Chapter 81: Su Peng
An Han sat comfortably on the base of the basketball hoop, taking bites of cold watermelon and sipping cold cola. He had completely forgotten the stomach trouble from a few days ago. Wu Dongming sat beside him, doing the same, and both of them were getting dirty looks from a group of freshmen nearby.
But those looks didn’t scare them. They were chatting and laughing, clearly enjoying themselves.
“An Han, be reasonable, why drag me out to do this in the middle of the day?” Wu Dongming said as he munched his melon. He casually scooted a little away from him.
Lately he and An Han hadn’t been joking around as much. He felt he had become a bit strange to him.
Their old style of teasing each other and pulling pranks had faded. Because of the way An Han had changed, he found himself more awkward around her. He couldn’t make the same jokes, and he didn’t dare mess with her physically anymore.
Being at the playground with An Han felt more like a date with a girl than hanging out with a friend.
The problem was, he’d always been nervous around girls and didn’t know what to say.
Wu Dongming glanced at An Han’s excited face. He seemed to enjoy watching the freshmen suffer a little while he relaxed, a small smile with shallow dimples on his cheek.
But a moment later he leaned back and his face turned a bit sad. “Hey…”
Wu Dongming bit back the urge to smack him playfully.
“Do you know if Su Peng likes any girls?” he asked.
“How would I know?”
“You lived in the same dorm with him for two years. You don’t know who he likes? Or who he’s close to?”
Wu Dongming didn’t get why he suddenly wanted to play matchmaker. After thinking for a moment, he shook his head. “He’s pretty much a homebody.”
“So homeboys deserve no girlfriends! If you never go out, how can you meet girls? And he keeps saying he wants a girlfriend!”
An Han scolded loudly. Wu Dongming felt like he’d been wrongfully accused.
He sighed and lay back on the base of the hoop, drinking cola now and then, looking as if he was using it to soothe his mood.
Long Xing still hadn’t solved his own problem with Su Peng, and now the system forced him to wear a cheongsam… Normally, he liked the style and photos of cheongsams, especially on beautiful girls.
But this time he had to wear the cheongsam himself and go out in it for a whole day.
If the system hadn’t been changing him more and more into a feminine person, he might have gone along for other rewards, like the first time Wu Dongming tricked him into cross-dressing.
Now he worried the system might change his mental gender too.
Thinking back, the system’s recent rewards were worrying.
A “cute-style body feature” made him act in more feminine ways without realizing it. That made him more attractive to men, but it also made him unconsciously more like a girl.
An “aesthetic feature” made him want to try wearing women’s clothes. His first thought when he saw a pretty outfit on a woman became, ‘Would this look better on me?’
Before, the system only changed his body. Now it was starting to mess with his mind.
“Hey, Dongming,” An Han suddenly asked, “is it possible for someone to be a man but inside think like a woman?”
“Isn’t that you?” Wu Dongming replied.
“……”
“Hey, what did it feel like when Su Peng gave you a princess carry?” Wu Dongming suddenly changed the topic and asked with interest.
An Han froze for a moment. His face quickly became hot and red. He turned his head away so Wu Dongming wouldn’t see his blushing face, and said angrily, “It felt like nothing! If you didn’t insist on playing games last night, would I have been carried like that?!”
“Ckckck, a lot of people saw it.”
An Han glared at him. This guy never said anything nice.
Wu Dongming originally tried to joke with An Han to get back the feeling of how they used to be as best friends, but now he felt even more uncomfortable being alone with him.
Who knew why An Han’s glare looked like a girl acting shy and annoyed? It made him unable to look back at him. He even felt guilty, like he really did something wrong.
That strange feeling made Wu Dongming even more uneasy. Smelling the faint scent around An Han that felt like a girl’s perfume, he quickly stood up. “I’m going back to the dorm.”
“Why go back so early?”
“If I stay here too long, I might get beaten up.” Wu Dongming threw his watermelon rind into the trash, shook his hands clean, and muttered while walking back to the dorm, “You didn’t even give me a tissue after buying watermelon…”
Watching Wu Dongming walk away, An Han could clearly feel his awkwardness when facing him.
Did his bro’s feelings for him also change?
But his affection score toward me is only a bit over sixty, right?
“Weird guy,” he muttered. He didn’t want to stay on the playground alone either, in case he really got beaten up like Wu Dongming said.
Better to think about the mission.
An Han got up from the basketball hoop and walked out of the playground without a clear destination. At the same time, he lowered his head and searched for cheongsams on the online shopping app.
He originally thought cheongsams sounded fancy and must be expensive, but when he checked, he found some cheap ones too.
Something that costs only a few dozen yuan, he could wear once and throw away.
But many of those cheongsams, whether on the models or in the review photos, looked more like sexy lingerie made in the cheongsam style.
The skirts were so short they only covered half the thigh, and many had slits… Some even had a big cut-out on the chest, showing the skin inside. But the cheongsam he imagined was the long, elegant kind worn by noble ladies in period dramas, graceful, classy, ladylike, not something meant to make men excited.
And he had to wear it outside!
That was too much stimulation for him.
“Maybe the system wants me to wear this kind…” he complained in his head.
Luckily, he did manage to find some more conservative, proper cheongsams on the platform.
They were also not expensive, just a few dozen yuan.
“Will I look good wearing this?” he worried. “If it looks too bad, I won’t be able to go out at all.”
“What if it doesn’t even fit me? I can’t go get one custom-made…”
He started worrying about his body again. Even though his bone structure was much smaller than a normal man’s, it was still bigger than a petite girl’s.
“An Han.”
The voice startled him so much he jumped. He looked up and realized he had walked all the way to the club activity rooms.
Su Peng had probably just come out. He was wearing a white sports outfit and was waving at him from a distance.
The moment he saw Su Peng, An Han’s body stiffened, and a blush rose on his cheeks again.
Just like Wu Dongming said, the scene of Su Peng carrying him in a princess carry from the dorm all the way out of the school was seen by many students. Someone even posted about it on the campus forum.
Thankfully, there were no photos. The curious readers just treated it like a sweet love story, not knowing the two main characters were both male.
After hesitating for a moment, An Han pushed down his nervousness and jogged over. “Do you need something?”
If he acted too shy, Su Peng might misunderstand, so it was better to act normal.
“I just saw you and wanted to say hi.” Su Peng smiled warmly.
But An Han suddenly stepped back and said cautiously, “You definitely have something to say! Tell me directly, don’t play guessing games.”
“How did you see through me?” Su Peng asked with surprise.
“Because your smile is too fake.”