Jiang Ruoqiao finished touching up her makeup and stepped out, and ran directly into her senior colleague.

The senior colleague had been very attentive to her all evening — she hadn’t let Jiang Ruoqiao touch a drop of alcohol. When toasts were being made, she had even explained to others on Jiang Ruoqiao’s behalf that she was still a student and it wasn’t suitable for her to drink.

“Xiao Qiao, where are you heading?” the senior colleague glanced at her wristwatch. “I had a bit to drink so I can’t drive — I’ve arranged for a substitute driver, but I’ll probably have to wait a while.”

Jiang Ruoqiao quickly said, “You don’t have to worry about me — you’ve worked hard enough tonight. Please just head straight home and rest.”

“But how will you get back?” the senior colleague said. “The nearest subway station isn’t exactly close.”

A trace of a smile appeared on Jiang Ruoqiao’s face. “Someone’s giving me a ride.”

The senior colleague looked mildly surprised, then smiled. “Your boyfriend?”

Jiang Ruoqiao neither nodded nor shook her head — she just smiled. The heating inside the venue had been generous, and though she hadn’t had a single drink, her cheeks were flushed pink, her eyes bright and unusually clear — the unmistakable look of someone deep in the sweetness of new feelings.

“Alright then,” the senior colleague said. “If he’s picking you up, I won’t insist. But do send me a message once you’re home safe.”

Jiang Ruoqiao nodded eagerly. “Of course, of course!”

She thought to herself that she really was fortunate.

She had met so many good people.

Her landlady was kind to her. Senior schoolmate Cen was kind to her. Her supervisor and her senior colleague had both taken her under their wing. Her senior colleague was barely in her thirties, yet she always treated Jiang Ruoqiao like a little girl to be looked after.

The banquet wound to a close.

People began filtering out one by one. Jiang Ruoqiao and Lu Yicheng met at the entrance. They looked at each other, and both smiled.

Lu Yicheng scrambled for something to say. “I called a car. The driver just phoned me — said he’ll be here in about ten minutes.”

“Mm.” Jiang Ruoqiao sidled up to him. “How much is the fare?”

Lu Yicheng said helplessly, “You’re never going to let that go, are you? That’s not what I meant. No splitting.”

Jiang Ruoqiao’s eyes curved with a smile. “I didn’t mean it that way either! Your cost-efficiency talk is a source of endless joy for me. If you stop saying it, my life will have a lot less happiness.”

Lu Yicheng: “……”

He had a nagging feeling she was laughing at him.

The two walked out of the hotel side by side. The hotel had a fountain outside, though in the dead of winter, no one was in any mood to stop and appreciate it.

After a few minutes’ wait, the car arrived as promised.

Jiang Ruoqiao and Lu Yicheng settled into the back seat together.

It was much warmer inside.

Before they’d even had a chance to chat, Lu Yicheng’s phone rang. It was Lu Siyan calling.

Jiang Ruoqiao: “?”

How infuriating — he called his dad first instead of her, his mother!

She was jealous!

Lu Yicheng answered. They were sitting fairly close together, and Lu Siyan had a big voice, so what he said was audible to Jiang Ruoqiao sitting right beside him.

Lu Siyan’s voice came through the phone, rattling urgently: “Dad! I have something very important to tell you! Today some relatives came to Great-grandma’s house, and I heard them talking about setting Mom up with a boyfriend!”

Jiang Ruoqiao: “……”

She could have predicted that.

It seemed that since last year, she had become some sort of hot commodity — relatives and neighbors all took tremendous enthusiasm in finding her a match.

Naturally, the candidates they proposed were always people connected to them in some way.

There was Old Lady Liu upstairs, for instance, who had been persistently promoting her grandson — currently studying abroad — for quite some time now.

Then there was one of her grandmother’s cousins who had been diligently working to introduce her to that cousin’s grand-nephew…

Lu Yicheng probably had no idea what that kind of thing felt like.

Such was the formidable power of the extended family network.

Lu Yicheng reflexively glanced at Jiang Ruoqiao, swallowing back the words “your mom is sitting right beside me.” Instead, he replied with complete calm: “Mm. Got it.”

Lu Siyan: “?”

He raised his voice even louder: “Dad! Aren’t you worried?! Aren’t you in a hurry?! They want to set Mom up with a boyfriend!”

Lu Yicheng: “……”

Of course he was worried.

But there was nothing he could do about it right now — because Jiang Ruoqiao was sitting right next to him.

The awkwardness only made everything worse.

Lu Yicheng: “Have you been behaving and listening to Great-grandma and Great-grandpa?”

He was attempting to change the subject. But as far as Lu Siyan was concerned, it didn’t work at all. The boy’s voice was still full of disbelief: “They want to set Mom up with a boyfriend! One of them studied abroad — they said he and Mom have known each other for many years! And another one even said they’re going to get them together for a meal and a movie over the New Year holiday!”

Lu Yicheng looked at Jiang Ruoqiao.

Jiang Ruoqiao held up both hands in an expression of pure innocence, mouthing back at him: “I didn’t know.”

Lu Yicheng tried to soothe Lu Siyan: “This is adult business — stay out of it. Be good and listen to Great-grandma and Great-grandpa.”

Lu Siyan heard the dismissiveness in his father’s voice and was appalled. This impossibly cool little boy said: “Dad, I don’t want to be your friend anymore. I’m cutting ties with you.”

He felt that wasn’t enough, so he added: “No one wants to play with you.”

“From now on, if I hear anything like this, I’m not telling you anymore!” Lu Siyan declared.

Lu Yicheng hesitated, wanting to keep him talking.

He still did want to know.

After all, know your enemy, know yourself, and you’ll win every battle.

But Jiang Ruoqiao was right beside him — he genuinely didn’t know how to phrase anything.

If he said “please, I want to hear it,” wouldn’t his intentions be a bit too obvious?

Lu Yicheng could only stay silent.

Lu Siyan huffed and hung up with magnificent dignity.

Jiang Ruoqiao held back her laughter.

Before she even had the chance to tease Lu Yicheng, her own phone rang. It was Lu Siyan calling.

Jiang Ruoqiao thought: First Dad, then me — fine, I’ll let it slide.

She answered.

Lu Siyan transformed completely — just one minute ago he had been dramatically cutting ties with Lu Yicheng, yet now on the phone with Jiang Ruoqiao he was turning on the full force of his charm: “Mom! My dearest mom! I miss you so much!”

Jiang Ruoqiao, coolly: “Is that so.”

Lu Siyan: “For real! Today I ate the sweetest sugarcane and I immediately thought of you, Mom. Have you had sugarcane this year? It’s so sweet.”

Even the most determined coolness was no match for a son’s warm enthusiasm.

Jiang Ruoqiao’s expression softened quickly into a smile. “I miss you too — but I still have a stretch to go before I can come back. When I do, Mom will take you shopping for new clothes, okay?”

“Yes!! Mom, I miss you!”

Lu Yicheng sat quietly beside her.

He felt it deeply — Lu Siyan, this child, truly had some talent for switching faces.

With him, there was nothing but cold indifference and declarations of severing friendship.

With Jiang Ruoqiao, it was all “Mom, I miss you, Mom, I love you.”

Mother and son were thoroughly wrapped up in each other for a while before Lu Siyan announced: “Mom, am I really old now?”

Jiang Ruoqiao still had a lingering smile. “Of course not!! I’m only twenty — I’m very young!”

She would have been embarrassed to say she was still just a kid herself — otherwise she would have.

Lu Siyan said with genuine concern: “Then why does everyone want you to find a boyfriend and get married?”

She was still in school, wasn’t she?

Jiang Ruoqiao reassured him: “That’s just how it goes. You’ll understand when you’re older — when you’re in school, everyone tells you that you absolutely cannot date. Then the moment you graduate, everyone rushes to pressure you into marriage. And more often than not, it’s the exact same people who said both things.”

“So do you want to get married?” Lu Siyan asked.

Jiang Ruoqiao felt it was a rather delicate thing, discussing this with her own child.

But she was determined to be the most open-minded parent possible — the kind who could honestly tell a child where babies come from, and who could just as readily talk about something as profound as marriage.

“Not right now,” Jiang Ruoqiao said. “I’m only twenty — I’m still young.”

Lu Siyan replied: “Mom, when you do want to get married, will you tell me first?”

“You don’t need to be so humble about it, darling,” Jiang Ruoqiao said meaningfully. “If I ever want to marry someone, I’ll absolutely have you weigh in. Your opinion matters enormously!”

Lu Siyan: “Woohoo!”

Children were like that — all they really wanted was to feel that their parents valued them deeply.

After a prolonged exchange of affection between mother and son, Lu Siyan began to complain. “Mom, I’ve been so annoyed lately. Annoyingly annoyed.”

“What happened?”

“They gave me a nickname! It made me so mad!” Lu Siyan chatted away without pause, venting non-stop. “They actually started calling me ‘Four Eyes’! Because my name is Lu Siyan, they took the ‘Si’ and made it into ‘four’ — it sounds so ugly!”

Jiang Ruoqiao: “?”

She held back a laugh. “That is very annoying.”

“They said ‘four eyes’ means wearing glasses,” Lu Siyan asked anxiously. “I won’t actually end up wearing glasses for real, will I?”

Lu Yicheng’s eyes were full of quiet amusement.

He could hear every word Lu Siyan was saying.

Jiang Ruoqiao thought about the question earnestly. “It probably won’t happen — I don’t have myopia, and your dad…”

Right, was Lu Yicheng near-sighted?

She didn’t actually know. She could have guessed that someone as straightforward as him would never bother with contact lenses, but still…

She turned to look at Lu Yicheng with a curious, questioning expression and raised a finger, pointing at his eyes.

Lu Yicheng laughed and mouthed back at her: “I’m not near-sighted.”

Jiang Ruoqiao breathed a small sigh of relief. “Your dad isn’t near-sighted either.”

The two of them seemed to have been blessed with something of a natural advantage.

She had noticed long ago that she was a bit of an anomaly — she never got breakouts, for instance. And while some of her friends, studying the same amount under the same conditions, had started wearing glasses early on, her own eyesight remained perfectly sharp.

Lu Siyan let out a “wow.” “Does that mean I’m definitely not going to become Four Eyes?”

Jiang Ruoqiao considered carefully. “I can’t say for certain — every person’s situation is different. You should still try not to look at your phone, tablet, or the TV too much, and eat more carrots and blueberries.”

Lu Siyan declared with absolute conviction: “Four Eyes is such an ugly nickname! To make sure no one ever calls me that, I’m going to protect my eyes no matter what. Starting tomorrow, I’m going to watch less cartoons!”

—