Chapter 56

"Of course it's you I'm seeing."

Chen Xi blurted out instinctively. Halfway through the sentence, she suddenly realized something was wrong and instantly clamped her mouth shut.

Zhou Yanzhou, however, simply smiled with open ease. Sitting sideways, one arm draped backward over the back of the chair, his legs crossed, he slightly raised the outer corners of his eyes, looking with keen interest at Chen Xi as she reacted to her own slip.

"What, am I not fit to be seen? Where am I not fit to be seen?"

Spoken in his tone, the words inexplicably carried the illusion of illicit lovers meeting in secret.

Chen Xi's cheeks burned scarlet, and she glared at Zhou Yanzhou with zero intimidation.

Zhou Yanzhou laughed even harder. He leaned forward slightly, amusement spreading across his entire face, the corners of his eyes and brows laced with pure delight.

Seeing him laugh without stopping, Chen Xi rolled her eyes in annoyance and muttered under her breath, "Is it really that funny?"

Zhou Yanzhou didn't catch it clearly.

He laughed so hard he involuntarily started coughing, his hand bracing against the edge of the sandalwood table, and it took him a good while to recover.

Chen Xi suddenly felt a bit hungry. Looking at the table full of fine dishes, she picked up her chopsticks again, intentionally pushing aside the pork ribs Zhou Yanzhou had put in her bowl, and ladled herself a bowl of steaming hot soup.

A few sips of the hot soup went down, instantly comforting her stomach, and her eyebrows curved upward on their own accord.

The man opposite her watched, rewarding her with a look that clearly said, "You have no willpower."

Chen Xi ignored him and continued sipping her soup.

Chen Xi ate until her stomach was rounded, and she was still burping softly as she walked out of the courtyard house.

Seeing that she was completely stuffed, Zhou Yanzhou suggested taking a stroll nearby to help digest the food.

At this, Chen Xi cast a wary glance at him, wanting to figure out what he was plotting.

Upon seeing this, Zhou Yanzhou couldn't help but let out a cold laugh. "Is your head stuffed with water?"

Chen Xi: *My head is stuffed with you.*

Zhou Yanzhou didn't drive. The two of them walked out along the mouth of the hutong, avoiding the bustling crowds of Nanluoguxiang, and headed toward another secluded alley.

The Chinese scholar trees in the hutong were flourishing, forming a lush, green canopy overhead that blocked out a large portion of the sun.

Aside from a few noodle shops, most of the doors in the alley were closed. Passersby and tourists occasionally wandered past, looking around left and right at the ancient architecture, trying to glean a bit of old history from every brick and tile.

Chen Xi had no desire to walk side-by-side with Zhou Yanzhou, so she deliberately lagged behind by two steps, her hands clasped behind her back as she aimlessly gazed at the quaint buildings.

When she encountered an auntie wearing an orange-yellow vest who had parked a temporary garbage cart to one side and was sweeping the ground with a broom, Chen Xi deliberately stopped in her tracks, intending to wait until the auntie swept the patch in front of her before walking past.

Zhou Yanzhou didn't stop. His long legs quickly carried him forward.

After walking a few steps without hearing any footsteps behind him, he turned around in confusion, only to see Chen Xi standing obediently not far away, quietly waiting for the cleaner to finish sweeping the fallen leaves off the ground.

Come to think of it, Zhou Yanzhou found this scene rather familiar.

As if he were used to Chen Xi's sudden actions, he didn't even urge her on. He simply stood in place, one hand tucked into his suit trouser pocket, his eyelids half-lifted, and waited quietly.

It took a while for the auntie to sweep away all the fallen leaves and clear a path before Chen Xi lifted her feet and briskly walked past the garbage cart.

When Zhou Yanzhou saw her catch up, he looked her up and down from head to toe and said in a mock-serious tone, "Who would've thought? You're actually quite polite."

"How come you show a completely different face when you're dealing with me?"

Chen Xi: *Don't you have any self-awareness at all?*

After winding out from some unknown alley, they unexpectedly found themselves at Shichahai.

The lotus flowers by the lake were in full bloom, and gray-green willow branches slanted gracefully into the water. Sunlight made the surface of the lake shimmer and glisten, as if sprinkled with a layer of gold dust.

Nearby bars had already opened for business, and the seductive music drifting from within made people instinctively pause in their tracks.

Seeing this, Zhou Yanzhou actually asked her if she wanted to go inside and sit for a while to have a drink.

Chen Xi looked at the man in disbelief and deliberately tried to disgust him: "Didn't you say I'm not allowed to drink when I'm out?"

Zhou Yanzhou hadn't expected her to still remember. He raised an eyebrow and said with a straight face, "It's fine if I'm with you."

Chen Xi: "It's precisely because you're with me that I can't feel at ease."

Zhou Yanzhou glanced at her from the corner of his eye, saying with a helpless expression, "Why do you have to be so at loggerheads with me? We are, after all, people who can sit at the same table and share a meal. Don't you agree?"

Chen Xi was at a loss for words. She looked up and stared into Zhou Yanzhou's glass-clear, pristine pupils, unable to find a retort for a moment.

It was a very peaceful afternoon. Chen Xi momentarily forgot their identities, forgot the estrangement of the past few years, and strolled with him along Shichahai, her gaze pure and clear as she watched the tranquil surface of the lake.

At that moment, she wondered if she should entangle herself to the very end with a heartless man like him.

Anyway, her heart had long since been sacrificed to this man.

Only this time, she refused to be the one who drifted with the current.

She wanted only her to remain in his eyes, and she wanted him to willingly surrender to her.

At the very least, it wouldn't be like 2013, where he steered the ship through everything.

This vessel—she needed the qualification to stop whenever she pleased.

It wasn't until a phone call disturbed the moment that Chen Xi snapped back to reality.

It was Zhou Yanzhou's phone. Listening to the phone's default system ringtone, Chen Xi watched with her own eyes as Zhou Yanzhou frowned, pulled out his phone, glanced at the screen, and then unceremoniously hung up without changing his expression.

The call was from Teacher Meng, doing nothing more than urging Zhou Yanzhou that it was about time he started dating. Over the past few years, Teacher Meng's heart had been entirely tied up with the old man, leaving her no time to manage him.

Now that she had finally waited for the old man to recover his health, she started worrying about his lifelong affairs again. Just two days prior, she had introduced a young woman to him.

Zhou Yanzhou hadn't taken the bait, hastily sharing a meal with the girl before leaving. Who knew what the girl had said to Teacher Meng afterward, but Teacher Meng kept urging him to put some genuine effort into pursuing her.

Following that train of thought, Zhou Yanzhou suddenly remembered that the young woman right in front of him had also started dating someone.

Time moved swiftly. In the blink of an eye, several years had passed. Upon meeting again, the girl in front of him was no longer sixteen; she had reached her early twenties.

At this age, everything was wonderful, and naturally, it was time to experience a passionate romance.

Zhou Yanzhou couldn't say he was angry; he merely felt a sense of regret.

Regret that in the prime years of her youth, he hadn't occupied an important place.

Chen Xi temporarily wanted nothing more to do with Zhou Yanzhou, hoping that after this once, they would never meet again.

After walking a section of Shichahai, Chen Xi made the excuse that her legs hurt and she needed to get back to the campus.

Zhou Yanzhou saw right through her intentions, but he didn't expose her, merely offering to drive her back.

During the return journey, Chen Xi tried to refuse several times, but alas, Zhou Yanzhou was tall and long-legged; a single stride of his equaled two or three of hers, and she simply couldn't outpace him.

By the time she finally caught up, Zhou Yanzhou was already seated in the driver's seat, signaling with his eyes for Chen Xi to get in the car, leaving her not a shred of leeway.

Chen Xi took a breath, held it in as she pulled open the car door, and ducked down to crawl back into the Porsche's front passenger seat.

The car had been baking under the open-air parking lot sun all afternoon. The moment she squeezed inside, a wave of scorching heat rolled over her, and Chen Xi almost stopped breathing.

Just as Chen Xi reached out to lower the window, Zhou Yanzhou beat her to it by turning on the air conditioning.

Perhaps because the interior was too hot, Zhou Yanzhou didn't rush to start the engine, instead letting the AC vents roar at full blast.

After waiting who knows how long, the cabin finally cooled down a bit.

Chen Xi shifted her hips and realized a patch of moisture had soaked through the leather seat, likely left behind from the intense heat earlier.

She turned her head to glance at the man beside her, and seeing his calm expression—as if he didn't find this awkward at all—she couldn't help frowning slightly.

With the AC turned up so high, once the heat inside the cabin was blown away, the vent blew a direct stream of cold air right at Chen Xi. Her arms felt a bit chilly, and she instinctively touched the back of her hand—it was ice-cold.

Noticing this while finishing a text message, Zhou Yanzhou turned the AC down a notch.

Hearing the change, Chen Xi cast a surprised side-long glance at Zhou Yanzhou.

Zhou Yanzhou was fairly familiar with Beijing's roads. He had driven the route to R University a few times and didn't need a navigation system.

The Porsche drove out of the alley and headed straight for R University. Sitting in the passenger seat, Chen Xi resumed her initial silence.

Just as Chen Xi was guessing whether their entire journey would continue in this dead silence, Zhou Yanzhou suddenly unlocked his phone, handed it directly in front of Chen Xi's eyes, and said, "Type your number in."

"Is your old phone number useless now?"

Her previous phone number had been chosen for her by Zhou Yanzhou, and she had used it for nearly three years.

When she entered university, she used the compensation money given by the school to buy a new laptop. Since university internet wasn't free, she had to purchase broadband access herself.

Chen Xi simply switched to a campus SIM card for convenience online. She had kept the old phone card for a few months, but later finding that almost nobody called, and wasting mobile data for nothing, she eventually took her ID card to the service hall and canceled it.

Now hearing Zhou Yanzhou ask this, Chen Xi couldn't help wondering: had he ever tried calling her?

During the summer vacation after high school graduation, Chen Xi suddenly broke free from high school life and regained her freedom. Without the oppression of exams, the constraints of school rules, and piles of test papers stacked like small mountains, her life suddenly lost its direction.

Every day at a fixed time, she took the bus to practice driving, and once practice ended, it was only two o'clock in the afternoon.

She had an entire afternoon to waste, yet she didn't know where to spend these leisurely and useless hours.

Sometimes, walking and walking, she would end up right at the entrance of the Xizhou Hotel. The hotel lobby manager knew Chen Xi and, upon seeing her, would warmly invite her inside to sit.

The Xizhou Hotel positioned itself on the high end; the guests who came were either wealthy or noble. Every time Chen Xi walked into that magnificent hotel wearing her plain clothes, she always doubted whether she was worthy.

She sat in a corner of the restaurant, ordered the house signature dish Beijing roast duck, and quietly watched the sun outside the window slowly descend toward the foot of Zhongxiu Mountain.

The hotel chef was a Beijinger, and his speaking intonation was very similar to Zhou Yanzhou's. Every time Chen Xi listened, she would momentarily fall into a trance, thinking she was actually in Beijing.

At first, Chen Xi still harbored thoughts of bumping into Zhou Yanzhou at the Xizhou Hotel, but every time she went, she was told the boss was not in.

Gradually, she stopped going there.

On the day she got her driver's license, Chen Xi shockingly lied to her uncle, saying she wanted to spend the night at a classmate's house.

In truth, she went to the top floor of the Xizhou Hotel that night. She enjoyed the entire floor to herself; the brilliant night lights shone through the floor-to-ceiling windows, bathing the entire room in a glow.

Hugging a throw pillow, Chen Xi sat alone by the floor-to-ceiling window, looking at the ant-sized traffic and figures of people down at People's Square, feeling an inexplicable sense of loneliness.

She sat there until three in the morning before getting up, her legs stiffly carrying her over to lie down on that large bed.

When she tossed and turning couldn't sleep, she on a whim pulled open the bedside table drawer to search for paper, wanting to write something down, only to unexpectedly find a letter.

She opened the envelope to find only a postcard of the Beijing Forbidden City, with a sentence written on the back: *Study hard, I'll wait for you in Beijing.*

While Chen Xi was still in a daze, an object suddenly appeared in her hand.

Lowering her head to look, it was Zhou Yanzhou's phone.

The screen was lit up, displaying a landscape photo as the wallpaper. It was a default system theme—very simple and neat.

Chen Xi hesitated for a long time before finally, under Zhou Yanzhou's urging, inputting her new phone number.

The save was successful, and Zhou Yanzhou pushed his luck further: "By the way, take me off your blacklist."

He was referring to WeChat.

Chen Xi had blocked him the moment the college entrance examination ended, and up until now, she had never thought about removing him from the blacklist.

Blinking, she feigned composure, put the phone down, and ignored Zhou Yanzhou's request.

Seeing her cold face and unwillingness to engage, Zhou Yanzhou didn't speak further either.

As they neared the school gate of R University, Chen Xi suddenly told Zhou Yanzhou to stop: "Just drop me off near here, don't drive any further forward."

Zhou Yanzhou's expression paused. Although he had his doubts, he still pulled the car over to the side of the road.

As soon as the car came to a steady stop, Chen Xi unbuckled her seatbelt and prepared to push open the door to get out, but Zhou Yanzhou locked the doors with lightning speed.

Hearing the click, Chen Xi instantly turned her head to look at the man.

Ignoring Chen Xi's questioning gaze, Zhou Yanzhou picked up his phone from the armrest box, opened his contacts list, and seeing that Chen Xi's phone number was stored there, his thumb hovered over the digits and dialed without a second thought.

It wasn't until the phone Chen Xi had tossed into her bag began to vibrate with a buzzing sound that Zhou Yanzhou hung up.

Chen Xi was somewhat angered by his stunt and couldn't help speaking out: "If you didn't trust me, why bother asking me at all?"

Zhou Yanzhou chuckled dismissively, his attitude as mild as ever: "I didn't say a single word, yet you've already convicted me."

"What, do you've me pegged that firmly as someone unworthy of trust?"

Chen Xi took a breath and blurted out in a reckless retort: "What part of you is worthy of my trust?"

Seeing her take it so seriously, Zhou Yanzhou suddenly lost the desire to continue.

He unlocked the car doors, his gaze shifting to rest upon that fair, clean face, suddenly realizing that bickering with a young girl was utterly pointless.

After tossing about all day, Zhou Yanzhou was also tired. Waving his hand, he issued a polite dismissal: "Go on back, you've arrived."

Chen Xi froze for a second, and the very next second, she grabbed her bag and pushed open the car door, stepping out without ever looking back.

Sitting in the car, Zhou Yanzhou watched her walk away until her figure vanished entirely from sight before finally driving off.

The moment Chen Xi turned into the school gates, she collapsed and squatted down on the ground after walking barely a couple of steps.

She looked as though she had just fought a losing battle, her entire face drained of color and utterly dejected.

As luck would have it, Xie Nanzhou, who had been searching for Chen Xi all day, was preparing to go out for drinks with close friends. As the group walked toward the school gate, they bumped into Chen Xi, who was squatting by the roadside with a completely bloodless face. Xie Nanzhou's expression shifted drastically.

Xie Nanzhou strode forward quickly, grabbed Chen Xi by the arm, and tried to pull her up from the ground. "Xixi, what's wrong with you? Where do you hurt?"

Chen Xi lacked all strength; she slumped weakly against Xie Nanzhou, her lips murmuring that she was fine.

Xie Nanzhou pulled her straight into his embrace, turned to tell his group of buddies that they would catch up next time, and supported Chen Xi as he walked toward the female dormitory building. "I'll take you back."

Just as Chen Xi was about to say there was no need, she looked up and noticed an eye-catching lipstick stain right on the collar of Xie Nanzhou's T-shirt.