The Female Lead Keeps Forcing Me to Take My Meds [Quick Transmigration] - Chapter 27

Chapter 27: Puppy Love?

At 4:30 in the afternoon, Ni An timed her trip to the restroom perfectly to freshen up her makeup. She reapplied her lipstick and, after admiring her reflection in the mirror, nodded with satisfaction.

This makeup was suitable for her movie night, too. She just needed to change her clothes at home.

She returned to her desk and unplugged three fully charged power banks, her laptop, two cell phones, and the wireless earbud case, neatly packing everything into her bag.

Standing in front of her desk, she paused, then put two unopened packs of tissues that were next to her computer into her backpack.

Ni An: “Almost forgot these. We ran out of tissues at home, and the ones I bought haven’t arrived yet.”

Everything packed, she hummed a tune in her heart as she headed toward Xi Congshuang’s office, waiting for her boss to give the order for everyone to clock out.

Xi Congshuang was sitting behind her desk, staring silently at her phone.

After three consecutive days of her offer to pick up the girl being rejected, Xi Congshuang finally confirmed that Cheng Zhishu was intentionally avoiding her.

The phone screen displayed the chat history from the past few days.

Orange: Sister, go home first after work. I’m going to buy new workbooks with Shangguan Yin today. Snowflake: https://www.google.com/search?q=Okay. Be careful on the way.

The next day.

Orange: Sister, go home first today, too. I need to go to Shangguan Yin’s house to explain a few problems to her. Snowflake: https://www.google.com/search?q=Okay.

Today.

Orange: Sister, go home first.

The first two days, she at least offered excuses. Today, she didn’t even bother with a reason.

Snowflake: What does Shangguan Yin need you for again today?

A notification tone sounded on Cheng Zhishu’s phone; a message had arrived.

…

Shangguan Yin, who was correcting errors on her test paper, suddenly felt a chill down her spine. She let out a huge sneeze, rubbed her nose, and asked blankly: “Huh? Did I catch a cold?”

Cheng Zhishu, staring at her phone: “…”

She glanced guiltily at the oblivious Shangguan Yin next to her and nervously typed: “Recently, the teacher formed English groups based on student scores to practice speaking. I have to wait until the other group members finish their tasks before I can leave.”

Not wanting the innocent Shangguan Yin to be burdened by her lie, Cheng Zhishu painfully deleted Shangguan Yin’s name and typed “other group members.”

The so-called English group consisted of two people. The group member who couldn’t complete the task was the subject-skewed Shangguan Yin.

She could score 148 in Math and 120 in Chinese, but English was hopeless. Absolutely hopeless, which left her lagging at the bottom of the class.

“Uh… Abba, abandon, right, abandon…” Shangguan Yin scratched her head, struggling to spell the word.

A moment later, Cheng Zhishu received a message.

“…”

For some reason, Cheng Zhishu suddenly felt that it was not okay at all.

She almost edited the message to hold Xi Congshuang back, then abandon the perpetually struggling Shangguan Yin, toss her backpack into the car, and go home.

But she couldn’t. She was afraid that seeing Xi Congshuang would reveal her true feelings, and she might uncontrollably ask about the progress of her marriage intentions.

And by what right could she ask that question?

“Sigh…” Cheng Zhishu turned off her phone.

…

On the other side, in the office.

The song in Ni An’s heart was about to reach its climax when she was interrupted by Xi Congshuang’s sudden question.

“Ni An.”

Ni An: “Yes, I’m here.”

“If someone you adopted was very attached to you, told you everything, and you had a very good relationship, and then one day she suddenly distanced herself without warning, what would you think the reason was?”

Adopted?

Ni An, who keenly caught the keyword, immediately thought of the sunny little girl. Her boss must be talking about her.

She must mean her sister, right?

Ni An, an only child who didn’t have a sister: “Uh, well…”

She struggled to think, but as an all-purpose assistant, she had the responsibility to solve any problem her boss might have.

Xi Congshuang, also an only child, looked up, waiting for her answer.

Ni An racked her brain: “Maybe it’s because she’s growing up and feels she needs a little privacy. And for a high schooler like little sister Cheng, she must have lots of friends she hangs out with.”

Xi Congshuang: “…”

Ni An’s confidence gradually weakened: “And because she’s playing with friends, it naturally squeezes out time with family. My high school and college years were when I spent the least time with my family.”

Xi Congshuang: “…Was your high school period like that?”

Ni An’s confidence swelled a tiny bit: “Yes.”

No answer came from the other side, only a long silence that made it hard for Ni An to breathe.

Finally, Xi Congshuang’s voice came from across the desk: “I see.”

“Time’s up. You can go home.”

Ni An’s racing heart quietly settled. She was thankful that she hadn’t blurted out the phrase ‘puppy love’ in her haste.

High school is a time of rich emotions, when girls are thinking about love. Puppy love is perfectly normal.

But I didn’t expect the boss to be so strict about family education. I guess I saved little sister Cheng’s life.

Xi Congshuang wheeled herself ahead, and she and her assistant took the elevator down to the underground garage.

Inside the elevator car, Assistant Ni clenched her fist, feeling that she had successfully completed another day as a reliable employee.

…

When she got home, Xi Congshuang ate dinner as usual, went upstairs to wash up, finished up the remaining work, and finally, read a book.

Cheng Zhishu wasn’t coming home for dinner these days, so Xiao Liu didn’t save any food, only preparing desserts and fruit in the fridge.

According to her schedule, Xi Congshuang would take a bath half an hour after dinner.

She was used to reading before bed, but it wasn’t time yet, and she was dealing with tedious, uninteresting work on her computer.

Buzz— A message arrived.

Xi Congshuang reached for her phone. The screen lit up, and after seeing the name Xi Hanran on it, she immediately put the phone down.

She wasn’t in the mood to open it.

A new project had recently been assigned to her, and Xi Hanran had been furious about it for days.

That’s why she kept sending messages to stir up trouble, as if Xi Congshuang would be delayed in her work due to chatting for too long, thus making the project less perfect.

The buzzing of the phone irritated her. Xi Congshuang flipped the silent switch.

“Needs privacy,” Xi Congshuang repeated quietly, leaning back in her chair, recalling Ni An’s words.

She closed her eyes, letting the light from the computer screen reflect on her face.

She almost forgot that people need personal space. No one will expose everything about themselves unreservedly to others.

…

“Congshuang, what are you doing? How can you watch this kind of video? It’s all my fault for not educating you properly, leading your thoughts astray.”

“What am I watching, Mom? I just accidentally clicked on it.”

“But the account history shows you watched for over an hour, and you skipped the progress bar three times during the climax! Who introduced this to you?”

“I wanted to watch it myself. No matter how many friends you ask, I’ll only give you one answer: I watched it on my own.”

“Fine, very good. I will contact the engineer to properly deal with the network at home and have them filter out this useless content. The future heirs of the two families don’t need to watch this junk. It will ruin you.”

What happened next?

The fiery young girl argued with her mother. The footage from the security cameras attracted her father, who was working overtime at the company, and they both listed all of her recent shortcomings.

She regressed, they were disappointed, she was their pride, and she shouldn’t be like this.

If it were the current Xi Congshuang, she would coldly smile and have the bodyguards usher them out, politely and distantly saying she would visit them next time.

But the teenage Xi Congshuang was much simpler. She would throw everything she could see, trying to prove her resistance with hysteria.

Then everything would crash heavily to the floor, making a dull “Thud!”

“Thud!”

Xi Congshuang opened her eyes and looked at the wall connecting the adjacent room. She quickly deduced that Cheng Zhishu was back.

The evidence was the lit-up balcony and the light shining from the next room.

Cheng Zhishu bent down, carefully lifting the chair that had fallen to the ground and setting it upright. She tilted her head to listen but couldn’t hear anything.

She let out a breath and righted the chair. She didn’t think her backpack was that heavy. How did she knock the chair over?

Separated by a wall, Xi Congshuang put her hands back on the computer keyboard, her fingers tapping.

It’s fine. It should be this way.

Maintaining the status quo is good.

…

Sometime after that, Xi Congshuang stopped texting Cheng Zhishu or offering to pick her up after work.

Initially, Ni An was a little unaccustomed and accidentally let a question slip.

With Li Mi looking at her with an expression that said, “Are you crazy? How dare you ask that?“, Xi Congshuang answered impassively: “Didn’t you say teenagers need privacy?”

“Huh?” Ni An was confused.

The self-righteous tone made Ni An think for a while, only then remembering the question her boss had asked her earlier. For some reason, she had the illusion that she detected a hint of resentment in her boss’s voice.

But Xi Congshuang was expressionless, so it must have been an illusion.

Ni An: “Yes, they like to play around at this age. Too much restraint and pressure will limit their nature.”

“…”

Li Mi only wondered what sort of “death-sentence” words Ni An was saying to the boss.

Unexpectedly, Xi Congshuang really fell silent and didn’t object.

Li Mi: “…!”

She sharply turned to look at Ni An, wanting to ask what she put in the boss’s lunch every day!

Ni An panicked: “Look at the road, aaaaaah!”

From that day on, Li Mi waited for the day Ni An would realize where things were going wrong.

Every day while driving, the sight of Xi Congshuang and Ni An automatically played a song in Li Mi’s head—How can I blame you for your mistake? It was me who gave you too much freedom.

…

It wasn’t until late autumn started to show its signs, and everyone added another layer of clothing, that Li Mi drove to the Xi Group headquarters as usual.

She parked the car in the designated spot, waited for the right time, opened the door, and stepped out. She put a long trench coat over her suit.

The weather had indeed gotten cold these past few days. Her boss had even extended her working hours, which was a regrettable change from her usual excellent style of being late and leaving early.

However, Li Mi was fully prepared and had turned on the car’s heater before getting out.

Five minutes later, the elevator descended in the distance. Xi Congshuang and Ni An emerged from the elevator. Li Mi stepped forward, opened the car door, and helped Xi Congshuang settle into the car.

Everything was as usual, flawless.

As she closed the car door, Li Mi thought about how Cheng Zhishu had two hours of evening self-study these days, and her boss had asked her to handle the pick-up and drop-off, doubling her salary. That was great.

She should be able to cobble together a week of annual leave this year to travel to a place she wanted to visit.

Li Mi was happily lost in her travel plans until a phone call shattered the peace.

“Why is Teacher Wu calling so late?” Xi Congshuang’s cool voice posed the question. “Oh? You said puppy love?”

Ni An: “?!”

Li Mi was shocked. My background music actually has such a wide range of application?

A few minutes later, Xi Congshuang ended the call with the Class 1 homeroom teacher.

She commanded: “We’re not going home. Go to No. 1 High School first.”

Li Mi couldn’t help but straighten her back, silently enduring the low pressure from her boss: “Understood.”

As for Ni An, who should have been in the passenger seat, she had already decisively fled as soon as she sensed the situation was wrong, even if it cost her ten yuan in transportation fees.

…

It was late autumn, and the sun set early. It was already dark shortly after dinner.

At the school, the buildings for the senior year were brightly lit. It wasn’t evening self-study time yet, and students were moving freely, snacking or discussing novel events from the day.

Wen Yan was resting her head on her desk, trying to sleep. The other students in the class were noisy.

Her deskmate, who had gone to pour water, suddenly returned and shook her shoulder to wake her: “Wen Yan, Wen Yan, huge news! Don’t sleep. Want to hear some massive gossip?”

Wen Yan, shaken violently, struggled to sit up and squinted: “Go on. Which rival team member of the idol group you stan is secretly dating now?”

Her deskmate was excited: “No, no! Not my bias’s rival. It’s your rival!”

Wen Yan: “I don’t follow celebrities. Where do I have a rival?”

Deskmate: “Mulan! She was caught by the teacher reading a love letter, and she’s already been called to the office. She won’t tell the teacher who wrote the love letter either.”

“…” Wen Yan sat up straight: “You mean, Cheng Zhishu?”

Her deskmate continued: “The Class 1 homeroom teacher is absolutely against any form of puppy love. She will definitely be calling the parents.”

When Wen Yan looked confused, her deskmate nodded: “Yeah, Mulan.”

After the summer vacation and before officially entering the senior year, Wen Yan had hired a tutor, hoping to secretly study and achieve an overtaking curve.

Moreover, her biological parents had moved out of the Xi residence and into a nearby neighborhood for some reason, making it more convenient for her. She didn’t have to travel back and forth between the two houses in the north and south of the city, allowing her to focus entirely on her studies.

However, the opening exam shattered Wen Yan’s beautiful dream completely. Cheng Zhishu firmly occupied the first-place spot, always maintaining a gap of five points or more with the students behind her.

Initially, the top five students were all determined, pulling out all the stops to surpass her. Later, they realized that no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t surpass Cheng Zhishu. She still held a five-point lead over the second place.

That was talent.

And the second-place student, unfortunately, was Wen Yan.

As for Cheng Zhishu’s nickname, it stemmed from her one-against-four fight in the derelict building, where she single-handedly caused the other party to drop out of school, making her utterly famous.

The Class 2 students, who had initially been hostile towards the transfer student, instantly changed their opinion of Cheng Zhishu.

They genuinely believed she wasn’t a cuckoo bird stealing a nest but clearly a great benefactor. And since Wen Yan herself didn’t care, how could they continue to care on her behalf?

Any student focused on their studies would dislike people who disrupted discipline.

Class 2 had endured the two black sheep—the ones who lowered the average score and played games during class—for a long time, hoping daily that they would suddenly see the light and drop out.

But their family shame had to be solved by an outsider. Cheng Zhishu quickly and efficiently got rid of the two culprits.

Thus, Cheng Zhishu’s reputation grew with every exam where she appeared on the Honor Roll. She was famous on campus, known as the Goddess of War, Mulan.

…

The Cheng Zhishu whom everyone was curious about was indeed in the office.

She didn’t stubbornly protect her romantic interest or betray the love letter’s writer, nor did she weepingly promise not to do it again.

Cheng Zhishu was calmly numb, attempting to explain to the teacher: “Teacher, I genuinely don’t know who wrote it.”

Teacher Wu didn’t believe her: “If you don’t know who wrote it, why did you open it?”

Cheng Zhishu: “…”

The situation was actually purely an accident. Cheng Zhishu, who had returned after dinner, sat down to tidy her desk and found that someone had slipped a love letter into her drawer sometime earlier.

Pink cover, clean and delicate handwriting, no signature. It was unfamiliar.

But from the appearance and the sweet-smelling envelope, it was a love letter.

“…” It looks like a girl wrote it.

Cheng Zhishu held the love letter, staring at the cover for a long time. For the first time, she didn’t casually toss it into a bag for a mass disposal after school.

Thinking that if Sister ever decided to marry again, she might have a chance to be considered, but before that, she should probably learn how to date—she opened the love letter for the first time.

She was studying it seriously, with an almost academic mindset. Unfortunately, she was so engrossed that she failed to notice the danger quietly approaching from behind.

Cheng Zhishu was reading the love letter. Teacher Wu was also watching her read the love letter, both of them appreciating the tender and subtle feelings of a young girl.

Seeing Cheng Zhishu becoming more and more absorbed, Teacher Wu snatched the letter and scanned it. She instantly exploded.

Hmph! Where did this little demon come from, seducing my star student and corrupting her focus? This threat must be eliminated.

Cheng Zhishu was called to the office in front of the whole class, leading to the current questioning.

Cheng Zhishu: “Because I receive over a dozen love letters every day. I haven’t read the others. I put them in a milk tea bag and dispose of them all on the way home.”

Teacher Wu was even more suspicious: “If you didn’t read the dozen letters every day before, why did you specifically read this one? Isn’t it because you knew who wrote it and opened it on purpose?”

Cheng Zhishu: “…”

The teacher makes too much sense. She couldn’t refute it.

Teacher Wu looked regretful: “No, I have to talk to your parents about this. You’re in your senior year, Zhishu. You can’t let a brief feeling fueled by hormones mess up your most important time.”

“When you get to university and enter society, many more wonderful people will be waiting for you.”

“The teacher just doesn’t want this relationship to be a source of regret in your life. I have seen too many people who regretted it.”

But.

The homeroom teacher not only failed to eliminate the factor corrupting her star student’s focus but actually summoned the person she believed was doing the corrupting!

And she did it in the form of a parent-teacher conference.

Teacher Wu was fiercely determined to handle this matter of “puppy love,” which would otherwise have died a natural death. Considering Xi Congshuang’s mobility limitations, she even specifically moved the meeting to the first-floor conference room.

First, there were no other teachers nearby, which wouldn’t hurt Cheng Zhishu’s dignity.

Second, Xi Congshuang’s wheelchair could enter.

This matter had to be discussed thoroughly. Teacher Wu was aware of Cheng Zhishu’s family background and knew that Cheng Zhishu didn’t have as many options in life. Her margin for error was smaller than that of other students.

Studying hard and getting into a good university was currently her best path.

Teacher Wu acted too quickly for Cheng Zhishu to stop her. After an unresolvable discussion, the security guard announced that the parent had arrived at the gate.

The previous guard had been fired for negligence. The newly hired one was much more responsible than before, ensuring the last incident wouldn’t happen again.

“Zhishu, go and bring Miss Xi over. I hope you will take the initiative to explain the situation to Miss Xi.”

Teacher Wu asked Cheng Zhishu to personally fetch her parent, so she went.

Her slender figure walked through the night. The sound of teachers lecturing in various classrooms was left behind her. She saw the familiar car again.

The first time she saw this car was on a rainy day.

The beautiful person smelling of medicine inside the car reached out to her. She vaguely felt that this must have been the beginning of her infatuation.

When she saw the person step out of the car and met Xi Congshuang’s eyes, Cheng Zhishu realized she hadn’t taken a good look at her in a long time.

When exactly did it start?

Everything began unspoken, then the mutual distance, and now this sudden collision again.

And has she chosen her marriage partner yet?

The teardrop mole beneath Xi Congshuang’s eye was captivating. She opened her mouth and asked: “Who is that person? Is it Shangguan Yin again?”

Cheng Zhishu: “…”

No, it’s not her.