The question came out of nowhere.
And it made Chen Qingqing tense all over again. She was silent for a moment, then answered quietly, “I’m not cold.”
Chen Qingqing wasn’t stupid, and on top of that Zhang Ruowei had been dispensing wisdom in the dorm on a daily basis. She knew perfectly well that on the surface this was concern, and underneath it was a warning sign.
She could even guess what the great villain in the other bed would do next if she said she was cold.
Face burning, she added, “Can we… can we just go to sleep properly?”
Xu Ye made a sound of agreement. “Good night, then.”
“Good night.”
Chen Qingqing shut her eyes again, and the night went quiet soon enough. Her breathing gradually turned even and regular, and it wasn’t long before she was asleep.
Xu Ye lay awake until the small hours.
…
Early the next morning Qin Zhiwei turned up downstairs at the hotel and rang to call Xu Ye and Chen Qingqing down. Seeing how rough Xu Ye looked — thoroughly wrung out — he sidled up beside him and swore at him under his breath. “You are a piece of work.”
Xu Ye yawned and couldn’t be bothered explaining himself.
Because he knew that if he told Qin Zhiwei he’d shared a room with Chen Qingqing and done absolutely nothing, Qin Zhiwei wouldn’t believe that either.
Not that Xu Ye minded in the slightest. Because coming out of the lift a moment ago, Chen Qingqing had taken hold of his hand herself.
In a relationship, when a girl who has always been the passive one suddenly starts doing things first, it means she has put her guard down.
And Xu Ye knew this much: real love always comes the way water carves its own channel. It is never done in a single stride.
They got to the railway station, went through the ticket check and boarded the high-speed train, and Xu Ye put Chen Qingqing in the window seat, took the middle himself, and left Qin Zhiwei the aisle.
Once the train pulled away, the tiredness caught up with Xu Ye. His head tipped sideways onto Chen Qingqing’s shoulder and he was asleep.
Every time she was pressed up against him like this, Chen Qingqing found it unusually warm — not just the arm that was actually touching him, but the whole left side of her face as well. And thinking about the fact that the villain currently asleep on her shoulder had taken sneaky photos of her while she was asleep, Chen Qingqing got out her own phone and took several of him.
Qin Zhiwei caught the whole small operation out of the corner of his eye, and although he’d eaten very little that morning, he suddenly felt entirely full.
He took out his phone and sent Shen Xinyi a message too. “Morning. Are you up yet?”
…
Around one in the afternoon.
Jiang Meilin stood beside her car and rang Xu Ye.
“Hello? Xiao Xu, have you arrived?”
“Two minutes out.”
“You’ll see me as soon as you’re through the exit. I’m in the same spot I picked you up from last time.”
“Got it. Auntie, I’ll leave it there — I need to get the suitcase.”
“Mm.”
Jiang Meilin waited six or seven minutes before she finally saw Xu Ye, Chen Qingqing and Qin Zhiwei come out of the station.
Xu Ye was pulling Chen Qingqing’s large suitcase, while the one in Chen Qingqing’s hand was a good deal smaller — presumably Xu Ye’s. As for Qin Zhiwei beside them, Jiang Meilin ignored him outright.
She came forward quickly, meaning to take the suitcase, but Xu Ye shook his head and smiled. “It’s heavy. I’ll do it.”
Jiang Meilin nodded, smiling, and went to open the boot for him.
Once the three of them were in the car she said, fastening her seatbelt, “I’ve booked a restaurant. I’ll take you to eat first, then run you home afterward.”
Xu Ye had no objection. Old Xu and Old Zhang knew he was coming home today, but not what time.
Qin Zhiwei, on hearing this, said at once, “Auntie, my mum’s already cooked and she’s waiting for me at home. Just drop me anywhere it’s easy to get a lift from.”
“That’s fine.”
So Qin Zhiwei got out partway, and Xu Ye stayed in Jiang Meilin’s car all the way to a Chinese restaurant called Yunjing Yuanzi.
The moment Xu Ye got out, he saw Chen Hansong standing at the door.
Chen Hansong might be divorced from Jiang Meilin, but he was still Chen Qingqing’s biological father — and if Xu Ye was going to call Jiang Meilin his mother-in-law, he’d have to call this man his father-in-law too.
He hadn’t expected Chen Hansong to be here.
This blunt instrument of a father-in-law has been getting a lot of screen time lately, he thought.
“Qingqing, you must be starving after a journey that long. Come in with Dad and get some food.” Chen Hansong came over beaming.
Chen Qingqing simply took hold of Xu Ye’s hand and walked into the restaurant.
At the door, Xu Ye still remembered to turn back and ask, “Uncle Chen. Which private room are we in?”
Chen Hansong said, face darkening, “Qiyunxuan.”
Qiyunxuan was the name of the room, second on the right. When Chen Qingqing pushed the door open, several dishes were already on the table, and since the air conditioning had been put on ahead of time, she and Xu Ye both took their down jackets off once they were inside.
Seeing Chen Hansong get his comeuppance, Jiang Meilin sneered at him deliberately. “I told you not to come and you insisted. Well? Regretting it now?”
“Aren’t those two moving rather fast? Their down jackets are a matching pair. Did you not see that?”
“I saw. And it isn’t just the jackets — the watches on their wrists are a matching pair too.”
Chen Hansong hadn’t spotted that one. He said urgently, “You need to have a proper talk with Qingqing. You can’t keep indulging this!”
“If you want to talk to her, do it yourself.”
“Do you think she’d listen to me?”
“And whose fault is that?”
The two of them bickered under their breath the whole way in, and only when they reached the door of the private room did they both, by unspoken agreement, shut their mouths and say nothing more.
They’d been up a little after eight, and to make the train Xu Ye and Chen Qingqing had each had a single bread roll. Chen Qingqing had a small appetite and wasn’t especially hungry now, but Xu Ye’s stomach had been complaining for a long time, so when the waitress came in with the dishes, Chen Qingqing hurriedly asked her to bring out a whole tub of rice.
“Qingqing, eat more.”
Chen Hansong barely ate a few mouthfuls himself, entirely occupied with setting food into Chen Qingqing’s bowl. She ate it, to begin with — but once it had built into a small mountain, she transferred the lot of it into Xu Ye’s.
Chen Hansong was wretched about it. Watching Xu Ye shovelling rice down like a pig, he sighed quietly to himself: What in the world did I do to deserve this?
“Xiao Xu, how long is your holiday?”
“Until after the Lantern Festival. Although I might have to go back a bit earlier — I’ve still got a business to run.”
“Qingqing, in that case—”
Jiang Meilin hadn’t finished the sentence before Chen Qingqing cut in. “I’ll go back to Shanghai with him.”
Jiang Meilin blanked for a second, then smiled. “That’s fine too. If you go back with Xiao Xu, it puts my mind at rest.”
Puts your mind at rest?
Puts your mind at rest my arse!
Chen Hansong was angry enough to bring up blood.
Once Xu Ye had concentrated on filling his stomach, he started telling Jiang Meilin funny stories from school, the two of them talking and laughing; every so often he’d get some detail wrong and Chen Qingqing would cut in to correct him. The three of them sounded like a family making small talk.
Chen Hansong badly wanted to join in and had no idea what to say. But watching Chen Qingqing talk — and the way a bit of a smile surfaced on her face now and then while she did — Chen Hansong finally understood that in these six months his daughter really had changed enormously.
Exactly as Jiang Meilin had said. Qingqing’s character was slowly getting better.
Chen Hansong badly wanted to put that down to the university environment, or to her roommates. But in his heart he knew perfectly well that none of it could be separated out from Xu Ye.
The only reason Chen Hansong found Xu Ye so hard to stomach now was that he was afraid Xu Ye would occupy, on his own, every last place in Chen Qingqing’s heart.
And he thought this little bastard was entirely capable of it.
(End of Chapter 180)