“I don’t want to put it too rudely, but…”
At an afternoon tea party many years later, the poised Xu Runhui lightly sipped her tea, looked around at the women present, and slowly opened her mouth in a tone of extreme confidence.
“The first person Siji ever confessed to wasn’t any of you. It was me, Xu Runhui-da!”
Yan Yanyan, sitting beside her, helplessly pressed a hand to her forehead.
“We’ve already sampled enough of this. When exactly did it happen? Just say it already.”
Xu Runhui looked at her a little smugly.
“Yanyan, you would never guess, would you? It was on the way home after our first PE class in the first year of high school.”
“Oh~~ the day you almost cried.”
“Who almost cried! …Ahem. Excuse me.”
“So what exactly did Siji say to you?”
Xu Runhui proudly stuck out her chest, and those two masses everyone called useless fat shook with the motion, drawing speechless eye-rolls from the crowd.
No one knew how that pair of things had managed to win Siji’s favor so much.
“‘In my heart there is always one room reserved only for you.’ How about it? Aren’t you envious? Aren’t you jealous?”
“What is that? Isn’t that just Siji’s hotel theory? And isn’t that about interpersonal relationships? What does it have to do with a confession?”
“Doesn’t it mean ‘there will always be a place for you in my heart’? How does that not count as a confession?”
“The way I see it, Siji only said that to comfort you when you were about to cry, right?”
“Yan! Yan! Yan!”
“Xu! Run! Hui!”
The two of them quarreling quickly drew more people in.
Everyone began showing off the sweet talk Zhong Siji had said to them, and the originally peaceful tea party became chaotic all at once.
“Xinya, aren’t you going to say something?” someone suddenly said to Zhong Xinya, who had not spoken a word the whole time.
Zhong Xinya elegantly took a shallow sip of tea before slowly answering.
“From what I know of Gege, he only wanted to comfort you and show off a little while he was at it, Senior Runhui.”
“…No!!!!!!!”
…………
…………
…………
Zhong Siji was already so awkward he did not know what to say.
He actually had many sets of lines like this.
Just as a top surfer waited for the giant wave of a lifetime, Zhong Siji had also been waiting for occasions when he could deliver these lines.
He was a boy, after all.
In the dead of every quiet night, who did not fantasize about shouting out some impassioned, lyrical, tragic, or moving line at the perfect moment and fiercely shaking someone else’s soul?
But please do not misunderstand.
These lines were not merely toys for showing off.
Every sentence Zhong Siji spoke contained genuine feeling.
Otherwise how could they shake another person’s soul?
But the problem now was that it seemed to have been a little too shaking.
For a full three minutes Xu Runhui had not said a single word, nor made the slightest bodily movement, just like the time-paused heroine in the movies Zhong Siji looked up late at night…
Oh.
Now it was already the hero.
That said, if the hero’s supreme bone moved during a time stop, did that count as a continuity error?
Just as Zhong Siji’s thoughts were about to slide into some strange corner, Xu Runhui across from him finally moved.
Zhong Siji only felt a gust of fragrant wind rush toward his face, and then a standard homebody moe-girl face was right in front of him.
Looking carefully, classmate Runhui is actually pretty cute too…
“Classmate Siji, was everything you just said serious?”
Under the lingering sunset, it was impossible to tell whether the girl’s flushed face was from shyness or from the sunset’s stain.
“Mm. All of it was serious.”
Zhong Siji’s expression also grew serious.
This was the witness of their unbreakable friendship!
How could he joke at a time like this!
“I… I see. Classmate Siji really is bold.”
Having gotten the answer she wanted, Xu Runhui retreated two steps in satisfaction, carrying a touch of shyness.
As I thought, looking at classmate Siji’s face this close at a time like this is still too stimulating.
Bold?
What does that mean?
Does even saying a comforting sentence count as bold?
Don’t tell me… classmate Runhui saw through the fact that I was delivering a cool line?
Thinking about it carefully, it was not impossible.
After all, she had also been present for the last “pants eating ice cream” incident.
If her associative ability was a little rich, she could think of it.
Zhong Siji’s face grew hot.
He subconsciously pinched his nose.
“So you saw through it. I don’t say things like that often, so classmate Runhui has to keep it secret for me.”
“Of course. Classmate Siji isn’t one of those bad men. How could he say things like that all the time?”
Uh, do the bad men of this world also like reciting cool lines?
Then it looks like I have to restrain myself a little, or the reputation that just barely started to recover will fall to the bottom again.
Zhong Siji vaguely felt that what he and Xu Runhui were talking about was not the same thing, but he could not put his finger on where the deviation was…
It should just be my imagination.
“Then, classmate Siji, I have one more question, a question I must get an answer to from you. May I… ask?”
Xu Runhui lifted her head, as if she had made some kind of resolution, and looked straight into those beautiful eyes she had never dared to meet.
Zhong Siji also felt her resolve.
Here he had to respond with no lies at all.
He could not let down their friendship, which was stronger than gold!
“Classmate Runhui, ask. If I lie, punish me by making me eat the bitter melon Xinya makes for the rest of my life.”
“For classmate Siji, that really is a trustworthy enough vow.”
Xu Runhui could roughly guess that Zhong Siji did not actually like bitter melon, and that the remark was as siscon as ever, but to be honest it truly let her breathe a sigh of relief.
After all, if she had to eat bitter melon every day after getting married, she would also have a little trouble stomaching it.
Her thoughts seemed to have drifted a bit far again.
Xu Runhui drew a deep breath, doing her best to calm the heart that was thump-thumping wildly because of the question she was about to ask.
She actually already had an answer to this question.
After all, no matter what, classmate Siji was still a boy.
It would be normal for him to be unable to help disliking…
But what if?
What if classmate Siji was that one-in-a-million, one-in-ten-million possibility?
Thinking of that, Xu Runhui covered the heart that was almost leaping out of her chest and slowly asked the question whose answer she wanted to know most.
“Classmate Siji, do you… hate girls with big chests?”
So that was it.
Everything fell into place in Zhong Siji’s heart.
It seemed he had still underestimated how much the men of the changed world detested huge-breasted girls.
You’ve had it hard all this time, classmate Runhui!
I won’t let you bear this kind of pain alone anymore!
Looking at Xu Runhui’s super-high-school-level huge breasts, Zhong Siji’s eyes filled with hot tears.
“I love huge breasts the most.”
“I won?”
Yan Yanyan had just opened the apartment door when she received Xu Runhui’s message.
When she tapped open the chat window, what met her eyes was only a puppy holding up a sign that said “I won.”
“Meaning unclear. Looks like she got stimulated by something somewhere again.”
Yan Yanyan stuffed her phone back into her pocket and could not even be bothered to reply.