Confession to You in Early Summer (GL) - Chapter 13
Jiang Youyi wasn’t very sociable, so she rarely stayed at school on weekends.
In the past, on weekends, she would mostly play at internet cafes until dawn or sing karaoke until late at night before going home. Sometimes, if she really didn’t want to go back, she would just find a random place to spend the night. When her dad found her, she would inevitably get a beating.
This was her first weekend staying at school since the beginning of this semester.
Many students at this high school were from out of town, with over half of them staying at school on weekends. The dormitory supervisor wasn’t as strict about discipline as usual. Even though the lights were already out, it was still noisy outside the corridor.
Jiang Youyi turned over and continued playing on her phone.
She couldn’t fall asleep at all at this hour. If Yan Wei hadn’t dragged her back, she would still be online at the internet cafe.
Oh, maybe she would have already ended up in the hospital.
Her dad had called her several times, but she hadn’t answered any of them, focusing intently on her game. Several missed call notifications popped up on the notification bar, but she didn’t even look at them.
Halfway through a new level, a text message suddenly popped up on the notification bar: Yan Wei is asking if you’re asleep.
The sender was an unknown number.
Jiang Youyi paused the game, switched to the text message interface, first clicked on the phone number, created a new contact, typed in Zhou Xiaoxiao, saved it, and then replied: Not yet.
Immediately after, two new text messages came in.
Zhou Xiaoxiao: Yan Wei is asking if you want to play badminton tomorrow.
Zhou Xiaoxiao: If it doesn’t rain, she’ll borrow rackets from the equipment room.
Jiang Youyi: Has she finished her homework?
Another dorm room not far away, receiving Zhou Xiaoxiao’s feedback, Yan Wei: “…”
Excessive.
The next day, Jiang Youyi slept until 11:30 in the morning. The reason she woke up was because she was a restless sleeper, and her face was pressed against several comic books that hadn’t been put away, which was a bit painful.
When she got up, the other two students staying at school in her dorm had already left, probably to the cafeteria for food or to the classroom to study.
Jiang Youyi was staying at school temporarily, and there wasn’t much food in her locker. Too lazy to go to the cafeteria, she simply brushed her teeth, splashed some cold water on her face, rummaged through her small cabinet, found a box of instant noodles, and barely managed to have an early lunch.
Just then, someone knocked on the door. Jiang Youyi, with a plastic fork in her mouth, went to open it and was dazzled by a youthful and beautiful figure outside the door.
Yan Wei wore a white baseball jacket with black stripes over a light blue T-shirt, paired with low-waisted skinny jeans. She held two lunch boxes in her left hand and gave Jiang Youyi, whose hair looked like a bird’s nest, a radiant smile.
Perhaps it was because of her good fashion sense, but Yan Wei clearly hadn’t dressed up very deliberately, yet any set of clothes looked great on her like a clothes hanger. Adding her naturally beautiful face, which could easily score an eight out of ten without makeup, and a perfectly timed smile, it was truly unfair.
Jiang Youyi looked down at the wrinkled T-shirt she was wearing. It was clearly the same style and the same size, but on the two of them, it looked like two completely different styles.
Jiang Youyi felt a bit frustrated and a bit frantic.
Why had she been lazy this morning, just grabbing the clothes that were thrown on the bedside table yesterday and putting them on directly? If she had changed, even wearing her school uniform would have been better than this.
“What are you doing here?” Jiang Youyi half-pushed the door, not intending to invite her in.
Yan Wei raised the plastic bag she was holding. “Isn’t it obvious? Bringing food.”
Jiang Youyi pouted, took the instant noodle fork out of her mouth, and asked knowingly, “Bringing it to whom? There’s no one else in the room but me.”
“Who else do I know in your dorm besides you?” Yan Wei smiled, answering her questions without minding Jiang Youyi’s attitude at all.
Jiang Youyi was about to stubbornly say she wasn’t hungry and didn’t need food, but her stomach inconveniently let out a series of rumbles.
Jiang Youyi: “…”
She didn’t know what dishes Yan Wei had gotten, but it smelled quite good.
Two minutes later, Jiang Youyi simply tidied up her dog-kennel-like bed. Several dog-eared detective novels and comic books by her pillow were stacked and thrown into the suitcase under the bed. The quilt was rolled up and placed against the wall. She smoothed out the bed sheet, put a light-colored wooden movable small table board on it, and sat down opposite Yan Wei across the table.
Yan Wei’s eyes darted around. This dining environment was a bit rough and cramped, but it was very common in student days.
Jiang Youyi abandoned her just-opened instant noodles that she hadn’t even added hot water to, and opened the two white foam lunch boxes placed side by side on the table one after the other. The aroma of hot food wafted over.
Stir-fried shredded pork with green peppers, shredded pork with lettuce and fungus, as well as a cold cucumber salad and stir-fried seasonal vegetables – it could be said to be quite a feast.
The food from the school cafeteria had a strong “big pot” taste, but served out separately like this, it actually looked quite appetizing.
One box contained the dishes, and the other contained rice. It looked like a single serving, but why were there two pairs of chopsticks next to the rice box?
Yan Wei took one of the pairs of chopsticks before Jiang Youyi could, tore open the outer plastic wrapper, and picked up a mouthful of vegetables, putting it in her mouth.
Jiang Youyi: “Wasn’t this food brought for me?”
Yan Wei chewed the vegetables and replied vaguely, “Yeah.”
“Then you…” Jiang Youyi hesitated.
Yan Wei rolled her eyes at her. “Can you finish it all by yourself?”
Looking at the amount, she couldn’t finish it, but…
“I can’t finish it.”
“Then that settles it,” Yan Wei used her chopsticks to draw a dividing line in the middle of the rice box and pointed to the pile on the other side. “This, yours.”
Jiang Youyi: “…”
The two piles of rice on either side of the dividing line were the same size, seeming very fair, but something still felt off.
Jiang Youyi held her chopsticks, clasped her hands together, and mentally repeated three times: She didn’t do it on purpose, she wasn’t flirting with me, she’s straight! Straight! Straight!
Straight girls’ friendship is very pure, don’t overthink it, and don’t be presumptuous.
Raising her eyes, she saw the T-shirt on Yan Wei again.
Oh, to hell with straight girls’ friendship.
She still felt annoyed. Who could stand this?
Jiang Youyi fell into inexplicable life confusion. What exactly had she and Yan Wei talked about last night? Why had they reconciled?
Now that she thought about it, she suddenly felt like they hadn’t gotten to the point at all.
But what was done was done…
“The food will get cold if you don’t eat it soon,” Yan Wei placed a large piece of meat on Jiang Youyi’s pile of rice. The oil smeared onto the rice, golden and translucent.
Jiang Youyi picked up the slice of meat, wrapped it around a few grains of rice, put it in her mouth, chewed twice, it was quite fragrant, better than what the cafeteria aunties made.
Ugh, this was originally cafeteria food.
Forget it, whatever.
It was pretty good.
“Let’s play badminton this afternoon,” Jiang Youyi took two bites of rice, poked at her phone with her head down, deliberately not looking at Yan Wei. “I gave you the whole morning, you should have finished your homework, right?”
Heh, making her sleeping in and not getting up early sound so grand. If she hadn’t come over once around 10 o’clock and seen Jiang Youyi’s two roommates leaving, she would have believed Jiang Youyi’s nonsense.
“Finished,” Yan Wei had eaten almost enough and put down her chopsticks. “But I’m not playing badminton this afternoon.”
Jiang Youyi was surprised and looked up. “Why?”
It didn’t seem to be raining outside?
“I just passed by the small shop and saw that Detective Conan released a new volume. I’m going to read comics in the dorm this afternoon,” Yan Wei said matter-of-factly.
Jiang Youyi: “???”
Wasn’t Yan Wei’s biggest hobby studying? When did she actually start liking reading comics?
Author’s Note:
Yan Wei: Because you like it.