“Your mom messaged me.”
After replying to Jiang Meilin, Xu Ye told Chen Qingqing about it directly.
She instinctively stopped what she was doing. “What did she say?”
Xu Ye answered honestly. “Your mom says your dad’s at Hongqiao Airport right now, about to head over to find you. She asked me whether you were on campus today.”
The smile vanished from Chen Qingqing’s face in an instant. “And what did you tell her?”
“I said we’re at a hotel. Your mom said your dad will call you once he’s near the school.”
Zhang Ruowei, Jiang Yu, and Shen Xinyi all knew about Chen Qingqing’s parents’ divorce by now, and seeing her mood shift, Zhang Ruowei asked tentatively, “Xu Ye, is Qingqing’s dad a difficult person to deal with?”
“Uh, I haven’t really dealt with him much.”
“Then should we maybe—”
Zhang Ruowei was about to suggest they clear out, but Chen Qingqing spoke up first. “Ruowei, Jiang Yu, Xinyi — you three head back.”
“Sure~”
The three of them didn’t think twice and quickly left the hotel.
From Hongqiao Airport to here was only about half an hour by subway, faster by car. Seeing Chen Qingqing stay silent, Xu Ye asked quietly, “We’re waiting here for your dad?”
“Mm.”
Xu Ye said carefully, “If your dad sees the two of us alone together in a hotel room, he’s going to kill me, isn’t he?”
Chen Qingqing turned to look at him, her eyes full of warning. “You scared?”
The reason she’d sent her roommates back to campus was precisely so her father would see her alone with Xu Ye in a hotel room. She wanted her father to understand: You don’t have time to be with me — so naturally, someone else will.
Xu Ye’s confidence returned in full. “Of course not. Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Xu Ye asked with a grin, “Let me ask you something. Suppose — and I mean suppose — your dad and I both fell into the water, and you could only save one of us. Would you save me, or save your dad?”
“That’s a question girls ask guys. Whoever heard of a guy asking a girl?” Chen Qingqing was exasperated.
“Come on, answer it.”
“I don’t know!” She quickly lobbed the problem right back at him. “You tell me — if your mom and I both fell into the water, what would you do?”
Xu Ye blurted out, “Don’t you know how to swim?”
“You—!”
“Alright, alright, just a joke to lighten the mood — you looked so anxious.”
Chen Qingqing turned aside and said, contradicting her own heart, “I’m not anxious.”
“How about… we practice guitar a bit more?”
She accepted the suggestion, picked the guitar back up, and started practicing Sheng Sheng Man, the song Xu Ye had written that day.
“The A section’s a little fast, and you played one of the chords in the middle wrong.”
“No, not like that — still wrong.”
Xu Ye got up and came around behind her, closing both hands over her small ones to guide her through it directly.
His palms were large, big enough to completely envelop her hands. And her hands were cold, while his ran warm — when their hands pressed together, their temperatures blended into each other.
Her hands were smooth and soft. Xu Ye didn’t dare openly hold them, so under the cover of teaching her guitar, he quietly squeezed her palm, kneaded her fingers…
“This chord should be played like this.”
“You need to slow this passage down.”
Chen Qingqing could even feel the warmth of his breath as he spoke by her ear. Her ears reddened quickly, her body going taut, and she sat frozen on the couch, not daring to move.
She couldn’t retain a word of what he was saying — until the phone on the table rang at the most inopportune moment, and she said, cheeks faintly flushed, “I… I need to take this call.”
“Sure~”
It was Chen Hansong. He’d already reached the gate of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. He’d assumed his daughter would come out to meet him — but Chen Qingqing simply gave him the hotel name and room number, then hung up on him.
After the call ended, Chen Qingqing glanced at the door, which Zhang Ruowei hadn’t closed on her way out, then picked the guitar back up, cheeks flushed, and said with her head lowered, “Let’s… let’s keep going.”
Xu Ye was taken aback. He hadn’t expected her to ask to continue. But he quickly realized: Chen Qingqing was very likely trying to deliberately stage this scene, to provoke Chen Hansong.
This old man really does have impeccable timing.
Xu Ye leaned back down without another word, wrapping his arms around her from behind, and the two of them resumed playing guitar with their minds anywhere but on the music.
Only about ten minutes later, a set of heavy footsteps sounded outside the door.
Clack!
The hotel door was pulled open from outside, and Chen Hansong appeared in the doorway. Hearing the sound, Xu Ye and Chen Qingqing looked up at the same time, their heads nearly touching.
Taking in the scene, Chen Hansong felt suddenly lightheaded, on the verge of fainting.
I’m dreaming. I must be dreaming.
He gripped the doorframe and asked, with great difficulty, “You… what are the two of you… doing!“
Xu Ye played dumb. “Uncle Chen, what are you doing here?”
Chen Hansong didn’t want to acknowledge Xu Ye at all. He looked at Chen Qingqing. “Qingqing, where are those roommates of yours?”
Chen Qingqing didn’t answer, but her expression said it all: Roommates? What roommates?
Seeing Chen Hansong so angry he could barely form words, Xu Ye finally let go and stood up straight.
Chen Hansong strode in and slammed the door shut behind him with a bang.
The room was thick with hostility.
Xu Ye, however, was the picture of calm. In ancient times, Cao Cao held the emperor hostage to command the feudal lords — and right now, Xu Ye had something of that same feeling, holding Qingqing to command his future father-in-law. [TL: 挟天子以令诸侯 — a famous strategy from the Three Kingdoms era attributed to Cao Cao: by controlling the puppet Han emperor, he could issue commands in the emperor’s name that other warlords were obliged to obey. Used here humorously — Xu Ye has “leverage” simply by being the one Qingqing has chosen to stand beside.]
Especially given that he and Chen Hansong had clashed before, the feeling was, frankly, pretty satisfying.
Chen Hansong stayed silent for a long while, then said to Xu Ye coldly, “Step out for a bit. I want to talk to my daughter.”
Xu Ye didn’t argue. They were father and daughter, after all. If Chen Qingqing genuinely disliked Chen Hansong, she wouldn’t be going to these lengths to provoke him. The more she acted like this, the more it proved that in her heart, neither Chen Hansong nor Jiang Meilin was replaceable. She was only using this method to protest their divorce — and their habit of pouring themselves entirely into their careers while never carving out time to be with her.
Plenty of people had done something similar; Xu Ye was no exception. Back in middle school, there’d been a stretch where Zhang Hong kept telling him about so-and-so’s kid who’d scored another hundred on the math test, so-and-so’s kid who’d placed first at midterms. Xu Ye’s grades had been a bit above average, and once, worn down by it, he’d deliberately turned in a blank exam and predictably landed near the bottom of the class. But Zhang Hong hadn’t punished him the way most parents would have — instead, she’d recognized her mistake, and never said anything like that in front of him again.
Xu Ye was just about to step out when Chen Qingqing, sitting on the couch, suddenly said, “Where do you think you’re going?”
He looked at Chen Qingqing, then at Chen Hansong, and finally said to the latter with a smile, “Uncle Chen, how about I just sit off to the side and play on my phone?”
Chen Hansong reluctantly allowed it.
He’d already realized that things between Xu Ye and his daughter had developed to a point where he could no longer intervene.
He sat down beside Chen Qingqing and had just started to speak when she shifted over, putting some distance between them.
The words on the tip of his tongue got swallowed back down.
After a long silence, Chen Hansong finally looked at Xu Ye again and asked, “What is your relationship, exactly, right now?”
Xu Ye was about to answer when Chen Qingqing beat him to it, saying with a touch of haughty pride, “He’s my boyfriend. I just said yes last week.”
Xu Ye shrugged, smiling at Chen Hansong, his expression and his eyes both seeming to say: Sorry, old man. I’ve already won your daughter over.
(End of Chapter 127)