted for the preliminary round? Are the judges’ brains eaten by dogs? I’m going to send an email to complain and report.”

“This painting is really good, although I can’t understand it. But why did the author enter the Golden Cup, such a dirty little competition? He should have registered for CAC. “

“I checked, the person who plagiarized is a high school student, from Wenhua No. 1 High School. Why did such a powerful high school produce such a person?”

“It’s not easy to study in Wenhua No. 1 High School. Who knows whether the parents asked for the gunman, but the gunman irresponsibly copied other people’s paintings directly.”

…

These comments were still calm, there were more unpleasant insults. All the sharp accusations and attacks pointed to Tao Xi alone. There had even been rumors that Tao Xi had a profound background with every detail vividly described. 1

A poor college student was plagiarized by a famous high school student from a powerful family, and was also shortlisted for a competition with better influence. It could easily ignite the public’s sensitivity in connection with the news that high-school parents helped their children fake research papers not long ago.

Even if everything was just speculation, no one cared about the true or false. The maliciousness on the Internet was crazy and cheap. They only needed a target and enjoyed the pleasure of knocking down the target. The truth was not important.

Tao Xi looked at the Weibo post with a straight face, and saw that there had been three or four big Vs forwarding it. The words were intense and full of gunpowder, and things that had not been finalized were anxious to rise to various levels, for fear that they would not disturb the public opinion.

“Xi ge, we definitely believe in you, it’s definitely someone who is messing with you!” Bi Chengfei said with an indignant expression. In his mind, Tao Xi would never do such a thing.

Li Xiaoyuan was afraid that Tao Xi saw too many bad remarks and hurriedly took the phone back from Tao Xi’s hand, he actually didn’t quite understand what was going on and could only comfort him meaninglessly: “Yes, all of us in the first class will be on your side.”

Two people gathered around Tao Xi, comforting and reassuring Tao Xi back and forth, for fear that Taoxi couldn’t stand the stimulation, only to find that the person concerned was calm from beginning to end, only frowning when reading the weibo post.

Tao Xi’s cell phone vibrated. He took it out and saw that it was Lin Qinhe’s call. After thanking the two of them, he walked away to get the call.

“Tao Xi, I have already asked for leave for you. You should take a taxi and go home directly. Don’t look at the phone when you go back. Wait for me at home. I’ll be there soon in the afternoon. I probably know what happened. Don’t be afraid, it will be resolved soon.”

Lin Qinhe spoke a little fast, but his voice was still as calm as usual.

Tao Xi walked to the corner of the corridor, looking at the dead branches outside the balcony, and said to Lin Qinhe.

“Don’t come back, take the exam with peace of mind tomorrow. I can handle this matter myself.”

Lin Qinhe paused, and said without a doubt: “I have already bought a plane ticket.”

Tao Xi took a deep breath and after a moment of silence, he still said stubbornly, “I wanted to tell you after the competition because I didn’t want to affect your competition. If you come back, all my previous plans will be in vain.”

After he finished speaking, he was suddenly patted on his shoulder with a hand. He turned his head to see it was Qiao Yitang with a solemn expression, she whispered to him, “Grandpa asked me to take you back.”

Tao Xi nodded his head and continued to say to the silent Lin Qinhe over there, “Really, you believe me, I will take care of it. You can take the exam in peace, I still want to see you get the national first prize.”

He told Lin Qinhe several times. After a few minutes, Lin Qinhe still did not explicitly agree, but only gave him a person’s business card on WeChat, the name was Su Yun.

Tao Xi opened WeChat and found that there were many new messages sent to him by classmates. Some said they believed him, some comforted him, and some were aggrieved.

He was a little surprised because he had been in this class for only less than six months,he hadn’t expected to gain the trust of his classmates in this matter.

After getting in the taxi, Tao Xi added Su Yun’s WeChat account. Su Yun first sent him a bunch of information, including Feng Yadong’s personal information and past paintings. He carefully looked at it from beginning to end. This person was really a poor student, a sophomore at Wenhua Academy of Fine Arts, and had participated in many art competitions. At first glance, his resume was not bad.

Qiao Yitang sat aside to look at the comments of that weibo post, and at this time, the number of comments doubled again. The latest comments cursed him extremely hard. Her eyes were red with anger, and she couldn’t wait to tear a big tear in the comments. After thinking about it, she resisted, and cursed a few swear words in a low voice.

Tao Xi looked at Qiao Yitang with his head tilted and said reassuringly: “Don’t look at it, just let them swear.”

Qiao Yitang froze. Seeing that the person who should be most angry had a calm face and  not a bit of panic, she asked angrily: “Why are you not anxious? I just saw you calling Lin Qinhe so calmly, thinking that you were pretending to be calm so as not to worry him. As a result, you’re really fine?”

She was almost dying of anxiety. Plagiarism in artistic creation was the easiest to be unclear. Once you got this hat, it would affect the reputation of the creator all his life. Tao Xi was going to apply for a foreign school soon. If he left a disgraceful mark in the CAC contest, absolutely no school will accept him.

“After all, it’s not like I did this.”

Tao Xi smiled at Qiao Yitang. Leaning back on the back of the seat and raising his eyelids, he zoomed in on the first prize painting of the Golden Cup on the phone. After looking at it carefully for a while, he found a person’s WeChat ID in the WeChat address book, clicked into the circle of friends, and found a few pictures among a bunch of selfies to open them.

有鼻子有眼 – has nose and eyes ;  a metaphors which means to speak fictional things as if they are real