“Brother, summer break is over, and there are only three days left before school starts. Do you actually have cancer or what?! It’s been two freaking months! Are you dead? At least say something!”
After a silence of two months, Gu Chen lay on his hospital bed holding his phone, a bitter smile finally appearing at the corner of his mouth.
This was his one and only kindred spirit at school, his roommate and desk-mate, Guo Ming.
He was an uncompromising “shut-in” whose usual hobby was researching various NSFW photos of gravure idols.
However, his drawing skills were top-tier; he possessed a “perfect clothing disappearance technique.”
Whether they were 2D or 3D, he could render them completely naked.
He had treated Gu Chen’s eyes to quite a feast in the past.
Ding-dong!
Soon, the WeChat notification sound rang again.
“Amitabha, mercy be upon you! Brother, I’ll definitely miss you. I hope you have a safe journey to the afterlife. Your death has absolutely nothing to do with me. All I did was show you that portrait I drew of Wang Meng from our class. You’re the one who couldn’t control yourself and ended up having a massive hemorrhage down there that led to your demise!”
Looking at the message, Gu Chen almost spat out a mouthful of blood.
‘Please, I’m begging you, don’t use your god-tier skills on our female classmates!’
Besides, while Wang Meng might not be the prettiest girl in class, her figure was definitely ranked number one, okay?
And with that baby face of hers, any man would find it hard to control himself.
“Screw you! Is that how you curse your own father? Your dear old dad isn’t dead yet. It’s truly a cause for celebration that I couldn’t fulfill your wish!”
“Holy crap! Brother, you finally replied! Do you have any idea how much I’ve suffered this entire summer break?!”
“How so?”
Gu Chen replied nonchalantly.
It was true that because of the sudden biological change, he hadn’t touched his phone for over two months.
As for Fatty’s curses, he ignored them.
After all, their bond was comparable to Naruto and Sasuke; he could handle a joke like this.
“It’s about the portrait! After you had that ‘hemorrhage,’ the Class Monitor came over to ask about your condition. I tried to be secretive, but she was sharp-eyed and found that portrait in your desk…”
“What?! You mean the Class Monitor found that drawing of Wang Meng?!”
Gu Chen was shocked.
If that was true, it was going to be a real problem.
“Yeah! Ever since then, she’s been making my life a living hell every single day. Just yesterday, she even came to my house and told my dad right to his face that she was going to take me to the police station to be executed! So, Brother, I really couldn’t take it anymore. I pinned the whole portrait thing on you. You can’t blame me, right?”
“Well, thank you so freaking much!”
Gu Chen rolled his eyes in annoyance.
He could imagine Fatty’s oval-shaped head hunched over his phone, laughing at him from the other side of the screen.
“But as your little brother — Brother, I suggest you hurry up and drop out or transfer schools. After the Class Monitor heard me say you were the one who drew it, she said: ‘I knew it was him!’ She also said she’d make sure you experienced one of the deaths from Detective Conan without even realizing it…”
Gu Chen frowned slightly upon hearing that.
In their class, he had always considered himself the “school tyrant.”
As the saying goes, one piece of rat droppings ruins the whole pot of porridge.
In their class, he was that piece of rat droppings.
In the Class Monitor’s eyes, he was definitely not a model student.
He was no different from a street thug.
After all, he frequently skipped class and got into fights…
There were even rumors circulating at school that he occasionally popped pills.
At the end of last semester, a pervert wearing a skintight bodysuit — the same kind as Alice from Goddess of Victory: Nikke — would appear in the artificial lake park every night.
Normally, that kind of cosplay wouldn’t be a big deal.
But what was absolutely unacceptable was that the person cosplaying was a freaking man.
Whenever he ran into female students, he would unzip the crotch and flash them.
That kind of psychological perversion wasn’t something you could blame on drugs, right?
Unfortunately, the Class Monitor had firmly decided in her heart that the cosplayer was him.
She was determined to find evidence.
Even though the Class Monitor was an unreasonable and troublesome woman, Gu Chen didn’t take her to heart.
A “real man doesn’t fight with women” — that saying had been passed down since ancient times for a reason, right?
Gu Chen soon ended the conversation with Fatty.
By the afternoon, he and his dad had packed up his hospital supplies and finished the discharge paperwork.
Walking out of the hospital gates, Gu Chen finally let out a sigh of relief.
Escaping the oppressive environment of the hospital made his entire body feel much lighter.
Back at home, the moment they entered, his dad went straight to the sofa and started tirelessly wiping their marriage certificate.
This had become a habit; he repeated it every day like a ritual.
Looking at that marriage certificate, a wave of complex emotions welled up in Gu Chen’s heart.
His dad had never been good at expressing himself.
In life, he used these “self-rituals” to alleviate his inner sorrow.
Gu Chen knew perfectly well that his dad had never truly moved on from the divorce.
Even though many years had passed, that broken marriage still seemed to weigh heavily on his father’s heart.
“I’m going to my room.”
Seeing this, Gu Chen didn’t know what to say.
Or rather, he had long since grown used to it.
His dad nodded slightly and continued wiping the frame.
Although he never spoke about why they divorced, Gu Chen had heard some gossip from relatives.
For instance, that the woman was loose and spent money like water…
There were even rumors that he was originally a twin, and that he should have had a sister.
Unfortunately, that sister wasn’t his father’s child.
It was said his mother had been with his dad and a Japanese guy within five minutes of each other, resulting in heteropaternal twins.
After the divorce, his mother took his sister and ran off with the Japanese guy, causing his dad to lose all face in the family…
As for the truth, Gu Chen had asked his dad before, but the man always kept his mouth shut.
Back in his room, Gu Chen stretched and lay down on his long-awaited bed.
The familiar scent was still there.
Strictly speaking, everything in the room was the same.
He was the only one who had changed!
“Dammit, do I really have to live as a woman from now on?”
The more Gu Chen thought about it, the worse he felt.
He sat up with a sudden kip-up and clenched his fists.
Because of his feminine face and girl-like voice, he had been bullied a lot and given all sorts of nasty nicknames.
Because of that, Gu Chen had trained his body desperately to pay back those past humiliations.
He looked at the posters of Bruce Lee, Sylvester Stallone, and the Spartans on the wall.
They were all “real men,” and they had all inspired him to become a true man himself.
Now, he only felt like he had failed them.
If they knew he had actually become a woman, wouldn’t they laugh their heads off?
‘Maybe I can get another sex change in the future? I heard medical science is very advanced nowadays.’
But Gu Chen immediately dismissed the idea.
Leaving the feasibility aside, the cost alone was not something his family could afford.
Before he was discovered to be female, his dad had already lost his job.
Adding this recent accident, their hard-earned savings were all gone.
If he didn’t find a way to make a living soon, even survival would be an issue.
At that thought, Gu Chen felt like a defeated rooster, unable to muster any spirit…
“Brother, just give in to me. I promise I’ll make sure you enjoy a woman’s pleasure from now on, hee-hee-hee…”
Fatty pinned Gu Chen to the ground, letting out his signature laugh.
Despite his best efforts, with his female body, Gu Chen was ultimately unable to defeat this pervert.
“No!!!”
In the middle of the night, Gu Chen woke up from the nightmare with a start, his forehead covered in cold sweat as he panted for breath.
‘What the hell kind of crappy dream was that? Why would I be pushed down by a guy like Fatty?’
‘Am I some kind of psychological pervert too?! That’s disgusting!’
Gu Chen pulled out his phone to check the time.
It was 3:30 AM.
He was completely awake now.
He got up, took a pack of tissues from his drawer, and sat at his computer desk, preparing to “study” with Teacher Cang.
However, he subconsciously reached for his handle, only to find nothing but empty space.
His interest vanished instantly, and he looked up at the ceiling, wailing in grief…