After Sleeping with My Childhood Friend/Arch-Nemesis - Chapter 2

The pedestrians on the street were sparse. Some looked like tourists just by their posture, while others were salarymen in suits and leather shoes, bowing to each other after finishing an entertainment engagement.

Zhou Xiaqing breathed in the fresh air, her head bowed as she poked her phone out of boredom, walking slowly toward the convenience store nearest to the hotel.

The dormitory group chat suddenly popped up.

Zhang Mingzhu, a roommate who had remained at school, posted passionately: “Sisters, shock!! I’m on my way back after buying a late-night snack. Guess what I just saw?!”

Zhou Xiaqing perked up and joked: “Aliens landed on Earth in an unidentified flying object?”

Zhang Mingzhu replied instantly: “Even more shocking than that!”

Zhou Xiaqing: “Huh?”

Zhang Mingzhu: “I saw the study committee member from Translation Class 2 and the sports committee member from Translation Class 3! Together! Walking out of a hotel!!”

Zhou Xiaqing was the monitor of Class 1 and had had more or less contact with the committee members of the other two classes: “Hasn’t the sports committee member of Class 3 always said he’s single?”

Zhang Mingzhu: “That’s what I’m saying! What is going on!”

Xu Ling seemed to have been woken up too: “Why are you two singing a duet? Things like this happen all the time on campus.”

Zhang Mingzhu: “That’s true, but knowing people you actually recognize are like this still makes one a little tiny bit surprised.”

She continued: “They looked unfamiliar with each other on the surface, all prim and proper, but who knew they were doing this and that behind the scenes? It’s so wow!”

The messages refreshed one after another. Zhou Xiaqing wanted to keep “eating the gossip,” but her temples started throbbing with pain again. She turned off her phone, pressed her temples with her fingers, and walked into the convenience store, breathing deeply all the way.

She walked straight to the freezer, grabbed a banana milkshake, paid for it, tore off the packaging, and put it into the machine to operate.

As she tapped her phone case unconsciously and stared down at her black sneakers in boredom, a male voice at once familiar and strange suddenly came from behind her: “Zhou Xiaqing?”

There was a hint of disbelief in the tone, as if he hadn’t expected to see her here.

She turned her head to respond. Although she already had an expectation in her heart, encountering a neighbor by such a small probability in a foreign land still gave her quite a start.

“What a coincidence?” Zhou Xiaqing blurted out.

The tall boy before her was wearing a dark blue, white-striped stand-collar jacket, half of his chin covered. He wore a baseball cap of the same color. When he looked down at her, she could only see his eyes and nose through the shadow of the brim, along with the outline of his lean, chiseled cheeks.

Even so, she could be certain that this person was the annoying Chen Jinshan who lived next door.

“Yeah.” Chen Jinshan gave a faint grunt of acknowledgement and turned his face away, quite coldly.

He looked like he didn’t want to bother with her at all.

Zhou Xiaqing immediately reigned in the extra expressions on her face. Regret. I should have pretended not to know him just now; taking the initiative in this kind of situation is the optimal solution.

She had grown up with Chen Jinshan, and it was fair to say she had witnessed every trajectory of his life thus far. Since she could remember, Chen Jinshan’s little mouth would chatter non-stop all day long. In kindergarten, his desire to express himself was so vigorous that he disrupted classroom discipline many times, to the point that he was directly advised to withdraw by the principal.

In elementary school, to cultivate his interests and, more importantly, to exhaust his energy, Chen Jinshan was sent to learn swimming, yet it didn’t suppress his mischievous nature in the slightest. He ran around causing “all kinds of evil” all day long, often having people come to his door to complain. Even after a “mixed-doubles” beating from his parents, he didn’t change his ways, infuriating his mother, Aunt Yu, to the point she had to take emergency heart medication.

Maybe he became more sensible after entering middle school, or perhaps he had been on the swim team for a long time and participated in more competitions, naturally settling down. It could also have been because he had grown taller and his sunny personality made him liked by girls, so, carrying the burden of being an “idol,” he naturally reined himself in a lot.

Right, it was also from middle school that their relationship began to nosedive. She didn’t know how she had offended Chen Jinshan; when they ran into each other, his words were always sarcastic, and she had observed carefully he only treated her this way.

Even if she cherished the bond of walking to school together in kindergarten and elementary school, and with a magnanimous heart, tried to find him to resolve misunderstandings, he would only mock her with veiled hints and underhanded jabs, his attitude extremely rude.

Zhou Xiaqing was never one to stick a hot face onto a cold butt. Besides, she happened to find him noisy, so gradually, she only communicated with him when necessary. Ever since then, any negative emotions he showed toward her no longer stirred any waves in her. She had already taken measures to save the friendship; since he rejected them, she simply and cleanly gave up.

Originally, in the life of Zhou Xiaqing, Chen Jinshan was just an expendable character.

Although they were still at the same school in high school, because they were in different classes, their meetings dropped sharply. She didn’t have such an intuitive understanding of him anymore. Plus, she was devoted to her studies, only vaguely hearing that he seemed to be very popular—girls often went to watch him train, buying him breakfast and stuffing him with gifts.

After graduating from high school, he entered the same university as her as a swimming scholarship student. Aside from being forced to sit at the same table by their parents’ strict orders during winter and summer breaks, they had only met once on campus. Even then, after a brief look, the two of them passed each other by tacit agreement, treating each other as strangers.

After a brief recollection, her consciousness returned, and Zhou Xiaqing settled this low-probability event in her heart as “enemies meeting on a narrow road” and someone’s “haunting presence.”

The milkshake was ready. Zhou Xiaqing ignored the person beside her, took the lid and straw for herself, and turned to leave, not dragging it out at all.

Ten meters after leaving the convenience store, she suddenly stopped, as if remembering something.

She took out her phone, performed a search, typed a few English words into her memo, and turned around to return the way she came.

After the clerk looked at the brand she wrote on her screen, he said a few words in a flustered and mumbling tone that she couldn’t understand. Seeing she didn’t react, he kept repeating two English words: “passport” and “twenty.”

“I left my passport at the hotel.” She didn’t have her passport with her, so she could only explain dryly, making a “20” gesture, “I’m already twenty.”

The clerk kept shaking his head, obviously still not believing her.

Sharp pain continued to transmit from her temples. She felt as if she were in a quagmire; no matter whether she struggled or not, her body was uncontrollably sinking, and she was about to suffocate.

She wanted to alleviate even a little bit of anxiety and pressure by smoking.

“OK, thank you.” She didn’t want to make things difficult for the clerk, so she picked up the phone on the checkout counter, preparing to quickly return to the hotel to get her passport before coming back to buy cigarettes.

The next second, an unfolded passport was pressed onto the checkout counter by a large hand. The clearly defined fingers pointed to the cigarette brand on her phone screen: “One pack of this, please.”

Zhou Xiaqing turned her head, and what came into view was Chen Jinshan’s chiseled profile.

The lights were too bright, making her head feel even dizzier.