Chapter 68: What Is "Liking" Someone?
"Chengcheng?"
Chen Shuting linked arms with the girl beside her, looking at her dazed expression.
She wasn’t sure what Chen Cheng was thinking about, but her face had turned slightly red, the corners of her lips curled up, and her eyes looked like crescent moons. Her smile was soft and sweet, carrying a hint of shy innocence.
"What are you thinking about? You seem totally out of it."
Chen Shuting waved a hand in front of Chen Cheng’s face.
"Nothing."
Chen Cheng snapped out of her thoughts and quickly wiped the smile off her face, putting on a blank expression. "Go use the toilet. I’ll wait for you outside."
"Okay~"
She stopped in front of the restroom mirror, adjusting her hair slightly.
After thinking for a moment, she took off the hair tie around her wrist and tried to put her hair into a low ponytail.
"Does this look better?"
She mumbled to herself, leaning closer to the mirror to fix some uneven strands. "Ugh, why is my hair so frizzy?"
Some stray baby hairs stuck out no matter how she tried to smooth them down, making her look a little messy.
"Chengcheng, ready to go?"
Chen Shuting called out after finishing in the restroom.
"Do you think I look good with a ponytail?"
"You’d look good even if you shaved your head."
With a face like Chen Cheng’s, she’d still look like an elegant little nun even if she went bald. Even without makeup or styling, she had a naturally effortless beauty.
"But this looks kinda messy."
"How can a girl not even know how to tie a ponytail?"
Chen Shuting reached over and helped her redo it. This time, the ponytail looked neater, but it was tied so tightly that Chen Cheng’s scalp hurt a little.
She studied herself in the mirror. Her hair was too short, and the ponytail didn’t look as good as she imagined.
So she untied her hair again, ran her fingers through her hair a few times like a makeshift comb, and walked back to class with Chen Shuting.
At the classroom door, An Yuan was joking around with a few guys. Their eyes met for a brief moment, and both of them awkwardly nodded in greeting. Chen Cheng quickly lowered her head and hurried past him.
She was too embarrassed to face An Yuan!
Why on earth did she lose her mind last night and ask him to hug her?!
And letting him hide under the desk with her legs open. Just thinking about it now made her want to scream!
Back at her seat, she was still a little out of it. Chen Shuting sat beside her, glancing at her lovestruck expression, then curiously turned to look at An Yuan in the hallway.
These two had supposedly been dating for a month, yet they were acting more like they had just entered the "crushing but awkward" stage.
That kind of phase where the tension makes them too shy to even talk properly.
"Isn’t An Yuan’s birthday tomorrow?" Chen Shuting asked curiously. "Did you prepare a gift for him?"
"How do you know that?"
"He celebrated his birthday in class the past two years."
She remembered An Yuan’s birthday that clearly? Did Chen Shuting have a thing for him?!
Chen Cheng shot her a suspicious look. "I already gave him a present."
"What did you get him?"
"Uh…"
Chen Cheng was too embarrassed to say the gift was her wearing a dress for him, so she blurted out, "I bought him a game."
"A game? You actually had to buy one?"
"......"
Seeing the girl fall silent, Chen Shuting realized she had asked a dumb question. She slumped over her desk, tugged at Chen Cheng’s arm, and lowered her voice to change the subject.
"Help me out with something…"
"What?"
Chen Cheng leaned in as well, following Chen Shuting’s gaze.
"Don’t you think Xinhai is kinda handsome?"
Chen Xinhai was a quiet, bookish guy in their class who wore glasses. He was a boarding student with decent grades but didn’t have much presence. A little chubby, kind of nerdy.
Handsome? Not really. To Chen Cheng, he was just an average high school boy.
Then she suddenly remembered, this girl’s type was probably studious guys with glasses. Back when she confessed to Chen Cheng and got rejected, she later went after Chen Xinhai in their senior year, only to get shut down again.
Still got that love brain~
"You’re in your final year, and you still want to date? Shouldn’t you be focused on studying?"
Chen Shuting’s face turned slightly red. "Like you have any right to say that."
"Me and An Yuan are just… never mind."
After what happened yesterday, she couldn’t exactly insist that she and An Yuan were "just friends" anymore. They had definitely crossed the line into something more ambiguous…
She let out a confused sigh. She really didn’t get why this body kept getting drawn to good-looking guys, messing up her own head in the process.
"What does it feel like to like someone?"
Chen Shuting blinked in surprise, then shook her head just as cluelessly. "You’ve never been in love before? But you’re so pretty!"
"I’ve dated once or twice… but I can’t really remember what it felt like," Chen Cheng tried to recall. "I just thought… they were pretty?"
Back then, as someone who cared a lot about appearances, she mostly liked how girls looked. When dating, she was usually too busy trying to act cool and impress them while also feeling nervous and shy. There weren’t many other emotions involved.
Dating girls was exhausting. Honestly, breaking up had felt like a relief, that was probably her only clear memory of it.
"Oh~ so you like delicate-looking guys?"
It was girls, okay?!
But Chen Cheng didn’t bother correcting her. She didn’t want to be mistaken for being into girls now.
"Maybe… your heart races, and you feel really happy when you see them?" Chen Shuting guessed. "That’s what they always say in romance dramas and novels, like feeling shy and having butterflies in your stomach."
"So do you feel that way about Chen Xinhai?"
"A little shy, maybe… but I haven’t really talked to him much…"
"Then you should just focus on your college entrance exams. You don’t have to rush into dating right now."
The class bell rang. Chen Shuting got up and went back to her seat, while Chen Cheng, as usual, kept her head down and continued working on practice questions.
Heart racing? Butterflies?
She never really felt that way around An Yuan. The only times she did were when things got physically intense, when the atmosphere was too charged…
Clearly, that was just normal teenage hormones. There was a big difference between wanting someone’s body and actually liking them. Chen Cheng wasn’t that shallow!
As for feeling happy… of course, she was happy hanging out with a friend. Even back when she was a guy in her past life, she had fun messing around with her buddies. It didn’t mean she liked them, right?
The teacher was unexpectedly late, and the classroom, which had been quiet at first, started buzzing with low chatter.
"Did the English teacher get sick?" her deskmate, Pan Jie, muttered. "It’d be great if we didn’t have English class…"
Agreed. English class sucked.
Chen Cheng wasn’t a fan of it either, even if their young married teacher was easy on the eyes.
She was resting her chin in her hands, lost in thought, when she suddenly felt a gaze on her back. Turning around, she caught An Yuan hastily lowering his head in embarrassment.
Before, An Yuan had always seemed mature and dependable. No matter how awkward the situation, he could handle it with a calm expression. But after what happened yesterday, he had turned into a shy, flustered boy. Seeing him like this was actually kind of funny.
Who knew he had such an adorable side? It made her want to tease him even more.