My Childhood Friend Can't Possibly Be This Cute

My name is Chen Mo, and my childhood friend Lin Xiaoye is the whole school's infamous "human weapon."

On the first day of school, she threw the school bully over her shoulder because "he was blocking my sunlight."

My daily routine is to walk a fine line around the disasters she causes, clean up after her, write apology letters, and pray I survive until graduation.

Then came that fateful night.

We'd run out of soy sauce at home, so, as usual, I climbed through her window to "borrow" some, only to stumble upon a scene I'd never forget.

Photos of me from every stage of my life were plastered all over her practice targets, surrounded by clumsily drawn pink hearts.

She was holding a dart and grinning at my ID photo.

"What are you staring at? Looking to get yourself killed?!"

A dart whizzed past my crotch and stuck in the doorframe.

Her face turned bright red, but her voice was fierce enough to kill:

"This is just... tactical research! Researching your weaknesses!"

My entire worldview shattered.

How could the ferocious girl who scared boys to tears secretly be a lovestruck dummy with my photos covering her walls?

From then on, my life as her "guardian" went completely off the rails.

I had to stop her from pinning people to walls in public and demanding, "I heard you want to be my love rival?";

I also had to be ready to bolt whenever she suffered a mortifying moment, like when I grabbed a megaphone and shouted, "Lin Xiaoye! Your mom says come home and change into your cartoon pajamas!" Then we'd race for our lives down three whole streets.

The love letter in my pocket fluttered away along the road, and the chibi drawing she'd made of the two of us was adorably awful.

My childhood friend might really... have something wrong with her?

And yet, somehow... she's kind of cute?