“I want to send you a love that never sets, mailing out a postcard that represents love…”

By the time Xu Ye got back to the room, the girls were already singing.

These were conservatory girls: put a microphone in their hands and every one of them turned into a mic hog nobody could stop. Xu Ye sat down next to Chen Qingqing and listened to them quietly.

Shen Xinyi, normally the quiet one, went completely wild the moment she set foot in a place like this. Qin Zhiwei held his phone up recording them, grinning like an idiot.

After the girls had run through four or five songs back to back, Jiang Yu finally set the microphone down on the table and smiled. “Xu Ye, Zhao Ming, you two sing a few.”

Xu Ye waved it off with a laugh. “Count me out. Let young master Zhao go first — it’s his home ground today.”

Zhao Ming didn’t need to be asked twice.

He reached over for the microphone on the table, walked to the song selection screen and queued up two songs.

The slut’s first pick was actually an English song, from some movie by the sound of it. Xu Ye’s English had never been much good and he couldn’t make out what the words meant at all. But those years Zhao Ming had spent studying abroad hadn’t gone to waste after all — his American accent was the real thing.

As for the actual singing, that was nothing special.

The second song was more interesting. A genuine old classic, and one of Aaron Kwok’s biggest hits: Endless Love for You.

Xu Ye’s guess was that Zhao Ming had picked it to hint at something.

Before Zhao Ming started, he caught sight of Xu Ye sitting on the sofa with a wicked grin on his face. He picked up the second microphone at once, came over and put an arm around Xu Ye’s shoulders. “Don’t just sit there. You’re singing it with me.”

Xu Ye played along and took the microphone.

The intro climbed slowly out of something low and dark into something bright, with the feel of a Shanghai dance number from the last century.

Zhao Ming sang first.

“The lights just turned on, the night is still young, people coming and going in a hurry…”

He got through a short stretch of the verse, then set the microphone down, and Xu Ye came in behind him.

“The wind-blown road is so long, one heart swaying back and forth…”

Just as the song was coming up on the chorus, Xu Ye bumped Zhao Ming out of the seat beside him with his backside, put an arm around Chen Qingqing’s slender waist and sang with his head rolling from side to side.

“…”

By the time they were halfway through, Chen Qingqing had gone scarlet.

She pushed at Xu Ye a few times, found he wouldn’t move, and in the end had to let it go.

Her roommates saw it and all let out a long ooooh, which only made Chen Qingqing more embarrassed.

Watching the two of them show off that openly left Zhao Ming and Qin Zhiwei sick with envy.

Damn.

When do I get to hold my girlfriend and sing “Love love love you forever” in her ear?

Both songs done, Zhao Ming and Xu Ye set the microphones down. Jiang Yu got up, went over to the song selection screen, sat down and started queuing songs.

The staff came in twice over that stretch, bringing drinks, fruit plates and snacks.

Under cover of handing the snacks around, Zhao Ming worked his way into the seat next to Zhang Ruowei. She watched him open his mouth several times and close it again without ever getting anything out, and thought: Come on, man, don’t lose your nerve on me. I’m not going to bite. Don’t you know how to start a conversation?

When Zhao Ming still didn’t move, Zhang Ruowei let out a small sigh. She picked a bottle of coconut milk up off the table, pretended she couldn’t get the cap off, glanced left and right at the people sitting on either side of her, and finally held it out to Zhao Ming. “Could… could you open this for me?” she asked in a small voice.

Zhao Ming had been fretting over how to get a word in with her. The moment the coconut milk came his way he took it, gave the cap one light twist and it was open.

You have to understand that back in the dorm, when something heavy needed carrying, or one of those cans of fruit needed opening, Shen Xinyi and the others always went to Zhang Ruowei.

Which is why Shen Xinyi’s eyes went round when she watched Zhang Ruowei come up short against a single bottle of coconut milk and hand it to Zhao Ming.

No, hang on, sister. Staying in college as a student is a waste of you. Go be a professor — teach that elective, Dating and Sexual Psychology for College Students.

Zhang Ruowei took the coconut milk back and said thank you.

And that gave Zhao Ming his way in. He took it. “Do you come out singing a lot?”

“Not really. We have to practice singing every day in class, so we hardly ever come to a KTV.”

“Is that right.”

Zhang Ruowei came straight back with one of her own. “Do you come to places like this a lot? I noticed just now that the staff here all seem to know you.”

Zhao Ming felt a jolt.

It was… it was exactly what Xu Ye had said it would be.

Zhao Ming was a man who had seen something of the world, after all. He explained it “lightly.” “It’s work. I have to entertain business clients sometimes, so I come by now and then. On my own I basically stay home and don’t go out.”

“Ohh, I see.”

Zhang Ruowei pressed on. “So what do you do with yourself? Hobbies?”

“What was that?”

Jiang Yu was singing and an ordinary speaking voice didn’t carry at all. Zhang Ruowei shifted along, moved closer to Zhao Ming and raised her voice. “What are your hobbies?!”

Christ.

She came over.

She’s leaning right in!

Christ, she smells good.

Zhao Ming was thrown into some disarray, but he still managed a smile and invented a set of very respectable hobbies. “Movies, reading, swimming, skiing.”

Lucky for Zhao Ming, Xu Ye was too far off to hear. If Xu Ye had caught him claiming he liked to read, he’d have rolled his eyes clean out of his head.

The hell are you playing at, acting like some kind of intellectual? Go take a piss and take a look at yourself in it — do you look like a man who reads?

Zhao Ming turned it back on her. “What about you? What do you do?”

“Travel, food, and yoga.”

“Where have you traveled?”

“In China I’ve been to Dali, Qingdao, Hangzhou, Guilin, Xi’an…”

Zhao Ming heard her out. “I haven’t been to as many places as you,” he said, embarrassed.

“How many years were you abroad?”

“Four and a half.”

“So which is more fun, over there or here?”

If Xu Ye had asked him that, Zhao Ming would have said “about the same.” Now, though, he smiled. “Here. Definitely more fun here.”

Zhang Ruowei nodded and let it drop.

Zhao Ming, for the moment, couldn’t think of anything new to say.

And meanwhile.

Xu Ye and Chen Qingqing already had their heads together, whispering.

Qin Zhiwei and Shen Xinyi were sitting together talking under their breath as well.

Apart from Jiang Yu, who was obliviously singing on and on, everyone had paired off, and Zhang Ruowei figured that at the rate this was going there was no telling when she would ever get a boyfriend.

So she decided to speed things up.

Just then Xu Ye happened to glance her way. Zhang Ruowei caught him at it and gave him a small smile, and the wickedness in her eyes said it for her: Watch closely, Xu Ye. Your big sister is going to show you what a high-level maneuver looks like.

She looked away and stood up as though heading for the restroom, but the table was in front of her, so she had to go past Zhao Ming. Zhao Ming had already pulled his feet back out of her way — and the moment she was upright her foot slipped, her ankle seeming to turn suddenly under her, and she lost her balance and went straight down onto him.

There was a shriek, and Zhang Ruowei knocked Zhao Ming flat onto the sofa. That wasn’t the main thing, though. The main thing was that the bottle of coconut milk in her hand still hadn’t made it back to the table, and as she went down it emptied itself all over him…

Xu Ye watched it happen. His face went blank for a second, and then he ducked his head and fought the laugh down.

(End of Chapter 301)