Third floor of Baolong Plaza.
Xu Ye led them to a hotpot restaurant called Jijihong.
The temperature was already in the single digits now, with winter clearly on the way, and at a time like this the best choice for a group meal was hotpot.
Once the pot came to a boil, the group ate and chatted.
Xu Ye brought up the topic himself. “Did you take the subway or a taxi over this morning?”
“Taxi.”
“Got here in forty-some minutes, right?”
Chen Qingqing made a small sound of agreement. “Forty-three minutes total.”
The subway took eighty minutes one way — meaning if you had a car, a round trip would only take half the time of the subway. This further cemented Xu Ye’s plan to buy a car by year’s end.
Qin Zhiwei finally cut in at just the right moment. “You guys don’t have it far at all. Whether I come by subway or taxi it takes me at least an hour. When I came last weekend, I nearly missed the last bus on the way back.”
Shen Xinyi laughed. “That far and you still come every week — you and Xu Ye must really be close.”
Qin Zhiwei scratched his head and grinned foolishly. “We’ve been friends since we were little.”
Xu Ye looked up at Qin Zhiwei just then, and seeing the smug little expression on his face, he knew exactly who this guy had his eye on.
Of Chen Qingqing’s three roommates, Zhang Ruowei acted all giggles and jokes on the surface, but if you actually tried to pursue her, she’d be the hardest of the three.
Jiang Yu kept saying she was growing her hair out, but she’d had short hair from the start of the semester until now. Anyone who knew her would realize she was actually a rather forceful personality — in a relationship, she’d be the dominant one.
And Shen Xinyi was the classic introverted, quiet type, well-raised and cultured. A girl like that was both easy and hard to pursue — she’d pay special attention to the small details, but once you’d genuinely moved her, it was easy for things to come together.
Qin Zhiwei’s looks were actually decent — it was just that he used to always do that quasi-shamate hairstyle [TL: 杀马特 (shāmǎtè), a Chinese youth subculture from the 2000s known for garish, spiky, dyed hair — long since a punchline for tacky fashion] that looked a bit off-putting. Ever since seeing that Xu Ye’s textured crop looked good, he’d copied a near-identical cut, and now looked much more presentable.
But this guy had one fatal flaw: he was too honest and earnest. With guys he’d talk trash and shoot the breeze about anything, and with girls he felt nothing for he could get along just fine — but the one thing was, the moment he met a girl who made his heart race, he’d instantly go mute, and might blush at the slightest word.
Since puberty, he hadn’t so much as held a girl’s hand. Nobody knew how he’d made it through these nineteen years.
(But those of you reading this surely know.)
Seeing Qin Zhiwei fall silent, Xu Ye figured he couldn’t just sit there any longer, so he quickly picked up the thread. “Our families live really close, played together since we were little, and stayed classmates all through school. After the gaokao he actually wanted to go to a university in our provincial capital — I was the one who dragged him to Shanghai by force.”
Shen Xinyi joked, “Then you’ve got to take responsibility for him.”
Xu Ye smiled. “Of course. As long as I’ve got a piece of meat to eat, there’s a mouthful of soup for my man Zhiwei.”
Qin Zhiwei frowned. “Why do I get soup? Can’t I eat meat with you?”
“My mistake.”
“You son of a—” Qin Zhiwei nearly cursed, but swallowed it back down at the crucial moment.
Xu Ye continued, “Last week I called him over to help assemble the company’s computers. He’s been into tinkering with this stuff since middle school — he’s basically half an expert now. If any of you have questions in that area, you can ask him.”
“Really?” Jiang Yu said quickly. “I’ve actually been thinking about buying a laptop lately, budget around 5,000. Any good value-for-money recommendations?”
Qin Zhiwei didn’t quite react in time.
Xu Ye reached over and pinched Qin Zhiwei’s thigh hard, and Qin Zhiwei quickly said, “Yeah — do you usually game more, or do office work more?”
“I don’t game.”
“Then…”
Qin Zhiwei was about to name a specific laptop model when Xu Ye cursed idiot internally and hurriedly cut in. “There are so many laptop models, she won’t remember if you list them now. Add each other on WeChat, and Zhiwei can just send you the link later. On top of value for money, whichever one you think looks nice, buy that one.”
“That’s true.”
Jiang Yu took out her phone on her own. “I’ll add you then.”
Qin Zhiwei was flattered beyond belief. Under Xu Ye’s watchful gaze, he hurried to pull out his phone, and Xu Ye helped pass it to Jiang Yu across the table. Once Jiang Yu had scanned the code, he passed it in front of Shen Xinyi. “You two add each other too.”
There was no reason to refuse at this point. Shen Xinyi set down her chopsticks, picked up her phone, and scanned to send a friend request too.
Qin Zhiwei’s heart was pounding. If there hadn’t been so many people around, he’d have wanted to kowtow to Xu Ye in gratitude.
The only ones at the table who could read what Xu Ye had just pulled off were probably Zhang Xinzhou and Zhang Ruowei — though neither said anything.
Once the hotpot was finished, Zhang Xinzhou, Ruan Xiaolu, and the rest all went back to school. They all understood perfectly well that at today’s meal, they were just there to keep the guests company.
Coming out of the hotpot place, Xu Ye checked the time and asked Zhang Ruowei and the others, “What do you want to do this afternoon?”
“Anything’s fine.”
“Let’s find something to do, or it’ll get too boring.”
The mall had an arcade and a cinema, but the girls weren’t very interested in the arcade. Xu Ye pulled out his phone and checked what was showing, and finding two decent films, smiled. “How about we go see a movie?”
“Sure, which one?”
“These two both look pretty good — one’s The Dead End, starring Deng Chao, Duan Yihong, and Wang Luodan; the other’s Rise of the Legend, starring Sammo Hung and Eddie Peng.” [TL: two real 2014–2015 Chinese films — 《烈日灼心》 a acclaimed crime thriller, and 《黄飞鸿之英雄有梦》 a martial-arts retelling of the Wong Fei-hung legend.]
The four girls quickly decided. “Let’s watch the Deng Chao one.”
If it had been up to the guys, they might’ve picked the Wong Fei-hung film based on the title alone, but girls generally weren’t keen on martial-arts flicks, so their choice was exactly what Xu Ye had anticipated.
The Dead End was genuinely a phenomenal film — Deng Chao even won Best Actor at both the Shanghai International Film Festival and the Golden Rooster Awards for it, and the final lethal-injection scene became a textbook-level demonstration piece at the Beijing Film Academy.
“There’s a showing in exactly ten minutes. Come on, let’s head upstairs.”
Xu Ye had bought the tickets before even getting in the elevator, and once he’d collected them at the cinema, he handed them out one by one.
“There aren’t six seats together — Qingqing and I are in the back row, and you four are in row six.”
When he handed Qin Zhiwei his ticket, Xu Ye even scratched him with a fingernail.
Qin Zhiwei looked down at the ticket in his hand, then snuck a glance at the one in Shen Xinyi’s — and finding their seats were right next to each other, his heart started thumping all over again.
After lining up to have their tickets checked, the six of them went into the theater together. Xu Ye pulled Chen Qingqing over to the corner of the back row and sat down.
When the ads finished and the feature began, all the lights in the theater went out.
In the pitch-black back row, a “pig’s trotter” slowly took hold of a small, pale, tender hand. The little hand tugged twice, found it couldn’t break free, and stopped struggling.
Xu Ye had already seen this movie and remembered the whole thing; he had absolutely no intention of actually watching it. About ten minutes in, he pushed up the armrest between their two seats, then his pig’s trotter went around the back of Chen Qingqing’s neck and came to rest lightly on her shoulder.
In the dim theater, Chen Qingqing tilted her head, her watery eyes fixed unblinkingly on Xu Ye, her pitiful little gaze seeming to ask: Dumb pig, what exactly are you trying to do?
Xu Ye said softly, “Leaning on my shoulder will be more comfortable to watch.”
Chen Qingqing glanced around and saw everyone else absorbed in the movie. First she edged imperceptibly toward Xu Ye’s seat, then slowly rested her head on his shoulder.
Now, neither of them had any heart left for watching the movie.
(End of Chapter 146)