"Cousin, where are we going now?"

It was a little after nine in the morning. Xu Ye was in the car and ready to pull out when Wang Manning started in from the back seat. He yawned. He hadn't slept well the night before and still looked like it.

Chen Qingqing answered for him from the next seat. "We've been invited to a friend of your cousin's."

"Oh."

Only then did Xu Ye speak. "Fruit shop first. We'll pick up some fruit."

Wang Manning was right back at him. "What do we need fruit for? Didn't we already buy some yesterday afternoon?"

"You want to show up at somebody's house empty-handed?"

Xu Ye went on. "First lesson in life. In college or after you graduate, you need to learn to be well-read and presentable."

"Presentable?"

"It means… knowing what's in books isn't enough. You also have to learn what presents to bring."

Wang Manning had no answer for that.

Chen Qingqing handed him an eye-roll and then gave his thigh a light slap, laughing. "Enough nonsense. Get moving."

Xu Ye's original idea had been to buy the fruit on the school snack street and look in on Luo Wenbing at the Kangyuan Fruit Shop while he was there. But Luo Wenbing's business was flat these days and he probably still had a bellyful of resentment stored up for Xu Ye, who figured one less thing was better than one more. He dropped the idea and stopped at whatever fruit shop was on the way instead, buying a few kinds of seasonal fruit already cut into pieces and packed in clear disposable boxes.

Then he called Zhao Ming, and once he heard that Zhao Ming had already picked up Zhang Ruowei, Jiang Yu and the rest, he drove straight for the Shengshi Jiayan Beauty Center.

At that moment.

For no reason anybody could see, Zheng Bin was in an argument with Wang Xiaomei, who worked the register at the beauty center's front desk.

Ever since the place opened Zheng Bin had been dropping by whether he had a reason to or…