Chapter 13: Do You Think I Have Ulterior Motives Towards You?

That dog belonged to the supermarket owner; Si Tingyan was just passing by and played with it for a bit.

The little fella was happily devouring its canned food, but Si Tingyan didn’t stay long and was about to head upstairs.

Seeing him get up, Cheng Mi also rose from the ground.

Si Tingyan glanced at her.

Cheng Mi said: “What, I can’t go back?”

Si Tingyan couldn’t be bothered with her and walked away.

His legs were longer than hers, so Cheng Mi lagged a few steps behind. They returned upstairs one after the other. The house was empty, and dust motes danced in the dim light.

Si Tingyan walked towards his room, with Cheng Mi trailing behind with her school bag.

“What’s your phone number?” she asked.

“Otherwise, I’ll never find you. Look at today, you just stood me up.”

Si Tingyan was direct: “Did I say I’d wait for you?”

“No, you didn’t,” Cheng Mi wasn’t annoyed. “But you knew I would definitely come find you.”

As she spoke, they had already reached the room doors. The two doors faced each other, and so did they.

After saying that, Cheng Mi looked at Si Tingyan directly, her intentions undisguised.

Si Tingyan also looked at her.

“So, what’s your phone number?” she asked him.

Si Tingyan’s eyes left her face. He opened his door and said: “I don’t have a phone.”

This made Cheng Mi choke, speechless.

She indeed hadn’t seen him use a phone.

But she didn’t believe him.

“Really? I don’t quite believe that.”

“I believe you don’t have one on you right now, but what about in your room?”

She was standing by Si Tingyan’s door, about to enter.

The next second, Si Tingyan’s room door slammed shut in front of her, with a bang, almost hitting Cheng Mi’s face.

Cheng Mi hissed and said through the door: “Si Tingyan, if this nose of mine were fake, you’d owe me money right now.”

Her response was the sound of a lock clicking inside the room.

The sound was utterly provocative.

Anyone else would surely be seething with anger and turn to leave.

But Cheng Mi was different; she provoked back.

“Do you think I have ulterior motives towards you, Si Tingyan?”

Cheng Mi was outside the door, her jacket slipped off her shoulder, hanging loosely from her arm.

“I actually do, so you locked this door quite right.”

She gained an advantage.

No sooner had she finished speaking than a sound came from the entrance. Someone behind the heavy front door was fumbling for keys.

It sounded very frantic, with various items clanging together in the bag.

It seemed very urgent, but she couldn’t find them, as Cheng Mi didn’t hear the lock click open for a long time.

She could guess who it was. Leaving Si Tingyan’s door, she walked over to open the front door.

The door opened, and outside stood Si Huiru.

Her face was pale, and there was fine sweat on her forehead, clearly indicating she had rushed out. Seeing Cheng Mi open the door, she was momentarily stunned, then smiled apologetically at Cheng Mi after realizing what happened.

“Cheng Mi, you’re back,” she said, a little embarrassed, “I couldn’t find the key.”

This was clearly her own home.

How could someone live so gently and cautiously?

Cheng Mi stepped aside to let her in: “It’s fine, I often forget my keys too.”

Si Huiru smiled at her. As she entered past her, she asked: “Is Xiao Yan home?”

Cheng Mi glanced at Si Tingyan’s room door and nodded.

Si Huiru hastily said thank you, took off her shoes, and, forgetting to put down her bag, hurried towards Si Tingyan’s room.

Cheng Mi’s room was there, so she naturally walked in that direction too.

Si Huiru reached Si Tingyan’s room door and reached out to open it. Of course, it didn’t open; the room door was locked by Si Tingyan.

“Xiao Yan, why is the door locked?” Si Huiru called to him through the door.

Cheng Mi walked to her own room door. Opposite, Si Tingyan’s room door opened.

They met again.

Cheng Mi’s gaze passed over his face as she went to open her own room door.

Behind her, Si Huiru’s voice was filled with anxiety: “Why didn’t you call mom when you went to the hospital? Mom only found out when the doctor called her.”

Hearing the word “call,” Cheng Mi turned to look.

Si Tingyan, surprisingly, was still looking at her.

He averted his gaze and replied to Si Huiru: “Why are you back? I’m fine.”

Si Tingyan didn’t have any major issues this time; the doctors must have told Si Huiru about his physical condition.

However, any slight change in Si Tingyan’s health would make Si Huiru incredibly worried; even a minor cold would keep Si Huiru uneasy all day.

“You weren’t feeling well this morning,” Si Huiru blamed herself, her brows deeply furrowed with worry. “Why didn’t I pay attention earlier and take you to the hospital?”

“Dr. Zhang said I’m fine.”

“Mhm,” Si Huiru was still very remorseful, “But he still told me to pay more attention to your health. The surgery later—”

Before she could finish, Si Tingyan interrupted her.

“I’m hungry. Should I go downstairs and buy something?”

Cheng Mi had pushed her room door halfway open and sensed that Si Tingyan didn’t want to discuss this matter.

Or rather, he was resistant to others hearing about his heart condition.

Cheng Mi was perceptive and pushed the door open, entered her room, and closed the door.

________________________________________

Before she could have dinner, Cheng Mi was called out by Zhang Lingyin, an editor from GR, who phoned her.

Zhang Lingyin had just returned from a business trip that afternoon, and the hustle and bustle had exhausted and frustrated her. As soon as she got off the plane, she wanted to let loose and called Cheng Mi out, saying it was a perfect opportunity to hold a welcome party for her joining the GR family.

Zhang Lingyin was very good at handling people; after years of navigating the professional world, she was undoubtedly smooth.

Cheng Mi didn’t refuse; this meal was unavoidable sooner or later. If she put Zhang Lingyin off now, she would just keep trying again until Cheng Mi reciprocated the courtesy.

So Cheng Mi didn’t refuse. After telling Si Huiru, she took a taxi to the commercial street.

Zhang Lingyin didn’t just call her; she also invited Deng Zi and several other colleagues from the studio.

Zhang Lingyin introduced everyone to her one by one, and Cheng Mi’s phone quickly filled with new contacts.

With so many people, the dinner was lively. The enthusiastic atmosphere resulted in them heading to a bar after the meal.

One round wasn’t enough for them to have fun, so they moved on to the next.

They found a nearby bar and reserved a booth.

Cheng Mi was no stranger to this place; Li Ziyu and his friends had brought her here before.

The impression was that the atmosphere was vibrant and exciting, and by the end of the night, her ears wouldn’t be filled with stale, overplayed music.

The GR studio crew were all pretty fun-loving. Some were only a year or two older than Cheng Mi. After a few drinks in the booth, they got hyped up and went wild on the dance floor.

Cheng Mi wasn’t very interested in joining the crowd tonight, so she poured herself a drink and just sipped it casually.

This was Zhang Lingyin’s first time coming to a bar with her, and she looked at her with new eyes: “I didn’t expect you to be so quiet. I thought you’d be quite wild.”

Cheng Mi happened to be reaching for her drink and smiled: “Do I look very bad?”

“Not at all, I’m complimenting you,” Zhang Lingyin said, as if her mouth was full of sugar, “This is called charismatic.”

“Look, what is this if not charismatic?” Zhang Lingyin showed her her phone, swiping right to a pile of her retouched photos. “Deng Zi sent these to me. We spent ages picking, and there wasn’t a single bad shot. It drove us crazy; it took hours just to finalize them.”

The person on the phone screen looked great in several different outfits and makeup styles. It wasn’t just pleasing to the eye; it made one marvel from head to toe.

Zooming in, every facial detail was magnified to the maximum, yet not a single flaw could be found. Her bold beauty was breathtaking.

Zhang Lingyin said: “These pictures of you don’t really look like you.”

Cheng Mi asked: “Why do you say that?”

“You seem very easygoing, but these pictures look very rebellious, you know, very wild.”

Rebellious, compared to Cheng Mi’s current overall aura, didn’t seem to fit much.

But her photos did give off that feeling.

Expressive models’ eyes tell stories, and Zhang Lingyin felt Cheng Mi was one of them. Her photos seemed to tell someone’s story—it could be hers, or it could be someone else’s.

And surprisingly, they complemented GR’s style perfectly.

Zhang Lingyin’s intuition as a photographer led to this thought, but Cheng Mi lightly dismissed it.

After a moment of silence, she just smiled: “Versatile style, many people can probably achieve that.”

Sensing that she didn’t want to say more, Zhang Lingyin was also tactful and didn’t continue on that topic.

Soon, only a few people remained in the booth who, like Cheng Mi, weren’t going to dance on the dance floor. Zhang Lingyin also left.

Cheng Mi was bored sitting there and, in this noisy, wild place, thought of someone.

Someone who had no connection whatsoever with every inch of air, every person, every drink in this place.

She pulled out her phone, which she hadn’t looked at all evening. As soon as she unlocked the screen, various friend request messages popped up, filling the screen—the ones they had added at the dinner table earlier.

Cheng Mi didn’t mind; she wasn’t obsessive about her contact list only containing people she knew, so she clicked “accept” for every one of them.

After clicking, she felt something was still missing, so she logged into the school forum using her student ID.

Cheng Mi remembered Hong Mao saying that the school forum was a gossip hub, where anything could be discussed except studying, especially handsome boys, beautiful girls, and relationships.

If she liked someone, she could go to the forum to check, and perhaps find some information, provided, of course, that the person was handsome.

And had to be a very handsome guy that many girls liked.

The person Cheng Mi was looking for met this criterion one hundred percent.

She tapped into the forum and immediately saw her own name on the homepage. The post was quite prominent; she didn’t even need to scroll down.

[That Cheng Mi from Senior Three, Class Four, is so arrogant. Does she think she’s amazing?]

The reply count was remarkably eye-catching, over a hundred, indicating a heated discussion.

Also, she probably... wasn’t very well-liked.

Cheng Mi saw it, paused her fingertips for a moment, but didn’t click on it. Instead, she clicked on the search icon in the top left corner.

She directly typed in three characters.

Si, Ting, Yan.

She clicked the small icon next to it, and the circle spun and spun.

After spinning for a long time, the page finally appeared, crowded with results, and still more continued to load as she scrolled down.

The forum was anonymous; no one could see who anyone else was. The bad and hateful sentiments surged unchecked, while the kind and admiring ones huddled here in the dark.

Most of Si Tingyan’s posts fell into the latter category, with one thread already built into a tall building.

The post was titled [Confessions].

Cheng Mi looked at the hundreds of layers in the post, a little curious, and clicked it open.

The first post was from a girl with the nickname UI.

• He doesn’t like Chinese class, often gets full marks in Physics and Math, doesn’t like candy, and likes to drink Wang Zai Milk.

Clearly, it was a girl’s secret crush history.

Things he didn’t know, but she cherished every detail. Carefully placed here, pouring out every fluttering, bittersweet moment.

Scrolling down, there were many replies, but not from the original poster. Instead, everyone tacitly treated this as a secret base.

• His name is Si Tingyan. I wrote his name in my notebook today and counted fifty-one. I wrote one more.

• I ran into him at the exam today. He passed by my desk twice. I really like him.

Cheng Mi finally understood why it was called the “Confessions” book.

From it, she even saw many sides of Si Tingyan she had never known.

He loved Wang Zai Milk, disliked Chinese class, enjoyed tinkering with machines, and had robots he built in the school’s physics lab.

Each detail was secretly observed by hundreds, even thousands, of gazes.

Halfway through scrolling, she unexpectedly found what she was looking for.

1504884196.

Si Tingyan’s QQ number.

At that time, QQ was the most active social media application, everyone had one, and their space signatures changed a dozen times a day.

Cheng Mi exited the forum and pasted the copied number into the search box.

In one second, the search page popped up.

Nickname S, avatar completely black.

Just as she was about to click “add friend,” the screen flashed, and a call from Hong Mao vibrated on the screen.

Cheng Mi vaguely sensed something was amiss, but she didn’t turn around.

The environment in this bar was so noisy it made her ears ache, let alone hearing clearly on the phone. Cheng Mi got up, intending to answer outside, but was accidentally blocked by someone who had collapsed on the floor from drinking too much. So, she simply turned and went to the restroom.

The restroom was unisex, and the smell of alcohol inside was strong.

Cheng Mi didn’t really look at anyone; she walked straight into a stall and locked it.

After she answered, Hong Mao’s end was just as dizzyingly loud.

“I just went on the school forum for no reason, and they said you went to a bar?” Hong Mao was yelling.

Cheng Mi held her phone a bit away and said: “Yes.”

“What’s going on? I thought you actually had something going on lately. Turns out you’re just not hanging out with us.”

Hong Mao’s tone sounded like he was calling her out of boredom.

Cheng Mi casually replied: “That’s not true. We’ll drink together sometime.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Then it’s settled. Hey, hey, gotta go. I’m going to pick up girls now.”

So he was using her as a tool to pick up girls...

Just make a call, and the girls on the other end would be unable to resist and would fall for it.

Just like Li Ziyu, truly good brothers.

The call ended on the other end. Cheng Mi took her phone away. The call screen disappeared, and the phone screen returned to the original page.

Si Tingyan’s account profile.

Cheng Mi looked at his extremely simple profile, smiled, and was about to send a friend request.

Suddenly, a somewhat sharp female voice came from outside.

“I really saw it! She was just sitting in the booth, adding Si Tingyan’s number on her phone!”

Cheng Mi’s finger paused on the screen and she looked up.

Through the stall door, another girl asked: “Really?”

“I’m not blind! I was sitting behind her. If I misidentified her, then I’m an idiot.”

The girl who came with her and chimed in said: “Don’t tell Qi Yunmiao this time.”

“Why not tell her? Are you still her friend?”

“It’s not like that. If you tell her, Qi Yunmiao will take it out on us, and then everyone will have a bad time.”

The girl who peeked at Cheng Mi’s phone said again: “What about later? Qi Yunmiao will find out eventually. Won’t she throw a tantrum then?”

“That bitch Cheng Mi can’t be allowed to add him. She’s such a slut. Qi Yunmiao definitely won’t be able to compete with her.”

At this moment, the stall door made a soft click.

Cheng Mi walked out of the stall.