After Transmigrating into a Book, I Saved the Cheap Shou - Chapter 17

The bell signaling the end of lunch break rang throughout the campus. An Zhixia thought she would talk things out properly with Su Chen after school. However, the moment class ended, Su Chen immediately stood up and left the classroom.

“Why are you walking so fast! Wait for me!” An Zhixia quickly followed.

“Su Chen!”

An Zhixia watched his figure gradually moving farther away and shouted loudly, “I’m sorry!”

Su Chen stopped in his tracks and turned back in confusion.

She fiddled with her fingers. “I’m sorry, okay? I was too willful. I was the one who asked you to come with me, but I still got mad at you.”

Su Chen said, “I’m not angry.”

An Zhixia crossed her arms and turned her head away. “If you’re not angry, then why did you ignore me the entire afternoon!” As the second young miss of the An family, this was the first time someone had treated her this way.

Su Chen rubbed his temples helplessly. “It’s my own problem. It has nothing to do with you.”

An Zhixia opened her beautiful eyes, a little upset. “Then if you have a problem, just say it! We’re friends, aren’t we? If you’re troubled by something, can’t you tell me so we can figure it out together?”

“You don’t consider me a friend?”

Su Chen froze, clenching his fists. He… had assumed An Zhixia was only using him as a tool to get closer to Gu Jingning. Although she had helped him out many times in front of others these past days, he still didn’t dare to easily trust anyone.

“Hey! Say something!”

Su Chen pressed his lips together and noticed many curious students looking their way. “Let’s find somewhere else first.”

An Zhixia took Su Chen to a café she often visited after school.

The café had a modern style. As soon as they pushed open the door, the air was filled with the bitter aroma of coffee and the sweet scent of cakes. Behind the counter, a barista was wiping glass cups. It was after-school hours, so quite a few students were scattered throughout the shop.

They sat down in a corner seat. This was Su Chen’s first time entering a café, and he looked around curiously.

Many people were sitting inside, yet the environment wasn’t noisy. Some were focused on doing homework while occasionally sipping their drinks. Others were chatting with friends over cake. Almost everyone, without exception, was wearing the same school uniform as him.

“What are you thinking about?” An Zhixia’s voice brought Su Chen back to his senses. She handed him the menu. “What do you want to drink?”

Su Chen lowered his head to look at the menu. His eyelids twitched slightly. The price of a single drink was roughly equal to his daily food expenses. His fingertips instinctively tightened as he pushed the menu back.

He said calmly, “You order.”

An Zhixia didn’t notice Su Chen’s emotions. She said generously, “I’m treating you, no need to be polite.”

Su Chen refused again. “No need.”

*Sigh, so stubborn.* She pressed the service bell. When the waiter came over, she ordered two iced lattes and ten different desserts. After closing the menu, the waiter confirmed again whether she really wanted so many. She nodded firmly.

“Can you finish all that?”

“Don’t underestimate a little girl who loves sweets.” An Zhixia said proudly.

They had known each other for half a year. In Su Chen’s eyes, no matter what An Zhixia did, she always did it with full confidence and arrogance, as if even if she pierced a hole in the sky, someone would patch it up for her. Her existence sometimes felt blinding to him. Her smugness unintentionally magnified his own helplessness.

“You asked me earlier whether I consider you a friend.” Su Chen looked straight into An Zhixia’s eyes. “Honestly, no.”

“……”

“You want to use me to get to know Senior Gu. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with thinking that way.”

“……”

“My family background is different from yours and your friends’. Our values are different too. What benefit could you possibly get from being friends with me?”

“……”

“Hey! Are you even listening?”

An Zhixia was taking small bites of cake. When she heard Su Chen call her, she picked up a napkin and wiped the cream from her mouth.

“Are you done?”

Su Chen closed his eyes helplessly. “…Yeah, I’m done.”

“I thought it was something serious! That’s all?”

She stabbed a strawberry on the cake with her fork. “I’m rich, I have a good personality, and I’m pretty. Do you know what my only regret is?”

“…Not being able to acknowledge your brother?”

“…That’s another one.”

She cleared her throat and put on a serious expression again. “It’s not having a real friend! A real friend!”

She held her forehead with one hand. “Everyone around me only cares about money. I don’t have a single sincere friend.” She hugged herself. “And the one person I actually wanted to befriend told me we’re just using each other for mutual benefit!”

“Am I destined to be trapped in fake relationships for the rest of my life?”

“…Stop acting. It’s too fake.” Su Chen turned his eyes away, refusing to watch the person with the exaggerated acting skills.

An Zhixia smiled sweetly. “Hehe, I was kidding. The people around me are all very nice, and the friends I make are sincere. But…”

“I’m sincere with you too.” She dropped her smile, no longer playful, and said seriously to Su Chen, “At the beginning, it was indeed because of my brother. But if that was the only reason, I wouldn’t keep coming to find you to hang out. I could just contact you by phone, right?”

“How should I put it…” An Zhixia racked her brain, trying to express her thoughts, but her language skills had always been poor. After thinking for a long time, she couldn’t come up with anything elegant, so she simply blurted out whatever came to mind: “I want to find my brother, but I also want to be friends with you. So I use finding my brother as an excuse to be friends with you. Um… do you understand? Anyway, the meaning is — I want both!”

A harsh scraping sound came from the chair at the next table.

“……” Su Chen stuffed a piece of cake into An Zhixia’s mouth.

“I understand. Keep your voice down.”

What An Zhixia meant was that she wanted to acknowledge her brother through him, but that also gave her the opportunity to become friends with him.

“Why… do you want to be friends with me…” Su Chen hesitated. He didn’t believe there were people in the world who wanted to be kind to others for no reason.

“On one hand, my personality just likes meeting different kinds of people. But on the other hand…” An Zhixia raised one eyebrow, her eyes carrying a touch of arrogance. “This young lady liked the confident and radiant way you looked when you gave your speech on stage at the beginning of school.”

“I originally thought you were the hidden son of some prestigious family. But when I found out you were just a poor student, I became even more interested in you.”

She tilted her head and twirled a strand of her long hair around her finger. “My dad often tells me to make more meaningful friends for the future. I think…” She smiled brightly at Su Chen. “You will also be a meaningful friend to me.”

Su Chen heard the person at the next table pull out their chair and leave. After thinking about An Zhixia’s words for a moment, he said, “…In the end, it’s still because I’m useful to you?”

“Sigh, why overthink so much? Who says you can’t become friends because of mutual benefits? In families like ours, when making friends, the first thing we look at is what the other person can bring us. You can’t expect someone to be good to you for no reason, right?”

There really was such a person. Su Chen lowered his eyes — one who was so kind that even he would sigh and call him a sucker.

“Anyway, you’ll understand later! But I promise, what I see is your future. You can’t help me with anything right now, but I still want to be friends with you. It’s sincere!”

“Alright, I understand.”

After listening to An Zhixia’s words, Su Chen actually felt more at ease being around her. One person approaching him without any purpose — Gu Jingning — was already enough. Although An Zhixia also had some motives, now that everything was out in the open, he could more easily observe her true intentions through her words and actions.

“Then what did you mean at lunch when you said Senior would be disappointed?”

“Oh… that.” It seemed a little hard for her to say. An Zhixia lost her previous confidence and covered her face with one hand. “When I was little, the family thought I would differentiate into an Omega, so whenever I was with my brother, he would always help me wear little dresses and tie butterfly bows and stuff.”

“The adults once asked him what gender he hoped I would be. He answered without hesitation that he liked Omega little sisters, so…”

An Zhixia despairingly lay on the table. “Now I’ve become a big, fierce Alpha. My brother is definitely going to be disappointed!!!”

Su Chen was stunned. No matter how he looked at her, An Zhixia seemed like a Beta. He hadn’t smelled any Alpha or Omega pheromones on her at all.

Although his own height was considered tall for an Omega, An Zhixia was slightly shorter than him — around 170 cm by his estimate — which was quite a bit shorter than most Alphas. That was why he had assumed she was a Beta.

As if knowing what Su Chen was thinking, An Zhixia rolled her eyes. “What are you looking at? This sister can still grow taller.”

“So you really are an Alpha? Why can’t I smell anything?”

An Zhixia leaned close to Su Chen’s ear and whispered, “My family specializes in inhibitors. In recent years, we’ve also developed patches that can completely suppress pheromones. It’s normal that you can’t smell anything.”

“You can’t leak any of this. The patches are still in the testing stage. If our rival pharmaceutical company finds out, it’s over!”

“Is it okay for you to tell me this?”

“It’s fine. This young lady trusts you. Besides, you don’t have any channels to spread it outside anyway.”

Su Chen stayed silent for a moment and glanced at his watch. More than an hour had already passed. He said to An Zhixia, who was still eating desserts, “I should go. I have to go to work.”

He was about to pick up his schoolbag when An Zhixia across from him interrupted, “Wait, wait, wait! Friend~ My dear good friend~”

Su Chen looked puzzled.

An Zhixia pointed at the untouched iced latte and the large amount of remaining desserts. “Help me finish a little bit before you leave~ Please~”

……

—

Walking out of the café, Gu Jingning was still digesting what he had just heard.

After school, Jiang Yunhe had originally planned to go on a date with Lin Mo, but Lin Mo was held up by student council matters. So Jiang Yunhe gave the soon-to-expire café coupon to Gu Jingning, while he stayed at school with his boyfriend.

Sigh, to be honest, when two friends start dating, the remaining person really does feel lonely. The three of them who used to be inseparable had now left him alone. Gu Jingning kicked a pebble on the road as he walked all the way to the outside of the café.

Maybe he should make new friends? Was it not good to keep sticking to Yunhe and Mo… Just as he was thinking this, he saw Su Chen sitting inside the café through the glass window, with an unfamiliar girl sitting across from him.

He thought since they knew each other, he could at least say hello. But as he got closer, he sensed the atmosphere at that table felt a bit strange, so he decided it was better not to approach.

Although he didn’t mean to eavesdrop, the café was packed during after-school hours. The only empty seat left was at the table right next to Su Chen’s, so he ended up sharing it with someone else.

The distance was too close. He really didn’t intend to listen to their conversation.

But from the intermittent voices coming from the next table — though partially covered by the café noise — he still caught parts of their dialogue.

Su Chen… was he being cheated on? By the girl across from him…

When he heard the girl say she was sincere toward Su Chen, he even felt relieved. If it wasn’t Pei Yuanqing, then Su Chen was also being pursued by someone. It might be good for him to stay away from the scumbag and try a normal relationship. However, when he later heard the girl say she wanted both, he got so agitated that his chair made a loud noise. Fortunately, Su Chen didn’t notice him.

And from the sound of it, Su Chen seemed to be compromising with the girl’s wish to have two boyfriends. What should he do? Should he break them up?

Just as he was about to stand up and stop the pure male high school student from going down the wrong path, he suddenly remembered An Yuan — an Omega with six or seven husbands who even wanted him to be the eighth. He got goosebumps all over. Even after staying in this world for so long, he still couldn’t accept this multi-oriented world.

So… did he even have the right to interfere? Besides, this was normal in this world, wasn’t it?

He was the abnormal one. He was the one who was… abnormal…

Abnormal abnormal abnormal abnormal abnormal abnormal abnormal abnormal abnormal abnormal abnormal abnormal abnormal abnormal abnormal abnormal abnormal abnormal abnormal.

He felt as if he had fallen into a bottomless black hole. Inside it, people kept saying things he couldn’t hear clearly. Cold air rushed into his lungs through his nose, and a suffocating feeling surged in his chest.

“This is your Chocolate Star Ice Blend with Lava Cake. Please enjoy.”

A crisp clinking sound rang beside his ear — the sound of a glass being placed on the table. The waiter’s voice pulled Gu Jingning back from the bizarre space to reality.

As the waiter was leaving, he grabbed the hem of his apron. His face was a little pale. “Sorry, can I change this to takeout?”

Five minutes later, he carried the bag and ran back to the dorm. The café wasn’t far from school, so he soon reached the dormitory door.

There was no one in the dorm. Using the last of his willpower, he placed the bag on the floor, rushed to his own spot, and frantically searched through his things. He finally found a medicine bottle. His breathing was rapid as he poured out the pills in a panic, but his hands were shaking so violently that he missed and spilled the pills all over the floor. He picked up the pills from the ground and hurriedly stuffed them into his mouth.

A few minutes later, his body finally calmed down. He stared blankly at the empty air in front of him.

It had been a long time since he had an episode…