Chapter 32 : She’d better give me a hard time soon.

In mid-September, the weather in Jingbei had already started to turn cool.

Tang Zhen rested her head against the car window.
She hadn’t been drinking, but she felt as if she were drunk.
She rolled down the car window, letting the wind blow against her face.
After leaning for a while… she slowly buried her head.

When she got home, Chen Min was in the living room, cursing at her phone—

“Are you sick?! Do you not know what time it is?!”
“If you’re so drunk, go to sleep! Why are you calling me!”

Tang Zhen was stunned for a moment.
Just then, Chen Min had finished cursing and hung up the phone.
She was huffing and puffing, her arms crossed, her face not quite its usual color, her brows furrowed particularly tightly.

“Is that Si Xiaolin?”

“How did you know?”

“I ran into her.”

Tang Zhen looked at Chen Min’s uneaten dinner on the coffee table, turned and went to the kitchen to pour her a glass of water, and then told Chen Min about her encounter with Si Xiaolin at the KTV.

The phone on the table was still vibrating.
All ten calls were from Si Xiaolin.

Tang Zhen kept her eyes on it. “You… want to answer it? She’s quite drunk.”

“No. If she drank too much, she can suffer on her own.”

Chen Min meant what she said.
She and Tang Zhen had completely different personalities.
If it were Tang Zhen… Si Xiaolin wouldn’t have had to call one after another.
The first call would have been enough.
Not only would Tang Zhen have answered, but she would also have gone to find her.

The two girls sat on the sofa.
The window was open, and you could faintly hear the wind howling outside.
The curtains were blowing in the wind.

The voltage in the old residential area was always unstable.
At this time of night, the lights in the living room would flicker from time to time.

“Do you think I’m very heartless?” Chen Min suddenly said.

“No.”

“Sigh, what’s the big deal.”

Chen Min waved her hand.
This was the first time she had taken the initiative to talk to Tang Zhen about herself and Si Xiaolin.

“Actually, she didn’t used to drink. I don’t know when it started, but she started to smoke and drink without any restraint. But… when I first met her, we were only sixteen. At sixteen, we were just kids. How could we have known how to smoke and drink?”

“You’ve known each other for that long?” Tang Zhen was a little surprised.

Chen Min looked at her and smiled.

As soon as she mentioned Si Xiaolin, Tang Zhen could clearly feel that Chen Min was not in her usual state.

Chen Min still had her arms crossed.
She leaned back against the sofa, her hair clipped up with a claw clip.
The slip dress with a back that opened to her waist… made her look particularly gentle in the autumn night wind.

“I went to high school in Jingbei. Although we weren’t in the same class, I knew about her. She was very high-profile back then.”

“High-profile?”

“Her family was rich. When others paid for meals with cash, she would either use a card or sign a tab. She wasn’t bad-looking, and most importantly, she was smart. While others were studying to death, she would casually take a test and get first place every time.”

Any one of these things would have been impressive, let alone all three.
And at such a sensitive age as sixteen or seventeen, it was hard not to be high-profile.

But this was a long story.
Chen Min didn’t know where to start.

But one thing Chen Min was sure of—

Si Xiaolin liked girls.

At sixteen, her orientation was still unclear, but she had a vague feeling.
Si Xiaolin would carry a basketball all day and go to the court to play as soon as class was over.
She was a good player and was tall.
When she ran, her shadow was much longer than others.
After a rebound, a thin layer of sweat would cover her neck.

That look… it was hard not to notice.

When she played, many girls would wait to give her water and tissues.

Si Xiaolin would sometimes take them, sometimes not, all depending on her mood that day.

Actually, the two of them were rivals at the time, fighting to the death for a spot in a math competition that would get them into Tsinghua or Peking University.
Looking back now, it was just two kids who wouldn’t admit defeat.
But at the time… their relationship could be described as fire and water.

At that time, Si Xiaolin was very eye-catching.
Wherever she went, she was the center of attention.
Every time Chen Min passed by the court, through the fence, she would see this person pulling her collar over her head to wipe her sweat.
When she pulled her collar down again, her shoulder-length hair would be sweaty.
For some reason, she just felt she was very deserving of a beating.

She couldn’t be entirely blamed for this.
After all, they were rivals.
Who would want to hear others praise their rival every day?

“I was so angry, you know? The competition teacher who was mentoring me even told me… Si Xiaolin has a talent for math. He told me to just do my best and not to be too hard on myself.”
“The way he said it, it was as if I was so bad, so inferior to Si Xiaolin. The more he said that, the more I wanted to prove him wrong. I was determined to show him how wrong he was.”

Tang Zhen listened intently. “And then?”

“And then… I realized I was the one who was wrong.”

Chen Min smiled again, her hand reaching behind her neck to rub it gently.

“I couldn’t out-study her. What’s that saying… in the face of talent, all effort has to give way.”
“The more I competed, the more I realized the gap between us was widening. I started to hate her more and more… until one day—”

At this point, Chen Min paused.

Tang Zhen didn’t know if it was her imagination, but she thought Chen Min had blushed.

Chen Min’s hand came away from the back of her neck and rested on her cheek—

“She actually ran over and said she liked me.”

Tang Zhen had no such experience.
When she was in high school, she was like a nerd, buried in various exercise books every day.
Occasionally, she would be teased by her classmates, but she never took it to heart.
She would neither blush nor feel shy, at most a little annoyed.

“And then?”

“And then? There was no ‘and then’.”

Chen Min suddenly stopped talking.
She sat up straight from the sofa, the blush on her face just now gone.

She turned her head and saw Tang Zhen still staring at her foolishly.
She suddenly smiled. “We were just kids back then. What did we know about these things? Later, I went back to my hometown for college. If it weren’t for coming back to Jingbei for work now, we probably would have lost touch.”

Tang Zhen was a little confused.
So were they together or not?
But since Chen Min didn’t say, she couldn’t ask.

“Don’t just talk about me. What about you?” Chen Min asked her.

“What about me?”

Chen Min poked Tang Zhen’s shoulder with her finger—

“Still playing dumb with me? Didn’t you just say that Chi Yuqin gave you both a ride home?”

Tang Zhen’s eyes rolled in their sockets. “When did I say that Chi Yuqin gave us a ride home?”

This time it was Chen Min’s turn to be stunned.

Tang Zhen pursed her lips—

“I didn’t get in the car. I took a cab back myself.”

“Are you stupid? She drove all the way there, and you didn’t let her take you?”

“Can’t I refuse her just once?”

Tang Zhen’s rhetorical question surprised Chen Min.
Only then did she notice that this person’s mood was different.
From the moment she came back until now, she hadn’t smiled once.

“You and Chi Yuqin… what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”
Tang Zhen turned her head away.
“What could be wrong between me and her? Her suitor has even come to the hospital. She’s very beautiful.”

Tang Zhen bit down hard on the word ‘beautiful.’

“She…”

“She likes girls.”
But she doesn’t like me.

A girl with no experience in love is always prone to overthinking things.
Tang Zhen was like that.
The feeling of gain and loss made her feel like she was a piece of gravel that could be discarded at any time.

She suddenly thought of what Chi Yuqin had said in the KTV private room— I don’t drink.

She doesn’t drink, so she won’t get drunk.

Because she won’t get drunk, she doesn’t even have a chance to take advantage of the situation.

But Tang Zhen still couldn’t help but fantasize.
What if Chi Yuqin had too much to drink?
Such a cold person, what would she be like if she had alcohol?
Would she be a little more passionate than now?

Chen Min looked at Tang Zhen, feeling that this girl was about to cry in the next second.

“Hey… are you going to cry?”

“Of course not!”
Tang Zhen was full of grievances, but her stubbornness was also invincible.
“Why would I cry for her?”

She said that, but her eyes were undeniably red.

Tang Zhen was actually a very simple girl.
She had no ulterior motives, nor did she have any hidden agendas.
But if you had to find fault, it would be those two times she had played a so-called ‘little trick’ in front of Chi Yuqin.

But what did it matter?

In Chen Min’s eyes, this ‘little trick’ was child’s play, let alone to Chi Yuqin.

“You said she was just a suitor…”

Chen Min was about to comfort her, but before she could finish, she was interrupted by Tang Zhen—
“Does she have a lot of suitors?”

“This…”

“Forget it, don’t say it. What does it have to do with me if she has a lot of suitors? I couldn’t care less.”

Tang Zhen suddenly stood up from the sofa—
“I’ve decided!”

Chen Min looked at her surprised expression—
“What have you decided?”

“I’m going to stay at Renhua! Stay in Jingbei!”
Since she’s not even in her sights, why should I care so much!
To become an outstanding cardiac surgeon, to have my picture on the display board too, isn’t that much more meaningful than all this romantic drama?

Chen Min was older than Tang Zhen and naturally had more experience in love, so she understood Tang Zhen’s current mood perfectly.
This mix of grievances and jealousy, both sour and bitter.
She was now at odds with herself.

“Do you know what you look like right now?”

“What?”

“A child who can’t get candy, insisting that the candy doesn’t taste good.”

Tang Zhen was caught.
Her face flushed red, and she didn’t dare to talk to Chen Min anymore.
She slipped into the bathroom.

The sound of trickling water could be heard.

When Chen Min went over, she saw this person washing her hands under the tap, not even using soap.

“Instead of wasting your time washing your hands, why don’t you think about how you’re going to greet Chi Yuqin at work tomorrow?”

Tang Zhen was stunned for a moment. “What do you mean?”

“Think about it. First, you ran into her suitor confessing her love. Then you found out she likes girls. Then at night, she offered to take you home, and you refused. What do you think… if you were Chi Yuqin, what would you think? She doesn’t know you like girls.”

Chen Min was deliberately teasing her, and Tang Zhen fell for it.

Her eyes were wide, her face full of bewilderment—
“She… she won’t think I’m discriminating against her, so I didn’t let her take me home, will she…”
“She won’t give me a hard time, will she?! It can’t be that serious…”

“I didn’t say that.”

Tang Zhen stared at Chen Min until Chen Min laughed, and only then did she realize this person was teasing her.

“She’d better give me a hard time soon. Then I can just confess to her directly and save all this trouble.”