The logic doesn’t add up.
The last two classes were on Mao Zedong Thought, with the teacher up front going over the key points on their own, while the students below either played on their phones or zoned out.
Only when the teacher started saying, “This part will definitely be on the exam,” did the classroom fill with the synchronized sound of pen tips sliding over pages.
Slacking off was one thing, but nobody actually wanted to fail.
Qiongsi Sang was sprawled across her desk, listlessly playing on her phone, repeatedly opening and closing the same app.
Then, she suddenly slapped her phone down on the desk. “Do you guys have any plans for the weekend?”
Qinghua Lu replied, “Panpan found a part-time job at a restaurant, and I promised her I’d drop by tomorrow.”
‘Panpan’ was also one of Xie Qiaoqiao’s former roommates, real name Fang Pan.
Since she was in a different major from the other three, they usually didn’t have classes together.
Qiongsi Sang immediately grew alert. “How come I didn’t know about this?”
Qinghua Lu rolled her eyes. “Because when she told me about it the day before yesterday, our little princess here was busy dating her working boy in West Campus.”
Qinghua Lu really wanted to ask Qiongsi Sang what she saw in that guy—he was so stingy he wouldn’t even take his girlfriend out to eat off campus, and you’d be hard-pressed to find another guy like that at all of Nanjing University.
But after thinking about it, she decided to keep her thoughts to herself.
Food.
She definitely didn’t want to become the couple’s after-dinner entertainment.
Qiongsi Sang propped her face up with one hand and thought for a moment. “Which restaurant? I’ll come too.”
Qinghua Lu said, “That new Thailand Cuisine place over on North Street, called Jindalai or Jindaqu or something, I can’t remember.”
“They have this thing where online orders count toward the servers’ commissions—Qiaobao, you want to come? My treat. Panpan said their signature dishes are pretty good.”
She pushed her phone in front of Xie Qiaoqiao, showing her pictures of vibrant, delicious-looking Seafood Pineapple Fried Rice and Tom Yum Soup.
Xie Qiaoqiao was tempted, but still shook her head. “I’ve got a part-time job this weekend.”
Qinghua Lu smacked her own head. “Oh right, you’ve got a part-time too. Next time, then.”
She took her phone back and resumed playing her match-three game on silent. Qiongsi Sang kept swiping at her app list, looking like she didn’t really want to play on her phone, but couldn’t put it down either.
Glancing at her two roommates, who seemed to have no worries at all, Qiongsi Sang complained, “I really envy you guys without boyfriends. No troubles at all.”
Qinghua Lu shot back with a sarcastic tone, “I just don’t have a boyfriend, doesn’t mean I don’t have someone I’m flirting with.”
That got Xie Qiaoqiao’s attention. She looked up from her book. “Someone you’re flirting with?”
Qinghua Lu replied, “A senior from the Student Union. I’ll introduce him to you next time if there’s a chance.”
Xie Qiaoqiao knew what ‘flirting’ meant—it was a relationship more than friends, but not quite lovers. But even knowing that, she still found it a bit hard to understand.
Xie Qiaoqiao asked, “How did you two become ‘flirting’ partners?”
She was direct. Qinghua Lu paused, but still answered honestly, “…He’s in the Student Union, so am I. We work together a lot, and then… it just happened, I guess.”
Qinghua Lu was usually pretty aloof, and it was the first time Xie Qiaoqiao had seen her looking so evasive, with her cheeks faintly flushed.
Even so, Xie Qiaoqiao still didn’t quite get it.
She said, confused, “You’re in the English department, Sisi is also in English, you two have classes together all the time, and you go back to the dorm together too, but you guys haven’t started flirting…”
Qinghua Lu was so startled she dropped her phone, and Qiongsi Sang nearly jumped out of her seat. The two of them shouted in unison, “Who would want to flirt with her—ABO!!!”
Qiongsi Sang frantically rubbed the goosebumps on her arm, temporarily forgetting all about her boyfriend not replying to her messages.
“Qiaobao, could you please not say such shocking things all of a sudden! My sexual orientation is straighter than a telephone pole!”
Qinghua Lu quickly chimed in, “Me too, I’m straight!”
Xie Qiaoqiao grew even more bewildered and, after a while, only managed a soft “Oh.”
She turned her head back to her book, but her mind wasn’t on it at all.
Xie Qiaoqiao thought feelings were really strange.
She couldn’t understand why people’s feelings would deepen just from working together often. Did Zhang Xueji say he liked her because they’d been ghost-hunting together these past few days?
The process seemed the same as how Qinghua Lu developed a ‘flirting’ relationship, so maybe that was it.
But she’d worked with Hua Lingyue even longer, and they hadn’t started flirting.
Was it because she, Qinghua Lu, and Qiongsi Sang were all straight girls?
She’d learned about this—straight girls only get romantic hormones for men. But she had other male colleagues too.
Xie Qiaoqiao scrolled through her WeChat contacts, found a male colleague she often worked with, and sent him a message.
[Do you think we’re just pure colleagues?]
[Qi Chen: Did you get hacked?]
[Qi Chen: I don’t have any money, you can’t scam me.]
Xie Qiaoqiao sent him a question mark, but it didn’t go through. The system notified her that she wasn’t friends with the other party—Qi Chen had just deleted her from WeChat.
At the same time, in their work group chat, Qi Chen popped up.
[Jiangguo Yihou Buxu Chengjing]
[Qi Chen: Xiao Xie got hacked. @Hua Lingyue]
[Hua Lingyue: ?]
[Qi Chen: Really. I don’t know what nickname she wrote for me, but the scammer probably thought I was her boyfriend and tried to get me to transfer money.]
[Qi Chen: Good thing I don’t have any money in my account anyway.]
[Qi Chen: But just to be safe, I deleted her so my account doesn’t get stolen too.]
[Xie Qiaoqiao: If your brain’s sick, go get it treated.]
[Qi Chen: Eh? You got your account back? That fast? Are you learning IT these days?]
Xie Qiaoqiao didn’t even want to bother with him.
How could anyone develop a flirtatious relationship with a coworker? Every time she worked with Qi Chen, she just wished his presence could be as faint as the sleeping husband in an adult film.
Can’t understand.
Impossible to understand.
Expressionless, Xie Qiaoqiao brushed aside the stray hairs falling in front of her eyes, only for them to fall back down again.
After school that afternoon, Xie Qiaoqiao got a message from Zhang Xueji.
He said her shoes were dry and asked if she wanted to have dinner together, and after eating, they could go pick up her clothes and shoes from his place.
Zhang Xueji explained he had a discussion meeting that night, so he wanted to arrange dinner with her in case their schedules didn’t match up later.
Xie Qiaoqiao found that reasonable and agreed to meet him at the bottom of the teaching building.
The sun was still blazing near five in the afternoon, and a few people had opened parasols at the building’s entrance.
As Xie Qiaoqiao walked down the stairs, she immediately spotted Zhang Xueji leaning against the wall, a light-colored canvas bag slung over his shoulder.
Compared to Zhang Xueji’s height, the bag’s strap looked a little short, a bit out of place.
She quickened her pace, and as Zhang Xueji stepped away from the wall to meet her halfway, she reached out, indicating for him to give her the canvas bag.
That was the canvas bag she’d left at Zhang Xueji’s place last night.
But Zhang Xueji didn’t hand it over. “Aren’t you already carrying your backpack? I’ll hold onto this. I can give it back to you once we get home—it’s the same.”
Xie Qiaoqiao thought about it. The logic seemed off, but her brain couldn’t quite process where the problem was, so she said nothing and slowly drew her hand back.
Zhang Xueji asked, “Did you bring a parasol?”
Xie Qiaoqiao shook her head, so Zhang Xueji opened his umbrella and tilted it to cover both their heads.
It wasn’t as good as a sun umbrella for blocking UV rays, but it was still cooler without the direct sunlight.
As they walked, Xie Qiaoqiao felt like she was getting a lot more looks than usual today.
Zhang Xueji asked, “Anything you want to eat?”
Xie Qiaoqiao thought of the pictures of Thai food Qinghua Lu had shown her earlier and was a bit tempted. “Thai food.”
Zhang Xueji started searching for nearby Thai restaurants on his phone, but kept sneaking glances at Xie Qiaoqiao’s hair.
The bun Hua Lingyue had quickly twisted up for her with chopsticks that morning was already coming loose, with a lot of stray hairs falling onto her cheeks and neck.
He noticed Xie Qiaoqiao kept brushing aside the strands that fell over her eyes.
Trying to sound casual, Zhang Xueji asked, “Are those chopsticks in your hair? New hairstyle?”
Xie Qiaoqiao replied, “I couldn’t find a hair tie this morning, so I just… ah.”
Suddenly, she realized something and turned to Zhang Xueji. “I left my hair tie in your bathroom.”
Zhang Xueji’s heart skipped a beat, but he kept his face calm. “Really? I didn’t notice… Your clothes are still in the laundry basket in the bathroom.”
Xie Qiaoqiao said, “Yeah, I tied it around the shampoo bottle when I was washing my hair.”
“We can grab it when we pick up my clothes later.”
Zhang Xueji responded with two quick “Yeah, yeah”s, staring down and swiping aimlessly at his phone. Store reviews scrolled past, but he didn’t see any of them, his ears and neck growing redder and redder.
Xie Qiaoqiao noticed and thought, It really is hot lately.
Zhang Xueji was practically getting cooked.
His phone screen was almost turning to static from all the swiping when he finally found a suitable excuse. “But, you might not be able to find your hair tie.”
“I booked a housekeeper before I left today, and she told me the shared bathroom shampoo was expired, so she threw the bottle away.”
Xie Qiaoqiao was baffled—was the shampoo really expired? She thought it still smelled pretty good.
Zhang Xueji added, “I rarely have friends over, so the shampoo in the shared bathroom has been there a long time, even though there’s still a lot left.”
“Sorry for losing your hair tie. I’ll buy you two new ones to make up for it.”
When Zhang Xueji offered to carry her canvas bag earlier, that faint, subtle sixth sense that something was off with the logic bubbled up in Xie Qiaoqiao’s heart again.
She turned her head to silently stare at Zhang Xueji.
Aside from his flushed skin, his expression was still relatively calm.
He held his phone up for her to see. “How about this place?”
The restaurant Zhang Xueji picked was a bit further from campus, but since he drove, it wasn’t a problem.
Xie Qiaoqiao added a note to her phone’s memo: [Financial status: healthy. Car is worth more than the house.]
Premium Chapter
Login to buy access to this Chapter.