The Heart-Pounding Game

“What are girls, anyway? I’ve never cared enough to bother with them.”

Qiao Ai watched with her own eyes as the senior school beauty confessed to a younger student and got rejected.

Chen Zhi, a troublemaker known as the school heartthrob of No. 1 High, leaned one arm on the windowsill. His shadowed eyes held a faint, mocking smile, and his tone was utterly nasty.

After that, no girl dared confess to Chen Zhi again.

Later, Qiao Ai passed the giant banyan tree beside the sports field and heard girls crying.

They called themselves Chen Zhi’s fan club, and his attitude toward girls had left them heartbroken.

Listening to them cry behind the tree, Qiao Ai wondered: If they cried from night till dawn, then from dawn till night, would they manage to cry Chen Zhi to death?

From that day on, Qiao Ai observed Chen Zhi for two whole months.

One day after school, some punks from another school cornered Qiao Ai in an alley. Chen Zhi stood deep in the alley, making no move to help her.

Qiao Ai walked up to him. “Chen, how about a bet?”

Chen Zhi’s dark eyes turned to her. “What are we betting on?”

Qiao Ai smiled sweetly. “That you’ll fall for me.”

Chen Zhi sneered, unconvinced.

-

Qiao Ai proposed that she and Chen Zhi confess their feelings to each other once a week.

Each time they confessed, they would both have to wear wristbands that recorded their heart rates.

The first person whose heart rate went over 110 would lose.

If Qiao Ai lost, she would do Chen Zhi’s homework for three years. If Chen Zhi lost, he would apologize to all the girls in school from the podium at Monday’s flag-raising ceremony.

Chen Zhi was so bored that he accepted the bet, certain he couldn’t lose.

-

Qiao Ai had a secret nobody knew.

She had hypoglycemia, and if she skipped breakfast and lunch, her heart rate would become extremely slow.

So slow that she needed a shot to stimulate her heart before a gastroscopy.

[She proposed this bet because she was sure to win]

Courageous and clever little sweetheart X gloomy, cunning fake underachiever

2022.5.11

Theme: A happy family