Fang Chengran chuckled: "I'm alone abroad, and I basically cook for myself."
Yang Wei blinked: "Don't you still have three, five, or seven girlfriends?"
"They're already being lenient by not making me serve them," Fang Chengran said, shrugging.
Yang Wei swallowed a mouthful of porridge, her eyes slightly mocking: "Keep pretending."
Fang Chengran looked at her and suddenly changed the subject: "Is the wedding photo in your bedroom painted like that by you?"
Yang Wei's eyes darkened for a moment, then she nodded and said, "Mm."
Fang Chengran said, "If you don't want to see it, why not just take down the wedding photos?"
Yang Wei paused for a moment, then unconsciously stirred the porridge with her spoon: "Hmm, that wedding photo is too big. The wall will look empty and unattractive after it's taken down."
Fang Chengran pursed his lips and said nothing more.
After the meal, Fang Chengran offered to wash the dishes again, but Yang Wei felt a little bad: "No need, you can leave them in the sink, I'll wash them myself later."
Fang Chengran turned around and glanced at her, saying in an expert-like tone, "You should avoid getting wet during your period."
Yang Wei smiled slightly: "Did your three, five, or seven girlfriends tell you?"
"The shop assistant told me," Fang Chengran corrected seriously. After washing the dishes, he checked the time and finally decided it was time to leave: "I'm going back now, you should get some rest."
"Okay, thank you so much for today."
Fang Chengran stopped, his bright eyes fixed intently on her, like the most beautiful obsidian: "Aren't you going to give me a thank-you kiss?"
Yang Wei paused for a moment, then took a step back: "I thought you were doing it for free."
Fang Chengran couldn't help but laugh out loud, and stepped forward to quickly peck Yang Wei on the cheek: "Here's a free goodnight kiss for you."
The kiss was light and quick, but it completely stunned Yang Wei.
She has never been kissed by anyone other than Qi Xiaoyan.
Fang Chengran raised his hand and brushed aside the black hair on her face, his eyes becoming ambiguous: "If you keep staring like this, I'll kiss your lips."
Yang Wei shuddered and quickly took two steps back: "Hahahaha, goodnight!" After saying that, she slammed the bedroom door shut and didn't forget to lock it.
Fang Chengran: "..."
It seems like I've been completely and utterly mistaken for a pervert.
I should have just kissed him.
After dropping Aunt Zhao off at the hotel, Qi Xiaoyan returned to school. The deadline for the math Olympiad textbook project was fast approaching, so he parked his car and went straight to the teaching and research building.
The three graduate students were inside. The girl with her hair in a ponytail was holding a magazine and said to the bespectacled man next to her, "Look, isn't Song Jin talking about Professor Qi?"
The boy habitually pushed up his glasses and advised, "You'd better not get involved in Professor Qi's affairs. This project is about to end, and I don't want him to turn around and dump a bunch of projects on us again."
The girl curled her lip, still holding the magazine in her hands: "I never imagined that Professor Qi's first love was Song Jin. It's too unbelievable."
Whose first love was Song Jin?
Qi Xiaoyan's voice suddenly came from behind, startling the girl so much that she dropped the magazine in her hand with a "thud" to the ground.
Qi Xiaoyan walked over, picked up the magazine, glanced at it, and put it back on the table. The three graduate students cautiously observed his expression, even lowering their breathing to a minimum. Qi Xiaoyan opened his computer and looked at the documents for a while, then said to the three people opposite him, "Reselect the topics for pages 137 to 159, as well as pages 177, 185, 199, 203, and 211."
"..."
A living hell.
"Submit the manuscript to the publisher on Friday on time."
"..."
Human! The! Purgatory!
mistress
The three graduate students worked themselves to the bone to find a topic that suited Professor Qi's taste before the deadline, and spent the entire Saturday sleeping in their dorm room, completely exhausted.
Yang Wei had originally planned to sleep all day, but Sheng Lei had invited her to a buffet. She reluctantly got up to wash up, only to find the water was off. Remembering her mother saying that the water would be cut off when there wasn't much left, she looked around her bedroom but couldn't find her water card.
The time she had arranged with Sheng Lei was fast approaching. Yang Wei searched in the closet for a while but couldn't find it, so she reluctantly called Qi Xiaoyan.
Qi Xiaoyan was about to go to the hotel to pick up Aunt Zhao when his phone screen lit up just as he buttoned up his collar. The word "Baby" was particularly eye-catching. He paused for a moment before quickly answering the phone: "What is it?"
The icy sound was like tiny ice crystals hitting Yang Wei's eardrums, causing her to momentarily lose her composure: "Where did you put the water card?"
"The second drawer of the bedside table on the right. The water tank is in the hallway, the third one from the top of the seventh row is ours. If the water is cut off, it means the water is almost gone, and the supermarket downstairs can collect the water bill on your behalf."
Qi Xiaoyan's tone was calm, but Yang Wei's ears turned red. She felt like a kindergarten child who knew nothing.
"Thank you." She said those two words quickly and hung up the phone without hesitation. Qi Xiaoyan listened to the dial tone for a while before picking up her coat and going out.
Yang Wei and Sheng Lei met at the Western restaurant on the second floor of the Dingou Hotel, where the buffet Western food is very popular among young people.
A handsome doorman politely opened the door for her. Yang Wei went up the spiral staircase in the lobby to the second floor, where a hostess greeted her with a sweet smile and a bow: "Welcome, do you have a reservation?"
Yang Wei glanced around the Western restaurant and quickly spotted Sheng Lei: "My friend has already arrived, I can just go over there."
The hostess gestured for her to enter with perfect technique. Yang Wei thought to herself, "As expected of a five-star hotel, the service is excellent." "By the way," she thought, "doesn't Fang Chengran work here? I wonder if I'll run into him?"
She walked over to Sheng Lei's table and glanced down at it. On the table were a crème brûlée, a banana crepe, and two strawberry cakes.
The desserts here are very famous, with a wide variety and a taste that is even better than many cake shops, so many people make a special trip here to eat desserts.
Looking at the cake on the table, Yang Wei felt her mouth watering. She forked a corner of the cake and put it in her mouth. The slight tartness of the strawberries and the sweetness of the cream blended perfectly, greatly pleasing her taste buds: "Mmm! The strawberry cake here is definitely the best!"
Sheng Lei twitched her lips: "Why do I feel like you've become increasingly low-class ever since you divorced Qi Xiaoyan?"
Yang Wei picked up a strawberry with her hand and put it in her mouth, looking at her nonchalantly: "I call this returning to my nature."
Sheng Lei rolled her eyes, a malicious smile playing on her lips: "How do you feel after the divorce? Don't you find it hard to sleep alone?"
Yang Wei thought about it seriously and said, "It feels so good! Slippers no longer have to be placed vertically at a 90-degree angle in front of the bed, toothbrush heads can point whichever way I want, and towels no longer have to be five centimeters apart!"
Sheng Lei opened her eyes slightly in surprise: "Professor Qi isn't that picky, is he?"
Yang Wei shook her head and mocked her for being too naive: "Professor Qi is a Virgo."
Sheng Lei: "..."
That's really well-reasoned and convincing.
Yang Wei ate a piece of cake, then ran to the self-service counter and ordered a freshly grilled veal steak. She returned with the plate and asked Sheng Lei, "How's the case you're handling going?"
Sheng Lei sighed, picked up a strawberry and put it in her mouth: "After working in this line of work for so long, we've completely lost interest in marriage."
"Oh? You ran into another jerk?"
Sheng Lei started listing on her fingers: "Ten years of marriage, the scumbag husband cheated on her, dumped his wife, and the mistress took his place. What's next?"
Yang Wei's eyebrows twitched: "Fight for custody?"
Sheng Lei shrugged: "See? Even you know how the story is going. What's the point of marriage then?"
Yang Wei thought for a moment and said, "But there are always people who grow old together, right?"
“Those elderly people are from the last century. I estimate that in another twenty years, you will no longer see elderly people walking hand in hand on the street.”
"There's no need to be so pessimistic, is there?"
Sheng Lei glanced at her: "What right do you, a divorced person, have to say such things?"
Yang Wei shut up.
She finished the steak on her plate, wiped her mouth, and said, "My mom called me the other day and said she wanted to introduce you to a boyfriend."
Sheng Lei almost choked on the cake in her mouth: "Aunt Yang truly deserves to be a graduate of the China University of Media and Communication."
Yang Wei nodded in deep agreement and then grabbed a plate of crayfish.
A woman in a long red dress walked over and suddenly stopped as she passed by them, looking at Sheng Lei with some surprise: "Attorney Sheng, what a coincidence?"
Yang Wei glanced at the woman and gestured to Sheng Lei with her eyes, "Who is this?" Sheng Lei smiled and stood up, introducing her to Yang Wei, "This is the other party's...girlfriend."
Yang Wei nodded in realization. Attorney Sheng was really tactful.
The woman in the red dress naturally understood Sheng Lei's underlying meaning, and looked at her with a slight frown: "Attorney Sheng, I know you may sympathize with your client, and I know that in your eyes I am a shameless mistress, but in my opinion, love has no first come, first served; only the one who is not loved is the mistress. A loveless marriage, or a precious love, which do you think is more important?"
Yang Wei was stunned by her righteous and indignant words. The passion she had forged in the debates of her youth surged within her: "My opponent's point is laughable! Even the ancients knew that emotions should be tempered with propriety. Don't you, a modern person, understand this? You seem to be educated, yet you haven't learned a shred of propriety and shame! If everyone used love as a shield to destroy other people's families, what would society become? Oh, this might not seem like much to my opponent, after all, 'You only lost a leg, while I lost my love!'"
After Yang Wei finished speaking, the entire Western restaurant seemed to fall silent for a second, then a sparse round of applause broke out, and some girls even stood up to applaud Yang Wei. The woman in the red dress felt a flush on her face, and quickly walked away in her high heels. Yang Wei and Sheng Lei also couldn't hold back any longer, paid their bill, and left amidst the applause.
As Qi Xiaoyan stepped into the elevator, Fang Chengran and his father came out of the elevator next door. He had been forced by his father to come to the hotel to observe and learn again today. From the chairman's office to the lobby on the first floor, female employees kept secretly glancing at him. If it weren't for the chairman with a serious expression accompanying him, some of them probably would have come up to talk to him directly.
"Good morning, Chairman." The waiter at the Chinese restaurant greeted Chairman Fang, glancing at Fang Chengran almost imperceptibly. The front desk staff also saw the chairman approaching from afar and stood even straighter than before: "Good morning, Chairman."
"Okay." Mr. Fang nodded and said to the receptionist, "Get him a standard room tonight."
The receptionist glanced at Fang Chengran and said with a smile, "Okay, please wait a moment."
Fang Chengran's face turned ugly as he twitched his lips: "Dad, are you serious?"
Mr. Fang glanced at him, then walked out of the hotel without a word. Fang Chengran leaned helplessly against the front desk. Just as he looked up, he saw Yang Wei and a woman he didn't recognize coming down from the second-floor Western restaurant.
twenty two
Fang Chengran glanced at his jeans and white T-shirt and sprinted into the adjacent front office at top speed.
Huang, the head of the front office, was working inside when Fang Chengran rushed in. He looked up at him in surprise and asked, "Young Master Fang, is there something you need?"
"Shh! Don't talk!" Fang Chengran gestured for him to be quiet, then gently opened the door and peeked into the hall through the crack.
Yang Wei and Sheng Lei came down the stairs. Sheng Lei kept laughing: "You really are a teacher. You have a real knack for educating people."
Yang Wei's cheeks were slightly flushed. She raised her hand and fanned herself by her ear: "Phew—I've been holding back at school for so long, it felt so good to rant today." It's just a pity that she wasted her lunch money; she wasn't full at all.
"You must be feeling really bad." Sheng Lei laughed for a while, then leaned closer and whispered, "You're so agitated, it's not because of Qi Xiaoyan, is it?"
Yang Wei vehemently denied it: "No."
"No? Then why did you suddenly cut your hair?"
Yang Wei looked at her amusedly: "Attorney Sheng, you care whether someone cheats on you or not, but you care whether I cut my hair or not?"