After that day, Ji Jie had a little shadow following her around.
The two weren't in the same class, and their course schedules mostly differed, but Qiao Ling always rushed over at the very last second to have lunch with her.
This went on for a week. By the weekend, Qiao Ling was enthusiastically inviting her out to hang out.
[Link] I heard the strawberry parfait at this place is amazing! Let's go try it together!
Ji Jie agreed easily once again.
What could she do? She was born incapable of turning down a true sweetheart type.
She didn't enjoy dealing with overly naive people. But Qiao Ling wasn't stupid—at least she could pick up on the honeyed tongue and heart of stone beneath Cheng Yunqiao's words. In Ji Jie's view, her emotional and social intelligence both passed the bar. Getting bullied at school was just bad luck.
Plus, as a character hovering at the margins of the novel, Qiao Ling had almost no entanglement with the protagonists. Spending time with someone like that let her relax more, without overthinking things.
On Sunday afternoon, after finishing her last practice test, she changed clothes and headed to the city center to meet her friend and try that supposedly amazing strawberry parfait.
On her way downstairs, she ran into Auntie Ping, who was pleased to hear she was going shopping with a girlfriend. "Have fun."
Ji Jie left the house in high spirits.
On the way, she considered whether she should let Huo Zhenyan know she might be home late tonight.
But after he'd rejected her attempt to curry favor last time, she figured he probably wouldn't want to be bothered with such trivial news. Anyway, Auntie Ping was there—if he asked, he'd find out.
"Baoni!" Qiao Ling had arrived early and was waving excitedly under the designated bus stop sign. "Over here, over here!"
No school uniform today—she'd swapped it for a knit sweater paired with a red plaid pleated skirt, topped with a soft, fluffy fleece jacket. She looked like a little strawberry cake.
Ji Jie stepped off the bus wrapped in a black ribbed down jacket, still wearing that gray hoodie underneath, with a simple canvas bag slung over her shoulder. "I see you."
Winter clothes were too bulky, and wearing her hair down felt cumbersome, so she'd swept her long hair up and secured it with a claw clip. With her height, she looked like a walking clothes rack, and the minimalist color palette looked cool on her.
The sweetheart type and the cool girl exchanged a glance, both thoroughly satisfied with what they saw.
The newly opened dessert shop was in high demand, but Qiao Ling had reserved a spot online in advance. Ji Jie didn't usually eat much dessert and couldn't be bothered to study the menu, so she ordered the same signature strawberry parfait as her friend.
Layers of dense, creamy ice cream stacked over soft chiffon cake, topped with snow-white whipped cream and plump, bright red strawberry slices. The strawberry sauce was made fresh daily in-house, drizzled on top in glistening ribbons.
"So good…" Qiao Ling cradled her face in one hand, fully immersed in a pink bubble of bliss.
The cool, sweet taste with its rich texture was hard not to fall in love with. Ji Jie glanced at the elegant little description card on the plate, then stirred with her small spoon and remarked, "How do you fit five grass radicals into a four-character dessert name?"
Qiao Ling didn't catch it yet. "Huh?"
"Look—strawberry parfait." Ji Jie pointed at the little card. "Grass, grass, grass, grass, grass."
"…" Qiao Ling burst out laughing, collapsing into her seat across the table. "You're so funny!"
Ji Jie confirmed matter-of-factly, "I do have my moments."
Soft music played in the shop, and the decor had a dreamy beauty to it. Lots of young girls were pairing up to take photos.
The scene stirred a faint sense of nostalgia in her.
Before coming to this world, she had friends of her own too. Her relationships with colleagues were mostly decent, and occasionally they'd make plans to go shopping or have meals together on weekends.
Unlike most working people, she actually enjoyed going to work.
After all, before she became an adult and left home, no one had ever said she was interesting. She had no money of her own to spend, so she never had the chance to bring friends to places like this.
Her attitude toward friendship was sincere, but she never went too deep in baring her heart. Her friends all treated her with great care—even more than her own family did. But perhaps because she'd had her first friend so late in life, the boundaries of adulthood had already been established. No matter how close they were, she could never go to the ends of the earth for anyone.
She just couldn't. There were no such molecules in her blood.
Though it seemed she was less loyal than others, in truth she had already given everything she had. Who told her she was born with only this much?
That's just how it is with a detached person.
She did have a little. And only that little.
She wondered if, in the other world, her body had already been cremated, and who had attended her funeral.
Ji Jie tried to recall her friends' faces carefully, but found that the images in her mind were no longer clear. She had only been here for a few dozen days.
She couldn't help but sigh. Sighing at how she really was like a thick-skinned and carefree person.
"Baoni." Midway through the meal, Qiao Ling suddenly hesitated to speak. After mentally preparing herself, she asked somewhat shyly, "You… are you a gifted-and-talented student?"
"Why do you ask that?" Ji Jie snapped back to attention, wanting to tease her. "Are you one?"
Qiao Ling said, "…Yeah."
Even knowing that this child was forthright, Ji Jie was still caught off guard. "You just told me like that?"
The novel had mentioned her identity, but only in passing. Most of the passages about gifted-and-talented students were focused on another person.
"Because you don't seem like the kind of person who would mock me," she said.
"Might as well just say I don't look like someone with money." Ji Jie teased her, then continued, "I'm not one. But it doesn't matter if you are. It doesn't matter at all."
"Hehe, that's great." She smiled. Then, from the bottom of her heart, she softly repeated, "That's really great."
She hadn't rushed to say these things at school, or in front of Cheng Yunqiao, because her intuition told her that the only person she could trust was the girl in front of her.
"Before coming to Huading, I never felt like my family was badly off," she said. "Actually, even now I don't feel that way. It's just that compared to the other students' families at my current school, our income is a bit less. But I've never lacked food or clothes since I was little. My parents buy me new clothes every month, and give me allowance too."
Her family was ordinary middle class. Her parents had a loving relationship and had raised her to be like a little sun. Back when she attended public school, she had many friends, excellent grades, and all the teachers liked her.
But after transferring to Huading, her campus life underwent a drastic change.
Both her teachers and parents had instructed her not to reveal her identity as a gifted-and-talented student, and the school didn't allow students to ask about it either. But she felt it was all futile. Burying one's head in the sand.
The class divide was still too obvious. Different upbringings meant that she and the others had vastly different horizons and spending habits.
The classmates were a bit mean to her, but they never said it outright. Just like Cheng Yunqiao. That kind of casual dismissal was the hardest to bear.
She often found herself reflecting on whether she'd said something wrong, or where she'd shown her weakness. She lived like a skittish bird, and at school she increasingly didn't want to initiate conversations with people.
She'd also tried to convince herself to just focus on her studies and not overthink things, but humans are social creatures by nature, and she genuinely loved spending time with friends. She really couldn't suppress her true self.
So she curled up, waiting for someone who might become a friend to appear. Whenever that hope arose, she'd poke her head out and try enthusiastically, then retreat after getting knocked down—but she never gave up, always waiting for the next one.
Until she waited for Ji Jie.
"That day I didn't have a pad with me, so I tried calling out, and a girl actually responded. I was so happy, thinking this was an opportunity. I was already fantasizing in my head about thanking her properly after getting out, then gaining a good friend, and where I'd go with her on the weekend… I never expected they had no intention of helping me at all. They locked me in the bathroom, and I missed an entire morning of class."
She was briefly dejected, then broke into a smile again. "But I'm still really happy, because it led me to you. So I think! Overall, this turned out to be a good thing."
Ji Jie thought to herself, what a silly kid, and wanted to ruffle her hair. "But I don't have the best reputation at school, do I? You've heard about me too, haven't you?"
"Yeah, there are a lot of rumors about you at school. But I think all of that is nonsense." Qiao Ling said with certainty. "I could tell just by looking at you. You're not like that."
Her eyes were a warm light brown, clear and bright. Ji Jie quietly looked into them, then after a moment, picked up her canvas bag and pulled out a box of chocolates.
"Hey," Qiao Ling recognized it at a glance. "I made this…" She stopped mid-sentence, her shocked gaze darting back and forth between Ji Jie and the chocolate in her hand.
The boxes used to package desserts for Wei Chao were different. Even though the wrapping paper and sticky note were gone, the creator could still recognize it at a glance.
"I swiped it from the boys' locker room." Ji Jie told a small lie. "My friend is on the volleyball team too, and he said Wei Chao never eats chocolate."
"Oh, is that so… I had no idea." Qiao Ling took it and opened the box. "Then let's eat it together."
Ji Jie had kept it in the fridge after bringing it home, and the weather was cold too, so the chocolate hadn't melted at all.
"Feeling sad?" Ji Jie reached out her hand. "Come sit over here by me."
Qiao Ling immediately got up, ran around to the other side, and hugged her arm, resting her face on Ji Jie's shoulder, the corners of her mouth drooping slightly.
After leaning there for a while, she already felt better. "Thank you for bringing it over. I put a lot of effort into making it—at least it wasn't wasted."
They ate the chocolate together. Sweets on top of sweets could get cloying, but they still enjoyed it happily.
This adolescent crush came to a quiet end. She felt a little wistful, but fortunately she hadn't expected a response in the first place, so she was able to quickly adjust and move on to gossiping.
"I heard some people ship him with the middle blocker. You know what I mean? That feeling of fighting side by side, perfectly in sync. It's really captivating."
Ji Jie nodded. "I get it."
"Hey." A kindred spirit was hard to find. She smiled like a little sun again. "But I also heard that his girlfriend is Huo Yuxi. It's been all over the school forum lately."
Ji Jie nodded again. "Yeah." This one was true.
"Do you like anyone? In our school." Qiao Ling asked wistfully. "Actually, I think several players on the volleyball team are pretty handsome."
Ji Jie thought for a moment, then answered seriously, "I'm currently in the midst of an unrequited love for Player No. 9."
"…"
Amid Qiao Ling's stunned expression, she slowly added, "So some of the rumors you've heard about me are true. Just not as exaggerated as they say."
"Ah… this…"
She'd almost ended up sharing the same bias as her friend. Qiao Ling's brain raced, quickly drawing a hard line. "Anyway, I won't be following No. 9 anymore! Hey, I think Player No. 4 is actually pretty unique too, don't you?"
Player No. 4? Ji Jie smiled.
Wasn't that He Lingfeng?
"You know No. 4?" Ji Jie said. "His personality is very different from Wei Chao's."
"Yeah yeah, indeed, you can tell from his playing style too."
She said cheerfully, "I don't actually know any of them, just gossiping privately. It's like being a fan. If I actually had to go talk to them, I'd definitely be super nervous, might not even dare to go."
Thanks to a friend's previous sharing, Ji Jie had some understanding of fandom, and they chatted enthusiastically, managing to burn off the calories from dessert, then went to dinner together.
It was a Thai restaurant, and Ji Jie had paid the bill in advance. Qiao Ling hadn't been able to beat her to it and was quite vexed. "You secretly paid at the dessert shop too!"
"Next time you pay," Ji Jie said.
One word—"next time"—and the kid was appeased.
Qiao Ling's mind had already started planning her outfit for their next date. Thinking of their afternoon conversation, she said to Ji Jie, "Baoni, the way you're different from them isn't that you don't look rich."
"You look like someone who'll be very rich in the future. Like… not rich from inheritance, but rich on your own!"
Ji Jie understood. "I'm a pre-fabricated rich person."
"Yes, exactly!"
"You'll be one too," Ji Jie said. "In the future."
Outside the novel, the first time she saw Qiao Ling's name was on the school's published ranking board.
The top three were all taken by boys. Cheng Yunqiao was ranked fourth, and Qiao Ling was right behind at fifth.
She was an outstanding girl, still performing excellently under high pressure. Ji Jie didn't understand why the novel had ignored her.
"Exactly! We both are!"
Qiao Ling was so excited she grabbed her arm. "We can study together from now on! The textbooks and courses I used with my old school friends are all different now, so we can't really talk about it. I've been wanting someone to discuss things with—studying with a friend is so much more motivating!"
A faint excitement stirred in Ji Jie's heart too. "No problem."
She was in need of a study buddy.
Night had already fallen. But they were enjoying their conversation so much that they didn't want to go home yet, walking along the bustling street, going quite far.
Ji Jie, for the first time ever, persisted for a long time, her feet about to give out, yet she didn't hear Qiao Ling complain of tiredness once.
Just when she was about to reach her limit, He Lingfeng's video call came through. "Where are you? Why aren't you home for dinner?"
"I'm shopping with friends." Ji Jie stopped to take the video call, and a soreness suddenly surged up from the soles of her feet.
"What friends do you have? Are you with Cheng Yunqiao?"
"No, newly made friends."
"Oh." He Lingfeng leaned back in his chair brashly, turned the camera, and relayed to the other person at the dining table, "She says she's eating out with new friends!"
"…"
Huo Zhenyan looked toward the screen.
The distance was a bit far, so it was hard to tell if he had any particular expression. All she heard was him saying okay.
Ji Jie's hand trembled: "Huh?"
"Yan-ge just asked why you didn't come home for dinner."
He Lingfeng didn't think there was any problem at all. It was just a video call, a casual thing to do. "Who's beside you?"
Hearing that she needed to appear on camera, Qiao Ling immediately leaned in, obediently greeting the family elder, "Hello Yan-ge… eh?"
Contestant No. 4's big face filled the screen, looking very arrogant.
Qiao Ling blinked, a little at a loss, but she didn't dodge either.
That angelic face seemed to cast a filter over the video feed, as if it had absorbed all the surrounding light and slammed it hard into the heart.
True love has descended!
He Lingfeng's eyes widened. In an instant, he sat up straight, even ran a hand through his hair, cleared his throat, and said, "Hello, little sister. It's still early—how about coming over for another meal?"