Chapter 11

Shen Jianqing’s way of smoking was languid and elegant. She half-closed her eyes, tilted her head back, and let the clear moonlight settle quietly across her face.

“The moment Chen Wei brought it up, I could tell.” Shen Jianqing lowered her hand and tapped the cigarette with her fingers, shaking off a thin length of ash. Then she turned her head and asked with a helpless air, “Qin Yue, can you really not tell that I was throwing you a line just now?”

Qin Yue looked at Shen Jianqing and countered, “Why would you think I need a line?”

Shen Jianqing narrowed her eyes and let out a soft hiss. “Wearing someone else’s clothes, getting caught red-handed by her and her colleagues. Doesn’t that call for an explanation? Wouldn’t explaining be awkward? And what if Chen Wei had followed up and asked about our relationship? What would you say? Not close? Not close, and yet you’re wearing her clothes? Close? Close how?”

“Master Qin. Come now. As clever as you are, tell me how to answer those questions?” Shen Jianqing asked with a composed air.

Qin Yue met her gaze coolly. “Your words already put Teacher Chen’s doubts to rest. She won’t ask those questions.”

Shen Jianqing let out a sound of mock admiration. “Sharp tongue. Then what about me?”

Shen Jianqing reached up and lifted the long hair hanging beside Qin Yue’s face, tucking it behind her ear with practiced ease.

Her original intent had been to see Qin Yue’s full expression so she could catch a hint of embarrassment and settle the score for Qin Yue’s slick dodging of the question.

Her gaze grazed the pale, delicate earlobe. Shen Jianqing paused. Her index finger slid down along the graceful curve of Qin Yue’s ear and pinched gently, rolling the lobe between her fingers. “Such a beautiful earlobe, and no piercings. What a waste.”

As soon as the words left her, Shen Jianqing withdrew her hand and looked ahead. She took a deep drag of her cigarette as though nothing had happened.

Naturally, Qin Yue had no reason to pursue it. The topic dropped off abruptly.

The two walked in silence, long shadows leading the way.

Near the parking lot, Shen Jianqing seemed to snap back. She studied Qin Yue with fresh interest and said, “Master Qin, about the clothes. Chen Wei is sorted. But what about me? Doesn’t the person involved deserve a reasonable explanation?”

Qin Yue had been lost in thought and quickly gathered herself.

“You forced me to take it and wear it home. You wouldn’t let me leave otherwise,” Qin Yue said.

Shen Jianqing froze. On this, she could honestly say she had zero recollection. But looking at Qin Yue’s expression…

Shen Jianqing drew a sharp breath through her teeth. “What exactly happened?”

Qin Yue spoke obliquely. “The night of your associate professor defense, you were drinking.”

That was two years ago.

No wonder she couldn’t remember.

Shen Jianqing thought it over and took a slow drag of her cigarette. Her gaze and her voice both seemed to take on a hazy, smoke-draped quality.

“That was a Friday?” Shen Jianqing asked.

If it hadn’t been a Friday, they wouldn’t have met, and Qin Yue wouldn’t have known she had been drinking.

Qin Yue said, “Yes.”

Shen Jianqing laughed and rolled her own sleeves up to her elbows. “My behavior gets bad when I drink.”

Qin Yue said, “Not that bad.”

When Qin Yue turned her eyes, she saw Shen Jianqing leaning against the car. Chin slightly lifted, Shen Jianqing undid one more button. The long hair falling beside her neck pressed one side of the open collar down and the other up, giving her a careless, disheveled sort of allure.

“Really?” Shen Jianqing wasn’t convinced.

Qin Yue glanced at her face, then at her slender waist, and leaned against the car beside her. “You only asked me one question.”

“What question?”

“Master Qin, is the rain heavy tonight?”

The faint furrow between Shen Jianqing’s brows deepened.

Jiangping’s winters rarely brought rain. And she remembered clearly that the day of her associate professor defense had been sunny.

Sigh.

That question almost certainly meant something else.

With Qin Yue as the subject, what else could it have meant?

Most likely, it had been flirtation.

Shen Jianqing suddenly wanted to quit drinking.

Before that, though, she needed to get a few things straight. Otherwise, Master Qin might drop some bombshell one day and scare her half to death.

“How did you answer?” Shen Jianqing asked.

Qin Yue squeezed the fingers in her pocket as she recalled. “Winter is dry. Heavy rain is rare.”

“But I insisted on hearing the sound of heavy rain?”

“Yes.”

Shen Jianqing, headache looming, half lifted her foot from her high heels and tried to salvage her dignity. “I become unreasonable when I drink.”

Qin Yue said, “Not really. Your train of thought was very clear.”

As Qin Yue spoke, she looked at the ground, pressing that low, slow voice, which already had a way of bewitching people, into something even richer.

Shen Jianqing’s nerves were wrapped in smoke. She couldn’t help looking at her. “Clear how?”

Qin Yue raised her head and met Shen Jianqing’s gaze across the pale moonlight. “You said, ‘Master Qin, when I hear it, and hear it clearly, then I’ll kiss you.'”

Shen Jianqing, “…”

The girl spends every visit diligently stirring me up and then smoothing it all out, two hours minimum at a stretch. And in the end, this is all she asks of me, and I had to turn it into a negotiation?

Teacher Shen, you are truly… awful.

And…

Hear it clearly?

Isn’t that just begging for more trouble???

Where on earth did you find the nerve to say that???

Her face was burning. Burning.

Shen Jianqing let out a long sigh, steadied herself, and with her last shred of hope asked, “Did I kiss you in the end?”

The fingers Qin Yue had been gripping curled up. Her expression was extraordinarily calm. “No. You had gotten my clothes soaked and insisted on compensating me with yours. When I refused, you threatened me, saying that if I didn’t take it and wear it home, I wouldn’t need to come back.”

Shen Jianqing, “…………”

Shen Jianqing’s brain ached. No, not ached. It throbbed.

She really wasn’t like this when she was sober. She was genuinely considerate, genuinely cooperative, and genuinely reciprocal.

She never lifted a finger…

But in terms of results, it was genuinely balanced, and Master Qin was genuinely satisfied.

There were times she gripped so hard she nearly broke Shen Jianqing’s waist.

How, how did I become like this after a few drinks???

Four “genuinely”s and two “really”s in a row. Shen Jianqing had talked herself into a deep, deep guilt.

She smoked and sighed, one breath after another.

Her gaze flicked over the smooth-pressed shirt on Qin Yue. Shen Jianqing licked her lips and asked, “Did you wear it out today specifically to settle old scores with me?”

“No,” Qin Yue said. “To cover something up. My own clothes don’t have collars.”

Shen Jianqing nodded and followed up. “Cover up what?”

She figured it out the moment she asked.

Qin Yue loved having her neck kissed. Sometimes just a few patient nuzzles were enough to make her tremble in response. The trouble was her skin was thin and marked easily. And last night, remembering the bit about her not drinking juice, the teacher in Shen Jianqing had come out and sucked particularly hard. Without something to cover it, going out really wasn’t an option.

Guilt deepened. Shen Jianqing pressed the hand holding her cigarette against the car body, her pinky slightly raised, and offered a way out. “There’s no one around now. No need to button up so tight. It’s still pretty warm at this hour.”

Qin Yue ground her shoe against the seam of the paving tiles and said “Mm.” She reached up and undid her buttons.

As she did, she turned her head to one side, drawing out the graceful tendon of her neck.

A fine sheen of sweat clung to it, tangled with a few strands of hair, echoing certain lingering moments. Particularly because her lips, too, were pressed tightly together.

Shen Jianqing looked away and continued smoking.

The “happy hormone” dopamine was stimulated, its levels climbing, stirring through her nerves in secret and in full force.

Her reactions gradually slowed, but her sensitivity to everything around her multiplied.

“Teacher Shen, what perfume do you wear?” Qin Yue asked suddenly. An entirely ordinary tone. To Shen Jianqing’s ears at that moment, it became a breeze passing by, carrying a soft, restrained force that shook loose the petals clinging to the branch and sent them drifting onto the river, spreading ripples outward in slow, widening circles.

Shen Jianqing held the cigarette between her lips and, under the dim light, let her eyes fall half-closed. Her gaze lingered on Qin Yue’s neck a beat before returning to her face.

“Do you like it?” Shen Jianqing asked.

Qin Yue said, “I do.” Unlike the deep, vintage scent she had smelled by the car last time, today’s was “very fresh.”

Shen Jianqing bent one knee and let her right foot swing free of its heel. “I forget the brand. A few years back, I got dragged into hot pot right before a flight. I smelled pretty bad, so I just had the duty-free clerk recommend something.”

Qin Yue said, “It suits summer.”

Shen Jianqing’s lips curled. She wanted a smoke, but when she looked down, the tobacco had burned out at some point without her noticing. She pinched the cigarette case. Empty. Of course.

Annoyance struck without warning.

Shen Jianqing raised her hand and swept the bothersome hair to her left shoulder, opening up her view on the other side. With no effort at all, she could catch sight of Qin Yue beside her, composed and at ease.

Qin Yue looked up at the sky. As her throat moved with a natural swallow, a bead of sweat rolled suddenly from behind her ear.

Silent, clean, it slid past the layered kiss marks on her neck, pulling the unspoken intimacy into something both brazen and impeccably discreet.

The restlessness in Shen Jianqing’s thoughts cut off abruptly.

They had known each other for nearly three years.

Their intimate encounters had been too many to count.

But she realized, in this moment, that she had never once looked at Qin Yue so clearly, so carefully. Young, beautiful, and utterly without ripple.

She was like a rose blooming at dawn, wrapped in splendid color and heady fragrance, but veiled beneath crystalline dewdrops. So quiet that even the morning sun dared not disturb her, content to grow alone in a silent corner. Only when the night deepened and the stillness grew thick would someone, unwilling to bear the loneliness, reach out to pluck her. Only then would she burst into bloom as if suddenly aware of her own allure, with a force you could not escape.

She was wild to the bone.

Right now, only Shen Jianqing had seen that unrestrained side of her. Private and rare. The memory alone was enough to make the still air crack open with heat, scorching through her.

The thought that had surfaced that afternoon in the lab, the one that had no business being there: to kiss her. It resurged now and pulled Shen Jianqing slowly closer.

The searing press of lips against a cool neck. In that instant, Qin Yue’s gaze, fixed on the deep black sky, wavered, then hid again beneath her lowered lashes. Calmly, she called to the person at her neck. “Teacher Shen.”

Shen Jianqing turned sideways and wrapped her arm around Qin Yue’s waist. The voice pressed down in her throat was as deep and resplendent as the midsummer sky. “I broke a promise that night. Let me make it up to you now.”

As she spoke, Shen Jianqing buried her face in Qin Yue’s neck. Her burning breath enveloped her.

The hands in Qin Yue’s pockets, easy and at ease, slowly clenched. Out of place and out of season, she thought: I’ve been busy all day. Will I smell of sweat?

Then she thought: Shen Jianqing is a clean person. She always showers before we begin. If she’s put off now, she’ll stop on her own.

But she didn’t.

She even discarded, with a lack of propriety, the cigarette butt on the ground. With that hand she traced Qin Yue’s collarbone, touched her skin, then pulled her collar open and kissed her in earnest.

Qin Yue’s breathing deepened, matching the rhythm of the stars and moon flickering in her eyes.

Before her, the woman was building a tower with soft lips and fingertips, rising to meet the sky, magnificent beyond words.

Surrounded, she climbed step by step, waiting for the woman to push open that final gate for her and surrender to the boundless romance.

“Master Qin, your neck is always this sensitive.” Shen Jianqing’s low, husky voice, teasing, sounded by Qin Yue’s ear.

Qin Yue leaned against the back of the car, gazing out at the empty campus. A wind had picked up, blowing through the fiery canna lilies in the flowerbed and brushing against her damp neck.

She blinked and realized, as if waking: past nine o’clock, the air had begun to cool.

In another month or two, the ivy on the wall would turn red in patches, and autumn would arrive.

Then winter.

Her favorite season. And the one she feared most.

But in this moment, Shen Jianqing stood in the path of the wind, like someone blocking the wild geese already heading south. She held back the autumn and winter creeping in, and, draped in clear wind and bright moonlight, stood in the height of summer and asked her, “Is your stomach still bothering you? Those cries just now sounded a little off.”

She was still drifting in the afterglow of romance. Reason had been taken hostage and could do nothing but surrender.

“It hurts,” Qin Yue said.

She was lying.