Chapter 20: Was it an illusion?
"Su Can!?" The people with Chen Lingshan were all girls from Class Five, and all her staunch supporters. At this stage in junior and senior high school, they might call themselves best friends, but there was still a relationship of followers and leader. Every circle had its center.
For people like Yue Zijiang and Wang Haoran, they were the center of that circle in Senior Year Two. Zhang Xi was the center of a group of first-year students from well-connected families. As for Chen Lingshan, her outstanding looks and the countless boys who secretly pursued and liked her likewise made her the center of her circle.
Su Can could only ever be a fleeting joke in this circle. To Li Lumei and the others surrounding Chen Lingshan, he was merely one of the countless toads craning their necks until they nearly snapped. Besides, Li Lumei had a peculiar possessiveness: she did not want any boy getting close to Chen Lingshan. It was as though, if Chen Lingshan diverted some of her attention to romance, she, as her best friend, would feel an inexplicable jealousy.
That was why she had always served as Chen Lingshan's guardian, which also made many boys regard her as an obstacle standing between them and Chen Lingshan.
Why did she protect Chen Lingshan like this? Li Lumei occasionally wondered about it herself. She thought it might be because she worried that, if a girl like Chen Lingshan were won over by one of those ordinary boys eyeing her so eagerly, it would be a desecration her values could not tolerate.
Yet when she saw a toad like Su Can walking shoulder to shoulder along the campus road in the setting sun with Tang Wu, who was practically an unattainable snow