The machine gave a crisp beep. The card was approved. The assistant store manager returned the black-and-gold card to Mu Yue with both hands.
It was as if a tornado had suddenly whipped through the quiet shop, catching everyone off guard.
The “idiot” Mu Yue had just called Qian Lei seemed not to be directed at him alone.
Some people had jumped to conclusions and started making snide remarks before they even understood what had happened. They now felt as though they, too, had been cursed at and slapped in the face.
The spectators who were only there for the entertainment, however, were having a wonderful time. They had not expected such a quick reversal and were shouting “666” from the sidelines. Some sharper-eyed onlookers had noticed from a distance that the card Mu Yue used was no ordinary bank card. They were secretly stunned. Just how rich did someone have to be for a younger member of the family to use a card like that as an ordinary credit card?
As for Qian Lei, who had been at the center of it all, he was having a much worse time. The saleswomen kept casting him seemingly innocent glances. Outsiders might not know the truth, but how could they not?
He had tried to hit on a girl while pretending to be generous, claiming that he would pay the bill. But the moment she actually expected him to pay, he had blown up. The young lady’s scolding had not been unjustified. He had no means to back up his arrogance, yet had still swaggered in front of her pretending to be wealthy. He was nothing more than a clown.
Of course, the saleswomen would never say any of that aloud. They continued to smile politely, but the passersby outside had no such concerns. One shrill laugh after another rang in Qian Lei’s ears, twisting his face with anger.
Qian Lei had never been humiliated like this before. He wanted to lose his temper, but more and more people were drawn to the commotion. Those who had arrived first pointed him out to those who came later. He seemed to hear the voices of people he knew, and had no time left to make any threats. After shooting Mu Yue a vicious glare, he hurried out of the jewelry section.
Leng Ming’s cousin, standing nearby, also felt the surrounding gazes pricking her like needles. Yes, she was certain Mu Yue had been insulting her just now. She muttered under her breath, “There was no need to swear at people, was there?”
The next moment, Mu Yue’s gaze landed precisely on her, startling her into instinctively hiding behind Leng Ming.
Mu Yue had noticed Leng Ming, but she had no intention of greeting him. She merely glanced at him before looking away and asking the saleswoman to put the last watch on her wrist.
Why bother saying hello? They weren’t close.
Fang Xinrui looked at Mu Yue in confusion, then glanced at her cousin. That made no sense. Her cousin was the campus heartthrob of No. 7 High, and it was obvious that he and Mu Yue knew each other. So why did Mu Yue treat him as if he were a complete stranger?
She got it! Mu Yue must be deliberately pretending not to care, trying to attract her cousin’s attention!
Mu Yue could not be bothered with irrelevant people. She was admiring the watch on her wrist.
It was shaped like a little sugar cube, with a red agate dial and diamond hour markers. It came with two strap options: a rose-gold steel bracelet or a red leather band. Small and beautiful, the watch symbolized a promising start and good luck, and cost 680,000 yuan. Mu Yue had fallen for it almost immediately when the saleswoman recommended it.
Yet her attitude of looking only at the watch and not at the people around her seemed to have displeased Leng Ming. Frowning, he looked at Mu Yue and asked, “Mu Yue, where’s Lin Xiaoxiao? Did she come here with you?”
Mu Yue tilted her head and looked back at him, thoroughly puzzled. “Who are you? Are we close? Whether she’s with me or not—what does it have to do with you?”
Leng Ming wasn’t good at verbal sparring, and his expression darkened even further at her words. His cousin, Fang Xinrui, popped out from behind him and glared at Mu Yue with equal displeasure. “Hey, what kind of attitude is that? You’re seriously so rude!”
“Wow, really? Just because your boyfriend asked me something, I have to answer? Is he the emperor or something? And you’re one to talk about manners? ‘Hey,’ miss.”
“I’m not—don’t get the wrong idea…” Fang Xinrui’s face flushed bright red, and she hurriedly let go of Leng Ming’s arm.
But Leng Ming cut her off before she could explain. He said to Mu Yue, “It’s nothing. I just wanted you to tell her to come to my house for dinner next weekend.” With that, he left with Fang Xinrui.
After they had gone some distance, Fang Xinrui finally asked in a small voice who Mu Yue was. Was she the girl he liked?
“Of course not,” Leng Ming replied with undisguised disgust. He had a feeling that Lin Xiaoxiao had become the way she was because of Mu Yue’s presence.
Fang Xinrui, however, misunderstood. Given the way her cousin had treated that girl—and the way he had deliberately interrupted her explanation—he had most likely wanted Mu Yue to misunderstand their relationship. But why would he do that? There could only be one reason: that woman liked her cousin!
So what if she had money? With a temper like that, her cousin would never be interested in her!
Leng Ming had indeed deliberately tried to make Mu Yue misunderstand, but not for anything remotely like the reason Fang Xinrui imagined. He did it because Mu Yue had seen what happened today and drawn the wrong conclusion. She would then tell Lin Xiaoxiao, causing Lin Xiaoxiao to misunderstand as well. As long as Lin Xiaoxiao came to question him, he could explain everything—and, in the process, point out that Mu Yue had been stirring things up and trying to undermine the trust between them.
Lin Xiaoxiao and Mu Yue were close. And the thing most girls found hardest to tolerate was betrayal by a best friend, wasn’t it? As long as a rift formed between them, Lin Xiaoxiao would distance herself from Mu Yue, and things could go back to the way they had been.
What a sleazy bastard.
Mu Yue watched the retreating figures of Leng Ming and Fang Xinrui and praised him inwardly.
Did he really think she hadn’t seen through him? “Boyfriend” had indeed been something she’d tossed out casually. She’d said it to make Leng Ming realize that, while he had another girl hanging off his arm, he was still preoccupied with Lin Xiaoxiao. But she soon recalled the timeline and guessed the identity of the girl beside him.
There had been a similar scene in the original story. Leng Ming had accompanied his mother, his aunt, and his cousin on a shopping trip. Fang Xinrui idolized her older cousin—she was practically his brainless fangirl—and the two of them behaved far more intimately than ordinary cousins. Lin Xiaoxiao happened to see them and misunderstood.
It was something the male lead could have cleared up with a single sentence, yet he dragged it out for more than a dozen chapters. In the end, the female lead learned the truth from someone else, felt unbearably guilty, and apologized to the male lead, begging him to forgive her.
But now Lin Xiaoxiao was living at school. She only had one day off on the weekends. Sometimes she would go out for some fresh air; other times, she would stay at school and study or do her homework with the other boarding students who had chosen to remain there.
Lin Xiaoxiao stayed at school this week. The mock exam had been incredibly difficult, and the results still weren’t out, but she could already tell that she’d done terribly. As she watched the countdown on the blackboard draw closer and closer to zero, Lin Xiaoxiao grew so anxious she could barely stand it. And they wanted her to play around? What right did she have to play? If studying wouldn’t kill her, then she’d study until it did!
Since Lin Xiaoxiao never even left campus, the events from the original story naturally never happened.
But unexpectedly, Mu Yue witnessed them instead. She wasn’t Lin Xiaoxiao—seeing through Leng Ming’s little trick took her less than three seconds.
So who had ever said that men didn’t understand scheming? Just look at him. He was practically a natural.
Trying to interfere, was he? Fine. Then she wouldn’t hold back.
The moment she got into the car, she opened WeChat and messaged Lin Xiaoxiao:
[Leng Ming has a girlfriend. They were acting very intimate, and the girl is his cousin.]
This time, Lin Xiaoxiao didn’t reply right away. She was probably doing her homework. Mu Yue was nearly home by the time she finally received a response—a whole string of question marks.
It was obvious that this one short sentence had completely fried Lin Xiaoxiao’s brain. In the end, after apparently thinking of something, she sent Mu Yue a voice message. “Yueyue, could there have been some misunderstanding?”
Mu Yue replied, “Maybe. His cousin seemed like she wanted to explain, but Leng Ming didn’t deny it. He doesn’t know that I know she’s his cousin.”
[…]
Lin Xiaoxiao genuinely had no idea what to say. Only an ellipsis could express how she felt. She put down her phone, experiencing for the first time the sensation of having her very soul struck by a devastating blow.
The moment she read the text, she had assumed it was going to be an incest plot, and she had instantly guessed that the cousin was Fang Xinrui. Fang Xinrui really did like Leng Ming a lot, and she was hostile toward every girl who tried to become her sister-in-law. Lin Xiaoxiao, for instance, had once been tormented terribly by her.
Those memories were too painful to revisit. If she thought about them any longer, Lin Xiaoxiao would have to curse herself for being so stupid all over again. Still, she felt that Leng Ming and Fang Xinrui weren’t that kind of couple. If anything, Fang Xinrui seemed more like a hardcore solo fan of his. That was why she had asked whether Mu Yue had misunderstood.
But Mu Yue’s next words left her completely dumbfounded.
What did she mean? Leng Ming had done it on purpose? He had deliberately refused to explain and let people misunderstand?
That was his cousin! Wasn’t he afraid that someone who happened to know both of them would take it for the truth?
Lin Xiaoxiao felt something cool rapidly settling inside her, though she couldn’t quite say what it was that had cooled. In any case, she was simply speechless.
If she asked Mu Yue, Mu Yue would tell her that this was what people called a walking red flag.
While Lin Xiaoxiao returned to working through problems to calm herself down, Mu Yue opened the system panel. Sure enough, she was pleased to see a new notification.
[Villain Points +100]
[Face-Slapping Points +300]
Mu Yue didn’t want to know the specific descriptions this time, and sure enough, the system gave her none—only two straightforward numbers.
The villain points she had accumulated earlier didn’t need to be exchanged again. They were converted directly into points, along with a new category called face-slapping points. Mu Yue took a look and found that it also belonged to the reversal system and was part of the achievement system.
This achievement required the setting, the number of people present, and the effect of the face-slapping to all meet certain standards before it could be considered complete. The reversal system had been quiet until now, so she hadn’t expected it to give her such a generous reward the moment it finally appeared.
Her assets had suddenly become much more substantial.
She had earned 50 points from buying props, 400 points from her new arrival bonus, and 64 points from eating out and buying jewelry. After subtracting the 10 points spent on props and adding the 3 points she had left from before, she now had a total of 507 points.
Great. This trip out hadn’t been for nothing!
After setting aside 310 points for this month’s and next month’s installments, the rest was hers to spend. Mu Yue checked her physical stats. Both Strength and Dexterity were still extremely low, and each point in either stat cost 5 points to purchase. Without hesitation, Mu Yue spent 100 points, adding 10 points to each.
Her Appearance stat had quietly risen by another 2 points. Together with the Health upgrades and the nutritional supplements she’d been getting over the past month, her Appearance score had reached 67.
In practical terms, that put Mu Yue in the “ordinarily pretty” range.
But in reality, she was already better-looking than over seventy percent of high school students her age. After all, at that age, whether male or female, anyone without acne scars or freckles was already a rare specimen. And this was with no makeup at all. With the help of a stylist and makeup artist, getting her score above 80 would be effortless.
So there was no need to rush into buying the most expensive stat. As her body grew healthier, stronger, and more agile, her appearance would improve along with it. Still, the free increases she could pick up this way were obviously limited. Once she reached a certain threshold, she would have no choice but to spend points.
After returning home, Mu Yue took every sparkling piece of jewelry out of its box and placed it in the vanity cabinet she had bought earlier. The cabinet’s surface could switch intelligently between transparent and opaque.
Inside were numerous small compartments, complete with lights and separated into several categories: tiny pieces, medium-sized pieces, special items, and matching sets. It had a huge capacity and was extremely convenient both for storage and for admiring her collection.
Every drawer came with a fingerprint lock, providing a certain degree of security. When Mu Yue had bought the cabinet, she had treated it as part of a collection game. In the past, that game would probably have taken years—perhaps even a lifetime—to complete.
But now? Hehe, she had a system.
Today’s additions occupied only a tiny corner of the first level. She would be able to keep playing this collection game for quite some time.
That night, after Mu Yue fell asleep, the four systems held a small meeting. The main topic was the “good babies” their host had called them today. The words had practically knocked them dizzy, and they were starting to lose their patience—they wanted to meet their host directly.
After discussing it, however, they thought over all the troublesome hosts they had encountered before and calmed down. In the end, they decided to wait and observe a little longer.
The little kitten listened as its seniors made perfectly reasonable arguments, but it still desperately wanted to meet its host. It struggled with itself for a while, yet ultimately couldn’t resist the temptation of being called a baby. In the middle of the night, it secretly appeared beside Mu Yue’s pillow in a physical form, curling into a little ball beside her head and purring contentedly.
When Mu Yue woke up in the morning, she instinctively reached toward the side of her pillow for her phone.
Instead, her hand touched a soft, furry bundle.
Startled, she quickly opened her eyes—only to find a round calico cat sleeping on her pillow, though she had no idea when it had gotten there.
Before her brain could catch up, Mu Yue’s hand had already reached out—and she was utterly dazzled. Wow! It was even softer than she’d imagined, like touching a little cloud! How could it be this soft and pleasant to pet?
But where had this cat come from? This was the fifteenth floor, and both her window and door were closed. Qianqian would never have bought a cat without her permission.
That left only one possibility.
“Are you the system?” Mu Yue asked curiously as she stroked the cat’s cheeks and the especially fluffy fur on its chest. “Kitty, which system are you?”
“Meow!” The Tycoon system, thoroughly enjoying being petted, rolled onto its side. Only then did it snap awake at the sound of her voice. “Host? I… I’m the Tycoon…”
Oh no! It had only meant to snuggle up and sleep for a little while. Who could have guessed that its host would make it feel so safe that it had fallen asleep for so long? Would its host hate it now that it had suddenly appeared? What should it do? What should it do?
The Tycoon instinctively wanted to run, but then Mu Yue patted her thigh and said in a voice so gentle it was almost unbelievable, “So you’re my little Tycoon! Come here and let me hug you!”
Aww! The host didn’t hate it—she even wanted to hug it!
The cat stopped retreating and carefully stepped onto Mu Yue’s thigh, settling into her arms. The next moment, both human and cat let out blissful sighs.
It was wonderful!
A brave kitty had to enjoy life while it could! As for the fury of the other three systems it might have to face later… well, it could worry about that when the time came!
Mu Yue and the Tycoon kitty played for a while, making the cat appear and disappear like a magic trick, before she finally got up to wash and get ready. It was Monday, and the results of the practice exam were coming out today. She couldn’t be late.
A light rain was falling, so the Monday flag-raising ceremony had been canceled. When Mu Yue arrived at the classroom, there was still plenty of time before class. Half the students were chatting, while the other half were taking advantage of every available moment to catch up on sleep with their heads on their desks. There was no helping it—Monday mornings were always the sleepiest.
Lin Xiaoxiao was napping too. The two girls in the row ahead, meanwhile, were discussing a rising young actress. Summer vacation hadn’t even begun yet, but the various variety shows scheduled for the summer were already warming up their publicity campaigns. The actress they were talking about had won the center position on a wildly popular girl-group survival show three years earlier.
For many entertainers who came from talent shows, the night they debuted was also the peak of their careers. Later on, eighty percent of them failed to create a bigger splash than they had during the show. They muddled along in the industry, drifting between highs and lows and struggling to stay afloat, remembered only when people compiled their annual rankings of girl groups and boy groups.
Every now and then, one of the lucky ones would make a comeback after years of silence—perhaps by appearing on a particular program or acting in a certain drama—and might even reach heights they had never touched before.
This young actress had experienced none of that. Ever since debuting on the show, she had enjoyed smooth sailing. Good opportunities had been delivered to her one after another: she had appeared on variety programs, acted in dramas, released songs, and performed at quite a few gala events. Her reputation was a mix of praise and criticism. She had not quite reached A-list status, but she was firmly established as a second-tier celebrity.
Ever since her season, the show had been on a steady decline. This year, the production team invited her back to serve as a mentor. The two girls in the row ahead were talking about exactly that, complaining among themselves.
“Wen Xue was obviously born to be an idol. I don’t understand why she insists on taking so many acting roles when her acting is, emmm… Every year, she shows up on the list of the worst dramas! She’s seriously wasting her talent!”
“Hey, why are you worrying about that? Do you have any idea how much Wen Xue makes from a single drama? Besides, she’s come back to the show, hasn’t she? Once the college entrance exams are over, we can watch it to our hearts’ content!”
Wen Xue.
Mu Yue raised an eyebrow. The heroine of the third domineering-CEO novel she had read was another “white-moonlight substitute.”
The description of her in the book was the quintessential old-school type: delicate and frail, timid and hesitant, spending all day being used by the male lead in one way or another. To him, she was nothing more than a substitute and a mistress. He was generous enough with the resources he gave her, but the heroine repeatedly insisted that none of that was what she wanted. There was only one thing she truly wanted.
Every time, the male lead would pull up his pants and put on an icy expression, warning her not to covet anything she had no right to possess.
Later, when the white moonlight returned to the country, the heroine could only suffer alone in a mansion spanning thousands of square meters, sleeping on an enormous bed. Eventually, she lost heart and declared that she would never appear before the male lead again, choosing instead to focus on her own career.
Then came the classic “chasing his wife to the crematorium”—and the male lead spent quite a lot of chapters trying to win her back before he finally succeeded.
It was an intensely old-fashioned kind of novel, but Mu Yue had always felt there was something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Especially during the later “chasing his wife” arc: she had read it while eating, and why did it seem to her that the heroine genuinely wanted to dump the male lead?
In the end, the heroine only agreed to give him another chance because he pestered her until she had no choice.
Mu Yue shook her head. Forget it. That was probably how all the “chasing his wife” stories went. By the later stages, the heroines always looked determined to leave the past behind and begin a new life, yet in the end, they all reconciled with the male leads.
The plot of this particular novel was still a long way off for her. It would not begin until after she entered university. In the original storyline, the original owner of this body had failed to get into a good university. With no money to retake the exams, she had been forced to look for work wherever she could, changing jobs several times. Eventually, she encountered the male lead at a private club, where she was fired and saddled with debt.
Mu Yue was actually rather looking forward to that scene.
The bell for the next class brought Mu Yue’s wandering thoughts back. She gathered her focus and threw herself into studying.
The mock-exam papers were handed back one after another. The teachers spent the day going over the questions on the papers: analyzing and breaking them down, making sure the students remembered every concept involved, organizing recurring question types, and finally emphasizing the kinds of questions that were certain to appear on the exam.
The ranking sheet had not yet been passed around by the teacher, but every student could already calculate their total score. Mu Yue did not need to. The system had already done it for her.
A total of 578 points.
That score might seem a long way from the 700-plus scores often mentioned in novels, but in reality, it was already an excellent result—high enough to clear the admission cutoff for most of the country’s top universities. If she could maintain this score in the college entrance examination, getting into University A alongside the real heiress would be a sure thing.
Fireworks exploded in Mu Yue’s mind, accompanied by the sound effect for completing a learning achievement.
She had completed the introductory achievement for becoming a top student, earning 200 points, as well as the 10 points from the study mission. She had received them all.
Still, she didn’t let her guard down. Over the past month, Mu Yue had used every scrap of time available to her and devoted herself to studying. She had given it everything she had—she could honestly say she had worked as hard as humanly possible—and even then, she had only just scraped past the mark. She had taken just one day off during the entire month: yesterday. And even on that one day, she’d run into so much damn trouble.
Her scores in physics, chemistry, and biology were bizarrely close: 70, 70.5, and 71. If the questions had been even slightly more difficult, if they had tested a concept Mu Yue hadn’t fully mastered, or if her luck had been just a little worse, she would have failed. After all, she had guessed two of the multiple-choice questions correctly. Mathematics had been just as dangerous. She’d scored 93—barely above the passing line.
Even if she tried to be optimistic, she couldn’t manage it. All she felt was an even greater sense of urgency. There was still one more mock exam, and then it would be the college entrance examination. Less than two months remained.
There was truly no time left for fooling around. Once Mu Yue started studying, she became ruthlessly single-minded, forgetting everything else—including whatever nonsense Leng Ming had been rambling on about at the mall.
So that weekend, while preparing lunch, Leng Ming kept glancing toward the door. But when all the dishes were ready and on the table, and his mother called him to eat, Lin Xiaoxiao still hadn’t appeared. He held his temper for as long as he could, but in the end, he couldn’t stop himself from calling her.
When Lin Xiaoxiao answered, she didn’t bother checking who it was. She was at Mu Yue’s place, enthusiastically shoveling rice into her mouth. After spending the whole morning attending extra lessons, her brain had been worked to exhaustion, and she was practically starving.
With her mouth full, Lin Xiaoxiao chewed twice without hearing anything from the other end. Only after she swallowed did she say, “Hello?”
“…” There was a moment of silence before the other person spoke in a distinctly sarcastic tone. “Lin Xiaoxiao, are you eating?”
Lin Xiaoxiao pulled the phone slightly away and finally saw that it was Leng Ming calling. She was puzzled. “Of course I am. Am I not allowed to eat at this hour? It’s already noon!”
Leng Ming drew a deep breath before saying, “Didn’t I ask Mu Yue to tell you to come to my house for dinner this weekend?”
“Huh?” Lin Xiaoxiao looked at Mu Yue.
Mu Yue had heard him too. “I forgot.”
And even if she hadn’t forgotten, she hadn’t intended to mention it.
What a joke. If you’re inviting someone to dinner, why not invite them yourself? Why make someone else pass along the message? Where were the basic manners and respect? And just because you told her to pass it on, did that mean she had to? I’m not your servant!
Leng Ming let out a cold laugh. “Ha! I knew it was her! Did she say something else that made you misunderstand?”
“…” Lin Xiaoxiao immediately remembered the matter involving her cousin’s boyfriend. For a moment, she felt secondhand embarrassment on Leng Ming’s behalf and had no idea what to say.
Leng Ming continued, “You’ve been avoiding me for so long because she said something, right? Hmm?”
That “hmm” made Lin Xiaoxiao’s scalp prickle. She didn’t know why she had once found that voice so sexy. Now, it only sounded unbearably awkward. She hurriedly said, “All right, all right. What do you want?”
Unexpectedly, her words only pushed Leng Ming over the edge. He ground his teeth and snarled, “Lin Xiaoxiao! Have you forgotten what day it is today?!”
“What day is it?” Lin Xiaoxiao asked, utterly bewildered.
What day was it? Mu Yue was a little confused too. The two of them had never actually defined their relationship from start to finish, so what special occasion could there be?
Huh? Wait. There did seem to be one—
“Lin Xiaoxiao, you’re unbelievable!” the person on the other end snapped before angrily hanging up.
Lin Xiaoxiao found the whole thing utterly baffling. It wasn’t until she returned to the home screen and saw the date that she finally realized.
Today was Leng Ming’s birthday.
The very day she had been eagerly looking forward to two months ago. She hadn’t marked it in her calendar because she had never thought she would forget it. It had been that important to her.
And yet now, she had actually forgotten.
At that very moment, she felt neither panic nor guilt. She only found it somewhat incredible.
She looked at Mu Yue, her emotions sour and complicated. “Yueyue, I think I really don’t like him anymore. I even forgot his birthday.”
Mu Yue smiled and delivered a classic line: “The fact that you could forget means he actually wasn’t all that important to you.”
Lin Xiaoxiao froze. Was that really true? Then… she thought of Leng Ming again. He remembered her birthday. During their two years of high school, both of her birthdays had been awful. She had thought Leng Ming would make things even worse for her, but on those birthdays, he had given her something unexpectedly warm.
The moment Mu Yue saw her expression, she knew things were taking a turn for the worse and immediately added, “Remembering someone doesn’t necessarily mean you—or they—have particularly deep feelings.”
“Then what does it mean?” Remembering that tiny bit of warmth had left Lin Xiaoxiao confused again.
Mu Yue replied expressionlessly, “It means he has a good memory.”
“…”
Mu Yue was speechless too. After thinking for a moment, she put down her chopsticks and simply said, “Go on. What did he give you for your birthday?”
These were all treasures Lin Xiaoxiao had kept to herself. She had never told the original owner about them, and this was the first time she had shared them with anyone else, so she felt a little embarrassed. “I was having a really bad day in my first year of high school…”
That day, the moment Lin Xiaoxiao left school, she realized she had left behind something her mother had given her. She went back to look for it, but it took her ages to find it in a bathroom trash can. Before she even had time to celebrate, she discovered that the stall door wouldn’t open. No one had done it on purpose—it was simply another stroke of bad luck. The mop handle that had been leaning against the wall had fallen over and jammed the door handle.
In any case, she was stuck there for a long time and didn’t manage to leave the school until very late. When she passed by the dessert shop she had been craving, it was closed because the owner had something to attend to. On her way home, a car splashed her from head to toe—even though it hadn’t rained at all that day.
Her father had wished her a happy birthday, but he had been busy, so they hadn’t even seen each other. When she finally reached the Leng family’s gate, a dog chased her down the street, barking furiously. She even lost one of her shoes while running.
All in all, she had been as miserable and disheveled as a person could possibly be.
Mu Yue was amazed just listening to it. Could someone really be that unlucky? Tsk. The power of the plot was truly formidable!
“And then what happened?”
“And then Leng Ming showed up!” Even now, Lin Xiaoxiao still felt touched whenever she remembered it. “He warmed up some milk for me, and when he found out it was my birthday, he even sang me a song. Haha, you wouldn’t believe it—he could do everything. Well, he was tone-deaf back then, and his singing was absolutely terrible!”
Mu Yue nodded to show that she understood and waited for her to continue. But Lin Xiaoxiao merely blinked and stared back at her.
“That’s it?”
“Mm-hmm. That’s it.”
“Wait, wait, wait!” This time, it was Mu Yue’s brain that was about to short-circuit. “Let me get this straight. You were soaked from head to toe, had lost one of your shoes, and came trudging miserably back to the Lengs’ house. He only warmed you a cup of milk and sang you one awful birthday song, and that was it? That was enough to make you fall for him?”
Earlier, when she’d suggested that Lin Xiaoxiao send Leng Ming some plain congee, she’d only been joking. Who would have thought Lin Xiaoxiao would actually turn it into a real-life reenactment?
Lin Xiaoxiao had a feeling that Mu Yue’s next words were going to shatter her rose-colored image of him, so she hurriedly clamped both hands over her mouth. If she’d had a third pair, she would have covered her ears too.
Unfortunately, she didn’t have any extra hands, and every word Mu Yue said still poured straight into her ears.
“Sweetie, I’m sure that no matter who it was, anyone with a normal amount of empathy would have shown some concern after seeing you in that state. If they knew it was your birthday, even a kind stranger might have gone straight out and bought you a cake. But one cup of milk was all it took to send you on your way? Honestly…” Mu Yue sighed in exasperation. After carefully considering her wording, she continued, “Think about it. If Leng Ming had been replaced by your dad—or me, or even Leng Ming’s mother—what would you have gotten? Would it really have been nothing more than a cup of hot milk and a birthday song?”
Lin Xiaoxiao didn’t want to think about it. She had a feeling that if she did, even Leng Ming’s image in her memories would completely lose its shine. But thoughts weren’t something she could simply control.
Her heart resisted, but her mind had already begun to imagine it.
If it had been her father, he definitely would have asked right away whether someone had bullied her. He would have hugged her sympathetically, urged her to take a hot shower and change into dry clothes, and prepared ginger tea or cold medicine for her once she came out. The table would have been covered with all kinds of delicious food—her favorite dishes, along with her favorite cake and fruit.
If it had been Mu Yue, she could use that rainy weekend a little over a month ago as a point of reference. Even when Mu Yue hadn’t been well-off, she still would have comforted Lin Xiaoxiao and cheered her up. She would have prepared a gift for her in advance. Back in their first year of high school, they hadn’t been friends yet, but in their second and third years, that was exactly what Mu Yue had done.
As for Auntie Leng, although she wouldn’t have been quite as thorough as Dad, she still would have asked whether something had happened to her, comforted her gently, and asked whether she’d eaten dinner and if she was hungry…
Thinking back on it, Lin Xiaoxiao was utterly devastated. Yes, she remembered now. That day, Auntie and Uncle had been busy until very late, leaving her alone at home with Leng Ming. But Leng Ming had only heated some milk for her and never asked whether she’d eaten dinner! By the time she realized she was hungry, it was already the middle of the night. Too embarrassed to get up and look for something to eat, she had gone hungry all night!
She had thought it was a unique and beautiful birthday memory. In reality, if someone else had received the same treatment, they wouldn’t have gotten any less—in fact, they probably would have gotten even more.
“Waaah!” Lin Xiaoxiao burst into tears—not because of Leng Ming, but simply because the beautiful fantasy of her first love had been shattered.
Seeing her cry, Mu Yue laughed. “All right, all right. What’s the big deal? Hurry up and eat. We still have to keep studying after this.”
Lin Xiaoxiao immediately cried even harder. When had her Yueyue turned into such a heartless demon? Waaah!
