After this public slap in the face, He Xin learned her lesson and no longer dared to provoke Wen Ying lightly.
It wasn’t that He Xin had changed; a person’s ingrained views don’t shift that easily. She had simply grown wiser and stopped wasting her breath on Wen Ying. Rotten wood cannot be carved, after all. Better to spend her energy on students who could actually be taught.
Instructor He Xin gave up on the troublemaker Wen Ying, and Troublemaker Wen expressed great delight.
As for whether He Xin had actually started the rumour that Wen Ying had booked a hotel room with a man, honestly, Wen Ying herself didn’t know.
She couldn’t exactly march over and interrogate He Xin under torture until the woman confessed, could she?
Fortunately, Wen Ying had clarified things quickly. Not many people had believed the rumour in the first place, and once Xie Qian returned to Beijing from Shanghai, bringing Peng Guoqing along to visit Wen Ying at the academy, the rumour vanished completely.
Xie Qian didn’t do anything dramatic. He simply chatted with Wen Ying for a while at the academy gate.
The academy wasn’t large, and the main path to the canteen faced the front gate directly. Plenty of students witnessed the scene.
The setting sun filtered through the trees, casting a warm golden light.
Xie Qian’s outstanding looks turned the moment into something straight out of a youth drama with eighteen beauty filters applied.
Shui Mingyue happened to see it. Her eyes instantly turned dreamy, and her voice became wistful. “From today onwards, every male lead in my novels has a face. Calling him merely ‘handsome’ feels disrespectful. I’ll use the most gorgeous prose possible to describe him…”
Mu Fan stood beside her, watching quietly without a word.
Shui Mingyue wasn’t the swooning type.
She simply appreciated beautiful things, whether objects or people. That was all.
To her, that was perfectly normal.
But appreciation didn’t mean she had to possess them.
She turned to Mu Fan and sighed softly. “Little Fish is really close with him. You’re out of the running!”
Mu Fan snapped out of his daze and immediately retorted, “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. I like talking to Little Fish because she’s interesting. Don’t you find her interesting too?”
Shui Mingyue nodded obligingly. “Mmm, mmm. I believe you.”
Your belief sounds so insincere!
Mu Fan was speechless. He glanced once more toward the gate, then headed to the canteen, muttering to himself as he walked, “What do you mean ‘in the running’ or not? The world is vast, but dinner is the most important. At least tonight nobody complained the food was too salty.”
Since Mu Fan refused to admit anything, Shui Mingyue dropped the subject.
A loud drum needs no heavy strike. Mu Fan earned serious money from his novels; he was definitely not stupid.
The two sat in the canteen surrounded by chatter.
Writers are ordinary people too, and ordinary people love gossip.
Worst of all, writers tend to be highly perceptive with overactive imaginations.
Seeing it with their own eyes plus wild speculation had already produced a full-blown romantic campus drama in their heads.
“Someone was saying just the other day that Little Fish booked a room with some guy—”
“Hah, obviously fake. With a boyfriend that handsome, you’d have to be insane to book a room with someone else!”
“Exactly! Little Fish herself said it was a relative visiting her. The rumour-monger is just bored…”
Why couldn’t the “man” in the hotel rumour be the young man at the gate?
Nonsense!
If the “man” had been that stunning youth, the rumour wouldn’t have been “Wen Ying booked a room with a random guy”; it would have been “Wen Ying and an incredibly handsome young man might have booked a room together”. A perfectly matched young couple giving in to the moment, so what?
It wasn’t as if two married people were having an affair!
Mu Fan listened to the discussions around him and felt they were from another planet.
“What is wrong with these people? Little Fish only just finished her gaokao. They think it’s normal for her to book hotel rooms with men?”
Shui Mingyue burst out laughing. “It depends on who the male lead is. Oh, you wouldn’t understand!”
Mu Fan genuinely didn’t.
Despite his talent and the hordes of female readers who adored him after he became famous, he had never enjoyed the privileges of top-tier looks. He didn’t understand that the world was full of face-judgers who applied entirely different standards to extremely attractive people!
What Mu Fan never expected was that Wen Ying didn’t get whisked away by the young man who looked better than any celebrity. Five minutes later, she walked into the canteen carrying several takeaway boxes.
“Hey, why didn’t you two wait for me?”
She looked at their nearly empty plates and chuckled. “Your loss. I get to enjoy this all by myself.”
With that, she opened the boxes.
The fragrant aroma of food wafted out. Shui Mingyue couldn’t help swallowing. “From that relative who makes desserts?”
“Nope. I can’t bother them every day. A friend packed it from a restaurant.”
Xie Qian had been very thoughtful. Knowing Wen Ying hadn’t eaten spicy food in days, he had specially chosen a Sichuan restaurant.
The taste of home made Wen Ying extremely content.
Mu Fan asked casually, “Mingyue and I were supposed to wait? We thought you’d gone out to dinner with your boyfriend!”
Wen Ying nearly choked. “N-no, he’s a really good friend—”
She hadn’t eaten spicy food in days, and the weather was hot, so her cheeks were already flushed.
Mu Fan couldn’t tell whether she was red from choking or from embarrassment.
Just a really good friend?
He went to fetch her a cup of water. “Here, drink. Eat slowly. Nobody’s stealing it from you.”
Shui Mingyue opened her mouth several times but ultimately said nothing. She had already warned him. If Mu Fan wanted to deceive himself, there was nothing she could do.
If Wen Ying and that young man truly had nothing more than friendship between them, Shui Mingyue would dig out her own eyeballs and never write another romance novel.
…
Outside the academy.
Peng Guoqing had the same question. “Why didn’t you invite Wen Ying to the restaurant? Good food should be eaten hot! And you, you came straight from the airport to the literature academy, said a few words, and left. I truly don’t understand you two!”
Xie Qian gave him a cool glance. “You don’t need to understand. You can’t even estimate your own gaokao score properly. How could you possibly understand what I’m doing?”
“…”
That hurt.
And it was infuriating.
If anyone else had said it, Peng Guoqing would have fought back fiercely.
While Peng Guoqing quietly seethed, Xie Qian suddenly changed the subject. “Do you know that Zhang Nan wants to come find Wen Ying?”
Peng Guoqing nodded. “Yeah! When girls meet up, they probably want to go shopping or something, right?”
You know nothing.
Xie Qian had a rough guess why Zhang Nan wanted to see Wen Ying.
During the gaokao, he, Zhang Nan, and Peng Guoqing had been assigned to the same exam room. Zhang Nan had tried to pry about his university choices then, but he had brushed her off.
It seemed she still hadn’t given up.
Xie Qian thought for a moment, then instructed Peng Guoqing, “Go tell Zhang Nan that I will apply to Huaqing University and stay in Beijing.”
Peng Guoqing’s eyes widened. “But you’re clearly going to Shanghai. You want me to lie to Zhang Nan?!”
He shook his head like a rattle drum.
“No way! When the lie gets exposed, I’m afraid Zhang Nan will twist my head off…”
Although Zhang Nan wouldn’t resort to physical violence like Xie Tang, she was the treasured daughter of the Zhang family and had several ferocious older cousins.
Yet under Xie Qian’s calm gaze, Peng Guoqing’s protests grew weaker.
Lying to Zhang Nan might get him beaten up by her cousins.
Not lying meant Xie Qian would deal with him right now.
Peng Guoqing felt life was too hard.
Why did he, poor little Qingqing, have to clean up Xie Qian’s romantic mess?
In the end he surrendered. “Fine, I’ll tell her.”
Xie Qian was about to speak when his phone rang. It was President Ran.
President Ran had a dinner invitation and wanted to bring Xie Qian along, mentioning especially that his daughter, who was studying composition, would also attend.
“Young people should get to know each other. It’ll make future collaborations easier.”
