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Psst! We're moving!
For several days after that, Shen Yihuan didn’t see Lu Zhou again.
The studio assigned her a new job: taking a series of photos, including night scenes, at a lavender field park in a neighboring city. This meant staying overnight.
Shen Yihuan finished organizing her things and went downstairs, only to see a familiar Land Rover parked at the entrance.
She walked over and tapped on the car window. When it rolled down, she saw Gu Minghui’s face, and cool air conditioning wafted out from inside.
Gu Minghui smiled at her. “Get in.”
“...” Shen Yihuan paused for two seconds. “That photography job... was it requested by you?”
“Yeah, my family’s old man just bought the land. Before we use it properly, we need to take a good set of beautiful photos for promotion to boost its reputation, right?”
Shen Yihuan tossed her small suitcase into the back seat and got in. “No wonder my boss specifically wanted me to go. I said, couldn’t you find someone else? I really don’t want to travel for work.”
“It’s just that I don’t trust anyone else. Don’t worry, food, lodging, and travel are all five-star quality. You won’t get tired,” Gu Minghui said with a smile as he started the car.
Although Shen Yihuan’s academic performance was always at the bottom of her class from childhood to university, she truly had a talent for photography. Many magazines even specially hired her for shoots.
The car got on the highway.
Having not slept well last night, Shen Yihuan quickly fell asleep.
When she woke up again, she was startled by a magnified face close to hers. Her pupils constricted, and she instinctively pushed hard.
“Damn it...” Gu Minghui’s head hit the car wall hard, and he immediately cursed under his breath in pain.
“Why are you so close to me? You scared me to death!” Shen Yihuan ignored him, patted her chest, and then glared at him. “What were you doing?!”
“Waking up Sleeping Beauty, of course,” he said, rubbing the back of his head, trying to make light of it.
“Don’t be disgusting. I’m telling you, someone as flirtatious and shameless as you... your future girlfriend is going to be unlucky.” She said this and got out of the car, pulling out her suitcase.
“Let me get that for you.”
“It’s fine, it’s not heavy,” she said.
Gu Minghui closed the car door, then replied to her previous comment, “I’m flirtatious, and you’re not? My ‘Sister Huan’ of the streets, how many innocent young boys did you ruin back then?”
Shen Yihuan rolled her eyes at him. “I’ve washed my hands of that.”
She thought of Lu Zhou again.
When they first got together... Lu Zhou was also an innocent young boy.
His first love and first kiss were both given to her.
Their first kiss was even taught to him by Shen Yihuan.
“Open your mouth...”
“Tongue.”
“Don’t bite, gently.”
...
She still blushed remembering it now.
But it was only that one time. Lu Zhou was a very fast learner, and kissing was no exception. Later, he didn’t need Shen Yihuan to teach him; he could easily kiss someone breathless and weak-kneed.
But his kisses were always very intense.
Like a beast suppressing itself.
His breathing was heavy, licking and gnawing, as if he wanted to completely dismember and devour her. Many times, Shen Yihuan was powerless to resist.
No matter how she taught him to be gentler, it was useless.
“Why is your face so red?” Gu Minghui looked at her strangely.
Shen Yihuan ignored him, set up her tripod, and glanced at the shooting location.
The lavender here bloomed relatively late. It was a vast expanse. The Gu Group had just acquired this land, planning to develop it into a high-end resort.
“Are there any specific shooting requirements?” Shen Yihuan adjusted the camera’s settings.
Gu Minghui leaned against a tree behind her. “Just make it look incredibly impressive at first glance.”
“Over the top.”
Shen Yihuan retorted, but still proceeded with the shoot as he requested.
It was fairly easy to make a flower field look impressive, but it required constantly changing positions to find new angles.
They ran around all day and were exhausted by evening. Shen Yihuan took a few photos of the flower sea at dusk, the sunlight illuminating a central pond with a golden, shimmering glow.
“Cherry, are you done? I’m starving,” Gu Minghui urged her.
“Almost.”
Shen Yihuan took a few more shots, then held the camera to check the photos she had just taken, feeling quite satisfied.
“Ready? Shall we go eat?”
“What do you want to eat?” Gu Minghui patted his pants as he got up from a hay bale. Seeing Shen Yihuan turn around, he suddenly froze. “Your neck...”
“What?”
Shen Yihuan opened her front-facing camera and saw several mottled red marks on her neck, slightly swollen, looking a bit frightening.
Gu Minghui: “When did you get those?”
“Just now, I guess...” Shen Yihuan looked a bit confused. “I didn’t have them this morning.”
“To the hospital!” Gu Minghui immediately said.
Shen Yihuan looked at him. “Not eating?”
“Eat what?! Forget about eating!”
________________________________________
After performing a skin scrap test, the doctor said, “It’s a pollen allergy, not serious. I’ll prescribe some ointment and pills. It should clear up in about a week.”
Shen Yihuan frowned. “A whole week?”
“Little girl, don’t be so vain. And definitely don’t try to cover your neck if you’re afraid of looking ugly; it’ll only slow down healing.”
Gu Minghui laughed, “It’s not ugly, it’s quite sexy.”
Shen Yihuan rolled her eyes.
By the time they left the hospital and had dinner, it was already very late. There was no time to shoot the night scene. Gu Minghui didn’t dare let her shoot anymore and directly canceled the morning shoot planned for tomorrow. They returned to their designated hotel, exhausted.
Gu Minghui was still driving, and Shen Yihuan sat beside him, carefully reading the instructions for the ointment and pills.
“Are you uncomfortable?”
“I don’t feel anything,” Shen Yihuan said.
“It’s too late to go back today. We’ll head back tomorrow morning.”
“There’s still one set of photos left. Actually, if I cover it with gauze, I can still shoot.”
“No, ancestor, I wouldn’t dare,” Gu Minghui laughed. “Don’t work so hard; I’m not used to it.”
Shen Yihuan finished applying the ointment, stretched lazily, and leaned back into the car seat.
This suburban area wasn’t as bright as the city at night. Besides a few streetlights, there were only countless stars in the sky, twinkling everywhere, making one feel as if they had stumbled into another world.
Shen Yihuan remembered the faint, dark light in Lu Zhou’s eyes when he drove her home that day.
It made her feel inexplicably thirsty.
“Oh, right?” Shen Yihuan turned her head. “Do you have... Lu Zhou’s contact information?”
Gu Minghui nearly stepped on the accelerator pedal instead of the brake. “I don’t like him, so why would I have it...? What are you doing? Are you going back to an old flame?”
Shen Yihuan said seriously, “I’m thinking about it.”
“...” Gu Minghui was so angry he wanted to smash the car. “Are you getting dumber with age? From first year high school until now, over nine years, you’re going to waste all that time on him?”
“I just feel like I was pretty bad to him before...” Shen Yihuan sighed. “He’s the one who wasted eight years on me.”
“Can you guarantee you’ll be good to him now?” Gu Minghui snorted. “Have you forgotten his hostility towards me back then? He treated you like a criminal. Can you handle that?”
Shen Yihuan clicked her tongue, feeling a bit annoyed.
She was just thinking.
Was it because she had given Lu Zhou too little security in the past, which is why his obsession grew deeper and more clamorous?
Back at the hotel.
Gu Minghui specifically told her to knock on his door if she felt unwell in the middle of the night.
Shen Yihuan hummed a few times and closed her room door.
The advantage of traveling for work with a rich guy was staying in five-star resort hotels, which were very spacious.
She came out after showering, reapplied a layer of ointment, then opened her laptop and camera equipment to import the images. Another hour passed after she finished refining the photos.
She actually had Lu Zhou’s contact information.
WeChat was only a one-sided deletion; she could simply re-request to add him as a friend. But she was afraid of getting another rejection.
His phone number was still in her contacts, but Lu Zhou seemed to have changed his number.
Right...
School anniversary!
Shen Yihuan had left the class WeChat group before because of the embarrassing discussions, so she only knew about the school anniversary information because Qiu Ruru told her. However, they used to have a QQ group...
She hadn’t used QQ since graduating from high school. Fortunately, all her account passwords were the same.
As soon as she logged in, she was bombarded with messages.
Tencent News, service accounts, various groups, and unread messages from some of her old ‘bad influence’ friends from years ago.
She found the high school class group. The school anniversary announcement was posted there, and the sender was actually the class monitor—it must have been the homeroom teacher who contacted Lu Zhou to convey this message.
Shen Yihuan’s pupils constricted slightly, her lips parting subtly in indescribable surprise.
Lu Zhou’s avatar...
It was still a couple avatar with hers.
Back in her rebellious middle school phase, she had forced Lu Zhou to change it. It completely didn’t match his ‘god’ and ‘academic genius’ image.
It was a pig.
Back then, they watched an animated show called “GG Bond,” and Lu Zhou’s avatar was the main character, GG Bond.
And Shen Yihuan’s... was another pig named “Princess Xiangxiang.”
It was so embarrassing.
Even more embarrassing was that Lu Zhou hadn’t even changed this avatar when he posted the school anniversary information in the group half a month ago.
In the muggy evening breeze of summer, these two childish avatars, in just one second, pulled Shen Yihuan’s memories back eight years.
She didn’t know if Lu Zhou hadn’t bothered to change it, or if it was for some other reason.
After a few minutes of spacing out, she finally clicked on Lu Zhou’s grayed-out avatar, wondering if he would still be online.
Shen Yihuan had changed phones in between, so the chat history was already blank.
She didn’t know what to send.
She hesitated repeatedly.
She sent a “poke” window shake.
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