Chapter 26 Part 1

And after learning it?

The place Qin Yue lived, she had seen today. The soundproofing was next to nonexistent. It was hardly a good place to go. If they went somewhere else… Qin Yue was strongly averse to it.

Shen Jianqing remembered it must have been their second year of knowing each other. She had been away on a business trip for a week and happened to fly back from the airport on a Friday. Thinking that the apartment, with nobody home for so many days, would be covered in dust, she had asked Qin Yue over WeChat: 【Should I find a hotel near your place tonight?】

Qin Yue took two or three minutes to reply: 【Why?】

She gave the reason and stressed that she would find a nicer hotel, but was still refused by Qin Yue.

【Forget paying for comfort.】

【Teacher Shen, let’s skip this week.】

Neither way worked. So the only option was still to have Qin Yue come under cover of darkness and return in the dark of night?

A headache.

Shen Jianqing raked her hair back in frustration. Suddenly Chen Wei jabbed an elbow into her left ribs, and the pain made her suck in a breath through her teeth. “What are you doing?” she said coldly.

Chen Wei narrowed her eyes and suddenly turned snide. “Didn’t you just say you barely know Master Qin? Oh, if you barely know her, how do you know where she lives?”

Shen Jianqing’s shoe caught in a crack between the damp gray bricks. She wanted to slap Chen Wei. A PhD holder, a lecturer at the Second College, and this was her grasp of the key point. Incredible.

“Is the topic of our conversation whether Qin Yue and I are close?” Shen Jianqing said with a frown.

Chen Wei shook her head again and returned to seriousness. “But a stomach needs nurturing. You can’t rush it.”

Shen Jianqing didn’t respond, thinking: Was Qin Yue’s problem just her stomach? Her whole body was falling apart.

Shen Jianqing let out a breath, took a tissue from her bag, hooked one leg up behind her, and bent down to carefully wipe the dirty water from the heel of her shoe.

Chen Wei sighed “so particular” at the display and leaned sideways against the lamppost. “With her stomach acting up, I doubt Master Qin will sleep well tonight. Oh! What are you doing? Why the sudden grim face?”

Chen Wei was startled by Shen Jianqing’s sudden change of expression. She watched her veer off and walk a long way before hurrying after her. “Buying tea in the middle of the night?”

Shen Jianqing lifted the soft curtain at the entrance of the tea market and strode inside. “Not buying.”

Chen Wei: “Then why did you come all the way here?”

Shen Jianqing said nothing, turned several corners on her own, and entered a plain, understated agarwood shop.

Chen Wei lived close to the tea market, but as a devoted coffee drinker she had never set foot in the place. Now driven by curiosity, she wanted to look at and touch everything.

It felt like only three or four minutes when she suddenly heard a ding beside her and saw Shen Jianqing’s phone screen display a payment of eighteen thousand yuan.

Chen Wei stared. “Did you buy gold?”

The shop owner printed the receipt with a good-natured grin. “Our agarwood is far more useful than gold. Its fragrance goes straight to the spleen and stomach. Smelling it long enough works just like a good diet. Very nourishing.”

“Understood, understood.” Chen Wei smiled along and glanced at Shen Jianqing pocketing her phone. She sighed inwardly: Tsk. Rich people’s faces are more impassive than ordinary folk’s. Look at that eighteen thousand spent, calmer than I was last week dropping eighteen hundred on a suit. The gap between worlds could catch you completely off guard.

Chen Wei followed Shen Jianqing out. She held back, then couldn’t, and asked the rich person with her head down poking at her phone, “Who are you buying this to nurture?”

The rich person didn’t even look up. So Chen Wei answered herself. “It’s for Master Qin, isn’t it? As far as spleen and stomach go, Master Qin’s is the only one I’ve noticed having trouble.”

Shen Jianqing finished placing the courier order, turned around, and said with an expression of pure kindness, “Your eyes aren’t blind yet, so how did you learn fortune-telling?”

Chen Wei selectively listened and immediately got excited. “Tsk tsk, you two really aren’t close, tsk tsk, not close at all, tsk…”

Halfway through, the rich person suddenly strode ahead and stopped in front of a young girl who was rubbing her stomach with a look of bliss. “What are you two drinking?” she asked.

The girl blinked, then hurriedly bowed to Shen Jianqing. “Hello, Teacher Shen! It’s sweet soup.”

“Hot?” Shen Jianqing asked.

The girl said, “Mm-hm, mine’s hot. This time of year there are iced and room-temperature ones too.”

“Where can I buy some?” Shen Jianqing asked.

The girl turned and pointed. “Just around the corner at Muzi Sweet Soup Shop. Not far. Want me to take you there?”

Shen Jianqing smiled. “No need. You two go on and enjoy yourselves.”

The girl nodded eagerly and, pulling her younger sister along, ran off.

From not far away, Chen Wei heard the two whispering: “Teacher Shen actually drinks sweet soup that costs twelve yuan a cup! That’s unbelievable.”

“It cools you down and cuts the grease in summer. Who doesn’t like it?”

“Sigh, you don’t get it. Once you get into our school and attend one of Teacher Shen’s lectures, you’ll understand. It’s just the way she is: microphone in her left hand, a piece of chalk between her index and middle fingers on the right, leaning sideways against the edge of the desk. My God, that waist is so beautiful, that bearing so elegant. She doesn’t look like someone who’d drink something so cheap and high-calorie at all.”

“Really? Then I absolutely have to get into your school next year!”

“Mm. It’s not exactly easy to get in.”

“…”

After eavesdropping, Chen Wei reached behind and felt her own waist… A bit round.

Carrying a heart full of guilt, Chen Wei walked over to Shen Jianqing and tapped a finger on the table. “Was that just now your student?” she asked, beating around the bush.

Shen Jianqing ordered and paid with swift movements. “Youth league secretary of Remote Sensing Class 8. I taught their digital electronics last semester.”

“Still hanging around campus in the summer. Must be a local.”

“Probably.”

“Your student-teacher relationship is pretty warm. Not like mine. Teacher in class, ‘whoever’ after the bell.”

“…”

Shen Jianqing lifted her eyes from her phone and glanced at Chen Wei. Chen Wei pretended not to notice. She casually pulled a straw from the container and pinched it a few times, deciding the moment had come.

“This sweet soup isn’t for you, is it? It’s for Master Qin too?” Chen Wei asked, putting on an air of total nonchalance.

Shen Jianqing let out a short laugh, pocketed her phone, and turned away. “Now I finally understand why Cai Wen’ge is so respectful to me but runs his mouth around you with zero regard for his elders.”

“Isn’t it because I’m excessively approachable?” Chen Wei countered confidently.

Shen Jianqing said, “Excessive, yes. Excessively talkative.”

Chen Wei: “…”

After buying the sweet soup and stepping outside, Chen Wei noticed that Shen Jianqing not only showed no sign of heading back to the residential compound but kept pulling out her phone to check. Curiosity got the better of her. “What are you looking at?”

Shen Jianqing turned her body so Chen Wei couldn’t see the screen. “Nothing.”

Chen Wei pulled a face beyond words, then turned her head, distracted by a young band busking in the square.

The night stretched on, the crescent moon pouring its light. In the song were endless strains of tender love, broadcast through Douyin live to every corner of the country, reaching the ears of every lover. Qin Yue, earphones in on the subway, was among them. Only most people heard it once and moved on, while Qin Yue switched to NetEase and put the song on repeat, listening from the start of the ride to its end.

“One day I’ll see your silhouette appear against the light,

When all of this is understood by you, our fingers interlaced,

Across time, with no more parting, hand in hand into tomorrow.”

Back at the apartment, Guan Xiangchen, who had been waiting for Qin Yue until her eyes nearly fell out, heard the door open and shot out of her room. “Wait for me!”

Guan Xiangchen squeezed in before Qin Yue’s door closed, holding half a watermelon. “I’ve been waiting all night to eat the heart of this watermelon with you. What happened? Did you really go with your Teacher Shen to a blind date?”

“Her superior set it up. Hard to turn down.” Qin Yue braced against the wall and took off her shoes. “I just went through the motions.”

Guan Xiangchen came out of the kitchen with a spoon and handed it to Qin Yue. “Even if it was just going through the motions, you didn’t have to tag along and put yourself through it. Out of sight, out of mind. Ever heard of that?”

“I know.” Qin Yue washed her hands, spun the spoon around in the heart of the watermelon, then handed it back to Xiangchen. “I can’t eat. You have it.”

Guan Xiangchen said “oh,” scooped up the piece Qin Yue had already carved out, and stuffed it in her mouth. “So sweet!” she exclaimed.

Qin Yue gave a small laugh, turned on the bright desk lamp, and started repairing her phone.

The room fell quiet, leaving only the soft scratch of Guan Xiangchen chewing watermelon.

After ten seconds or so, Qin Yue suddenly spoke. “I didn’t go out with Shen Jianqing today to keep her company at a blind date.”

Admittedly, every little thing she did at that dinner had been tied to Shen Jianqing’s blind date. But the fundamental reason she had shown up had never been to deliberately twist a knife in her own heart. She had wanted to use the opportunity to meet Ke Liangping and pitch herself, preparing for next year’s graduate entrance exam.

Qin Yue gave Guan Xiangchen a brief, concise account of the afternoon’s phone call from Ke Liangping to Shen Jianqing. Guan Xiangchen was full of sighs. “As they say, connections make things easy. I always figured people from these two worlds would basically never cross paths, and here you are, with a top professor and a dean of research coming to find you on their own initiative.”

“Yue’er, would you call this infiltrating the enemy’s ranks?” Guan Xiangchen asked, chin propped in her hand.

Qin Yue was amused by the way she put it. She nodded. “I suppose so.”

“My girl is badass!” Guan Xiangchen gave Qin Yue a thumbs up and asked quickly. “So what did he say? If you pass the cutoff, he’ll take you on?”