The volume of the speaking voices was actually not very loud, but my overly sensitive cat ears just happened to help me hear them crystal clear.
“That black-haired catgirl from the class next door, the one with red eyes—do you guys know her? I heard her personality is super terrible. When other people talk to her it’s like sticking against a cold butt.”
“Wow, for real? At the start of the semester I ran into her before. She looked pretty good-looking, just with a bland expression. Is she really that hard to approach?”
“It’s true. My friend is in the same class as her and said she puts on airs to death. When you ask her questions she doesn’t answer, just ‘mm-mm’s a few times with no expression, acting like other people owe her money.”
“Hahaha, that’s just the aloof goddess persona. That kind of character setting is pretty popular now. You don’t get it…”
As the class bell rang, the girls chatting in the corridor returned to the classroom. Only then did I quietly walk back from the corner and take another staircase to return to my classroom.
My fingers had long since unconsciously clenched tight, the nails sinking into the flesh of my palms and producing a faint pain.
I had not heard similar discussions many times.
Perhaps as such words spread and spread, they had already reached places I could not hear, turning into strange tales like demons and ghosts.
But this one time alone I remembered very clearly.
Every sentence that girl said pierced into the bottom of my heart like needles, and late at night fragmentary scenes would occasionally flash back.
There were not many catgirls in our school.
The orange-cat senior one grade above me wore a cute hairpin and was the vice president of the student council. She looked very cheerful and always greeted others with a smile.
Even in the same grade there were two other catgirls with different hair colors; they had both been recruited into sports clubs.
To be precise they had been snatched away, after all the physical advantages of catgirls were too great.
Unluckily, at present the only black-haired catgirl in the school was me, so the hard-to-get-along-with “black-haired catgirl” they spoke of was most likely referring to me.
I still felt somewhat sad inside.
It was not because I had been spoken of badly—I had long grown used to that kind of thing.
I was mainly worried that if these rumors reached Gu Fan’s ears, would he feel I was very inferior?
Umm… looking at it this way, I’m truly a complete social cripple.
Sensing that my subconscious wanted to start self-pitying again, in order to curb this out-of-control trend, I came back to my senses and continued the topic.
“Mm… so Big Sis has never dated either?”
“Dating? That I have. In university I found a boyfriend. I was the one who actively pursued him. He hadn’t dated anyone before either, saying he had always held the principle of prioritizing studies. Heh heh.”
Big Sis said this, a pleased expression floating onto her face, as if associating to warm scenes of getting along with her boyfriend.
“Is university life… interesting? Are there a lot of pretty girls?”
I did not know since when, but whenever I heard of new things or situations I had never understood, my first thought would always be—would these novel things snatch Gu Fan away from my side?
Even though I considered that in the social sense Gu Fan should temporarily belong to me, Gu Fan might not think so, yet my possessiveness was reminding me at every moment that I absolutely had to raise my vigilance and could not easily let Gu Fan be lured away by the flowers and plants outside.
Associating to this point, I suddenly felt I was very laughable.
Peers were all thinking about studying hard and striving to get into a good school, yet I had turned into a romance-brain catgirl who spent all day thinking of relying on dating to take Gu Fan down.
Peers were filling their minds with studying hard and striving for good schools, while I was deluding myself with further improper scenes. Truly a hopeless waste of a catgirl.
With me being this indolent, did I really have a chance to enter the same university as the academically excellent Gu Fan?
Even with three years of foundation, my grades could only be said to be pretty good right now, far from reaching the level of a top student.
“Same school? Why did you get together?”
The tone that blurted out became hurried.
Realizing this, I immediately steadied myself, took a deep breath, and made up for my earlier loss of composure.
“Umm, what I wanted to ask is how Big Sis specifically views this matter of dating… I want to use it as reference.”
Hearing this, Big Sis suddenly stared at me.
“Speaking of which, little Zhi Nian, you wouldn’t be wanting to get together with that childhood-sweetheart little handsome guy, would you? Or have you already gotten together?”
“Eh—wrong!”
My heart skipped a beat, and instinct prompted me to cry out involuntarily.
Although the motive for me gathering the courage to ask Big Sis was precisely wanting to learn some dating techniques from an older sister a few years my senior, being so straightforwardly pointed out in my thoughts still made me feel a bit embarrassed.
The body after becoming a catgirl also made me keenly perceive that under this stimulation, the muscles of my body spontaneously tensed tightly.
Perhaps just like a hard, stiff mummy?
If looking from a bystander’s perspective, at this moment it was as if strange little insects were crawling all over my entire body.
I nervously licked my lips, thinking of how to reply to Big Sis.
Such absurd associations floated up in my mind.
“Mmm… actually we haven’t gotten together yet, right? Although whenever I have free time I go find him, I always feel like I’m unilaterally sticking to him like a wood-boring insect. He’s always bland, without particularly strong or obvious emotional expression.”
At the beginning of speaking I was still a bit stumbling.
Later, while speaking and recalling Gu Fan’s everyday words and expressions, the speed of my speech began to become fluent.
“There’s this kind of thing? Little Zhi Nian, you wouldn’t have been taken control of by the other party, would you? From the sound of it, this little childhood sweetheart of yours seems to be of quite a high rank, firmly dangling little Zhi Nian. You have to know, boys of this age are itching to devour their girlfriends clean, you know?”
Hearing this, I immediately felt a wave of chill spreading from my chest.
Clearly it was an extremely hot summer, yet I was so cold that the tail behind me curled up with force.
The bones seemed to be trembling from freezing, yet the outer skin was extremely dry and hot.
So annoying so annoying so annoying…
Sister Lin Yun had a point…
I had already expressed my own feelings to Gu Fan both openly and covertly so many times, yet he had almost never actively expressed his own affection toward me.
The intimate contacts that had occurred so far were ultimately limited only to the level of more than friends but less than lovers.
It was as if an invisible ruler representing absolute rationality was lying horizontally between me and Gu Fan.
Absolutely forbidding crossing that taboo line.
At every moment reminding Gu Fan that he must grasp the proper measure.
I was only one step short of straightforwardly rushing up to kiss him and saying to him, “Meow! I love you, want to spend the rest of my life with you, hurry and marry me home as your wife meow!”—this kind of shameless words.
Why did Gu Fan just not understand?
Or was it really like Big Sis said, that Gu Fan was truly pretending to be stupid?
I did not know when, but Big Sis had slowed her forward footsteps and walked out of the cobblestone path.
I who was immersed in my own world followed step by step behind Big Sis.
By the time I came back to my senses, I discovered we were standing in the shade under a large banyan tree.
The cool summer wind brushed past the dense branches and leaves, drilling into the gaps of my clothes and skirt, slightly unraveling the red cloth net woven from restlessness that wrapped the surface of my whole body.
“Feeling better? Those things I just said were random guesses. Little Zhi Nian, you don’t need to take them too seriously.”
Seeing me slowly emerge from the dazed state, Big Sis leaning against the banyan tree said with a trace of apology.
“Actually before formally dating him, I would also randomly think of some baseless things and possibilities. I think it was probably the lack of security deep in the heart acting up. Uncertain whether I possessed it, and unable to predict the various risks after possessing it, I would subconsciously speculate whether the other party truly loved me.”
“Umm… so Big Sis would also think that way?”
Big Sis spread her hands.
“After all it’s also my first time dating. Plus I tested out from a small village. Getting along with a guy who’s always lived in a first-tier city, there’s always a sense of not being worthy in my heart.”
I lowered my head, rubbing the hem of my dress.
“Then how did Big Sis resolve it? I… I want to know.”
I gathered courage and forced myself to ask the most critical question.
I took several deep breaths before raising my head after finishing that sentence.
Big Sis lightly sighed.
“How to put it… some things, even if you work hard, may not necessarily have results, for example studying. But matters of feelings, no matter how hard you try, may not necessarily have results either. No matter how afraid I am, it’s only wasting time and mental energy in vain. Better to just go with the flow and relax the mindset.”
“Umm.”
The first thought that floated up in my mind was actually disagreement.
But I did not say it out loud, only pressed my lips tightly together.
The cat ears on my head uneasily curled up.
Big Sis was silent for a moment, then supplemented.
“In the end, this old lady’s conditions aren’t that bad either. I don’t lack this one man. If he really doesn’t like me, then this old lady can just switch to liking another man.”
But… but!
I anxiously opened my mouth wanting to refute, yet my barren vocabulary left me not knowing for a moment how to weave suitable words.
I could feel the cat tail behind me stretching open from its ball-like state, forcefully swinging left and right, up and down.
As if all the emotions I wanted to express had turned into kinetic energy of the body and been transmitted out through this playful tail.
Big Sis’s gaze lightly swept past behind me.
“Zhi Nian, you just think too much, think too far.”
“No, no. It’s that my personality is truly too terrible, and conditions in every aspect are too poor, so I must carefully consider all kinds of possibilities.”
“You little black cat who loves to randomly think—I understand you too well.”
This time the speed of my response even became normal.
Perhaps because the shortcoming I had always deliberately hidden had been poked.
Big Sis, half a head taller than me, slightly bent down and looked me face to face.
“You have it. You definitely have it. Catgirls are all very pure. If you have to think everything through clearly before you’re willing to take a step, by the time you’ve finished analyzing all the possibilities, the yellow flowers will have already gone cold.”
I was left speechless.
I did not know how to refute, because I also felt Sister Lin Yun was right. I truly was that kind of person.
Big Sis reached out and helped tidy my somewhat messy collar.
“If you ask me, little Zhi Nian has no need to belittle yourself so much. You have to know that in a certain sense, you are a rich young miss. Perfect looks, super good figure, and a very rare catgirl. No matter where you put her, Zhi Nian, you are the most sought-after dating target.”
“It’s not… true… not… true…”
Enn, weren’t we just chatting about Big Sis’s first love? Let’s continue chatting about that?
At this moment I could only murmur with this kind of repeated words, trying to negate Big Sis’s conclusion.
Unfortunately, Big Sis’s attitude this time was very firm. She had no intention of yielding and letting me perfunctorily brush the topic past.
“I still say the same thing. Zhi Nian, as long as you want, you can find boys whose conditions are several times better than your childhood sweetheart to be your partner. There’s no need to linger on a little tree accidentally discovered in the woods. Raise your head more and look around—how many tall, upright green pines are there.”
“…But I truly like him.”
After a moment of silence, I pressed my voice low and answered.
Then I heard Big Sis let out a cold snort.
“So, can you be certain he likes you? Can you affirm that his feelings toward you are the only ones?”
“I… don’t know…”
“Since the eight characters haven’t even formed a single stroke yet, yet he can make you worry about him all day. Don’t tell me you’ve already thought about where to buy the house after marriage and which kindergarten the child should go to?”
My extremely sharp hearing transformed the words Big Sis stated into one vivid picture after another and forcibly stuffed them into my brain.
The temperature of my face rose sharply. My brain seemed to vibrate as if trembling, like layers of floating waves.
If looking from a bystander’s perspective, perhaps right now clear visible hot steam would be floating upward above my head?
Hehehe.
The tips of my ears were especially scorching hot. Perhaps they had already turned so red they were about to drip blood?
At least I could feel the blood vessels forcefully pulsing, whether the ears below or the cat ears above—both were like this.
My eyes stared dead at the ground.
Unfortunately half the field of vision was blocked by my own peaks, so I did not even have the chance to try finding a suitable crack in the ground to drill into.
“Alright alright, after chatting for so long, we should go stroll around. Let’s go. We’ll go to the commercial street and see what specialties we can buy.”
The Big Sis who had been pressing step by step suddenly relaxed.
She moved a step to the side, took hold of my wrist, and without allowing any objection walked again toward the cobblestone path leading to the center of the plaza.
With my train of thought interrupted, I could only silently rein in the restless emotions in my heart and follow behind Big Sis with a red face.
Although I felt extremely ashamed and shy.
I had to say that having an older sister many years my senior to guide me truly made me think clearly about many things.
At the very least, I had to try.
Even if all those problems I imagined completely occurred, I could not possibly stop liking Gu Fan because of that.
I was just this stubborn kind of catgirl—not stopping until I reached the Yellow River.
Since Gu Fan delayed in giving his own answer, then I would go ask in person.