"Ning Chu’s actually a girl... and she’s dating Wen Yang too..."
"Why didn’t I realize it?"
"Now that I think about it, she's even prettier than most girls. Why didn’t it cross my mind?"
Wang Jie was starting to doubt his life choices. He slumped over his desk during class, muttering to himself in confusion.
He wasn’t even that dense, normally.
Ning Chu figured maybe this was just the inertia of the original plot.
After all, in the book, even after she turned into a girl and went into heat from time to time, Wang Jie still never noticed anything.
Luckily, up until now, none of the plotlines had managed to progress smoothly, they'd all been thoroughly disrupted by her.
Even the gangbang ending had been changed by her.
In the end, it became a pure 1v1 love story...Wang Jie turned his head to study Ning Chu’s face, frowning, then sighed.
Looking at it now, despite wearing men's clothing, it’s hard for him to not see Ning Chu feminine figure. Yet, despite having lived under the same roof for so long, he had never realized it before.
Also, in the past, both Ning Chu and Wen Yang often exchanged glances at each other, it was obvious there was something going on between them.
"Am I really just an idiot?"
"Yes, you are," Zhang Shaoqing said firmly.
. . . . . . . .
After morning classes ended, Ning Chu and Wen Yang, as usual, headed to the cafeteria for lunch.
Just as they sat down, Ning Chu's phone buzzed with a video call.
"Mom! I'm home already!"
When she answered the call, a chubby face filled the screen, it’s Black Bean.
The black haired cat girl is excitedly clutching the phone and shouting, "Grandma’s making dinner for me! All meat!"
"Call me sister..."
Ning Chu tirelessly corrected Black Bean’s way of addressing her, glancing around nervously, afraid her classmates would overhear.
If someone else hears what Black Bean calls her, she'd be seen as a university student who had a daughter despite being under twenty…
Well, Wen Yang would probably get sent to jail.
"Sister~"
"So, are you getting used to it over there?" Ning Chu casually asked, then turned to Wen Yang, saying, "I’m craving fried chicken legs."
"Okay, I’ll go get us some."
It was Black Bean’s first time using video chat; her chubby baby face couldn't even fit properly into the screen.
"Yeah! The house is huge~ And there’s lots of snacks!"
Seeing Black Bean’s happy and satisfied smile on the screen, Ning Chu finally set aside her worries.
She had been afraid that Black Bean, as a cat girl, might suffer from stress after moving to a new environment.
For cats, intense stress could actually be fatal.
"Black Bean! Time for lunch!"
"Coming!"
Her mother’s voice came from off-screen, and then Black Bean disappeared from the frame.
Ning Chu didn't hang up; she just set her phone to the side.
"How’s it going?" Wen Yang returned with food, sitting next to Ning Chu and glancing at the phone. "Where’d she go?"
"She went to eat. Seems like she’s doing fine."
"That’s good."
Today, Wen Yang had only gotten one plate of food and two bowls of rice. He split the disposable chopsticks and handed a pair to Ning Chu, asking, "Black Bean's gonna have to start school, right?"
"Yeah, of course she has to go to school."
"Poor thing," he shook his head. "She used to just laze around all day, had someone to clean up after her, and didn’t have to worry about food or anything."
By that logic, Black Bean really was pitiful.
From being a cat who only needed to be cute, she now had to go to school, learn to socialize, eventually find a job... all the adult headaches were going to fall on her shoulders.
Whereas before, Black Bean’s life was just eat, sleep, repeat, without a care in the world.
"Sister! I’m going to eat now!"
Suddenly, Black Bean popped back onto the screen, shouting, "Bye-bye, brother-in-law!"
As the video call ended, Wen Yang froze for a moment, mumbling, "Didn’t she used to call me 'Dad' or 'Brother' before?"
"It’s probably something my mom taught her," Ning Chu guessed.
Now that Black Bean was settled, and most of the female supporting characters in the school arc had already given up on Wen Yang, Ning Chu didn’t have to worry about constantly running into desperate love rivals anymore.
Also, her novel had officially been signed and published two days ago.
Even without weekend part-time jobs, she could now consistently earn a few hundred yuan a month just from full attendance bonuses.
Everything was finally on track, and from now on, she could properly enjoy her college life~
She happily swayed her waist slightly as she ate her lunch.
One hand was playing with her phone when a new message notification popped up.
"Isn't Black Bean supposed to be eating right now?" she mumbled softly. "Mom wouldn't let her play with her phone during meals, right?"
Although, truth be told, her mom herself loved watching TV dramas and scrolling through short videos while eating...
Ning Chu tapped open the message, and the screen automatically switched to a chat app.
It turned out it wasn't Black Bean, but a familiar yet slightly unfamiliar account.
"Is that Black Bean?" Wen Yang leaned over to peek at her screen. "Hm? Who is it?"
"Uh... It’s a neighbourhood friend from when I was a kid," Ning Chu said, putting down her chopsticks and resting her chin in her hand, troubled.
"He just got discharged from the army. We haven’t seen each other in years, and now he wants to hang out."
When she saw the picture, it all came back to her—in her original world, during her freshman year, this guy had indeed retired from the army around this time.
Because he couldn't find a satisfactory job after his discharge, he came to the city where she was studying, planning to catch up with old friends for a couple of days and look for job opportunities.
At the time, she had happily agreed, spent the weekend hanging out with him, even helped him find a job, and they had kept in touch ever since, becoming good friends.
Although the same event was happening again, things were totally different now…
She was now a succubus.
Meeting up with her old friend definitely wouldn’t unfold like before.
"He doesn’t know you’re actually a girl now, right?"
Ning Chu nodded gloomily. "Yeah, should I just not go?"
"But not going feels kind of bad too..."
After all, he was a childhood friend who’s like her second big brother, someone who had always looked out for her.
Furthermore, she didn’t want to lose a sincere friendship just because she was being overly cautious.
Seeing her hesitate, Wen Yang simply made the decision for her: "Then just go. I’ll be working a part-time job downtown this weekend anyway."
"If anything bad happens, call me. I’ll be there fast."
Ning Chu agreed with a nod and tried to think more positively.
Ever since learning this was a parallel world, she had expected that eventually she’d run into old friends while appearing as a girl.
This was just the first one.
She couldn’t hide from every single one of them, right?
"The problem is... how do I explain it?" she pondered. "Maybe I’ll just say I got into cross-dressing?"
"But when you eventually marry me, that excuse won’t hold anymore," Wen Yang said.
"Maybe I should just go dressed as a guy? It's been years, he probably doesn’t remember exactly what I looked like anyway."
Rather than what she should dress in, Wen Yang was more worried about something else.
"Hey, what if he falls in love with you?"
"???"
"On second thought. You really shouldn’t go!"
His possessiveness toward Ning Chu flared up again, making him almost a carbon copy of her own temper:
"I don't like the fact that you are about to meet with a man alone."
"Hmm… Then, you can come with me."