Rebirth: Once Again With You

"Hmm, looking at the biting mark on your nails, I reckon you still bite your nails up until today." Shao Jingfei said thoughtfully. He used his thumb to play with her fingers, and it caused a ticklish feeling in her.

"So what?"

"That's a bad habit to have, of course. I know it because I used to have the same habit as you." Shao Jingfei grinned before raising his other hand to proudly show his black nails to her.

"Don't you think this is the coolest idea ever? My brother is the one who taught me this method, and now I will pass down that teaching to you, my disciple!"

Li Chunhua touched his fingers curiously with her other hand. She noticed that his nails were fake all along for the first time.

"I thought these are your real nails, and you painted them black."

Shao Jingfei could feel her warm temperature from her feathery touch, which made him straighten his posture out of nervousness.

Oblivious to his change, Li Chunhua kept looking at his nails seriously. Her eyelashes fluttered as her eyes blinked in wonderment.

'How cute,' Shao Jingfei thought inwardly until he realized how outrageous that thinking was.

'Snap out of it. She is Chunhua, that arrogant and conceited girl. Only her face is cute. That's right, only her face.'

Shao Jingfei cleared his throat before saying, "I will get scolded every day if I dare to paint my nails black in this school."

"Ah, so you take them off whenever there is a uniform inspection?"

"Yep, yep. I did the same thing for my earrings. I would be punished for cleaning the storage room every day if I didn't take them off."

"Sounds like a pain. Why don't you just take them off?"

"Well, earrings are mostly for aesthetics, but these nails are important to deter my nail-biting habit. The feeling of biting the real nail and the fake ones are different, forcing me to feel self-conscious." Shao Jingfei looked down at his nails fondly, like he was reminiscing.

"It was like these nails were laughing at me whenever I started to bite them."

Li Chunhua quickly realized that he must have recalled his brother again. He was the only one who treated him kindly during his stay in the Shao family's house.

She tacitly chose not to ask further questions and said, "That's pretty cool. I never thought about it that way."

"If I use real paint and bite my nail, it feels like I was chewing a chemical product, and it was gross. With fake nails, it's safe, and it will protect your nails too."

Then, Shao Jingfei took the box from Li Chunhua and grabbed one of the nails. "It was very easy to attach and detach. Here, let me show you the example."

Li Chunhua could feel the ticklish sensation again when Shao Jingfei busily tried to attach the fake pink nails to her fingers.

He hummed while doing his work. Perhaps because he was used to it, it didn't take long before Li Chunhua's nails completely transformed into a new ones. That was her first time wearing something like that, so the sight of them fascinated her.

"Wow, so pretty." Li Chunhua uttered while raising her hands in the air.

"I know this color will suit you." Shao Jingfei nodded in agreement while looking down at her nails in satisfaction.

"Did you choose this personally for me?"

"At first, I thought I could lend you some of mine. So you can see if you like to wear it or not. But all of my collections are not suitable for a girl. I bought this from the place where I usually purchase mine, and I can vouch for its quality."

"But, are these expensive?" Li Chunhua asked hesitantly.

"Not really. It wasn't that expensive from the beginning, and since I'm a regular, I got a discount from the store."

Li Chunhua looked down at her hands again. She wasn't lying when she said these nails are pretty. The way it glistened under the sunlight made it look like jewels.

These would definitely make her think twice before biting into her nails again. She wouldn't want to ruin such pretty things.

"I hope you like the color. The storekeeper said girls usually like pink and flowers, so that's the design I chose," Shao Jingfei added while scratching the back of his neck awkwardly.

"It's my first time choosing a gift for a girl, so I don't know what to pick."

"What? This is your first time?" Li Chunhua asked in surprise.

"Yeah, why?"

"No, I thought you were used to things like this. You have a lot of friends, after all."

Shao Jingfei snorted in amusement. "Do I look like the kind of guy who will give any girl a gift?"

"En, you did," Li Chunhua replied honestly.

Shao Jingfei shrugged his shoulder. "Well, you are wrong then. I have a lot of girl friends, but I won't just give them gifts randomly. Unless it's their birthday or something."

"But you said this is your first. You are contradicting yourself."

"No, I'm not. You are the first girl whose gift I spent a lot of effort thinking about. Usually, I will just ask what is popular and buy them for my friends without much thought."

Li Chunhua secretly felt warm and honored inside, knowing that she was his first friend whom he gave a gift thoughtfully. She stared at Shao Jingfei and noticed how the tip of his ears was slightly reddened.

'Is he embarrassed? Haha, he can be adorable too sometimes,' Li Chunhua laughed inwardly.

Excluding her family, people always fought to give her the best gift they could find. Most of them were expensive and from luxury-brand, and some were meticulously handmade, but none struck any impression on her.

However, she really liked the small gift from Shao Jingfei, who was worried about her bad habit. To even come up with this gift, he must pay close attention to her condition.

Li Chunhua wasn't stupid, either. She knew he felt terrible for answering her phone call late that night when she got her episode.

Now he always picked up her call within a few seconds. His mouth was complaining, but he would always be available to talk with her no matter what times she called in the day.

Shao Jingfei's little gesture never went unnoticeable, and he made her feel safe to confide in him.

"Thank you for the gift. I like it very much." Li Chunhua beamed at him.

"Oh, I'm glad if you like it. You have to be careful around the teacher, though. Don't forget to detach them if you don't want to get scolded."

Li Chunhua only scoffed while flipping her hair smugly. "Please don't put me on the same level as you. I have never been scolded by the teachers and never will."

The boy rolled his eyes at her antics, "On second thought, I hope you get found out at least once."

"It will never happen because they like me very much, unlike you."

"Now you finally acting more like yourself. Stop changing your character too much; it feels weird." Shao Jingfei cringed.

"Huh? I always act like I usually do."

Shao Jingfei shook his head helplessly, losing interest in continuing the conversation. "Forget what I said. I probably just imagining things because I was hungry."