Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Falling for Jin Chuan was an accident, yet at the same time, it wasn’t.

He wasn’t exactly cold or aloof, but as he grew older and more handsome, he naturally developed an aura that kept people at a distance.

I eventually became a little afraid of him.

So, despite living right next door all these years, we hardly had any interaction.

It was just that every time that tall, long-legged boy appeared at the entrance of the alley, my gaze would quietly follow him for a few seconds.

That definitely wasn’t enough to be called a crush.

After all, everyone wants to take a second look at something beautiful.

So why did my heart skip a beat?

“Blame it on the fact that the rainy season at seventeen is just too damp…” I wrote in a message to Xia Xiaoyun.

Xia Xiaoyun replied, “You’re losing it.”

Maybe I was losing it a little.

But the rainy season at seventeen really is very damp.

Girls gradually start to become sensitive and graceful, sometimes like brooding rain clouds.

I, however, was still stuck in my childhood, always wearing the “tacky” clothes my mother made for school.

Sometimes it was a school uniform jacket paired with a lace cupcake skirt.

Sometimes it was a sweater adorned with colorful knitted dolls.

It looked more than a little ridiculous.

People didn’t say anything to my face, but their eyes always followed me from the shadows.

Behind my back, they called me an attention-seeker.

They wondered why someone my age still thought she was a little princess.

But once, I walked past a group of boys from Class A who were playing basketball.

Their judgmental stares were far too obvious.

A tall guy said, “Why does she always wear such weird stuff?”

“She looks pretty,” Jin Chuan said in a flat, indifferent tone.

I happened to hear him as I hurried past.

My heart fluttered like a small droplet of water on a branch.

*Plop.* It fell.

I knew perfectly well that I wasn’t a beauty.

But Jin Chuan also knew why I always wore those childish clothes.

My mother had lost a leg in a car accident a few years ago and could no longer go out to work.

With the encouragement of my father and me, she fell in love with doing handicrafts.

For instance, making bright, vivid dresses for me.

She didn’t realize that her aesthetic might be outdated.

And we would never tell her that it was.

Though I was a homebody with social anxiety-sometimes even appearing cowardly-wearing the clothes my mother made was the one thing I was never self-conscious about.

I used to think Jin Chuan was mean and sharp-tongued; he was strict as hell when tutoring me and always sighed heavily while grading my homework.

And yet, he possessed a distant sort of tenderness that only I knew about.