[GL] I'm Just A Side Character... So Why Is The Heroine Chasing Me?!-Chapter 36: Almost kissed?!

Dinner was uneventful.

The Academy dining hall served the same bland spiritual rice porridge it always did. Zhao Lingxi ate in silence. Lan Yue ate in silence. Tang Xiaoli, who was physically incapable of silence, filled the gap by telling them about a second year student who had accidentally turned himself bright blue during an alchemy experiment.

"His entire face. Blue. Like a blueberry with legs." She waved her chopsticks for emphasis. "The instructor just stared at him and said, ’Well, at least you matched your robes.’"

Zhao Han nearly choked on his porridge laughing.

Lan Yue barely heard any of it.

The hair pin sat in her pocket like a live coal. Every few minutes her fingers would brush against it, and her heart would do that annoying lurch that she was getting really tired of.

It was just a gift. A practical gift. Her mistress needed a new hair pin. The old one was cracked. This was a servant doing her job.

There was absolutely nothing romantic about it.

"You’re making a face," Tang Xiaoli whispered.

"I’m eating."

"You’re eating and making a face. Like you’re trying to solve a math problem that personally offended you."

"Mind your own business."

"Your business is way more interesting than mine."

---

After dinner, Zhao Han was escorted back to the lower quarters by Liu Ruyan. Tang Xiaoli disappeared to her room with a suspicious wink that Lan Yue chose to ignore.

The East Pavilion quieted down.

Lan Yue prepared tea and brought it to Zhao Lingxi’s room. Her mistress sat by the window, her long black hair loose around her shoulders. She had removed her outer robe and wore only a thin inner garment of pale blue. Moonlight poured through the window and turned her skin luminous.

She looked like a painting. The kind that scholars wrote bad poetry about.

Lan Yue set the tea down and sat across from her. "You said you would tell me. About Elder Su."

Zhao Lingxi nodded. She picked up her tea and held it without drinking, watching the steam curl upward.

"My spirit roots aren’t broken," she said.

Lan Yue blinked. "What?"

"Everyone has called them shattered. Defective. Trash. For my entire life, I believed them." Her voice was quiet but steady. "But Elder Su showed me an ancient scroll. Eight hundred years old. It describes a condition called Shattered Heaven Roots."

She explained everything. The fragmented roots that were too powerful for the body to contain. The golden spiritual energy that didn’t follow normal meridian pathways. The four cultivators in history who had possessed the same condition, all of whom reached the highest realms of power.

Lan Yue listened without interrupting. When Zhao Lingxi finished, the room was very quiet.

"So all those years," Lan Yue said slowly. "All those people who called you worthless. Your father who banished you. The servants who mocked you. Everyone who said you would never amount to anything."

"They were wrong," Zhao Lingxi said simply.

"They were bastards."

The word came out harder than Lan Yue intended. Zhao Lingxi looked at her, slightly startled.

"Sorry," Lan Yue muttered. "But they were. Every single one of them. They looked at a diamond and called it dirt because they were too stupid to know the difference."

Something shifted in Zhao Lingxi’s expression. The careful blankness cracked, just a little, and underneath was something raw and aching. The face of a girl who had been told she was nothing for twenty years and was only now learning it was a lie.

"Elder Su said I need to keep it secret," Zhao Lingxi said. "If the wrong people find out..."

"They’ll come for you. I know." Lan Yue met her eyes. "Then we make sure they don’t find out. Not until you’re strong enough that it doesn’t matter who knows."

"We?"

"Did I stutter?"

Zhao Lingxi stared at her. Then that rare, barely there smile appeared. The one that made Lan Yue feel like the entire room had gotten warmer.

"You didn’t stutter," Zhao Lingxi said softly.

The moment stretched between them. Warm. Heavy. Full of things neither of them was ready to say out loud.

Lan Yue’s hand drifted to her pocket.

Now. Do it now. Before you lose your nerve.

She pulled out the hair pin and set it on the table between them. The dark wood gleamed in the moonlight, and the small pearl at the tip glowed with a soft, silvery light.

Zhao Lingxi looked at it. Then at Lan Yue.

"What’s this?"

"Your hair pin is cracked." Lan Yue’s voice came out rougher than she wanted. "I noticed it last week. So I got you a new one. At the market. It’s nothing special. Tang Xiaoli was there and she helped me pick it, well actually she didn’t help at all she was buying fire crystals, but the point is your old pin is going to break soon and you need..."

She was rambling. She knew she was rambling. She couldn’t stop.

"...and the shopkeeper said the wood is from a spirit pine so it’s actually pretty durable and the pearl is just decorative it doesn’t do anything special I just thought it looked..."

"Beautiful," Zhao Lingxi said.

Lan Yue’s mouth snapped shut.

Zhao Lingxi picked up the hair pin, turning it carefully in her fingers. The moonlight caught the pearl, sending tiny silver reflections dancing across the walls.

"It’s beautiful," she said again, quieter this time.

"It was only three spirit stones," Lan Yue mumbled. "It’s really not..."

"Three spirit stones?" Zhao Lingxi’s eyes sharpened. "That’s most of your allowance."

"I had five. Now I have two. It’s fine."

"You spent most of your money on a gift for me."

"On a practical item for my mistress. There’s a difference."

"Is there?"

Lan Yue opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

No words came out.

Zhao Lingxi stood and moved to the small mirror on her vanity table. She gathered her hair with one hand and slid the new pin into place with the other. The dark wood contrasted perfectly against her black hair. The pearl sat just above her left ear, catching light with every small movement.

She turned back to Lan Yue.

"How does it look?"

Lan Yue forgot how breathing worked.

The pin somehow made everything sharper. The line of her jaw. The curve of her neck. The way her hair fell around her shoulders like black water. And her eyes, those dark endless eyes, were watching Lan Yue with an expression that was equal parts amusement and something else. Something warmer. Something that made Lan Yue’s pulse hammer against her ribs.

"Good," Lan Yue managed. "It looks good."

"Just good?"

"Really good."

"Hm." Zhao Lingxi touched the pearl lightly with her fingertips. "I’ll wear it every day."

"You don’t have to do that."

"I want to."

Three words. Spoken simply, without drama or emphasis. But they hit Lan Yue somewhere deep in her chest.

Zhao Lingxi walked toward her. Slowly. Each step deliberate. She stopped close enough that Lan Yue could smell the faint scent of the herbal bath she’d taken earlier. Clean and warm with something underneath that was just her.

"Thank you, Lan Yue," she said.

Her voice was low. Almost a murmur. Her breath ghosted across Lan Yue’s cheek.

They were so close. Close enough that if either of them leaned forward even slightly...

A crash from next door shattered the moment.

"GENERAL FLUFFBOTTOM, NO! THAT’S MY PILL FORMULA! STOP EATING IT!"

Tang Xiaoli’s shriek was followed by frantic squawking, the sound of something ceramic breaking, and what might have been a small explosion.

Zhao Lingxi stepped back. Her composure returned instantly, as if a switch had been flipped.

Lan Yue exhaled so hard she nearly deflated.

"I should... go check on that," Lan Yue said weakly.

"You should."

"Before she burns the building down."

"That would be inconvenient."

"Right. Okay. Good night."

"Good night, Lan Yue."

Lan Yue backed toward the door. She bumped into the door frame.

"Ow."

"Careful."

"I’m fine."

She fled.

In the hallway, she pressed her back against the wall and covered her face with both hands. Her cheeks were on fire. Her heart was racing. Every nerve in her body was screaming.

They had almost kissed.

No. Wait. No they hadn’t. That was ridiculous. Zhao Lingxi was just standing close because the room was small. And the moonlight was doing weird things. And the hair pin looked nice so Lan Yue’s brain had temporarily short circuited. That was all. Perfectly normal. Nothing to panic about.

From inside her room, she heard Tang Xiaoli wrestling with General Fluffbottom, who was apparently winning.

"I am going to turn you into a feather duster!" Tang Xiaoli yelled.

The bird squawked defiantly.

Lan Yue slid down the wall and sat on the cold stone floor, pressing her palms against her burning cheeks.

She was not developing feelings for Zhao Lingxi. Absolutely not. She was a transmigrator on a mission. Rewrite the plot. Save the brother. Avoid becoming cannon fodder. That was the plan. Simple. Clean. Professional.

The fact that her mistress smelled really nice was irrelevant.

The fact that her voice went soft when she said "thank you" was meaningless.

The fact that Lan Yue’s heart was still hammering so hard she could hear it in her ears was probably just low blood sugar. Yes. She hadn’t eaten enough at dinner. That explained everything.

She stood up, dusted herself off, and straightened her robes.

"I am a survivor of the apocalypse," she muttered to herself. "I fought zombies. I led armies. I am not going to lose my mind over a hair pin and some moonlight."

She marched to her room with as much composure as she could manage.

She did not think about Zhao Lingxi wearing the hair pin every day.

She did not think about the way her breath had felt against her cheek.

She absolutely did not press her fingers against her own cheek where that breath had been.

Not even once.

...Okay, maybe once.

But that was it.