Chapter 15: Sneaking a Peek

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“This is Xu Chengming, a senior from our department.”

Jiang Ying had completely put the matter of the WeChat messages out of her mind, but less than an hour had passed when, to her surprise, Lu Zhixi came looking for her in person.

She stood and linked her arm through his, then said to Xu Chengming, “Brother Chengming, you haven’t met Zhixi yet, have you? What a coincidence—we can introduce you today.”

After exchanging greetings with Lu Zhixi, Xu Chengming smiled. “I’ve heard about you before. You really are very handsome. Yingying is certainly lucky.”

Lu Zhixi smiled. “The rumors exaggerated things.”

The space against the wall was cramped. Jiang Ying had originally planned to sit with Zhou Anning and let Lu Zhixi take her seat, but Xu Chengming stood up first.

“You sit here, junior. I should get back to my table too. Yingying, Anning, let’s keep in touch in the group chat from now on. We’ll find time to have a meal and catch up properly.”

The three of them had once shared a small group chat called “Senior on Top, Little Sisters Pay Their Respects,” created when Jiang Ying and Zhou Anning first entered university. Their last conversation had been a year ago, when Xu Chengming sent them final-exam review materials and past papers for their major courses. Driven half-mad by their exams, the two girls had wailed and thanked him for saving their lives.

After that, Xu Chengming became too busy with his graduate courses. One of the girls fell in love, while the other battled her ex-boyfriend, and the three of them gradually lost touch around that time.

After running into one another that evening, Zhou Anning let out a howl in the group chat. The dead chat came back to life, renamed “We All Have a Mentally Sound Future.”

Only after Xu Chengming left did Jiang Ying say to Lu Zhixi, “You could have just called me. You didn’t have to come all the way here.”

“I wasn’t busy tonight. I could also pick you up and take you home.”

Jiang Ying paused. “Hm? I was planning to go back to the dorm with Anning tonight…”

Beside them, Zhou Anning bit her straw and said mournfully, “Young Master Lu is fighting me for your affection. Alas, I’ll be spending another night alone.”

Lu Zhixi smiled. “There’s no rush to go back. I’m paying tonight. Order as much as you like.”

Then he looked at Jiang Ying. “But I thought you would be going home for dinner, so I specifically asked Lingjing to prepare your favorite king crab. It would be best if you saved some room and ate a little more when we got back.”

Zhou Anning, a single woman whose emotional and intellectual intelligence were both fully operational, had no face left to keep Jiang Ying there chatting while the two of them were being so affectionate in front of her. Besides, she was not especially familiar with Lu Zhixi. She simply said, “It’s Saturday. If you head back toward Chaoyang any later, you’ll run into traffic. You might as well go straight home. You can always have dinner together another time.”

Jiang Ying guessed that Lu Zhixi had not eaten either. Knowing that he disliked barbecue, she nodded. “All right.”

Lu Zhixi insisted on paying, but unfortunately, his phone had run out of power. He told Jiang Ying to stay where she was and keep chatting with Zhou Anning, then took her phone to the front desk to borrow a power bank and settle the bill.

The tavern had very few employees. The owner doubled as bartender, server, and cashier, and with so many customers that evening, he could not keep up. He asked Lu Zhixi to wait for a while at the bar.

Sitting at the bar, Lu Zhixi tried entering the password for Jiang Ying’s lock screen.

Her birthday. Wrong.

The date they had gotten together. Also wrong.

After pausing for a long moment, he entered his own birthday—and the phone unlocked.

The moment he opened WeChat, he saw a three-person group chat.

Through the group chat, he opened the conversation between Jiang Ying and Xu Chengming.

In their final exchange, Xu Chengming had said to Jiang Ying:

“You could try dating someone and beginning a new relationship. Someone who brings positive emotions into your life can be very effective in helping you escape a negative state of mind. You’ve been at university for so long—haven’t you met anyone suitable?”

One month after that conversation ended, Lu Zhixi accepted her confession.

*

“Actually, I don’t have many close classmates at school. Apart from Anning, Brother Chengming is one of them. It was such a coincidence running into him today. I’d even been wondering when the three of us might be able to have dinner together.”

Jiang Ying mentioned the evening casually, only to realize that Lu Zhixi was being unusually quiet.

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He gazed out the car window. The dim yellow glow of the streetlights filtered through the glass and settled in his eyes like a lake brimming with sunset.

“Zhixi, what’s wrong?” Jiang Ying asked worriedly.

Lu Zhixi turned his gaze toward her, his expression perfectly calm. “Nothing.”

Jiang Ying had something weighing on her mind as well. Seeing that Lu Zhixi was not in the mood to talk, she said nothing more. It was rare for the two of them to travel in silence all the way home.

By the time they stood outside the apartment, she finally began to feel uneasy about that strange silence.

Then Lu Zhixi suddenly took her hand and led her into the dining room.

On the dining table stood a silver candleholder with smooth, curved lines. Candlelight gathered into rings of warm radiance, while melted wax pooled in the silver dish like a transparent, viscous river. A king crab flown in from Norway sat on the table, along with ham salad and cinnamon apple pie. Since she did not drink, the wineglass had thoughtfully been filled with sparkling apple water instead.

Jiang Ying’s eyes widened in surprise. “This is quite a feast.”

“Everything was prepared according to your tastes.”

Lu Zhixi sat beside her and personally removed the glistening, plump crabmeat from the long legs, placing it intact on the porcelain plate before her.

Jiang Ying slurped the jelly-soft, delicious meat into her mouth. “It really is good. Zhixi, I can do it myself. You probably haven’t eaten tonight either, have you?”

His hands did not stop moving. “It’s all right.”

Watching his concentrated expression as he picked the crab, Jiang Ying fell into a daze.

For the past few days, unease had pressed against her chest like an overinflated balloon. But now, a hole had suddenly been pricked in it, and it rapidly shrank away.

Lu Zhixi had always been gentle, considerate, attentive, and mature. Yet in truth, he was only eighteen. That night at the villa, her thoughts had been a mess, and his emotions had gotten somewhat out of control. When things had turned unpleasant, he had apologized at once. Even Zhou Anning had thought his reaction entirely normal.

Jiang Ying decided that she had been worrying unnecessarily.

“Zhixi, thank you for doing all this for me.”

Lu Zhixi smiled. His gaze fell upon the bright-red, sharply hooked teeth at the tip of the crab leg.

“You once said that you liked gentle people. Judging by things now, I’ve done well enough to satisfy you, haven’t I?”

Jiang Ying did not notice anything strange in his words. She nodded. “You’re the gentlest, most caring man I’ve ever met.”

“You’ve gotten to know other men too?”

The question came out of nowhere, but Jiang Ying still thought about it carefully.

When she had entered university as a freshman, finding a partner had naturally been a popular topic. Everyone had just escaped the dull oppression of the college entrance examinations and arrived in a major city, at a good university, surrounded by outstanding people their own age. If she thought about it carefully, Jiang Ying had tried chatting with two or three boys and even gone to the cinema with them, but none of it had developed into anything romantic. In the end, everything had simply faded away.

She saw no reason to hide any of it. So she explained the matter to Lu Zhixi truthfully, then asked half-jokingly, “You must have gone out with girls before too, right?”

Lu Zhixi held a crab claw between his fingers and pulled the meat free. This time, he misjudged his strength, and the entire leg snapped cleanly in two.

“I haven’t.”

After saying that, he fell silent for a long time—so long that Jiang Ying began to feel a little guilty.

“Zhixi, why did you stop talking…?”

Lu Zhixi paused and looked at her.

Her face was wrapped in a soft halo of light, and the eyes meeting his shimmered with a bright, gentle luster.

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He smiled and placed the crabmeat on her plate. “Eat up.”

That night, after washing up, Jiang Ying trimmed the pink peonies she had replaced only the day before at her bedside.

The outermost petals of the peonies curved in smooth, rounded arcs. Within them, layer upon overlapping layer, pale pink unfurled in succession, brimming with a full yet quiet vitality.

The bathroom door behind her opened. Warm steam drifted into the air-conditioned room, and footsteps gradually drew closer. Carrying the damp warmth of the shower, Lu Zhixi enclosed her in his arms from behind.

Jiang Ying did not turn around. She set down the spray bottle and gently prodded the blossoms, checking for any wilted petals.

“These flowers came from a group purchase on a website. I thought the quality of online flowers would be poor, but after they opened up, they turned out even prettier than the ones from the flower shop.”

She pulled out the finest blossom and held it before Lu Zhixi. “Smell it. Doesn’t it have a wonderful fragrance?”

The pale pink peony brushed against the tip of his nose, and even his cold, fair skin seemed tinged with the flower’s blush.

Jiang Ying suddenly understood the meaning of the phrase about a beautiful face glowing beside peach blossoms, even though the flower in her hand was not a peach blossom.

Lu Zhixi breathed in its scent. “It smells lovely. Why did you stop buying roses?”

She placed the flower back in the vase and said softly, “I feel like you don’t really like roses.”

The instant she finished speaking, her entire body fell into his arms. Following the force of his pull, she landed on the soft bed.

Lu Zhixi leaned over her, rubbing his high, straight nose against her tender cheek as he breathed in her scent, just as he had inhaled the fragrance of the flower moments before.

Their lips touched, then parted at once. Like children at play, they kissed lightly, again and again.

He kissed her eyelids and suddenly said, “I’m very satisfied too.”

She really was like his puppy.

Her eyes were alike, and so was her temperament.

Like Papi, she was gentle and clever. Whoever treated her well, she grew close to and came to like. Whoever treated her best, she liked most of all.

Lu Zhixi thought that he had understood this long ago. That was why he had played his role so well these days, and why he had found satisfaction through her.

Between people, there were only the simple rules of mutual need and exchange of benefits, no matter what was being exchanged.

At last, that restless emotion settled down. He looked at her back.

If she had a tail, it would probably be wagging like a puppy’s.

A tail?

Lu Zhixi suddenly remembered that Qi Wen had once sent over a box. He rose and left the bedroom.

Jiang Ying sensed that something was off about him, though she could not say exactly what. Just as she was about to get out of bed and look for him, she saw him return carrying something covered in soft fur.

“Zhixi, I…” Jiang Ying instinctively retreated into the corner of the bed.

“Come here,” he coaxed.