The elevator doors opened, then closed.

The moment they shut, everyone inside burst out laughing.

“Xu Ye, you are terrible!”

“Right? Li Junfeng’s face went completely green.”

“But wait — you actually opened a fruit shop?”

Xu Ye admitted it freely. “Yeah, opened it last week. Otherwise I would’ve come the week before.”

Zhang Ruowei jumped in immediately. “He didn’t come last week, and our Qingqing spent the whole time moping around the dorm. She was thinking about you every single day.”

“I was not!” Qingqing’s face went red and she scrambled to deny it.

“You absolutely were.” Zhang Ruowei’s expression was pure mischief. “And what you two were doing back there in that private room — all lovey-dovey, you practically looked like an old married couple.”

Hearing something that embarrassing said out loud, Qingqing instantly regretted every cooperative impulse she’d had in the past hour.

She glared at Xu Ye with enough force to bore a hole through him, decided it still wasn’t satisfying enough, and reached around to his side, finding a pinch of flesh at his waist and twisting hard.

He didn’t make a sound.

The five of them left the mall and headed back to campus. Zhang Ruowei, with impeccable timing, announced, “Jiang Yu, Xinyi — let’s go back to the dorm. We’ve been a third wheel — third wheels — all day. Time to let these two have some privacy.”

“Bye-bye, handsome~”

“Bye~”

The second Zhang Ruowei, Jiang Yu, and Shen Xinyi disappeared around the corner, Qingqing rounded on Xu Ye with her best approximation of fierce. “It’s all your fault!”

Xu Ye was entirely unrepentant. “Sure, sure, my fault entirely. And if there’s a next time, I’ll definitely do the same thing.”

“There won’t be a next time. Next time, I’m absolutely not letting you hold my hand.”

“By then it won’t be up to you.”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing, nothing.”

“Go away. I don’t want to talk to you.”

She turned on her heel. He circled around to face her again. “I hadn’t expected you to actually read what I was going for back there. I thought you might not play along.”

Qingqing pressed her lips together. “If you breathe a word of this to anyone, you’re finished.”

“Don’t worry. Sealed vault. Anyway — we just ate, want to take a walk?”

“Don’t want to walk.”

“Then I’ll carry you.”

She let out a small, dignified sound of dismissal and walked on ahead.

The corner of Xu Ye’s mouth curved up. He followed.

Behind the Helüting Concert Hall [TL: 贺绿汀音乐厅 — the Conservatory’s main performance venue, named after the renowned Chinese composer He Lüting] at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, there was a grove of trees that students favored for evening strolls. Being a music school, the grove was never quite quiet — at any given time, someone was sitting on one of the stone benches or settling on the grass with an instrument, playing for no one in particular.

They wandered through it side by side. Xu Ye said quietly, “I’ll head back tomorrow at noon. Going forward, if I’m coming to see you, I’ll let you know Friday evening.”

“Okay.”

“I’ve got the class president thing and now the shop to deal with, so once things get busy, I won’t be able to come every week. If you go out on weekends, go with Zhang Ruowei and the others, not by yourself.”

“I never go out alone anyway.”

“And if you ever actually want to see me, just message me. No matter what’s going on, I’ll come.”

She didn’t want to turn it down, but saying yes felt like too much to concede. She kept quiet.

After a long pause, she finally asked, “Is it really only forty minutes from your school by car?”

“If there’s no traffic, yeah.” He glanced at her, curious. “Why do you ask?”

“Just asking.”

The campus streetlights had come on by the time he walked her back to her building and returned to the hotel on his own.

Qingqing went back to her room, sat at her desk, stared at nothing for a while, then turned to Zhang Ruowei. “Do you know how much a car costs?”

Zhang Ruowei answered without looking up. “Depends what kind. Cheap ones you can find for tens of thousands, mid-range maybe a hundred thousand or so, nicer ones two or three hundred thousand, and anything over a million basically counts as a luxury car.”

Shen Xinyi looked over, curious. “Why are you asking?”

Zhang Ruowei turned to look too. “Yeah — what’s this about?”

“Nothing.” Qingqing shook her head, opened her phone, and checked her bank balance. A few tens of thousands. She divided a hundred thousand by three thousand, and worked out that if she could save three thousand yuan a month, it would take roughly three years to put together a hundred thousand.

She was a little unhappy about that.

Chen Hansong was considerably unhappier.

As a father, he wanted to know everything — how his daughter was getting on at school, whether she could stand the cafeteria food, whether the bunk beds were manageable, whether her classmates were decent people. But every time he asked, Qingqing sent back the same three words in rotation: fine, okay, not bad. Or nothing at all.

He’d reached his limit today.

After finishing work at the bank, he drove straight to Red Leaf Estate and pressed the doorbell.

Half a minute later, Jiang Meilin opened the door, looked at him standing there, and said coldly, “What are you doing here?”

“Jiang Meilin. What is happening with our daughter at school? Every time I message her I get one-syllable answers. Do you have any idea how worried I am?”

“Relax. She’s doing very well.”

“How would you know?”

“She’s my daughter.”

“Don’t give me that,” Chen Hansong shot back. “She’s as short with you as she is with me. She’s not telling you anything.”

“She’s not telling me, no. But someone is.” Jiang Meilin leaned against the doorframe. “Her three roommates are named Zhang Ruowei, Jiang Yu, and Shen Xinyi. Did you know that? I know that the first weekend after military training, she went to the Bund and the Oriental Pearl. Did you know that? I also know that today she visited Yuyuan Garden and the City God Temple. Did you know any of that?”

“Who told you all this?”

He caught the answer before she said it, his voice rising. “Don’t tell me — it was that Xu Ye?”

Jiang Meilin smiled. “It was.”

“Jiang Meilin. What on earth are you thinking? It’s one thing for Qingqing to be young and foolish, but you — how can you be this naive? Can that boy actually be trusted?”

“Can he be trusted?” She looked back at him evenly. “Can you?”

“I—!”

Chen Hansong opened his mouth and found nothing there.

Jiang Meilin settled back into the sofa, crossed her legs, and said with a cool smile, “I might as well tell you. I think this Xu Ye is good. Better than most young men I’ve come across. And if — I’m saying if — Qingqing finds herself falling for him, I’ll support it.”

“You — you — you’ve completely lost your mind.”

Right as he finished saying it, her phone rang. Chen Qingqing.

Jiang Meilin held the screen up for Chen Hansong to see. He shut his mouth and sat down beside her.

“Hello, Qingqing.”

“My allowance isn’t enough.”

Jiang Meilin paused, frowning slightly. “Five thousand a month isn’t enough?”

Qingqing said nothing.

“Do you want to buy something? You can tell me — I can get it for you.”

“I want to buy a car.”

“What?”

(End of Chapter)