Chen Qingqing bought a great many drawing supplies.

Out of the stationery shop, the two of them drove to the hotel. The moment they were in the room she couldn’t wait — she spread the drawing paper out on the coffee table by the sofa and arranged the supplies one by one beside it.

Once everything was ready she handed Xu Ye her phone. “Pick a photo and I’ll draw it.”

Xu Ye typed in the passcode and opened the album, and a dazzling spread of photographs came up. Chen Qingqing wasn’t much for selfies, and when they went out she didn’t take stacks of scenery shots the way Zhang Ruowei and the others did — so fifty percent of what was in it was pictures he had taken and sent her, and more than fifteen percent were photos she had taken of him without his knowing.

“Why do you have this many bad photos of me, taken on the sly?”

“You’re not allowed to delete them!”

“Don’t worry, I won’t.” Xu Ye scrolled through at random, and in the end he still thought the two pictures of them together from New Year’s Eve last year were the best, and the ones that meant the most.

So he opened the one of himself giving her a bear hug from behind, set the phone on the coffee table and said, “Draw this one.”

Chen Qingqing glanced at it, saw which one it was, and smiled too.

She was the same as him.

She liked that photo very much herself. The other one — the two of them standing together with their heads tipped — was still the lock screen on both their phones, and neither had ever changed it.

She set the phone to the left of the paper, studied it carefully for a while, then picked up a pencil and began marking the points and laying out the composition.

But the sofa seat was a little high, and drawing meant bending her whole back over. She found it hard going, so she simply put a cushion on the floor and sat cross-legged on it.

Xu Ye sat behind her, looking down and watching quietly.

Once the outlines were down she started on the finer work. Her hands were deft, and the pencil in them seemed to have a particular magic to it. In no time at all their two figures had appeared on the paper.

Seeing her finish the hair, put the pencil down and roll her wrist, Xu Ye said quickly, “Take a break. There’s no rush.”

She shook her head. “My hand’s just a bit sore.”

“Give me your hand. I’ll rub it.”

She held her small hand out as a matter of course. Xu Ye took it as though it were something precious, pressed here and rubbed there, and finally kissed the back of it before letting go.

The pencil tip moved across the paper with a soft scratching.

Time went slowly by.

She had all but ‘moved’ the photograph off the phone onto the paper exactly as it was. She checked it over carefully several times, found nothing wrong, and only then clapped her small hands together, satisfied. “It’s done.”

Xu Ye hadn’t touched his phone the whole time. He had sat and watched, putting in a word of praise every so often — emotional value in full. When she finished he leaned straight in and took the drawing, looking it over again and again, unwilling to put it down, and laughed. “That’s impressive. You’ve actually made it this good. Come here and let me kiss you, as a reward.”

“Go away.”

She pushed him off and got to her feet, but she had been sitting too long and both legs had long since gone numb. She sat quickly back down on the sofa and beat at her calves with a small fist.

Xu Ye knew perfectly well, but asked anyway. “What’s wrong?”

“My legs are numb.”

The words were barely out before he lifted her legs into his lap and got the little white socks off her feet faster than she could stop him.

The instant his hands touched her feet it was like an electric shock. Her insteps went rigid, and her toes, pale and smooth as lotus shoots, tightened with them.

Thanks to Zhao Ming, Xu Ye had been to the foot-massage parlor a few times and knew what made a foot rub feel best. He supported her heel, made a fist with his right hand and worked the sole with exactly the right pressure, then moved on to the calf…

“That tickles~”

Chen Qingqing pressed her lips lightly together, her eyes as clear as autumn water. She wanted to pull her legs back, but it felt good. To take her mind off it she went red and asked, “Have you ever rubbed anybody else’s legs like this?”

“Of course not.”

“All right. My feet aren’t numb any more.”

She had just started to draw her legs back when he caught hold of them again. He pointed at a spot on her thigh. “When did you get a mosquito bite here?”

“I don’t know.”

“Doesn’t it itch?”

“It didn’t before. Now that you’ve said it, it does a bit.”

Xu Ye laughed. “Put some mosquito lotion on when you get back to the dorm.”

“No need.” She shook her head and pulled her leg back. “If you press a cross into a mosquito bite it stops itching.”

She said it and did it at the same time.

Watching her, Xu Ye felt his heart melt. How is my girlfriend this cute?

He reached out, took her face in both hands, and kissed her — forcibly, imperiously, with no reason in it at all.

……

It was five thirty.

Zhao Ming took Xu Ye’s call and hurried over to the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.

Xu Ye used the same excuse as before — his car wouldn’t hold this many people — and had Zhao Ming collect Zhang Ruowei, Jiang Yu and Shen Xinyi from the dorm and bring them to the restaurant he had named.

Zhao Ming was ten thousand times willing, of course. He drove the whole way pressed right up against the speed limit, got to the foot of the women’s dormitory as fast as it could be done. Once there he checked himself in the mirror, fixed his hair, and only then sent Zhang Ruowei a message.

Zhang Ruowei had heard from Xu Ye long before. When the message came she picked up her perfume, put the smallest amount on her wrist and then touched a little behind her ear. It was neither strong nor faint — from a distance you wouldn’t catch anything, and up close it wouldn’t sting.

“Come on. Let’s go down.”

She picked up her bag and led the two roommates downstairs.

Zhao Ming was still sunk in his own nerves and hadn’t noticed how fast they had come down. Seeing that she already had the rear door open, he kicked himself for not even getting out to open it for them.

Zhang Ruowei got into the back, and Jiang Yu and Shen Xinyi got in after her.

She seemed to have foreseen exactly this, and said it deliberately. “Why are you all sitting in the back? Don’t you know how rude that is?”

When people who knew each other rode together, leaving the front passenger seat empty made the driver a chauffeur and nothing else. It was a rude thing to do.

But as long as she didn’t raise it, Zhao Ming certainly wasn’t going to.

Besides, they had met him exactly once and couldn’t be called close yet, so there was nothing wrong with it.

But having said it, Zhang Ruowei pushed open the door on her side, got out, walked around to the front passenger door, opened it and got back in.

Zhao Ming’s heart turned right over with the warmth of it.

God!

She is far too thoughtful!

This is bad.

Why is my heart beating this fast?

(End of Chapter 299)