“What nonsense are you talking!”
Chen Qingqing had actually been quite pleased that Xu Ye had come over this late, but at that she folded her arms across her chest at once and said, huffing, “I knew it. You turning up out of nowhere — you were never thinking anything good.”
“Heh heh.” Xu Ye went to give her hands a couple of strokes, but he had barely got his hand across before she slapped it away.
“Don’t touch me.”
“All right, all right, no more fooling around.” Xu Ye laughed. “I’m going to be very busy for a while. So after this, the next time I come over will probably have to wait until the summer break.”
Chen Qingqing pursed her lips and said, not very happy about it, “Didn’t you say you wouldn’t fail anything even without revising?”
“It isn’t about revising. I’m setting up an investment company. The office and the team are both about ready now, and once the office equipment goes in, the company has to start running. There’ll be a lot to do at the start, and as the boss I certainly can’t get away.”
“Yes, yes, yes. Nobody’s busier than you.”
There was a note of reproach in Chen Qingqing’s voice.
In the beginning, when Xu Ye came to her to talk, she used to find him long-winded. But now… she could hardly wait to spend every day talking to him from morning to night.
Xu Ye caught the meaning underneath it and answered hurriedly, laughing. “Isn’t that exactly why I drove over tonight, while I’ve still got the time? So… could you not go back to the dorm tonight?”
He had barely finished before he added, “I promise I’ll behave tonight. I just want to be with you a bit longer.”
Xu Ye hadn’t come over the previous weekend.
The truth was that Chen Qingqing wanted more time with Xu Ye too.
After all, once a girl falls for someone she wants nothing more than to be with him twenty-four hours a day, wrapped around him, stuck to him, following him around like a shadow.
But these were the things Chen Qingqing was never going to say out loud to Xu Ye.
She was, after all, the kind of person who blushed at the mere thought of the bad things she and Xu Ye had already done.
So just then she didn’t know whether she ought to agree or not — until Xu Ye pressed her. “Say something.”
Chen Qingqing turned her head away toward the window and, keeping hold of as much dignity as she could manage, said, “Depends how you behave.”
Xu Ye immediately started grinning like a fool.
Outside the window, night had settled over the whole city, the sky scattered all over with stars. Shanghai, on the edge of the plum rain season, was very muggy, and a downpour felt as though it might come at any moment. [TL: 梅雨季节, the “plum rain,” is the East Asian rainy season that settles over the Yangtze region from roughly June to July — named for its arrival as the plums ripen.]
Chen Qingqing looked down at her phone, then turned her head to look at Xu Ye, then opened her phone up and sent Shen Xinyi a message on the sly. “I’m not coming back to the dorm tonight.”
…
“Hello. A room, please.”
“Twin room? Or double?”
Xu Ye turned and glanced at Chen Qingqing, then said, very righteously, “A twin will do.”
Xu Ye was a regular at this hotel.
The young woman at the desk certainly recognized him, and he had made a point of telling her one particular thing before. Hearing him ask for a twin this time, she was a little taken aback.
Once the deposit was paid and they had the key card, the two of them took the elevator upstairs.
Xu Ye opened the door, let Chen Qingqing walk in first, then pulled it shut behind them.
“It’s so stuffy.”
Xu Ye turned the air conditioning on and said with a smile, “It looks like it’s going to rain tomorrow. And keep raining for over a week.”
Chen Qingqing had already showered back at the dorm and still had a pair of slippers on her feet. She sat down at the foot of the bed, and — afraid the silence would turn awkward — started a subject of her own. “Are you still going back to Jiangzhou over the summer, then?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”
“You’ve set up another company, though, haven’t you.”
“That’s not a problem.” Xu Ye laughed. “I’ve found somebody with experience to hold down the fort at the company, and the two months of the summer are a good chance to test what he can do. I won’t be at home the whole two months, though. I’ll probably have to come back to Shanghai in mid-August. Will you come back with me when I do?”
Chen Qingqing propped both hands on her thighs, tilted her head up and thought about it for a moment, then said, “No.”
She had assumed Xu Ye would ask her why. Instead he said, “That’s fine too. I’ll come back to Shanghai first, then, and go pick you up when term’s nearly starting.”
Chen Qingqing was not at all satisfied with that answer.
She felt there was something not quite right about Xu Ye tonight. Any other time he would have shamelessly wheedled away at her with a whole stream of sweet talk until she agreed to come back with him…
How had he suddenly turned so “upright”?
Chen Qingqing was a little puzzled, but it wasn’t a thing she could ask about, so she simply said nothing, took off her shoes and sat cross-legged on the bed.
Xu Ye had no idea Chen Qingqing had already decided to stay at the hotel that night. To his mind the first order of business was getting her to stay at all, because otherwise everything else was pointless — which was exactly why he was being so gentlemanly and so proper.
“I’m going to take a shower.”
“Oh.”
Xu Ye went into the bathroom and stayed in there twenty minutes. When he came out, Chen Qingqing had moved up to the head of the bed with both feet tucked under the covers.
From the look of it she wasn’t planning on leaving.
Xu Ye dried his hair absently, and the moment he put the hairdryer down he asked, “What are you doing?”
“Scrolling Weibo.”
“It’s only just past eight. How about a movie before we sleep?”
“Does the television work?”
Xu Ye came over, lifted the covers and sat down right beside Chen Qingqing, saying as he did, “We can watch it on the phone.”
He had been putting it on just now after all.
He was a bad man. Forever and always a great big bad man.
Chen Qingqing twisted around at once. “What are you doing?”
Xu Ye pointed at the phone with a completely untroubled face. “Watching a movie.”
“You… you promised in the car that you’d behave.”
“When have I misbehaved?”
Chen Qingqing had nothing to say to that. She wrinkled her small nose, made one small fierce threat, and in the end gave in anyway.
Xu Ye pulled the covers up at once, opened the video player on his phone, picked a 142-minute film called The Shawshank Redemption off the ratings list, and turned the light off while he was at it, leaving only a dim yellow bedside lamp.
The movie worked its way slowly forward.
But they had both seen this one already, and neither of their minds was on the film just then.
Xu Ye was working out how he was going to justify staying in this bed to sleep.
And Chen Qingqing was working out why Xu Ye’s body was this hot — just sitting beside him, she could feel that his side was several degrees warmer.
When the air conditioning had been switched on it had defaulted to eighteen degrees, and an hour later the temperature in the room had dropped right down. Wearing only two thin layers of pajamas, Chen Qingqing shifted a little closer to Xu Ye without thinking about it, and when he registered the movement he reached his arm around behind her head and took hold of her shoulder.
Chen Qingqing said nothing. But the feelings she had only just calmed turned tense again, and she rested her head on Xu Ye’s shoulder as though it were the most natural thing.
And that one movement of hers threw Xu Ye into complete disarray.
How could she be this soft?
How could she smell this good?
The effect of the stir-fried lamb kidney made itself felt at this point after all, and Xu Ye felt he was now like a balloon pumped full of air, liable to burst at any second.
Chen Qingqing felt the hand around her shoulder getting tighter and tighter, and asked softly, “What’s wrong?”
The words had barely left her mouth.
Xu Ye simply tossed the phone onto the bed beside them, turned and kissed her.
“Mm~”
(End of Chapter 247)