Suddenly, a slight dampness brushed across her delicate shoulder. The girl looked up in confusion, only to meet a pair of blue eyes brimming with tears.
“Ji Qingchan, I missed you so much.” The big boy choked out a sob and flung himself into her arms, crying.
Ji Yueni was stunned for a moment.
Then, the corner of her mouth twitched a few times.
“Uh, Jiang Chi, I remember I told you that Ji Qingchan doesn’t actually exi—”
Before she could finish, she was pulled tightly into the big boy’s embrace.
He hugged her so fiercely, it felt as if he wanted to press her deep into his bones and blood. Ji Yueni could barely breathe.
“Qingchan, Qingchan, my Qingchan.” His voice trembled with intense emotion. His hands locked tightly around her waist, as if she were his entire world.
Hot tears dripped onto the back of her pale hand. Ji Yueni’s whole body went rigid. For a moment, she didn’t know how to respond.
At this moment, Jiang Chi was nothing like the silent, aloof “iceberg god” at school, nor the harsh art critic who held a camera and lectured Ji Yueni. He looked more like a big boy who had lost his beloved toy.
“Um… Uh…” Ji Yueni swallowed, at a loss for what to do. “Could you not cry? They say ‘a real man doesn’t shed tears easily.’ Try to pull yourself together, okay?”
“I got turned into this and didn’t even cry a mess, but you’re losing just a virtual character and you’re crying like this.”
“Qingchan, Qingchan…” But the big boy seemed not to hear her at all, still clutching her waist and muttering.
“Jiang Chi, Ji Qingchan really doesn’t exist!” Ji Yueni couldn’t help but raise her voice as she pushed at him. She caught a glimmer of something crystalline in his eyes.
“Can’t you stop clinging to the past? She’s just a virtual character! If you want, I’ll pay to buy you a max-level account with as many virtual wives as you want!!”
“Men need to move on, you know! There are thousands of beautiful women in Huayuan. If this one doesn’t work out, just pick another. Why give up a whole forest for one little sapling? Are you stupid or what!”
Ji Yueni gave up trying to be gentle with Jiang Chi. She cut straight to the point, crisp and direct: “Do you really think any girl would fall in love at first sight with a boy who can’t even fit into a group? Do you think a girl would try so hard only to get the cold shoulder? Do you think a girl would just unconditionally accept a guy with obsessive cleanliness?”
“Ji Qingchan is fake! Her whole purpose is to win you over, and then dump you!”
“There’s no such thing as love for no reason in this world. You need to wake up!!”
Ji Yueni’s words landed on the boy’s head like a heavy blow. He trembled all over, his lips pale as paper, his empty gaze full of heartbreak.
“I know.”
Jiang Chi’s voice started to shake.
His nose began to sting, and the grievance in his heart surged up. Tears spilled from his eyes, and the more he wiped them away, the more they fell.
“Ji Yueni, I hate you.”
“I know I haven’t done anything to let you down. That thing with Chen Jiajia—I just happened to be passing by. But you?”
“You created that straw that pulled me out of the mud, but then you mercilessly destroyed her. You toyed with my feelings at will. I’m like Tom being teased in front of you.”
“You say ‘Ji Qingchan’ is fake, doesn’t exist, isn’t even a real person—but did you ever consider how I feel?” Jiang Chi’s voice choked. “I know I don’t fit in. I know I don’t talk much. I know no one likes me, no one loves me.”
“But I want to fit in, too. I want to have a group of brothers. I want to taste what love feels like. I want to be normal!”
“Everything I desperately wanted is like trash you can toss away. Do you think I’m ridiculous for falling in love with a virtual character?”
“But she’s all I have!!”
Jiang Chi roared, his voice hoarse.
“Only she accepted my obsessive cleanliness. Only she treated me like a normal person. Only she let me taste what love is. Only she… made me feel like a normal person.”
“I admit I’m immature, not much of a man—but so what? You’ll never know what it feels like to have your heart gouged out.”
Jiang Chi clenched his teeth, nearly hysterical.
“Ji Yueni, I know in your eyes I’m just a big boy who cries when he loses a toy, a ridiculous clown. But you’ll never know—that toy was my everything!!”
Ji Yueni’s body stiffened a little. She sighed silently in her heart, letting him hug her as she gently patted his back the way her mother did when she was little.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I know I was wrong.” After a pause, she added, “I just wanted to play around at first, and yes, your feelings… Forget it, forget it. I know my apology is empty now, but I swear I’ll make it up to you! I guarantee it on my name, Ji Yueni!”
As she spoke, Ji Yueni thumped her chest in a manly fashion, only to find her hand met with softness, making her a bit embarrassed.
But whether it was a sincere moment or something else, after her words, the sobs from the boy in her arms gradually faded.
“Sorry, I lost control of my emotions.” After a long while, Jiang Chi sat up and apologized in a low voice, though his eyes were still red.
“It’s fine, it’s fine. Every man loses control sometimes, it’s understandable.” Ji Yueni waved her hand indifferently.
“If there’s nothing else, I’ll head back to my room.”
With that, Ji Yueni got out of bed and headed for the door.
Then, a boy’s voice sounded from behind.
“Ji Yueni.”
At the call of her name, Ji Yueni paused unconsciously. She quickly turned around and saw the big boy sitting quietly at the edge of the bed.
Jiang Chi’s face was streaked with tears. His handsome pale face was all wrinkled, completely devoid of its usual charm. His eyes were ringed with red—one look and you could tell he’d been crying hard, none of his usual calm or coldness left.
“If you ever need to do that kind of thing again, you can come to me. I can help you.”
Ji Yueni was stunned at first. Then her face turned bright red, like a ripe tomato. Without replying, she spun around and fled in panic, her hurried figure as if running from something.
When her figure had completely disappeared from Jiang Chi’s sight, the tears vanished from his face, replaced by a chilling coldness, all the previous vulnerability and sorrow gone.
He tilted his head, gazing in the direction Ji Yueni had just left, and there was a madness and sickness in his eyes, a hidden, indescribable intensity.
“Compensation?” he murmured, his voice low and eerie. “What could possibly be a better compensation than my Qingchan?”
Ji Yueni, just surrender to femininity, and obediently become the one I love.
Then Jiang Chi wiped away his tears and face with a tissue. He took out that blue diary and began recording today’s experiences, his assessment of Ji Yueni’s psychology, and his detailed plan for the next steps.
As he wrote, Jiang Chi suddenly remembered a blacksmithing contest he’d once seen. If femininization was like forging a blade, then Ji Yueni was the raw material, and he himself was the master smith, determined to forge her into that charming “her”—to complete her thorough transformation, to have her shed her old self and cast aside the past.
He would make Ji Yueni his raw material, forging a girl who belonged to him alone: obedient, docile, a girl who could be locked away.