Chen Qingqing was caught completely off guard. She went down flat on the bed in an instant, and her hands, without her deciding it, locked around Xu Ye’s waist.
Xu Ye swore it: Chen Qingqing’s mouth really was sweet. Sweeter than an orange Zhenzhibang lollipop.
He tasted that sweetness greedily, until the hands at his waist dug hard into the flesh. Only then did his kisses move on, one after another, to her tender pale cheek, to the smooth fine tip of her nose, to her earlobe as soft as water…
Chen Qingqing felt she had been kissed all over, and she hurriedly got her hands up in front of her and covered Xu Ye’s mouth, then turned her head to one side and said, scarlet in the face, “That’s… that’s enough, isn’t it.”
Xu Ye didn’t speak. He braced both hands on the bed, a pair of hungry eyes fixed straight on her, his breathing heavy through his nose — and Chen Qingqing felt as though she were facing an army. She pulled her hands back in a hurry and covered her own mouth with them.
Her heart felt as though it were about to come up out of her throat, and her breathing turned quick and unsteady.
“I want to sleep with you tonight~”
Xu Ye said it one word at a time, and each one was like the bronze bell in a temple, striking again and again against Chen Qingqing’s heart. She shook her head hurriedly, swallowed, and said in a small frightened voice, “No. I’m not ready yet.”
The room was quiet for a good long while.
Xu Ye said nothing at all. His reason was fighting the hardest battle it had ever fought against his impulses.
A long time passed.
In the end reason had the upper hand.
Xu Ye said, his voice a little hoarse, “All right. Take your hands away. One more kiss and I’ll go back to my own bed.”
“Just one?”
“Mm.” He added quickly, “But you’re not allowed to bite me.”
Chen Qingqing was silent for a moment, then slowly moved her hands away after all. Once they were away she shut her eyes in a hurry and arranged herself into an attitude of bully me as you like.
Xu Ye stopped there and didn’t push it any further. Once he had kissed her he got straight off the bed.
And then…
He went off around the room like a lunatic.
Chen Qingqing watched him brace himself on the floor and do several dozen push-ups, then lie on the bed and do nearly a hundred sit-ups, and then go into the bathroom, where before long the sound of running water came through the door.
Chen Qingqing was thoroughly bewildered. Didn’t he already have a shower earlier?
And that was only the beginning.
Xu Ye kept at it until past one in the morning before he lay down. Over the course of that one night he did eighty push-ups and a hundred and fifty-six sit-ups, and took two cold showers.
…
The price of a whole night of that was that Xu Ye didn’t wake until past nine the next day, and the moment he opened his eyes a violent pain went through his neck.
“Agh~”
He sat up in a hurry and tried to turn his neck. He had barely turned his head a fraction before it hurt appallingly.
Damn it, he’d slept on it wrong!
Chen Qingqing was sitting beside him and saw something was off, so she got up and came over. “What’s the matter with you?”
“I’ve got a crick in my neck.”
“Serves you right, after losing your mind last night.”
Xu Ye got worked up. “That was for your sake, wasn’t it. Do you know what I went through last night?”
He turned his head in his agitation, and the pain got worse again.
Xu Ye bared his teeth with it.
Chen Qingqing looked at him and decided he wasn’t putting it on, and only then asked, “Does it hurt a lot?”
“It hurts.”
“So what do we do now? Should we go to the hospital?”
It was Xu Ye’s first crick in the neck as well, and he had no idea how to deal with it. He said quickly, “Search on your phone, see if there’s anything that helps. Right now it hurts terribly if I move my head at all.”
“Oh.”
Chen Qingqing sat down on the edge of Xu Ye’s bed, got her phone out and searched Baidu. She read through a few answers and said quickly, “The internet says it needs massaging.”
“Quick, quick, quick, come rub it for me.”
Xu Ye lay face-down on the bed in a hurry, and as his head went onto the pillow he drew a sharp breath through his teeth again.
Seeing that, Chen Qingqing could only sit down beside the pillow. A pair of small hands as pale and smooth as lotus root went quickly onto the back of his neck — and before she had put any pressure on at all, Xu Ye cried out again.
“Gently, gently~”
Chen Qingqing pursed her lips, exasperated. “I haven’t even pressed yet. Just bear with it.”
Xu Ye gritted his teeth and bore the pain.
Chen Qingqing played an instructional video on her phone and worked from it as she watched, and after close to ten minutes of pressing she asked, “How is it? Does it still hurt?”
Xu Ye turned his neck slightly. It still hurt, but it was a great deal better than when he had first woken.
He got up off the bed and went to wash with his head at an angle. Chen Qingqing looked at the state of him and started laughing with the purest enjoyment, and when Xu Ye came out he shot her a look and said with a cold snort, “Laugh. Go on, laugh. Once I’m better I’m definitely getting you back for this.”
Chen Qingqing wasn’t even frightened of Xu Ye’s threats now. She smiled. “Ha. Tell me again once you’re better.”
The two of them walked out of the hotel meaning to get breakfast, and only then found that it had been raining outside all night — a thin, drizzling rain that had washed the whole world clean. Yesterday’s muggy, heavy weather had actually turned somewhat cold today. Xu Ye came over beside Chen Qingqing, took her small hand and gave it a couple of squeezes, then said, “Let’s go get a bowl of noodles first. I’ll take you back to the dorm for warmer clothes afterward.”
“Oh.”
Chen Qingqing tucked her arm through Xu Ye’s, and the two of them borrowed an umbrella from the hotel and walked over toward the halal noodle shop across the road…
“Is this rain going to last a long time?”
“Mm.”
“Do you like sunny days or rainy days?”
“I like every day that has you in it.”
“Buttering me up again, are you.”
“Well, are you happy?”
“Happy.”
“Then give me a kiss, quick.”
“No. Don’t even think about kissing me again for a while.”
“Why?”
“Because last night you kissed me sixteen times altogether. You’ve already drawn against the next time, and the next, and the next, and the next, and the next.”
“Ah, that’s tragic.”
“Ha. Regretting it now, aren’t you.”
“I do regret something, but it isn’t that.”
“What, then?”
“I regret that after all the trouble I went to tricking you into a hotel last night, I didn’t sleep with you.”
“You jerk.”
…
With the rain there was nowhere else to go, and on top of that there were several things at the company waiting for Xu Ye to get back and deal with, so he drove back to school that morning.
Once Xu Ye had gone, Chen Qingqing went back to the dorm, sat down in her chair and simply stared into space.
Before long the phone on the desk buzzed. She picked it up and looked, found it was from her mother, and tapped the voice message to play it against her ear.
Jiang Meilin: “Qingqing, when does the summer break start?”
Chen Qingqing: “The twenty-ninth.”
Jiang Meilin: “And when are you coming home?”
Chen Qingqing’s mind was still on Xu Ye, and she answered without thinking. “I don’t know. Ask him.”
Jiang Meilin saw the message and went blank for a second, but she still replied quickly. “All right. I’ll give Xiao Xu a call.”
Chen Qingqing came straight back. “He’s driving right now.”
Jiang Meilin: “Fine, I’ll call later.”
Jiang Meilin sat on the sofa looking at the messages her daughter had sent, thoroughly puzzled. That’s strange. Why do I have the feeling my daughter’s already been married off?
(End of Chapter 248)