Reversed Life: Chapter 18 - Sister Xiang will Always be Sister Xiang
Chapter 18: Sister Xiang will Always be Sister Xiang
On the way there, Mu Xiangxiang had been worrying about how to handle the party and had asked Qiao Nan for advice. In response, he’d merely given her a dismissive sneer with absolutely no useful content whatsoever. Yet less than three minutes after arriving, she understood exactly why he’d been so confident.
At first, her thinking had been this: Qiao Nan had obviously been incredibly popular at Yingcheng. If too many unavoidable social interactions came up at the party and she accidentally said the wrong thing, even a single sentence could lead to unforeseen disaster.
The truth, however, was that although most people at the party really were staring at her, aside from those ever-present gazes, not! a! single! person! came! over! to! start! a! conversation!
That alone would’ve been one thing, but even when she took the initiative to greet others, she rarely got much response. After yet another girl blushed furiously and turned away the instant their eyes met, Mu Xiangxiang began doubting the supposedly indisputable setting in her worldview that “Qiao Nan is very popular.”
Qiao Nan lounged crookedly on the sofa, shooting a sidelong glance at the person beside him who wore his face while somehow radiating an oddly abstinent aura. To be fair, Mu Xiangxiang had styled this body extremely successfully. At the very least, even Qiao Nan himself had been briefly stunned the first time he saw “himself” today. It was the first time he’d realized he could actually look like this when not slouching or grinning like a hooligan. But…
Had Mu Xiangxiang really spent the whole trip worrying that someone would dare mess with her looking like this?
Besides, even before the body swap, Qiao Nan hadn’t been as universally approachable as she imagined.
The gymnasium had always been packed with Yingcheng students watching him play basketball, but aside from classmates and close friends like Jiang Hai, how many people had actually dared approach him privately to chat?
And now, after what happened before he transferred schools, even Jiang Hai and the others probably…
Qiao Nan stared at the champagne flute in his hand. It contained sparkling… apple juice.
Mu Xiangxiang’s body had never drunk alcohol before, and he was worried he might become a drunken menace if he drank for real, so he could only reluctantly settle for this kiddie nonsense.
Expressionless, he downed the liquid in one gulp, shoved his hands into his pockets, and lazily stood up. “Stay here. If anybody gives you trouble you can’t handle, just curse them out directly. I’m going outside for a smoke.”
*******
By now, Mu Xiangxiang wasn’t nervous anymore. She’d always had a calm personality, and once she realized nobody was likely to make things difficult for her, she immediately relaxed. She sat on the sofa for a while, played an online game remotely with Cao Wei, drank several fancy-looking beverages handed to her by the staff, and before long her body started warming up slightly and she felt sleepy. Since nobody was talking to her anyway, she simply headed over to the food table.
Ever since switching into Qiao Nan’s body, she felt like her appetite had increased several times over. She got hungry constantly.
She’d clearly eaten lunch at the Qiao house before coming, yet only a few hours later her stomach was already empty again.
The table was packed with dazzling food, all releasing mouthwatering aromas. Mu Xiangxiang had never attended an event like this before, and because of her family’s financial situation, she rarely had the chance to eat fancy snacks like these. For a moment, she honestly didn’t even know where to start.
Meanwhile, the little Yingcheng “animals” nearby watched their school tyrant staring coldly at the dessert table with an overwhelmingly intimidating aura radiating from him— and immediately scattered in panic.
Completely unaware that she’d cleared out every living creature within a two-meter radius, Mu Xiangxiang hesitated for a long time before slowly copying what others were doing. She picked up a plate, carefully selected a tiny, exquisitely crafted pastry, and delicately bit into it—
Mmmmmm—!!!!!!!
Cream, soft cake, and fresh fruit melted instantly in her mouth as the fragrance of strawberries rushed straight to her head—
Mu Xiangxiang felt like she might cry.
Limited by poverty, she truly hadn’t eaten many good things in her life. Her father’s cooking from before his accident remained one of the most vivid memories she had, but after she forbade him from entering the kitchen, even that warmth gradually faded with time.
Honestly, aside from being relatively calm by nature, Mu Xiangxiang had always considered herself a very ordinary girl. She got shy. She got nervous. At the age when feelings first bloom, she’d developed crushes on handsome, confident boys. Naturally, she also craved tasty food.
She liked sweets. She liked the expensive braised pork from the cafeteria. She envied classmates who had pocket money to rush off to the convenience store after class. She just never showed it on her face.
And right now, one delicate little strawberry pastry was already enough to completely fill her with happiness.
So many desserts. All free. She could keep eating until she was full.
After roughly estimating how much all this would cost if she had to pay herself, Mu Xiangxiang decided not to move from the table at all. She simply leaned there and carefully sampled each dessert one by one.
Of course, nobody was paying attention to what she was doing anyway, because after a long period of calm, the entrance to the villa suddenly grew noisy again. Unfortunately, the arrivals this time were unwelcome guests.
******
The birthday girl Gao Yan nearly cursed aloud when she saw who’d arrived. The handsome boy leading the group either failed to notice her expression or simply pretended not to. Smiling brightly, he greeted her: “Happy birthday, Yanyan~”
Their families had known each other since their parents’ generation, so no matter how unwilling she felt, Gao Yan could only force a smile. “Thanks. Guan Ziming, what are you doing here?”
“Came to Xiaoming Mountain with friends for a few laps this weekend. City C doesn’t have roads this good for racing.” Guan Ziming grinned. “We rented Villas Three, Four, and Five for a party. We were planning to start driving around ten, but when we heard you were here, we decided to stop by first.”
Gao Yan’s mouth twitched. Wow. Thank you so much for personally coming all this way to ruin my night. Then Guan Ziming’s expression subtly changed. His eyes swept around the villa before he casually asked: “I heard Qiao Nan came tonight too?”
The instant those words came out, Gao Yan’s face changed. The friends around her immediately tensed as well. “How do you know that?”
Someone behind Guan Ziming burst out laughing. “Obviously from Moments.”
Gao Yan opened her social media feed. The very first post was from a female classmate—a hidden shot of someone’s back accompanied by the caption: [AHHH after more than a year I finally saw my male god again. He changed so much but he’s still so handsome QAQ]
You idiot!
Closing her eyes briefly, Gao Yan put away her phone and her expression turned serious. “Guan Ziming. Today’s my birthday. Give me some face and don’t cause trouble.”
Guan Ziming stared at her for a few seconds before crookedly smiling with a sinister edge. “I just want to catch up with him. Why are you talking like I came here to pick a fight? Am I that kind of person?”
The last sentence was directed at the friends behind him.
His group immediately burst into loud laughter. “Oh, definitely—”
Gao Yan’s heart sank.
The guys behind Guan Ziming were from neighboring City C. They’d first crossed paths with Yingcheng during interschool basketball tournaments back in middle school, and for four straight years they’d been repeatedly crushed by Yingcheng. At first, it was probably just friction on the court. But eventually things changed. The grudge between them and Qiao Nan wasn’t something that could be explained in a few sentences.
Ordinary Yingcheng students might not know, but Gao Yan had heard directly from Jiang Hai— Qiao Nan’s transfer out of Yingcheng had a lot to do with Guan Ziming and his group.
The situation was complicated. Letting Qiao Nan run into them was obviously a terrible idea. Gao Yan knew she couldn’t stop the aggressive-looking group before her. Sweat began appearing at her temples. “Hey—”
Before she could finish speaking, Guan Ziming—after scanning the villa hall—suddenly lit up. His eyes locked onto a figure in the corner. He snapped his fingers and raised his brows in delight. “Found~you~”
“Guan Ziming, you—” Gao Yan tried to stop him, but she was immediately blocked by the friends he’d brought with him.
The disturbance over here wasn’t especially loud. Using nothing more than his gaze, Guan Ziming scared off the nearby Yingcheng students who didn’t yet understand his intentions. As he strode forward, the smile gradually vanished from his face.
He stared fixedly at the person ahead while viciously repeating the other’s name in his mind.
Old grudges and new hatred surged together. Thanks to this guy, he’d spent three entire months last year dragging himself around in a wheelchair with his right leg encased in plaster. And this bastard thought transferring schools would just settle everything?
Not a chance.
The way the other side had looked down on them as perpetual losers on the court surged back into his mind. At that moment, Guan Ziming actually felt exhilarated. For tonight’s racing event, practically the entire Xiaoming Mountain was packed with friends he’d invited. He wasn’t afraid of a group fight at all. He could hardly wait to see panic appear on that arrogant face.
So he strode up to his target aggressively, full of anticipation.
After several long breaths—
Mu Xiangxiang kept her head lowered, still slowly eating a walnut-stuffed brownie.
Guan Ziming: “…”
Being ignored like this made his face twitch. He cleared his throat and finally spoke up: “Hey—”
The person in front of him, who had been completely focused on eating, finally looked up. His lips were still moving as he chewed, one cheek slightly puffed out from the food inside.
Guan Ziming froze. “…………………………”
Surrounded by sweets she normally could never afford to eat freely, plus all kinds of colorful drinks she’d never tried before, Mu Xiangxiang was currently in an extremely good mood. The sugar rush had lifted her spirits so much that everything and everyone around her seemed to come with a soft glow filter.
Being interrupted from her food trance didn’t bother her in the slightest—especially when the one interrupting her was a handsome young guy wrapped in that same soft glow. Completely ignorant of the gossip surrounding Yingcheng’s campus celebrities, Mu Xiangxiang knew nothing about the grudges between the school’s famous figures. After studying him for a moment, she failed to recognize Guan Ziming, whom she’d only briefly seen during a few interschool basketball games.
Maybe because the party had gone on too late and she was getting sleepy, her head felt a little heavy and her thoughts seemed slower than usual. She stared at the newcomer. This was the first person tonight who had actually come over to talk to her.
Pretty good-looking. His expression standing there looked a little dumb somehow. His vibe weirdly reminded her of Yan Zhiyang.
Seeing him stand there stupidly for so long without saying what he wanted, she thought for a moment, picked up a butter cookie from her plate, and offered it to him while still chewing brownie. “Want one?”
Guan Ziming: “………………”
Mu Xiangxiang extended her hand toward him a little farther, her attitude warm and friendly. “This one tastes pretty good.”
The handsome face before him showed a rare kind of kindness, the slight curve of his lips carrying none of the usual mockery. Behind the glasses perched on his nose, those bright clear eyes narrowed slightly with a smile. There were even brownie crumbs stuck at the corner of his mouth, and his cheeks moved faintly as he chewed—
He just looked… very approachable.
Guan Ziming had seen this guy acting arrogant, disdainful, overbearing, vicious, aggressively domineering—
But never harmless like this.
The hand holding out the cookie wasn’t delicate at all. After facing off against him so many times, Guan Ziming knew better than anyone how explosively precise that hand could be when handling a basketball—
But now, after being held out too long, it wobbled slightly.
Guan Ziming stood there blankly. After a brief mental shutdown, his first thought was— Was Qiao Nan messing with him?
And yet at the same time, his hand honestly reached out on its own.
Sweet buttery flavor filled his mouth. After taking the cookie back, the other person immediately fed himself another one and simply continued eating, showing no vigilance or hostility toward him at all.
“How is it?” Occasionally he even passed over one of the brightly colored cocktails from the table.
Guan Ziming slowly chewed the cookie. He didn’t think it tasted any different from ordinary cookies he’d had before, but under those bright eyes behind the lenses, for some reason he still gave a muffled: “Mm.”
The other person immediately smiled openly and asked: “Want another?”
Who am I? Where am I? What was I here for?
Guan Ziming struggled desperately through an endless stream of ellipses and self-reflection, yet somehow couldn’t bring himself to say anything harsh in the face of that smiling expression. Then the person opposite him, not receiving an answer, showed a puzzled look before— Tilting his head.
Guan Ziming: “…Yeah.”
*******
At the villa entrance, Guan Ziming’s underlings watched their boss suddenly pick up a dessert plate and start eating pastries. “………………”
Wait, that’s not what you went over there for!!!
After a long and awkward silence, they released the equally speechless party host. Both sides stood there uncertainly for a while before one of Guan Ziming’s lackeys coughed.
He felt that, as a capable subordinate, he ought to say something in a moment like this.
Unfortunately, before he could open his mouth, the final batch of invited Yingcheng guests—who had been conspicuously absent all evening—finally arrived late.
Having been intercepted on the mountain road by Guan Ziming’s people and already learned everything from them, Jiang Hai stormed through the villa doors with a vicious expression and immediately grabbed that underling by the collar. “Fuck your mother! I already told you I was the one driving back then! If you’ve got problems, come at me! Brother Nan already transferred schools—why the hell are you still looking for him?!”
Behind him, Xiao Pangzi and the others shared the same outrage. Each picked a suitable target, ignored the other side’s frantic cries of “Wait wait wait wait!”, and directly threw themselves into a brawl.
*******
The cold night wind hit his face. Qiao Nan stepped out onto the terrace and looked up at the starry sky, unexpectedly feeling a trace of melancholy.
It was almost nine already. Jiang Hai and the others still hadn’t arrived. Earlier inside, after overhearing some girls gossiping about Yingcheng’s new school heartthrob, he’d learned these idiots had recently been training like madmen.
He didn’t even need to guess why those formerly lazy bastards—who’d once wanted nothing more than to loaf around waiting to die—had suddenly become so hardworking. Obviously because, in the upcoming basketball league, they’d once again run into their old rivals from City C: Guan Ziming.
Opening his phone and entering his message list, he saw that his old chat history with Jiang Hai and Xiao Pangzi had already been buried beneath messages from the boys at No. 12 High School. Clicking into it, the screen was packed with spam-like messages—
[Why did you transfer?!]
[Brother Nan, where are you?!]
[Xiao Pangzi and I are downstairs]
[Pick up the phone, bro! Are you home or not?!]
[Did you transfer because of Guan Ziming?!]
[Bro, don’t do this. I’ll take responsibility myself. This has nothing to do with you. I’m turning myself in right now.]
Only at that point in the one-sided chat did Qiao Nan finally see his own reply appear on the right side.
A single word—[Scram.]
There were no new messages after that, because Qiao Nan had blocked them all. He’d even gone out of his way to beat Jiang Hai up again and warn him not to stir up more trouble.
On the way there, Mu Xiangxiang had been worrying about how to handle the party and had asked Qiao Nan for advice. In response, he’d merely given her a dismissive sneer with absolutely no useful content whatsoever. Yet less than three minutes after arriving, she understood exactly why he’d been so confident.
At first, her thinking had been this: Qiao Nan had obviously been incredibly popular at Yingcheng. If too many unavoidable social interactions came up at the party and she accidentally said the wrong thing, even a single sentence could lead to unforeseen disaster.
The truth, however, was that although most people at the party really were staring at her, aside from those ever-present gazes, not! a! single! person! came! over! to! start! a! conversation!
That alone would’ve been one thing, but even when she took the initiative to greet others, she rarely got much response. After yet another girl blushed furiously and turned away the instant their eyes met, Mu Xiangxiang began doubting the supposedly indisputable setting in her worldview that “Qiao Nan is very popular.”
Qiao Nan lounged crookedly on the sofa, shooting a sidelong glance at the person beside him who wore his face while somehow radiating an oddly abstinent aura. To be fair, Mu Xiangxiang had styled this body extremely successfully. At the very least, even Qiao Nan himself had been briefly stunned the first time he saw “himself” today. It was the first time he’d realized he could actually look like this when not slouching or grinning like a hooligan. But…
Had Mu Xiangxiang really spent the whole trip worrying that someone would dare mess with her looking like this?
Besides, even before the body swap, Qiao Nan hadn’t been as universally approachable as she imagined.
The gymnasium had always been packed with Yingcheng students watching him play basketball, but aside from classmates and close friends like Jiang Hai, how many people had actually dared approach him privately to chat?
And now, after what happened before he transferred schools, even Jiang Hai and the others probably…
Qiao Nan stared at the champagne flute in his hand. It contained sparkling… apple juice.
Mu Xiangxiang’s body had never drunk alcohol before, and he was worried he might become a drunken menace if he drank for real, so he could only reluctantly settle for this kiddie nonsense.
Expressionless, he downed the liquid in one gulp, shoved his hands into his pockets, and lazily stood up. “Stay here. If anybody gives you trouble you can’t handle, just curse them out directly. I’m going outside for a smoke.”
*******
By now, Mu Xiangxiang wasn’t nervous anymore. She’d always had a calm personality, and once she realized nobody was likely to make things difficult for her, she immediately relaxed. She sat on the sofa for a while, played an online game remotely with Cao Wei, drank several fancy-looking beverages handed to her by the staff, and before long her body started warming up slightly and she felt sleepy. Since nobody was talking to her anyway, she simply headed over to the food table.
Ever since switching into Qiao Nan’s body, she felt like her appetite had increased several times over. She got hungry constantly.
She’d clearly eaten lunch at the Qiao house before coming, yet only a few hours later her stomach was already empty again.
The table was packed with dazzling food, all releasing mouthwatering aromas. Mu Xiangxiang had never attended an event like this before, and because of her family’s financial situation, she rarely had the chance to eat fancy snacks like these. For a moment, she honestly didn’t even know where to start.
Meanwhile, the little Yingcheng “animals” nearby watched their school tyrant staring coldly at the dessert table with an overwhelmingly intimidating aura radiating from him— and immediately scattered in panic.
Completely unaware that she’d cleared out every living creature within a two-meter radius, Mu Xiangxiang hesitated for a long time before slowly copying what others were doing. She picked up a plate, carefully selected a tiny, exquisitely crafted pastry, and delicately bit into it—
Mmmmmm—!!!!!!!
Cream, soft cake, and fresh fruit melted instantly in her mouth as the fragrance of strawberries rushed straight to her head—
Mu Xiangxiang felt like she might cry.
Limited by poverty, she truly hadn’t eaten many good things in her life. Her father’s cooking from before his accident remained one of the most vivid memories she had, but after she forbade him from entering the kitchen, even that warmth gradually faded with time.
Honestly, aside from being relatively calm by nature, Mu Xiangxiang had always considered herself a very ordinary girl. She got shy. She got nervous. At the age when feelings first bloom, she’d developed crushes on handsome, confident boys. Naturally, she also craved tasty food.
She liked sweets. She liked the expensive braised pork from the cafeteria. She envied classmates who had pocket money to rush off to the convenience store after class. She just never showed it on her face.
And right now, one delicate little strawberry pastry was already enough to completely fill her with happiness.
So many desserts. All free. She could keep eating until she was full.
After roughly estimating how much all this would cost if she had to pay herself, Mu Xiangxiang decided not to move from the table at all. She simply leaned there and carefully sampled each dessert one by one.
Of course, nobody was paying attention to what she was doing anyway, because after a long period of calm, the entrance to the villa suddenly grew noisy again. Unfortunately, the arrivals this time were unwelcome guests.
******
The birthday girl Gao Yan nearly cursed aloud when she saw who’d arrived. The handsome boy leading the group either failed to notice her expression or simply pretended not to. Smiling brightly, he greeted her: “Happy birthday, Yanyan~”
Their families had known each other since their parents’ generation, so no matter how unwilling she felt, Gao Yan could only force a smile. “Thanks. Guan Ziming, what are you doing here?”
“Came to Xiaoming Mountain with friends for a few laps this weekend. City C doesn’t have roads this good for racing.” Guan Ziming grinned. “We rented Villas Three, Four, and Five for a party. We were planning to start driving around ten, but when we heard you were here, we decided to stop by first.”
Gao Yan’s mouth twitched. Wow. Thank you so much for personally coming all this way to ruin my night. Then Guan Ziming’s expression subtly changed. His eyes swept around the villa before he casually asked: “I heard Qiao Nan came tonight too?”
The instant those words came out, Gao Yan’s face changed. The friends around her immediately tensed as well. “How do you know that?”
Someone behind Guan Ziming burst out laughing. “Obviously from Moments.”
Gao Yan opened her social media feed. The very first post was from a female classmate—a hidden shot of someone’s back accompanied by the caption: [AHHH after more than a year I finally saw my male god again. He changed so much but he’s still so handsome QAQ]
You idiot!
Closing her eyes briefly, Gao Yan put away her phone and her expression turned serious. “Guan Ziming. Today’s my birthday. Give me some face and don’t cause trouble.”
Guan Ziming stared at her for a few seconds before crookedly smiling with a sinister edge. “I just want to catch up with him. Why are you talking like I came here to pick a fight? Am I that kind of person?”
The last sentence was directed at the friends behind him.
His group immediately burst into loud laughter. “Oh, definitely—”
Gao Yan’s heart sank.
The guys behind Guan Ziming were from neighboring City C. They’d first crossed paths with Yingcheng during interschool basketball tournaments back in middle school, and for four straight years they’d been repeatedly crushed by Yingcheng. At first, it was probably just friction on the court. But eventually things changed. The grudge between them and Qiao Nan wasn’t something that could be explained in a few sentences.
Ordinary Yingcheng students might not know, but Gao Yan had heard directly from Jiang Hai— Qiao Nan’s transfer out of Yingcheng had a lot to do with Guan Ziming and his group.
The situation was complicated. Letting Qiao Nan run into them was obviously a terrible idea. Gao Yan knew she couldn’t stop the aggressive-looking group before her. Sweat began appearing at her temples. “Hey—”
Before she could finish speaking, Guan Ziming—after scanning the villa hall—suddenly lit up. His eyes locked onto a figure in the corner. He snapped his fingers and raised his brows in delight. “Found~you~”
“Guan Ziming, you—” Gao Yan tried to stop him, but she was immediately blocked by the friends he’d brought with him.
The disturbance over here wasn’t especially loud. Using nothing more than his gaze, Guan Ziming scared off the nearby Yingcheng students who didn’t yet understand his intentions. As he strode forward, the smile gradually vanished from his face.
He stared fixedly at the person ahead while viciously repeating the other’s name in his mind.
Old grudges and new hatred surged together. Thanks to this guy, he’d spent three entire months last year dragging himself around in a wheelchair with his right leg encased in plaster. And this bastard thought transferring schools would just settle everything?
Not a chance.
The way the other side had looked down on them as perpetual losers on the court surged back into his mind. At that moment, Guan Ziming actually felt exhilarated. For tonight’s racing event, practically the entire Xiaoming Mountain was packed with friends he’d invited. He wasn’t afraid of a group fight at all. He could hardly wait to see panic appear on that arrogant face.
So he strode up to his target aggressively, full of anticipation.
After several long breaths—
Mu Xiangxiang kept her head lowered, still slowly eating a walnut-stuffed brownie.
Guan Ziming: “…”
Being ignored like this made his face twitch. He cleared his throat and finally spoke up: “Hey—”
The person in front of him, who had been completely focused on eating, finally looked up. His lips were still moving as he chewed, one cheek slightly puffed out from the food inside.
Guan Ziming froze. “…………………………”
Surrounded by sweets she normally could never afford to eat freely, plus all kinds of colorful drinks she’d never tried before, Mu Xiangxiang was currently in an extremely good mood. The sugar rush had lifted her spirits so much that everything and everyone around her seemed to come with a soft glow filter.
Being interrupted from her food trance didn’t bother her in the slightest—especially when the one interrupting her was a handsome young guy wrapped in that same soft glow. Completely ignorant of the gossip surrounding Yingcheng’s campus celebrities, Mu Xiangxiang knew nothing about the grudges between the school’s famous figures. After studying him for a moment, she failed to recognize Guan Ziming, whom she’d only briefly seen during a few interschool basketball games.
Maybe because the party had gone on too late and she was getting sleepy, her head felt a little heavy and her thoughts seemed slower than usual. She stared at the newcomer. This was the first person tonight who had actually come over to talk to her.
Pretty good-looking. His expression standing there looked a little dumb somehow. His vibe weirdly reminded her of Yan Zhiyang.
Seeing him stand there stupidly for so long without saying what he wanted, she thought for a moment, picked up a butter cookie from her plate, and offered it to him while still chewing brownie. “Want one?”
Guan Ziming: “………………”
Mu Xiangxiang extended her hand toward him a little farther, her attitude warm and friendly. “This one tastes pretty good.”
The handsome face before him showed a rare kind of kindness, the slight curve of his lips carrying none of the usual mockery. Behind the glasses perched on his nose, those bright clear eyes narrowed slightly with a smile. There were even brownie crumbs stuck at the corner of his mouth, and his cheeks moved faintly as he chewed—
He just looked… very approachable.
Guan Ziming had seen this guy acting arrogant, disdainful, overbearing, vicious, aggressively domineering—
But never harmless like this.
The hand holding out the cookie wasn’t delicate at all. After facing off against him so many times, Guan Ziming knew better than anyone how explosively precise that hand could be when handling a basketball—
But now, after being held out too long, it wobbled slightly.
Guan Ziming stood there blankly. After a brief mental shutdown, his first thought was— Was Qiao Nan messing with him?
And yet at the same time, his hand honestly reached out on its own.
Sweet buttery flavor filled his mouth. After taking the cookie back, the other person immediately fed himself another one and simply continued eating, showing no vigilance or hostility toward him at all.
“How is it?” Occasionally he even passed over one of the brightly colored cocktails from the table.
Guan Ziming slowly chewed the cookie. He didn’t think it tasted any different from ordinary cookies he’d had before, but under those bright eyes behind the lenses, for some reason he still gave a muffled: “Mm.”
The other person immediately smiled openly and asked: “Want another?”
Who am I? Where am I? What was I here for?
Guan Ziming struggled desperately through an endless stream of ellipses and self-reflection, yet somehow couldn’t bring himself to say anything harsh in the face of that smiling expression. Then the person opposite him, not receiving an answer, showed a puzzled look before— Tilting his head.
Guan Ziming: “…Yeah.”
*******
At the villa entrance, Guan Ziming’s underlings watched their boss suddenly pick up a dessert plate and start eating pastries. “………………”
Wait, that’s not what you went over there for!!!
After a long and awkward silence, they released the equally speechless party host. Both sides stood there uncertainly for a while before one of Guan Ziming’s lackeys coughed.
He felt that, as a capable subordinate, he ought to say something in a moment like this.
Unfortunately, before he could open his mouth, the final batch of invited Yingcheng guests—who had been conspicuously absent all evening—finally arrived late.
Having been intercepted on the mountain road by Guan Ziming’s people and already learned everything from them, Jiang Hai stormed through the villa doors with a vicious expression and immediately grabbed that underling by the collar. “Fuck your mother! I already told you I was the one driving back then! If you’ve got problems, come at me! Brother Nan already transferred schools—why the hell are you still looking for him?!”
Behind him, Xiao Pangzi and the others shared the same outrage. Each picked a suitable target, ignored the other side’s frantic cries of “Wait wait wait wait!”, and directly threw themselves into a brawl.
*******
The cold night wind hit his face. Qiao Nan stepped out onto the terrace and looked up at the starry sky, unexpectedly feeling a trace of melancholy.
It was almost nine already. Jiang Hai and the others still hadn’t arrived. Earlier inside, after overhearing some girls gossiping about Yingcheng’s new school heartthrob, he’d learned these idiots had recently been training like madmen.
He didn’t even need to guess why those formerly lazy bastards—who’d once wanted nothing more than to loaf around waiting to die—had suddenly become so hardworking. Obviously because, in the upcoming basketball league, they’d once again run into their old rivals from City C: Guan Ziming.
Opening his phone and entering his message list, he saw that his old chat history with Jiang Hai and Xiao Pangzi had already been buried beneath messages from the boys at No. 12 High School. Clicking into it, the screen was packed with spam-like messages—
[Why did you transfer?!]
[Brother Nan, where are you?!]
[Xiao Pangzi and I are downstairs]
[Pick up the phone, bro! Are you home or not?!]
[Did you transfer because of Guan Ziming?!]
[Bro, don’t do this. I’ll take responsibility myself. This has nothing to do with you. I’m turning myself in right now.]
Only at that point in the one-sided chat did Qiao Nan finally see his own reply appear on the right side.
A single word—[Scram.]
There were no new messages after that, because Qiao Nan had blocked them all. He’d even gone out of his way to beat Jiang Hai up again and warn him not to stir up more trouble.
Thinking back to Jiang Hai’s aggrieved, teary face after the beating made him want to laugh. That little bastard still had the nerve to feel wronged? Didn’t he realize what a massive mess he’d caused? Deliberately crashing into Guan Ziming’s car—what kind of idiotic move was that? Such a waste of that smart-looking face.
At first, Jiang Hai had refused to explain the reason. Only after Qiao Nan beat him thoroughly did he finally confess through tears that he’d overheard one of Guan Ziming’s teammates—angry after losing a game—complaining on the phone about wanting to “have a little collision” with Qiao Nan while he practiced driving on Xiaoming Mountain.
At the time, Qiao Nan had been practicing motorcycle racing.
Jiang Hai exploded with anger. His brain stopped functioning entirely. He immediately chased after them and rammed their car, leaving Guan Ziming—who had been sitting in the passenger seat of the front vehicle—with a fractured leg.
But he hadn’t thought things through. Guan Ziming’s family controlled one of the pillar industries of the neighboring city. Someone like Jiang Hai, just the son of an ordinary wealthy family in City A, was in no position to offend them. If the Guan family seriously pursued the matter, a prison sentence wouldn’t have been impossible.
Thinking of that guy who was still lying in a hospital bed back then, neck stiff as he insisted he didn’t regret anything at all, Qiao Nan rubbed his temples in headache and pulled out a cigarette pack from his pocket, biting one out with his mouth.
He couldn’t just sit by and watch his brother go to jail. More importantly, Jiang Hai might not be able to withstand the Guan family—but that didn’t mean Qiao Nan couldn’t either. After all, over the years, his reputation for causing trouble had already become deeply ingrained.
He thought of how neither his father nor his older brother had expressed any doubt when he’d admitted to the incident of hitting someone. He couldn’t even tell what he felt about that. Actually, staying at Mu Xiangxiang’s house these past few days had made him forget about smoking for a long time—but now, looking at the brightly lit mountain road in the distance, the craving suddenly came back.
Just as his hand went into his pocket, he heard hurried footsteps behind him—the distinctive sound of high heels striking the floor.
His hand paused mid-motion as he reached for his lighter. Qiao Nan lowered his head and let out a laugh.
“Mi Xiang—don’t you think this is a bit inappropriate? Fang Lili already told us not to come find her—”
“Shut up. So she’s being stupid and you’re going along with it too?!”
Mi Xiang cut her friend off sharply, scanning the surroundings. After hearing from Fang Lili that the short-haired girl who arrived with Qiao Nan was Mu Xiangxiang, she had been genuinely shocked. Combining that with the other girl’s previously almost invisible presence, she had become deeply wary.
A plain, unremarkable girl transforming into a goddess-like figure and ending up with the school’s male idol—that was basically textbook drama logic.
Even though her current look seemed slightly off from the usual “sweet romance heroine” type… less feminine, more cool and edgy—but still! That didn’t change the fact that she had become extremely, extremely eye-catching.
Mi Xiang firmly believed that all human transformation was ultimately for the sake of attractiveness. Fang Lili, however, disagreed and even blushingly defended her: “No, maybe she always had that personality and just cut her hair accordingly… she actually looks really good on her.”
Idiot!!
Thinking of how this girl even showed up today with Yingcheng’s former campus heartthrob, Mi Xiang—who had years of experience and had often been labeled behind her back as a “scheming green tea girl”—decided it was time to meet this opponent herself. She didn’t believe there was truly a woman who had no interest in handsome guys as Fang Lili described. This so-called cool girl was probably just pretending—maybe even a “man-woman act” type.
She led her friends straight to the terrace door.
Gathering momentum, she pushed it open.
The deep night poured in. Under a sky full of stars, she met a pair of smiling, half-lidded eyes.
Qiao Nan recognized her—this was the girl whose gaze had been especially sharp when he first arrived. At the time, he had even made her blush and look away with just a smile. She looked familiar now; he finally remembered who she was.
Yingcheng High’s basketball cheer captain.
He didn’t really have much impression of her. When he played basketball with Jiang Hai and the others, he’d often hear her and her group screaming in the stands—it was annoying.
He had no patience for it and would sometimes tell them to shut up.
But strangely, those girls never seemed offended; instead, they would get even more excited, faces red as they cheered harder.
Anyway, just one of those people who gave him a headache…
The leader among them was the most enthusiastic, even handing out water and towels. His impression of her had been gentle and shy. Who would’ve thought she had such a completely different side when dealing with girls.
Change bodies, see the world—indeed, eye-opening.
Qiao Nan gave the “performer” in front of him a thumbs-up, lazily leaning back in his chair on the terrace. He glanced at the frozen girls at the door. “Something you need?”
The unlit cigarette trembled between his lips. In the starlight and night breeze, the girl leaned back with her arms on the chair, as if the whole world belonged to her—including the girls standing before her.
Mi Xiang froze slightly; her earlier momentum instantly dropped. Her expression also softened unconsciously, the kind of gentleness she usually only showed around boys. After a pause, she remembered her purpose. “…I, I…”
She stamped her foot. “Are you Mu Xiangxiang?!”
Qiao Nan leaned back, smiling lazily. “Guess~”
Mi Xiang gritted her teeth. Facing the short-haired girl’s sharp, almost predatory gaze in the dark, she inexplicably felt shy.
What the hell—why was she getting shy toward a girl?!
She turned and saw her friends were also blushing. Mi Xiang was almost furious.
Normally, she wouldn’t back down even against high-level social rivals, but today she felt oddly wronged, even wanting to act coquettish like she did with boys.
But she crushed that thought immediately.
“Stop pretending. I know you’re Mu Xiangxiang!” she said, though her earlier aggression had weakened into something almost like a complaint. “Tell me—what’s your relationship with Jiang Hai and Qiao Nan? Do you like them?!”
Qiao Nan had expected this kind of question, but still found it amusing. He leaned back, then suddenly laughed, shoulders shaking. Mi Xiang’s face turned beet-red, but for some reason she still couldn’t bring herself to curse at him.
When he finally stopped laughing and looked up, he realized the girl was crying. Tears were silently streaming down her face, her reddened eyes full of accusation.
“……” Though he didn’t like her much, he never enjoyed making girls cry. So he quickly composed himself, coughed, and stood up.
At that moment, Mi Xiang’s phone rang. She sniffed and answered, still angry at her own strange emotional reactions. “Hello?”
“Mi Xiang! Where are you?!” Fang Lili’s panicked voice came through. “Guan Ziming brought a group of people and started fighting with Jiang Hai’s side! They’re trying to head up the mountain road, and we can’t stop them—what do we do?!”
Mi Xiang froze. Before she could even process it, her body instinctively stepped sideways to block the short-haired girl trying to leave. “Wait! You still haven’t answered my question!”
Fang Lili paused on the phone. “Who are you talking to?!”
Qiao Nan’s impatience flared up instantly. He tried to leave but was blocked again. His glare made the girl flinch, but she still stubbornly stood in place.
He exhaled sharply, then shoved her head aside. “Move. Who the hell wants to steal your man? I’m not into guys.”
He was genuinely disgusted that she’d lump him with someone like Jiang Hai. He liked girls—girls, girls, girls! The kind like Mu Xiangxiang—fair, slim, soft, with…chest!
Wait. Mu Xiangxiang’s chest seemed…
Whatever. Anyway—girls.
The girl finally stepped aside. He didn’t bother with her and ran off toward the villa.
That damn Jiang Hai never knew how to stop causing trouble.
Behind him, the girls were still frozen on the terrace. Mi Xiang stood there dazed for a long time before realizing her phone was still connected.
“…uh…”
Fang Lili’s voice came through slowly: “...Shut up. I need a moment.”
*****
Gao Yang’s birthday party had completely fallen apart. The living room was a mess after a fight.
By the time Qiao Nan arrived, he could already hear Jiang Hai arguing with one of Guan Ziming’s underlings: “…You dare try a four-kilometer downhill run?!”
“Come on then! Let’s go! I’m saying this now—whoever backs down is a dog who kneels and admits it!”
At this moment, veins on the side of Qiao Nan’s forehead were twitching wildly. The “four-kilometer” that Jiang Hai and the others were talking about referred to the mountain road of Xiaoming Mountain. Because the road was short—just over four kilometers—regulars who came here to race nicknamed it that.
But although it was short, it was by no means easy. Xiaoming Mountain was famous for its dangerous curves. Qiao Nan had once brought Jiang Hai here to race, and that coward had spent the entire ride curled up in the back seat, shaking in fear. And yet that same pathetic excuse for guts was now acting tough in public—Qiao Nan genuinely wanted to beat him to death.
So he proceeded to act on that impulse.
Jiang Hai was still showing off, coldly ordering Gao Yan, Fang Lingli, and the others trying to stop him to step aside. Then suddenly—smack!—a slap landed on his forehead, leaving him stunned for a few seconds.
“Go on! Go, I’m telling you to go!” Before he could react, a rain of slaps came down like crackling thunder. The entire scene fell briefly silent as everyone watched the sudden appearance of the short-haired girl brutally beating Jiang Hai.
Jiang Hai snapped out of his blank shock. Still confused, his first reaction wasn’t rage but to raise his arms to protect his head, looking almost pitifully lost.
Even one of Guan Ziming’s underlings couldn’t bear it and tried to intervene: “Uh… okay, that’s enough… miss… that’s about it…”
But the moment he spoke, a sharp glare from the short-haired girl made him shudder and immediately withdraw his hands.
After venting his frustration over his useless subordinate, Qiao Nan’s anger faded slightly. He released Jiang Hai’s collar and straightened up, fixing his gaze on the person who had been arguing with Jiang Hai earlier.
He knew this guy—Guan Ziming’s right-hand man, nicknamed “Big Dog.” Unlike Jiang Hai, this bastard had been racing with Guan Ziming since before he even turned eighteen.
Qiao Nan snorted. “Four-kilometer downhill. Who brought it up—was it you, or him?”
Under his sharp gaze, Big Dog blinked, inexplicably feeling weaker. “…Me.”
“Ha.” The beautiful short-haired girl curled her lips. “Whoever backs down is a dog—you guys are pretty impressive, huh.”
Big Dog: “…” That wasn’t exactly what I said…
But Qiao Nan, fully in “protective mode,” was completely unreasonable. These people had crashed the Foreign Language High School party and even bullied his former underclassmen—he was already extremely annoyed.
If he was annoyed, nobody else was allowed to be happy.
So he said, “I think that’s a good idea. Four-kilometer downhill—how about I race you?”
The moment those words fell, the already silent villa became even quieter. After a few seconds, Jiang Hai was the first to jump up. “No—”
Smack! A slap to the back of his head. Qiao Nan looked down at him coldly, eyes sharp. “Shut up.”
Jiang Hai: “…………” Before his brain could process anything, his body instinctively shrank back.
Big Dog, who had witnessed everything: “…” Though he didn’t know who this girl was, she seemed… kind of terrifying.
Even so, he still felt it was unfair to race against a girl, and frowned, about to refuse.
But Qiao Nan preempted him sharply: “You said it yourself—whoever backs down is a dog. Don’t tell me you’re backing out.”
“…” Big Dog looked at her again, then said reluctantly, “Of course not.”
Qiao Nan clapped his hands in satisfaction. “Good.”
Then he suddenly remembered Mu Xiangxiang, scanning the crowd—but Guan Ziming wasn’t there either.
Alarm bells rang in his head. His expression turned instantly sharp as countless worst-case scenarios flashed through his mind in half a second. “Fuck, where’s Guan Ziming?!”
He’d only been away for a tiny moment — surely nothing had really happened to Mu Xiangxiang, right? Fuck, this time he’d really screwed up. He never expected Guan Ziming and that pack of bastards to be this relentlessly persistent. They’d better not have actually laid a hand on Mu Xiangxiang, otherwise—
The more Qiao Nan thought about it, the more fury blazed inside him. Even as his mind rapidly analyzed the situation, he had already, in an instant, come up with the ninety-ninth way to retaliate against them.
Then he saw the Big Dog opposite him — trapped under the pressure of his violent rage — lift an arm with a sickly expression and point in a certain direction.
Qiao Nan followed the gesture, then froze. “….”
Wait.
What the hell?
Mu Xiangxiang was standing calmly at a quiet corner, meeting his complicated gaze with a completely innocent expression.
She even looked puzzled—wondering why a fight had suddenly broken out. She’d even managed to save a whole tray of cakes before they got destroyed, and was now standing there like she had transcended worldly chaos, quietly eating.
She casually popped another bite into her mouth, then suddenly remembered something and offered a piece to the handsome, glowing boy next to her. “Do you want some?”
Guan Ziming: “………… Thanks.”
Qiao Nan stared at the two of them sharing cookies like nothing was happening. After a long silence, he finally found his voice again. “…Come here.”
Not only Qiao Nan, even Guan Ziming looked confused—so much so that he actually accepted the tray of desserts from Mu Xiangxiang and carried it all the way down to the mountain road.
His subordinates followed behind, repeatedly looking like they wanted to speak but didn’t dare.
Mu Xiangxiang still hadn’t figured out what was going on. “What happened? I didn’t dare ask earlier when you weren’t around—why did Jiang Hai suddenly start fighting? Is it related to you?”
Qiao Nan sniffed faintly, eyes narrowed. “What did you drink just now?”
“Just the drinks from the table?”
Qiao Nan sighed. He vaguely remembered his alcohol tolerance wasn’t great—he’d once caused chaos in a bar after drinking. As they walked, he looked up at the night sky. “Don’t talk. I might hit you.”
Mu Xiangxiang frowned, not understanding why he was suddenly angry. When they reached the road, Qiao Nan coldly joined Big Dog and the others by the racing cars. With nothing else to do, she went back to eating cookies with the glowing pretty boy.
Guan Ziming, still holding her dessert tray, met the bewildered looks from his own racing group: “……”
Over on the other side, Big Dog tapped the car Jiang Hai had brought. “You’re not seriously going to use this, are you?”
After the truth of the crash came out, Jiang Hai’s original car had been confiscated by his family, replaced with a much tamer-looking one. The crowd burst into laughter.
Qiao Nan lightly jumped onto the hood, resting one heel against the tire, glancing lazily at them. “Why not?”
Her posture was wildly arrogant. The headlights cast a cold glow over her sharp, beautiful face. Big Dog hesitated. “…Sure, but do you even understand cars? This one’s horsepower—”
Qiao Nan laughed, kicked Jiang Hai lightly, and held out her hand. “Keys.”
Jiang Hai hesitated. Gao Yan and Fang Lingli rushed forward anxiously:
“Mu Xiangxiang, don’t race them…”
“The curves on Xiaoming Mountain are really sharp…”
“Let’s just go back, don’t joke with your life…”
Qiao Nan pinched Gao Yan’s cheek, ignored them, and kicked Jiang Hai again. “Keys. I won’t say it a third time.”
The familiar threat made Jiang Hai flinch instantly. He hurriedly pulled the keys from his pocket and respectfully handed them over.
“Move aside,” Qiao Nan said, jumping down and getting into the car. From the racing team, someone chuckled softly: “That girl really going to race Big Dog? She’s got guts.”
“Maybe she really does have some skills?”
“Possible? Look at how fair and delicate she is—she probably hasn’t even been exposed to much sun—”
Before he could finish, a seductive engine roar suddenly erupted.
The sound of the throttle surged in waves, and before anyone could react, the small battered car that had been parked in place suddenly whipped into a drift right on the spot—
Dust filled the air. The window slowly rolled down. In the driver’s seat, the short-haired girl rested one hand on the steering wheel and propped the other on the window frame, leaning out with a faint, teasing smile.
The men in the racing group all froze at once. Jiang Hai and Fang Lingli’s side also went silent.
Qiao Nan tapped the steering wheel and spoke to Big Dog, who was still staring blankly at him: “Go on. Where’s your car? Didn’t we agree—whoever backs down is a fucking dog.”
Big Dog snapped back to his senses, coughed, and looked around as if he had forgotten where his car was parked. He even sneaked another glance at the girl inside the car.
But she was no longer paying attention to him.
Qiao Nan was staring at the two figures not far away. Mu Xiangxiang was still eating nonstop, while Guan Ziming stood there holding a tray of pastries, looking like “who am I, where am I, what am I doing.”
A wave of genuine irritation rose in him, and the veins at his temple twitched twice.
Then Mu Xiangxiang heard that almost spirit-calling voice again: “…Come here.”
She hesitated for a moment, but still decided to obey. Before leaving, she took another cupcake from the tray and didn’t forget to instruct Guan Ziming: “I’ll be gone for a bit. Don’t eat everything—leave some for me.”
Guan Ziming, who had somehow ended up with a stomach full of cake tonight: “…You’re overthinking.”
Only then did Mu Xiangxiang feel reassured. She politely said thanks, and after getting into the car she even nodded at him, then turned to Qiao Nan: “How long does one lap take?”
Qiao Nan didn’t answer her.
After waiting a moment, Mu Xiangxiang prepared to ask again.
But Qiao Nan’s voice cut in before she could speak: “I really feel like taking you and crashing us both into that tree up ahead.”
Author’s note:
Revenge Little King Guan Ziming [holding a tray]: I really don’t want it to end up like this—
Today’s Qiao Nan is still very “green” as ever (heart)
At first, Jiang Hai had refused to explain the reason. Only after Qiao Nan beat him thoroughly did he finally confess through tears that he’d overheard one of Guan Ziming’s teammates—angry after losing a game—complaining on the phone about wanting to “have a little collision” with Qiao Nan while he practiced driving on Xiaoming Mountain.
At the time, Qiao Nan had been practicing motorcycle racing.
Jiang Hai exploded with anger. His brain stopped functioning entirely. He immediately chased after them and rammed their car, leaving Guan Ziming—who had been sitting in the passenger seat of the front vehicle—with a fractured leg.
But he hadn’t thought things through. Guan Ziming’s family controlled one of the pillar industries of the neighboring city. Someone like Jiang Hai, just the son of an ordinary wealthy family in City A, was in no position to offend them. If the Guan family seriously pursued the matter, a prison sentence wouldn’t have been impossible.
Thinking of that guy who was still lying in a hospital bed back then, neck stiff as he insisted he didn’t regret anything at all, Qiao Nan rubbed his temples in headache and pulled out a cigarette pack from his pocket, biting one out with his mouth.
He couldn’t just sit by and watch his brother go to jail. More importantly, Jiang Hai might not be able to withstand the Guan family—but that didn’t mean Qiao Nan couldn’t either. After all, over the years, his reputation for causing trouble had already become deeply ingrained.
He thought of how neither his father nor his older brother had expressed any doubt when he’d admitted to the incident of hitting someone. He couldn’t even tell what he felt about that. Actually, staying at Mu Xiangxiang’s house these past few days had made him forget about smoking for a long time—but now, looking at the brightly lit mountain road in the distance, the craving suddenly came back.
Just as his hand went into his pocket, he heard hurried footsteps behind him—the distinctive sound of high heels striking the floor.
His hand paused mid-motion as he reached for his lighter. Qiao Nan lowered his head and let out a laugh.
“Mi Xiang—don’t you think this is a bit inappropriate? Fang Lili already told us not to come find her—”
“Shut up. So she’s being stupid and you’re going along with it too?!”
Mi Xiang cut her friend off sharply, scanning the surroundings. After hearing from Fang Lili that the short-haired girl who arrived with Qiao Nan was Mu Xiangxiang, she had been genuinely shocked. Combining that with the other girl’s previously almost invisible presence, she had become deeply wary.
A plain, unremarkable girl transforming into a goddess-like figure and ending up with the school’s male idol—that was basically textbook drama logic.
Even though her current look seemed slightly off from the usual “sweet romance heroine” type… less feminine, more cool and edgy—but still! That didn’t change the fact that she had become extremely, extremely eye-catching.
Mi Xiang firmly believed that all human transformation was ultimately for the sake of attractiveness. Fang Lili, however, disagreed and even blushingly defended her: “No, maybe she always had that personality and just cut her hair accordingly… she actually looks really good on her.”
Idiot!!
Thinking of how this girl even showed up today with Yingcheng’s former campus heartthrob, Mi Xiang—who had years of experience and had often been labeled behind her back as a “scheming green tea girl”—decided it was time to meet this opponent herself. She didn’t believe there was truly a woman who had no interest in handsome guys as Fang Lili described. This so-called cool girl was probably just pretending—maybe even a “man-woman act” type.
She led her friends straight to the terrace door.
Gathering momentum, she pushed it open.
The deep night poured in. Under a sky full of stars, she met a pair of smiling, half-lidded eyes.
Qiao Nan recognized her—this was the girl whose gaze had been especially sharp when he first arrived. At the time, he had even made her blush and look away with just a smile. She looked familiar now; he finally remembered who she was.
Yingcheng High’s basketball cheer captain.
He didn’t really have much impression of her. When he played basketball with Jiang Hai and the others, he’d often hear her and her group screaming in the stands—it was annoying.
He had no patience for it and would sometimes tell them to shut up.
But strangely, those girls never seemed offended; instead, they would get even more excited, faces red as they cheered harder.
Anyway, just one of those people who gave him a headache…
The leader among them was the most enthusiastic, even handing out water and towels. His impression of her had been gentle and shy. Who would’ve thought she had such a completely different side when dealing with girls.
Change bodies, see the world—indeed, eye-opening.
Qiao Nan gave the “performer” in front of him a thumbs-up, lazily leaning back in his chair on the terrace. He glanced at the frozen girls at the door. “Something you need?”
The unlit cigarette trembled between his lips. In the starlight and night breeze, the girl leaned back with her arms on the chair, as if the whole world belonged to her—including the girls standing before her.
Mi Xiang froze slightly; her earlier momentum instantly dropped. Her expression also softened unconsciously, the kind of gentleness she usually only showed around boys. After a pause, she remembered her purpose. “…I, I…”
She stamped her foot. “Are you Mu Xiangxiang?!”
Qiao Nan leaned back, smiling lazily. “Guess~”
Mi Xiang gritted her teeth. Facing the short-haired girl’s sharp, almost predatory gaze in the dark, she inexplicably felt shy.
What the hell—why was she getting shy toward a girl?!
She turned and saw her friends were also blushing. Mi Xiang was almost furious.
Normally, she wouldn’t back down even against high-level social rivals, but today she felt oddly wronged, even wanting to act coquettish like she did with boys.
But she crushed that thought immediately.
“Stop pretending. I know you’re Mu Xiangxiang!” she said, though her earlier aggression had weakened into something almost like a complaint. “Tell me—what’s your relationship with Jiang Hai and Qiao Nan? Do you like them?!”
Qiao Nan had expected this kind of question, but still found it amusing. He leaned back, then suddenly laughed, shoulders shaking. Mi Xiang’s face turned beet-red, but for some reason she still couldn’t bring herself to curse at him.
When he finally stopped laughing and looked up, he realized the girl was crying. Tears were silently streaming down her face, her reddened eyes full of accusation.
“……” Though he didn’t like her much, he never enjoyed making girls cry. So he quickly composed himself, coughed, and stood up.
At that moment, Mi Xiang’s phone rang. She sniffed and answered, still angry at her own strange emotional reactions. “Hello?”
“Mi Xiang! Where are you?!” Fang Lili’s panicked voice came through. “Guan Ziming brought a group of people and started fighting with Jiang Hai’s side! They’re trying to head up the mountain road, and we can’t stop them—what do we do?!”
Mi Xiang froze. Before she could even process it, her body instinctively stepped sideways to block the short-haired girl trying to leave. “Wait! You still haven’t answered my question!”
Fang Lili paused on the phone. “Who are you talking to?!”
Qiao Nan’s impatience flared up instantly. He tried to leave but was blocked again. His glare made the girl flinch, but she still stubbornly stood in place.
He exhaled sharply, then shoved her head aside. “Move. Who the hell wants to steal your man? I’m not into guys.”
He was genuinely disgusted that she’d lump him with someone like Jiang Hai. He liked girls—girls, girls, girls! The kind like Mu Xiangxiang—fair, slim, soft, with…chest!
Wait. Mu Xiangxiang’s chest seemed…
Whatever. Anyway—girls.
The girl finally stepped aside. He didn’t bother with her and ran off toward the villa.
That damn Jiang Hai never knew how to stop causing trouble.
Behind him, the girls were still frozen on the terrace. Mi Xiang stood there dazed for a long time before realizing her phone was still connected.
“…uh…”
Fang Lili’s voice came through slowly: “...Shut up. I need a moment.”
*****
Gao Yang’s birthday party had completely fallen apart. The living room was a mess after a fight.
By the time Qiao Nan arrived, he could already hear Jiang Hai arguing with one of Guan Ziming’s underlings: “…You dare try a four-kilometer downhill run?!”
“Come on then! Let’s go! I’m saying this now—whoever backs down is a dog who kneels and admits it!”
At this moment, veins on the side of Qiao Nan’s forehead were twitching wildly. The “four-kilometer” that Jiang Hai and the others were talking about referred to the mountain road of Xiaoming Mountain. Because the road was short—just over four kilometers—regulars who came here to race nicknamed it that.
But although it was short, it was by no means easy. Xiaoming Mountain was famous for its dangerous curves. Qiao Nan had once brought Jiang Hai here to race, and that coward had spent the entire ride curled up in the back seat, shaking in fear. And yet that same pathetic excuse for guts was now acting tough in public—Qiao Nan genuinely wanted to beat him to death.
So he proceeded to act on that impulse.
Jiang Hai was still showing off, coldly ordering Gao Yan, Fang Lingli, and the others trying to stop him to step aside. Then suddenly—smack!—a slap landed on his forehead, leaving him stunned for a few seconds.
“Go on! Go, I’m telling you to go!” Before he could react, a rain of slaps came down like crackling thunder. The entire scene fell briefly silent as everyone watched the sudden appearance of the short-haired girl brutally beating Jiang Hai.
Jiang Hai snapped out of his blank shock. Still confused, his first reaction wasn’t rage but to raise his arms to protect his head, looking almost pitifully lost.
Even one of Guan Ziming’s underlings couldn’t bear it and tried to intervene: “Uh… okay, that’s enough… miss… that’s about it…”
But the moment he spoke, a sharp glare from the short-haired girl made him shudder and immediately withdraw his hands.
After venting his frustration over his useless subordinate, Qiao Nan’s anger faded slightly. He released Jiang Hai’s collar and straightened up, fixing his gaze on the person who had been arguing with Jiang Hai earlier.
He knew this guy—Guan Ziming’s right-hand man, nicknamed “Big Dog.” Unlike Jiang Hai, this bastard had been racing with Guan Ziming since before he even turned eighteen.
Qiao Nan snorted. “Four-kilometer downhill. Who brought it up—was it you, or him?”
Under his sharp gaze, Big Dog blinked, inexplicably feeling weaker. “…Me.”
“Ha.” The beautiful short-haired girl curled her lips. “Whoever backs down is a dog—you guys are pretty impressive, huh.”
Big Dog: “…” That wasn’t exactly what I said…
But Qiao Nan, fully in “protective mode,” was completely unreasonable. These people had crashed the Foreign Language High School party and even bullied his former underclassmen—he was already extremely annoyed.
If he was annoyed, nobody else was allowed to be happy.
So he said, “I think that’s a good idea. Four-kilometer downhill—how about I race you?”
The moment those words fell, the already silent villa became even quieter. After a few seconds, Jiang Hai was the first to jump up. “No—”
Smack! A slap to the back of his head. Qiao Nan looked down at him coldly, eyes sharp. “Shut up.”
Jiang Hai: “…………” Before his brain could process anything, his body instinctively shrank back.
Big Dog, who had witnessed everything: “…” Though he didn’t know who this girl was, she seemed… kind of terrifying.
Even so, he still felt it was unfair to race against a girl, and frowned, about to refuse.
But Qiao Nan preempted him sharply: “You said it yourself—whoever backs down is a dog. Don’t tell me you’re backing out.”
“…” Big Dog looked at her again, then said reluctantly, “Of course not.”
Qiao Nan clapped his hands in satisfaction. “Good.”
Then he suddenly remembered Mu Xiangxiang, scanning the crowd—but Guan Ziming wasn’t there either.
Alarm bells rang in his head. His expression turned instantly sharp as countless worst-case scenarios flashed through his mind in half a second. “Fuck, where’s Guan Ziming?!”
He’d only been away for a tiny moment — surely nothing had really happened to Mu Xiangxiang, right? Fuck, this time he’d really screwed up. He never expected Guan Ziming and that pack of bastards to be this relentlessly persistent. They’d better not have actually laid a hand on Mu Xiangxiang, otherwise—
The more Qiao Nan thought about it, the more fury blazed inside him. Even as his mind rapidly analyzed the situation, he had already, in an instant, come up with the ninety-ninth way to retaliate against them.
Then he saw the Big Dog opposite him — trapped under the pressure of his violent rage — lift an arm with a sickly expression and point in a certain direction.
Qiao Nan followed the gesture, then froze. “….”
Wait.
What the hell?
Mu Xiangxiang was standing calmly at a quiet corner, meeting his complicated gaze with a completely innocent expression.
She even looked puzzled—wondering why a fight had suddenly broken out. She’d even managed to save a whole tray of cakes before they got destroyed, and was now standing there like she had transcended worldly chaos, quietly eating.
She casually popped another bite into her mouth, then suddenly remembered something and offered a piece to the handsome, glowing boy next to her. “Do you want some?”
Guan Ziming: “………… Thanks.”
Qiao Nan stared at the two of them sharing cookies like nothing was happening. After a long silence, he finally found his voice again. “…Come here.”
Not only Qiao Nan, even Guan Ziming looked confused—so much so that he actually accepted the tray of desserts from Mu Xiangxiang and carried it all the way down to the mountain road.
His subordinates followed behind, repeatedly looking like they wanted to speak but didn’t dare.
Mu Xiangxiang still hadn’t figured out what was going on. “What happened? I didn’t dare ask earlier when you weren’t around—why did Jiang Hai suddenly start fighting? Is it related to you?”
Qiao Nan sniffed faintly, eyes narrowed. “What did you drink just now?”
“Just the drinks from the table?”
Qiao Nan sighed. He vaguely remembered his alcohol tolerance wasn’t great—he’d once caused chaos in a bar after drinking. As they walked, he looked up at the night sky. “Don’t talk. I might hit you.”
Mu Xiangxiang frowned, not understanding why he was suddenly angry. When they reached the road, Qiao Nan coldly joined Big Dog and the others by the racing cars. With nothing else to do, she went back to eating cookies with the glowing pretty boy.
Guan Ziming, still holding her dessert tray, met the bewildered looks from his own racing group: “……”
Over on the other side, Big Dog tapped the car Jiang Hai had brought. “You’re not seriously going to use this, are you?”
After the truth of the crash came out, Jiang Hai’s original car had been confiscated by his family, replaced with a much tamer-looking one. The crowd burst into laughter.
Qiao Nan lightly jumped onto the hood, resting one heel against the tire, glancing lazily at them. “Why not?”
Her posture was wildly arrogant. The headlights cast a cold glow over her sharp, beautiful face. Big Dog hesitated. “…Sure, but do you even understand cars? This one’s horsepower—”
Qiao Nan laughed, kicked Jiang Hai lightly, and held out her hand. “Keys.”
Jiang Hai hesitated. Gao Yan and Fang Lingli rushed forward anxiously:
“Mu Xiangxiang, don’t race them…”
“The curves on Xiaoming Mountain are really sharp…”
“Let’s just go back, don’t joke with your life…”
Qiao Nan pinched Gao Yan’s cheek, ignored them, and kicked Jiang Hai again. “Keys. I won’t say it a third time.”
The familiar threat made Jiang Hai flinch instantly. He hurriedly pulled the keys from his pocket and respectfully handed them over.
“Move aside,” Qiao Nan said, jumping down and getting into the car. From the racing team, someone chuckled softly: “That girl really going to race Big Dog? She’s got guts.”
“Maybe she really does have some skills?”
“Possible? Look at how fair and delicate she is—she probably hasn’t even been exposed to much sun—”
Before he could finish, a seductive engine roar suddenly erupted.
The sound of the throttle surged in waves, and before anyone could react, the small battered car that had been parked in place suddenly whipped into a drift right on the spot—
Dust filled the air. The window slowly rolled down. In the driver’s seat, the short-haired girl rested one hand on the steering wheel and propped the other on the window frame, leaning out with a faint, teasing smile.
The men in the racing group all froze at once. Jiang Hai and Fang Lingli’s side also went silent.
Qiao Nan tapped the steering wheel and spoke to Big Dog, who was still staring blankly at him: “Go on. Where’s your car? Didn’t we agree—whoever backs down is a fucking dog.”
Big Dog snapped back to his senses, coughed, and looked around as if he had forgotten where his car was parked. He even sneaked another glance at the girl inside the car.
But she was no longer paying attention to him.
Qiao Nan was staring at the two figures not far away. Mu Xiangxiang was still eating nonstop, while Guan Ziming stood there holding a tray of pastries, looking like “who am I, where am I, what am I doing.”
A wave of genuine irritation rose in him, and the veins at his temple twitched twice.
Then Mu Xiangxiang heard that almost spirit-calling voice again: “…Come here.”
She hesitated for a moment, but still decided to obey. Before leaving, she took another cupcake from the tray and didn’t forget to instruct Guan Ziming: “I’ll be gone for a bit. Don’t eat everything—leave some for me.”
Guan Ziming, who had somehow ended up with a stomach full of cake tonight: “…You’re overthinking.”
Only then did Mu Xiangxiang feel reassured. She politely said thanks, and after getting into the car she even nodded at him, then turned to Qiao Nan: “How long does one lap take?”
Qiao Nan didn’t answer her.
After waiting a moment, Mu Xiangxiang prepared to ask again.
But Qiao Nan’s voice cut in before she could speak: “I really feel like taking you and crashing us both into that tree up ahead.”
Author’s note:
Revenge Little King Guan Ziming [holding a tray]: I really don’t want it to end up like this—
Today’s Qiao Nan is still very “green” as ever (heart)
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