Chapter 149: Junior High Classmates
“Sasha classmate, is this your first time at Nongda Affiliated High School? I wonder if the canteen dishes suit the tastes of all you Caida Affiliated High School classmates. If you have any opinions on the dishes, please feel free to complain to our canteen logistics department.”
“Have you tried the beverages from our club? For afternoon tea, having a cake and a cup of fruit milk from A Bite of China Club would be perfect.”
“Ah, right, I heard Yue Xiang Restaurant has opened a branch over at Finance University. What do you think of the stuff there? Our canteen cooperates with Yue Xiang Restaurant for meal supply, and I’d like to hear evaluations from other places too…”
After greeting them, Xiang Chuan’s mouth wouldn’t stop, instantly switching to corporate slave business mode, chattering away in a one-sided chat with the other party.
Sasha was chatted into a daze by her nonstop mouth, figuring there was originally no plan to connect with operations-level personnel, so she could only respond one by one with hasty yet polite replies like “Mm, yes” and “Okay, definitely next time.”
If Sasha hadn’t replied it would have been fine, as Xiang Chuan could react quickly and stop, but upon hearing that familiar customer-style response from Sasha, it was like pouring fuel on the fire for Xiang Chuan, making her mouth even more unstoppable. Ouyang Yating and Nancy saw their club president cornering Sasha like this, and the tension they had felt toward Sasha earlier eased somewhat, though they still quietly kept an eye on Sasha’s situation while sneaking glances at Ainuo’s reaction.
Ainuo himself had no special reaction to Sasha; instead, their club president’s obviously unbrakeable mouth gave him an urge to assign her extra homework: Why aren’t you this talkative when doing homework usually!
Sasha hadn’t expected to be first approached by this seemingly harmless same-age classmate. She quietly sized up Ainuo, seeing the calm expression on their face, relieved that her perfunctory performance hadn’t left a bad impression, yet also feeling a bit disappointed that it seemed she truly hadn’t left much of an impression on Ainuo back in junior high.
Fortunately, she hid it well and didn’t show a hint in front of others.
Just then, Sasha noticed her same-class friend leaving her seat and walking this way, her heart relaxing: She was saved.
But when the short-haired girl classmate who usually stayed by her side got close, Sasha realized the other was staring at Xiang Chuan the whole time, with a very complex expression on her face.
“Xiang Chuan… classmate?”
An Su Chun hesitantly spoke up; if not for their three years as classmates, she wouldn’t quite dare recognize Xiang Chuan.
“Mm? Who are you?”
Xiang Chuan, somewhat high from chatting, glanced at the newcomer. Her long-dormant “memory” stirred at the sight, but before her brain could process the contents of the “memory,” it subconsciously blurted out her first impression of the person.
Seeing this stunned “junior high classmate,” Xiang Chuan kept a straight face outwardly while screaming for help inwardly.
Yes, this was her… more precisely, a junior high classmate of “Xiang Chuan,” and even a same-class classmate. This was intel Xiang Chuan had just found in the “memory.”
“What? It’s only been a few months, and you’ve forgotten even your same-class classmate?” The short-haired girl frowned, her expression not looking good.
The other party’s unfriendly gaze made Xiang Chuan break out in a sweat, which actually let the Sasha who had just been relentlessly chatted up by Xiang Chuan breathe a sigh of relief. She curiously watched Xiang Chuan and An Su Chun, not forgetting to sneak a glance toward Ainuo.
When Chou Manman came in holding two sets of newly made sample uniforms, she saw this scene. After quietly asking around at the table where Class Eight students were gathered, she immediately charged over to Ouyang Yating and Nancy like she’d been injected with chicken blood, openly mixing in with the A Bite of China Club crowd to watch the gossip up close.
—Gossip! Gossip is a good thing! Xiang Chuan said that if you can’t think of a script, listen to the gossip around you for inspiration. And here it came! If not for considering others’ right to privacy, Chou Manman would now desperately want to pull out her terminal and turn on the camera for a 360-degree no-dead-angle shoot.
“Sorry, sorry, you’re An Su Chun classmate, right? I didn’t recognize you at first.” Xiang Chuan showed a polite and courteous smile, first apologizing to the other party.
She didn’t want to have too much involvement with the other party.
Perhaps because she wasn’t the original “Xiang Chuan,” she couldn’t read the emotional fluctuations of “Xiang Chuan” in the “memory,” but based on the scenes in the “memory,” the former Xiang Chuan had been a quiet and somewhat reclusive person in elementary and junior high. When Xiang Chuan viewed her “memory” in her free time, she rarely saw anyone besides family around her, which explained why her parents and sister had been so surprised when she brought Ouyang Yating and the others home before.
Fortunately, there was the all-purpose excuse of information turbulence; otherwise, with Xiang Chuan’s complete personality change, in ancient times she’d be thought of as possessed by a ghost.
Because of this, after arriving in this era, Xiang Chuan didn’t have many complicated interpersonal relationships to handle. The “junior high classmate” before her was, in the literal sense, a familiar stranger both to the original “Xiang Chuan” and to her.
Seeing the familiar business smile on Xiang Chuan’s face, the Class Eight crowd immediately understood her relationship with this An Su Chun classmate. They knew that business smile well! So very well! Every afternoon when they ran into Xiang Chuan wandering around the restaurant of A Bite of China Club, they often saw that very “fake” smile on her face when greeting other class classmates, while when serving them she was often expressionless, and sometimes with their troublesome orders, they could even see Xiang Chuan’s eye corner or mouth twitching at a certain frequency, but comparatively it was much more lively.
Xiang Chuan using this very “fake” smile to face this junior high classmate meant that in Xiang Chuan’s mind, she was about the same as those unfamiliar members from other classes.
This also made the Class Eight crowd drop the idea of going over to make friends.
—Rather than wasting energy on strangers, better to chat more with Xiang Chuan and mooch some good eats!
The Class Eight crowd, either eating cake or drinking beverages, thought so in unison.
Xiang Chuan’s response naturally didn’t sit well with An Su Chun.
Just now when Sasha left her seat to talk to the boy nearby, she had been gossiping with her classmate about her friend and his relationship. You know, Sasha was known at Caida Affiliated High School as the gentle high mountain flower admired by the first-year high school boys; she always kept her distance in exchanges with boys from the same school, and her somewhat carried-away demeanor today was truly unprecedented.
But before An Su Chun could gossip for long, she saw Sasha being pulled aside by a girl she hadn’t noticed earlier, who kept talking nonstop. Taking a closer look, she was shocked: It was actually Xiang Chuan, the quiet one from their class back then.
What shocked her even more was that the Xiang Chuan in front of her, chatting animatedly with Sasha, was worlds apart from the silent image in her memory. An Su Chun couldn’t hold back and walked right up, leading to the scene just now.
Looking at the Xiang Chuan in front of her who was smiling without sincerity, An Su Chun felt very uncomfortable inside. Though they indeed hadn’t interacted much, they had at least been classmates through those precious three years of junior high—yet why did it feel… no different from strangers?
Xiang Chuan: But aren’t they just strangers?
