Ye Qingchang returned to the dorm, her long, straight black hair drenched, as were her black clothes and skirt.
“You had an umbrella, didn’t you? How did you still get soaked head to toe?” Liu Xie poked her head out after her shower. “And why are you back so much later than us? What were you up to?”
“You really are a curious baby,” Ye Qingchang placed her frilly umbrella, wet inside and out, on the dry area of the dorm balcony.
“It’s hard not to be curious, since it’s just the two of us left in the dorm.”
At those words, Ye Qingchang looked up and saw that the only thing in the room was a golden caterpillar curled up in a blanket, cocooning on the bed.
“Where are Little Bird and the dorm leader?”
“Little Bird suddenly remembered her period’s over and she has to go to work today, so she grabbed her umbrella, yelled something, and dashed out.”
Liu Xie answered as she idly rolled Ye Qingchang’s workbook into a stick. “My spear’s been worn down by the heavy rain, my armor is rusted, but my charge is pure Don Quixote style!”
“That doesn’t sound like a sentence from either of your cultures.”
“That’s true, just saw it in a video,” Liu Xie said without shame. “As for the dorm leader, she vanished during dinner, probably ran off somewhere again.”
“So if I hadn’t come back, you’d be a lonely elder left behind, huh?”
“That’s right,” Liu Xie put the rolled workbook back on Ye Qingchang’s desk. “But you still haven’t said why you got back so late and ended up soaked.”
“Xiao Yi’an stopped me,” Ye Qingchang said flatly.
Liu Xie froze, then leaned over to check Ye Qingchang up and down. “He didn’t do anything to you, did he? When I saw him running earlier, he seemed a bit off.”
Then she added, “Did he snatch your umbrella, and then you snatched it back?”
“No, I slapped him, then punched him twice.” Ye Qingchang stated it as a fact.
“Wow, buddy, you’re a bit violent.”
“He asked me to give him a chance, said we should start over, and that he wanted to pursue me.” Ye Qingchang continued, “He said he now clearly sees the mistakes he made before.”
“Hey, buddy, I gotta have a word with you about this,” Liu Xie pulled out Ye Qingchang’s chair and sat down. “When a man says he realizes his mistakes, that’s the most untrustworthy line of all.”
“Back in the day, when I was still a man—”
“You’ve always been a virgin, oh, not anymore.”
“Please, have some mercy with your words,” Liu Xie put her hands together in mock prayer. “But really, Old Three, you should know, words like that are the least reliable, especially when the guy’s got a record.”
Ye Qingchang pondered for a moment.
Does Xiao Yi’an count as someone with a record?
Probably not.
After all, in some sense, she watched Xiao Yi’an grow up. She raised him herself; she knew what kind of kid he was.
“I don’t think he counts.”
“Here it comes, here it comes,” Liu Xie pointed at Ye Qingchang, looking utterly heartbroken. “You don’t think he counts, you think he’s different from everyone else. That’s exactly what innocent girls say when they meet a bad boy.”
“First, you’re the bad boy, not me. Second, do I really look like an innocent girl to you?”
“So you’re about to go on about being some kind of love expert with your own rhythm again, huh?”
Liu Xie mumbled weakly, finally giving up on trying to talk Ye Qingchang out of it. “So you agreed to give him a chance?”
“I didn’t agree,” Ye Qingchang said.
“Huh?”
Ye Qingchang took out some clean clothes from the wardrobe, preparing for a shower. “I’m still in favor of cutting all ties. But he said he wants to get to know me again, and that he’ll be the one to pursue me. If I get annoyed, I can tell him to get lost or just reject him outright.”
“Basically, he means, treat him like a stranger for now. How he manages to win me over is his headache, not mine, and he can’t stop me. But how far I let him get is entirely up to me.”
Liu Xie glanced at Ye Qingchang suspiciously, “You’re not about to pull some love expert moves again, are you?”
“No, not anymore, never again.” Ye Qingchang’s expression was calm. “If he really can change and grow because I left, and if he can become a better person while I’m free of all this, then I’ll genuinely be happy for him. But that’s all. If he wants to win me back, he’s not nearly there.”
Looking at the confident Ye Qingchang in front of her, Liu Xie felt something was off.
She hoped she was just overthinking it.
Curling up back on her bed, her hair now thoroughly dry and fragrant, she realized that as a guy, she’d never been able to do something like grab her own hair, hold it to her nose, and take a sniff.
Checking the group chat, she saw the latest message was a food pic shared by dorm leader Yang Shuli.
Exquisite plating, colors that made your mouth water, and wisps of rising steam.
A single glance revealed it was taken by Xu Nian.
If the petite Yang Shuli had taken it, the background would be sharp, while the food itself would be a blurry mess, like melted cream.
And sure enough, that was exactly the case.
“How’s the picture?” Yang Shuli bounced around, trying to grab her phone from Xu Nian’s hand. “Does it make them so jealous they want to eat right away?”
“Should do the trick,” Xu Nian smiled gently, handing the phone back to Yang Shuli.
Then, she pressed the newly bought cat-ear headband onto Yang Shuli’s head.
It was black, with the inside of the ears painted a pleasing pink.
Yang Shuli seemed a bit unused to it, fiddling with the mostly decorative, barely practical accessory.
Finally, she managed to set it in a reasonably comfortable spot and shook her head a little.
“Lao Xu, do you really like these kinds of things?” Yang Shuli didn’t seem shy at all. She even lifted her phone to the camera.
She opened her mouth wide at the camera, looking in the selfie interface like a particularly adorable little kitten ready to gobble up anyone looking at the picture.
Maybe getting eaten by a kitten like that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
“Who doesn’t like things that are beautiful or cute?” Xu Nian shot back with a question.
“So you like this kind of stuff, huh,” Yang Shuli made a face, as if struggling to accept it. “No worries, I get it. Next time, I’ll buy you a cat ear and a cat tail too. You can wear them.”
“I like seeing them, not wearing them myself.”
“You like me wearing them?” Yang Shuli pointed to herself.
“Something like that.
Though taking off the last word would also be right.”
“Then…” Yang Shuli raised her fists, curled them slightly, tilted her head, and said to Xu Nian,
“Meow?”
The phone slipped from Xu Nian’s hand and fell to the floor.
She’s a bit to innocent.