Shi Bei raised her head to look at Kong Lingrou, quietly waiting for an answer amid her subconsciously accelerating heartbeat.
The dim lighting made her face appear elusive and hard to read.
“No.”
As if emphasizing it, she added again: “I have never liked anyone.”
Her voice was flat and even, and her face bore no expression that could be interpreted.
“…”
“It’s because I didn’t want to celebrate Kong Lingyu’s birthday, but she’s a very difficult person to deal with. When turning her down, I had to give a reason she could accept.”
This was identical to the conclusion Shi Bei had guessed herself.
She voiced the strange point that bothered her: “But Kong Lingyu listens to you most of the time; she’s willing to do whatever you say. Did you really need to deliberately tell a lie?”
“She listens to me most of the time, but in order to achieve a goal she believes should be met, she will throw tantrums regardless of the cost unless there is a naturally valid reason for refusal. In order to avoid keeping her company on Christmas, I even claimed to be a Calvinist.”
“Oh.” Shi Bei was persuaded, unable to refrain from murmuring under her breath, “I thought that Miss Takahashi from earlier was someone you had a crush on.”
“…” Kong Lingrou’s expression suddenly shifted, her eyes carrying a look of skepticism that practically read what on earth are you thinking?
She originally hadn’t intended to say more, but in the end, she couldn’t resist adding a line:
“Her and me—no matter how you look at it, we’re just friends, aren’t we?”
“Mhm.” Shi Bei pondered, tilting her face slightly to peek at her. “Hard to say.”
Upon returning home, a puppy resembling a small black shadow scurried over to the entryway with a pitter-patter of paws. After pawing at Kong Lingrou for a while, it unexpectedly turned around and rubbed against Shi Bei’s thigh.
Shi Bei was flattered by the unexpected favor; after freezing for a few seconds, she decided to bend down and pick it up.
Yet the moment her arms enveloped that ball of fluffy body, the puppy twisted around sharply and ran back onto Kong Lingrou’s lap, even throwing her a look that closely resembled a roll of its eyes.
…What did that mean?
Wasn’t that pawing action at her leg just now an invitation for a hug and play?
Shi Bei felt deeply shocked. While trying hard to contemplate the psychology of the puppy, she cast a bewildered glance at Kong Lingrou and asked, “Why did it run away?”
To her surprise, Kong Lingrou let out a light laugh.
“Looks like a dog thief, doesn’t she?” She squatted down to stroke Lele’s head, praising it with satisfaction, “So smart, knowing to hide from strange people.”
“…Tch.”
Shi Bei felt very hurt on the inside. Casting a side-eye at that seemingly exceedingly smart puppy, she resolved that she must secretly curry favor with it whenever Kong Lingrou wasn’t around in the future, cultivating a deep affection between them.
When the time came, compared to a strict owner who set rules, the puppy would definitely prefer an easygoing, doting guest like her.
When Kong Lingrou discovered that her puppy liked someone else more than her… she would definitely be so angry she’d be rendered speechless.
With her vague plan established in her mind, the corners of Shi Bei’s lips curled up secretly.
Kong Lingrou fastened the leash on the puppy and headed out the door.
Once again, Shi Bei was left alone in the vast space.
With nothing to do, Shi Bei rested her chin on her hands against the desk, mulling over the conversation she had heard in the underground parking lot earlier.
If Kong Lingrou had truly possessed feelings for Takahashi Rin in the past, she would have cut off her questions nonchalantly at most, rather than denying it with such openly skeptical emotion.
—It seemed they really were just friends.
She had to admit that Shi Bei felt a little happy.
But why was she so happy…
Presumably, it was because if Kong Lingrou harbored a crush on someone who was so close at hand, it might cause her upcoming plan of deliberate seduction to fail entirely.
Or perhaps she simply felt that sweet-looking female actress seemed like a bad person.
Kong Lingrou was already bad enough herself; if another bad person were added to the mix, how could Shi Bei possibly be a match for them?
In a daze, she analyzed her own emotions, unsure of how much time had passed. By the time her senses returned to reality, she unexpectedly heard the sound of Kong Lingrou and the puppy returning home.
The natural light on the balcony had shifted into low-saturation sunset clouds.
Emotions were truly the subject Shi Bei was least adept at; every time she spent a massive amount of time on them, she often failed to glean any clear result.
Only at moments like this could she understand the helplessness felt by those classmates who immediately got stuck whenever they encountered a math problem with a twist.
Sprawling lazily, Shi Bei clicked open WeChat, only to see a large stack of unread messages.
Without realizing when it had happened, she had actually blocked her senior classmate as a habit.
Fortunately, the messages were still from today.
Her senior was notifying her that their advisor had returned to the country and that she should report to the lab as normal starting next week, while also asking if there would be any issues with the small projects and presentation meetings being conducted in Japanese.
Shi Bei:
My Japanese isn’t good enough to give a presentation… I can’t even handle everyday conversation.
Senior:
Dump the presentation on the seniors! Just stay right beside the Chinese seniors at all times. When the professor speaks to you, answer in English; if you can’t express it in English, look at the seniors and speak Chinese. Don’t stand on ceremony—hand everything over to the seniors. A senior is your shield against arrows and your spear in a charge!
Shi Bei:
What if I can’t even understand what I’m hearing?
Senior:
Then just say ‘hai’ to everything. Wait until the professor turns away, then ask the seniors what happened just now. Don’t be nervous—the professor is very gentle, so it’s fine even if you don’t understand.
Shi Bei:
Hai! Understood!
Looking at her phone, Shi Bei couldn’t help practicing the pronunciation of “hai” out loud, catching the entering Kong Lingrou off guard.
“What are you doing?”
“…Practicing how to talk to the professor.”
“Practicing how to speak properly?”
“Mm… the senior in the lab said doing this would be enough.”
To save the trouble of explaining, Shi Bei handed her phone over directly for her to read.
“What do you think?”
Kong Lingrou took it over. After scrolling through her entire chat history with her senior, her brows furrowed slightly, though she refrained from voicing any opinion.
“Get ready for dinner first, then finish memorizing today’s Japanese vocabulary and grammar.”
“Oh.”
For dinner, Kong Lingrou personally cooked pan-seared steak. The food she prepared for herself and Shi Bei was very simple: a large piece of meat and a small portion of corn kernels thawed in the microwave.
However, the bowl for the puppy feeding alongside them was colorful, featuring carefully proportioned nutritional ratios of meat bricks, canned organ meats, and various vegetable purées frozen into cubes.
“What’s that?” Shi Bei pointed at a pudding-like block in the puppy’s bowl, “It looks pretty delicious.”
“Unsalted beef bone broth frozen with fish oil, kelp powder, and multivitamin powder. If you want to eat some, there’s a little leftover in the fridge.”
Shi Bei ignored her words. Watching the puppy under the table who ate in a refined and obedient manner, she asked again: “Why doesn’t it ever bark? I feel like I’ve never heard it bark once.”
Kong Lingrou thought about it seriously before speculating: “The medical checkup was completely normal; the doctor said it’s naturally disinclined to bark. Perhaps because it left its parents when it was very young, it never learned how to bark.”
Shi Bei: “Then aren’t you going to teach it either?”
“…”
Shi Bei raised her face, looking toward her in confusion.
She saw Kong Lingrou looking at her phone while eating, having no intention of continuing to pay attention to her.
After finishing the meal and placing the dishes into the dishwasher, it was time for Shi Bei’s study session.
Now, Kong Lingrou no longer explained the text line by line to her; instead, she directly marked out the vocabulary and grammar, having her memorize the meanings according to the annotations before reading the text, and finally reciting the entire article from memory.
She merely sat beside her to handle supervision and Q&A.
Fortunately, Shi Bei possessed a strong memory and adapted well to boring, high-intensity learning methods.
As long as she could memorize it, mechanical input was bound to be the most efficient.
During the four hours Shi Bei spent rote memorizing, Kong Lingrou sat beside her using a laptop to look up information on Shi Bei’s advisor.
After searching through a few general research papers, she used Shi Bei’s phone to contact her senior classmate, asking some more specific details.
Feeding all the valid data into an artificial intelligence, she simulated and generated most of the Japanese Shi Bei would encounter upon going to the lab—with content ranging from basic greeting methods to response templates for meetings.
Finally, relying on her past experience and intuition, she deleted, trimmed, and added over two thousand words of content, compiling a complete Japanese conversation document tailored exclusively for Shi Bei.
In the blink of an eye, four hours passed, and Shi Bei reached the last dialogue of this unit.
Kong Lingrou picked up her laptop, stood up, and went into the study to print out the document she had just created. After punching holes in the paper, she loaded it into an A4 loose-leaf binder and handed it over once Shi Bei finished studying all of today’s texts.
“Memorize all of this before next Thursday.”
“What is this?” Shi Bei had just put down her textbook when she was handed such a thick binder.
Flipping it open, it turned out to be filled entirely with everyday Japanese conversations.
The content was concise, clear, and listed responses for various common situations like a code decision tree.
The simulation was so detailed that the more she looked, the more she felt it resembled something produced by a senior from her own department’s laboratory. On the final page, there were even corresponding Japanese terms for computer domain-specific terminology.
“Where did you find this material? Did my senior send it over?”
Shi Bei picked up her phone, but only saw a few extra Q&A exchanges regarding the lab situation.
“Found it randomly online.” Kong Lingrou pulled out a chair and sat down, asking, “Have you memorized today’s text?”
“Mm.”
She thereupon picked up the book, her tone resembling a schoolteacher who had served as a homeroom teacher for over twenty years:
“Then recite it.”
“On which website did you find such a useful thing?” Shi Bei, immersed in the joy of acquiring a treasure tome, began reading it earnestly. “Send me the link.”
“Not telling you.”
“Why keep it a secret?” Shi Bei cast a glance up at her. “It couldn’t possibly be that you wrote it yourself, could it?”
“…”
Seeing that she didn’t speak, Shi Bei’s gaze fell back onto the Q&A treasure tome: “It can’t be that you wrote it; you don’t even know how to code…” She abruptly raised her face and added: “Kong Lingrou, you know how to code! Is this really something you wrote?”
Kong Lingrou let out a sigh. Seeing that she was unwilling to recite the text anytime soon, she could only put down the book in her hand first: “When did I ever know how to write code? How come I didn’t know that myself?”
“Not long after the first semester of middle school started, there was a big stack of programming-related books on your desk—I even asked to borrow them from you.”
“I’ve always liked reading all kinds of books. I’ve even read books on animal husbandry; does that mean I still know how to mix feed to raise pigs?”
“Maybe you do know how to mix feed to raise pigs! Back then, when you read those books on animal husbandry and animal health, wasn’t it so you could raise a dog scientifically and nutritionally today?”
“…”
Shi Bei searched through her memory and said with utmost clarity: “Back in middle school, you personally designed and built an inventory management tool. I helped you debug the code; I still remember spending half a day looking for a bug back then, only to find it was an error where a misspelling had been messed up by the input method’s auto-correct function.”
She hadn’t expected her to actually remember so clearly.
Kong Lingrou said calmly: “Back then, it was just making such a simple thing, taking over two months of earnest tinkering while looking at books to build it out. Does that even count as knowing how to program?”
Shi Bei thought along her words and couldn’t help nodding: “True enough. If I had been the one to do it from the start, even taking seven days slower it should have been finished—and yet it took over two months…”
She let out a couple of chuckles.
Kong Lingrou: …