Chapter 27 - I really like her… but not like a sister, not like a friend. I mean… like a lover

The first morning after returning to school from the National Day holiday, the last two periods were P.E. class. When selecting electives earlier, Lin Xian had been persuaded by Shi Man to choose table tennis. Though she had absolutely no foundation, Shi Man had confidently assured her that table tennis was the least time-consuming and least exhausting option. Lin Xian, in a moment of impulse, had fallen for it. Later, she regretted it, but by then, it was already too late.

This class, as the teacher had already announced beforehand, was when they would complete their first physical fitness test of university. The test was to be completed over two weeks, and this week’s tasks were standing long jump and the 800-meter run.

The standing long jump was relatively easy, and everyone passed with little trouble. After a brief rest, the dreaded 800-meter run came up next—a challenge many students were already dreading.

Shi Man was no exception. Her delicate face scrunched into a frown as she calculated that once she finished running this 800 meters, she’d probably lose half her life in the process. She turned her head to glance at Lin Xian, who was standing calmly to the side, and poked her, asking, “Are you a fast runner?”

Lin Xian blinked her large eyes and flashed a bright, toothy smile, answering with a bit of cheekiness, “Not too bad. But I think I’ll probably be faster than you.”

Shi Man narrowed her charming almond-shaped eyes and shot her a dagger-like glance—so smug! Still, she sensibly stretched her arms and legs and said, “Then I’ll just stick close behind you. If I can keep up with you, I should be able to pass.”

Lin Xian hesitated, then sincerely advised, “I might be pretty fast. If you try to follow me all the way, you might tire yourself out. It’s better to run at your own pace and stay with the main group. As long as you don’t fall too far behind, it should be fine.”

Shi Man gave Lin Xian’s slim frame a doubtful glance, her disbelief clearly written all over her face... Could she really be that good?

Lin Xian caught her look and smiled confidently. “You’ll see.”

Five minutes later, the 800-meter test began. Lin Xian, Shi Man, and about a dozen other classmates started together. As soon as the “Start” command was shouted, Lin Xian dashed out like an arrow leaving the bow.

After just one lap, Shi Man was already panting hard, nearly gasping for breath. She glanced over to see Lin Xian, now almost a full lap ahead of everyone, sprinting toward the finish line. Finally, she believed it—Lin Xian wasn’t bluffing.

Her legs... were they powered by a motor?

By the time Shi Man barely crossed the finish line within the passing time, half-dead and about to collapse, Lin Xian had already caught her breath and came over to support her—and even tease her a bit.

Instead of letting Shi Man sit down, Lin Xian pulled her up and made her keep walking around the track, dragging her tired legs along. As they walked, Lin Xian chuckled and mocked, “You’re really weak. You’ve got to exercise more regularly.”

Shi Man barely had the strength to walk but still managed to argue, breathless and defiant: “You... you just... run... a little faster... than most people... Zhi Jin... Zhi Jin runs fast too... you... you should compare with her first...”

Xia Zhijin had taken second place in the 800-meter race for the School of Finance at last year’s university sports meet. So Shi Man’s praise wasn’t exaggerated. Incidentally, the PE teacher had just invited Lin Xian to represent the freshman class at this year’s sports meet. It was hard to say who would be faster—her or Xia Zhijin. But Shi Man didn’t know about that yet.

Lin Xian didn’t argue, instead tilting her head to glance at Shi Man, who looked all proud at the mention of Xia Zhijin. Her smile deepened. Well, well... after the National Day break, have they made up?

Once they’d both recovered, it was time for table tennis practice. Lin Xian kept sending the ball flying everywhere—up into the air, bouncing off the floor—earning Shi Man’s mocking laughter. Shi Man praised Xia Zhijin’s skills nonstop, throwing her name into practically every sentence. Lin Xian couldn’t take it anymore and finally asked, “You and Senior Zhijin made up, huh?”

Shi Man casually served a ball and shot back with a question of her own: “When were we not?”

Lin Xian, distracted by the exchange, watched helplessly as the ball barely tapped the table and bounced up in a graceful arc right past her—her paddle missed it completely.

As she jogged off to pick up the ball, she grumbled to herself. Oh, so that person who had been dragging her to eat and walk home every day while not saying a single word to Xia Zhijin—wasn’t Shi Man? Was everything she saw a lie? Hmph. Stubborn mouth!

She served the ball again clumsily, her dark, glossy eyes rolling a little as she came up with a new angle. She asked casually, “What did you do over the holiday? Did you travel?”

Shi Man easily returned the ball and replied offhandedly, “Went back to my hometown with Zhijin to visit her grandma and little sister. Stayed there for four days.” As she spoke, her mood visibly improved. Her radiant face softened, and her eyes sparkled: “Zhijin rode a bike and took me across the fields, watching the wind ripple through the wheat. She even took me up the mountain to look over the sleeping village below. She’s really handy, too—she picked a stalk of foxtail grass by the roadside and wove it into a lifelike little grasshopper...”

Lin Xian missed the ball again and just gave up. She put her paddle down on the table, stopped trying, and listened seriously instead.

This sister-obsessed girl was at it again. But Lin Xian caught on to another point and asked curiously, “Wait, you guys have a hometown? I thought you were locals?”

Shi Man paused, gave Lin Xian a long look, then suddenly smiled faintly and said, “Let’s go sit over there and rest for a bit.” Without waiting, she walked toward a long bench in the corner that no one was using.

Lin Xian didn’t suspect anything. She picked up the ball and paddle and followed her over.

The two of them leaned back leisurely on the bench. Shi Man ran her hands over the paddle’s handle, rubbing it over and over. After a while, she finally turned to look at Lin Xian and said, “Lin Xian, we haven’t known each other for that long, but I trust you. I know you’re not the kind of person who goes around gossiping, so I’ll just tell you directly.”

Lin Xian turned to meet her gaze and instinctively responded with a soft “Mm?”

Shi Man looked away, her eyes falling on the red table tennis paddle in her hand, and began to speak calmly: “Zhijin isn’t really my sister. But for a while, I truly believed she was. I used to call her ‘sister’ all the time.”

She added, “Have you heard of that reality show, Transformation?”

Lin Xian nodded. Back when it aired, her parents had actually liked it quite a lot. They’d tease her while watching, saying things like, ‘You’re so disobedient, maybe we should send you to live with a poor rural family like on the show—then you’d learn to be grateful and appreciate what you have.’ Lin Xian would always scoff and ignore them.

Shi Man went on, “It was something like that. Before I turned twelve, I was really rebellious. I hated studying. Not long after I started middle school, I got expelled for organizing fights across schools with older students.”

Lin Xian had always been a model student. From a young age, her parents and teachers had warned her to steer clear of the type of classmates Shi Man was just describing—the ones adults always labeled as ‘bad kids.’ She was a little dumbfounded. Shi Man now didn’t show any of that past.

Shi Man smiled faintly, brushing off Lin Xian’s surprise. “I don’t have a dad. I don’t even know who he is.” Her voice was calm, as if she had long since come to terms with it. “My grandfather’s side of the family is pretty wealthy. My mom inherited his estate. She’s always busy with work, so I basically grew up with a nanny. I’d only see her maybe a few times a year during the holidays. When I was little, I was timid. The nanny took advantage of the fact that my mom wasn’t home and abused me, threatened me. I was too scared to say anything.”

She glanced up at the sky as if replaying the memories. “When I got older, around the upper grades of primary school, I had loads of pocket money, so I started hanging out with older kids—middle schoolers mostly. Made a bunch of party friends and got bolder. The nanny couldn’t control me anymore, so she told my mom I was going off the rails. And my mom—she actually believed her. Didn’t believe me. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. So I figured, fine, I’ll give her what she wants. I’ll be bad. All she ever gave me was money. She didn’t care about anything else, and she couldn’t control me anymore anyway.”

“After I got expelled, we finally got to see each other every day. She tried to manage me herself. Didn’t work. We just argued nonstop. I pissed her off so badly she nearly went crazy. That’s when she finally realized—I’d grown into someone she couldn’t control at all.”

For the first time, a shadow passed over Shi Man’s delicate features—a kind of gloom that Lin Xian had never seen on her before.

“So I guess she listened to someone’s advice… She tricked me into going to the poorest, most remote mountain village in the city, then dumped me with a family she’d paid to take me in. I lived there for two months.”

“Zhijin,” she looked up at Lin Xian, voice soft, “was the daughter of that family.”

Lin Xian’s eyes widened instinctively, blinking in disbelief.

Xia Zhijin had always carried herself with a calm, graceful elegance. Her outfits, her demeanor—and let’s not forget that BMW she used to pick Shi Man up from school—none of it screamed ‘poor mountain girl.’ At school, she was the student council’s office director. Most people in the council guessed she was some low-key rich heiress.

Shi Man’s gaze grew distant, like she was seeing those days play out in her memory again. “Her family was really poor, but they were kind. Honest. Decent people. When I first got there, they welcomed me with everything they had—even though I looked down on it all and couldn’t accept any of it. Zhijin’s dad passed away when she was seven. Her family had an old grandmother, and a little sister five years younger than her. Her mom supported the whole family by working out of town for years at a time.”

“I made a mess of things when I first arrived. Took all the resentment I had toward my mom and unloaded it onto them. But they never held it against me. They were patient. Kind. Every time. Once, after I’d called my mom and she refused to take me home, I stormed off trying to walk back by myself. I slipped on a mountain path and fell into a ditch. Zhijin jumped in after me without hesitation, pushed me up, then waited alone for someone to come get her. Isn’t she stupid? She wasn’t afraid I’d just leave her down there and never come back?”

“I saw her cry for the first time when I threw the bamboo baskets she and her grandma had stayed up weaving into the fire. She’d always been so calm, no matter how I acted. That night, she squatted by the stove, crying so hard she could barely breathe, but without a sound. That’s when I realized… she did care. Her little sister told me they were going to sell those baskets to buy medicine for their grandma. That was the first time I thought… maybe I’d really done something wrong.”

Shi Man let out a soft, self-deprecating laugh. “Back then, I never knew… just having money already counted as happiness.”

“That night, they started weaving again. I went to sleep, but I couldn’t settle. Eventually, I got up and kicked one of the baskets, muttering, ‘Hey, how do you make this thing, anyway?’ After that, I started slowly becoming part of their family. I even grew to love the simplicity and warmth of their life. Zhijin once told me, ‘I really envy you. Your life is your own. Don’t throw it away just because you’re angry.’ I remembered those words.”

Lin Xian silently repeated them to herself, imagining how Zhijin must have felt when she said them. Suddenly, she felt something bittersweet stir inside her. Shi Man’s life is her own. Zhijin envies that… so then, does that mean Zhijin’s life isn’t hers? What kind of fate had she accepted for herself?

“I went back home eventually, but I stayed in touch with her. Before I left, we made a promise—to work hard, and reunite in high school. As long as I studied hard and behaved, I got my mom to agree to sponsor Zhijin and her sister’s school and living expenses.”

“But then, two years later, when we were in senior year, her mother died of kidney failure. I told her then—my home is your home now. My mom is your mom. After she got into college, I told my mom I was lonely in this big empty house, and convinced her to let Zhijin move in. She’s lived with us ever since.”

“I always introduced her as my ‘older sister,’ because I didn’t want her labeled as some charity case. Even if people asked about her background and she never hid the truth, I didn’t want that to be the first thing people saw. I didn’t want them looking at her with pity before praising her for being some kind of ‘phoenix rising from the ashes.’ She’s proud. She doesn’t need anyone’s pity. I want people to see only how amazing, how strong, how admirable she is—and that’s enough.”

Lin Xian could no longer describe what she was feeling. It was more than shock.

As Shi Man spoke, her expression was calm but firm. And every time she mentioned Zhijin’s name, her eyes sparkled—truly sparkled—with light and warmth. For the first time, Lin Xian realized that Shi Man wasn’t just some spoiled, dramatic girl. She had this steady, loyal side too.

After a long pause, Lin Xian murmured, “Manman… you really like her, don’t you?” She figured, to care about someone this much, to think through every detail for them like that… it had to be love, the deepest kind of friendship.

Shi Man’s bright eyes softened, her smile deepening as she let out a quiet sigh. “Yeah… I really like her.”

Suddenly, she leaned in close, her lips near Lin Xian’s ear, and whispered with a sly smile, “Wanna hear a secret no one else knows?”

Her voice was light, teasing, a little sultry. “I really like her… but not like a sister, not like a friend. I mean… like a lover.”

Lin Xian nodded absentmindedly, like her brain had short-circuited. Oh. Got it. Makes sense—

Wait. No.

Wait a damn minute!

Lin Xian’s brain froze completely.

Shi Man just said—just now—what?!

“Like a lover.”

Aaaaahhhhh!!!