Xiang Di decided to play dumb.

When the heartbeat exceeds its maximum load limit, playing dumb is often the best way to escape.

Xiang Di：【Huh?】

Bai Jiangxin：【……】

Bai Jiangxin：【Don’t, you know.】

Xiang Di continued to play dumb：【Know what?】

Bai Jiangxin：【5“】

A five-second voice message. Xiang Di didn’t even dare to tap to listen, only cowardly turned on the speech-to-text function.

—What, you fell and hit your tailbone, did you lose your memory?

Xiang Di abruptly reached out and touched her own tailbone.

Bai Jiangxin was using this part to hint at what happened back then.

At that time she had completely frozen. Wang Sichen had appeared too suddenly, she stood up too hastily, her legs hadn’t even stabilized, and she directly fell off his lap, landing hard on her butt right in front of him.

Bai Jiangxin had obviously been stunned as well. He didn’t have time to help her up, and by the time he reacted, she had already run away.

But fortunately, he didn’t say it outright. The content of the voice message still hadn’t reached the level of something Xiang Di didn’t dare to hear. She sighed. Damn it, at a time like this, she was actually still craving his low voice. She was really hopeless.

Desire defeated reason, and Xiang Di tapped open the voice message.

The familiar indifferent voice, no special intonation, yet it still made her ears itch and her heart go numb.

One of the rules of having a secret crush: you must speak vaguely, and you absolutely must not take the initiative to lay everything bare. Otherwise, once the other person discovers it and then plays dumb in return, you’ll truly become the clown. Xiang Di put on a suddenly-realizing act：【Oh oh, you mean the time I accidentally fell?】

She said：【I’m fine, I can already run and jump now, thanks for your concern～[doge]】

Bai Jiangxin：【It’s what happened before you fell.】

Xiang Di：“……”

The fingertip hovering over the phone’s virtual keyboard seemed to suddenly lose all strength. She had no choice but to follow his words：【Oh oh, you mean when we accidentally bumped into each other?】

Bai Jiangxin：【Do you remember where we bumped?】

Xiang Di was basically using her life to play dumb：【I don’t remember.】

Bai Jiangxin：【It’s fine, I remember.】

Bai Jiangxin：【Mouth.】

Bai Jiangxin：【And we didn’t bump into each other, we kissed.】

Xiang Di threw her phone away and plunged headfirst into the bedsheets.

Her heart was spasming. She couldn’t take it anymore. Even through the phone she felt her face burning and her ears flushing. Dear heavens, can someone please save her?

Thankfully she and he were talking through their phones. If this were face-to-face, she would probably have been so shy she’d faint on the spot.

Xiang Di reluctantly picked up her phone, bracing herself at the edge of her rationality, and replied to him.

Xiang Di：【Oh oh, it was an accident, and we drank so much fruit wine in the afternoon, you probably weren’t sitting steadily, it’s fine.】

A flawless, full-mark answer. It shifted the cause to alcohol and also displayed her own nonchalance.

However, in less than a second, her full-mark answer was cracked by Bai Jiangxin.

Bai Jiangxin：【Wasn’t it you who didn’t stand steadily first and sat on my lap?】

Xiang Di could only shirk responsibility：【……It was your leg that tripped me first.】

Bai Jiangxin：【It was you who stood in front of me first.】

Bai Jiangxin：【I was sleeping, you stood in front of me, what were you trying to do?】

Xiang Di’s mind went boom.

How did he know?!! And wasn’t he already asleep at that time?!

Or was he pretending to sleep? And then just waiting for her to be unable to resist the temptation of good looks and come close to him?

What exactly is he after?

No no no no. Xiang Di knocked on her own head. After countless disappointments over the past three years, hasn’t she learned her lesson yet? Don’t be self-indulgent. Don’t become a clown.

Of course Xiang Di couldn’t admit it：【I was looking because you had something dirty on your face, okay?】

Bai Jiangxin：【If there was something dirty, why didn’t you use your hand to help me wipe it off? Can you make it disappear just by looking?】

Xiang Di：【But men and women shouldn’t touch each other.】

Bai Jiangxin：【We already touched lips.】

Xiang Di was about to collapse.

Why is he so persistent?

Xiang Di had a strong intuition that Bai Jiangxin had already seen through her clumsy excuses, yet he deliberately didn’t expose her, instead accompanying her in going around in circles here.

As if he were intentionally waiting—first watching how she bullshits, then sentence by sentence finding the loopholes in her words, slowly exposing her, until she can no longer find any excuse to play dumb with him.

What Bai Jiangxin’s purpose is, Xiang Di doesn’t know for now. She only feels like she’s about to be exposed.

The liking she has hidden for three years, those little thoughts about him, seem to have already been noticed by him.

No no no, absolutely cannot let him know.

Maybe because she has had a secret crush for too long, Xiang Di has already become accustomed to this kind of emotion that doesn’t see the light of day. Whether sour, sweet, bitter, or spicy, she is used to digesting it on her own. Therefore, she doesn’t want to expose it to anyone, even if that person is Bai Jiangxin.

She can be unrestrained in her imagination, because that is a secret only she knows. But she cannot be willful in reality, because that would bring trouble to Bai Jiangxin.

Although she occasionally feels that having a secret crush is painful, overall, these three years have been fairly happy for her. Now there are only two months left until graduation. She does not plan to confess, nor will she expect any beautiful dream to come true. Today’s accident—she herself was the one with impure thoughts, so naturally she won’t take it up with Bai Jiangxin. She just wants to smooth this matter over. In the future, when she turns this memory over again, she can keep it and slowly reminisce.

Moreover, she had been in the same grade as him for three years and in the same class for one year, and before that, he hadn’t even known what her name was. During this period they had had some contact, but in the end it was only normal interaction between people. How could he possibly… suddenly have any thoughts about her?

After calming her heartbeat, Xiang Di typed out her message.

【Sigh, it was just an accident. Since neither of us did it on purpose, tonight we’ll sleep it off, and then pretend nothing happened. Tomorrow we’re still good classmates, okay?[doge]】

She waited nervously for several minutes before finally receiving his reply.

Bai Jiangxin：【Up to you.】

Just three simple words, seemingly also agreeing with her proposal and letting today’s matter pass. Xiang Di let out a breath.

But at the moment she relaxed, an emotion that couldn’t quite be named lingered in her heart.

Xiang Di pressed a hand to her chest.

She had clearly made the correct choice of lowering her expectations to the minimum. So why did she still feel a little sour inside?

Isn’t it said that a secret crush is actually liking an imagined person? Based on one’s inner expectations and projections, you unilaterally imagine the person you like as perfect. When you truly get close to the real person, you realize that they are completely different from the beautiful image in your imagination, and then the illusion fades, and you don’t like them as much anymore.

But why did she… seem to be liking Bai Jiangxin more and more?

Is it because he really is already perfect to the point of having no flaws, or because she has liked him to such an irredeemable extent that no matter what his true self is like, she will like him, and only like him?

The former would be fine—it would mean her taste really is good. But what if it’s the latter?

Xiang Di turned over in distress.

Judging by how much she was increasingly liking him, even after graduating from high school and entering university, she would probably find it hard to meet someone who could make her heart flutter more than Bai Jiangxin.

Then wouldn’t she really fall for him for her whole life? Would she really have to secretly like him for a lifetime?

If she can’t like anyone else, doesn’t that mean she’ll have to be a nun for life? No way. After reading so much porn, she still very much wants to experience in real life that kind of pleasure that makes you squirt. (TL: LMAOOO)

─── ꒰ঌ·✦·໒꒱ ───

A lifetime is too long; it’s too early to think about that now. Finishing school properly is the real priority.

Before the morning alarm even rang, Xiang Di had already opened her eyes.

Isn’t this just what senior year is like? When the whole family is asleep, she’s still awake; when the whole family is still asleep, she has to get up to go to school.

Mondays used to always be exciting, because she could see Bai Jiangxin again. But this week was different. Bai Jiangxin had turned from her motivation to go to school into pressure. Xiang Di listlessly climbed out of bed, her whole body resisting going to school, even wanting to take a day off.

However, the house was silent. Xiang Sheng, as usual, had played games until nearly dawn before sleeping. The Xiang Rongqiang couple had only returned home after working until midnight last night. She was the only one awake in the house. There was no one to help her ask for leave.

Xiang Di could only resign herself to going to school.

Because she woke up early, she also arrived early. When she got there, only a few people were in the classroom. Afraid that if she sat at her desk she would get sleepy, Xiang Di picked up her key memorization notes and went out into the corridor to recite.

The sunlight outside the corridor windows gradually brightened, filtering through gaps between the leaves and spilling into the long corridor. More and more people appeared in the corridor, and the sound of recitation gradually grew louder. Xiang Di covered her ears, immersing herself alone in her own recitation world.

“Concern, care and worry; consent, agree and permit; contest, competition; contact… contact… background environment?”

“It’s contact and connection. Background is context.”

A reminding voice sounded by her ear. Xiang Di froze, feeling that the voice was somewhat familiar.

She turned her head, then lifted her neck, and crashed into a pair of cold, clear black eyes.

At the instant she looked up, those black eyes trembled slightly, and the hidden embarrassment flashed past the corner of his lips.

Yesterday’s events were still vivid in her mind. Yet she was like she had a sickness— the more she didn’t dare to look, the more her gaze drifted toward his pale pink lips. Her heartbeat, awkwardness, helplessness, and all kinds of emotions surged up at once.

She was going to die. Xiang Di clenched the key points in her hand.

【…I’m done for. Really, fear what you fear and it comes true.】

Without the usual Monday excitement of seeing him, her heart right now only held unsettled shock. The silent atmosphere urgently needed someone to break it. Bai Jiangxin slightly furrowed his brows, his tone calm: “You just recited it wrong.”

Xiang Di lowered her head, her tone mechanical: “Oh, thanks…”

No movement. She stared at the flat board shoes he was wearing today.

【Why hasn’t he gone into the classroom yet?】

【Please, hurry up and go into the classroom. I really don’t know how to face you right now ahhh.】

【Forget it, if you’re not going in, I’ll go in. If I can’t afford to offend you, can’t I at least avoid you? Good thing I changed seatmates before and didn’t sit with you anymore. There’s even Wang Sichen in between. I won’t have to see your face.】

Hugging her key points, Xiang Di turned and walked toward the classroom.

Before, she had clearly found Wang Sichen an eyesore because he blocked him. Now in the blink of an eye, Wang Sichen had become her lifesaver—still because he blocked him.

Bai Jiangxin’s face darkened. His lips opened and closed, but in the end he still didn’t call out to her.