SBAB Chapter 38

Although Cheng Shiyin hesitated at the rejection, she was equally hesitant about the affirmative response.

When she heard Lin Xin say “I like you,” she was surprised by the sudden confession but never doubted Lin Xin’s feelings. Despite how ill-timed it might have been, she couldn’t bring herself to make a joke that would allow them both to gracefully exit the situation.

Having missed that one chance to gracefully withdraw, she could only see Lin Xin now, so close, yet so distant. She could see the person who, with no choice but to push his feelings onto her, could only passively wait for her response.

In his reddened eyes, love that longed to be expressed was trapped, but an undeniable, humble yearning beneath it.

Seeing this, Cheng Shiyin instantly understood how laughable her thoughts had been that night during the fireworks. To be more precise, she had been foolish to believe in them so strongly ever since.

Lin Xin’s feelings had never been without signs. They had always been this way from the beginning, and she hadn’t noticed.

Cheng Shiyin no longer had the energy to consider all the questions she should have thought about before a relationship began, including Lin Xin’s concerns about her still identifying as a woman. In the face of Lin Xin’s emotions, such a critical issue seemed almost irrelevant. Cheng Shiyin could only attempt to accept his heavy feelings, which already left her feeling drained.

Her careful consideration of this answer might have been the result of giving all her effort to accepting Lin Xin and his clumsy yet intense expression of love.

Facing Lin Xin, Cheng Shiyin could not bring herself to cruelly reject him, but neither could she easily deceive someone as sincere as him.

But she had simply accepted his feelings. She didn’t understand, didn’t believe, and couldn’t imagine herself returning the same kind of deep affection he had shown. No matter how Cheng Shiyin tried to picture it, she couldn’t see herself reciprocating those feelings.

Her relationship with Gu Nian had always been a half-hearted arrangement between two people who had never truly given love. But facing Lin Xin, who was giving all he had, Cheng Shiyin couldn’t make such a rash decision.

In the end, Cheng Shiyin looked at the single-choice question before her, the only options being “yes” or “no,” and chose to escape.

At the most suffocating moment of the Ferris wheel ride, the machine released Cheng Shiyin. After the ride stopped, the staff, holding a pre-prepared rose, opened the locked door. Cheng Shiyin didn’t notice them and immediately lowered her head and ran out. She bumped the rose onto the ground and then fled along the path of scattered petals.

But the choice Cheng Shiyin made after much inner turmoil appeared to Lin Xin as her decision to escape from him. She didn’t say anything, but through her actions, she made it clear: her answer was rejection, and they should never meet again.

Once Lin Xin had his answer, he didn’t chase after Cheng Shiyin’s retreating figure. It wasn’t until she completely disappeared from the crowd that Lin Xin, feeling defeated, slowly got up from his seat. He leaned on the Ferris wheel’s door frame and, just before his left foot hit the ground, he stepped back to avoid the petals scattered by Cheng Shiyin.

Squatting down in front of the petals, Lin Xin picked them up one by one, placing them in his backpack in one breath, leaving only a single rose petal to rub between his fingers. “So rounding up the odds makes the failure rate higher…” Lin Xin said to himself, the scentless petals in his hand, as he walked away, muttering words no one could understand.

With his muttering, wherever Lin Xin went, the crowd parted before him like the Red Sea, and he walked toward the exit without any hindrance.

It wasn’t until he spotted Shang Xiaoxia in the crowd that Lin Xin realized: that the only support he had relied on was just a joke someone had made. The rumor of a “100% confession success rate” was just a lie, and an incredibly clumsy one at that. Lin Xin couldn’t bring himself to blame anyone; he could only feel frustrated with his foolishness.

From that day onward, Cheng Shiyin disappeared from Lin Xin’s world. He lost all contact with the student council, and everything returned to how it had been before. The strange silence that hung between Lin Xin and Shang Xiaoxia whenever they were alone together was the only proof that something, known only to a few, had happened on one particular day.

Lin Xin’s first semester of college passed like this.

Lin Xin half-heartedly finished his last required course, hung his backpack on a hook in a girls’ bathroom stall, took care of the physical issue he’d been holding for over an hour, and then suddenly sighed, exhaling a breath full of helplessness. Lin Xin lowered the toilet lid, pulled up his pants, and sat down, staring at the contact in his phone labeled “Mom.” After a moment, he finally pressed the call button.

“Hey, Mom. I won’t be coming home for the break this year. There’s some stuff left to take care of at school, so I won’t be able to make it back.”

“…Ah, I didn’t lie to you. Why would I lie? My credits weren’t enough, so I joined an extracurricular program to do some work for the school and make up for the credits.”

“…Yes, yes, I’m studying hard. It’s just that I didn’t join the student council, and I didn’t get elected for any committee positions, so this is the only option I had. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to graduate.”

“Right, right, I’ll go back next semester. Don’t worry, I’m not a kid anymore. Okay, I’m hanging up now. I have an exam in a bit.” After half an hour of rambling, Lin Xin finally managed to convince his mother.

In reality, his physical changes had already stopped. He hadn’t grown taller or experienced any further masculine changes. But he was still his mother’s child, and she might notice the changes immediately. Even though months had passed, Lin Xin still couldn’t come up with a way to explain this change, one that even he found hard to believe, without scaring his mother. So, after thinking it over, Lin Xin chose not to face his mother, whose health wasn’t great.

The issue with his mother was resolved, but the school problem wasn’t. Without parental consent, the school wasn’t planning to keep him, the poor, homeless child. So, two hours later, Lin Xin found himself in a small village near the school, carrying a blanket roll and dragging a suitcase.

He kept calling the numbers on the rental signs along the road but was rejected one after another due to strict requirements like a minimum three-month rental period. The available apartments ranged from ground-floor single rooms with private bathrooms to top-floor rooms with shared bathrooms. Lin Xin was sweating in the cold winter, his lips getting dry from talking, but after a while, he finally found a landlord willing to show him a room. Although it was on the 7th floor, without an elevator and no air conditioning.

Looking at his luggage, Lin Xin was worried about having to bring it all back down if the deal didn’t work out, showing the landlord an awkward expression. The landlord, indifferent, shook the keys in his hand while also talking on the phone with another potential tenant. Lin Xin hid his luggage in the bike storage on the first floor and followed the landlord upstairs.

Fortunately, Lin Xin hit it off with the landlord, and they directly signed a contract for one month’s deposit and rent. Lin Xin paid with his phone. The landlord put the contract in his bag and said to Lin Xin, “Wait here for a moment. I’ll go downstairs to get your key. The spare key I have is marked, so I can’t give it to you.”

“Okay.” Lin Xin nodded in agreement, smiling as he looked at his rental contract, feeling self-satisfied for having managed to take care of this.

However, half an hour passed, and the landlord still hadn’t returned. His phone was off. Realizing something was wrong, Lin Xin hurried back downstairs to check his luggage, only to find it had disappeared too.

His luggage was stolen, and the money was taken as well. The landlord, of course, wasn’t a real landlord. In less than half a day, Lin Xin had felt the harsh reality of society and even began to despair, muttering to himself, “Maybe I’ll just sleep on the side of the road, under the overpass.”

He stood there alone in the middle of the road, gazing blankly around him, feeling as though every face passing by was marked with “bad person.”

But then, there was one person who was completely different from the rest. She was so familiar, yet so unfamiliar.

She suddenly appeared before Lin Xin, radiating an almost blinding light. By the time his eyes adjusted to the brightness and he fully came to his senses, he realized he was lying on Cheng Shiyin’s bed in her bedroom.

Now, in the entire room, there were only Lin Xin and Cheng Shiyin.