IMH - 16

“Yu Qian, it’s strange. Aren’t we supposed to have dinner with the ‘Eleven’ team? Why are we ordering room service back in the room?”

“Tired, don’t want to eat at the restaurant.”

Peter sat in the living room of Yu Qian’s suite. The hotel staff had just delivered their ordered meals.

Perhaps due to eating too much Western food abroad, even though the menu recommended steak and lamb chops, both of them still opted for simple noodles.

Peter ordered a bowl of spicy tripe noodles, while Yu Qian chose a vegetable noodle dish.

The hotel’s noodles were well-cooked and still appetizing.

As Yu Qian blew on her noodles to cool them down, Peter spoke again, his tone filled with deep suspicion: “But you said you wanted to eat in the room, and Cheng Xiaonan just agreed? He actually let you come back alone? Didn’t he take this chance to share dinner with you?”

“No.”

Peter instinctively felt that something must have happened between Yu Qian and Cheng Xiaonan during his absence.

After taking a few bites of noodles to roughly appease his starving stomach, he finally opened his mouth, pointing at Yu Qian and saying with certainty: “There’s something fishy going on between you two.”

Yu Qian didn’t show any particular expression, quietly eating her vegetables.

After a while, it was Peter who couldn’t hold back and started complaining pitifully: “I’ve waited all this time without dinner just for this gossip. You’re not planning to tell me what’s going on between you two? Just a little bit?”

“Troublesome.”

She truly found it troublesome, which was why she disliked talking about the past the most.

“Alright, we don’t have to talk about the past. But you have to tell me what happened today, right?”

Yu Qian put down her chopsticks, picked up a bottle of mineral water, unscrewed the cap, took a couple of sips, and then said: “Not much. I just couldn’t help but tease him a little.”

Come to think of it, her action could be considered returning a favor, right?

Cheng Xiaonan teased her first, so she teased him back as a courtesy.

What was wrong with that?

But for some reason, Cheng Xiaonan seemed preoccupied on the way back to the hotel. It wasn’t the kind of absent-mindedness from being teased.

It was more like... how to describe it? Yu Qian even felt that his mood wasn’t very good.

When they entered the hotel, she saw his furrowed brows reflected in the glass door.

Why did she make this younger brother so gloomy?

So Yu Qian said she was tired, called for room service to eat in the room, and wouldn’t join the staff for dinner.

Cheng Xiaonan just said, “Okay.”

Peter had a good impression of Cheng Xiaonan.

Having known Yu Qian for many years, he had constantly heard various rumors in the industry but had never seen her really involved with anyone.

Suddenly catching a whiff of gossip, he was incredibly excited.

However, before Peter could ask further, Yu Qian’s phone rang—it was an unfamiliar number.

She obviously knew who it was and answered without hesitation. After listening for two seconds, she responded in a very calm tone: “Mm, wait a moment. I’ll come down now.”

Peter put down his chopsticks: “Who is it? Who?”

“Han Chu.”

“Why does this name sound so familiar? Have I heard it before?”

“I told you about him—the neighbor’s older brother when I was a child, the top student.”

Yu Qian walked to the door and glanced at Cheng Xiaonan’s coat.

Hadn’t heard anyone return from next door? She would return it tomorrow.

Just as she stepped out, Peter poked his head out from her room and called after her mournfully: “Yu Qian, I don’t like this Han Chu.”

Yu Qian turned to look at him: “I never said I liked him either.”

In the end, Peter asked her what needed to be delivered so late at night.

Without much expression, Yu Qian replied: “My mother’s belongings.”

Ji Ran went to a friend’s birthday party and wasn’t staying with Shen Shen tonight.

Shen Shen was like a wild horse off its leash. After eating at the hotel, he insisted on dragging Cheng Xiaonan out for another drink.

Normally, Cheng Xiaonan wouldn’t agree.

He didn’t smoke or drink, refused to attend non-business-related drinking parties, and hated the feeling of being the only sober one among a group of drunks. He said he didn’t have the fetish to watch a bunch of drunkards acting like lunatics.

But today, after Shen Shen persuaded him with a few words, Cheng Xiaonan didn’t oppose it. He picked up his phone and said, “Alright, let’s go.”

Shen Shen, getting drunk and boasting, turned his head and saw Cheng Xiaonan silently looking down at his own right hand.

His Southern Brother was naturally superior-looking, with beautiful hands.

Men usually didn’t pay attention to these things. At first, Shen Shen didn’t find anything special about Cheng Xiaonan’s hands, who often played games and basketball with him.

It was in high school when he heard girls in the class say—”Cheng Xiaonan’s hands, oh my god, they kill me!”

Sometimes, after winning a basketball game and in a good mood, Cheng Xiaonan would hear this and casually joke: “Is it only my hands that are good-looking? Don’t I play basketball well?”

Shen Shen put down his beer and nudged Cheng Xiaonan with his elbow: “Southern Brother, I know your hands are nice, stop staring and chat with your buddy.”

Cheng Xiaonan stared at his wrist, his mind still replaying the scene of Yu Qian leaning over earlier:

The dress she wore was already very sexy.

White, with a zipper running from the neckline all the way down to the hem, made of a material that was translucent yet not quite. A thin strip swayed subtly with her movements.

Like a white seagull skimming across the water.

Perhaps from being in the air-conditioned room for too long, her fingertips were cold.

Her thumb rested on the pulse point of his wrist, her lips lightly brushing against the soft makeup remover wipe on his fingertips.

At that moment, Cheng Xiaonan’s mind went blank for an instant.

But the more he realized it, the more frustrated he became.

He almost laughed in anger.

He kept hanging around Yu Qian because he thought she couldn’t possibly forget him completely. Maybe someday, in a good mood, she would reveal some clues.

Especially recently, her misunderstanding that he had a girlfriend made Cheng Xiaonan think that perhaps she deliberately kept her distance from him because of it.

Otherwise, with her habit of teasing younger guys whenever she met them, why had she never teased him?

Skipping him entirely must mean she remembered him.

Feeling relieved about this, Yu Qian actually flirted with him.

Cheng Xiaonan’s pent-up frustration almost suffocated him:

Did this sister really forget him and treat him like other younger guys, flirting casually just for fun?

Shen Shen beside him rambled on, starting from his hands and recounting a bunch of things from high school, and then moving on to gossip about the hand models in the company.

Cheng Xiaonan, thoroughly annoyed by the chatter, pushed the increasingly intrusive person back into his seat: “Yu Qian flirted with me.”

“Ji Ran said that last year’s signed hand model, the one with a very androgynous appearance, heard that she… holy crap! Did you say who flirted with you? Yu Qian?”

Shen Shen, having drunk more, talked even more, his eyes shining as he slapped the table: “Southern Brother! If she flirts with you, you flirt back! Go for it! Be brave! What are you being such a coward for?!”

Cheng Xiaonan smiled with his head bowed.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t been brave before. When he was 18, he had guts. But why did he become timid afterward?

In his memory, it was a spring afternoon.

In the final stretch of senior year, the school became increasingly demanding. They only had a half-day off every two weeks, and it was just one day.

Boarders who lived far away could skip one evening study session and go home on Saturday afternoon. But Cheng Xiaonan and others who lived near the school were encouraged by their homeroom teacher to come to school for self-study on Sunday morning if they didn’t want to study at home.

If they were going to encourage it, why bother doing it in the parents’ group?

That Sunday morning, Cheng Xiaonan was dropped off at school by Old Cheng. After enduring self-study, he wandered out of school in the afternoon and saw Yu Qian.

It was only after sending numerous messages and persuading her that she reluctantly agreed to take him out in the afternoon.

As proof of his academic prowess, he even carefully forged a high-scoring test paper, ready to show her.

Yu Qian’s car was parked in front of the convenience store. Cheng Xiaonan bought ice cream cones and returned to sit in the passenger seat. However, Yu Qian was getting ready to get out of the car again.

Cheng Xiaonan jokingly teased her: “Where are you going? What’s this? Are you not jealous that I talked to the cashier girl for a bit? Want to pick a fight? Don’t go; it’s not worth it, not worth it.”

Finding him annoying, Yu Qian casually threw her phone at him.

Cheng Xiaonan didn’t dodge, letting the phone land lightly on his lap. Smiling, he handed her an ice cream cone: “You haven’t said where we’re going yet?”

“To recharge my phone credit.”

Cheng Xiaonan ate his ice cream cone as he watched Yu Qian enter the telecommunications office next to the convenience store. He intended to move her phone, which she had thrown onto his lap, aside.

But her phone wasn’t locked. When he picked it up, it suddenly spoke—a man’s voice.

The man said in a voice message:

“Qian Qian, it was my fault for our argument last time. I know you’re angry with me. But you know, I meant well; it was my way of speaking that was wrong. Have I really upset you so much that you ignored me for half a year? Aunt Qu said you’ve been busy lately. When you’re free, let’s meet for dinner. Our mentor said there’s a great Sichuan hot pot place near the school. Do you feel like eating something spicy?”

The man’s voice was pleasant.

He seemed to be a serious person, speaking clearly with a slight warm smile.

But Cheng Xiaonan found it grating no matter how he listened to it.

Frowning, Cheng Xiaonan looked at the phone in his hand.

For some unknown reason, Yu Qian had labeled this man as Han Chu, with a note in parentheses reading “Top Student”:

【Han Chu (Top Student)】

Top student.

Not long after meeting Yu Qian, Cheng Xiaonan had asked, “What kind of men do you like?”

“Top students,” she had said at the time.

They had been in a cold war for half a year, and Cheng Xiaonan had only known Yu Qian for half a year.

Could it be that she became particularly close to him during these six months because she was in a cold war with someone else?

There was definitely something wrong with those ice cream cones from the convenience store that afternoon—creamy yuzu.

He didn’t taste the yuzu flavor, but Cheng Xiaonan felt a bitter taste spreading all the way to the root of his tongue.

And then?

After that afternoon, Yu Qian said she was busy and hardly contacted Cheng Xiaonan.

Only once, after he sent her a message, Yu Qian replied with one sentence:

【Was the test paper intentionally left in the car?】

At the time, Cheng Xiaonan was extremely unhappy, thinking that Yu Qian was questioning his grades. He wasn’t the top student she expected, so that day he unprecedentedly didn’t reply to her message.

Yu Qian didn’t say anything more.

The next contact was news of her going abroad.

On her end, the wind roared at the airport. She said she was going to study at Stanford University in Germany.

Shen Shen was still fixated on the topic of “flirting,” already babbling nonsense, suggesting that adults’ feelings required mutual probing and advising him to wrap a towel around himself and knock on Yu Qian’s door at night.

“Am I sick?” Cheng Xiaonan asked.

“What do you mean, sick? Just do as I say. Knock on the door and say your bathroom drain is blocked, borrow hers!”

Cheng Xiaonan glanced at the alcohol content of the beer and thought Shen Shen was going to get stupid if he drank more. He shoved a skewer of grilled bread into his mouth and poured out the remaining half can of beer.

Shen Shen, with the bread in his mouth, still looked quite aggrieved: “Why did you pour out my beer, Southern Brother? Was I wrong? You need to be brave. Being too nice makes it easy for people to see you as a backup option.”

The word “backup” hit a nerve with Cheng Xiaonan, and he kicked Shen Shen: “Quietly eat your food.”

Fortunately, even though Shen Shen was drunk, he still remembered his ancestor Ji Ran and said, “I better get back to the hotel early. Ji Ran will check on me soon.”

Cheng Xiaonan paid the bill and walked back with Shen Shen.

The restaurant was close to the hotel, about a ten-minute walk. As they entered the revolving door of the hotel, a tall, slim man stood in the lobby, slowly wiping his glasses with his head bowed.

A waiter politely approached and reminded him: “Sir, we have sofas here. You can sit and wait comfortably.”

The man put on his glasses, shook his head: “No need, she’ll be down soon. Thank you.”

Shen Shen, staggering from drinking, nearly bumped into the man but was pulled back by Cheng Xiaonan grabbing the collar of his clothes.

While waiting for the elevator, Shen Shen almost fell asleep with his eyes closed.

The elevator doors slowly opened, and Yu Qian stood inside.

As she walked out, Cheng Xiaonan was slightly stunned before stepping aside.

As Yu Qian passed by Cheng Xiaonan, he couldn’t help but speak: “So late, are you going out?”

Yu Qian glanced at him: “No, just picking something up.”

With that, she walked towards the lobby.

She was only wearing a dress. The night breeze was rising, and the air was chilly.

It seemed she really didn’t plan to go out.

The elevator didn’t stop on the first floor but descended to the underground parking lot two floors below.

As Cheng Xiaonan supported Shen Shen while waiting for the elevator to come back up, he suddenly heard Yu Qian’s voice.

She raised her hand towards the man standing in the lobby: “Han Chu, over here.”

Han Chu?

Cheng Xiaonan frowned and looked over—

The man who had been standing in the lobby was now walking towards Yu Qian with a smile in his eyes.