Yang Lin was nearly four months along now.

Her belly had begun to round slightly, though in loose clothes there was still no great change to see.

When Xu Ye and Chen Qingqing arrived, Yang Lin was sitting on the sofa opening packages.

With nothing to do at home on her own, she'd taken to buying baby things online. She had already bought a dozen-odd outfits for the baby alone, some for a boy and some for a girl, every one of them adorable.

Chen Qingqing sat beside her asking about this and that, curious as a small child.

Yang Lin answered a few, then said, smiling, with a great deal behind it, "So you like babies too?"

"I—" Chen Qingqing was about to answer when she caught up with what was actually being said. She shut her mouth in a hurry and sat there red to the ears, not daring to make another sound.

Besides Yang Lin there was an Auntie Ding in the house, who handled the three meals a day and the cleaning and would sometimes go downstairs with Yang Lin for a walk and some sun. She couldn't drive, though, so the last few hospital visits had all been Xu Ye driving Yang Lin over.

There'd been one time when Chen Qingqing wasn't with them, and the nurses at the hospital, seeing Xu Ye bringing Yang Lin in for a prenatal checkup, had given him strange looks from start to finish. Xu Ye caught on late; only after he'd said Auntie Yang Lin out loud a few times did the nurse's eyes stop resting on him.

The two of them had only just gotten back to the hotel that afternoon when Zhang Ruowei called. Zhao Ming had been summoned away by his uncle, and she and Jiang Yu were bored in the dorm, so they were coming over to find Xu Ye and Chen Qingqing.

Chen Qingqing gave Zhang Ruowei the room number without hesitating.

Xu Ye heard that and protested from across the room. "You're actually letting them come?"

Chen Qingqing was about to speak…