It was the last day of August.
It was also the last day before term started.
Xu Ye slept in and didn’t get out of bed until mid-morning. There was nobody in the dorm room but him.
Li Tongwen had already gone to the company.
Zhang Xinzhou wouldn’t be back from Shenzhen until that evening.
As for Yang Fei, there had been no word from him all summer. He had posted to Moments once in July, apparently from a concert with Li Lulu.
Once he was up and washed, Xu Ye drove to the cafeteria first. It was unusually crowded that day, and the campus was full of underclassmen who had just registered. He had four steamed buns and a bag of soy milk packed to go, planning to eat them in the car on the way to the company.
But there were far too many people on the roads, and Xu Ye lost count of how many times he leaned on the horn.
Some moved aside at the first honk.
Others needed several before they cleared the road, and swore while they were at it. “Damn. So having a car makes you special.”
Passing the administration building, Xu Ye ran into the same two junior girls from the train the day before, of all people. They were following a senior on their way to do their enrollment paperwork.
He gave the horn two taps to say hello.
He hadn’t expected the senior leading them to hear the horn and actually point at him, displeasure all over the man’s face.
Seeing no car behind him, Xu Ye stopped, pushed the door open and waved at the two girls. “What a coincidence.”
They were astonished to see him.
The senior showing them around took one look at Xu Ye and the impatience went out of his face in an instant. He meekly moved off to one side.
“Senior, what are you doing here?”
“Oh, I’m heading to my company. Have you two finished your paperwork?”
“Almost done.”
“Good. Go get it done, then. If you run into anything at school you can reach me on WeChat.”
“Will do.”
A quick hello, and Xu Ye drove out of the school.
Once he had watched the car go, the senior asked curiously, “How do you two know Xu Ye?”
“You know Xu Ye too?”
“He’s a big name at our school now. I doubt there are many people here who don’t know who he is.”
“Huh? A big name?”
……
Xu Ye spent the morning at the company.
At noon he took Li Tongwen and Jiang Wei back to the school for lunch, but instead of driving to the cafeteria he went to the snack street.
He badly wanted to know how Luo Wenbing’s Kangyuan fruit shop was doing.
He had barely driven in when he spotted a fruit shop some way ahead, its entrance lined with flower wreaths.
The shop was called Baiguoyuan. It was very large inside, roughly three times the size of Qingqing Fruit Shop, and the whole front wall had been made of glass, so that anyone passing outside could see the range of fruit in there. Prices were posted on the glass for a great many of them.
Xu Ye deliberately took a zoomed-in photo with his phone and looked at it. The prices really were a little cheaper.
He gave a small laugh and kept going.
He drove on about another hundred and fifty meters.
Then he saw another new shop. Not a fruit shop, but fruit-related all the same — a dessert place doing yogurt fruit bowls.
Even Li Tongwen, who never had much to say, couldn’t help himself at the sight of it. “Lucky we sold the shop on when we did. Otherwise business in the second half of the year would have taken a serious hit.”
Xu Ye laughed. “I was going to look in on Luo Wenbing, but at this point he probably wants me dead. Let’s just find somewhere to eat.”
He parked in a space at the roadside, found a street stall, and the three of them grabbed something to eat before heading back to the company.
Zhang Xinzhou arrived a little after four and brought Yanqing to the company with him. The moment she saw Xu Ye she started complaining.
“Xu Ye, could you not be so driven?”
Xu Ye went a little blank. “Miss Yan, where’s this coming from?”
“I wanted Zhang Xinzhou to go away with me over the summer, and he stayed in Shanghai until the middle of August before he went home. He spends more time with you now than he does with me.”
Xu Ye pressed her. “Then why didn’t you stay over the summer and keep him company?”
“I—!”
“Is it a bad thing that I’m getting Zhang Xinzhou to better himself along with me? Or would you rather have a boyfriend with no ambition at all?”
“You—!”
Two sentences from Xu Ye and Yanqing had nothing left to say.
Zhang Xinzhou was delighted too. It had never occurred to him that you could turn a thing like this around on the person who started it.
He shot Xu Ye a look at once: Nobody but you.
Yanqing was no match for him in an argument. She pulled a face. “I can’t win against you. I’m done. I’m going back to school.”
Xu Ye said quickly, “Do you want me to drive you two?”
“No need.”
Yanqing put an arm around Zhang Xinzhou’s shoulders like a man, going up on her toes to do it. “This guy’s already bought a car.”
Zhang Xinzhou sighed. “I’ll run her back to school first. We’ll talk when I’m back.”
“Mm.”
Yanqing was studying at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, twenty minutes away by car. Zhang Xinzhou sometimes drove over to see her midweek, and Xu Ye envied how close they were.
Getting to the Conservatory took him forty minutes at the least, and the roads over were often jammed, so it regularly ran to an hour.
At that thought, Xu Ye picked up his phone and sent Chen Qingqing a message. “What are you up to?”
Chen Qingqing: “Out at the supermarket with them, buying toothpaste, shampoo, tissues, that sort of thing. What about you? What are you up to?”
Xu Ye: “Thinking about you, obviously.”
Chen Qingqing: “I don’t believe you.”
Xu Ye: “I’m thinking about something else too.”
Chen Qingqing: “What?”
Xu Ye: “I’m wondering when we can move in together.”
Chen Qingqing saw the message and locked the phone at once.
She was far too embarrassed to answer a question that blunt.
The mere thought of moving in and living under one roof with Xu Ye every day made her unbearably nervous.
She held the phone and drifted around the supermarket after her three roommates, while all sorts of pictures of the two of them together surfaced in her mind.
Washing up together.
Eating together.
Curled up on the sofa together watching TV.
Lying in bed asleep together, and then held tight in his arms…
If we lived together that rotten thing would bully me all day long.
No. No.
I definitely can’t say yes right now.
But…
Why am I looking forward to it so much?
The more she thought about it, the redder her face got.
“Qingqing, what are you doing?”
“Nothing… nothing.”
Chen Qingqing realized she had nearly been left behind and hurried to catch up. Then she quietly got out her phone and sent Xu Ye a reply.
“Not yet, okay?”
(End of Chapter 288)