There was still only one backpack.
Lou Fan followed behind Qin Peiran out of the school gate. Remembering how Qin Peiran’s roommates hadn’t even raised their heads just now, she couldn’t help asking, “Don’t your roommates even ask where you’re going when you pack your things in the middle of the night?”
In her previous life, Lou Fan hadn’t heard Qin Peiran mention her roommates much, nor had she ever thought about this detail.
“We’re not close.” Qin Peiran said only these two words and was completely unwilling to speak further.
That made sense, Lou Fan thought to herself. In order to work and earn tuition money, Qin Peiran often had to work until one or two in the morning. The dormitory would long be locked by then, forcing her to find a random chair to sleep on at her workplace and return to school the next day just to grab her books for class.
It was only natural that she wasn’t close with her roommates.
Except, Lou Fan leaned a bit closer to Qin Peiran’s direction, lowering her voice to ask, “Aren’t you afraid I’m a human trafficker?”
There were many people at the school gate: some wearing pajamas, some in sportswear, and others in pretty dresses.
Yet someone like Lou Fan, wearing a knee-length suit skirt, stepping on high heels, and letting her long, straight black hair drape softly over her waist, was truly a rare sight.
What’s more, she possessed an unforgettable face, and her exquisite makeup attracted quite a few lingering gazes.
Feeling the stares cast by the surrounding people, Qin Peiran pulled Lou Fan a bit further away.
Lou Fan was clueless, assuming they were blocking the path at the school gate, and obediently followed Qin Peiran to a nearby row of tree shades.
Few people passed through here, and the light was blocked by the canopy, allowing only two hazy figures to be discerned beneath the trees.
Yet it also offered a clear view of everyone passing by the school gate.
Secretive, thrilling, and long-lost.
Growing closer and closer.
The leaves of the bushes brushed against Lou Fan’s exposed calves, sending a tingling, numb sensation through her skin. Qin Peiran’s hand, which was still grasping Lou Fan’s arm, had not let go. The distance between them was neither close nor far, yet Lou Fan’s heartbeat was more violent than during any previous intimacy.
“Elder sister.” Qin Peiran suddenly spoke up, the five fingers grasping Lou Fan’s arm tightening unconsciously. “Is it okay if I call you that?”
“Oh, of course.” Lou Fan felt a nervous surge for no apparent reason.
Even though she clearly knew the other person harbored no such intentions toward her, her heart still fluttered at the sound of those two words.
That felt like cheating.
“Why are you being so good to me?” Qin Peiran looked slightly shorter than Lou Fan in her high heels. At this moment, she tilted her head up slightly, pulling Lou Fan’s hand closer toward her chest. Caught off guard, Lou Fan almost stumbled right into Qin Peiran’s embrace.
“The footing is unstable.” Qin Peiran glanced down at Lou Fan’s shoe heels, then looked back up, gazing at Lou Fan with a pair of extremely clear eyes. “Be careful, elder sister.”
Qin Peiran looked far too righteous and proper, completely contrasting with Lou Fan.
If Lou Fan’s appearance looked deeply affectionate even when gazing at a dog, then Qin Peiran was the kind of person who could remain entirely indifferent even while lying in her lover’s bed.
Of course, this was merely Lou Fan’s guess, seeing as she had never witnessed Qin Peiran loving anyone else, and had only ever seen her in her own bed.
Clearly wearing the simplest hoodie and jeans, her long hair simply tied up into a high ponytail, and clearly possessing a face that looked immensely cold and thin, her eyes transparent and clear without the slightest trace of enticement.
Clearly every instance of calling her elder sister was natural and normal.
Yet it still stirred ripples deep within Lou Fan’s heart.
Perhaps the colder someone’s appearance was, the more gorgeous they became when stirred by passion, Lou Fan thought with a mischievous glint in her eye.
“Who’s being good to you?” Lou Fan yanked her wrist free, casually tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “I already told you what the eminent monk in the temple said. I’m just doing a good deed.” As she spoke, she glanced toward the school gate, where several students were buying grilled sausages from a roadside stall.
Just as Lou Fan was about to pull out her phone to call a ride home, her ankle was suddenly gripped by a warm hand.
A tingling numbness wrapped around that section of skin.
Lou Fan almost cried out in surprise. With the hand holding her phone shielding her mouth, she looked down.
Qin Peiran was half-crouched on the ground, one hand gripping her ankle while the other held the heel of her high heel.
“Take them off.” Qin Peiran didn’t look up, her tone flat.
“What, what are you doing?” Lou Fan glanced hastily at the nearby grilled sausage stall, crouched down alongside her, and said in a lowered voice.
She had worn high heels all day long, and her ankles were already chafed red. All she wanted right now was to rush home; she had no energy to horse around here with Qin Peiran.
Qin Peiran’s hand didn’t let go. Sideways, she glanced at the crouching Lou Fan, her fingertips brushing lightly across her ankle bone. “They’re chafed red. I’m trading with you.”
“Hss.” Qin Peiran didn’t use much force; it wasn’t painful, but it was itchy, that sneaky kind of itchy that tugged at one’s heart and soul.
“Does it hurt?” Qin Peiran asked.
“No, don’t. Hey, we’re going home right after this anyway.” Lou Fan tried to brush Qin Peiran’s hand away, but the other’s stubbornness far exceeded her imagination.
“Waiting for a car takes a while, and we still have to go upstairs.” Qin Peiran unceremoniously inserted her fingers into the back of Lou Fan’s shoe, slipped it off, and swapped it with the sneakers on her own feet.
Lou Fan couldn’t win against her. Once they finished changing shoes and stood back up, before they even had time to hail a ride, Lou Fan felt a weight on her shoulder.
Qin Peiran naturally draped her arm over Lou Fan’s shoulder.
“I don’t know how to walk in these.” Qin Peiran bit her lower lip, lifting her foot to jiggle the shoe heel.
“If you don’t know how, then why?” Lou Fan furrowed her brow, about to flare up, only to see Qin Peiran hook her arm and pull her closer.
“Don’t let me fall.” Qin Peiran’s slender outer brow arched upward, gazing down at Lou Fan from top to bottom with the advantage of the high heels. Her arm was hooked tightly, bringing them close enough to hear each other’s breathing.
Lou Fan somewhat unnaturally averted her gaze.
Why was this child so strange?
She kept her head down, using her phone to hail a car, her gaze fixed motionlessly on the little car icon on the screen. She didn’t look up, but her right ear felt burning hot.
After all, Qin Peiran’s breath kept beating against that spot, accompanied by an utterly unreserved gaze.
Like a beast eyeing its prey with predatory watchfulness, leaving Lou Fan acting like fish on a cutting board.
“Does elder sister really want nothing from me?” Qin Peiran’s voice was very low; if the two of them hadn’t been standing so close, Lou Fan wouldn’t have been able to hear her clearly. “What should I do if I’m a little scared?”
Helpless, Lou Fan silently recited the license plate ending of the car that was still five minutes away and put away her phone.
Turning her head, she realized that the distance between them had completely breached the safe zone.
Her gaze landed on those slightly parted lips, and Lou Fan inevitably lost her steady breathing. Who could blame her when Qin Peiran hit every single one of her aesthetic preferences?
“Hm?” When Qin Peiran pressed for an answer, she had a habit of tilting her chin slightly. At such a close distance and with such a gesture, the short breaths of air turned humid and viscous, leading Lou Fan’s mind astray.
Lou Fan remembered that kind of touch: icy cold, yet instantly scorching the moment their tongues intertwined.
Silently reciting the car’s license plate digits two more times to resist the impulse to do something to the face right in front of her, she reached out and pinched the tip of Qin Peiran’s nose.
Her nose was straight and tall, freezing for a moment after being pinched by Lou Fan.
Watching Qin Peiran freeze right in front of her, Lou Fan curved the corners of her eyes with playful amusement and let out a soft chuckle. “Isn’t it a bit too late to be scared now?”
Her fingers were gentle, shaking Qin Peiran’s pinched nose slightly. “Go home with the bad guy, little kid.”
“Qin Peiran?” A strange male voice rang out.
Lou Fan instantly reined in her smile, letting go, and just as she raised her head, she heard that man speak again:
“Are you guys being lesbians?” Followed immediately by a string of laughter.
The group of students who had just been buying grilled sausages were now walking toward the two of them, each holding a plastic bag. The male student who had spoken walked at the very front, and the fluorescent green basketball shoes on his feet looked newly bought, glaring enough to make Lou Fan’s head spin.
“Where did this green toad come from?” Lou Fan was already feeling ready to explode from Qin Peiran’s antics, and since this person happened to run right into her crosshairs, she naturally didn’t hold back her tongue.
Yet that sentence happened to be drowned out by the honk of a passing car.
The moment he caught sight of Lou Fan clearly, the green toad’s small eyes visibly lit up for a split second. He looked at Qin Peiran, then pointed at Lou Fan. “Hey, Qin Peiran, who is she to you? Aren’t you going to introduce us?”
Qin Peiran’s thin eyelids pressed down, her expression darkening by a notable margin, and she moved her lips reluctantly. “An elder sister.”
“Oh, an elder sister. Is she a maternal or paternal cousin?” The green toad wore a fawning expression, practically telegraphing his intention to come over and strike up a conversation with Lou Fan.
Too lazy to waste any more breath on such a person, Lou Fan grabbed the arm Qin Peiran had already lowered and dragged her toward the roadside. “The car is here, let’s go.”
It wasn’t until they returned home, when Lou Fan sat on the low entryway stool and swapped the sneakers back to her house slippers, that she belatedly raised her eyes and gave a playful, sidelong smirk to Qin Peiran, who was standing there properly. “You don’t know how to walk in these?”
As she spoke, she used her hand to hook the ankle of Qin Peiran’s high-heeled foot.
The touched skin shivered, and Qin Peiran instinctively flinched half a step back.
Lou Fan curled her lips into an innocent expression. “So you’re allowed to touch me, but I’m not allowed to touch you back?”
“No.” Qin Peiran took off the high heels and neatly placed them onto the shoe rack.
Stopping her teasing, Lou Fan raised her hand to ruffle Qin Peiran’s hair before grabbing a towel and heading into the bathroom to shower.
They had fussed around too late tonight, but thankfully tomorrow was Saturday, meaning she could sleep in. After finishing her shower, Lou Fan thought to herself as she walked out wrapped only in a bath towel.
It wasn’t until she caught sight of the silhouette sitting on the sofa that Lou Fan suddenly remembered she had forgotten to put on her pajamas inside the bathroom.
She really couldn’t be blamed for this.
When the two of them lived together in her previous life, Lou Fan had never minded such things; later on, after Qin Peiran moved out, Lou Fan had even less reason to care.
Yet right now, their relationship could bluntly be described as cohabiting roommates tied together by financial support. Lou Fan instinctively tightened the bath towel around her body, preparing to bypass the living room and head straight to her bedroom.
“Wait a moment.” Qin Peiran’s voice brushed past her ear from behind. Lou Fan felt a chill near her ear and turned her head slightly.
Qin Peiran had somehow already walked up behind her, holding a bottle of iodophor she had retrieved from the cabinet, and pointed at Lou Fan’s heel. “It’s chafed raw. Let me put some medicine on it for you.”
“No need.” Lou Fan clutched the bath towel with one hand while freeing the other to grab the glass bottle from Qin Peiran’s grasp. “I can do it myself.”
Qin Peiran pulled the hand holding the iodophor slightly back out of reach, then naturally and smoothly twirled a strand of Lou Fan’s hair. “Go blow-dry your hair first.”
With that, she pressed her hand against Lou Fan’s lower back, pushing her toward the bedroom.
A warm palm rested against the bath towel, using a bit of force as she pushed Lou Fan forward, causing her fingertips to accidentally graze from the edge of the towel onto Lou Fan’s bare back.
Bold and open.
Yet it left Lou Fan’s mind entirely unsettled.