Annie’s usually steady hand trembled slightly as she turned to exchange a doubtful glance with Zhuang Xiaoyue. Zhuang Xiaoyue caught the hidden meaning in her eyes, pressed a hand to her forehead, and turned away, doing her best to play the part of an innocent bystander.
Annie remained frozen in place for a long moment. Pei Xingzhi assumed she simply wasn’t skilled enough, silently grumbling to himself that Zhuang Xiaoyue was always digging holes for him. But since this was, after all, a place Zhuang Xiaoyue had recommended, it wouldn’t be right for him to just walk out. So he pulled out his phone himself, searched for examples, and showed them to Annie.
Annie looked at the screen with unease, it was filled with all sorts of blue and green “shamate” hairstyles, the kind of photos that would have led teenage fashion trends over a decade ago.
“Your aesthetic… is a bit unusual…” Annie hesitated, then cast a pleading look at Zhuang Xiaoyue.
She could afford to turn down this job, but she absolutely could not give someone a haircut like that and ruin her own reputation.
Zhuang Xiaoyue received her gaze and, with no other choice, stepped forward.
“Sister Annie, just dye it a really eye-catching color. My friend just thinks he looks too innocent and wants to seem more mature.”
“Pretty much that. As long as I look like someone you wouldn’t want to mess with!” Pei Xingzhi nodded in satisfaction, seeing that Zhuang Xiaoyue had finally caught his meaning.
“Any other requirements besides that?”
“I want to look fierce and edgy, the kind of person people wouldn’t dare approach from a distance!”
Xie Nanyi liked the obedient type, so he’d deliberately do the opposite. He refused to be inexplicably lumped together with Xie Nanyi.
He wasn’t sure if Annie understood what he meant, but judging by her confident expression, she probably had it covered.
Dyeing hair was a time-consuming process, and Pei Xingzhi didn’t idle away the time. He opened up the confession wall and started collecting the traits of people Xie Nanyi had rejected.
“Brother Xiaoyue, I think I’ll need to get an ear piercing later.”
Zhuang Xiaoyue was dozing off nearby, but Pei Xingzhi’s words snapped him wide awake. He rolled his eyes, wondering what kind of stunt this guy was pulling now.
“What now?”
“An ear piercing brings bad luck to one’s husband. That way Xie Nanyi won’t pursue me.”
Pei Xingzhi’s words left everyone in the room silent for a full minute before they all gave him a thumbs up.
“Fair enough.”
With that affirmation, Pei Xingzhi perked up and continued scrolling through his phone, searching for his next target.
“I think I could also get a lip piercing, or a tongue piercing, or…”
“Before you pierce anything, maybe think about whether your parents will kill you first.”
Pei Xingzhi’s words made Zhuang Xiaoyue wince in sympathy. He stepped forward, snatched the phone from Pei Xingzhi’s hands, and cut off any further ideas of self-torture.
He’d originally thought Pei Xingzhi was just a little annoyed by Xie Nanyi’s pursuit, but only now did he realize just how much Xie Nanyi had pushed Pei Xingzhi to the brink.
The guy had practically turned a perfectly good, upstanding youth into a full-blown alternative punk.
“Then forget it…” Pei Xingzhi belatedly realized that his delayed rebellious phase would probably trigger a massive reaction from his parents, after all, they were the type to make a huge fuss over him scraping his knee from a minor fall.
Unlike Pei Xingzhi, Annie was a human with normal aesthetic sensibilities, so naturally she couldn’t craft the visually striking style Pei Xingzhi had hoped for. But taking his request into account, the final result was a dazzling red.
Pei Xingzhi’s fair skin made the bold hair color accentuate his striking features even more. Loose strands of hair fell scattered across his brows, giving him a doll-like delicacy at first glance. Annie didn’t cut his long hair short, merely trimming it into the trendy mullet style.
His hair had a slight natural wave, with the ends curling up naturally and glistening under the light, as if a holy angel had descended upon the mortal world.
“Wow!” Zhuang Xiaoyue was momentarily stunned, only snapping back to reality after Pei Xingzhi patted him a few times.
“How are you this handsome?” Zhuang Xiaoyue cupped his face with both hands in a lovesick pose. “I’m about to fall in love with you.”
“I’m not into BL relationships! Don’t even think about it!” Pei Xingzhi was now extremely averse to the word “love,” unable to even hear it.
Zhuang Xiaoyue rolled his eyes in disgust and dropped the subject.
By the time the two walked out of the hair salon, night had fallen. The salon was near the school’s night market, so they bought a big pile of snacks and ate as they walked back toward campus.
The confession bridge was a necessary stop on their way back to the dormitory, and almost every day someone confessed there. Today was no exception.
The two had eaten a bit too much for dinner, so they paused along the way to watch the commotion.
The couple confessing were an AB pair, brought together by the existence of their marks.
Whenever mark-based romance came up, the crowd naturally couldn’t help but think of Xie Nanyi and Pei Xingzhi, who were all the rage on campus. Once someone brought up the topic, others chimed in, and the center of conversation quickly shifted from the couple who had just confessed to Xie Nanyi and Pei Xingzhi.
Hearing his own name, Pei Xingzhi pressed his cap down lower and dragged Zhuang Xiaoyue toward the dormitory, afraid they’d realize the topic of discussion was right there among them.
It was still early, and Zhuang Xiaoyue didn’t want to go back to the dorm yet, so the two took a detour to the campus coffee shop. Pei Xingzhi had eaten too much just now, and the sudden running had made his stomach uncomfortable. He rubbed his belly and slumped over the table to digest.
Zhuang Xiaoyue, on the other hand, had a good appetite and even ordered a small cake as an after-dinner treat. The two sat side by side at the counter, and Pei Xingzhi felt nothing but endless exhaustion.
“Xie Nanyi doesn’t seem like a bad person, so why do you hate him so much?” It wasn’t just Zhuang Xiaoyue, almost everyone on campus who knew Xie Nanyi was pursuing Pei Xingzhi was curious about this question.
In their view, the mark between marked pairs was just like the pheromone compatibility between Alphas and Omegas, a bond destined from birth, an instinct no one could resist.
No one could refuse the pull of pheromones or mark imprints, and no one could break that rule. Moreover, for a Beta, a mark was absolutely a positive evolution, it allowed a Beta to develop feelings for and bond with an Alpha or Omega who was a step above them.
To put it cynically, this evolution might even allow them to achieve class mobility, because if not for the existence of marks, who would ever pay attention to a common Beta?
Although Zhuang Xiaoyue was an Omega, due to his inferior pheromones, he had been treated little better than a Beta since childhood. So even he couldn’t understand why Pei Xingzhi would turn down a high-quality Alpha and go out of his way to reject his advances.
Pei Xingzhi didn’t know how to answer Zhuang Xiaoyue’s question either.
It seemed he had no reason to reject Xie Nanyi.
As everyone believed, everything about Xie Nanyi was beyond comparison to him.
If he accepted Xie Nanyi’s pursuit, he could enjoy the treatment that all Betas dreamed of, and he could also enjoy all the privileges he had once hoped for.
His current rejection seemed to make no sense at all.
But then again, why should he accept Xie Nanyi’s pursuit?
Before this, he and Xie Nanyi had never met. He knew nothing about Xie Nanyi, and he didn’t love him. Xie Nanyi’s pursuit of him was merely driven by the mark, and Xie Nanyi didn’t love him either.
Not to mention that he wasn’t even Xie Nanyi’s marked partner.
He didn’t know why his name had appeared on Xie Nanyi, and he was more inclined to believe it was a prank by the young master Xie, just to toy with him.
“Xiaoyue.” Pei Xingzhi pressed his lips together, unsure how to answer his question.
“Xie Nanyi is certainly not lacking in anything, but neither am I. He’s an outstanding person, and so am I.”
“Everything I have now, I earned through my own abilities. I’m capable of accomplishing everything on my own, so why should I bind my name to a stranger based on some mark? I don’t like Xie Nanyi, and I don’t want to force myself to be with him because of something that doesn’t even exist.”
Pei Xingzhi’s words were too vague and elusive; Zhuang Xiaoyue didn’t quite understand what he was saying. He bit his fork and nodded silently, saying he understood.
Pei Xingzhi could tell he hadn’t really taken it in. He sighed and ordered a coffee to keep himself going, planning to continue working on his homework that night.
After ordering the coffee, Pei Xingzhi pulled out his phone to pay, but when he reached into his back pocket, he came up empty.
His phone was gone.
Pei Xingzhi was extremely unwilling to accept this cruel fact. It seemed like nothing good had happened to him lately.
The waiter was staring at him with a sharp look. Pei Xingzhi forced a very ugly smile and tugged at Zhuang Xiaoyue beside him, asking him to pay.
The person next to him took out a phone to pay, then produced Pei Xingzhi’s phone and handed it to him.
Pei Xingzhi looked at the slender fingers that clearly didn’t belong to Zhuang Xiaoyue, and looked up in confusion to see Xie Nanyi’s face.
Pei Xingzhi turned around in a panic, only to find that Zhuang Xiaoyue had moved to a table further inside at some point, replaced by the person he least wanted to see right now.
Zhuang Xiaoyue clasped his hands together and raised them above his head, bowing apologetically to him. Pei Xingzhi stood up to go after him, but was pushed back down by Xie Nanyi the moment he rose.
The waiter’s gossipy gaze fell on them. Pei Xingzhi didn’t want to end up on tomorrow’s confession wall, so he flipped Zhuang Xiaoyue the middle finger and sat back down.
“When did you get here?” Pei Xingzhi asked, his tone harsh and full of hostility.
“Right when you were still talking just now.” Xie Nanyi answered truthfully.
He had only meant to return Pei Xingzhi’s phone, but unexpectedly overheard his monologue.
“You heard all of that, didn’t you? I don’t like you, and I don’t want to accept your pursuit. Can you stop bothering me now?” Since the words were already out, Pei Xingzhi couldn’t be bothered to fake any friendliness.
He had already been blunt enough just now. If Xie Nanyi knew what was good for him, he wouldn’t keep pestering him, right?
“I know you don’t like me, and I don’t like you either.” Xie Nanyi’s answer caught Pei Xingzhi completely off guard.
Of course he could tell that Xie Nanyi didn’t like him, but hearing the person who had been pursuing him so fervently that morning say this so calmly now still felt jarringly inconsistent.
“I feel the same way you do, I hate the constraint of the imprint. But my father doesn’t see it that way. He thinks this kind of thing is like fate, a divine will that no one can defy.”
“So what?” Xie Nanyi was rambling on and on, and Pei Xingzhi couldn’t grasp the point of his words at all.
“So my father demands that I must be with the one I’m imprinted with, even if the two of us have never met each other.”
“Who’s your dad, and why does he get to meddle in my business?” Pei Xingzhi tossed his hair back, looking annoyed.
“This hair color suits you.”
“What?”
Xie Nanyi coughed lightly behind his hand and continued the previous topic.
“Since we’re already seen as bound by this relationship in the eyes of others, why not play along and act it out for them. I need Classmate Pei to help me get through my father’s scrutiny, and in return, Classmate Pei can freely make use of the Xie family’s resources.”
“Why would I agree to that? Even without you, I can accomplish what I want to do.” Pei Xingzhi furrowed his brow. This partnership sounded completely useless to him, he couldn’t think of a single benefit besides tarnishing his reputation.
“Classmate Pei can take some time to consider it.” Xie Nanyi wasn’t in a hurry, speaking softly and letting Pei Xingzhi decide on his own.
“No need to consider. I won’t agree.” With that, Pei Xingzhi stood up, grabbed Zhuang Xiaoyue who hadn’t finished her cake yet, and walked out of the coffee shop.
Pei Xingzhi’s coffee didn’t arrive until after he had already left. Xie Nanyi picked it up and took a small sip.
The sour, bitter taste seemed as if it had been extracted from Pei Xingzhi himself.
It wasn’t very good, but he didn’t dislike the flavor.