The two girls were very polite. In order not to disturb them while they continued eating, they chatted a bit and then prepared to leave.

Before leaving, they took a photo with Xiang Sheng and asked if they could post the photo online.

Xiang Sheng said, “You can post it, as long as you didn’t photograph my sister.”

The girls of course understood and promised they hadn’t, then left.

As soon as they were gone, Xiang Sheng immediately dropped the cold cool-guy persona and showed off to Xiang Di. “See that? This is your brother’s popularity. Even eating hotpot, I can run into fans, and they’re even such pretty female fans.”

“They are very pretty.” Xiang Di said while chewing a slice of fatty beef. “Just not very good eyesight.”

“I’m the one treating for this hotpot. I advise you to watch your words.” Xiang Sheng said disdainfully. “Let me tell you, the ones with bad eyesight aren’t them—it’s you. Anyone who had a brother as handsome as me would be laughing themselves awake in their dreams.”

Xiang Di bit on her chopsticks and clicked her tongue.

Speaking of this, Xiang Sheng remembered something. “Hey, before, you said the boys in your class are more handsome than me. I told you to show me photos. Where are the photos? You don’t want the two thousand five hundred anymore?”

“Don’t want it. Afraid you’d be so ashamed after seeing them that you’d hang yourself on the spot.” Xiang Di said. “I can’t sacrifice my own brother’s life for a mere two thousand five hundred.”

Xiang Sheng twitched the corner of his mouth. “Then should I be thanking you?”

Xiang Di: “No need to thank me.”

“Cut it. You don’t dare show me the photos because there simply isn’t anyone in your class more handsome than me.” Xiang Sheng pointed at her with his chopsticks. “You’re just bullshitting.”

Xiang Di became anxious. “There really are, and there are even several of them. I just don’t have their photos.”

“They don’t even have photos in their Moments?”

“No. You think everyone’s like you? Thinking you look pretty good and then posting horny stuff online every day. They’re all very low-key, okay.” Xiang Di immediately took out her phone. “If you don’t believe me, I’ll show you.”

As she spoke, she opened WeChat. To prevent Xiang Sheng from seeing, she first canceled Bai Jiangxin’s pinned chat, then opened his Moments and showed it to Xiang Sheng.

A single horizontal line, only showing three days of visibility, zero posts. Such a cold and aloof Moments.

Then Xiang Di showed him Zhou Linxiao’s. Zhou Linxiao’s Moments did have content, but it was all daily scenery photos. He even photographed stray cats by the roadside—just no selfies.

The class monitor and Wang Sichen both had selfies in their Moments. Xiang Di felt that although the two of them looked pretty good too, they still couldn’t deal any dimension-crushing blow to her own brother, so she didn’t show those to Xiang Sheng.

Xiang Sheng still didn’t believe it. “I don’t believe someone who’s more handsome than me could resist not posting selfies.”

“Truly handsome guys already don’t lack praise from others in real life. Do they still need to post selfies to seek a sense of existence?”

She had indeed thought about secretly taking a couple of their photos before and showing them to Xiang Sheng, but after thinking about it, she gave up.

If she got discovered, how awkward would that be. Zhou Linxiao would be fine—if she explained it to him, he would definitely be understanding. But Bai Jiangxin would definitely feel offended.

She liked him so much; she didn’t want to do anything that would offend him, not even secretly taking photos.

Halfway through the hotpot, seeing that her dipping sauce was already used up, Xiang Di stood up. “I’m going to mix another bowl of sauce.”

Xiang Sheng said, “Hey, help me mix another bowl too.”

“Don’t you have hands yourself?”

“I’m paying for this meal. Will it kill you to help me a bit?”

“Fine, fine.”

Xiang Di left, casually tossing her phone beside the hotpot.

Not even afraid of getting oil on it. This dead girl had less sense of propriety than him, a grown man. Xiang Sheng casually picked up her phone and wiped it with a tissue.

With that wipe, the password input screen appeared.

A six-digit password. Xiang Sheng tried entering Xiang Di’s date of birth and unlocked it successfully.

“……”

This is why you shouldn’t use your birthday as your password—way too easy to guess.

A thought suddenly flashed through Xiang Sheng’s mind.

A person’s biggest secrets are usually all in their phone. Wasn’t this the perfect chance to grab her dirt?

This dead girl definitely had a whole pile of porn novels on her phone. But just as he was about to tap into her File Assistant, Xiang Sheng hesitated.

No, after all, this dead sister of his was already eighteen. If he really discovered something outrageous, where would her self-esteem go?

After all, when he was in high school, he also hid plenty of stuff on his own phone.

But now her phone was right here with him. Not looking made him feel extremely unwilling, especially thinking about how unjustly he had been scolded by his parents that morning.

Xiang Sheng irritably clicked his tongue.

In the end, he came up with a despicable but brilliant plan. Because he thought of it while eating hotpot, he named it: the Evil Hotpot Plan.

Dead sister, this is the price you pay for using incest sibling stuff to disgust your own brother.

Xiang Sheng first found that viral abs-showing video of his, then sent it to her. After that, using her WeChat account, he found the two boys’ profile pictures she had just shown him.

Both boys’ avatars were very distinctive. One was a ragdoll cat.

The other was the monster boss from Stranger Things. One of them he didn’t know the name of—his sister hadn’t added a remark, so they probably weren’t close. The other one was called Zhou Linxiao.

Xiang Sheng didn’t look at Xiang Di’s chat history with the two boys. He directly shared the video to both of them.

And asked: 【Do you have abs like this?】

A slightly provocative question.

If these two really were big handsome guys, then with the pure little-girl image his sister always maintained in front of people, how would she clean this up in their eyes?

The one his sister hadn’t remarked hadn’t looked at his phone yet and didn’t reply for the moment. The other one, Zhou Linxiao, replied very quickly.

Zhou Linxiao: 【Yeah.】

Zhou Linxiao: 【His are trained too thin. Mine are a bit bigger than his.】

Zhou Linxiao: 【Why are you suddenly asking me this?】

Xiang Sheng raised an eyebrow.

Heh. This Zhou Linxiao—just a high school brat—actually has more time than him to train muscles?

Xiang Sheng was thinking about how to retort when his sister had already returned with two bowls of sauce.

He quickly deleted all the messages and pretended nothing had happened.

Xiang Di walked over and saw her brother just place her phone back on the table.

She immediately frowned suspiciously. “You looked at my phone?”

“Oil splashed on your phone,” Xiang Sheng said without changing his expression.

Xiang Di was still a bit doubtful and immediately unlocked her phone and checked around. She didn’t find anything unusual.

Xiang Di warned, “You’d better not have looked. Otherwise, our sibling relationship ends here.”

Xiang Sheng clicked his tongue.

“Hurry up, then,” he said. “Every week you knock me for a big meal. This pig of yours—I really can’t afford to raise you anymore.”

─── ꒰ঌ·✦·໒꒱ ───

The happy Sunday ended, and the devilish Monday arrived again.

But Xiang Di was still very happy—not only because she could see Bai Jiangxin again, but also because after this week’s classes were over, she had a luxurious buffet waiting for her.

Being able to go out for a big meal every week—life was really too wonderful.

This good mood lasted all the way into the classroom.

Her deskmate Zhou Linxiao had already arrived. Today there was a flag-raising ceremony, so he was also wearing the school uniform.

The traditional Chinese-style school uniform on him carried both the clear elegance and restraint of an Eastern youth, as well as the depth and flamboyance of mixed heritage.

Extremely friendly to the eyes.

Thank you Grandpa Jesus and Lady Nuwa for jointly creating such a pleasing-to-the-eye big handsome guy.

Filled with gratitude, Xiang Di greeted Zhou Linxiao in Spanish.

“Buenos días!”

Not very standard, but very cute pronunciation. Zhou Linxiao narrowed his beautiful olive-colored eyes and gently replied with good morning, then asked her:

“Why didn’t you reply to my message yesterday?”

Xiang Di blinked. “Huh? What message?”

Zhou Linxiao didn’t waste words and directly showed her his phone.

Xiang Di took the phone, and her expression instantly stiffened.

She didn’t even need to think to guess that this message was definitely sent by her damn brother.

That damn brother was still sleeping soundly at home. Settling accounts with him could wait. Her top priority right now was to quickly explain things clearly to Zhou Linxiao.

Zhou Linxiao even added from the side, “You didn’t reply after that. Could it be that you don’t believe my abs are bigger than that person’s?”

“No!” Xiang Di spoke incoherently. “Hey, listen to me—”

Zhou Linxiao: “Then do you want to take a look?”

“That message was… ah?”

Xiang Di stared blankly at him. “What did you just say?”

“Do you want to look at my abs?”

Zhou Linxiao repeated it. He didn’t feel that abs were anything shameful. After all, most Spaniards believe clothes are shackles that bind the soul, and Spain is one of the countries in the world that likes nudity the most, having the greatest number of nude beaches. Moreover, back then, his father had relied on a perfect physique to capture his mother’s heart.

However, because his mother is Chinese, she taught him a lot of Eastern etiquette from a young age, so his views were already considered relatively conservative.

Faced with his straightforward invitation, Xiang Di really wanted to say no, but…

Although she had read countless porn novels and porn comics, and had even watched a tiny bit of female-oriented porn, she had truly never seen real abs in real life.

Beer bellies were everywhere. Abs weren’t like Chinese cabbage at the market—something you could grow with just a few sit-ups.

What she actually wanted to see most was Bai Jiangxin’s abs, but whether Bai Jiangxin even had abs, she didn’t know.

Even if he did, she probably would only ever be able to fantasize about it in her head. Seeing them in reality was definitely impossible.

So…

“…That message wasn’t sent by me. It was a prank from my family member,” Xiang Di said. “But since we’re talking about looking at abs…” She asked cautiously, “You really don’t mind me looking?”

Although she was very open-minded in thought, she had always been conservative in behavior. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have secretly liked Bai Jiangxin for a full three years without daring to make a move.

Zhou Linxiao smiled. “What’s there to mind about? If you’re interested, you can even touch them.”

…Touch?

Xiang Di held out one finger. “I’ll just poke once with my finger, okay? Don’t worry, I definitely won’t take advantage of you.”

“It’s just touching abs. Does that even count as taking advantage?” Zhou Linxiao said. “Then wouldn’t my fitness trainer have to go to the police station?” Even though he was the one being touched, he instead comforted her not to feel pressured. “But you have to promise me that after looking, you’ll praise me a bit, so I feel that all this hard work training abs was worth it.”

“Absolutely!”

Xiang Di nodded so hard it was like a rattle-drum.

After speaking, Zhou Linxiao was about to take off his school uniform.

Xiang Di hurriedly stopped him. “What are you doing?”

Zhou Linxiao asked, tone puzzled: “Weren’t we looking at abs?”

“…But you can’t just take off your clothes in the classroom.”

“Not allowed in the classroom?” Zhou Linxiao laughed. “That conservative, huh? Then shall we go outside?”

Xiang Di thought taking clothes off outside wasn’t great either. After all, this was China, not Spain. But on the other hand, she truly hadn’t seen much of the world. The biggest spectacle she’d ever seen in her life was the imagined Bai Jiangxin, so she really, really wanted a glimpse of the real thing.

She bit her lip and said, “Better to look in the classroom.”

Zhou Linxiao simply unzipped his school jacket. The weather was still a bit cold, but maybe mixed-race people were naturally less sensitive to cold. Underneath, he only wore a thin woolen base layer. He didn’t even need to lift it; Xiang Di could already see two firm, faintly visible pectoral muscles.

Wow, big pecs. If they were Bai Jiangxin’s, she probably would have had a nosebleed already.

Then Zhou Linxiao lifted up his base layer.

Well-defined, not one extra bulge, not one missing, with distinct lines and thick blue veins pulsing beneath the skin, taut to just the right degree.

Calling it a miracle by Michelangelo would not be an exaggeration.

Her mind held not a single vulgar thought, filled only with appreciation and admiration for this fine physique. Xiang Di gave a thumbs-up and said to him, “Handsome!”

“Thank you.” Zhou Linxiao smiled modestly. “Want to touch?”

Xiang Di nodded, swallowed, and extended her right index finger.

Dear right index finger, you are the luckiest of my ten fingers. Please be sure to remember today’s sensation. This will very likely be the most perfect abs you will ever have the chance to touch in your lifetime.

Xiang Di was still giving her right index finger a pep talk before the touch when suddenly, Zhou Linxiao felt a shadow fall over him and Xiang Di, blocking the light above them. He looked up and, upon seeing what the shadow was, gave a bright smile.

“Classmate Bai Jiangxin? Good morning.”

Hearing that name, Xiang Di’s body jolted violently, and she took a step backward.

Her back bumped into a hard wall. She turned her head, tilted it back, and saw Bai Jiangxin’s face, his dark eyes slightly narrowed, expressionless.

Bai Jiangxin looked down at the two of them. “What are you doing?”

Zhou Linxiao was utterly honest. “Xiang Di is touching my abs.”

Bai Jiangxin’s mouth twitched. For a moment, he was left speechless by Zhou Linxiao’s candor.