“Ruowei, can I borrow your concealer?”
“Go ahead, take it.”
“Xinyi, quick quick quick — help me do my eyeliner, I can never get it straight.”
“Qingqing, that foundation you recommended is amazing, it looks so natural.”
“…”
Xu Ye wasn’t about to take a photo to prove he was in the women’s dorm. Instead, he quietly held down the voice message button and recorded about fifty seconds of their conversation, then sent it to Qin Zhiwei.
Qin Zhiwei saw the voice message, opened it immediately, and listened. By the end of it, his brain had stopped working.
No.
This absolute menace actually went to the women’s dorm first thing in the morning?!
Qin Zhiwei: How did you even get in?
Xu Ye: They dragged me up.
Qin Zhiwei: They dragged you up and you just WENT? Have you no shame?
There was a distinct note of sourness to every word.
Xu Ye: Stop complaining. I’m suffering over here.
Qin Zhiwei: Suffering how?
Xu Ye: Can’t keep the safety on. [TL: a deliberately ambiguous metaphor — ostensibly about a gun’s safety catch, actually about something else entirely]
Qin Zhiwei: You absolute—
Qin Zhiwei: ANIMAL.
Qin Zhiwei: BEAST.
Qin Zhiwei: You’re the scum of the earth.
…
Zhang Ruowei and the others were true to their word — exactly half an hour, not a minute over.
All four of them grabbed their bags and headed for the door.
“Handsome, stay in the room. I’ll go scope out the lobby first.”
“Got it.”
Zhang Ruowei sprinted downstairs, found the floor attendant deep in negotiations with a water delivery man, and immediately raced back up to collect Xu Ye and the three roommates. They were out of the building at a flat run.
“Phew — that was close.”
Xu Ye laughed. “So, what’s the plan for today?”
“Whatever you decide. Wherever you and Qingqing go, we follow.”
He made up his mind quickly. “Disneyland’s too far. You’ve all probably already been to the Oriental Pearl and the Bund. How about Yuyuan Garden? [TL: 豫园 — a famous classical Chinese garden in the heart of old Shanghai, built during the Ming dynasty, now surrounded by a bustling traditional bazaar and known as one of the city’s most iconic cultural sites] The City God Temple’s right there too.”
“Let’s do it.” All three roommates agreed without hesitation.
A bus stop was a few hundred meters away; the nearest subway station was nearly two kilometers. They weighed it up and went with the subway.
Walking to the station, Xu Ye played the role of quiet companion — the four girls chatted and laughed among themselves while he chimed in occasionally.
They regretted the subway the moment they got inside.
It was Saturday, and every person in Shanghai who wanted to go anywhere had apparently chosen this exact station at this exact moment. “Packed” didn’t quite cover it.
But they were already here. Nothing to do but brace themselves and wait.
Once they got onto the platform, Xu Ye drifted close to Qingqing. “Stick close to me when it comes.”
She didn’t like crowds. She nodded without thinking.
“Train’s coming!” Jiang Yu called out.
Xu Ye immediately took Qingqing’s wrist and steered them both to the front of the press. When the doors opened, he had her through first. He kept hold of her hand as they stepped inside.
Qingqing blinked, her face going pink, and then she went very still — let herself be led in, obedient as anything.
No seats left, naturally. Xu Ye maneuvered her into the corner where a row of seats met the wall — tucked her into that angle and positioned himself outside, a human buffer between her and the rest of the car.
A crowd of people who hadn’t made it on waited for the next train. Zhang Ruowei, Shen Xinyi, and Jiang Yu had made it on board and squeezed over to Xu Ye’s side, and the moment they saw how thoroughly Qingqing was shielded, all three of them turned visibly envious.
“Xu Ye, you really can’t spend the whole day showing off like this in front of us. We’ll die of jealousy.”
“Seriously.”
Xu Ye grinned. “Say things like that and Qingqing’s going to go red again.”
She already had.
Partly from the heat of a crowded subway car in late summer. Partly from something closer to her heart speeding up. She kept her eyes down and pretended not to hear the conversation happening above her head — and didn’t notice that Xu Ye had called her “Qingqing” again. Last time he’d used that name, she’d stomped squarely on his foot. This time, she just turned red.
Funny how that worked. A girl’s blush said more than a whole paragraph of poetry.
Three stops. Seven or eight minutes, and they were off.
Coming out of the station, Xu Ye noticed she’d broken a sweat. He pulled out a tissue from the hotel stash in his pocket and reached toward her face.
Qingqing tilted her head and dodged.
Zhang Ruowei stepped forward immediately, her smile bright. “Handsome, you can wipe mine if you’d like.”
Jiang Yu pushed in too. “Me too, me too!”
Shen Xinyi didn’t quite have the nerve, but stood to the side laughing.
Qingqing, thoroughly outmaneuvered by her own roommates, snatched the tissue out of Xu Ye’s hand, wiped her own face, and walked off toward the station exit.
Xu Ye gave Zhang Ruowei and Jiang Yu each a thumbs-up, then followed.
It was Xu Ye’s first time in this part of the city too, so he pulled up navigation once they reached Qingqing’s side, and they made it to the Yuyuan Garden ticket counter without incident. Adult tickets were forty yuan, student tickets twenty — he bought five and in they went.
Walking the stone-paved paths, classical architecture rose up around them in quiet clusters — pavilions and corridors winding between gardens, flowering plants crowding the walkways, still water reflecting the carved eaves of the buildings above. Every corner looked like a painting.
Red walls, dark tiles, stone rockeries, lotus in bloom — every turn of the path was a different view.
The three roommates started taking photos almost immediately, and Xu Ye somehow became the group’s default photographer, snapping shot after shot.
His eye was good enough that he earned unanimous approval from all three of them. To ensure he could actually share the photos, Zhang Ruowei went ahead and added him to their dorm group chat.
Yuyuan had everything — a market, a snack street, a handful of proper restaurants. At noon, the five of them found their way to Songheling [TL: 松鹤楼 — a Suzhou-style restaurant with over two hundred years of history, one of Shanghai’s most celebrated culinary institutions, famous for its Jiangnan cuisine], a Yuyuan institution with over a century behind it. They each ordered a bowl of the braised pork noodle soup — not much more expensive than anywhere else, twenty-five yuan a bowl — and joined a line that moved with the urgency of a bureaucratic queue.
When the food finally arrived, Qingqing pulled a hair tie from her bag before picking up her chopsticks and gathered her long, dark hair up into a ponytail.
Zhang Ruowei watched with undisguised envy. “Qingqing, I am genuinely jealous of your hair. Thick, straight, barely falls out — me, every time I wash mine it’s a tragedy.”
Shen Xinyi nodded in solidarity.
Jiang Yu turned to Xu Ye with a sparkle of mischief. “Xu Ye, do you know what counts as the most understated form of showing off for a woman?”
“What?”
“Painless periods, good circulation, a full head of hair, eating whatever you want without gaining weight, and never getting sick.”
Xu Ye smiled. “And do you know what counts as a man showing off quietly?”
“What?”
“Making a quiet woman loud.”
Chen Qingqing: ?
Shen Xinyi: ?
Jiang Yu: ?
Zhang Ruowei: “Xu Ye, you absolute menace!”
(End of Chapter)