Chapter 18: Pretending to Still Be a Boy

The thin bedroom door was suddenly pushed open.

Her second sister, with a round face that always looked irritable, stormed in angrily.

However, she only saw the short-haired girl on the bed, wearing an oversized shirt and hugging her knees, looking up at her in a flustered and helpless manner.

Her frail appearance made one want to embrace her.

“What are you doing? Don’t think acting pathetic will make me forgive you! What’s the deal with soaking your underwear in that sink? I wash my face in there!”

Yu Mingfei stood with her hands on her hips, still looking unappeased, yet her tone had already softened considerably, even carrying a hint of playful amusement.

“And, even if you look like a girl, you don’t have to act so effeminate, do you?”

“Ah, ah?”

An Jing stared blankly at Yu Mingfei, a little confused about the current situation.

She was clearly as girlish as could be, yet she still perceived herself as a boy, and… seemed quite used to it?

“Ahhh—seriously, don’t make such a cute sound!”

Yu Mingfei, contrary to her usual self, darted to An Jing and vigorously rubbed her small face.

“Alright, alright, big sister forgives you today. Don’t do it next time, hear me?”

“O-okay…”

“Honestly,” Yu Mingfei turned and walked out of the room, muttering softly, “It’d be great if the little brat never grew up. I can’t imagine him with a beard…”

An Jing watched the gently closing door, her thoughts drifting in outer space for half a circle before finally returning to Earth.

It seemed that, in everyone’s perception, she was still a boy, just a boy so delicate he looked like a girl.

While this didn’t immediately make An Jing feel like everything around her was unfamiliar, it did add a lot of trouble.

The main point was—a former boy who one day turned into a girl.

The reasons for this were not only complex but also… so shameful.

If anyone found out, it would be terrible.

“Oh, my head… pretending to be a boy—I actually have to do this one day…”

An Jing covered her forehead, smiling wryly, then cheered up again.

She was always good at looking on the bright side.

“This is good too. At least when I change back, there won’t be any unexpected trouble. The fewer changes caused by this incident, the better, right?”

The morning breeze caressed her face.

The time displayed in the lower right corner of the computer was still early.

Yu Mingfei, who had gotten up to use the restroom, had gone back to sleep.

As for her eldest sister, Yu Minghui, she hadn’t gotten up at all.

Next to the outdated CRT monitor sat a bottle of fresh milk taken from the refrigerator and half a bag of red bean paste buns.

Most weekends, if An Jing was hungry in the morning, she would look for snacks like these to fill her stomach.

She opened Baidu now, searching for information on “men turning into women,” hoping to find a scientific basis from the internet.

However, either the current online information wasn’t comprehensive enough, or this kind of thing simply wasn’t scientific.

In any case, she couldn’t find any proper explanations.

Even entering keywords like “meteorite fragments” yielded no results—at most, a few news articles about deaths caused by meteorite radiation popped up.

This made her a little nervous, and she instinctively turned to glance at the golden stone being illuminated by the morning sun.

But, if there was really any serious radiation, she should have been dead by now.

Although turning into a girl was far from normal, at least there was no danger to her life.

An Jing propped her chin on her hand, using her junior high physics knowledge plus sci-fi stories read from various magazines to speculate, “Could it be that the meteorite radiation caused my chromosomes to recombine, and also changed my DNA to some extent, so I turned into a girl and gained superpowers? Ah—but if that’s the case, wouldn’t it have no consciousness?”

She shook her head vigorously, shaking off the jumbled thoughts, instantly no longer wanting to explain it scientifically.

Now, she desperately wished it would appear a little more magical.

Otherwise, she might really never be able to change back.

After all, one can’t plead with inanimate objects…

Since she couldn’t explain it scientifically, she searched for related stories again, thinking perhaps others had experienced similar encounters—

She wasn’t wrong; she immediately found a whole bunch of stories about boys turning into girls.

And many of them… were explicit, making one’s face flush and heart pound, yet a strange sensation like an electric current coursed through her body.

“Could it be… that the people who wrote these stories have also experienced this…? No, that’s impossible… It must just be imagination…”

An Jing stammered to herself, her gaze unable to tear away from the alluring lines of text.

One thought filled her mind: after becoming a girl, was doing that really ten times more pleasurable than when she was a boy?

“No!”

She abruptly pressed down on her restless left hand, gasping for breath.

“I can’t go back on what I promised the stone, or else I truly won’t be able to… But what if the stone is just a stone…? No! Better safe than sorry!”

***

“Wah!”

A sudden knock on the door startled An Jing, making her tremble.

She frantically closed the webpage filled with explicit text, turning to face the door in a panic.

Luckily, it was Yu Minghui standing outside; she didn’t have a habit of pushing open people’s doors without warning.

“Xiao Jing, are you celebrating your birthday at home tonight? You can invite your classmates over, you know?”

“Ah… ah! That!”

So much had happened today that An Jing almost forgot it was her own birthday.

“There should be quite a few people… and they’re all boys. Is it okay for them all to come over, Sister Huihui?”

“It’s fine. How many? Three or five?”

“Not counting me, probably… about four or five?”

“Alright then, Big Sister will go buy groceries later. You’re going out for lunch, right?”

“Ah, yes… I need to leave at nine.”

“Okay, then have a happy day today~”

An Jing coughed dryly.

Hearing the footsteps outside fade away, her pounding heart finally calmed down quite a bit.

She hesitated for a moment but ultimately didn’t open that webpage again.

Just then, QQ suddenly made a ‘ding-ding-ding’ sound, and an icon in the lower-right taskbar was flashing.

Since August of this year, when Tencent allowed all users to upload custom avatars, almost everyone had started using their favorite pictures, no longer limited to the system options.

For a beautiful girl like Zhu Ying, her icon was directly her own photo.

In the photo, she was wearing a short-sleeved school uniform and summer school pants rolled up to her thighs, covering her small mouth and turning her face slightly to the side.

Coupled with the low pixel count, she appeared somewhat blurry in the picture.

In the upper right corner, a string of Martian text, which An Jing could only understand half of, was written in fluorescent font, (I’m ready to go out, An Jing, how about you?)

An Jing quickly glanced at the system time in the lower right corner. 

Unbeknownst to her, it was already past eight. 

If she lived a bit further away, walking to the Shed Commercial Street would take about twenty to thirty minutes. 

Allowing for some extra time in case of unexpected delays, it was indeed almost time to set off.

(I’m almost ready to leave too. Let’s meet there then.)

An Jing quickly typed a sentence on her black membrane keyboard, then moved the mouse to the top of the screen, brought up her QQ interface, and opened the chat window for Fang Qiang and the others.

Then came Ctrl+V, sending them all the sincerest greeting, (Idiots, get up and let’s go!)

The others seemed to still be sleeping in, with no response.

However, Zhu Ying immediately replied.

For the first time in her life, An Jing felt that the ‘ding-ding’ sound of a new message was so pleasant to hear. 

(You haven’t played QQ Farm yet?)

Seeing Zhu Ying’s message, An Jing couldn’t help but glance sideways at her desktop icons.

For an anime otaku like her, those gal games were far more interesting than any so-called QQ Farm.

Although it was very popular at the moment, she completely failed to understand the point of “stealing vegetables.”

(Uh, yeah.) 

An Jing replied with a somewhat awkward message.

(Hurry up and activate it~ I want to steal from you!)

(Now?) 

(Uh-huh! Activating it is quick! It shouldn’t take long to get to your place, right?)

(Then I’ll activate it…)

An Jing energetically opened QQ Zone, quickly activated the farm using her extensive experience with mini-games, planted vegetables in her currently owned fields according to the newbie tutorial, then took a screenshot and sent it to Zhu Ying, (Done!) 

(Yay! Now I can steal your vegetables later!) 

At that moment, An Jing suddenly felt that this somewhat boring mini-game was full of meaning.

(I’m almost leaving too. If anything comes up, you can send me a QQ message, but I might not see it.)

(Don’t you have the SMS receiving service for QQ messages activated?)

(That’s too much of a waste of money…)

(What about mobile data?) 

(I only have 30MB. I use it occasionally. It’s too expensive, I can’t afford the phone bill…)

(3G is becoming popular now, yet you still only have so little data? You can buy a package card at the newsstand for twenty yuan a month with 600MB of data!)

(Uh, I barely have any pocket money. I’d better save it.)

(No, you’re really pitiful.)

Zhu Ying sent a message in Martian text, then her avatar went dark.

An Jing didn’t know if she had gone offline or was just invisible.

But in any case, she must have set off.

“Then I should probably leave too. As for clothes… I’ll wear something more fitting…”

An Jing mumbled, took a screenshot of her chat with Zhu Ying, and sent it to the anime otaku group.

(Hehe!!)

Immediately, someone jumped out and yelled, (I’m on a phone, don’t send pictures!)

(Hehe, the campus belle initiated a chat with me today.)

(Tch, how pathetic! I thought Hatsune-chan messaged you!)

An Jing didn’t read the subsequent group messages, because she needed to find clothes—she was about to leave.