Chapter 33 Folding Stars (Transformed!) "Xie Shijin, do you like it..."
It's so noisy...
Cheng Shiyun was awakened by a burst of chattering and playing, her eyelids feeling as heavy as lead weights.
She struggled to open her eyes, and the tip of her nose brushed against a cool blade of grass.
Beneath her was soft grass, and not far away was a slide painted bright yellow. Several children were lined up, their short legs taking small steps up the slide. There were also swings nearby. This... seemed to be a kindergarten.
The fish ponds in the vegetable market, the alleyways of residential buildings, and now even a kindergarten—it's all so random!
Good news, she has been reborn.
Bad news: the lush green wheatgrass in front of her was even taller than her!
From this angle, it looks a bit like a flea.
...Cheng Shiyun had a bad feeling.
The most urgent thing is to find a mirror and see what kind of animal I've turned into this time.
"Ah!" A little girl suddenly fell off the swing.
The kindergarten teacher rushed over, picked her up, and asked, "What happened, Beibei? Where did you fall?"
Beibei pointed to the bushes and said, "T-Teacher, there's a snake!"
"A snake?" The teacher was startled and quickly looked around. "Where's the snake?"
The other children panicked and hid behind the teacher.
"Where are the snakes!"
Cheng Shiyun is terrified of snakes.
She looked left and right but couldn't see a snake, while the children kept backing away.
"Aaaaaah! A snake's coming! Run!"
"Quick, quick, into the classroom!" The kindergarten teacher scooped up two children who were crying in fright. "Teacher Zhang, let all the children go into the classroom and lock the doors and windows!"
The classroom door was slammed shut, and the teachers even brought out chairs to block it.
Cheng Shiyun's eyes widened.
Let her go in too; she's afraid of snakes too!
The bolder teacher grabbed a broom and chased them away by the window: "Go away! Don't come any closer!"
"Bad snake! Terrifying bad snake!"
Cheng Shiyun was hit by a stone thrown by a child.
My head hurts so much!
She instinctively took two steps back, then suddenly noticed a small shadow reflected in the glass door.
It was a long, thin creature with a body covered in dense scales. Its head was a small triangle, and it had a forked tongue sticking out...
When she moves, her shadow moves too.
Help! Help me!
Cheng Shiyun screamed, her scales almost bursting off her body.
She turned into a snake!
A small white snake.
"Hello, is this 119? This is Hongxin Kindergarten. We found a snake on the lawn in the kindergarten. We don't know what species it is..."
Cheng Shiyun heard the alarm message and keenly noticed the location name.
Hongxin Kindergarten is very close to Xie Shijin's home!
...
It took Cheng Shiyun ten minutes to accept the fact that she had turned into a snake, and another two minutes to run out of the kindergarten before the fire department arrived.
Afraid of being beaten, and even more afraid of being run over by a car, Cheng Shiyun hid in the bushes the whole way.
"Ni Jiaqi!"
Cheng Shiyun saw Ni Jiaqi outside the teachers' apartment.
The weather was sweltering, and Ni Jiaqi's back was soaked with sweat. He sat on the curb, his mother calling him several times, urging him to come home. He hadn't found Cheng Shiyun yet, and didn't want to go back, so he sat there all day.
"Cheng Shiyun, where did you go?" He wiped his wet, red nose.
Crying like this, you're really pathetic.
Ni Jiaqi sniffed twice and suddenly felt a rustling sound behind him.
He turned his head and found that the bushes behind him had been parted at some point. Looking down, he met a pair of small, dark eyes, no bigger than mung beans.
"Hiss~!"
Ni Jiaqi jumped eight feet high: "How come there are snakes here!"
He has been afraid of animals that crawl on the ground since he was a child—snakes, lizards, spiders, centipedes—any one of them that suddenly appears in front of him can scare him half to death.
Jelly once found a small snake somewhere and put it next to his pillow. It ended up crawling into his clothes. He carried that snake to class all morning, and when he finally pulled it out, he fainted.
The little snake in front of him looked just like that snake, and Ni Jiaqi got goosebumps. He kept backing away, shouting, "Don't come any closer... Get away, get away quickly!"
"..." You said it!
Cheng Shiyun turned and left.
Heh, she knew it. Ni Jiaqi was such a coward, he wouldn't even be able to support her, he'd scare himself to death first!
Just then, the bus arrived, and Ni Jiaqi boarded it as if fleeing. Cheng Shiyun didn't linger either, and disappeared into Xie Shijin's residential area.
Although the little snake has no hands or feet, she can climb up by wrapping herself around the handrail, which is much faster than climbing the stairs one step at a time!
Soon, Cheng Shiyun went up to the sixth floor.
She missed Xie Shijin so much, missed the cat food he made, missed his scent, and wanted to hug her and scratch her chin.
Although it had only been three days, Cheng Shiyun felt as if an eternity had passed. She couldn't wait to come back and see Xie Shijin, but when she actually stood outside the door, she felt a sense of... trepidation as she approached her fellow villagers.
She didn't know what kind of snake she was, but no matter how you looked at it, it wasn't very pretty. Ni Jiaqi was so afraid of her, how could Xie Shijin still recognize her?
She couldn't open the door because she had lost her key, so Cheng Shiyun had to go to the rooftop again and, just like last time, swing down to Xie Shijin's balcony.
But she didn't see Xie Shijin.
Are you not home?
The balcony window was open, and Cheng Shiyun hesitated before climbing inside. Just as she climbed onto the living room table, she heard someone unlocking the door.
"!"
Hide! Hide!
She wasn't ready to meet Xie Shijin looking like this.
Cheng Shiyun rushed into the bedroom.
Opposite Xie Shijin's bed was a desk, with the cabinet underneath half-open. Cheng Shiyun crawled inside without a second thought.
Then, with a "thud," it bumped into a transparent glass bottle.
She hit her head so hard it hurt.
After feeling dizzy and lightheaded, Cheng Shiyun shook her head and was suddenly surprised by what she saw.
...
Xie Shijin opened the door.
"Take a good rest. If you need anything, just come and find us. We're all home, so don't be shy." Uncle Lin from apartment 602 led him into the house.
After Ni Jiaqi left in the afternoon, Uncle Lin was worried about Xie Shijin. He had taken so many strange medicines, what if he didn't vomit them all up? Without saying a word, he took him to the hospital to have his stomach pumped.
Having been neighbors for ten years, Xie Shijin was practically his son.
Uncle Lin placed the medicine prescribed by the doctor on the living room table. Seeing that a strong wind had started blowing outside, which had even blown the curtains open, he said, "Close the balcony window. The weather forecast says it will rain tonight. I'll bring the flowers in for you too."
The boy treasured this pot of gardenias. One night, during a heavy rain, he went to the balcony to collect the laundry and saw the boy carrying the pot of gardenias in his arms as he walked into the house without an umbrella, his clothes completely soaked.
Xie Shijin looked out the window: "It's raining..."
"Yes, a torrential downpour."
"Have you logged off?" the boy asked, his voice confused.
Uncle Lin closed the window, gave him a strange look, and said, "No, it won't rain until tonight, around 9:30."
It didn't rain.
Why did he hear the sound of rain?
As soon as he closed his eyes, all he could hear was the sound of rain.
The ticking sound pulled him back into that nightmare.
In his dream, it was also a rainy day. The sky was extremely dark, and the rainwater was as deep as his knees, almost swallowing the entire street.
He ran against the current, doing everything he could to keep going.
The water was too strong, dragging his legs, he fell, got up, fell again, and got up again.
He had to get to school before 9:37 to stop something.
The icy rain poured down his throat, and the mud and sand stuck to his eyes.
He threw away his umbrella and took off his raincoat.
But it seemed that no matter how fast he ran, it was too late.
Uncle Lin kept rambling on, "Yichuan gets a lot of rain in the summer. This year is alright, but the past two years it rained for half a month at a time..."
His words abruptly stopped. Uncle Lin noticed his pale face and knew that he was thinking about what happened two years ago again.
The wind howled and crashed against the glass, making a dull thud.
Uncle Lin sighed: "Xiao Xie, what's past is past. If that girl were still alive, she wouldn't want to see you like this, would she..."
He spoke at length, and after a long while, the boy responded with a strained and hoarse voice.
"yes."
Uncle Lin smiled and said, "Then I'll be going now. The doctor said you should rest well and not go out today."
It's almost nine o'clock now. On rainy days, the boy would usually go out with an umbrella at this time.
Uncle Lin patted him on the shoulder, walked to the door, and closed it.
"Don't close the door."
Uncle Lin looked at him: "Aren't you going to close the door?"
The boy nodded and said:
"She doesn't have the key."
...
Cheng Shiyun returned even without the key, hiding in the closet and looking at the stars.
After all, she wasn't a real kitten and couldn't possibly sleep with Xie Shijin. She usually slept in her own bed and had only been to Xie Shijin's bedroom a few times.
So she didn't know that there were stars in the cabinet under the desk.
Those stars folded from fluorescent paper look ordinary during the day, but they glow at night and are very beautiful.
During her first year of high school, origami stars were all the rage on campus. Feng Yue would fold them next to her every day. Cheng Shiyun had also folded them, but she had never been good at handicrafts since she was little.
After breaking two strips of colored paper in a row, Cheng Shiyun gave up: "I won't break them anymore, I can't do it."
"Be patient, don't pull too hard when tying the knot, like this..." Feng Yue demonstrated for her, "Why don't you try again?"
Cheng Shiyun shook her head: "Why did you suddenly start folding this?"
It wasn't just Feng Yue; several girls in the class were folding folding paper. They folded it during class and after class. Old Zhao confiscated the tools used by several of them, but they bought more and secretly folded them.
Feng Yue kept her head down and didn't say anything.
Cheng Shiyun immediately sensed something was up: "Oh, you have someone you like?"
"Don't talk nonsense, I was just folding it for fun." Feng Yue covered her mouth.
It's the long break between classes now. Because of the rain, the students didn't go downstairs to run exercises, and the classrooms are noisy.
Cheng Shiyun rested her chin on her hand and asked curiously, "Does he like you?"
Feng Yue glanced at her classmates who were all busy with their own things, leaned close to her ear, and whispered shyly, "I like it."
Cheng Shiyun frowned: "...Then why didn't he fold it for you?"
Feng Yue was taken aback: "He doesn't."
"You can't even fold paper stars, so why do you like him?"
Feng Yue blushed, noticing the boy approaching behind her, and hurriedly said, "Xie Shijin is back, I have to go."
Cheng Shiyun grabbed her, determined to get to the bottom of it: "What do you like about him?"
Feng Yue sighed and said softly, "You'll know when you find someone you like."
"Even if I have someone I like, I won't fold folds for him; he'll only fold them for me."
The girl's voice was clear and bright, and her tone was matter-of-fact.
The school bell rang, and Feng Yue returned to her seat.
Feng Yue folded a really pretty star and gave one to Cheng Shiyun. Cheng Shiyun put it in her pencil case and would poke it with the tip of her pencil every now and then. Why couldn't she fold such a pretty star?
As she poked and poked, Xingxing escaped, rolled out of her pencil case, and landed on Xie Shijin's test paper.
Cheng Shiyun subconsciously looked up at Xie Shijin and smiled.
During this physics quiz, Mr. Zhao was grading homework and would occasionally look up at the students below the podium: "Do your own work, don't look around or whisper to each other."
Cheng Shiyun reached out to the boy, then withdrew her hand and patted her chest.
The sign language meaning is: Give me.
Xie Shijin glanced at her, lowered her eyelashes, and not only did she not return the star to her, she also opened it and looked at both sides.
It seems they are checking if there are any words written on it.
Cheng Shiyun: "???"
He suspected her of cheating?
To the girl's astonishment, the boy's slender fingers slightly bent, and in a few quick movements, he folded a star and pushed it onto her desk.
Cheng Shiyun was quite surprised. It's rare to see a boy with such dexterity; for example, Ni Jiaqi always tied his shoelaces in a knot that was impossible to untie. She realized for the first time that a boy's fingers could be so nimble.
Moreover, folding stars and origami cranes are generally considered skills that only girls possess, yet Xie Shijin could also fold stars.
But she was even more surprised now.
Cheng Shiyun had also bought this kind of glass jar before; it would take 520 stars to fill it.
She has little patience and only has a short attention span when it comes to crafts. After folding two or three pieces, she used the glass jar to weigh down the notebooks on her desk.
In front of Cheng Shiyun were two such large glass jars.
It was filled to the brim with paper stars that would light up.
So beautiful.
For whom did Xie Shijin fold so many stars?
The cabinet was only a few feet high, and the books from all three years of high school took up most of it, so the glass bottles were placed upside down, and paper stars emitting various colors of light filled a dim corner.
There seemed to be something pressing down under the bottle, reflecting the starlight and making the cabinet even brighter.
Cheng Shiyun used her head to push the glass bottle open.
It is a framed photograph.
A photo of Xie Shijin.
But it's not a photograph in the traditional sense; it's the kind that's been cut from a list of honors.
At the foot of each teaching building in Yichuan No. 7 Middle School, there is a wall of honor.
The top ten students in each monthly exam are called to the teacher's office for a photo, which is then printed on the honor roll. Once the new monthly exam results are released, the previous honor roll is removed.
I didn't realize Xie Shijin was so narcissistic; he even frames photos like this.
It's not that it can't be framed, it's just that it's... strange, and unnecessary.
He can take two selfies that look better than Lao Zhao's.
The bedroom door opened.
Xie Shijin came in.
Cheng Shiyun shrank further into the cabinet.
The bedroom window was open, and a cool breeze was blowing in. The weather forecast was wrong; it had already started raining.
Raindrops, carried by the wind, slanted in and pattered against the floor. It was very noisy.
Xie Shijin went to close the window.
He raised his hand, and Cheng Shiyun's pupils contracted slightly.
Xie Shijin was injured in his left hand, but the room was dark and the light was dim, so it was not very clear.
When he walked to the window, where it was slightly brighter, Cheng Shiyun saw that the bandage on his hand was seeping blood.
Outside the window, the night was dark and gloomy, and cold raindrops pelted down on me.
Xie Shijin pressed his palm against the window frame, his thin shoulders trembling, and his thin clothes offered little protection from the night wind.
He stood by the window, like a piece of light gray paper.
It was as if another gust of wind could blow the boy's body away.
It felt so faint that it lacked any real sense of reality.
But the single tear beneath his wet eyelashes, like a red-hot needle, pierced Cheng Shiyun's heart the moment it fell from the corner of his eye.
Cheng Shiyun felt a sense of suffocation, as if she could empathize with the situation.
She had only been gone for three days.
Why has Xie Shijin changed to this state again?
Is it because of... her?
Her departure seemed to cause him pain again.
Cheng Shiyun suddenly felt resentful that she had come back so late, and that she had avoided him even after returning.
"Xie Shijin?" the girl asked, her voice choked with emotion.
Xie Shijin slowly lifted her eyelashes: "...Cheng Shiyun?"
He heard Cheng Shiyun's voice.
The boy's eyes slowly brightened, and he hurriedly raised his hand to adjust the hearing aid in his ear: "Cheng Shiyun?"
"Hiss~ I'm here, you're not hallucinating, I'm back," Cheng Shiyun said. "I'm in this cabinet on the lower right side of your desk."
Xie Shijin's heart tightened, and he suddenly turned his head to stare at the half-open cabinet, walking over step by step.
His tone was one of joy, yet disbelief.
"...When did you get back?"
He knelt on one knee, his pale fingers resting on the edge of the cabinet, trying to pull it open.
Cheng Shiyun saw his fingers probe inside and suddenly shouted, "Ouch! Don't pull! Don't pull!"
"You're not allowed to move!" the girl said agitatedly, stopping him.
“Okay…” Xie Shijin took a deep breath, his Adam’s apple bobbing with a soreness. “I won’t move.”
His fingers were still resting on the edge of the cabinet door, not letting go, and the nails inside the cabinet had turned white.
Cheng Shiyun said, "I just got back a few minutes ago. I came back as soon as I woke up." She didn't waste any time on the way.
Xie Shijin asked, "Who opened the door for you?"
"Nobody's here, and I've lost my keys." Cheng Shiyun said, sounding a little aggrieved.
She searched for a long time in the bushes but couldn't find it.
"Then how did you get in?"
"The balcony window was open, so I crawled in through the balcony window."
She did the same thing last time, but last time Xie Shijin closed the window tightly, which almost caused her to witness his death.
"Why are you hiding in the closet now that you're back? Are you hurt?" Xie Shijin's voice was already hoarse.
"I'm not hurt, I'm perfectly fine, don't worry unnecessarily." Cheng Shiyun hesitated, then added, "There's a reason why I hid inside..."
“…Cheng Shiyun, let me see you.”
The boy prayed softly.
His voice trembled, low and hoarse, and he still seemed unable to believe it.
Cheng Shiyun's heart trembled upon hearing this, and her nose felt sore, but she wasn't quite ready yet, so she wanted to give Xie Shijin a heads-up first: "...Didn't I tell you before that I can transform?"
"I'm not lying to you, I really can turn into small animals, but I can't control what I can become, so this time, I didn't become a butterfly—"
"keep."
The boy interrupted her impatiently.
Cheng Shiyun was a little confused: "What?"
"Butterfly, mouse, bird, whatever you are, I will take care of you."
When Xie Shijin visited Puji Temple before, he said that no matter what she became, he would take care of her.
Hearing his firm and unwavering answer again now still made her heart pound.
After taking a few hurried breaths, Cheng Shiyun asked nervously, "...Hiss~ Where's the little snake?"
She pushed aside the two transparent glass bottles, climbed over the photo cut from the honor roll, followed the boy's cold fingertips, climbed up the back of his hand, and tilted her head to look at him.
"Xie Shijin, do you like little snakes?"
-----------------------
Author's Note: I knew you'd turned into a little snake the moment you made a sound! Hiss hiss hiss~
Finally, I can unlock the scenes where it's wrapped around my wrist, collarbone, and waist! Hehe [pants][pants]
Can become human
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com