Chapter 6

Kong Jian remained seated, pointing at the bowl beside Ning Yan’s hand—the one with only a single wonton touched—as she made one last attempt to resist. “You haven’t eaten your breakfast yet.”

Ning Yan shot her a faintly mocking look. “Senior Sister won’t eat her own breakfast, but now she’s suddenly concerned about mine?”

Kong Jian’s brows furrowed. That gaze made her lips press together, a hint of unconscious grievance flickering across her face. “Eat it if you want. If your stomach ends up wrecked because of me, that’s on you!”

The young woman set aside her irritating expression and broke into a smile warm enough to melt hearts. “If Senior Sister tells me to eat, of course I will. How could I act like you—knowing full well it’s for my own good, yet stubbornly refusing to listen? It’s like being a bad-tempered child, leaving people at a loss for how to even like you.”

Kong Jian’s face flushed alternately pale and red. She wanted to argue back but couldn’t find a single point of rebuttal.

What Ning Yan said was spot on. Xi Yunyun had advised her more than once about skipping breakfast. Kong Jian knew it was bad for her health, yet she’d stubbornly stuck to her guns, relying on the fact that Xi Yunyun could never force her.

But Xi Yunyun had never called her out so bluntly. At most, she’d let out a helpless sigh, followed by a half-joking complaint—

“Jian, please, just find yourself a girlfriend already. Let her coax you into eating breakfast, okay?”

No one besides Xi Yunyun had ever paid attention to her breakfast-skipping habit.

Now, having her willful streak laid bare so mercilessly by someone she’d only met a day ago, Kong Jian’s emotions churned into a complicated mess.

Ning Yan took a sip of the soup. Seeing the rims of her companion’s eyes redden faintly—a sign she’d struck a nerve—she finally spoke. “Senior Sister is perfect in every way. I adore every single thing about her. But this one bad habit… no matter how much I like her, I can’t stay rational and keep indulging it.”

Kong Jian wasn’t listening anymore. She just saw those lips moving, as if more cutting words were on the way.

Noticing Kong Jian’s distraction, Ning Yan paused mid-scoop of her wonton. Instead, she reached over and pressed a finger to her cheek.

A glistening droplet clung to the pad of her fingertip.

Ning Yan sighed, her eyes brimming with heartache and helplessness. “Senior Sister, that’s just not fair.”

Still lost in a daze, Kong Jian heard a gentle murmur by her ear. “Senior Sister, scoot in a little.”

Dazedly, she shifted inward by an inch. Two seconds later, a cool finger pressed against her chin. Ning Yan applied gentle pressure, tilting her head up toward where she now sat.

Without any tools, using only her fingers, she carefully wiped away the faint trail of tears that had slipped from the corner of Kong Jian’s eye.

“Senior Sister, do you hate breakfast… or do you hate me?”

The moment those fingers touched her cheek, Kong Jian snapped back to reality. The scene was mortifying. She hadn’t realized her tear ducts were so fragile.

She hadn’t cried in over a decade, yet here she was, breaking down in front of someone who was little more than a stranger.

“Senior Sister, I need to be a little forward now.”

Before Kong Jian could grasp what that meant, Ning Yan pulled her into a firm embrace.

“If you pull this again, I’ll have to punish you a little, Senior Sister. Crying right in front of me like this—are you trying to make me give up on convincing you to eat breakfast?”

“You don’t know me well yet, Senior Sister. Once I set my sights on something, I always get it. That includes making you drop this nasty habit of skipping breakfast.”

Ning Yan released her.

She reached out and gave a light rub to the top of Kong Jian’s head—eyes still squeezed shut, refusing to open.

“If there’s a kind of breakfast Senior Sister doesn’t like, I can take you to find one you do. If you don’t like eating it yourself, I can feed it to you bite by bite, just like today. When it comes to getting something done, there are always more solutions than problems. You get that, right, Senior Sister?”

“There’s one more thing you should know. In front of you, Senior Sister, I always have plenty of time—and endless patience. So, starting tomorrow, let’s work on this together. Help me kick this habit of yours that I don’t like, okay?”

Ning Yan fell silent.

Kong Jian played dead for a full two minutes. Feeling that gaze still fixed on her face, she finally gave up and snapped her eyes open, making a show of standing. “I’m off to the library to study!”

Her legs hadn’t fully straightened when her wrist was tugged downward. Her backside hit the leather bench again with a thud.

Ning Yan stopped teasing and called her bluff outright. “No need to pretend, Senior Sister. I know studying isn’t your top priority right now. Just sit nicely and wait for me to finish breakfast. Then you can come with me to buy a few skirts.”

“Why are you buying a skirt?”

The girl chuckled meaningfully. “It’s what they say on TV. When you’re going to see someone you like, you should wear a skirt. But right now, I only have two skirts in my closet, which is nowhere near enough for me.”

Kong Jian recalled Ning Yan’s outfit from yesterday—a simple T-shirt paired with a pleated skirt.

It seemed like she and Chen Yan had met up before even entering the school gates.

“You and Chen Yan are meeting again today?”

“Why would I meet him?”

Seeing the displeased look on her face, as if she’d been caught out, Kong Jian wisely held her tongue.

Of course. Who would want their friend to know they were sneaking around with her boyfriend?

~~~

Kong Jian had a nightmare.

It was a blurry scene buried deep in the recesses of her memory.

A woman gently coaxed the little girl in front of her, who was staring unblinkingly at the cartoon playing on the TV. “Be a good girl, Jianjian. Just finish this one bite of porridge, okay?”

The toddler obediently swallowed a mouthful. Hearing the woman coax her again, she listened. “Jianjian’s such a good girl. How about one more bite? Once you finish this one, Mommy will watch the little fairies with you, all right?”

One bite, two bites, three…

By the time the bowl of lean pork congee was empty, the expected memory of mother and daughter watching TV together never came. Instead, it shifted to another scene.

The same furnishings, the same pair of figures—one big, one small.

But the colors in this picture were the stark opposite of the earlier warm tones, twisted and gray like an old black-and-white film.

“Eat it or not? Eat it or not! If you don’t eat now, you won’t eat for the rest of your life. Feeding you breakfast and you’re dawdling like this—wait till I finish this cigarette. If you haven’t swallowed that porridge by then, you’ll never eat again, you hear me?”

In the haze of cigarette smoke, the scrawny little girl trembled as she brought the bowl of plain congee to her lips, her eyes red-rimmed.

She gulped it down twice before bursting into a wail.

The careless shopkeeper hadn’t filtered out the grit when rinsing the rice. Tiny stones mixed in the congee had sharp edges that tore at her fragile mouth. She spat it out, and a few threads of blood followed, splattering to the floor.

The man’s face turned terrifying in an instant. With a sharp slap across the child’s tear-streaked cheek, his eyes blazed with chilling menace. “When that bitch of a mother of yours died, why didn’t she take you, you little burden, with her? Cry one more time, and I’ll make sure you never cry again.”

The scene vanished abruptly.

Kong Jian rubbed her temples and got out of bed, heading to the balcony. She gazed at the first rays of dawn creeping over the horizon and curved her lips into a faint smile.

It had been a long time since she’d gone back to visit her grandmother. She should make the trip this weekend.

~~~

“You’re going to have breakfast with that underclassman again? I’ve never seen you dote on me like this. I really want to know what kind of little vixen managed to steal the heart of our Kong Jian, who’s never been one for pretty faces.”

Xi Yunyun crawled out of bed and huffed at her sourly.

Kong Jian invited her generously. “Want to come along? I can wait ten minutes for you.”

Unlike Kong Jian, Xi Yunyun always did her makeup before heading out.

In her words, what if she ran into some hot guy on the road? She couldn’t let him see her looking like a hot mess.

Love was a mystical thing, and sometimes those little human touches made all the difference.

Kong Jian had naturally flawless skin. Up close, it was almost unreal—not a single pore in sight.

She rarely even bought skincare products, let alone makeup. The one and only time she’d ever put anything on her face growing up was on graduation photo day, when Xi Yunyun had forced her to sit still and endure the full movie-star treatment.

Xi Yunyun lifted her chin arrogantly. “No need. My man’s bringing me breakfast later. Hmph. I’m off to wash my face. We’ve got classes in periods three and four—don’t get so carried away that you forget. Whoever gets to the classroom first can grab the seats.”

Kong Jian’s outfit today was much like yesterday’s: a short-sleeved top with cropped jeans.

On a beauty like her, even a burlap sack would probably look like high fashion with a grunge twist.

Ning Yan clearly wasn’t thrilled with it. Her delicate brows furrowed, and the aggrieved expression on her petite face was so thick it was impossible to ignore.

“Senior Sis, you must wear skirts when you go out on dates with Brother Chen Yan, right? I really want to see what you’d look like in a skirt.”

Kong Jian replied, “I never wear skirts.”

The girl’s tense expression instantly relaxed. “Then when will you wear one, Senior Sis? I’m really looking forward to it.”

Kong Jian glanced at the suspender skirt she’d bought just yesterday. Was that for meeting Chen Yan too?

“You plan to keep wearing skirts even when the weather cools down?”

Ning Yan nodded without a care. “I told you, didn’t I? You should wear a skirt when you go see someone you like. What’s wrong? Doesn’t it look good?”

Kong Jian shook her head, offering the most impartial assessment. “No, it looks great.”

She’d heard that A City’s winters could drop to below freezing at their coldest, and imagining the little girl prioritizing style over warmth with her nose frozen bright red, Kong Jian sighed. Love was truly tormenting.

“From the sound of it, you plan to wear skirts every single day of the year?”

Ning Yan tightened her grip on Kong Jian’s hand. “No need. Once we’re dating, I won’t have to dress so formally anymore.”

Kong Jian blinked to express her confusion.

The girl, who must have watched countless idol dramas, had plenty of tricks up her sleeve. “Once we’re dating, there’ll be even better things we can do when we meet up.”

As she spoke, her beautiful eyes fixed intently on Kong Jian’s unpainted yet vividly alluring lips.

The prey, eyed hungrily by the wolf, remained utterly oblivious as she pondered a far more serious issue.

Should they find a time for the three of them to meet and openly lay out their relationships?