Did the Tsundere Miss Get Slapped in the Face Again Today? - Chapter 37

Chapter 37: “We Are Not Suitable.”

“Where’s Sister Anran? Didn’t she come today?” Xiaoman looked around the convenience store but didn’t see Lin Anran.

Jiang Zhi, moving the mouse and stopping her hand that was counting the accounts on the computer, responded with an “Mmm”: “She had something going on at home today, so she couldn’t come.”

Jiang Zhi seemed down. Xiaoman couldn’t help but tease: “She only missed one day. You can’t be this listless, right?”

Jiang Zhi: “Where are you getting that from? I’m just tired.”

Xiaoman raised an eyebrow, then couldn’t resist her curiosity: “Sister Zhizhi, just how rich is Sister Anran’s family? Do you know the price of the bag she casually gave me last time?”

The price of the bag was so high that Xiaoman initially didn’t dare to accept it. Later, she tried to return it, and, as expected, was scolded by Lin Anran.

Jiang Zhi didn’t know about these things and genuinely didn’t know the price: “Ten thousand yuan?”

Xiaoman shook her head.

Jiang Zhi guessed higher: “Forty thousand? Fifty thousand?”

Xiaoman continued to shake her head, no longer holding back the answer: “The market price is one hundred and eighty thousand yuan.”

Jiang Zhi was stunned. In her mind, an expensive bag was around forty or fifty thousand. She realized her frame of reference was still limited.

But then again, Lin Anran could easily spend thousands or tens of thousands on a casual takeout order, so a bag worth over a hundred thousand yuan didn’t seem like a big deal.

She carried different styles of bags every day. A bag worth a hundred thousand might be the least noteworthy among Lin Anran’s piles of bags.

Jiang Zhi lowered her eyes and looked at the canvas bag placed next to her.

Jiang Zhi’s canvas bag was bought on sale online. She still remembered the price: twenty-nine yuan and ninety cents.

She had been using this cheap bag for a year, and the quality was good, so using it for another year didn’t seem like a problem.

A bag worth 180,000 yuan, and a bag worth 29.9 yuan…

Xiaoman: “You always said before that your relationship with her was purely platonic. I actually didn’t quite believe it until she gave me that bag. Now, I feel that your claim of ‘pure friendship’ is likely true.”

Jiang Zhi withdrew her gaze from the canvas bag. Breaking from her usual habit of emphasizing the pure friendship, she asked, “What? Didn’t you say we were a great match before? And now we’re not?”

Xiaoman smiled: “You still match; the vibe and the feeling are very compatible. But those things are ephemeral. The most important thing is the practical reality.”

The practical reality was this:

One was the daughter of a large corporation, pampered and privileged, who would never have to worry about money her entire life. A single bag cost over a hundred thousand yuan, and she had over a hundred of them.

The other was a poor orphan, ignored by the world, who spent her entire life struggling for money and survival, using a canvas bag that cost a few dozen yuan for a whole year.

The difference between her and Lin Anran was not slight; the chasm between them was one she could never cross in a lifetime.

“Although I’m a big romantic, love-first, and love to ‘ship’ people,” Xiaoman shrugged. “When it comes to dating, you still have to consider a matching family background. No, wait, Sister Zhizhi, please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not looking down on you. I’m just analyzing a realistic situation…”

Jiang Zhi shook her head, not taking offense: “It’s okay. I understand what you mean.”

Jiang Zhi understood the meaning of “a matching family background” better than anyone.

She was wearing a shirt that Lin Anran had gotten for her. Jiang Zhi hadn’t specifically looked up the price of the shirt, but she knew that the price of the clothing would likely shatter her meager understanding of wealth again.

One thousand? Ten thousand? Maybe even far more.

The clothing was so expensive that Jiang Zhi felt she was slightly undeserving of wearing it.

“She used to really like instant noodles and coffee, do you remember?” Jiang Zhi suddenly asked.

“I remember. She always complained that she wanted to eat them whenever she waited for you to get off work, but you said it wasn’t healthy and rarely let her have them,”

Xiaoman casually said, “But, she hasn’t asked for those two things in a long time.”

Jiang Zhi looked at the instant coffee displayed in front of the cash register: “That’s right. She hasn’t asked to eat them in a long time.”

A person who always drank high-end, hand-ground coffee and ate hand-pulled noodles made by star chefs, felt novelty and fondness when they first tried instant coffee and instant noodles.

But once they tasted them a few more times, the novelty wore off, and they would realize that the cheap instant coffee was ultimately incomparable to, and could not be compared with, high-end hand-ground coffee.

The two were worlds apart.

And Jiang Zhi was that cheap instant coffee.

Lin Anran hadn’t met anyone like Jiang Zhi before. At first glance, she was new and different.

But once they spent more time together, and if they really got together, she would find that there was nothing novel or different about her—she was actually quite ordinary and cheap.

It was late autumn, and the temperature already felt like winter. Riding her scooter on the road, the wind bit at her face painfully.

Suddenly, her finger pressed the brake, stopping the scooter. She took out her phone.

She didn’t know what prompted her, but she suddenly wanted to ask Lin Anran one thing; she urgently needed to know the answer.

Even though she was halfway through her ride, stopping by the side of the road against the cold wind, she had to pull out her phone and send her a message.

Her fingers trembled as she typed, she pondered for a moment, and finally gritted her teeth and pressed the send button.

Do you still like drinking coffee, and do you still think instant noodles taste good?

It was a question with no beginning or end.

Jiang Zhi stared at the phone screen, waiting without blinking for her reply.

The top of the screen showed Typing…

Jiang Zhi’s heart felt like it was being squeezed and lifted, making the wait particularly agonizing.

Finally, her message came back: I don’t like them anymore.

Jiang Zhi bit her lip until it turned white and stubbornly pressed further: Why don’t you like them anymore? You liked them a lot before.

Lin Anran: I got tired of eating them. Who can keep liking those things? Why are you suddenly asking this?

Jiang Zhi lowered her gaze. After a long while, she typed back: Nothing, just asking casually.

The other side replied instantly: I know. You must be missing me and deliberately finding a topic to chat about.

Tch, the topic you found is very ordinary. You’re not good at chatting at all.

I’ve only been gone for one day. No, to be precise, eight hours and nine minutes. It hasn’t been a day, not even half a day.

Don’t be so clingy. I don’t like people who are too clingy…

The phone vibrated non-stop as Lin Anran sent message after message.

Jiang Zhi sat on her scooter, her feet resting on the ground, her hand holding her phone, staring at the messages for about ten minutes.

Maybe not that long, or maybe even longer.

She didn’t reply to Lin Anran again. She only remembered the phrase she had replied with: got tired of it…

Her constantly wavering heart suddenly reached a conclusion.

She faced the cold wind and smiled with a sense of relief.

She stuffed her phone into her jacket pocket, rubbed her hands that were stiff with cold, and then rubbed her face that was red from the cold, sighing: “It’s so cold.”

Winter was coming; it was truly cold. Her body was cold, and her heart was colder than winter.

She looked at the small car driving past her. Unlike her scooter, exposed to the wind and rain, the people inside the car enjoyed spring-like warmth all year.

Lin Anran always said she was overly sentimental and should be less so. Now it seemed she was right, as her sentimental thoughts were acting up again.

In her twenty-five years of life, she had been disciplined—no smoking, no drinking, no clubbing, and she rarely went out for gatherings or fun.

Every day was spent working, commuting, and taking on a part-time job, saving money to the point of haggling over whether the packaging fee or delivery fee for takeout was too expensive.

She had been disciplined and stingy for so many years, but today, for the first time, she wanted to be reckless. She wanted to cross the line, she wanted to indulge in a fantasy, just this once.

Ignoring reason, regardless of the outcome, ignoring family background, and ignoring the concept of a matching social status—just enjoying the present.

Just enjoying the present… just this once…

But this thought only lasted for a brief moment.

The moment she asked Lin Anran if she still liked coffee and she replied that she didn’t and was tired of it, that fantasy was brutally pulled back to reality.

She didn’t dare to fantasize anymore.

A disciplined person should continue to be disciplined and put away any inappropriate thoughts.

She restarted her scooter and drove towards the dilapidated small apartment complex where she lived, her cheap rented room.

The wind was too strong, and something blew into her eyes, making them red-rimmed.

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