Chapter 184 182. Transition 【6/17】
Time flew by, and in the blink of an eye it was Friday.
An Han sold her old phone secondhand for five hundred yuan, switched to the brand-new iPhone she had won from the lottery, and eased some of her financial pressure in the process.
Although she wasn’t quite used to the new phone’s system, she rarely played mobile games anyway, so changing platforms caused no real loss.
Yet getting the phone didn’t bring her much joy.
With no one she truly cared about to show it off to, she always felt an emptiness deep in her heart.
Evening classes ended.
Stepping into December, the temperature this year was noticeably colder than the same period in previous years. Two waves of cold air from the north arrived back to back, so even though An Han had already put on a padded jacket, her hands, ears, and nose exposed to the air were faintly red. Her feet, even in thick socks, never seemed to warm up.
The overly dry autumn and winter climate left faint, barely noticeable white flakes on her cheeks.
She breathed out a puff of warm air, shoved both hands into her pockets, lowered her head, and slightly curled her body as she reached the eaves of the teaching building. She lifted her head and looked at the drizzling rain in the night.
It had been fine indoors just now, but once outside, the rain made the cold feel even worse.
Her feet were freezing, yet no matter how she kept stomping them, it did nothing to help.
“I forgot to bring an umbrella…” she muttered, turning to look at Long Xing. “Do you have one? Can I borrow it?”
“The rain’s not even that heavy,” Chen Junjie cut in. “What kind of man is scared of a little rain!”
As he spoke, he took the lead and walked into the rain. Wearing only a thin autumn jacket, he shuddered the moment he stepped outside, then immediately broke into a run.
Long Xing watched his retreating figure helplessly and suggested to An Han, “Why don’t you wait here? I’ll go back to the dorm and get one for you.”
“That works…”
An Han pressed her legs tightly together, curling her body as if that might generate more warmth.
She had always been sensitive to both cold and heat, and after becoming a girl, she seemed even more afraid of the cold.
She kind of missed the thermal underwear she had back home…
Watching Long Xing and Wang Sheng jog away, she let out a heavy sigh. She rubbed the dead skin on her cheek with her fingertip and muttered to herself, “I should probably buy some moisturizing skincare products, right?”
“But I don’t know anything about this… what brands are good?”
She frowned, took out her new phone, and awkwardly tried to operate it with one hand. In the end, the difficulty of handling such a large phone with her small hand defeated her resistance to the cold, and she reluctantly pulled her other hand out of her pocket.
She found a skincare review post online and leaned back against the wall, standing with her calves crossed and tilted as she read.
“It’s not urgent. It’s raining, so it won’t be that dry these next few days.”
“Su Peng doesn’t even come to see me anymore…”
“Even when he occasionally comes to talk, he just chats for a couple of sentences and leaves.”
After reading just a couple of lines, her thoughts drifted elsewhere.
“That’s a good thing~ but his favorability hasn’t dropped at all. He’s probably plotting something again.”
She muttered under her breath, but her expression grew increasingly gloomy. She clearly wasn’t on her period, yet her mood refused to improve, as if she were suffering from withdrawal.
“If we don’t interact for a long time, his favorability will definitely drop. The system can’t force me to like him.”
“My current mindset is just the system’s influence!”
Outside, the rain grew heavier, turning from a light drizzle into a steady downpour. The Long Xing who had promised to get her an umbrella still hadn’t returned after five or six minutes.
She knew a round trip would probably take fifteen or twenty minutes, but her heart had already impatiently flown to her warm rental room.
Most of the students had left the teaching building, leaving An Han alone, staring longingly into the distance.
If only she had just run back when the rain was still light.
Even if it got heavier after leaving campus, it would’ve been better than standing here doing nothing.
“According to my very limited experience reading romance novels, this is the moment when Su Peng should pop out of nowhere and scare me.”
An Han suddenly turned her head, only to see Ren Chi walking out from deep inside the teaching building, holding an umbrella.
So it wasn’t Su Peng’s footsteps after all.
“What? You don’t look happy even when you see your counselor?” Ren Chi smiled as he walked up to her. “Didn’t bring an umbrella? If you’d run back earlier, you might’ve made it.”
“I don’t want to get soaked… I’m afraid of the cold.”
“Then remember to buy some thermal underwear. In this kind of weather, wearing more layers never hurts.” He casually showed concern for his student. “It should warm up again next week. It’ll be better then.”
“Mm.”
Ren Chi smiled and opened his umbrella. “Where are you living now? I can walk you part of the way.”
“No need. Long-ge said he’d get me an umbrella.”
“Since you live off campus, be more careful. If you run into any weird creeps, call the police right away. You can also call me.”
Fulfilling his duties as a counselor, he gave a few reminders. Then, seeing how red her nose and ears were from the cold, he sighed helplessly. “Come on, just send Long Xing a message and go.”
“Alright…”
An Han could clearly feel that there was nothing strange or lustful in the way Ren Chi looked at her. Only then did she step under her counselor’s umbrella, walking expressionlessly while staring at her own toes.
Ren Chi was talkative. After only a few steps, he asked, “I heard you won an iPhone on Monday?”
“Yeah.”
“Pretty lucky. After everyone found out about your luck, that blind-box machine in the cafeteria has been sold out every day.” He pointed at himself self-deprecatingly. “I bought one too—won a phone screen protector.”
“Mm…”
Showing off her luck should’ve been something happy, but An Han couldn’t feel happy at all.
Maybe because she knew it was a system reward, or maybe because she hadn’t shown it off to the right person.
Ren Chi noticed her emotional state and cautiously asked, “Is it true what the class is saying, that you’re dating Su Peng?”
“Of course not!” An Han immediately became agitated and denied it without hesitation. “We’re both guys, okay! How could I date him! He—oh, right, you know I’m a girl…”
Ren Chi shrugged.
“I don’t plan on dating anyone anyway… it’s just rumors.”
She lowered her head and wound a strand of hair at her temple around her finger, looping it over and over.
Her hair was too short; after two loops, it tugged at her scalp, sending a sharp pain through her.
“Why didn’t Su Peng come to class this afternoon?”
“He said he’d been sick for a few days and it kept getting worse, so he went to the hospital this afternoon,” Ren Chi answered, his gaze drifting to her awkward in-between hairstyle.
“Planning to grow your hair out?” he asked with the concern of an elder. “You should take better care of it or get it trimmed. This hairstyle is a bit… non-mainstream.”
After not getting a haircut for several months, An Han’s hair had long since covered her eyes. The sides were past her ears, and the hair at the back stuck out like a little broom.
“I’m too lazy to style it, and I don’t want to cut it.”
She casually brushed aside her bangs, lifted her head, and looked into the distance. “I’m almost there.”
“Alright, then you go on ahead.”
An Han jogged through the rain and reached the eaves along the street in the urban village. From here on, she could make it all the way back to her rental without getting wet.
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