“What did you say?” Lu Xingyan asked loudly.
His voice was drowned out by the deafening roar of the fireworks ascending into the sky. When the fireworks had finished, he asked again, “What did you just say?”
Shen Xingruo’s gaze returned from afar, casually saying, “Oh, I said Happy New Year.”
No, she had just said more than four words.
As Lu Xingyan was still suspicious, Shen Xingruo suddenly withdrew her hand and walked aside.
She found two branches and inserted them into the snowman’s body, using them as its arms.
Lu Xingyan commented professionally from the side, “These two branches are too long, don’t you think they look uncoordinated?”
He stepped forward, pulled out one of the branches, broke it into two sections, and then inserted it back. “This looks much more harmonious.”
Shen Xingruo remained noncommittal.
Lu Xingyan picked up the remaining branch and wrote on the ground in front of the snowman, “Shen Xingruo’s little snowman.”
In another line, he added, “——Gift from Lu Xingyan.”
His handwriting was crooked, far from being decent.
Shen Xingruo took the branch from him and went behind the snowman to write.
Just as he was about to follow to see, Shen Xingruo shouted, “You’re not allowed to look.”
“Why not? I want to see.”
Lu Xingyan was adamant, but Shen Xingruo was even more resolute. Before he could approach, she smoothed out the snow with the branch.
Lu Xingyan stood still for a few seconds, then stepped back, indifferent. “Okay, okay, you write. It’s not like it’s some top-secret information. Do you think I want to see?”
Watching Lu Xingyan retreat to the front of the snowman, Shen Xingruo continued writing.
After finishing, she tossed the branch aside, not giving Lu Xingyan a chance to peek, urging him to go back.
“You’re in such a hurry. I’ve worked so hard to build this, and we haven’t even taken a picture yet.”
“Tomorrow it won’t melt, and besides, taking pictures at night won’t yield good results.” Before Lu Xingyan could respond, Shen Xingruo looked down at her slippers. “My shoes seem to be wet.”
Lu Xingyan followed her gaze. “Seriously, with such thick snow outside, why didn’t you change your shoes?”
He didn’t delay any longer and reached back to grab Shen Xingruo’s hand, briskly walking into the building. Even during the short time it took to climb the stairs, they continued to banter back and forth.
They bickered to the door. Shen Xingruo, tired of wasting words, bent her knee and lightly bumped into Lu Xingyan. “Quit the chatter, open the door.”
Lu Xingyan paused. “Why don’t you open it?”
“I didn’t bring the keys…” Shen Xingruo stopped mid-sentence, suddenly realizing something, and turned to him. “You didn’t bring them either, did you?”
“I left while you were still at home, so of course I didn’t bring them,” Lu Xingyan replied, somewhat inexplicably. “No, wait, Shen Xingruo, you’re the one with the IQ problem. You forgot your keys when you left last.”
Shen Xingruo forgot to change her shoes, let alone remember the keys. But when facing Lu Xingyan, the words “I’m sorry” were nowhere to be found in her dictionary.
So she just frowned lightly, impatiently saying, “Alright, can we argue our way into finding a key now?”
“Do you know why, after studying so hard, you still didn’t score over 500 points?” Shen Xingruo continued, her tone tinged with exasperation. “It’s because whenever you encounter a problem, you never think of solutions first; instead, you engage in pointless arguments. You perfectly embody the concept of working twice as hard for half the result. How can you make progress like this? Think about it, what’s more important, the process or the outcome?”
Lu Xingyan remained silent.
He hadn’t even spoken fifty words in total, and now he was receiving a whole essay on how to be a better person.
Confused by the turn of events, Lu Xingyan found that Shen Xingruo had already called Aunt Zhou, explaining that they were downstairs watching fireworks and had forgotten their keys.
Aunt Zhou quickly got up.
She put on her coat and opened the door for the two while nagging, “Oh my, Xingruo, why did you go downstairs in slippers? Are they wet? Let me prepare some hot water for you to soak your feet.”
“No need to bother, Aunt Zhou, I’ll just take a shower later,” Shen Xingruo replied.
“Alright then.”
After Lu Xingyan closed the door, he muttered, “We should change to a fingerprint lock another day. What era is this lock from anyway?”
As Aunt Zhou walked upstairs, she continued, “Your dad doesn’t like fingerprint or password locks. And now, with that… facial recognition thing, there used to be kids who’d press it multiple times by mistake, and it would keep sending error alerts to their phones. You’d get so many in a day.”
Lu Xingyan was speechless.
Seeing Shen Xingruo enter her room, he entered his own.
In the dim light of night, his hands were numb, and he hadn’t had a chance to carefully examine the scarf Shen Xingruo had given him. After entering his room, he took a quick shower, picked out a new outfit based on the color of the scarf, then wrapped it around his neck and stood in front of the mirror, adjusting his bangs and striking a pose.
Naturally, on New Year’s Eve, friends wouldn’t go to bed early.
Li Chengfan and his team were playing PUBG, but they lost a match. Just as they were about to blame each other in the group chat, they realized that Lu Xingyan had flooded the chat with his selfies while they weren’t looking.
“Lu Xingyan, you truly have a charm that’s hard to resist,” Li Chengfan remarked.
Zhao Langming joked, “Master of selfies, zero deaths, zero kills.”
After dissing each other, they scrolled back up and noticed a text message from Lu Xingyan: “The scarf and gloves from Shen Xingruo as gifts.”
Lu Xingyan was clearly in a good mood; there was even a message below the text message, offering a red packet.
Opening it, they found a considerable amount inside. “Okay, not bad,” Li Chengfan commented.
In perfect sync, they swiftly retracted their previous messages, pretending as if nothing happened. Then, their tone changed drastically as they began to shower Lu Xingyan with praise.
“Congratulations, Master Lu, for receiving such a generous gift on New Year’s Eve,” Zhao Langming exclaimed.
Li Chengfan added, “No doubt, when Master Lu makes a move, he means business. It’s as if he’s already got kids with the amount he’s giving.”
Lu Xingyan was pleased with the commercial flattery he received.
He got up and glanced out the window; the snow was still falling, and the snowman downstairs stood proudly. He felt reassured.
But as he walked towards the bed, he paused, as if he remembered something. He turned back to his desk, rummaging through it for something.
After a while, he found a dusty telescope. Without bothering to clean it properly, he took it and went out to the balcony, opening the window and earnestly peering down.
Only the faint moonlight remained in the night sky, and after struggling to see through the toy-like telescope for a while, he could barely make out the snowman. The words in the chat above and below were impossible to read.
The snow continued to fall incessantly, and after a while, the words Shen Xingruo had written would be completely covered.
An idea sparked in Lu Xingyan’s mind. He moved quietly, ensuring that no light leaked out from Shen Xingruo’s door before slipping out of his room and downstairs.
Arriving at the spot where the snowmen were, he used the light from his phone to see that the words he had written earlier were still faintly visible. Satisfied, he circled to look at what Shen Xingruo had written, without a second thought, he snapped a photo before examining it carefully.
“Your back? Is this a back-writing?” he murmured to himself, “Back, is there something behind?”
Lu Xingyan repeated it, “Is there something behind you?”
Suddenly, his heart skipped a beat, and he instinctively turned around—
But there was nothing.
Damn…
He shrugged it off, attributing it to the eerie atmosphere of the late night. Though there was nothing there, Lu Xingyan felt a cold sweat breaking out on his back.
Fortunately, his phone chimed with a WeChat notification just in time.
“Shen Xingruo: Your IQ is overdue, jg.”
Lu Xingyan looked up to see Shen Xingruo leaning against the window, waving his phone at him.
Lu Xingyan “…”
Once again, he questioned his judgment. What sins had he committed in his past life to end up falling for Shen Xingruo in this one?
Returning upstairs, Lu Xingyan stood at the door, remembering another frustrating issue—
Yes, he had forgotten his keys again.
Asking Shen Xingruo to open the door was out of the question. He would rather freeze to death in the hallway than ask Shen Xingruo for anything.
What to do now?
Lu Xingyan quickly thought of an excuse and prepared to call the housekeeper.
Just then, the door opened.
Shen Xingruo stood at the door, scrutinizing him from head to toe before remarking, “Forgot your keys again.”
It wasn’t a question; she was speaking more in statements.
“Heraclitus said, ‘You cannot step into the same river twice,’ Lu Xingyan. How do you manage to do the same stupid thing twice in one night?”
Before he could respond, Shen Xingruo continued, almost to herself, “Well, he said people can’t, but he didn’t say pigs can’t.”
“…?”
“Who said I forgot my keys?”
“Oh, you brought them. Then open it yourself.”
Shen Xingruo nodded and moved to close the door.
Lu Xingyan, quick on his feet, squeezed in before she could shut it. Then, he pressed her against the door, enclosing her entirely.
He carried the scent of fresh snow from outside, crisp and cold, mingled with the familiar fragrance of her shower gel, grassy and refreshing, causing Shen Xingruo’s cheeks to inexplicably flush in the darkness.
“Shen Xingruo, I’ve tolerated you for a long time. Don’t think just because I like you, you can mock me with impunity. Got it?”
Lu Xingyan leaned in close, his voice low and threatening, yet it almost sounded flirtatious.
Shen Xingruo remained silent.
Seeing her reaction, Lu Xingyan eased up slightly, wondering if he had gone too far.
But in a moment of contemplation, he remembered the recent scare and realized he couldn’t let it slide so easily.
Furthermore, they weren’t even dating yet, and Shen Xingruo already seemed to be asserting dominance. If he didn’t address it now, would he ever have a say in the relationship?
Speaking of which, he recalled their conversation downstairs, the fireworks drowning out a crucial sentence.
He had been teasing Shen Xingruo, asking her to be his girlfriend.
Could it be that her response was an actual agreement?
Lu Xingyan replayed Shen Xingruo’s lip movements in his mind.
Considering the length of her words, he felt that the likelihood of Shen Xingruo saying “everything in my dreams” was much higher than her saying “I agree with you.”
But a tiny spark of hope flared up in his heart, making it hard to give up. Pressing Shen Xingruo against the door, he asked, “What did you say when we were setting off fireworks? Be honest, I’ll let you go back to sleep if you tell me.”
Shen Xingruo stared at him, her eyes unblinking.
Just as it seemed like Shen Xingruo was about to speak, suddenly, a creaking sound came from upstairs.
Lu Xingyan froze, pushing Shen Xingruo down slightly.
He squatted a bit earlier, still unwilling to let go of Shen Xingruo, which ended up with her knees pressing his down, forcing him into a kneeling position.
But none of this mattered now; what mattered was—
Mrs. Zhou was coming downstairs.
A warm yellow light suddenly illuminated the ground floor.
Shen Xingruo and Lu Xingyan locked eyes, their heartbeats synchronizing as they listened to Mrs. Zhou’s footsteps, which seemed to quicken.
The footsteps approached.
One step, two steps, three steps…
At about three or four meters away, Mrs. Zhou stopped.
She pushed open the kitchen door, glanced at the soup simmering on the stove, took a sip of water, and then, leaning on her tired hips, slowly climbed back upstairs.
It wasn’t until the light dimmed again, and the door creaked shut once more, that they both breathed a sigh of relief.
Mrs. Zhou must have just woken up and wasn’t going to sleep so soon. Both of them tactfully remained still.
Lu Xingyan’s eyes were still bright and clear in the darkness, his skin pale.
Seeing his relieved expression, Shen Xingruo thought… he was quite cute.
“What are you looking at?” Lu Xingyan asked sharply.
Shen Xingruo ignored him, continuing to scrutinize him for a while before suddenly leaning in and whispering in his ear, “When we were setting off fireworks, I said, ‘After the college entrance exam, I’ll agree to be your girlfriend.'”
She also spoke in a sharp tone.
Her warm, soft breath sprayed against his ear, causing Lu Xingyan to feel like he was burning all over.
He hadn’t misheard; he could exchange points for a girlfriend after the college entrance exam!
Damn, why was it only January 1st now? When was the college entrance exam again? June 7th or June 8th?
For a moment, he felt as if he had consumed some kind of aphrodisiac, even thinking that it wasn’t so bad to kneel and speak like this as a real man.