The next day’s return to school went pretty normally—except for one thing: Zhu Niao seemed to keep noticing that Gou Yu was intentionally keeping his distance from her.
“Why are you avoiding me?” she suddenly leaned over to him, her petite frame nudging his shoulder as she grinned, “It’s not like I’m gonna fight you for toilet scraps or anything.”
Zhu Niao started to wonder if it was because she’d stolen his pack of spicy strips yesterday.
“I’ll give you two packs of Little Trickster to make up for it, okay?” she offered, face full of pain—this was clearly her best bargaining chip.
“It’s not about the spicy strips…”
Gou Yu shrank back slightly.
After what happened yesterday, he couldn’t help but start thinking about things he had deliberately buried or ignored.
Now that Zhu Niao had become a girl, what exactly should their relationship become?
He believed Zhu Niao had probably thought the same way at first—neither of them wanted things to change.
They didn’t want to let go of their years-long friendship as bros, so they just kept pretending everything was the same as before.
But after yesterday’s… uncontrollable reaction, that whole question had been shoved into Gou Yu’s face.
If they kept acting like bros, these kinds of awkward situations were only going to happen more often, not less.
“You’re a girl now. You should at least try to pay attention to your behavior and habits a little.”
He mulled it over for a moment, then decided to start persuading her from this angle.
“What did I do wrong?”
Zhu Niao blinked innocently and looked down, following Gou Yu’s line of sight.
She saw herself sitting with her legs wide open under her pale pink dress, forming a perfect V.
They were even bouncing a little out of habit.
“…What does this have to do with you avoiding me?” she mumbled.
Still, she silently closed her legs, pulled her hands back from the bag of chips in Gou Yu’s drawer, and placed them neatly on the desk in front of her.
She did care about why Gou Yu was keeping his distance.
She just didn’t know why exactly, but it gave her a strange, creeping anxiety.
Maybe it was because of her changed identity.
Maybe it was because everything familiar to her was slowly fading away.
Maybe it was because, aside from her nearly estranged family, she only had a few close friends left.
Gou Yu was important to her.
Even if she didn’t fully understand how much.
“You’re a girl now,” Gou Yu said again, looking up briefly at the teacher who was lecturing at the front of the class.
“When you’re around guys, you should at least try to act a bit more modest. You get that?”
“Oh…”
Zhu Niao pursed her lips.
She shrank back pitifully.
That sentence—it almost sounded like she needed to start keeping her distance from her best friend.
But… maybe not quite.
A spark lit up in her eyes.
Like she had suddenly remembered something, she leaned right back onto Gou Yu’s shoulder again.
“Hey, did you forget that time we told everyone we were a couple—just to get rid of that guy who kept hitting on me?”
Gou Yu froze for a second.
Right.
He had nearly forgotten about that.
“I think I saw it a couple days ago… wait, lemme find it—” Zhu Niao held up her phone in front of Gou Yu.
“Here, look.”
And sure enough, there it was: a post on the school forum that had racked up a decent amount of traction.
SHOCKING: Campus Belle Caught Living with a Mystery Man—the Truth Behind It Will Blow Your Mind!
Gou Yu’s expression twitched. “What kind of clickbait title is that?”
The entire post was basically Zhu Niao publicly announcing Gou Yu as her boyfriend.
Nothing else even remotely matched the dramatic headline.
“Journalism major,” she said.
“Figures.”
Zhu Niao giggled and slumped forward on her desk, her sparkling eyes gazing up at the still-seated Gou Yu.
“So if we suddenly start acting all distant now, people are going to think something’s really off, you know?”
Gou Yu paused, then finally said—reluctantly, “This relationship was never supposed to be right to begin with.”
“But without that relationship,” she leaned in again, “how else do we explain living together?”
“You could just—” Gou Yu began reflexively.
But then he saw her face.
There was a faint redness around her eyes.
Maybe from staying up too late last night—but he wasn’t brave enough to assume that.
Her lower lip was caught lightly between her teeth, and her expression trembled with hesitation.
She was looking straight at him, waiting.
Afraid.
Like a kitten abandoned in the snow by a once-playful owner—left at the door, unsure if she was still welcome to step back inside.
The real reason Gou Yu had been pretending not to notice, pretending not to talk things through, was simple: as a guy, he had no idea how to deal with Zhu Niao anymore—especially now that she stepped on every one of his emotional landmines.
But now… maybe he understood why she had been pretending, too.
His little bird didn’t feel safe.
And right now, he was the only one who could give her that feeling of safety.
He should have known.
Even if Zhu Niao looked like she was handling everything well, this sudden, violent change—people treating her like a stranger, the future foggy and full of unknowns—how could she not be scared?
Zhu Niao was like a hedgehog.
She had always lived alongside him, the porcupine.
But now, all her spines were gone—yet the darkness and threats around her hadn’t lessened at all.
And if even he turned his back and pointed his quills at her…
“Then give back the spicy strips from yesterday to your daddy, and maybe your daddy will consider swallowing his pride and pretending to be your boyfriend a bit longer,” Gou Yu said with a grin, slipping back into his usual teasing tone.
“Two packs, you little schemer. You still owe me one,” Zhu Niao replied, unwilling to back down so easily.
“You want me to do you a favor, and you’re robbing me of a pack in return?”
“Exactly—and you’re going out to buy them for me, too.”
“You’re shameless,” Gou Yu muttered, turning away and giving Zhu Niao nothing but his back and his butt as he walked off.
Meanwhile, Ye Qingchang, who was in the middle of watching an online lecture, paused and looked toward Liu Xie, who was wearing the goofiest auntie smile imaginable.
“Hey, Number Two, what are you doing?”
“Watching a trashy romance drama,” Liu Xie said, smile still plastered on her face.
“But didn’t you leave your phone back in the dorm?”
Ye Qingchang followed her gaze but didn’t see anything particularly interesting.
“I have eyes that are finely attuned to beauty.”
Ye Qingchang frowned. She had no idea what kind of episode Liu Xie was having now.
Just then, from Ye Qingchang’s other side—on the far left—Yang Shuli called out to Liu Xie.
“Oi!” Once Liu Xie turned around, she continued, “I don’t think I can make it to dinner tonight. I was supposed to treat Old Xu tonight, remember?”
Liu Xie thought for a second, recalling that one time they’d stalked Xu Nian for hours and it had ended in absolutely nothing interesting.
“Then treat someone else. All I’m offering here is a free meal, not a big deal. If Niao Niao didn’t have the night shift today, she wouldn’t be coming either.”
Zhu Niao turned her head.
“No, no, no—it’s because of the free meal that I switched my night shift to tomorrow.”
Her job didn’t track hours anyway.
It all depended on conscience—and whether the shop manager could keep it together.
Of course, when the shop manager couldn’t keep it together, she’d just shut the store down.
“Don’t look at me like that. You guys know how I am. Other than that cursed student club, I’ve got nothing serious going on. Between flipping through textbooks in the dorm alone or mooching a free dinner, I know which one to pick,” Ye Qingchang said, adjusting her glasses.