Wen Jiuzhe didn’t care about anyone, and he didn’t like joining those boring spectacles.
He accidentally ran into the scene where Xue Ling was being confessed to. Because he realized that the protagonist of this farce was the girl his annoying older cousin liked, he stopped with a bit of interest, lazily sticking his hands in his pockets as he watched the commotion for a while.
Awkwardness and difficulty were clearly written on Xue Ling’s face. She looked like she really wanted to interrupt and refuse, but she didn’t open her mouth, waiting with an awkward smile for that boy to finish his idiotic speech.
Her temper was absurdly good.
Suddenly, she saw him in the crowd, and her gaze flickered for a moment.
Wen Jiuzhe was actually quite happy to watch her be awkward and unable to step down from the situation, and took pleasure in her misfortune because of it.
He thought maliciously, serves you right. At a time like this, if you don’t be firm yourself, could there really be someone who comes to save you?
In Wen Jiuzhe’s nineteen years of life, the one truth he understood best was this: no one will save you, and no one can save you—only self-rescue.
There was a trace of help-seeking in her eyes, so faint it was almost imperceptible. She unconsciously glanced around, but it seemed no one received that weak distress signal of hers.
In the end, she met Wen Jiuzhe’s gaze.
Just take it as repayment for that bread she treated him to last time, Wen Jiuzhe thought, stepping forward to kick over a cup of milk tea, forcibly bringing this confession to an end.
After watching the spectacle, he originally wanted to disperse along with the crowd, but while Xue Ling was holding tools and cleaning up the scene, she kept lifting her head to look at him from time to time—once, then again—like she wanted to say something to him.
Wen Jiuzhe was also a bit curious about what she wanted to say, so he sat there idly waiting.
What he waited for was a boring thank-you. Wen Jiuzhe smiled on the surface, but felt somewhat impatient inside.
He said that sentence, “be my girlfriend,” with malice. His original intention was to disgust her, but she froze for a moment and actually nodded.
Wen Jiuzhe looked at her for a moment and felt that she looked very stupid, as if her brain wasn’t turning.
It was something said casually, and probably shouldn’t be taken seriously. But at that moment, looking at Xue Ling’s face that knew nothing, a dark thought arose in Wen Jiuzhe’s heart.
Didn’t Wen Xuan like her?
If Wen Xuan found out that Xue Ling was together with him, he would definitely be so angry he’d go mad.
So he smiled, looking at Xue Ling as he thought: who told you to agree, just accept that you’re unlucky.
Be my girlfriend, and you’ll have plenty of trouble.
He wasn’t seriously being her boyfriend. At the beginning, he just found her temperament displeasing and deliberately looked for trouble to anger her.
Xue Ling wasn’t the kind of person they said never got angry. It was just that when she got angry, she didn’t dare to show it—she pretended she wasn’t angry, and just held it in.
Wen Jiuzhe watched her, curious about what she would be like if she couldn’t hold it in anymore and truly got angry.
It felt like it might be a bit interesting.
He couldn’t muster interest in anything, yet he gradually developed immense interest in provoking Xue Ling into losing her temper.
And his persistence was effective, but what he didn’t expect was that the first time he saw Xue Ling lose her temper was because of him.
When Wen Xuan learned that Xue Ling was together with him, he indeed flew into a rage. He raged impotently and lectured him again.
The injury left on his face was seen by Xue Ling. She didn’t say anything at the time, but later she went to their school and proactively sought Wen Xuan out to talk.
“You hit Wen Jiuzhe again, didn’t you? If you hit him because of his illegitimate-child status, I think your reason doesn’t hold up.”
“Shouldn’t you be blaming your uncle instead? Why don’t you hit your morally corrupt uncle—because you don’t dare? And besides, you’re just his cousin, not his real brother. May I ask what business of yours this is?”
“Why am I with Wen Jiuzhe?”
“I heard you talking about me to others—you think I’m virtuous and well-behaved, right? Your requirement for women is to be virtuous and well-behaved? Then my requirement for men is to act like a man. Wen Jiuzhe fits my requirements better than you do, so I chose him.”
“You’d better stop bullying Wen Jiuzhe. The last time you beat him in the woods, I recorded a video.”
“If I find out you hit him again, I’ll post the video on the forums of several nearby schools, and mass-send it to your classmates, friends, and people in the student union, so everyone can see how ugly you look when you beat someone.”
“……”
They were talking under the big tree beside the library. By coincidence, Wen Jiuzhe was sitting in the corridor window above their heads smoking, and he heard the entire exchange.
He saw his cousin, who usually bared his ferocious nature toward him, being cornered by Xue Ling until his face turned the color of pig liver—red, then black, black tinged with green—spectacularly so.
He almost couldn’t hold back a laugh, and at the same time felt a bit absurd inside. He had thought Xue Ling wouldn’t dare say a single harsh word to anyone; he hadn’t expected her to be quite good at sarcasm.
Standing at the window, he saw Wen Xuan trembling with rage where he stood, and also saw Xue Ling walk a short distance away, then suddenly lose her composure, raise her hand to pound her chest, looking shaken, even glancing back as if afraid Wen Xuan would chase after her to hit her.
So scared, yet she still dared to come over and threaten him?
Xue Ling kept breaking his initial impression of her.
Not long after the two of them confirmed their relationship, Xue Ling took the initiative to propose living together.
Wen Jiuzhe hadn’t expected her to make such a request, because at that time the two of them hadn’t even held hands more than twice.
And she looked like the kind of person who was reserved and conservative, someone who would absolutely be unable to accept the relationship progressing too fast.
Yet she went to him and proactively said, “I’m renting a place nearby by myself, and there’s an empty room. Can you move in?”
“Why?” Wen Jiuzhe didn’t understand why she would suddenly make such a request.
“Because… I don’t feel at ease living there alone. Recently there have often been strangers wandering around my door. I’m a little scared.”
It wasn’t until Wen Jiuzhe returned to the dormitory that his roommate Fang Xianwen came over smugly to claim credit, saying:
“Yesterday a girl came looking for you—it was that girl my cousin Wen Xuan likes. She even asked about you. I figure she was helping my cousin gather information.”
“So I told her that Brother Ze, you’re living miserably, being ostracized by everyone in the dorm, that all the stuff you keep in the dorm gets thrown out, and they don’t even let you come back to sleep, so you often end up sleeping on the streets. That way, when she tells my cousin, we won’t give ourselves away.”
Wen Jiuzhe: “……”
So that was why Xue Ling invited him to live together.
“Well said. Don’t say it again next time, just pretend you’re mute.”
Wen Jiuzhe patted Fang Xianwen on the shoulder. “Also, she’s my girlfriend now.”
Fang Xianwen froze. “Huh? What?”
Although it was a misunderstanding, Wen Jiuzhe still moved over to live with Xue Ling.
He didn’t see the stranger she mentioned wandering by her door, but he dealt with a middle-aged man who always struck up conversations with her in the elevator.
The few people in Wen Jiuzhe’s dorm were very afraid of him. As long as he was in the dorm, they didn’t dare speak loudly, especially when he came back injured—then the others didn’t even dare stay at school, preferring to live outside and leave the dorm to him.
Compared to those cowardly boys, Xue Ling was very strange. She wasn’t afraid of him, even though he was tall and imposing, and his bearing didn’t look like that of a good person.
She seemed to think that he was someone who needed to be taken care of and protected.
Clearly, she herself didn’t even reach his shoulder in height, yet she had an inexplicable urge to protect him.
At the same time, she was becoming more and more skilled at losing her temper at him.
The time she yelled at him the loudest was because on his birthday, after he ate an eight-inch cake she had brought back, a patch of red rash broke out on his arm.
She couldn’t take it anymore and shouted at him: “Why didn’t you say earlier that you’re allergic to eggs? You know you’re allergic to eggs and you still ate so much?!”
“Wasn’t it you who said I had to finish it?” Wen Jiuzhe sat on the sofa and shot back.
“I didn’t know you were allergic to eggs! Why didn’t you say anything?! Are you an idiot?!”
“What’s there to say? It’s just a little allergy, it’ll be fine soon.” Wen Jiuzhe didn’t even know why she was angry—angrier than being chased by a dog.
He had been allergic to eggs since childhood. Back then, his family was poor, and every time his mother would leave the eggs for him to eat.
When he was young, the allergy was more severe. After eating eggs, he would have trouble breathing, but his mother didn’t know what an allergy was. Like many parents, she felt eggs were nutritious, a good thing—how could they not be eaten?
After he grew up, the allergy got much better. It was just that eating products containing eggs would cause a few red rashes.
For Wen Jiuzhe, who often had injuries on his body, this kind of minor issue of allergic rashes wasn’t even worth paying attention to.
He’d never paid attention to it growing up. He ate eggs anyway, and wasn’t he fine? Others didn’t care, and he didn’t care either—bread, eggs, whatever there was to eat.
But the day she found out he was allergic to eggs, Xue Ling scolded him, then went to buy allergy medicine for him and urged him to take it.
She grabbed his arm, frowned as she looked at it, and touched his red rash.
“Does it still itch now?”
He hadn’t felt anything before, but when her fingers poked him, that patch of skin suddenly started itching.
Her fingers were cool, the pads a little soft, the sensation vivid, awakening some feelings he’d never noticed before.
That night, he couldn’t help scratching his arm over and over, scratching out long red marks before the itching finally subsided.
After that, Xue Ling never bought bread or cake for the house again. Even when she went to the supermarket to buy noodles, she made sure to check carefully whether they were egg noodles.
“…Is it really necessary to be this careful?”
She flipped through the ingredient list without even lifting her head. “Of course it is.”
He silently followed behind her, carrying the heavy shopping basket in one hand, a strange feeling rising in his heart.
“Xue Ling.”
“Hm?”
“Feeling sorry for men brings an unfortunate life.” Just like his mother.
Xue Ling turned back and glared at him irritably. “You’re starting again, aren’t you? If you don’t see me angry for a day, you feel uncomfortable all over, is that it?”
“Xue Ling.”
“What now?”
“In the future, you absolutely must not become someone’s virtuous wife and good mother.”
Wen Jiuzhe thought that if she took care of someone like this in the future, raising that man into a childish piece of trash, she’d have bitter days ahead of her.
Just thinking about it already made him feel unhappy.
Xue Ling rolled her eyes at the condiments on the shelf and replied numbly and perfunctorily, “Alright, alright, I won’t be a virtuous wife and good mother—let you be one instead. You can be the virtuous wife and good mother in the future.”
Barking like a dog every day without knowing why.
Wen Jiuzhe didn’t know when his feelings for Xue Ling changed from dislike to liking. By the time he noticed, he realized he disliked Wen Xuan even more.
Because Wen Xuan liked Xue Ling, he found Wen Xuan’s existence even more unbearable.
A piece of trash like Wen Xuan—what right did he have to like Xue Ling?
On the first day he and Xue Ling confirmed their relationship, Wen Jiuzhe thought: I don’t like her like this—soft, weak, without a temper, letting others bully her.
On the hundredth day after he and Xue Ling confirmed their relationship, Wen Jiuzhe thought: I don’t like her like this. She’d better become irritable, ill-tempered, and not know how to take care of people. That way no one will take advantage of her anymore, and she won’t attract trash men again.
He himself also fell within the category of trash men.
༚༅༚˳ . . ˳༚༅༚
The cigarette burned to its end, the sun revealing its outline, lighting up the open field.
Wen Jiuzhe came back to himself from his memories.
He finally got back on the bike and returned to the courtyard where he had left it.
The courtyard gate was still properly locked. When he opened the lock and walked closer to the car, he felt his heartbeat gradually quicken, pounding heavily in his chest.
It was as if only at this moment was he truly about to reunite with someone long separated.
He paused for a while in front of the car door, then first pulled open the back seat door.
Xue Ling’s figure was curled up in the corner, completely motionless.
Wen Jiuzhe looked at her, and unexpectedly didn’t know how to speak.
Suddenly his gaze swept over a small box on the seat—it was a box of anti-allergy medicine.
He remembered very clearly that it hadn’t been in the car before.
