Back Then, I Adored You

From then on, whenever she appeared within his line of vision, he would be the first to turn and look at her.

Back then, everyone had worn school uniforms but when she had worn the same uniform, she always managed to exude her individual beauty.

Her family did not have the respectable family background like the socialites he had known from his youth. Even though her clothing was of the discount or thrift store variety, that didn’t distract from her natural allure. She had a lot of style, as evidenced by the many different ways she wore her luscious, long, black hair. Sometimes she swept it up in a pretty ponytail, sometimes it would simply hang loosely framing her face, and other times it was wound in a cute bun.

As he had started to take notice of her more frequently, he gradually became aware of how popular she was among the boys in the school. Boys from other schools might have named a big-shot celebrity or singer as their idol but for the majority of the boys in A High School, their goddess was Qin Zhi’ai.

He had, most certainly, also seen many boys stop her to profess their affections.

Perhaps because she had experienced these situations many times, regardless of whether the interaction was aggressive, passionate, poetic, or bashful, she could always handle the confessions smoothly and coolly.

Every time he’d witnessed these interactions, despite his nonchalant appearance, Gu Yusheng’s heart would flood with emotion. After she’d reject the confessions and leave, he would always behave in a strange manner that even he didn’t understand.

For example, he once accidentally smashed the basketball off course, and it crashed into the head of the boy who had passed her a love letter earlier.

Another time he accidentally spilled mineral water from his water bottle onto a fanboy who’d passed her a gift moments before.

He even locked a boy in a toilet stall, causing him to miss an entire class, because he’d been relentlessly pestering Qin Zhi’ai.

Every night, he would also sneak back to school, enter her classroom, and remove all her various admirers’ gifts of snacks and love letters that regularly flooded the drawer of her desk.

And then, there was also a time when a boy had smugly commented, “I’m wearing the school uniform and so is Qin Zhi’ai. We’re twinning as a couple.” Gu Yusheng immediately walked over with a cigarette in his hand and slammed into the boy, burning more than one hole in his uniform.

Back then, Gu Yusheng was young and arrogant and, backed by a formidable family background, the school rarely restrained his behavior. For instance, he had never worn the school uniform, and there was never a repercussion; after the incident with the “twinning” boy, though, he wore his uniform obediently right until the day he graduated from high school.

Back in his school days, all the cunning wits he’d developed were fully utilized in his obsession with Qin Zhi’ai. Topping that off with his minor acts of childishness was his penchant for covering up her mistakes before others would notice them.

One of his finest feats had been when Qin Zhi’ai and Xu Wennuan were obsessed with a dancing game on the computer and would always head to the same internet cafe in the afternoon to play. This of course attracted the attention of many delinquent boys who hung out by their school.

On one of these days, he was preparing to head back to school when he coincidentally witnessed a thug climb over her computer and try to hit on her shamelessly. He even tried to caress her face, but she easily slapped his hand away with her water bottle and he hadn’t managed to touch her.

Three days later, he saw the thug at the internet cafe playing a game and being exceptionally loud. Staring at him for a moment, Gu Yusheng kicked his chair out from under himself and stood up. As he passed behind the thug, the screen vividly displayed a critical boss fight going on, with only one hit point left for the thug. Gu Yusheng reached out his hand and pulled out the power source of the thug’s computer.