xiao hui’s development with zhanyi [more specifically jian yi]
I wanted to bring up the development of xiao hui over the course of the story.
when the audience was first shown the appearance of xiao hui, it was a rather neutral appearance. she was one of the many girls who had a crush on zhan zheng xi as a lot of females would flock around zhan zheng xi, offering to ‘lend notes’ from class as a way to get closer to him, often bugging/asking jian yi about him, blushing furiously when he politely puts the hat back on a girl’s head which had fallen when she bumped into him, etc.
a harmless thing and who could blame her (or the other girls) when he is so handsome; what made her stand out from the other females, however, was that the author consistently showed her from the very beginning to express that she clearly had a deeper crush than the others did. zhan zheng xi himself never expressed any interest in them and admitted to jian yi that he is rather uncomfortable/annoyed with such attention from females most of the time, telling jian yi “this kind of thing is annoying” (cough, cuz you gay xi, cough).
despite this, zhan zheng xi remained cordial with the women interested in him. however, xiao hui had become sort of a ‘pest’ in zhan zheng xi’s eyes — for the lack of a better word. zhan zheng xi would do the casual sort of polite rejection most people do in real life where you don’t want to have to flat out reject them because its awkward or you don’t want to appear rude by saying something like “I don’t like you that way. please leave me alone”, so you just try to avoid them until they get the hint. from the beginning of the story she would consistently follow and sort of ‘bug’ zhan zheng xi, oblivious to his obvious hints of disinterest. in the beginning of the story, he even pleads jian yi to cover/hide him from her and pleads with his eyes for jian yi to do something to ‘save [him] quick’ from her, which led the hilarious outcome of jian yi saying they should go pee together.
when xiao hui slowly started to have more of a part in the story, the neutral shed of light was faded slowly faded and became more negative as she became more bitter towards jian yi who was always surrounding zhan zheng xi. readers were shown her complaining about him in her thoughts as she felt he wouldn’t leave xi alone. after zhan zheng xi has avoided her several times, she writes a lover letter to him (which jian yi delivers) but zhan zheng xi chooses not to read. she starts to become a bit more persistent, and tells him she’d wait for him after school to which he tells her ‘thats not necessary’, she also then invites him to her birthday party to which he responds that he doesn’t like noisy places and quickly escapes her. witnessing this, jian yi felt some sympathy towards her.
now while zhan zheng xi wasn’t actually cruel, it’s clear jian yi felt a bit of empathy towards her and could easily imagine himself in her shoes (even though he was jealous). then came the chaos of people leaking her love letter, which zheng xi hadn’t read, on the school’s bulletin board >>> jian yi finds this out when he overhears a few girls talking about it and he becomes frustrated that zhan zheng xi has become the new hot gossip of the school because of xiao hui’s letter. jian yi didn’t want zhan zheng xi to be involved with any of this type of drama. when he lets this become known to xiao hui, she gets upset and starts hurling homophobic insults his way.
her letter had just been leaked, she’s embarrassed, and she’s jealous and bitter of how close of jian yi is with zhan zheng xi — because of this, she becomes extremely upset in the heat of the moment (does it excuse her comments? no. but that’s where her mind space was at). jian yi explodes because her comment about him being ‘gay’ hits close to home; yet, even when she cries and zhan zheng xi shows up — jian yi encourages zhan zheng xi to go comfort her. but zhan zheng xi doesn’t listen and his first priority is jian yi and how upset he is. he comforts him instead and goes to officially and politely reject her in the best possible way he can, telling her she would meet someone one day who would love her (but implying that it wouldn’t be him). up until this point, she already knew jian yi liked zhan zheng xi as more than a friend, but after zheng xi officially rejects her, she begins to suspect that zhan zheng xi liked jian yi as well. she is still sad, but calms and slowly begins to stop crying. after this, there is a bit of awkward tension between her and zhanyi, more specifically jian yi as she had insulted him so cruelly beforehand. fast forward to later on when she goes to help zhanyi save mo from being framed for something he didn’t do.
she is shaking and sweating. it’s important to remember the last time she saw and spoke to them was not particularly on good terms, and she doesn’t know if either of them have forgiven her for what she said to jian yi. she is nervous and scared of what they think of her and wonders if they will even accept her help — which they do in a heartbeat. jian yi doesn’t appear angry with her any longer and is quick to forgive her. they all help clear mo’s name together and xiao hui’s character starts to have a more positive light shone on her as the story goes on.
later when she bumps into them at the mall, jian yi actually offers for her to join them out to eat, once again expressing he shows no ill will towards her. she is polite as well, wanting to respect boundaries (a vast difference from her persistent approach in the beginning of the story) saying she hopes she wouldn’t be interrupting them, to which he tells her she wouldn’t. as I said before, it seems that after zhan zheng xi rejected her, she herself realized that zhan zheng xi has mutual feelings for jian yi. it must have been something that has been going through her mind for a while now. we have repeatedly seen how the student body act / react to seeing zhan zheng xi and jian yi together, a lot of them stare in shock and/or amazement, it’s pretty obvious to most people there who have seen them interact that their feelings for each other are more than platonic. It didn’t seem to be as obvious to xiao hui at first but now it seems as clear as day to her. so she finally begins to wonder about zheng xi’s feelings for jian yi.
she decides to be upfront about it and directly asks “is it jian yi?” knowing full well the answer. she knows already. she knows the answer is yes. she wouldn’t be crying if she didn’t know his feelings for jian yi were mutual. xiao hui is crying because she is heartbroken — the guy she likes and is clearly still not over yet already has strong romantic feelings for someone else, for her it’s like a knife twisting inside her, to know that the suspicions she has been having were true. but we can also see that she is also smiling when she asks if its jian yi, because ultimately i think she does want happiness for the person she likes even if its not with her; just like when zheng xi rejected her, he still wished that someday he hoped she would find someone to make her happy even though he admitted the person for her would not be him. her smile also seems to be a way to provide support for zheng xi, whether intentionally or not, and show that she is okay with it (him having feelings for another man, even though she had said those terrible things to jian yi back then). she finally has some closure to her suspicions and is officially able to move on.
after this, she hangs out with them for the rest of their trip at the mall and you can with no doubt see that she is no longer bitter as shown below.
after zhan zheng xi admitted to her that jian yi is the person he likes, “is important” and “can’t be replaced”, things have changed. it’s clear from the panel above how she doesn’t want to interrupt them because the moment felt so private; so she hides behind a wall, has tears streaming down her face and is blushing at them as she lurks. now that she has accepted that zhanyi only have eyes for each other, she has become a full fledged supporter (and shipper if you will).
in the last chapter, she approaches jian yi to be a model for their music club and jian yi is more than happy to help. they all get along with each other and there is no bitterness or resentment towards the other.
the development of their whole relationship from the start is very nice to see.
germansingergirl
theartofmadeline
izzy806
romaincrisis
