Chapter 125
Spring passed and autumn came.
Some things had changed, but more had remained the same. For instance, it was now the eve of the Christmas Ball in their sophomore year, and the Student Council Presidium, which hadn't expanded its members in the past year, still consisted of the same six people, all with headaches.
“...So, what should we do?” An Chen, already a senior but still worrying about the Presidium, stood before the whiteboard, looking at the people below with a considerable headache. “Before we chose the theme, I thought that considering all aspects, Ximian should be the one to open the ball this year, but...”
“I really can't.” Gu Ximian sighed softly, her refusal very sincere. “This year's ball theme doesn't suit me. I really don't know what to dress up as...”
“Then you're truly a fortunate person.”
Lou Che muttered with a shrug, adding his support, “...But actually, even before we chose the theme, I didn't think we had to pick Gu Ximian. There's no need, right? Giving such a role, one that's guaranteed to be popular and sought after, to someone who's already spoken for... wouldn't that just cause trouble for Zhuang Chi—”
“...I don't really think so... and don't talk nonsense, it's not like we're family yet...”
Looking at Zhuang Chi, who had been inexplicably haggard and listless ever since the theme was chosen, Lou Che stared at her for a long while, not understanding the situation. He turned to ask Gu Ximian, “What's wrong with her? Is she throwing a tantrum because the event you held a while ago was just an engagement banquet and not a wedding banquet?”
“...Of course not.”
Replying before Gu Ximian could speak, Zhuang Chi silently sat up a little straighter. In order to prevent the genius from continuing to have strange misunderstandings, she forced herself to cheer up and brought the topic back on track. “So who should open the ball this time? Excluding me, Gu Ximian, and An Chen who's already done it, the remaining people are—”
“Olivia probably can't do it either, for the same reason as Gu Ximian, I guess.” An Chen said, looking at Olivia and receiving a bashful nod in response. His gaze shifted back and forth between Lou Che and Ling Jing, and he mused, “...To be honest, you two are actually quite suitable. It's hard for me to decide between you.”
“Huh??” Before anyone else could say anything, Ling Jing was the first to object, slapping the table in protest. “You're talking nonsense! With a theme like this, I don't know what to dress up as either! I never had a phase like that!”
The Christmas Ball. Ling Jing walked onto the stage, her long black hair messily draped down to her waist, exuding a cold, hard aura that warned others to stay away. Her narrow eyes held three parts indifference, three parts ridicule, and four parts carelessness. She wore a single leather glove on one hand, upon which perched a chubby, grayish-white hawk.
She wore her St. Blaisedon uniform like a delinquent, the jacket casually draped over her shoulders, the top two buttons of her shirt loosely undone. With a cold expression, she walked across the auditorium stage and stopped under the spotlight. As if noticing something, she suddenly crouched down, abruptly picked up a small stuffed cat from a cardboard box on the stage, and then revealed a lonely smile. “I see. Are you alone too?”
“...We really should have figured out a way to simulate rain on stage,” Lou Che muttered in a low voice from the audience. “And doesn't that stuffed toy look a bit out of place? It's hard to tell that Ling Jing is playing a delinquent who found an abandoned cat on the roadside. She looks more like an idiot.”
“There's nothing we can do. This is an auditorium, not a theater. It's not equipped with a rain function, and I can't just conjure up rain,” An Chen also replied in a hushed voice. “As for the stuffed toy... we can't put a real cat in the box, can we? What if the cat runs away—that would be the least of our worries. What if her hawk suddenly gets the whim to fight the cat? That would be a disaster. No one wants to see a bloody incident at a rare Christmas Ball.”
“But her hawk is quite well-behaved. It doesn't look like it's struggling or trying to fly away at all,” Olivia said, staring at Xiao Ying with great curiosity. She then blinked, troubled. “...Speaking of which, is Ling Jing's arm shaking? Is it because she finds acting this part too embarrassing?”
“No, that's probably because of Xiao Ying's weight.”
“Besides, Olivia, you arrived later so you might not know, but Ling Jing herself was pretty much like this back in the day. The fact that she feels embarrassed is a good thing. It shows she's grown a lot.”
“Eh, eh? Is that so...?”
Listening to her friends' chatter, Zhuang Chi silently watched Ling Jing's performance on stage from the side and sighed sincerely. “...Setting all that aside... Ling Jing is really perfect for it. This—‘Black History’ ball theme.”
That's right. This year's ball theme, after going through the same library book-finding ritual as last year, was determined when they inexplicably picked up a book that talked at length about the unbearable things one does in their ignorant youth. As a result, the theme was set as “Black History.”
When Zhuang Chi heard this theme, she felt terrible, sensing that the world's consciousness or The Notebook was targeting her. But at least she wasn't the one opening the ball. The one doing the opening, Ling Jing, was portraying herself from before she met them. To be honest, Ling Jing really did look a bit like how she was when Zhuang Chi first saw her at the school gate. It was just that Xiao Ying had gotten a size fatter since then, looking like a fluffy ball of fur. On top of that, it had eaten a big meal before going on stage and was now drowsy, possessing not a shred of intimidating presence.
“I've actually been meaning to ask you for a while,” Gu Ximian, who had been quiet for a long time, suddenly turned to Zhuang Chi and asked softly, “That hawk of hers... did you originally set it up to be so gluttonous?”
“...” Zhuang Chi was silent for a moment, then said dryly, “...No. I never set up anything like that.”
She had never set up such a strange detail. It was simply that Ling Jing happened to have raised such a gluttonous bird.
Gu Ximian understood, let out a soft laugh, and asked again, “What about Ling Jing? Was she always like she is on stage now when you were writing her?”
“...More or less...”
There was no refuting this. Zhuang Chi replied in a small, unconfident voice, thinking about how she had originally positioned Ling Jing as a school bully type of delinquent Alpha, with a bad temper and always getting into fights—basically no different from a high schooler who hadn't outgrown their chuunibyou phase. Looking at her now felt almost surreal. As Zhuang Chi was thinking, she heard Gu Ximian chuckle softly. “Then she really has grown a lot, hasn't she? She's not like that anymore, is she.”
Zhuang Chi watched Ling Jing flee the stage in a flustered and hurried manner after her performance ended, and couldn't help but laugh. “...Yeah.”
It was hard to say whether it was her influence from coming to this world or Ling Jing's own doing, but after spending so much time together, Ling Jing had indeed changed a great deal from her original setting. Or rather, it wasn't just Ling Jing. An Chen, Lou Che, Olivia—they had all more or less become different from how they were at the beginning, as if it were proof that this world was indeed operating as it should. Everyone was constantly growing, becoming better people.
The opening ended, and the ball began amidst cheerful laughter. After consoling the mortified Ling Jing, Zhuang Chi walked to a corner of the auditorium and stood beside Gu Ximian, sighing with lingering fear, “Thank goodness I wasn't the one opening this year, otherwise it would have been...”
Gu Ximian held back her laughter, tilting her head to look at her as if she didn't know. “What's wrong? You could have just walked on stage normally. After all, for you...”
—Just being in this world is black history everywhere, right? Gu Ximian didn't finish her sentence, but Zhuang Chi could already see the latter half in her teasing eyes. She felt a little embarrassed and changed the subject with a sigh. “...What about you? Do you really not have any black history at all?”
“None like yours and Ling Jing's.” The reply was brisk, but it still stabbed Zhuang Chi in the heart. Gu Ximian looked at Zhuang Chi's complicated expression, finally couldn't hold back her laughter, and said frankly, “But if we're really talking about it, I guess I was somewhat similar before I met you at fifteen. Back then, I was always thinking about when the world would be destroyed.”
...What a grand scale. And unlike those pretentious and affected chuunibyou thoughts, Gu Ximian's thoughts back then were probably truly genuine. Zhuang Chi suddenly felt a pang of guilt, but Gu Ximian quickly noticed it in her eyes and reached out to pinch her lover's soft, nice-to-touch cheek. “That's all in the past, don't think so much about it. I don't think that way anymore. I just want this world to exist for a little longer, and I'm very glad my wish back then didn't come true.”
“Because...” Gu Ximian paused, her voice suddenly softening, “...we haven't gotten married yet.”
Zhuang Chi's heart trembled, and her reply came out stuttering, “Th-that... at least we have to wait until we're both of legal age to marry—wait a minute, the world can't be destroyed even after we get married!”
“That's right.” Gu Ximian suddenly broke into a smile, her curved eyes seeming to hold a crescent of radiant light. “There are still so many things I want to do with you. For example—”
As she spoke, she suddenly moved a little closer to Zhuang Chi. Her upturned gaze held a deliberate grievance, yet a faint smile could be seen within it. Her voice was soft and gentle. “At the Christmas Ball... you still owe me a kiss, don't you?”
Her way of putting it was a bit unreasonable. A kiss is something between two people, and Zhuang Chi hadn't dodged her at the last Christmas Ball, yet now she was suddenly being told she was in debt. Zhuang Chi, good-naturedly, blinked her eyes and didn't correct her. She just gestured to the people coming and going around them and said with a smile, “There's no mistletoe now.”
“Then that's your fault for not preparing in advance.” Gu Ximian snorted lightly, raising her head slightly in a provocative manner. “And no one ever made a rule that you can't kiss when you're not under the mistletoe.”
There was indeed no such rule. Zhuang Chi smiled, then leaned in and gently placed a kiss on Gu Ximian's lips.
There were indeed small sounds of teasing from the surroundings, but times had changed. Zhuang Chi pretended not to hear them. Anyway, in the past year, she and Gu Ximian had become a model couple known to almost everyone at St. Blaisedon, and they were engaged. She had heard such comments many times, so one more didn't matter. Feeling that her skin had grown thicker than before, Zhuang Chi took a small step back and, before Gu Ximian could speak, extended her hand. “Were you about to say I still owe you a dance?”
This person was indeed getting better and better at understanding her thoughts. Her words having been preempted, Gu Ximian pressed her lips together. While placing her hand in Zhuang Chi's palm, she maintained a straight face and said in a low voice, “Yes. You have no idea what I was feeling when I danced with you at the last Christmas Ball...”
“I'm sorry,” Zhuang Chi said agreeably, taking her hand. “For the sake of me making it up to you properly, will you forgive me?”
The cool expression on Gu Ximian's face was starting to crack. She was clearly in a very good mood, but because she liked seeing Zhuang Chi coax her like this, she replied nitpickingly, “But today's ball theme isn't as good as last time. If you take me to dance now, won't you feel like you're dancing with your own black history?”
“How could I?” Zhuang Chi denied without a second thought. She held Gu Ximian's hand tighter, her reply earnest and solemn. “You were never defined that way.”
Even going back to the very beginning, when she had just realized this was the world of her novel, Zhuang Chi did indeed feel that this world was her black history—because of the childish writing, the plot-hole-ridden settings, and the unreasonable plot. But it was never because of her female protagonist, because of Gu Ximian.
From the very beginning until now, whether in her writing or in reality, Zhuang Chi had always poured all her attention and favoritism into Gu Ximian. To her, Gu Ximian was, on the contrary, the light that illuminated this world she had created, a world that could be called her black history. As long as Gu Ximian was here, she would love this world a little more.
“Then how am I defined?”
“You are my only female protagonist.”
In the novel, and in life.
They would walk a very, very long way together, holding hands just like this. A long time from now, when they talked about those “black histories” together again, perhaps they would think of it as a beautiful story.
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