I'll Just Quietly Watch You Pretend to Be Good

#Pretending to act# #Playing hard to get# #Healing# #Comforting#

In high school, Xia Muqing's family adopted an orphan. She got perfect grades, had a perfect personality, and was gorgeous. Xia Muqing had always been the ideal child everyone else compared themselves to, but now she'd been outshone.

It was the first day back at school.

In a small alley, the well-behaved boy in a school uniform expertly pinned a gang of punks to the ground and made them beg for mercy.

Then, with an indifferent tug at his torn collar, he covered the hideous scars and the talisman-like tattoos interwoven with them.

His practiced movements, hideous scars, and tattoos threaded with incantations seemed utterly at odds with his fair, obedient face, as if they belonged to different bodies.

Perhaps Xia Muqing had been staring too intently. Jing Che noticed her in the distance and instinctively tried to hide his bloodstained hand. He slowly straightened up, looking innocent as he said in a soft, casual voice, "Sis, they ganged up on me. It really hurt."

He sounded utterly aggrieved and brazen at the same time, as if Xia Muqing were blind.

But Xia Muqing played along, nodding and taking Jing Che to the hospital.

Inside, she was intensely curious about his behavior, and began keeping a long-term observation journal.

Having grown up around family who did research, she knew that studying a specimen took immense patience. To ensure she had a complete record of his behavior, she never disturbed the specimen itself and played along with its well-behaved facade.

Jing Che hadn't thought much of it. If she wasn't going to expose him, he was happy to keep acting. It wasn't as if he had anywhere else to go.

That is, until Jing Che accidentally opened Xia Muqing's notebook on the behavioral habits of defective animals...

A defective animal? Him?

Hah.

Jing Che deliberately let his mask slip again and again, but Xia Muqing remained as she always was.

Jing Che couldn't help but admire her. What a good observer: so tolerant and patient.

But she also piqued his interest. He began testing the limits of her tolerance, pushing her further and further to see when she would finally crack.

He stopped holding back, letting his wild side show. He became an unrestrained aggressor, with Xia Muqing as his target.

But Xia Muqing summed it all up as: the specimen was in heat...

To make sure her records were complete, she looked at Jing Che, standing close enough to touch, acting intimately and gazing at her lips... She dutifully rose onto her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his...

Theme: Healing