A little over twenty minutes later.
Xu Ye pulled up outside the gate of an upscale residential compound in Jing’an District, and Chen Qingqing sent Jiang Meilin a message.
After about five minutes’ wait, a woman in a gray pencil skirt came out of the compound. She was around one meter sixty-two, in heels, and as she walked toward them she held her phone up, checking it against the license plate number Jiang Meilin had sent her.
Chen Qingqing recognized her from a long way off, and as Yang Lin came up she pushed the car door open in a hurry and got out, waving first. “Auntie Yang Lin~”
The moment Yang Lin caught sight of Chen Qingqing, her whole face lit up. She put the phone away and came over quickly, took the girl’s hands in hers, looked her over from one side and then the other, and finally pulled her into a hug. “Oh my — our Qingqing gets prettier and prettier. And here I was thinking you wouldn’t recognize me.”
“Of course I would~”
Only then did Xu Ye get out. He gave her a mild smile. “Hello, Auntie.”
Yang Lin heard the voice and turned her eyes on him at once.
On the phone yesterday, Yang Lin had heard that Chen Qingqing already had a boyfriend, and the news had astonished her. She knew Chen Hansong and Jiang Meilin had always doted on the girl, and under ordinary circumstances neither of them would have agreed to her dating this early. On top of which Chen Qingqing was on the introverted side to begin with, and had barely a handful of friends — so how had she suddenly acquired a boyfriend?
Which was why Yang Lin had been so quick to get her over to the apartment. Partly it had been a long time since she had laid eyes on the girl, and partly Yang Lin wanted to see exactly what sort of boyfriend Chen Qingqing had found herself.
Yang Lin’s eyes went over Xu Ye twice, up and down. Then she smiled and asked Chen Qingqing, beside her, “Qingqing, so this is your boyfriend.”
“Mm.”
Chen Qingqing owned up to it without the least embarrassment.
Yang Lin pointed at the car. “Let’s get in first. We’ll talk at the apartment.”
“Sure~”
Following Yang Lin’s directions, Xu Ye soon had the car down in the compound’s underground parking garage. Once they were in the elevator, Yang Lin swiped a card and pressed the button for the fifteenth floor.
When the elevator opened, a living room of a good fifty square meters came into view.
Jing’an District already had some of the higher property prices in Shanghai, and the amenities around this particular spot were comprehensive down to the last item. With a living room alone that size, it went without saying that this apartment was what people call a full-floor unit.
Yang Lin got slippers out for the two of them, and once Xu Ye and Chen Qingqing had come through into the living room she waved them onto the sofa and went over to the refrigerator herself to ask what they wanted to drink.
“Water’s fine.”
Yang Lin took out two bottles of mineral water. She handed one to Chen Qingqing first, and as she passed the other to Xu Ye she added a question. “And what’s your name, handsome?”
Yang Lin had worked at foreign firms ever since graduating and had spent several years abroad on top of that, so she was very open by temperament, quite unlike women of her age back home — something you could tell from the way she dressed alone.
Forty-odd years old and dressed like a girl in her twenties, with a small rose tattooed behind one ear. The overall impression brought a saying to Xu Ye’s mind: the hero’s blade is not yet blunt, and this old girl still has her looks.
“Xu Ye. Auntie, Xiao Xu is fine.”
“You two aren’t at the same university, are you?”
“No.” Xu Ye twisted the cap off his own bottle of water, put the cap back on and swapped the bottle for Chen Qingqing’s, answering Yang Lin as he did it. “My school’s over in Pudong New Area. It’s a fair distance from Qingqing’s.”
Yang Lin had another ready. “And what do your parents do?”
My own mother-in-law never asked me any of this, Xu Ye thought, and you’ve beaten her to it.
Xu Ye smiled. “My dad’s an ordinary civil servant. My mom works at a small outfit.”
“Any brothers or sisters?”
“No.”
Just as Yang Lin was about to go on, Chen Qingqing, next to her, had heard enough. She gave her thigh a push and pouted. “Auntie Yang Lin, why do you keep asking him things?”
That only made Yang Lin put an arm around her shoulders and laugh. “Ha! Sticking up for your boyfriend already.”
Chen Qingqing was in no position to answer that. She dropped her head, her face full of shyness.
None of it fazed Xu Ye. Seeing that Yang Lin had stopped, he began looking around and taking in how the living room was arranged, and his eyes came to rest at last on one of the cabinets, because he could see a good many certificates and trophies inside it.
Curious, Xu Ye spoke up. “Auntie, may I take a look over there?”
“Of course.”
Xu Ye got up and walked over, running his eyes across the writing on them. When he found they were all from design awards, he asked his first real question of the visit. “Auntie, are you a fashion designer?”
“Mm.”
“This many awards. That’s impressive.”
Once he had finished looking, Xu Ye went back to the sofa and sat down, and a question surfaced in his mind: would a well-known designer like Yang Lin have heard of Youwei? If even she knew the brand, it meant Youwei already carried some weight within the industry. So he asked, “Auntie, do you keep up with domestic clothing brands?”
Yang Lin had no idea what he was driving at, but she nodded all the same. “Of course. Only last week I was invited to Chengdu for the runway show of a domestic streetwear label.”
“Then do you know the brand Youwei?”
“Youwei?”
From Yang Lin’s expression Xu Ye assumed she hadn’t heard of it — and then she answered with a question of her own. “You mean that clothing brand that’s been all over the internet this year, the one that only does lingerie and swimwear?”
Xu Ye nodded, smiling. “That’s the one.”
“I know it. What’s the brand got to do with you?”
Xu Ye was about to speak, but Chen Qingqing got in ahead of him. “He and a boss lady of his started that company together. They’re partners.”
“What?”
Yang Lin was thoroughly astonished.
Youwei was a brand she herself had only heard of quite recently, mainly because it was so popular online. The label was still nowhere near the top-tier luxury houses she had worked for, but going by what people online were saying, the company had a great deal of room to grow.
Xu Ye was still a university student, so it would never have crossed Yang Lin’s mind that the company had anything to do with him — still less that he was a partner in it.
The truth was that after getting Xu Ye’s family situation out of him just now, Yang Lin had been unable to work out how Jiang Meilin could have agreed to her precious daughter finding a boyfriend as ordinary as this one.
Now, though, she asked, “Is what Qingqing said true?”
“Mm.” Xu Ye nodded, then fished out of his pocket one of the business cards Zhang Xinzhou had made up for him. He passed it to Yang Lin, smiling. “Auntie, this is my card.”
Yang Lin took it and looked down at the black-and-gilt art card in her hand, and read it out under her breath. “Chairman of Qingye Investment… Xu Ye.”
(End of Chapter 304)