Seven in the morning, the next day.

The alarm went off, and amid a chorus of cursing from his three roommates, Xu Ye scrambled out of bed, brushed his teeth, washed his face, threw on a change of clothes, and was out the door.

He grabbed four meat buns and a bottle of soy milk at the cafeteria, walked to the bus stop, and was soon on a bus headed for the subway station.

Getting all the way over there wasn’t exactly simple — a ten-minute bus ride first, then the subway, with a transfer in the middle. The whole trip took roughly eighty minutes.

Xu Ye left the dorm at seven-fifteen and didn’t make it to the Shanghai Conservatory of Music until eight-forty. Unlike most universities, the Conservatory had an open campus policy, so he had no trouble strolling right in.

Say what you want, but art students really did look like they’d been bumped up a tier on the attractiveness scale compared to your average college student — the girls walking past were almost uniformly fair-skinned, gorgeous, with legs for miles. A few bold upperclassmen even shot him flirtatious looks along the way, all of which he ruthlessly ignored.

Once he reached the building where Chen Qingqing’s dorm was, he pulled out his phone and called her.

Inside the dorm, the moment her phone started ringing, Qingqing’s heart sped up for no reason she could name. She hung up immediately, pulled on a pair of pink-and-white Nike sneakers, grabbed an unopened phone box, and hurried out.

Jiang Yu laughed. “We almost never see Qingqing in this much of a hurry.”

Zhang Ruowei said, with absolute certainty, “That handsome guy of hers is definitely standing outside our building right now. Anyone want to bet me on it?”

Shen Xinyi, mid-toothbrushing, wandered over to the window, glanced down, and said, “No need to bet. I can already see him.”

“Training just ended and he’s already running over here? Those two are almost disgustingly close.”

“Shen Xinyi, careful, you’re drooling on the floor.”

…

By the time Qingqing reached the ground floor, she realized she’d been moving a little too eagerly.

She took a breath, composed herself, deliberately waited a beat, and then stepped out of the dorm at an unhurried, casual pace.

Xu Ye was right there by the entrance — she clocked him instantly, of course, but pretended otherwise, glancing around as if she hadn’t noticed him at all.

He knew exactly what she was doing. He walked up and waved a hand in front of her face. “Really? Half a month apart and suddenly you don’t recognize me?”

“Who are you?”

“Your boyfriend!” Xu Ye puffed his chest out, the picture of righteous indignation.

At that, Qingqing turned and started walking back inside. Xu Ye grabbed her arm quickly. “Come on, I transferred buses and trains twice to get here.”

That got her to stop. She turned, looked him up and down, and wrinkled her nose. “You look like you just got back from Africa.”

“My school doesn’t joke around with training. No sunscreen, and I’m still the lightest one of the bunch — my three roommates are all darker than me.”

“How long did it take you to get here?”

“Hour and twenty.”

“That long?”

“Wasn’t bad, honestly. Knowing I was about to see you made the time fly.”

Qingqing pressed her lips together, fighting back a smile, then held out the unopened phone box. “Here.”

“What is it?”

“Open it and find out.”

He took it and tore through the outer cardboard. The second the Apple packaging underneath came into view, he knew exactly what it was — the newest iPhone 6.

He looked up at her, stunned. “This is for me?”

Qingqing scrambled for an excuse. “I had my mom get me a new phone. Somehow she ended up shipping two. Probably a mix-up on the store’s end. Lucky you.”

Xu Ye grinned. “If you wanted to give me a gift, you could’ve just said ‘gift.’ Who’s going to believe an excuse that flimsy?”

“Then give it back!”

“You don’t take back something you’ve already given.”

“I changed my mind.”

“Not happening. It’s mine now.”

“Give it to me!”

He held the phone up over his head. Qingqing rose up on her toes, trying to snatch it back, but after a couple of failed attempts, she considered stomping on his foot — then remembered she’d already injured that exact foot once before — and shoved him aside instead, marching off on her own.

He hurried after her. “Wait up!”

The two of them made their way out of the school. Qingqing stopped and asked, “Where to?”

“Your school’s pretty close to the Bund. [TL: the Bund — Shanghai’s famous waterfront promenade, lined with century-old colonial buildings facing the city’s futuristic skyline across the river] Let’s walk around there this morning, catch a movie in the afternoon, swing by the Oriental Pearl Tower for a photo, and I’ll get you back to school by evening before I head home.”

“Lead the way.”

Qingqing had a terrible sense of direction, and between that and not having left campus much during military training, she lost all sense of which way was which the moment they passed the school gates.

Xu Ye led her to the subway station and they got off at Nanjing East Road. [TL: one of Shanghai’s most famous pedestrian shopping streets, just a short walk from the Bund]

On the train, he couldn’t wait to start transferring his data over to the new iPhone. Sure, an iPhone 6 wasn’t going to hold a candle to whatever model would exist a decade from now, but it was a massive upgrade from the junk phone he’d been using.

In 2014, an iPhone could still run circles around any domestic phone on the market.

He spent the whole ride grinning like an idiot — and not just because of the phone itself, but because of what it meant: he now had a girlfriend-in-waiting who actually wanted to buy him things.

In his past life, he’d once bought Gu Mengyao an iPhone too — scrimped and saved an entire semester’s worth of pocket money for it. She’d been happy for all of one day before going right back to treating him like an afterthought.

Then versus now.

Xu Ye felt something well up in his chest. Once they stepped out of the subway station, he turned to Qingqing, suddenly serious. “Thank you.”

“It’s just a phone. What’s there to thank me for?”

“Once I’ve got money of my own, I’ll buy you anything you want.”

“We’ll talk about that once you actually have money,” Qingqing said, hands clasped behind her back, head tilted away, the corner of her mouth still curved upward.

Walking along the Bund, the view stretched out across both banks of the Huangpu River — a light breeze, sunlight scattering across the water, the Oriental Pearl Tower, Jin Mao Tower, and the Shanghai World Financial Center rising in the distance, framed against the cruise boats and ferries gliding across the river. The whole scene came together like a postcard of the city at its most dazzling.

They wandered without any real destination. About half an hour in, Qingqing sat down on a bench along the walkway, lightly tapping her thigh with a small fist. “I’m tired.”

“Let’s rest, then.”

He sat down next to her. Once the data transfer finished, he used his old phone to snap a photo of the new iPhone, then posted it to Moments from the iPhone itself.

He uploaded the picture first, then added a caption: Got this iPhone from my girlfriend.

To avoid getting an earful, he blocked Old Xu, his mom, and a handful of relatives from seeing it before hitting post.

“What are you smiling about?”

“Nothing. Just posting something to brag about you a little.”

Qingqing rolled her eyes. “No shame at all.”

“Oh no.”

“What now?”

“I forgot to block your mom.”

A flicker of dread crossed Qingqing’s face. She snatched the phone right out of his hand and looked — and the moment she saw what he’d actually posted, her face went bright red.

“Xu Ye!”

“Don’t panic, I’ll delete it right now, your mom probably hasn’t even seen it yet.”

He took the phone back and was about to delete the post when a notification popped up. He refreshed the page — and right there, under the likes, sat three unmistakable words: Auntie Jiang.

He looked up at Qingqing, voice suddenly very small. “Your mom already liked it.”

(End of Chapter)