Lin Jianxia's Little Bit of Entertainment Time

The bell for the last class of the afternoon had barely rung when Lin Jianxia swiftly packed her bag and left the classroom without looking back.

Watching her nearly fleeing figure, Jiang Yubai's mouth twitched slightly as he somewhat regretfully packed up his own things.

Ever since Lin Jianxia had stared at his scratch paper for a long while, she had ignored him for the rest of the day.

Well... perhaps what was written in that notebook had been too much of a shock for her.

He should have been more tactful.

Jiang Yubai thought this with considerable regret.

Elsewhere.

Lin Jianxia walked briskly with her schoolbag on her back. Only after leaving the school gates did she let out a long breath.

She usually left as soon as school was over, but she had never been in such a hurry as she was today.

She pressed a hand to her still-racing heart and looked back. Only after confirming that no one had followed her did she truly relax.

But what rose in her heart afterward was a sharp burst of annoyance.

Though she now believed that Jiang Yubai's rent collection yesterday had not been aimed at her.

That guy was clearly no good either—after meeting her just once, he had actually dared to set his sights on her sister.

Who asked a younger sister about her older sister's preferences? Did he really think no one could see through those little thoughts of his?

Just as she thought, that thing about making her his maid had not been a joke!

That scumbag! That beast! That playboy!

Lin Jianxia pursed her lips indignantly, her chest rising and falling slightly.

So what if he was her landlord? She would be able to pay the rent this Friday anyway.

Then she could discuss things with the manager and see whether she could get paid earlier in the future, so she would not have to look at Jiang Yubai's face every day.

As for this week...

Since she could not openly offend him, she would just give him the cold shoulder like she did everyone else.

As long as she kept ignoring him, he would probably find it boring and give up on his own after a while, right?

At that thought, Lin Jianxia took a deep breath, patted her cheeks to compose herself, then quickly headed into the alley.

After turning left and right several times, she soon stopped in front of a bookstore called "Sisyphus."

After cautiously looking around one last time and confirming that there were no classmates in sight, Lin Jianxia pushed open the door and entered.

The wind chime above the door gave a crisp jingle. The proprietress behind the counter looked up, and upon seeing her, merely nodded as if it were nothing unusual.

"You're here? A lot of books came in over the weekend. You can leave at seven today."

With that, she lowered her head and continued working on her computer.

A few seconds later, catching sight of the figure still standing before her from the corner of her eye, the proprietress frowned.

"Is there something else?"

After hesitating, Lin Jianxia still asked, "Um... Aunt Zhao, this week's wages will still be paid on Friday, right?"

At those words, the proprietress's expression paused almost imperceptibly before she put on a smile again.

"They'll be paid. Friday, just as usual. Do you think I'd withhold a young girl's wages?"

Lin Jianxia immediately breathed a sigh of relief, and her expression brightened.

"Then I'll get to work!"

She waved at Aunt Zhao and hurried toward the back room of the bookstore.

In the storage room at the back, books wrapped in kraft paper had been piled into a small mountain—mostly new books delivered in bulk over the weekend.

Lin Jianxia's task was to unpack this "mountain of books," sort them, and shelve them one by one in their proper bookcases.

To be honest, the work was rather tedious.

She was alone in the storeroom, and the summer heat was stifling. There was not even a fan, much less air conditioning.

She repeated the same motions for hours—unpacking, flipping through pages, sorting, shelving, over and over again.

Whenever she occasionally raised her head from between the pages, all she could see were mountains of stacked kraft paper and the steadily darkening sky outside the window.

But... Lin Jianxia actually liked this job quite a lot.

Her mother had died early, and her father had considered the two sisters burdens. He had cut off contact long ago and started a new family.

After deducting the sisters' tuition and the bare minimum for food and clothing from the meager monthly child support, there was almost no money left.

And... she occasionally had to set some aside to send to their grandmother in the countryside, so the shortfall could only be made up by Lin Jianxia taking odd jobs.

But although she was already an adult, whenever nearby shops saw the Lin No. 3 Middle School uniform she wore, most would still shake their heads and refuse.

After all, few shops were willing to risk "employing child labor" by hiring a student still attending high school.

So it was not until summer vacation was nearly over that she had finally found this tiny bookstore.

The pay was a little low, but at least it covered the monthly rent and left her a little extra to buy her sister something tasty.

That was good enough.

Squatting beside the pile of books, Lin Jianxia mechanically unwrapped the kraft paper. Sweat slid down from her temple, darkening a small patch along the edge of a cardboard box.

One book, two books...

After unpacking an entire bundle, she sorted and checked them by title, placed them in order on the storeroom shelves, and ticked off the corresponding entries on the delivery list.

Every now and then, she raised an arm to wipe her cheek, then quickly lowered it and continued unpacking the next bundle.

The storeroom held only the rustle of turning pages and her faint breathing.

The light outside gradually dimmed, and the small mountain of paper-wrapped books finally disappeared.

After placing the last book on the shelf, Lin Jianxia let out a long breath and instinctively looked at the clock hanging by the storeroom door.

The hour hand pointed to just past six twenty. There were still around thirty minutes until the time the proprietress had said she could leave.

She did not go out right away, because Aunt Zhao would most likely make her clean for a while longer and not let her leave until half past seven.

Lin Jianxia took out some tissues and carefully wiped her face and hands clean before turning her gaze toward the shelf beside her.

Because it was near a school, the bookstore mostly stocked student favorites such as youth romances and fantasy light novels. Classics occupied only a small corner.

She was not very interested in fantasy, so she carefully searched through the romance section and cautiously pulled out a book.

After spreading some kraft paper beneath herself, Lin Jianxia sat on it with her knees drawn up and her back against the wall. Only then did she gently open the novel, her eyes lighting up along with it.

The plot was actually childish, nothing more than cliché stories like "The Domineering CEO Falls in Love with Me," yet she read it with great relish.

Finishing her work quickly, then reading for a little while near quitting time...

This was one of the few bits of entertainment time that belonged solely to Lin Jianxia.

Her gaze moved across the words on the page, but her eyes gradually drifted away as she fell into a daze.

For some reason, she could not immerse herself in the story today, no matter how hard she tried. That playboy's words kept echoing unbidden in her mind.

"Oh, right. What does your sister usually like? She seems pretty interesting."

Even though a day had already passed, every time she recalled the scratch paper he had pushed over to her, a wave of embarrassment and irritation still shot through her heart.

What the heck!

Pervert! Who got interested after meeting someone once? "Pretty interesting"—wasn't that just lust at first sight?

Yet after the embarrassment and irritation faded, a strange feeling began to emerge from the depths of her heart.

Light and soft, yet impossible to shake off.

—Come to think of it, Jiang Yubai does kind of look like the men described in novels...

—Pah, pah, pah! He's just a landlord!

Lin Jianxia vigorously shook her head, driving those messy thoughts from her mind and trying to focus her gaze on the pages again.

But this time, the words in the book seemed even harder to take in.