I Fell in Love With My Cold-Hearted, Flirtatious Roommate (GL) - Chapter 12

Before the three-day Christmas break, the Textbook Research class organized its final presentation. Passing this class meant the semester was nearing its end.

Two days prior, Rong Ting received the PDF version from Ran Jiu. It was surprisingly well-done.

She was astonished and wanted to offer some payment, but Ran Jiu refused.

She sent the PDF to the group chat. Except for Wan Sang, who came out to nitpick for a long time, no one spoke. Eventually, seeing the silence, Wan Sang had to offer herself an excuse: [Forget it. The time is so tight; doing it like this is pretty good. Let’s stick with it.]

When Rong Ting’s group went up to present, Rong Ting was the last to speak. Wan Sang went first and spoke eloquently for half an hour, constantly making eye contact and small gestures with the teaching assistant (TA).

The TA’s gaze noticeably shifted from encouragement to gradual impatience, visible to everyone.

The result was that the speaking time for the following students was severely compressed. Rong Ting immediately cut a lot of her material, compressing it into five minutes. The groups that presented afterward also complained bitterly in the chat, lamenting the lack of time.

Later, the TA also sent a message: [I hope students will cooperate well with their group members, discuss the time before the presentation, and do not steal others’ time.]

Suddenly, another message appeared below. The name was Zhang Ling, who was not in their class. Judging by the grade, she should be a senior one year ahead of them.

[Addendum: Don’t drag down the entire group’s progress and steal others’ spotlight.]

Wan Sang was sensitive and immediately took offense, immediately getting into a fierce argument with the other party.

The TA had to temporarily remove both of them from the chat, adding: [Students, please present well. Special situations are handled specially. Do not cause conflict in class or in the group chat.]

After class, Rong Ting felt a sense of relief all over. She just wanted to return to her rental room and sleep.

She knew Ran Jiu usually wouldn’t be back at noon, but she subconsciously sent her a message: [Are you coming back for lunch?]

“Rong Ting, Junior Sister.”

Hearing someone call her, Rong Ting looked up. A senior sister in a pink long dress was smiling at her. Her fluffy chestnut waves fell to both sides of her shoulders. She didn’t know the person in front of her and asked confusedly, “You are?”

“Oh, I’m Zhang Ling.” The girl in front of her was very poised, “I think the binding of the textbook you were responsible for is very good. We have to submit the final draft at the end of the semester. Can we borrow yours for reference?”

Generally, this kind of reference is sensitive, equivalent to plagiarizing the assignment in disguise. However, Rong Ting’s sense of group solidarity was weak at this time. Besides, there wasn’t much to reference in just the textbook binding. She agreed without much thought.

The two exchanged WeChat accounts, and Rong Ting only transferred the PDF version to her.

Wan Sang saw this scene, glared at them bitterly, and walked away aggressively.

In the afternoon, Rong Ting had just woken up when she saw Wan Sang @ her in the group chat again, asking if she had planned to embarrass her all along, deliberately making her unable to finish her speech in class. The language was so intense that it was unbearable to look at.

Rong Ting: [I don’t know that Senior Sister.]

Wan Sang: [Bullsh*t! Then why did she suddenly target me??]

Rong Ting: [I thought you understood best. Isn’t human malice often inexplicable? Maybe she just found you unpleasant to look at.]

This sentence was truly sent when Rong Ting was emotionally stable, but in Wan Sang’s eyes, it was equivalent to launching a missile at her.

The enraged Wan Sang posted in the group chat: [Then you team up with her next time.]

This was accompanied by a notification that Rong Ting had been kicked out of the group.

Rong Ting calmly switched pages, then clicked to delete the chat, and suddenly felt the world was much quieter.

Ran Jiu seemed very busy during this time. She came home close to midnight every time and left early in the morning. The two barely saw each other.

Rong Ting had planned to treat Ran Jiu and her helpful friends to a meal when she had time, but Ran Jiu was too busy, and the opportunity never arose.

That day, after submitting her final assignment, Rong Ting slept until the afternoon. When she woke up at 5 PM, she found a message in the group chat about the school distributing tickets for the Beijing International Film Festival (Di Du Da Ying Jie).

According to the previous student union president, this was an advantage of being in the capital. If they returned to other places, they might not have such rich cultural resources. Rong Ting deeply agreed, but she didn’t like places with too many people. She preferred visiting Beijing’s libraries, museums, and niche art streets.

Besides, she always took a “Buddhist” approach to grabbing the tickets the school distributed every year, so she likely wouldn’t get them.

Sure enough, as soon as the tickets were released, they were snatched up by the students who had been waiting in the chat.

She closed the screen uninterestingly, planning to take another nap, when a message suddenly popped up in the class group chat. This time, besides the film festival tickets, they also added five tickets for a Voice Acting Celebration (Pei Yin Qing Dian), first come, first served.

Voice Acting Celebration? Could it be related to Ran Jiu?

In the moment she was distracted, the tickets were also snatched by people who had raised their hands early.

The people in the chat were already enthusiastically discussing the film festival. A portion of the radio drama and voice acting enthusiasts were discussing voice actors.

Having grabbed nothing, Rong Ting lay down again dejectedly. She couldn’t write her paper, so she took out her phone and glanced at a few things.

It was normal for the film festival tickets to be hard to get; there were only a few for the whole school. But according to the group chat, the Voice Acting Celebration event happened to be scheduled at their university. They heard that many important voice actors from TV dramas would also be attending.

Rong Ting knew very little about this area, but a few people in her class were particularly fond of following radio dramas and often shared them on their moments.

She occasionally clicked on the live stream links shared on the moments. Such live streams usually didn’t show faces; you could only hear the voices.

Trained voices could satisfy various tastes of the audience. Some were Yu Jie (mature woman) voices, some were Luo Li (loli/young girl) voices, there were cold male god types, and there were those who imitated cartoon characters, satisfying people’s various fantasies about voices to a certain extent.

She subconsciously wondered, if Ran Jiu was also a voice actor, how would her performing voice differ from her real-life one?

She got up, opened her computer again, and searched for related videos on Bilibili.

Because of the upcoming event, many voice actor studios also posted rehearsal videos on the website. She chose a few to watch cursorily.

Most CVs live-streamed in pairs, joking and messing around, yet the bullet screens still covered the entire screen, filled with fans’ cheers of getting “food” (chi liang, slang for consuming fan content).

Rong Ting skillfully searched for Ran Jiu’s CV name. The videos inside were few, and several were noisy recorded broadcasts. After searching for a long time, she found one solo female vocal reading. It wasn’t even credited with the CV name. The title was simply Xiang Ji Xuan Zhi (The Record of the Xiang Ji Chamber), published by Freesia Studio.

As the gentle background music began, the reader’s voice had fewer twists and turns. The timbre gave a texture of falling raindrops. The even tone was permeated with a faint sense of melancholy.

Rong Ting knew immediately that it was Ran Jiu reading. Moreover, this audio was close to her natural voice. It felt less like a performance and more like the emotion she carried.

Rong Ting understood the essay but didn’t understand her.

Or rather, she herself was like a difficult puzzle.

This work was nestled among a bunch of videos from famous CVs. It had over 4,000 comments and two or three thousand saves.

Rong Ting clicked “Save” and then followed Freesia Studio and a few of the voice actors. Finally, the cursor circled Ran Jiu’s profile picture a few times, but she still didn’t click “Follow.”

Ran Jiu, for Rong Ting, was always an elusive secret, cool and mysterious, making her gaze unconsciously focus on her.

Yet untouchable.

Rong Ting thought resignedly, as long as the location was on campus, even if she couldn’t get a ticket, she could still stand outside and take a look, right?

The more she thought about it, the more troublesome it became. She simply listened to that video over and over again.