“And then?” Zheng Ranran bit on her straw.

She was currently experimenting with homemade milk tea, and the whole house smelled of it. There were piles of straws scattered across the table.

Lu Yixin quietly pushed the cup of homemade milk tea on her side out of reach and frowned. “Then nothing.”

After that day, she and Li Xiao’an never spoke again, and with Wu Qi, they only nodded when they met.

She just wasn’t angry anymore, but it was still hard for her to truly fit into the dorm life.

“You freshmen really have time.” Zheng Ranran grabbed a handful of notes. “I still haven’t even gotten a good look at the girls in my dorm.”

She was the same as Lu Yixin, going home on weekends and staying in the dorm on weekdays.

Only, Zheng Ranran wasn’t doing it for the group life. She just wanted to save the time spent commuting back and forth to school.

After a little over a month since school started, she’d already lost four jin.

“Now that I think about it, senior year of high school was actually pretty nice.” The freshman med-dog Zheng Ranran lay flat on her bed and let out a long sigh.

Lu Yixin rubbed her nose, took off her shoes, and lay down on Zheng Ranran’s bed too. She rubbed against the blanket twice, muttering enviously, “How come you lost four jin, but this part still got bigger…”

Some dry up in drought, some drown in flood.

“The one in your family probably likes them flat.” Zheng Ranran patted Lu Yixin’s face.

Lu Yixin thought of that moment in the dark when Fang Yongnian had held her and kissed her forehead. She turned over and covered her face.

“Kissed?” Zheng Ranran propped up her upper body, eyes wide open.

She had thought that a man like Fang Yongnian would probably take until he was forty before progressing to that stage between a man and a woman.

That fast?

Had she underestimated Lu Yixin, or underestimated Fang Yongnian!

“…Here.” Lu Yixin shyly brushed aside her bangs, lifted her pinky delicately, and pointed to her forehead.

Zheng Ranran: “…………”

Alright, that counted as progress too.

“What about you and Gu Lili?” Lu Yixin also knew that her own progress was as slow as a turtle’s.

Strangely, she wasn’t in a hurry at all.

She even enjoyed the way things were between her and Fang Yongnian now—slow and gentle, drawing closer bit by bit.

She still occasionally got scolded by Fang Yongnian until her head was spinning for being childish, but the only difference was that before, after scolding, that was it. Now, after scolding, Fang Yongnian would pat her head.

There was a secret kind of intimacy between her and Fang Yongnian that she found hard to describe.

Fang Yongnian made her feel incomparably at peace.

“When he gets into college.” Zheng Ranran’s progress was also that of a snail.

The two of them were laughing at each other from fifty paces to a hundred.

“Gu Lili probably likes big ones.” Lu Yixin still felt indignant about her own development.

“Mm, he’s vulgar.” Zheng Ranran smiled, turning this insult into something that somehow sounded tender.

Lu Yixin hugged Zheng Ranran and, using the familiar way she always did, took advantage of her for a few minutes.

“Do you think we’ll drift further and further apart in the future?” Lu Yixin, whose figure was gradually showing signs of maturing, suddenly felt melancholic.

They both had boyfriends now, both had roommates, different majors, different universities.

In the future, they would each have their own lives—lives far more complex and varied than in high school, when they stuck together every day and even went to the bathroom hand in hand.

“Do you think we’ll slowly run out of things to talk about?” After the melancholy came panic.

Just like now, all her chatter about dorm life had nothing to do with Zheng Ranran.

And in the future, all the things she would chatter about would slowly have nothing to do with Zheng Ranran.

“We never really had that many things in common to begin with.” Zheng Ranran pushed Lu Yixin’s forehead with her palm.

The two of them had always been people from different worlds. Her family was a mess, while Lu Yixin’s family was harmonious to the point of being enviable.

Even back in high school, when they studied, the questions she worked on and the ones Lu Yixin worked on were of completely different difficulty levels.

“We’re different.” Zheng Ranran, for once, grew sentimental. “If it weren’t for you, I might have turned into Li Xiao’an.”

Or something even worse.

She had never been a good kid. She’d always had a knack for getting into trouble. Other than having good grades, she was full of defiance.

Only Lu Yixin had the patience to stick with her, always soft-tempered, always trusting her unconditionally no matter what she did. And because of Lu Yixin, this little burden she carried along, she gradually lost interest in getting into trouble.

She couldn’t bear to.

She couldn’t bear to ruin someone as beautiful as Lu Yixin.

She could actually understand why Fang Yongnian eventually surrendered.

Anyone who was trusted wholeheartedly by Lu Yixin would, in the end, be unable to let go of her.

But…

“Do you have skin hunger or something?” Zheng Ranran really couldn’t understand Lu Yixin’s groping tendencies. “Are you like this with your Fang Yongnian too?”

That hand of hers had already slid to her stomach.

“I don’t dare.” Lu Yixin narrowed her eyes. “So I’m practicing!”

Zheng Ranran: “…You’ll just get beaten if you touch him like that.”

That was the way one touched a plush toy!

“You know how?” The girl’s rustling voice carried a kind of excitement even she couldn’t quite grasp when talking about such a taboo topic.

“I’m telling you, I have anatomy class next semester. I’ll teach you then!” Zheng Ranran said eagerly.

By then, she would know exactly how every muscle and nerve was structured—including the sensitive spots!

Lu Yixin: “……”

“Gu Lili is so pitiful.” The Lu Yixin who had just been worrying about losing their common topics was now curled up on Zheng Ranran’s bed, laughing so hard she was shaking.

They would grow up.

They would gradually have their own lives, and perhaps one day, they would no longer share everything with each other the way they did now.

But they would still be friends.

No matter how long it had been since they last met, as long as they exchanged a smile, they would instantly return to their girlhood—rolling around on the bed talking about taboo topics, holding hands in the restroom while discussing whether they’d gained or lost weight, which part had grown and which part still stubbornly refused to.

Because some kinds of feelings, just like love, would also carve themselves into one’s bones, growing together with you, becoming a part of your life.

୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧

Lu Yixin caught a cold.

After fooling around and chatting with Zheng Ranran under the blanket until they were both covered in sweat, she went out late at night at the end of November to grab a midnight snack. Wanting to look good, she had only worn a thin jacket—and that was how she caught a cold.

Usually as healthy as an ox, once she did catch a cold, she was completely done for.

Unfortunately, Lu Boyuan was the kind of person who firmly resisted antibiotics. Even when her fever reached thirty-nine degrees, he simply threw her a pack of physical cooling patches, filled all the thermoses in the house with hot water, told her she had to finish them all today, and then hurried off to work.

He left behind a sniffling Lu Yixin whose whole body ached from the fever. After her father left, she poked her head out, then sneaked across the street.

Fang Yongnian’s house already had a password lock. The code was 4321.

The straight man Fang Yongnian had no idea that setting the password to his girlfriend’s birthday was something romantic. He had only chosen an easy number to remember so that the forgetful Lu Yixin wouldn’t forget it.

Lu Yixin sniffled. She felt like she must have gone blind.

Because even this, the way Fang Yongnian had set the password, seemed romantic to her. It felt especially thoughtful, and so different from those greasy, pretentious types out there.

Fang Yongnian wasn’t home. According to Lu Boyuan, they were currently conducting clinical trials, and Fang Yongnian hadn’t been back for quite a while. His temper had also been getting worse.

Lu Yixin sniffled again.

But she didn’t really feel much difference, because Fang Yongnian was still patient and gentle with her. He replied to almost every WeChat message she sent, and under her constant coaxing, he still made sure to call her every night before bed to say goodnight.

After they got together, Fang Yongnian had never again said the word “no” to her.

With a cooling patch stuck to her forehead, Lu Yixin bent down to pick up the fat cat rubbing against her leg at the door. Her voice was thick from her cold. “Have you gotten fatter again?”

“How long has it been since you last saw your daddy?” Lu Yixin buried her face into the cat’s belly.

It had been a long time, almost ten days.

Fang Yongnian’s house, long unoccupied, had returned to looking like a show home—cold and impersonal.

Lu Yixin stood in the middle of the especially empty living room, holding the cat, dazed for a while.

At first, she had only come because she missed him too much. She just wanted to take a look around his room—even if it meant acting like some kind of pervert and smelling the pillow he had slept on, that would have been enough.

But now, suddenly, she didn’t want to move anymore.

Aunties came and went every day to clean the place, and at night, someone from his company’s logistics team would come by to feed the cat. Without Fang Yongnian there, the house had long been scrubbed clean of any trace of him.

The fat cat stayed quietly in her arms for half a minute before struggling free, then jumped onto the sofa and curled up in a soft spot into a ball.

Lu Yixin followed it, lay down on the sofa, hugged a cushion, and pulled a blanket over herself.

“Let’s sleep together.” The feverish girl, feeling lonely, had grown a little fragile.

The fat cat glanced at her, then condescendingly shifted its plump body a little closer to her hand, closed its eyes, and went to sleep.

Lu Yixin knew that, in truth, she really wanted to call Fang Yongnian.

It was rare for her to fall ill, and it had also been a while since she’d last seen him—this was the perfect time to act spoiled.

But she didn’t even take out her phone to look at it.

Fang Yongnian had never once said no to her.

So she knew that if she told him over the phone that she wanted to see him, he would definitely come back.

Even if the company was busy.

Even if her father said that Fang Yongnian’s temper lately had been so bad he was about to turn into a fire-breathing dragon.

Fang Yongnian never minded whether she was sensible or not. Once he had promised to spoil her, he spoiled her without any limit.

But she minded.

She rubbed her face against the fat cat’s belly again.

“He must be exhausted,” Lu Yixin murmured as she scratched the cat’s chin, rambling softly.

She knew his temper well.

He must be so tired that he couldn’t stand it anymore, that’s why he kept losing his patience.

“Do you think it’d be good if I brought them something to eat tonight?” she asked hoarsely, meeting the cat’s mismatched eyes. The fat cat blinked at her, and Lu Yixin laughed.

She thought her idea was brilliant.

“I’ll take a nap first!” she decided happily.

Once she woke up, she would go downstairs to the Cantonese restaurant and pack up some porridge.

Her dad liked sweet porridge, and Fang Yongnian liked savory porridge. She would pack extra and eat supper with them.

She should have thought of it long ago.

Even though she couldn’t hug Fang Yongnian in front of her father, she really, really missed him.

Even just seeing him for a moment would be enough.