Chapter 42: A Glimpse of the Chest-O nerd por quem eu tinha uma paixão secreta não era doce, então mudei para o bad boy que gosta de mim abertamente(Doce celestial do mundo humano)

Night.

It was freezing outside. The trees stood bare against the howling wind, and the windowpanes were covered in frost. The weather forecast predicted snow for tomorrow.

God knew whether it would actually snow; the forecast was never reliable.

Lin Shu lay in bed, listening to music while staring at the ceiling.

She had been back home for three hours already.

Yet her mind was completely filled with Xie Buchend, making even the provocative hip-thrust dance videos impossible to focus on.

The tone of his voice, the curve of his smile, and the helpless, pitiful look he wore when dealing with her...

Scene after scene replayed in her mind on an endless loop.

There was simply no pause button to be found.

Terrifying. Truly, a man who had never walked the path of temptation was the most alluring of all.

Lin Shu rolled back and forth hugging her pillow, finally deciding to get up and solve a couple of math problems to calm her restless mind.

……

A high-rise building thirty meters above the ground.

No wind, ignoring air resistance.

She is thrown outward at a velocity of 20 meters per second.

Question: How long will she spend in the air? What will her velocity be upon impact?

Lin Shu felt completely floaty even just looking at the physics problem. Not only had the air resistance disappeared, but gravity itself seemed to have vanished.

She read through the prompt over and over again, yet failed to register a single given condition.

Twirling her gel pen in her hand, the corners of her mouth curled high upward.

Her phone vibrated.

It was a message from Xie Buchend.

Huh?

How did he know she was thinking about him?

Xie Buchend: It's swollen.

Lin Shu: What's swollen?

Xie Buchend: Don't you remember the good deed you did?

Lin Shu: No way, you're that delicate...

Xie Buchend: ……

Lin Shu: Let me see your chest.

……

Xie Buchend stood bare-chested in the bathroom, turning sideways to pull back the skin over his left pectoral muscle, revealing a clearly visible bruise.

He struggled to take a photo of it in the mirror.

He was going to make Lin Shu see the mess she had caused.

His cousin walked in.

Glancing over, the cousin froze.

"Xiao Chen, what are you doing..."

"Nothing."

"……Young people have impulses and curiosity, that's completely normal. I couldn't control myself at your age either, but Xiao Chen, you need to cherish your body. Make sure you stay away from those strange circles."

His cousin lectured him earnestly.

Xie Buchend looked into the mirror at the teenage boy with a bruised chest, sensing something indescribable... With a sharp snap, he tossed his phone aside.

And bolted out of the room like he had seen a ghost.

Utterly exasperated.

Right on cue, Lin Shu's messages flooded in like a debt collector demanding payment.

Lin Shu: Why went quiet?

Lin Shu: Let me see, is the injury bad?

Lin Shu: Brother Chen?

Lin Shu: Answer me.

Xie Buchend pressed his lips together, holding his phone in one hand to type, his fingers trembling slightly.

Xie Buchend: What kind of person do you take me for?

Xie Buchend: Lin Shu, you absolute sex fiend.

Xie Buchend: Don't think I don't know what you're thinking.

……

Huh?

How did she know what he was thinking?

Lin Shu clicked her tongue, biting her fingernail as she blamed Xie Buchend for being so clueless as to call out her pure intentions.

Honestly.

Wealthy, but not the least bit generous.

Not a good man.

She tossed her pen aside, pushed her workbook away, and stared blankly at the phone screen where no more messages were popping up. With a long sigh, she locked the screen.

Lin Shu decided to find something else to do.

She finished writing the serialized Republican-era novel for the school magazine, opened the school's official website, copied two announcements, excerpted two passages from classic literary works, and combined them with some humorous news before formatting it all into an issue.

She sent the file to her Chinese teacher first.

Once the teacher approved it, she uploaded the digital magazine to the public mailbox for downloading.

The Chinese teacher asked her if she wanted to print out a couple of physical copies.

Lin Shu replied that nobody would read them anyway, and it would just be a waste of paper.

The teacher said she loved the stories Lin Shu wrote—they had spirit, humanity, and a touch of mischief, so perhaps people would pass them around if they were printed.

Besides, it wouldn't cost her any money.

Thinking about it, Lin Shu decided she would take them to the copy room on Monday, make a stack, and leave them on the table at the entrance of the teaching building so anyone who wanted to read could just pick one up.

……

Time for bed, time for bed.

If she didn't sleep now, she'd be staying up all night.

In her dream, Lin Shu returned to her past life. Ji Xingshen had gone away on a business trip for half a month without coming home, leaving her alone in the house while she constantly received boastful photos sent by his mistress.

The faceless mistress was posing with her peach-like buttocks on a large bed to take pictures, surrounded by packaging boxes from Louis Vuitton and Paris, along with a bouquet of flowers.

Ji Xingshen's back was half-visible in the frame.

Mistress: Sister-in-law, you won't be angry that big brother is taking me shopping, right?

Lin Shu: You can keep those two skinny ribs to suck on yourself; I've already lost interest in men with less than a B-cup chest.

She made her bold declaration and turned around.

Xie Buchend was standing behind her like a ghost.

Lin Shu said in shock, "In this world, aren't you already dead..."

The young boy folded his arms, a smile playing coldly on his lips. "Dead under your demonic claws, right?"

……

Lin Shu woke up with a start.

Scratching her head and turning her hair into a bird's nest, she thought to herself that she'd better not provoke Xie Buchend ever again.

That petty man had actually chased her into her dreams just to scold her.

……

Monday.

Lin Shu woke up at five-thirty, arrived at school an hour early to print the school magazine, and taking advantage of the empty hallways, placed the stack on the table at the entrance of the teaching building.

She didn't tell a soul and returned to her classroom as if nothing had happened.

During recess, she checked on them twice.

At noon, she came down to check again.

Not a single one of the twenty booklets seemed to have been taken... though one had fallen to the floor.

Lin Shu picked it up, dusted it off, and put it back.

"Forget it."

Nobody ever read them anyway.

Previously, Zhou Ya had said someone was urging her to update her novel, but that was probably just to encourage her—after all, who was so idle they'd actually read the school magazine?

In a couple of years, let alone school publications, nobody would even watch television.

Oh no.

Someone was coming.

Lin Shu darted like an arrow behind the railings, pulling her shoulders in and holding her breath.

Terrified of being discovered.

The newcomer stopped in front of the table and began flipping through the magazine.

Lin Shu could hear the rustle of turning pages, and it seemed that person had skipped the school news and gone straight to the serialized novel...

Her heart leaped into her throat.

The other person put the magazine away and took a step.

Lin Shu was simply too curious; this might be her very first reader...

Although she had worked as a translator in her past life and translated two books with readers emailing her, writing original fiction was a first for her, making this presumably her very first reader in the truest sense.

Don't be scared.

Looking won't hurt.

The girl counted the footsteps and cautiously poked her head out.

After seeing the person who matched her expectant gaze—well, she might as well have died.

……

"Xie Buchend, what are you doing?"

Lin Shu jumped out, ambushing him like Cheng咬金.

Xie Buchend waved the magazine around. "Getting a booklet."

Lin Shu demanded, "What are you getting it for?"

Surely he wasn't going to fold paper airplanes out of it...

Some boys were still like elementary schoolers, loving to fold paper airplanes and aim at people on the floor below. Lin Shu had been accurately targeted twice, so seeing anyone fold paper airplanes instantly made her angry.

Xie Buchend said, "...Oh, of course not. Are you hoping for a paper airplane?"

Huh?

Hoping for your head.

Lin Shu asked him what he was actually taking the booklet for.

Xie Buchend folded his arms. "What else do you do with reading material besides read it? Take it to the bathroom?"

Lin Shu declared that she was in charge of managing these booklets, and whoever read them had to return them without damaging them or drawing on them.

Xie Buchend raised an eyebrow. "Understood, Teacher Lin..."

Lin Shu hummed twice.

Xie Buchend's teasing tone at the end really sounded punchable.

The weather was freezing, and the surroundings were deserted.

The boy slowed his pace, waiting for the girl to catch up, and flipping through the magazine asked, "You're the one in charge of this booklet?"

Lin Shu's ears burned hot, and she subconsciously held her breath.

"......I did the layout, and our Chinese teacher reviewed it."

"Where did the articles on it come from?"

"The school website, public domain libraries..."

"Oh." Xie Buchend said indifferently, "Do you know where the novel serialized on page four was found?"

"......I don't know."

Oh mother, he had actually read what she wrote!

Did he really have to do this?

Was he trying to drive her to her grave?

Even with a knife held to her throat, Lin Shu would never let Xie Buchend find out who the author "Weishen" was!