Chapter 12 – being apart
There’s no way someone could go a thousand days without getting rid of a verbal tic.
Xiang You was a little displeased.
Displeased by this overly familiar way of addressing her that no longer fit their relationship.
And displeased by her own unnatural reaction.
Besides, when Meng Ou had first started calling her that, it had actually been to tease her.
Back in their second year of high school, it was very popular in their class to pass around all kinds of Mary Sue novels.
Most were written by Korean authors. The plots were over-the-top, but somehow reading them was strangely cathartic.
At that time, the two of them were not together yet, but Meng Ou liked to wander over to her desk whenever he had nothing better to do.
If he had just sat there quietly, that would have been fine. But no, he also liked to mess with things.
Her desk, specifically.
Xiang You bought a new pen, and he had to come over and take a look.
There was a little doll hanging from the end of it, and he insisted on shaking it around like a rattle.
It was obviously a cap-pull pen, but this clueless guy treated it like a click pen and pressed it twice. As a result, he snapped the decoration off the end of the pen.
Xiang You was so furious that she chased after him and hit him.
She hadn’t even been willing to write a single word with that pen!
Later, Meng Ou compensated her with an entire box of identical pens.
But she was still unhappy. She just felt that, out of that whole row of identical pens, the one she had painstakingly picked out back then was the prettiest.
So in the end, that box of pens was left at home to dry out. After all, they really did only look pretty. The ink kept running out whenever she wrote with them.
As for whatever test papers and homework Xiang You had lying around on her desk, of course he had to pick those up and look at them too.
If she had done well, he would say, “Wow, our top student Xiang is really amazing.”
If she had done badly, he would say, “How come you can’t save the teacher some ink in that red pen?”
Basically, whether she did well or badly, he had to make a few snide remarks.
When Xiang You was in a good mood, she usually couldn’t be bothered to argue with him, and would even throw his remarks right back at him.
But there were also times when she was in a bad mood.
Once, Xiang You had managed to “bloom across the board” in several subjects and had just been chewed out by her teachers.
Meng Ou didn’t know about it. He came trotting over in high spirits, picked up a test paper covered in red X’s, and said with a grin, “Whoa, the lilies are blooming bright red.”
Xiang You glared at him with red-rimmed eyes.
The smile froze on Meng Ou’s face. Before he could say anything else, he saw Xiang You get up and charge toward his seat.
Under everyone’s watchful eyes, Xiang You grabbed the test papers and homework on his desk and tore them into pieces with a loud shrrrip.
Everyone around them was stunned, their eyes darting back and forth between the two of them.
Everyone thought Xiang You was incredibly gutsy.
Because, at heart, Meng Ou was not someone you wanted to mess with.
He had gotten into fights with people before, and he had also slammed his hand on desks and shouted at people.
He looked careless and easygoing, as though he was easy to talk to, but once someone crossed his line, he could be fiercer than anyone.
What they didn’t know, however, was that both times he had lost his temper with someone, it had actually been because of Xiang You.
In any case, one moment they were looking nervously at Meng Ou, trying not to get caught in the crossfire; the next, they were looking worriedly at Xiang You, thinking she was probably about to be in trouble.
But in the end, what they saw was Meng Ou lowering his eyes and apologizing to Xiang You in the most meek and ingratiating manner.
Xiang You ignored him and continued doing her homework with a stiff expression.
In the end, the class bell interrupted Meng Ou’s endless apologies and pleas for forgiveness.
Actually, after gradually calming down, Xiang You felt a little guilty too.
Meng Ou’s mouth was annoying, but he wasn’t bad when it came to actually doing things.
He would laugh at how many mistakes she had made, but he would also patiently explain the problems to her.
There were even some questions she didn’t realize she had gotten wrong several times already, but Meng Ou remembered them perfectly, even remembering the wrong answers she had given on the previous occasions.
But she still didn’t want to apologize.
Meng Ou’s mouth was just too infuriating!
Later, Meng Ou spent an entire Chinese class gluing all the test papers and homework back together.
The Chinese teacher was annoyed by his blatant fooling around and called him up to recite the text.
Meng Ou recited it while continuing to work with his hands.
And so, in the quiet classroom, everyone heard something like this:
“Riiip,” a strip of tape being torn off, followed by a section of the text being recited. “Riiip,” another strip of tape being torn off, followed by another section of the text.
After he recited the entire passage without missing a single word, the Chinese teacher decided that hints weren’t going to work. He had to make it explicit.
“Meng Ou, what are you doing?”
“Reporting to the teacher, I’m gluing my Chinese test papers back together.” From among the test papers for all his subjects, Meng Ou carefully lifted up a string of half-glued Chinese test papers.
“What happened to your test papers?” The teacher was so startled that he forgot to criticize him.
“My little sister accidentally tore them up.”
In front of everyone who knew the truth, Meng Ou lied without so much as blinking.
The Chinese teacher was dumbfounded, momentarily forgetting that the test papers had only been handed out that morning.
And the so-called “little sister” shot him an indignant sidelong glance.
After class, Meng Ou came to apologize to his “little sister” again.
“I’m not your little sister!” Xiang You said unhappily.
“Then…” Meng Ou blinked as he thought about it. “You can be my older sister?”
“I don’t want to be your older sister either!” Xiang You retorted.
“Then you can be my Little Aunt. That works, right?” Meng Ou raised both hands in surrender.
Xiang You felt as though she had gotten the better of him, while at the same time feeling as though she hadn’t.
Who wanted to become relatives with Meng Ou?!
“I’m your Great Aunt!” Xiang You said as she pushed him aside.
“Oh, hello, Great Auntie.” Meng Ou shamelessly called her that, then moved back over. “Great Auntie, please forgive…” He stopped. “Oh no, I can’t get the generations straight.”
Xiang You stared at him with a stiff expression, her mouth half open as she prepared to laugh at his ignorance, only to discover that she couldn’t get the generations straight either.
In the end, all the things she wanted to say turned into one sentence:
“You’re so annoying!”
“Great Auntie can’t die. Otherwise I’d be sad.” Meng Ou started talking nonsense again.
“Stop calling me that!” It was the first time someone had called her “Great Auntie,” and somehow she was furious about it. “I forgive you, okay?!”
“Alrighty!” Meng Ou grinned so widely his eyes narrowed into slits.
He didn’t even spare her pens or test papers, so naturally those miscellaneous books didn’t escape his attention either.
Another day when he came looking for a beating, Meng Ou lowered his eyes and spotted a book in her desk cubby. He grabbed it by the corner and yanked it out.
“The Demon Prince Falls in Love with Me…” Meng Ou read the title in an especially punchable tone. “A cross-species romance, huh?”
“Give it back!” Xiang You was embarrassed and snatched the book back. “He, he’s human!”
“Then what’s the fun in that?” Meng Ou gave an exaggerated sigh of disappointment. “I thought you were going to be a demon princess. Is it like vampires? Bite someone once and you turn into a demon?”
“I told you, he’s human! Human, just like you!” Xiang You was so angry that she tapped him on the head with the book.
“Just like me?” Meng Ou, whose attention was always fixed on the strangest things.
“Pah!” Xiang You glared at him. “He’s ten thousand times better than you.”
“That good?” Meng Ou held both hands out toward her. “Demon princess, let me have a look and learn something.”
As the saying went, comparing people made one feel inferior, and comparing goods made one want to throw them away. Xiang You thought he really ought to take a look and reflect on himself, so she ignored the “demon princess” part and handed him the book.
“‘Damn, the Demon Prince is so fucking handsome! Upon that noble head is a pair of narrow, captivating eyes’…”
It hadn’t seemed embarrassing when she was reading it. So how come, when Meng Ou read it aloud, it sounded so disgusting?
“You can’t pull it off. Give it to me.” Xiang You snatched the book back for the second time.
But when she looked up, she saw Meng Ou smiling at her.
His eyes curved, the corners of his mouth curved, wearing that kind of fake, greasy smile.
“What are you doing?” Xiang You asked, confused.
Still smiling, Meng Ou tapped the book that had yet to be closed.
Xiang You looked down and softly read, “‘When he saw me, the Demon Prince put on his trademark smile, the one that made countless young girls yearn for him day and night: his sexy lips pressed together ever so slightly, his usually arrogant eyes curved ever so slightly. It was a tenderness he showed only to me, just like this’… Hm?”
That was how it was written in the book.
“Just like this: (o_o).”
Yes, these books usually contained a lot of emoticons.
But this expression didn’t look charming at all!
Xiang You’s girlish dream was shattered. And when she looked up, she saw the exact same smile.
Ah. Meng Ou wasn’t imitating that whole passage at all. He was imitating the emoticon!
“I’m giving it to you!” Xiang You slapped the book against his face.
Thanks to Meng Ou, she never wanted to read this book again!
Meng Ou was a person who believed in returning favors. A few days later, he gave her another book.
“The Demon Lord Has Arrived?” Xiang You read the title blankly.
“Don’t you like demons?” Meng Ou said.
Like hell I did!
From then on, whenever she saw a demon, all she could think of was Meng Ou grinning stupidly.
But since it was a gift, she couldn’t bring herself to make her dislike quite so obvious.
She accepted it, but she didn’t read a single page.
One day, Xiang You was alone on the terrace, memorizing vocabulary.
Just as she was struggling with a word she simply could not memorize, a shadow suddenly fell across her.
With a “smack,” Meng Ou raised a hand and gave her half a wall-dong. “Xiang Xiaoyou, you’re my girl!”
Xiang You was standing in the corner of the terrace, with a wall on one side and a railing made of vertical bars on the other.
She was so startled that her hand jerked, and her vocabulary book fell to the ground. Of all things, it rolled once and fell through the railing.
“You’re crazy!” Xiang You shoved him away and turned to dash downstairs.
Meng Ou stood there stupidly, the hand he had held behind his back clutching a rose. Before he had even had the chance to give it to her, he had unconsciously snapped it in half.
That day, because she had gone to retrieve her vocabulary book, Xiang You was late to class and got a few words from the teacher.
Meng Ou also came over of his own accord to apologize to her.
Only his apology wasn’t exactly pleasant to hear.
“You don’t want to be my girl, so how about I be your guy?”
“If you were my guy, I would’ve thrown you in the trash can ages ago!” Xiang You gave him a sidelong look.
Meng Ou’s eyes turned in a circle, and then landed on the miniature trash can sitting on her desk.
Before Xiang You could stop him, she watched him pick up the palm-sized trash can and turn it upside down over his own head.
The trash can was filled with eraser shavings, pencil shavings, scraps of paper, and things like that.
Many years later, when she looked back on it, Xiang You felt a belated flutter of her heart.
A pile of scraps came cascading down onto the handsome boy’s face with a rustle. His long eyelashes were dotted with bits of debris. He blinked uncomfortably while smiling at her. “I fell into the trash can. Do you want to fish me out?”
But to Xiang You at the time, the fact that he was dirty wasn’t important.
What mattered was that he had dirtied the floor beside her desk too!
“Are you sick?!” Xiang You genuinely thought there was something wrong with this person’s brain.
She took back the trash can and bent down to pick up the garbage.
Only to discover that the more she picked up, the more there was.
It was all falling off Meng Ou.
“You’re so dirty. Stay away from me.” Xiang You reached out to push him away.
But Meng Ou caught her wrist in one hand and raised it to the level of his face. “Don’t just pick up what’s on the floor.”
Xiang You looked at the few scraps of paper stuck to his face and, with no patience left for him, gave his face a smack.
The scraps fluttered down in all directions, and Xiang You hurriedly held out the trash can to catch them.
A cheerful “Thank you” came from beside her ear.
How strange.
This person was so, so annoying.
But Xiang You couldn’t truly bring herself to hate him.
Not until later, that summer after the college entrance examination.
Xiang You was sorting through the books she had accumulated over three years, and the cardboard box for things she planned to throw away was packed to the brim.
She pulled out the copy of The Demon Lord Has Arrived that she hadn’t read even a single page of.
She hadn’t liked it then, and there was even less chance she would like it now.
But before throwing it away, she still casually flipped through it.
A slip of paper fluttered out.
“Would you be willing to become my demon princess?”
There was no name signed at the bottom, but she knew at a glance who had written it.
A beautiful running script, bold and sweeping, seemingly chaotic yet orderly.
“I would.”
A year later, Xiang You answered sweetly from afar.
She had seen this kind of scene in so many stories.
A confession that came too late, a regret that could never be made up for.
Luckily, there were no regrets between the two of them.
At least, that was how it was back then.
She carefully kept the note in her drawer, then turned back to look at the book.
The long summer vacation was boring anyway, so she might as well see what was written inside.
Though the more she read, the more she felt it was truly childish.
How had she ever liked reading this stuff? Xiang You couldn’t understand it.
Until she reached this passage:
“Demon Lord had backed me all the way into a corner.
The Demon Lord raised one hand, almost as if he could shatter the entire wall. I was trapped in his embrace, my heart pounding away.
“Mi Xiaoluo, you’re my girl!” the Demon Lord declared in a tone that brooked no argument.
Then, from behind his back, he produced a precious rose.
It was an extremely rare variety from his family’s estate, one that had only produced a single flower after being cultivated for dozens of generations.”
“Pfft…” Xiang You couldn’t help laughing.
No wonder, when she had run away that day, she had caught a flash of red from the corner of her eye.
Was it really a rare variety that only produced one flower after dozens of generations?
If it wasn’t, she didn’t want it.
Later, Xiang You put the book back on the bookshelf.
Its gaudy cover looked so completely out of place among the reference books and world classics.
And whenever Xiang You looked back at it,
Meng Ou was also that kind of person, someone so special that he seemed completely out of place.
Just like that one and only rose in the whole world.
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