Bai Jiangxin pressed him down once more, his expression displeased. “Did I tell you to move?”

He tightened his grip again, just in case Ye Minjia escaped once more.

Ye Minjia: “……”

Pretty domineering, huh.

Normally he rejected physical contact ten thousand times over, acting like anyone touching him was sullying his pure and noble body. Today the sun must have risen in the west—here he was, taking his pulse.

In the blink of an eye, the classroom had emptied out. Ye Minjia couldn’t help rolling his eyes. Mainly, he really had no idea what this person was trying to do—but he understood Bai Jiangxin well enough to know there was a way to make him let go.

“I’m saying, brother—if you keep this up, I’m really starting to feel like things between us are getting a little ambiguous…”

Bai Jiangxin’s brow twitched. He immediately let go, his face filled with undisguised disgust.

Ye Minjia grabbed his wrist in pain. “Fuck, are you seriously this strong?”

He looked so refined and gentle, how could his grip be this strong? If it were a girl without much flesh on her bones, wouldn’t he have snapped her wrist?

Hard to imagine. He could only hope that his future girlfriend would be physically sturdier, able to withstand being grabbed like that.

If they didn’t go down now, they’d miss roll call. As the class monitor, he still had to maintain discipline. Ye Minjia couldn’t be bothered to deal with Bai Jiangxin anymore and directly said, “I’m not dealing with you anymore. Go down at your own pace. I’m leaving first.”

Bai Jiangxin didn’t respond, nor did he get up. He sat in his seat, expression complicated, lost in thought.

Just now, he had been gripping Ye Minjia’s hand for at least three minutes, and Ye Minjia’s incessant inner monologue hadn’t stopped for a second.

From the confusion of “Did he find out I secretly played on his Honor of Kings account,” to “Shit, then he’s definitely going to change the password and I’ll never be able to log into his account to show off and flirt with girls again,” and finally to “Can you just give me a clean end already—what the hell are you trying to do by grabbing me like this,” until he said it felt a bit ambiguous—Bai Jiangxin had been startled and hurriedly let go.

As long as he maintained physical contact, he could keep hearing what Ye Minjia was thinking.

But he couldn’t hear Xiang Di’s thoughts anymore. Even if the biological link had already disappeared, when he had just helped Xiang Di earlier, he should have been able to hear her inner voice.

Later, Xiang Di had patted him again. He had frozen—not because he was averse to her touch, but because he still hadn’t heard anything.

The old man had told him before that their kind of hereditary condition had virtually no chance of being cured, because there were no pathological cases at all. If he didn’t want to hear people’s inner thoughts, the only way was to avoid contact with others.

Just then, someone patted him on the back again. Bai Jiangxin turned around—it was the homeroom teacher, Chen Jinghua.

Chen Jinghua had entered from the back door. Seeing that Bai Jiangxin was the only one left sitting in the classroom, he came over to remind him.

“Bai Jiangxin, why haven’t you gone down yet?”

【What’s wrong with this kid? Standing here like a great Buddha?】

Chen Jinghua asked, “Feeling unwell?”

Bai Jiangxin shook his head. “I’m fine. I was just thinking about a problem.”

“Oh. Then hurry down. You can think about it again after the flag-raising,” Chen Jinghua said. “After you go down, help me tell Ye Minjia to keep an eye on our class’s discipline. I need to make a trip to the principal’s office. Tell Ye Minjia not to tell the others—if they know I’m not around, some people will make a huge fuss.”

Just as he finished instructing him, the phone in Chen Jinghua’s pocket rang. He hurriedly picked it up. “Principal—oh, the students have already arrived? Okay, I’ll be right there.”

Before leaving the classroom, Chen Jinghua reminded Bai Jiangxin to close the classroom door on his way out.

The homeroom teacher left in a hurry.

After closing the door, Bai Jiangxin also went downstairs.

All the way down, he kept finding one thing strange: as long as there was physical contact, he could hear Ye Minjia’s inner thoughts, and he could also hear the homeroom teacher’s inner thoughts—but he simply couldn’t hear Xiang Di’s.

Why had the physical-contact link failed only with Xiang Di?

By the time he reached the field, Ye Minjia had just finished counting heads and waved for him to come over quickly.

“Master Bai, you’re finally here,” Ye Minjia said. “Hurry up.”

Ye Minjia pulled him into the boys’ formation. The boys were standing rather close together, and Bai Jiangxin heard the inner complaints of two boys grumbling about how many things the school required.

Bai Jiangxin frowned and shifted a little to the side, putting some distance between himself and them.

The flag-raising ceremony was about to begin; the national anthem was about to play. All the homeroom teachers were standing at the front of their respective class formations. Ye Minjia made a sound of surprise. “Why hasn’t the homeroom teacher come yet?”

Bai Jiangxin said flatly, “He went to the principal’s office.”

Ye Minjia said in shock, “Our homeroom teacher finally got fired?”

“Bullshit.” A boy standing behind Bai Jiangxin poked his head out and said, “I heard Teacher Dan say that our class is getting a transfer student, personally arranged by the principal. The homeroom teacher is probably busy with that.”

“A transfer student at a time like this? Just because our side has an easier gaokao doesn’t mean you can mess around like this,” Ye Minjia said. “That confident about the gaokao?”

The boy shrugged. “No idea.”

Ye Minjia suddenly nudged Bai Jiangxin.

“Hey, there’s a transfer student coming. Any thoughts?”

Bai Jiangxin’s tone was calm. “What thoughts could I have?”

“What if their grades are better than yours?” Ye Minjia said. “Scared?”

Bai Jiangxin shot him a flat glance and couldn’t be bothered to respond.

“Oh, so confident?” Ye Minjia said. “Then what if it’s a guy, and what if he’s even more handsome than you? When that happens, all the girls will switch their affections, and you, the former school heartthrob, will be out of fashion.”

Bai Jiangxin frowned. Just as Ye Minjia thought he had finally felt a sense of crisis, Bai Jiangxin tugged at the corner of his lips, his dark eyes deepening as he let out a lukewarm chuckle.

“That’d be perfect.”

Perfect—he’d finally get some peace and quiet.

Bai Jiangxin couldn’t figure out what he was annoyed about, or why he was bothering to dwell on the fact that he couldn’t hear Xiang Di’s inner thoughts anymore.

What was there to dwell on? Out of all those inner voices, Xiang Di’s was the noisiest and the most disruptive to him—lewd and lustful, to the point that it made it hard for him to stay at school, and even after he got home, he was still thinking about it. Now that he couldn’t hear it anymore, that was perfect.

Just do as she wished and quickly separate seats. Pretend that nothing had happened during this period, and he could be completely freed.

─── ꒰ঌ·✦·໒꒱ ───

The boring flag-raising ceremony finally ended. Xiang Di stretched lazily. She had just eaten breakfast, but standing there had made her hungry again. She planned to go to the school store with Liang Qianqian to buy something else to eat.

Just as she linked arms with Liang Qianqian, someone called out to her.

A face that was good-looking but somewhat gloomy, like the King of Hell—it was Bai Jiangxin.

Because he had snapped at her on the way to school earlier, Xiang Di was a little afraid of him now, worried that he’d snap at her again. She shrank her shoulders slightly and asked gently what it was.

Bai Jiangxin said, “Come with me to see the homeroom teacher.”

Xiang Di remembered—it was about changing seats.

She hadn’t expected him to be in such a hurry to change seats. There was actually a bit of disappointment in her heart, but she didn’t show anything. She nodded briskly. “Oh, okay, let’s go.”

It looked like the school store was out of the question. Xiang Di had no choice but to ask Liang Qianqian to help her buy a bread roll from the store.

Liang Qianqian glanced at Bai Jiangxin, then at Xiang Di.

The suspicion in her heart grew stronger and stronger. It seemed Ye Minjia’s guess was actually pretty accurate.

She didn’t dare ask what the two of them were going to see the homeroom teacher for. Instead, she directly asked Xiang Di, “What flavor do you want?”

Xiang Di answered without hesitation, “Pork floss.”

Hearing the way she chose pork floss without the slightest hesitation, the tension in Bai Jiangxin’s brows finally eased a little.

The two of them didn’t return to the classroom and instead went straight to the teachers’ office. Along the way, there was nothing to talk about.

Xiang Di was very quiet. So after the link disappeared, she actually became this quiet.

She obediently walked one step behind him, preferring to be bored enough to tuck her hands into the oversized sleeves of her school uniform, lowering her head and silently staring at the heels of Bai Jiangxin’s shoes, twisting her uniform sleeves as she played with them like a little child, not trying to talk to him at all.

She was already this quiet, yet whether it was the morning breeze brushing her bangs and making a sound, or her light footsteps as she walked, or even the sound of her breathing—somehow, it all made it impossible for Bai Jiangxin to ignore her.

Bai Jiangxin closed his eyes helplessly and could only stop walking.

Something suddenly bumped into his back.

He turned around. Before he could say anything, Xiang Di had already taken a big step backward.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I wasn’t watching where I was going just now—I didn’t mean to!”

Afraid that he would misunderstand and think she had deliberately created physical contact, Xiang Di hurriedly took another big step back, pulling away to an absolutely safe distance from him.

Xiang Di very consciously said, “Let’s go. This way I definitely won’t accidentally bump into you again.”

Looking at Xiang Di standing so far away from him, if he were even a little nearsighted, Bai Jiangxin wouldn’t be able to see her face clearly.

Why didn’t she just retreat to the ends of the world while she was at it? If she was so afraid of touching him, wouldn’t it be better to just leave Earth altogether and immigrate to live on some alien planet?

Bai Jiangxin’s expression darkened as he stepped closer to her—at which point Xiang Di took another step back.

Her movement of retreating again, combined with the fact that he couldn’t hear her inner thoughts and had no idea why she was doing this, finally pushed Bai Jiangxin over the edge.

His low voice carried confusion and incomprehension. He frowned at her, paused, then asked with a hint of helplessness, “Xiang Di, am I going to eat you? What exactly are you hiding from me for?”

He almost blurted out—didn’t you like me, didn’t you like calling me husband, didn’t you treat me as a sexual fantasy? Why don’t you dare come close to me?

You don’t even dare to get close to him—so this is what she calls liking him?