"Get the car ready."
"Yes, Master," the butler replied with a nod.
Seeing him about to leave, the butler hesitated for a moment before he couldn't help but speak up, "Master, your face... shouldn't we treat it first?"
Ye Jinzhi subconsciously touched his cheek, his expression unchanging. "It's fine. We'll deal with it when we get to the company."
"Understood. Take care, sir."
Bella sat on the bus. She had originally been holding her phone to memorize vocabulary, but got distracted and tapped into the Little Red app.
Scrolling through the comment section and reading the messages from her "little cuties," she really wanted to reply to every single one.
"No... cookie-cutter replies would be a blasphemy to our pure relationship!" she muttered, biting her nails.
Continuing to scroll down, she was still shocked by how wild the netizens' comments were:
"Waiting for the female lead to counterattack, begging to be fed!"
"Help! That tail knows exactly where to slap. Is it trying to squeeze in?"
"Author, this sexual tension is incredible! That slap hit right in my heart. What happens next? I want to see something spicier!"
"Wuwuwu, so hungry for content. Does the author have any other 'food' for us? Please, even just a few scraps will do!"
"I'm begging you, please just throw out even your scrapped drafts! We aren't afraid of being stuffed to death, we're only afraid of dying from cravings!"
...
Bella stared at the cries for food in the comment section and raised an eyebrow. "You guys are so greedy... But, I like greedy kids the best."
She had actually drawn an even more explicit draft earlier, even meticulously adding glistening moisture to the scales of that tail, but she didn't dare to post it.
She was scared {(°△°;"}!
Looking at the wildly jumping notifications in her dashboard, Bella buried her face in her hands and muttered to herself, "I've been slacking. I'll draw it tonight!"
Bella thought about it and pinned a message to reply to everyone:
"Ha, haha... You like it? You say you like me? (Crawls darkly) (Twists) (Screams)
Since you've confessed your love, none of you are allowed to leave! Every little cutie who left a comment, I'm going to crawl through the internet cable and steal a kiss from you! Mwah~ ^3^"
Just as Bella stepped through the school gates, she saw Ye Jinzhi walking ahead, pushing a mountain bike.
She subconsciously slowed her pace, her gaze lingering on the tall, straight figure in front of her.
For a moment, the surrounding noise seemed to fade away, replaced by an absurd sense of intersecting light and shadow.
The feeling was too subtle and strange.
At night, she was the honored guest of the desire-drowned, older version of Ye Jinzhi;
By day, she was the classmate of this green, aloof younger version of Ye Jinzhi, playing a game of push-and-pull right before her eyes.
A trace of a shudder and a secret illusion inexplicably arose in her heart, as if she were wandering between a pair of twins.
In the two identical shadows, she couldn't tell who was whose stand-in.
It was just that these twins happened to share the same face, and both happened to be named Ye Jinzhi.
A flash of inspiration struck her mind, and the heat in her eyes instantly flared up.
Once she finished her current drawings about the disciplinary committee member and the sports student, the prototype for a new theme was already ready to burst forth:
She would draw a love triangle involving twin brothers and the female lead.
It would be best to add some heavy drama—let one of them take the spot as both the main guy and the side piece.
After all, only the side piece who is best at poaching someone else's partner knows best how to guard against and frame another side piece.
This immoral sense of mirroring made her dopamine start secreting crazily just thinking about it.
Bella was still immersed in her twin love triangle ideas when her shoulder was suddenly slapped hard.
"Hey, fwend—good mowning!"
The thick, cumin-flavored accent forcibly shattered her fantasies. Bella turned her head and met Ma Xin'er's energetic, smiling face.
She was amused by the tone, played along with the joke, and replied in the same accent:
"Hey, fwend."
Ma Xin'er was dazzled by Bella's smiling backward glance. Her usually boisterous personality instantly switched to whiny baby mode, and she grabbed Bella's forearm, whining:
"Wuwu, Bella... your face is truly too stunning. Every time I look at it, I'm amazed all over again. I'm going to fall in love with you!"
Bella's eyes curved in a smile. She didn't seem awkward at all, but rather calmly accepted the string of compliments:
"Thanks. I also quite like this face my parents gave me."
Looking at Ma Xin'er's exaggerated envious face, Bella raised her hand and affectionately pinched her cheek, her tone hiding a hint of teasing gentleness:
"However, there are plenty of pretty faces out there. Compared to this face, I'm more grateful for these eyes of mine, which were able to spot the cutest Ma Xin'er in the crowd at a single glance this early morning."
"Oh my~ Hey, did you hear?"
Seeing that they were getting closer to the back door of the classroom, Ma Xin'er suddenly leaned in mysteriously to Bella's ear and lowered her voice:
"Word on the street is there's a surprise exam for the senior class today. Rumor has it... the questions are all variations of the exact problems the teachers went over yesterday. It seems a lot of the numbers haven't even been changed much."
"What?!"
Upon hearing this, Bella didn't even have time to ask for details. She grabbed Ma Xin'er's arm and sprinted toward the classroom as if her feet were oiled.
The rumors circulating among the student body, though unofficial, were often frighteningly accurate.
"Hurry, hurry! Let's get back and quickly scan over the formulas before it starts!"
Bella muttered while panting. Right now, memorizing even one more line of ancient poetry or a formula was like saving up a life-saving talisman for the upcoming execution ground.
The class bell rang. Bella craned her neck to peek out the door, and sure enough, several math teachers were each holding a thick stack of test papers in their arms.
Her last shred of wishful thinking was completely shattered.
Ma Xin'er in the front seat seemed to have anticipated this scene. She leaned back slightly and lowered her voice:
"See? They said there'd be a test, and here it is, no messing around."
Bella cleared the items off her desk, smiling and shaking her head. "I am in awe."
As soon as the bell signaling the end of the exam rang and the papers were collected, Ma Xin'er turned around and pulled her and a few surrounding classmates into checking their answers:
"That last big derivative question! Mr. Liu didn't even change the numbers on some of them; he just copied them exactly as they were."
"What did you guys calculate for f'(x) at the end? I got 1/e+2."
"Me too!"
"We're safe!"
The group formed a circle and checked their answers, letting out a long breath of relief when they found that everyone had calculated the same result.
This collective sense of surviving a disaster was the best way to soothe exam anxiety. As long as no one fell into a trap, everything was sunny.
Just as they were talking, a few boys who had been messing around in the back row suddenly dawdled over.
The boy leading them was clutching his test paper. His eyes darted around, and after a long while, he asked in a low voice:
"Um... Bella, for the second-to-last multiple-choice question, did you pick A or B?"
