“…”
She simply wanted to tell Kong Lingrou that this kind of terrible, emotional, and unrealistic discussion was an exceptional case.
Because she had gone through so much trouble to audit a computer science course—and an applied, practical one at that—this type of course should have been the most interesting.
She should have been experiencing what it was like for a group of people to sit together and work in unity to try implementing their ideas using the cleanest and most elegant programming language.
Not like this current situation, where several eccentric group members behaved like total novices who knew nothing and only knew how to pick fights on internet forums, letting nothing but drunken, wild fantasies spew from their mouths.
This was what Shi Bei felt regretful about.
She disliked being misunderstood, even though she was long used to it.
Shi Bei refrained from saying anything further; resting her head on her arms, she intended to close her eyes and rest for a bit.
An hour and a half passed in the blink of an eye.
There was only one class on Friday’s schedule.
Shi Bei, who had fallen into a deep slumber, was woken up by the class dismissal bell. She saw that Kong Lingrou beside her had already packed up her things: “Walk out slowly by yourself. I’ll take a taxi home and then drive the car over to pick you up.”
“That’s too much trouble; I can go back by myself.”
“Then what was the point of me keeping you company for the whole morning?”
“It was a class taught by a professor you knew, and you wanted to audit it to feel the atmosphere, right? Besides, an hour and a half doesn’t count as the whole morning.”
Seeing that Kong Lingrou was annoyed, she curved her eyes slightly and immediately changed her tune, obediently saying: “Alright, then I’ll wait for you at the entrance.”
The agreed plan was for Kong Lingrou to go home first and drive the car out to pick up Shi Bei so they could go eat together.
However, after picking up Shi Bei, Kong Lingrou rechecked the time on the way to the restaurant and realized it was almost time for the puppy’s meal.
“Let’s make a quick trip back. Wait for me in the car; I’ll go upstairs first to feed Lele,” Kong Lingrou said, turning the steering wheel. “I should have fed her earlier; I forgot.”
The corners of Shi Bei’s lips curved upward softly; without even looking, she knew Kong Lingrou must be frowning right now.
The sequence had been disrupted, and multiple threads were performing the same task. This kind of failure—where poor planning led to dragged-down efficiency—would make Kong Lingrou feel extraordinarily uncomfortable.
Shi Bei, on the other hand, felt nothing about such things at all.
She even felt secretly that the way Kong Lingrou went crazy over such small matters was quite cute—a rare moment of childishness.
“It doesn’t matter; it’s still early anyway.” Shi Bei took the opportunity to ask, “I saw that the mini-fridge was packed full of meat. Is that all prepared for the puppy?”
“Mm.”
“Isn’t that a bit too pampering?”
“Since I’m raising her, I might as well. If I don’t feed her, the puppy can’t use money to buy the food she likes herself.”
“You said in the past that you would never raise a pet again.”
“…Things don’t always happen strictly according to my wishes.”
“Wasn’t it you who wanted to raise her?” Shi Bei turned her head, seemingly catching the subtext in her words. “Then who asked you to raise her?”
“My grandfather sent her over.”
“Why did he send you a puppy? Sent directly from back home to Japan?”
The car drove into the apartment parking lot.
“Why are there so many questions?” Kong Lingrou put a stop to her endless stream of queries, unbuckled her seatbelt, and stepped out of the car. “Wait for me here for fifteen minutes.”
“Alright then.” Shi Bei turned on her phone to check the time.
Kong Lingrou gave her an amused look.
Left alone in the car, Shi Bei closed her eyes, intending to doze off for a bit.
In less than two minutes, she suddenly heard the rear door opening and the sound of someone sitting down and swiftly shutting the door behind them.
Startled, she looked in the rearview mirror and saw a young female passenger.
After getting into the car, the girl unexpectedly didn’t say a word and ducked between the passenger seat’s backrest and the rear seat.
Only her long brown hair and fair nape were visible in the rearview mirror, wearing a baby-blue smock top.
Frightened, Shi Bei didn’t make a sound.
Holding her phone, she observed what was going on.
The unfamiliar girl seemed to find the posture uncomfortable; she suddenly twisted around to kneel on the seat, assuming a position that was half-upright and half-slouched against the seat’s backrest, her gaze constantly peering outward through the rear window.
Shi Bei opened her phone browser and began searching.
She was somewhat face-blind, especially when it came to exquisitely beautiful people who shared a certain resemblance; she was not very good at telling who was who.
Therefore, she pulled up Takahashi Rin’s official photo.
Just as she was silently observing.
The girl, who seemed to be waiting out of boredom, suddenly turned her head as if stretching her neck.
Her eyes met Shi Bei’s direct, unblinking gaze.
“Ah—!” The first scream echoed inside the car.
“Hello.” Shi Bei held up the official photo on her phone next to her face for comparison, calmly greeting her in Japanese: “Miss Takahashi Rin.”
Having her name called out, the shaken Takahashi Rin instantly regained her composure.
Her posture, kneeling on the seat, resembled a cat quietly claiming its territory; she flashed her signature smile and said in a sweet voice: “Hello, you must be Xiaorou’s friend, right?”
Before Shi Bei could even be surprised by her pure Chinese, she was first dumbfounded by the nickname “Xiaorou” coming out of her mouth, which sounded even worse than calling her “Little Monkey.”
“I’m sorry, my suspicious actions disturbed you. In fact, I constantly felt like a fan was following me just now, and afraid of being recognized, I happened to see this familiar car, so I slipped inside to hide.”
Lies. Total lies.
She claimed to be afraid of being recognized by fans, yet she wasn’t even wearing a mask on her face.
She had definitely come to find Kong Lingrou; walking into the underground parking lot, she happened to see Kong Lingrou get off without locking the car doors, assuming she had temporarily gone upstairs to grab something she forgot.
So she hurried to open the door and slipped into the back seat to hide, wanting to scare Kong Lingrou.
Why lie? She couldn’t understand.
Shi Bei asked bluntly: “Isn’t this your own car?”
“Ah.” Takahashi Rin paused for a brief moment, realizing that this girl possessed enough information, and immediately shifted the meaning of her previous sentence: “Ah yes, I’m familiar with my own car, which is why I hid here.”
Before the short conversation even ended or led anywhere meaningful, Shi Bei already felt that she thoroughly disliked her.
This was the first time she had formed a judgment on her impression of someone so rapidly.
A period of silence ensued.
“Are you her classmate?” Takahashi Rin’s Chinese was extremely standard, though her pronunciation was slightly uncoordinated and her word choice carried a subtle unnaturalness.
“Your Chinese is really good.” Shi Bei didn’t answer; instead, maintaining a smile, she probed with feigned innocence, “Have you been learning it for a long time?”
“It’s not that good, nor has it been very long, hahaha.”
Takahashi Rin’s smiling appearance gave off a very gentle demeanor, yet her words contained zero useful information.
Like dry wood thrown into a furnace, Shi Bei’s suppressed annoyance rose another notch.
Unable to maintain a smile for long like an actress, her face froze back into a expressionless state.
Finally, amid the awkward silence between the two, the time on Shi Bei’s phone ticked to the fourteenth minute since Kong Lingrou had left the car.
The rear window rolled down first.
Takahashi Rin, who had claimed she was hiding from fans, exposed her face with a brilliant smile outside the window without any hesitation: “Yo!”
“?” Kong Lingrou subconsciously glanced at Shi Bei in the passenger seat; seeing that she was still there, she paused before asking Takahashi Rin, “Why are you here?”
“I kept calling your phone, but I couldn’t get through.”
Takahashi Rin’s tone instantly turned cute and clingy.
Kong Lingrou glanced at her phone; there were no missed calls. However, tapping into it revealed a few unknown calls that had been automatically intercepted and blocked.
“Changed your number again?”
“Mm.” Takahashi Rin said piteously, “Strange messages kept coming into that previous phone number…”
“Next time, before canceling your number in a fit of anger, send me your new number first.”
“I did send it, but why can’t you turn on LINE notifications?”
“I don’t like LINE.”
“But you don’t check WeChat messages either.”
“I don’t like WeChat.”
“So calling is the only way to reach you in time, right?” Takahashi Rin chattered away, “Why is that? Everyone says aloof people prefer checking messages over making calls, but you’re the opposite—is it because you want to hear my voice?”
Kong Lingrou chuckled lightly without refuting.
She simply lowered her head and added her new number to her contacts first.
“By the way.” Takahashi Rin recalled the wheelchair she had seen in the trunk from the back seat earlier and said with a smile, “Did you want to drive this clumsy car because your friend’s leg is injured?”
Under the gaze Shi Bei directed at her, Takahashi Rin, having confirmed she guessed correctly, continued smilingly: “Actually, you can book an accessible taxi; an electric wheelchair can go straight up the ramp into the vehicle. A senior colleague in my previous drama crew had trouble moving his legs, and he booked a taxi to the location every time.”
“We’re just about to go eat.” Kong Lingrou gave a noncommittal response, opened the door to get into the car first, and asked, “Do you want to come along?”
“Sure!” Takahashi Rin’s tone was sprightly as she quickly settled in and buckled her seatbelt.
“What do you want to eat?” This question was asked as she turned to Shi Bei.
“Whatever.” Shi Bei’s voice was very soft.
“You’re the picky one, yet when I ask, you say whatever,” Kong Lingrou said, driving the car out first without noticing Shi Bei’s instantly darkened expression.
Perhaps out of consideration for Takahashi Rin, Kong Lingrou drove the car to a high-end restaurant that required a membership to enter.
On the way, Shi Bei gradually realized from their conversation that a span of six years meant more than just the absence of a few key pieces of information.
Her past life was like old wallpaper—it could be peeled off entirely from top to bottom and replaced with a new design.
Shi Bei ate the entire meal without uttering a word.
When she sank deep into thought without finding any clues, her mood took on a somber, almost possessed darkness.
All the visual frames shifted to a dim, frame-dropping state, accompanied by rustling sounds.
Expressionlessly, she swallowed the mushrooms from her baked rice.
By the time her attention returned to reality, Takahashi Rin was no longer there.
The car engine shut off in the parking lot.
“What are you spacing out for?” Kong Lingrou unbuckled her seatbelt, looked at the motionless Shi Bei, and added, “Are you no longer a picky eater now?”
The abrupt question made Shi Bei slowly regain her senses.
Failing to understand all at once, she didn’t know what to say.
The dim light around the underground parking lot cast a gloomy glow on the figure curled in the seat.
On her pale, expressionless face, only those pitch-black eyes shone with an alarming brightness—like inorganic matter produced in a dark cave that hadn’t seen light for a long time, gouged out to serve as the sinister eyes of a ghost.
Staring straight at Kong Lingrou.
Kong Lingrou asked her: “Do you still want to go anywhere else?”
“…” Shi Bei shook her head.
“Then let’s go back.”
Kong Lingrou prepared to grab the crutches.
Just as her hand rested on the car door, Shi Bei leaned forward and caught her left wrist.
Cold and soft, wrapping upward like seaweed from the seabed.
Kong Lingrou turned her face, looking at her in confusion: “What on earth is wrong?”
“I heard that you used to have a crush on a girl whose birthday is on July 11th.” Her palm felt the warm, beating pulse; with a pair of blazing eyes carrying a hint of morbid emotion, she asked in a soft, gentle whisper, “Kong Lingrou, who was it that you had a crush on?”