Chapter 31 — The Campus God Who Spat Blood (5) | Bending the Male Lead, One Day at a Time
Xing Ge’s mouth twitched and twitched again.
Thank goodness there was no one in the women’s restroom. Otherwise tomorrow’s A-University campus paper would be glorious.
Calm as a lake, she walked up to a closed stall, lifted her leg, and kicked it like a neighborhood gangster. “Open up.”
Silence inside.
Hah. Foolish human. You think that can stop her?
She’d just climb over the wall!
“You—”
Chen Xi's eyes widened. His instinct was to rush out the door to escape. Xing Ge reached out and directly restrained him in front of her, pinning him so he couldn’t move.
Their height difference made the pose ridiculous; her face could only press against his back.
The sudden contact scrambled Chen Xi’s entire brain. The kid was small, but his brute strength was shocking. Both forearms locked across his chest until he could barely breathe.
His soft, messy hair tickled his back.
A deer went thundering through his ribcage.
“Why are you avoiding me?” she demanded, ferocious.
“Am I?” The cool god of campus feigned calm and tried to pry her arms away. Xing Ge caught his hand instead.
Chen Xi: “!!!”
Holy sh*t, so embarrassing!
It was clearly a boy’s hand he had grabbed, long-fingered, a little rough, warm with a sheen of sweat. Their fingers laced together, and the temperature shot up. In moments everything felt damp, sticky as syrup.
Bit by bit, a bloom of peach pink spread across his cheeks.
He said nothing for a long time.
Behind him, Xing Ge could not see that blush and assumed he was guilty. She immediately burned up. “Not avoiding me? Then which turtle decided that the moment I come back to the dorm he has to climb to the top bunk, yank down the curtain, and ignore me when I talk to him? You were never like this before!”
Her voice picked up the flavor of grievance as she went.
Xing Ge really did treat the male lead as a brother.
She repeatedly ignored the system’s instigation.
And what did she get? This guy suddenly drawing a line like she carried the plague.
With a chest full of complaints, she was ready to give him a proper scolding, but sweat started pouring down her forehead. F***, it was hot. The sting of salt crawled into her eyes.
No way. Next time she had to tell the male lead this was a terrible place to talk. If a girl came in, they would both get chased out by flying slippers. If he had to hide again, could he pick somewhere more comfortable? She would even take the biology lab swimming in formalin over this.
In the heavy silence, Chen Xi felt a large patch of dampness spreading across his back.
Crying?
He is crying?
Did he make him cry?
Chen Xi’s heart clenched.
Everyone has a little beast living inside them. Most days it sleeps like a log, harmless. But the moment someone you care about is hurting, that wicked beast stretches its claws and shreds your heart into glittering glass, then keeps it dangling there, not up, not down, painfully suspended.
That was exactly how he felt.
The thought of this little thing with tears in his eyes made his heart splinter into shards.
Before he even knew what he was doing, Chen Xi turned and pulled the kid’s head into his chest.
Xing Ge: “???”
What just happened?
“Ying’er, it was my fault.” He apologized first. That clean voice, roughened with a grain of sanded sugar, was lovely enough to make ears pregnant.
Ying’er? Xing Ge felt the name was weird, but she could not pin down why.
The male lead, just past twenty, was in that rare stage where a boy’s greenness brushes against a man’s allure: clean, cool, subtly seductive, mellow, all kinds of contradictory flavors at once.
Xing Ge wore a giant, confused question mark on her face. How did the fight end before it even started?
She wanted to kneel before the circuitry of this man’s brain.
While she was still processing, those artist’s hands, white and elegant, tipped her chin. Cool as jade, comforting.
She had no time to dwell on it because the male lead added lazily, “What do you want to eat later? I will go buy it.”
Xing Ge: “!!!”
In that moment, the male lead shone too bright to look at.
Great God, please accept my kneecaps.
They went to the restroom enemies and came out… inexplicably reconciled.
Everyone who heard about it wanted to swear. Is this a joke?
What was more, after this cold war episode, Chen Xi’s “spoil the little brother” skills advanced another full stage, drawing public hatred wherever they went.
How good did it get?
Cheng Rui was tempted to yank Xing Ge by the collar and shout, bro, are you secretly the boss’s long-lost biological little brother?
He did not dare. Someone was watching like a hawk from the side, very elegantly rolling up a sleeve to reveal a strong, lean wrist.
Good grief. The boss had once won the national karate championship. This was not someone you provoked.
He tucked his tail between his legs and backed down.
Still, that put-upon look was so amusing that Xing Ge could not help it. She smiled, her brows bending like new moons, showing a neat row of white teeth.
Ah, like a little angel.
Clutching his face, Cheng Rui decided to forgive the kid for now. He was their youngest, handsome and loyal; a little pampering was acceptable.
To show goodwill, he squeezed the kid’s hand. “There’s a friendly scrimmage with another school this weekend. Want in? I’ll save you a spot.”
Cheng Rui was a severe basketball addict. Thanks to his parents’ good genes, he had long legs and long arms, and decent skills. He had joined the team as a freshman and had been high on it ever since.
To be fair, it was “Master” Chen Xi who had led him in.
At that time, Chen Xi was a small forward famous across major universities. He never lost a single game. Many little fangirls from other schools specifically skipped classes to watch him play. Even the teachers knew and turned a blind eye.
But the male lead only played when he felt like it. Capricious to the bone, he got bored in under half a year. The school team begged to keep him on the roster by name only, hoping the emperor might “favor” them with the occasional appearance.
Of course Xing Ge agreed. After being cooped up on campus, even the prettiest scenery gets old.
Basketball? For an old hand schooled in every fighting style under the sun, that was child’s play.
“Then it’s a date this weekend. We’llterm mimicking gunfire
or playful shooting,
often used in a humorous
or lighthearted context. biu-biu
“Obviously. When the mighty 502 Division rolls out, we will have them doubting life in minutes,” Xing Ge laughed.
The two joked and jostled like they had been friends for years.
Xu Jianyuan, who had just returned, saw them talking so happily and wanted to join in. Then he accidentally glimpsed the boss’s narrowed eyes. Hmm, he'd better stick to walking along the wall.
Then he silently thought: Cheng Rui is definitely going to be unlucky soon.
Old buddy, silently lighting a candle for you. Rest in peace!
Sure enough, Tuesday morning in Old Demon’s class, because he had not handed in his homework, Cheng Rui was baptized in flying spit the second the bell rang, questioning his entire existence.
What the heck. This was not scientific.
The boss and the youngest were clearly playing games last night. The three of them peacefully fought a guild war together until 2 a.m. before sleeping! No one said anything about doing homework, d*mn it!
He looked over at the two who had dodged the calamity.
The one who had played hardest, Xing Ge, was already asleep on the desk. And Chen Xi? Propping his chin in one hand, he lazily toyed with Xing Ge’s hair like none of this involved him.
Faintly, he heard the baby-faced kid mumble, “Quit it. I forgot to wash my hair last night.”
“It’s fine. I washed my hands,” said Scholar Chen in a low voice. “If you’re tired, sleep. I will wake you if anything happens.”
Ow. Another arrow through the heart.
Cheng Rui swallowed his own blood and shouldered the blame in silence.
Boss, mercy please. I truly do not know what I did to offend you!
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