Chapter 42

Time slipped away in the blink of an eye, yet every single day felt as long as a year.

Nearly half a year had passed since Chen Xi returned to Xiping from Beijing. Spanning the entire spring and autumn, with the bitter northwest wind about to sweep across the land, Chen Xi finally welcomed the winter vacation of her second year of high school amidst the intense academic environment.

As soon as the final exam ended, the students excitedly returned to their classrooms, hauling their desks, study materials, and books back from the corridors without missing a single item. They then sank into their chairs with bright, eager expressions, craning their necks in anticipation for the head teacher to arrive and announce the start of the break.

Chen Xi’s exam room happened to be in Class One of the Science Wing. As she packed her pencil case and prepared to leave, He Xu and two other boys walked in, radiating confidence.

Seeing Chen Xi packing her things at the very last seat by the window, He Xu immediately abandoned his friends and strode quickly toward her.

Ever since they traveled to Beijing together for the competition, their relationship had grown considerably closer.

Gradually, rumors began to circulate around the school that the two of them were engaged in early puppy love.

Chen Xi paid no heed to these gossips, but she never expected the head teacher to take them seriously. Following a school assembly, the head teacher had actually called them aside and sternly reminded them not to forget their identities as students, urging them to prioritize the upcoming college entrance examinations above all else.

He Xu had a very high probability of being recommended for early admission to Tsinghua or Peking University, so he wasn't particularly worried. Instead, he just chuckled and told the head teacher that he had no intention of engaging in puppy love.

In a daze, Chen Xi followed suit and also claimed she wasn't in any relationship.

From the bottom of his heart, the head teacher cherished top-tier students. Seeing that their attitudes seemed sincere enough, he offered a few words of caution and waved them back to class.

Chen Xi was sensitive in almost every aspect, yet exceptionally dense when it came to matters of the heart.

Perhaps a few subtle signs had revealed themselves before her, but without absolute certainty, she always dismissed them as mere illusions.

He Xu had never made any gesture that crossed the boundary of classmates, and Chen Xi simply pretended that nothing had happened.

Behind them, her good friend let out a deliberate sigh, as if trying to cheer He Xu on.

Watching Chen Xi’s smiling, curved eyes, He Xu’s ears suddenly turned red. He faked a couple of coughs and asked with a feigned composure, "Are you confident about taking first place this exam?"

Chen Xi blinked and gave a conservative shake of her head. "Not entirely sure."

He Xu licked his lips, making conversation for the sake of it: "The math test was actually quite straightforward this time."

Normally, the math exam papers for the arts and science tracks were set separately, but to increase the difficulty, the school had deliberately used the same set of questions for both.

Thinking of the final two major problem sets, Chen Xi furrowed her brow slightly. "I thought the last two complex problems were quite difficult."

He Xu let out an "ah" and muttered, "Were they?"

"Which question didn't you get? Shall I explain it to you?"

The warning bell for class rang, and the science students hurried back to their classrooms one after another.

Seeing the crowd growing larger, Chen Xi clutched her pencil case and draft notebook. Looking up at He Xu’s sincere expression, she hesitated and said, "How about after we get back?"

Seeing that Chen Xi had agreed, He Xu flashed a row of clean, white teeth and beamed. "Alright."

Just as the words left his mouth, someone poked their head in through the front doorway and called out to He Xu, "Squad leader, old Xu wants you in the office."

Without waiting for He Xu to speak, Chen Xi gently brought the conversation to a close. "Go ahead then, you're busy. I'm heading back."

He Xu opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but seeing that Chen Xi had already turned away, he had to swallow the words back down his throat.

No sooner had Chen Xi stepped back into her classroom than the head teacher walked in leisurely, holding a thermal flask.

Noticing the chaotic and noisy state of the room, the head teacher slammed the flask heavily onto the podium and brought the students' clamor to a halt with a stern expression:

"Do you still want your vacation or not?"

The students who had been whispering to their left and right instantly fell silent. The classroom, which had just been as rowdy as a vegetable market, became dead quiet in an instant.

Zhu Qing turned her head, picked up a pen, and scribbled a sentence on her draft paper, swiftly tossing it onto Chen Xi’s desk.

Looking bewildered, Chen Xi picked up the paper and read: *Are you and He Xu dating?*

*How is that possible.*

Chen Xi shook her head resolutely, denying the fact.

Understanding Chen Xi’s meaning, Zhu Qing snatched back the draft paper and wrote furiously: *T, you better be careful. Liang Wen from Class Three has had a crush on He Xu for ages. I just heard her best friends in the exam room plotting to settle scores with you.*

After finishing, Zhu Qing slanted the scrap of paper over, signaling Chen Xi to read.

Chen Xi looked at the words with a puzzled expression. Who was Liang Wen? She didn't know her at all.

Standing on the platform, the head teacher was lecturing on holiday precautions when he caught Zhu Qing’s little stunt out of the corner of his eye and issued a warning: "Zhu Qing, settle down right now."

Looking up with a lingering fear, Zhu Qing met the head teacher’s intensely oppressive gaze. Terrified, she dropped her pen and wished she could crawl right inside her desk.

If she remembered correctly, wasn't the head teacher Zhu Qing’s maternal uncle?

Once the head teacher’s attention drifted elsewhere, Zhu Qing stuck out her tongue, leaned closer to Chen Xi, and whispered, "Anyway, just be careful. Don't let yourself get bullied."

"Liang Wen is that girl who co-hosted the New Year's Eve gala with He Xu last year. She isn't as pretty as you, but she's a bit taller."

"What are you doing for winter vacation? My mom and the others want to go to Yunnan for the Spring Festival."

Zhu Qing’s thoughts leaped too fast for Chen Xi to keep up.

Blinking her eyelashes slowly, Chen Xi let her gaze fall upon the textbook on her desk, while Zhou Yanzhou’s face popped into her mind unbidden.

Over the past half year, Zhou Yanzhou had seemed to vanish into thin air. Aside from occasional text messages proving he was still alive in this world, it was virtually impossible to capture any trace of his activities.

That invitation before leaving Beijing would probably come to nothing now, wouldn't it? Chen Xi thought with a sense of despair.

After finishing the winter homework assignments, the head teacher finally showed some mercy and released them, wishing them a happy winter vacation.

The moment the head teacher left, an uproar erupted in the classroom. Within two minutes, the students scattered like birds and beasts, and most of them had already departed.

Chen Xi slowly packed her schoolbag, parted ways with Zhu Qing at the playground, and walked alone toward the bus stop at the school gate.

Before she had taken many steps, her path was blocked by two aggressive-looking girls. Chen Xi had no choice but to stop, clutching her backpack straps and looking at them in confusion.

The leading girl wore her hair in a meatbun bun and exuded the air of a minor boss. She reached out and shoved Chen Xi, asking maliciously, "Are you Chen Xi from Class One? You don't look like much."

Stumbling from the push, Chen Xi managed to steady her footing and asked with a calm expression, "Who are you?"

The meatbun-haired girl glared at Chen Xi and snapped with a bad attitude, "Never mind who we are. You just need to remember one thing: stay away from He Xu."

At this, the girl looked Chen Xi up and down. Seeing her dressed in a school uniform with a docile expression—and harboring a deep aversion to straight-A students—she said impatiently, "He’s not someone you can dream of having."

Not wanting to entangle herself with them, Chen Xi closed her eyes for a moment and replied in a pleasant tone, "He Xu and I are just ordinary classmates. You've got it all wrong."

With that, Chen Xi ignored their dumbfounded looks, stepped around them, and walked straight ahead.

By this time, everyone else had left the school. Fearing they might pester her further, Chen Xi broke into a run as soon as she reached the intersection.

Seeing this, the meatbun-haired girl let out a low, vulgar curse.

The short girl beside her couldn't help feeling a lingering sense of dread. "Do you think she'll go back and tell her parents? What if it implicates Xiao Wen?"

Staring fiercely in the direction Chen Xi had fled, the meatbun-haired girl gritted her teeth. "She wouldn't dare!"

"Her parents are both dead, who is she going to tell?"

"Xiao Wen doesn't know about this, don't tell her. If it really gets exposed, just say we can't stand the sight of her, and don't say anything else."

Chen Xi ran a long way in one breath, only slowing down and panting softly once she was certain the two hadn't followed her.

Remembering Zhu Qing’s warning, Chen Xi didn't dare to delay. She hailed a taxi at the street corner, dove inside, hastily gave her address, and collapsed against the seat to rest.

Upon returning home, she discovered there were guests. Chen Xi stood in the foyer for a moment, forced out a smile, and walked into the house with her schoolbag, slowing her pace.

Three unfamiliar middle-aged women were sitting in the living room. Her aunt was sitting at the edge of the sofa, enthusiastically inviting them to eat grapes. Hearing footsteps, the aunt looked up at Chen Xi, and her tone immediately cooled: "You're back?"

"Go upstairs, change your clothes, and play with Xiao Sheng for a while."

Meeting the probing gazes of the ladies, Chen Xi nodded obediently.

Passing by the living room, she headed straight upstairs.

Just as she reached the foot of the stairs, she heard someone ask, "Who is this girl? She looks really striking."

Her aunt resumed her fake yet enthusiastic voice: "My husband's niece. Her parents passed away in a car accident, so she's been living with me."

Several of the women chimed in with comforting words: "The little girl has such a pitiful background. You've had a hard time."

"Indeed, raising someone else's child is the hardest thing. Scold them too lightly and you haven't taught them right; scold them too heavily and you're afraid of gossip."

"Indeed, indeed..."

Ignoring the gossip behind her, Chen Xi went upstairs without changing her expression.

By the time she came back downstairs after changing, the ladies in the living room had already moved on to a new topic.

Chen Xi walked into the small room on the right side of the living room and squatted down to play with plasticine alongside her little cousin.

The door remained wide open, and the conversation from the living room drifted unhindered into Chen Xi’s ears.

"You all know about the newly built Sail Hotel at People's Square, right?"

"Who doesn't know that? I walk past People's Square every day and watched with my own eyes as it turned from a patch of muddy yellow clay into a building dozens of stories high."

"I wonder how much a night costs. Once the interior decoration is finished, I'm going to go in and stay there myself."

Chen Xi put down the plasticine and secretly glanced toward the doorway, seeing that the speaker was a woman wearing a white sweater.

Just as the woman finished speaking, a curly-haired woman sitting diagonally across from her dropped her shoulders and spoke in a deeply mysterious tone: "That hotel owner is supposedly surnamed Zhou, from Beijing. I heard he's very young, not even thirty."

"Doesn't my husband work at the Audit Bureau? He saw that boss with his own eyes—looks just like a movie star, you'd never take him for a businessman at all..."

Chen Xi wanted to listen a bit longer, but her cousin suddenly grabbed her, clamoring for her to mold an elephant for him out of clay.

Chen Xi had no choice but to pick up her cousin, holding the plasticine to shape an elephant with one hand while soothing him in a low voice.

Mentioning the owner of the Sail Hotel seemed to spark an intense curiosity among the ladies.

Listening to bits and pieces, Chen Xi slowly pieced together a few fragments of information.

"Didn't the mayor's daughter want to be matched with him some time ago? Ended up getting a cold shoulder. Just think about it, what kind of circles does that person move in back in Beijing? How could he possibly fancy a girl from a tiny backwater place like Xiping?"

"I'd say that mayor's daughter is a toad trying to eat swan meat, not even looking to see if she's worthy."

...

The ladies traded words of disdain, as if determined to cast the mayor's daughter down into the dust.

Yet Chen Xi couldn't help thinking: if even the mayor's daughter wasn't a match for Zhou Yanzhou, what kind of girl would actually be suited for him?

Chen Xi didn't dwell on this question for long. That night, after soothing her restless cousin to sleep, she returned to her bedroom weighed down with exhaustion.

As she hesitated over whether to take a shower, the phone hidden under her pillow suddenly vibrated twice.

Chen Xi hurriedly grabbed the phone, entered her password, and unlocked it.

The person who had been silent for so long suddenly sent a text message: *Returning to China at the end of the month, should be able to make it in time for the fireworks show?*

Staring at those few words and recalling the ladies' discussion in the living room that afternoon, Chen Xi felt her eyes sting with sudden heat.

She pinched her sore nose twice, repeatedly typing and deleting.

Full five minutes later, she finally replied: *I'll wait for you.*

Far away in the United States, Zhou Yanzhou caught sight of the message, the corner of his lips curling up as he dialed the number without a second thought.

When the ringtone sounded, Chen Xi gave a start; she had forgotten to switch off her silent mode.

Fearing her uncle would hear, Chen Xi hurriedly pressed the answer button in a flurry of panic.

Through the electrical waves, the man’s mellow, laughter-laced voice slowly spilled from the screen: "What are you doing?"

Covering her unruly chest and swallowing nervously, Chen Xi feigned composure and replied, "Nothing much."

Lowering his laptop and standing up to walk toward the floor-to-ceiling window, Zhou Yanzhou gazed out at the bustling streets of Manhattan and asked leisurely, "Did you miss me?"

Chen Xi’s breathing hitched. Gripping the edge of her quilt, she massaged it unconsciously and whispered a denial in protest: "No."

Unsurprised, Zhou Yanzhou let out a chuckle. With his hands in his pockets, imagining Chen Xi’s expression at that exact moment, he spoke in a gentle tone: "It's fine, I missed you."

Chen Xi froze in place.

Looking down at her phone screen in sheer disbelief, she confirmed beyond doubt that it was indeed Zhou Yanzhou.

Had he taken the wrong medicine???

Perhaps because he hadn't heard Chen Xi’s voice for so long, or perhaps because he had stayed abroad for too long, Zhou Yanzhou found himself unusually nostalgic for his days in Xiping.

Though a faint trace of longing surfaced in his eyes, he said aloud, "I really missed you."