Bai Jiangxin heard Xiang Di politely say to the shop clerk, “Hello, I’d like a cup of Honey Peach Four Seasons Spring.”
It was her.
Bai Jiangxin was certain.
Just like with silent reading, everyone’s inner voice has the same timbre as the sound produced through the physical vibration of the vocal cords. Xiang Di’s inner voice was still sweet and obedient, only what she said from her heart was far more unrestrained than what she said aloud.
【Four Seasons Spring~ Four Seasons Spring~ drinking Four Seasons Spring together with hubby~ that way it counts as drinking couple milk tea~】
Xiang Di hummed a tune in her heart. No idea what melody it was—anyway, it definitely wasn’t the tune of Offering. Most likely something she made up herself.
To be honest, her talent for composing wasn’t great.
Bai Jiangxin didn’t move for quite a while. Ye Minjia urged him, “Are we going or not?”
Bai Jiangxin came back to his senses. “Let’s go.”
Finally squeezing out of the crowd, Ye Minjia straightened his school uniform and complained, “I swear, is it really necessary for this many people just to buy milk tea? I’m about to get squashed into a wife cake.”
Hearing Ye Minjia say wife cake, Bai Jiangxin’s Adam’s apple suddenly bobbed, and he let out a soft scoff at the corner of his lips.
Ye Minjia was confused. “What are you laughing at?”
Bai Jiangxin looked at him and, for no apparent reason, said, “You’re actually pretty suited to being a prophet.”
What a grand, heart-only silent drama of secret love—so noisy it was about to deafen his ears.
Ye Minjia was even more confused. “What does that mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything.” Bai Jiangxin said lightly. “I’ll only come with you to buy it this one time. Next time, you come by yourself.”
Ye Minjia sighed helplessly. “Do you hate drinking milk tea that much?”
“Don’t hate it.” Bai Jiangxin said. “But I don’t like it either.”
─── ꒰ঌ·✦·໒꒱ ───
“So sweet.”
As soon as he got the milk tea, on the way back to the classroom, Ye Minjia couldn’t wait to take a sip first.
This wasn’t full sugar—this was every bit of sugar in the world poured into his cup of milk tea.
Girls really were impressive. They could drink something this sweet without changing expression. No wonder Xiang Di’s ranking in the joint exam had improved so much this time. With this kind of sugar tolerance, she’d succeed at anything she did.
He glanced at Bai Jiangxin beside him and asked, “Is yours not sweet?”
Bai Jiangxin: “It’s okay.”
Ye Minjia pulled out his straw, wanting to mooch a sip from him. “Let me have a taste.”
Bai Jiangxin swiftly dodged to the side.
“You’re way too stingy.” Ye Minjia looked displeased. “That cup was my treat, okay? If I’d known, I wouldn’t have treated you.”
Who knew Bai Jiangxin didn’t buy into moral pressure at all. He said calmly, “I’ll transfer the money to you later.”
“……Why do you have zero sense of humor?”
His own cup was way too sweet, and Ye Minjia really didn’t want to keep drinking it, so he said, “How about the two of us switch and drink each other’s?”
After saying that, he held his own cup out in front of Bai Jiangxin. Bai Jiangxin immediately frowned in disgust.
“Take it away. I don’t want something you’ve already drunk.”
Ye Minjia knew he was a germaphobe. He didn’t like crowded places, didn’t like any physical contact with others, and even when it came to eating and drinking, every time they went to the cafeteria, he insisted on bringing his own tableware. Even when eating out, as long as Bai Jiangxin was there, everyone had to use serving chopsticks. The moment someone dared to pick up food with their own chopsticks, he wouldn’t eat another bite.
It made it seem like he despised other people that much. As a result, Bai Jiangxin almost never participated in any class gatherings.
He wore a perpetually cold expression. The girls treated him like an unattainable flower on a high peak, only daring to admire him from afar. As for the boys, most were just passing acquaintances—usually just getting together to play games. Only Ye Minjia could tolerate him, treating him as a brother, so that this school heartthrob, whose talent points were all maxed out on intelligence and looks, wouldn’t end up being alone at school.
Mainly, Ye Minjia was thick-skinned. The more Bai Jiangxin refused to let him drink, the more he wanted to do something stupid.
He simply slung an arm around Bai Jiangxin and went to snatch the cup from his hand.
Bai Jiangxin’s expression was full of disgust. But Ye Minjia was far too hard to shake off and even tried to force him to drink that cup of milk tea that was sweet to death. Bai Jiangxin warned him, “Ye Minjia, don’t be disgusting.”
The lowered voice carried anger. Ye Minjia was clinging to him and was startled by the sight of his good brother being genuinely angry.
It was just a joke. He also knew he was a germaphobe and would never share a cup of milk tea with someone—but did he really have to be this fierce?
Ye Minjia genuinely treated Bai Jiangxin as a brother, but Bai Jiangxin was always giving him the cold shoulder, and sometimes he couldn’t help feeling unhappy.
【Does this kid really despise me that much?】
【Three years as brothers, and this is all it amounts to.】
【Forget it. After the college entrance exam, it’ll be bridge to bridge, road to road. I won’t have to press my warm face against this dead block of ice ever again.】
Ye Minjia muttered and sulked to himself in his heart.
Letting out a barely perceptible sigh, Bai Jiangxin said, “You know I have a cleanliness obsession. I can’t drink the same beverage as someone else.”
After a pause, he added, “Next time I’ll treat you.”
He wasn’t good at comforting people, even less at backing down. This was already the greatest concession he could make to a friend.
Fortunately, Ye Minjia was a carefree sort and easy to placate. He clicked his tongue.
“Fine, I won’t argue with you this time.”
【Knew it, you’re still afraid of losing me.】
Bai Jiangxin had long since grown used to Ye Minjia’s mood swings that changed faster than flipping a book.
Ye Minjia’s inner voice didn’t make Bai Jiangxin feel repulsed. He always refused any physical contact with others and disdained prying into other people’s thoughts. Ye Minjia was the exception. Although this guy often did stupid things, he truly treated him as a friend.
Of course, no matter how good a friend was, he still couldn’t share a cup of milk tea.
With the college entrance exam approaching, even the occasional physical contact in daily life was already enough to make Bai Jiangxin feel his ears grow noisy. He didn’t want to spend every day endlessly listening to Ye Minjia’s meaningless inner chatter.
Moreover, eavesdropping on another person’s inner voice was, after all, a kind of intrusion into their privacy.
If Ye Minjia knew he had this ability, let alone sharing a cup of milk tea—
He’d probably be scrambling to stay as far away from him as possible.
No matter how good the relationship was, no one would be willing to be stripped bare of all their secrets and stand in front of the other person, with even what they were thinking laid out clearly for the other to see.
─── ꒰ঌ·✦·໒꒱ ───
Having bought the same milk tea as Bai Jiangxin, Xiang Di drank it with particular happiness.
Even though many people ordered the same milk tea every day and this wasn’t anything especially rare, someone in unrequited love always had ten thousand ways to brainwash themselves.
Xiang Di couldn’t bear to finish it so quickly. She planned to take the milk tea back to the classroom and set it on her desk, even though it wasn’t certain anyone would notice that she and Bai Jiangxin had ordered the same drink.
But what if even one person noticed? And then joked, hey, you and Bai Jiangxin ordered the same milk tea—you two are really in sync.
It was really just a tiny bit of secret-love scheming. Thinking of this, Xiang Di couldn’t help smiling first.
After gulping down more than half a cup of milk tea in one go, Liang Qianqian suddenly wanted to go to the restroom, so she asked Xiang Di to help take her milk tea back to the classroom while she went to take care of it.
It was just noon break, and there weren’t many people in the classroom. In the senior year classroom, books were piled up like mountains. Xiang Di subconsciously glanced toward a certain desk.
He wasn’t there, but the milk tea he had just bought was placed on the desk.
Taking advantage of no one paying attention, Xiang Di quietly walked over to his desk. Their class was a key class, so the “mountains of books” were already relatively modest, but compared to other people’s desks where stacks upon stacks rose like illegal constructions—Bai Jiangxin’s desk was even more simple and clean. It was a strange phenomenon: the better someone studied, the fewer books there were on their desk.
Draft paper was laid out on his desk, covered with the solution process to a certain math problem.
abcdxy—every letter was written beautifully. How was it that even the auxiliary lines in a geometry problem were drawn so straight, so pleasing to look at?
Without realizing it, Xiang Di became absorbed.
“Do you need something?”
A voice suddenly broke her fixation. Xiang Di looked up—Bai Jiangxin had returned at some point without her knowing.
She parted her lips slightly. Being caught red-handed by her crush, standing in front of his desk and fawning over his draft paper—nothing could be more socially mortifying than this.
Bai Jiangxin looked at Xiang Di calmly.
Judging from the girl’s outward appearance alone—well-behaved and quiet—there really wasn’t any sign at all of the undercurrents in her heart.
Bai Jiangxin hadn’t taken the milk tea shop incident to heart, nor did he intend to expose Xiang Di’s secret.
How Xiang Di thought of him in her heart, what she called him there, was her business. Who she liked, who she disliked, even who she secretly loved, was all her freedom. Even if that person was him, as long as it didn’t disturb him, it wasn’t his place to interfere.
The premise was that she could only think about it in her heart, and not stand in front of him and disrupt his noon break.
They had only been classmates for a single semester. They hadn’t even spoken before. He had no idea how she had come to like him.
What did she know about him? What did she understand about him?
Probably like everyone else—just a shallow fondness. After graduation, bridge to bridge, road to road, she would forget all about it.
Bai Jiangxin watched as her face rapidly flushed red, and had no intention of helping her out of the situation.
“What are you doing standing next to my seat?” he asked, not politely.
Facing her crush for the first time in such an awkward situation, Xiang Di could only save herself by making something up on the spot.
“Uh, there’s a problem I don’t know how to solve. I wanted to ask you about it.”
“What problem?”
Xiang Di asked cautiously, “You’re willing to teach me?”
Bai Jiangxin: “Bring it here, let me take a look.”
Fortunately, Xiang Di really did have a problem she couldn’t solve. To avoid giving herself away, she deliberately picked a relatively difficult one. She had originally planned to save it to ask the teacher, but now she could just ask Bai Jiangxin instead.
Seeing that she truly brought a problem to ask about, Bai Jiangxin didn’t refuse.
After being classmates for an entire semester, this was the first time Xiang Di had asked Bai Jiangxin for help.
So it turned out that even with classmates he wasn’t familiar with, he was still willing to help.
Who said he was an unapproachable flower on a high peak? He was obviously a very good person.
Those people who said he had a cold personality really didn’t understand him at all.
Xiang Di silently spoke up for Bai Jiangxin in her heart.
She had wanted to come ask him questions before, but unfortunately she was really too timid. No matter how much she thought about it in her heart, her body still didn’t dare to act.
Thinking about it now, she herself had also been afraid of being rejected by him. She actually had her own preconceived notions about him.
Sorry. Xiang Di quietly apologized to him in her heart.
Out of a bit of secret scheming, Xiang Di temporarily set her own milk tea on his desk, creating the impression of “I’m just casually borrowing your desk to put this for a moment.”
Looking at the two cups of milk tea placed together—even the stickers were exactly the same, to the point that you couldn’t even tell whose was whose—Xiang Di secretly rejoiced, feeling as if she and Bai Jiangxin were using couple cups.
She regretted not sneaking her phone to school. Otherwise, no matter what, she would have taken a photo of the two cups of milk tea together, added a nice filter, and used it as her wallpaper.
Bai Jiangxin didn’t notice the girl’s little scheming at all. On top of that, the problem Xiang Di asked about was indeed rather difficult and needed some time. While lowering his head to work through the calculations, he casually picked up the milk tea on the desk and took a small sip.
“Ah.”
A soft exclamation.
Bai Jiangxin raised his head, his expression slightly impatient.
What was she exclaiming about now?
Xiang Di’s round eyes widened. She cautiously pointed at the cup of milk tea in his hand.
“Um, you drank the wrong milk tea. That one… is my milk tea…”
Bai Jiangxin froze, looking at the cup in his hand.
It was too late. He had already drunk it.
Bai Jiangxin’s expression changed.
When most people have their things mistakenly drunk by someone else, their first reaction is usually embarrassment, discomfort, and well, this cup of milk tea is ruined now.
But Xiang Di’s reaction was completely different.
A biological link formed through microorganisms in saliva. Very quickly, Bai Jiangxin’s brain received a shriek—one even more excited than at noon.
【Help.】
【This is an indirect kiss—this is definitely an indirect kiss, right?!】
【I must have accumulated virtue in my past life. In this life I get to have an indirect kiss with my husband. Heavenly Mother, you’re being way too good to me.】
【Ah! Ah! Ah!】
Bai Jiangxin’s expression was speechless.
Was she a marmot or something?
Then he heard the marmot let out a smug little hum.
Xiang Di’s train of thought really was extraordinary. After something like this happened, aside from the excitement of having an indirect kiss with the boy she secretly liked, there was even a tiny bit of schadenfreude in her heart.
【Serves you right for being so aloof all the time. We’ve been classmates for a whole semester and you didn’t even know I was your classmate. Well now, didn’t you end up drinking my saliva? Let’s see how you deal with this~】
【Bleh bleh bleh~】
Bai Jiangxin: “……”
This schadenfreude, this annoying little tone that was practically itching for him to embarrass himself—did this person really have a crush on him?
─── ꒰ঌ·✦·໒꒱ ───
Author’s note:
Yes, that’s exactly how our yellow-hearted sweetheart carries out her secret crush.
Everyone doesn’t need to worry about our precious girl dying of social embarrassment from having her inner thoughts overheard—actually, comparatively speaking, Xiao Bai is the one who’ll be more socially dead instead -v-
