Chapter 29

[It’s only a kiss, no more than that. Please let us off the hook.]

“Finish your homework first?” Yan Can lifted her chin off Su Ci’s shoulder. The weight on her disappeared all at once, and Su Ci felt oddly unaccustomed to it. “How long will that take?”

“This paper,” Su Ci said. “Just until I finish this paper.”

Su Ci had a clear plan for everything she did each day. After finishing the assignments her teachers gave her, she would add extra study tasks based on her energy and condition that day.

Today, she had set herself the goal of finishing one full mock exam paper with an error rate of no more than 5 percent, memorizing one page of the Oxford Dictionary, and then memorizing the next extracurricular Classical Chinese passage.

But she probably wouldn’t finish the vocabulary and textbook material.

Because she couldn’t focus.

Yan Can leaned in a little closer and looked at the hand Su Ci was using to hold her pen.

It was a very beautiful hand. The bones were elegantly proportioned, the nails neatly trimmed and smooth.

Her gaze moved down and landed on the math problem beneath Su Ci’s pen tip.

It was a multiple-choice question, and not a difficult one. But for some reason, Su Ci had stayed on it for quite a while.

Yan Can knew Su Ci’s abilities well. They were both in the math competition training class; no matter how tricky the special instructor’s questions were, Su Ci could solve them.

She could even come up with several different methods.

For a question of this level, logically, Su Ci should have been able to pick the correct answer the moment she read the stem.

“C,” Yan Can said after wondering why she’d been taking so long. She blew lightly against Su Ci’s ear, laughter coloring her voice. “Su Ci, you’re cheating. For such an easy question, you’re deliberately thinking about it for so long.”

“You’re stalling on purpose.”

Su Ci pinched her burning earlobe and, without even looking at her, kept her eyes on the paper in front of her. Her voice was steady. “I’m not.”

Her expression was calm; she really didn’t look like she was lying.

But if she wasn’t lying, why had she spent so long on one question? Could she have gotten distracted?

Impossible. Su Ci was such a top student; she could recite vocabulary while walking. How could she possibly get distracted?

How interesting. Su Ci had moments like this too.

“Good, if you’re not.”

Yan Can didn’t feel like doing homework anymore either. She sat beside her like a supervisor, staring intently.

At Su Ci’s hand as it moved the pen. At the tip of the pen gliding across the scratch paper.

Su Ci’s expression didn’t change, but her heart was pounding wildly, telling her that the calm, indifferent look on her face was fake.

The supervisor, warmed into laziness by the sun, grew sleepy. Her eyelids drooped; after a yawn, she lay down on the desk and fell asleep not long after.

…

When Yan Can woke up and looked over, Su Ci was still doing her homework. She yawned, subconsciously wiped the corner of her mouth, and glanced at the clock; only fifteen minutes had passed.

The tears from sleep made her vision blurry. She rubbed the moisture from the corners of her eyes and called Su Ci’s name.

Su Ci turned her head and gave a soft “Mm,” meaning what is it.

That single “Mm” was spoken with such a gentle, drawn-out lilt that it sounded like a little hook, tugging at her heart until it trembled.

Yan Can steadied herself, made out that it was still the same test paper, and couldn’t help complaining, “You still haven’t finished?”

At this person’s level, half an hour should have been more than enough.

How could she still not be done?

The pen was set down very lightly on the scratch paper, making a faint rustle. Su Ci tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and said, “I’m done. Want to kiss me now?”

Yan Can had obviously been the one tossing around words like kiss and peck and all those suggestive terms as casually as drinking water; she’d long since grown numb to them.

But hearing Su Ci say it like that, her heartbeat inexplicably jumped.

Seeing her stare blankly, Su Ci asked, “Not kissing anymore?”

!!!

Yan Can snapped awake at once. “Kiss!”

She swallowed, still not having figured out how to kiss or what position to use, when she saw Su Ci stand up calmly and draw the curtains on both sides with a whoosh. The room was instantly plunged into darkness.

Actually, whether the curtains were drawn or not didn’t matter; no one could possibly peek in at this window anyway.

Still, if Su Ci wanted to draw them, then draw them.

Yan Can blinked twice. After a moment to adjust to the darkness, she could make out Su Ci’s face across from her.

Not very clearly; only a blurry outline. But that was enough.

“Then… I’m coming over?” She reached out nervously to take Su Ci’s hand, only to have her little finger hooked and be led toward the bedside.

Yan Can was still a little dazed, but she followed along as Su Ci pulled her. Su Ci sat at the foot of the bed, eyes closed, in a posture that was clearly waiting to be kissed.

Once her eyes adjusted to the dimness, Yan Can could clearly see her trembling lashes and her full lips.

One of Su Ci’s hands turned over, palm against palm with hers; their fingers slid together.

The moment those soft lips pressed down, they also tightened; their fingers locked.

Sweet, still as sweet as ever…

Wet, intimate sounds filled the room. The air seemed to thin all at once; the room, which had stayed comfortably warm all year round, began to heat up.

It was impossible to tell whose breathing started first.

The instant she tasted the other girl’s lips, Yan Can threw everything else to the back of her mind.

What just one kiss? From the moment their lips touched, they never separated.

Their lips and teeth ground over each other’s mouths again and again; a soft tongue surged into the other’s mouth like a conquering army.

It couldn’t be called gentle; if anything, the movements were a little rough.

Su Ci was having trouble breathing. “Yan… Can… stop… stop…”

Her voice was hoarse, but especially pleasant.

If it had been any other time, Yan Can would have pulled back at once.

But today, for some reason, the moment their lips touched, her mind seemed to go blank.

She was like a fish dying of thirst; once she caught a drop of water, she couldn’t stop.

More…

No one knew how long they kissed. Yan Can felt her lips and tongue go numb, her strength draining away, and only then did she let the person beneath her go, gasping for breath in great gulps.

When Yan Can’s breathing had finally steadied a little and her reason started to return, she looked at Su Ci.

The other girl’s hair was spread messily across the bed; her eyes were wet, and her chest rose and fell quickly with her breathing.

She’d been bullied miserably by her.

Yan Can immediately lowered her head.

Her heart was pounding. It took a long time before she dared look at Su Ci again.

Even until Su Ci went home that night, Yan Can still didn’t quite dare meet her eyes.

.

The next day, Su Ci went to the principal’s office; the person who received her was the principal’s assistant.

A middle-aged woman in a professional suit and glasses, she looked capable and sharp.

After roughly understanding Su Ci’s situation, the woman accepted the materials and told her she would hand them to the principal. As for the later result, she should follow the school’s official Weibo account.

After Su Ci left the office, the woman took out her phone and called the number on the other end. Not long after, the call connected, and she said respectfully, “Miss, we’ve received the materials submitted by student Su Ci.”

Yan Can was standing in the corridor, enjoying the breeze. Looking at the students frolicking on the playground, she said lazily, “Do whatever needs to be done.”

Hearing that, the woman immediately understood.

At noon, Yan Can ran into Su Ci in the cafeteria; she and her deskmate were eating together. When Su Ci looked up, their eyes met. Her gaze slid over Yan Can in a second, showing no trace of lingering feeling at all.

Yan Can knew she’d gone too far yesterday. She’d promised just one kiss, but in the end she pinned Su Ci to the bed and kissed her for three hours.

She’d kissed her lips swollen and her throat hoarse.

She had already apologized last night, and she’d sent another message apologizing this morning, but Su Ci hadn’t replied to a single one.

Great. Su Ci was angry again.

How was she supposed to coax her this time…

Cao Shuai being publicly criticized by the school happened the day after Su Ci handed over the evidence.

The school moved extremely fast. After issuing the notice and naming him for criticism, they immediately organized an anti-campus-bullying publicity event and even invited staff from the local police station to give a legal-awareness talk.

It was quite a show of force.

Each class quickly responded, synchronously holding themed class meetings on campus safety and students’ psychological well-being.

Su Ci hadn’t expected the principal to take this matter so seriously; she faintly sensed something was off.

Wasn’t this too fast?

Even with the evidence in hand after an investigation, it shouldn’t have been this fast.

Suspecting a hidden hand behind it, Su Ci went to ask Yan Can the very next day.

“No, I didn’t.” Yan Can put down her chopsticks, took a sip of yogurt, and looked at her. “Didn’t you say you’d handle it yourself?”

She’d only helped push things along a little and supervised the process a bit.

Su Ci looked at her for quite a while. Yan Can smiled and insisted stubbornly to the end, “Really, I didn’t.”

Su Ci said nothing, but from those two exchanges she became even more certain that Yan Can had absolutely been involved.

Otherwise the school wouldn’t have acted so quickly.

Since Su Ci had rarely taken the initiative to look for her, Yan Can asked tentatively, “Are you still mad at me?”

Su Ci raised her eyes, a little puzzled.

Yan Can, on the other hand, suddenly felt awkward in front of her at school. “It’s just that I kissed—”

“Shut up.” Su Ci shot her an annoyed look.

Yan Can immediately covered her mouth and blinked twice at her. “You’re not mad anymore?”

Su Ci said, “Don’t talk while you’re eating.”

Yan Can laughed. Looking at her like this, Su Ci really had forgiven her.

After all, if Su Ci were truly angry and ignoring her, she wouldn’t have said so much to her at all.

.

The math competition results came out on Monday. Su Ci won the gold medal and a generous bonus; the prize money was enough to cover her tuition and living expenses from high school through university, with money left over.

But Yan Can noticed that Su Ci was still working part-time at that restaurant.

Could it be that top students just liked earning their way through school?

But since Su Ci didn’t say anything, Yan Can didn’t ask either.

Before long, the weekend arrived, and Yan Can invited Su Ci to her home to do homework together.

She said it was to do homework, but there was a little selfishness behind it.

Once there was a first time, there would be a second. Yan Can realized she was falling.

She was addicted to Su Ci.

She thought about kissing her every day.

Last time, she’d kissed Su Ci so hard that she’d thought Su Ci would never let her kiss her again; because of that, she’d apologized to Su Ci over and over.

But what Yan Can hadn’t expected was that one day Su Ci told her she hadn’t been angry because Yan Can kissed her.

Her exact words were: “It’s just kissing. Why would I be angry?”

Yan Can………

She was completely baffled and immediately asked the question that had been bothering her. “Then why didn’t you reply when I sent you that long apology message?”

Su Ci frowned. “I did reply.”

Yan Can immediately pulled out her phone and checked their chat history, then flipped the screen around and showed her. “No, you didn’t! Where is it?”

Su Ci also looked a little confused. She took out her own phone, and the two of them leaned together to look.

Su Ci had indeed sent it; it was just that it hadn’t gone through, with an exclamation mark after the word “no.”