After Pei Chuan finished class, the classroom immediately erupted into noise.

Everyone had thought Professor Pei was just dating Bei Yao—they never expected the two were already married! It was simply earth-shattering news.

After Professor Pei finished class, he went directly to the Medical School teaching building.

There were some things he’d missed for many years. He’d held the title of her boyfriend but had never once come to Bei Yao’s teaching building to pick her up.

Pei Chuan had dismissed the Computer Science students from class early, so when he came to the Medical School side, they still had three or four minutes before class ended.

The warm yellow sunlight slanted westward. Summer solstice had already passed, and the tree branches and leaves were lush green.

He quietly walked through the corridor and stood outside their classroom waiting for Bei Yao to get out of class.

It was already the last few minutes before dismissal, so the students were more or less restless, looking around. As a result, they immediately spotted Professor Pei at the door.

The entire school knew that people from the Scientific Research Institute had come to lecture. The Medical School also had gossips who recognized this promising young scientist at a glance.

They stopped listening to class and began whispering.

Everyone’s gazes looked over.

This year, Pei Chuan was twenty-three years old.

He wore a white shirt with a light gray tie. The man’s solid body filled out the shirt’s outline, and below that were black pants secured with a belt.

He wore a watch on his wrist and just stood not far from the door.

Pei Chuan’s spine was very straight, like a silent pine tree.

His gaze passed over the equally youthful students and looked toward Bei Yao sitting in the middle-back rows.

Because she was married, she ran back and forth between home and school and always had countless things she couldn’t finish in time. At this moment, she was copying notes. The girl’s long lashes were lowered, her sitting posture very proper—just like when she used to sit beside him, that girl with two little tender lotus-root-like arms crossed.

The Medical School students were also about to explode: “Is that Professor Pei? Someone from the Scientific Academy?”

“Right, right, I went to Computer Science a few days ago and saw him. It’s definitely him.”

“What’s he doing at our college?”

“Don’t know.”

Qin Dongni nudged Bei Yao: “Yao Yao, look at the door.”

Bei Yao lifted her head.

Sunlight filtered through the tree shadows in dappled patterns. He stood there looking at her. One person outside the door, one person inside.

But it was as if time had never passed. In the blink of an eye, many years had gone by, yet he was still by her side. Seeing her lift her eyes, he also gazed at her from afar through the crowd.

Bei Yao couldn’t hear what the lecturer on the podium was saying anymore.

She also stared blankly at him.

Pei Chuan was done teaching class? In her eyes, going public meant telling her roommates—surely he wouldn’t take a megaphone and shout everywhere that Pei Chuan and I got our marriage certificate, right?

The surrounding discussion and curiosity grew louder: “What is Professor Pei doing at our college?”

“Yeah, I want to know too. Will he come into the classroom?”

Although the lecturer on the podium noticed something was wrong and originally wanted to scold the students, upon seeing Professor Pei outside the door, he just smiled and shook his head inwardly. Never mind, never mind.

A minute later, the bell rang, but this time not a single person ran out of the classroom first.

Bei Yao packed up her schoolbag.

Her current schoolbag was beige, containing a medical textbook she needed to read and her wallet. On the very outside, it still had the panda plushie that he’d delivered by remote-control airplane back in high school.

Under everyone’s gaze, she walked toward Pei Chuan.

“What are you doing here, Pei Chuan?”

Walking out of the air-conditioned classroom, she immediately felt summer’s temperature. The wind blew, making the sycamore leaves sway gently. Occasionally there were a few bird calls.

At that time, the sky was especially blue without a single cloud.

Pei Chuan took her schoolbag and slung it over his broad shoulder.

She heard him say: “I came to pick up my wife and take her home.”

This sentence wasn’t deliberately lowered in volume. The classroom fell quiet for a moment.

Pei Chuan held Bei Yao’s hand. Without looking at the reactions inside, he led her outside.

The sunlight stretched their two shadows very long.

After quite a while, the stunned Medical School students in the classroom suddenly erupted in intense discussion.

“What did he say! Pick up his what?”

“I’m not deaf, am I! I’m not blind, am I!”

“Is that Professor Pei? What about the Computer Science rumors of him being sexually frigid and aloof?”

“Holy crap! No way, what’s going on!”

…

The classroom exploded into chaos. Qin Dongni and Shan Xiaomai were suddenly surrounded by many people. Qin Dongni thought of the gold bracelet she’d received—when you accept someone’s gifts, your hands are tied. The pressure was immense.

“Right, right, right, our Yao Yao is his legal wife. She’s been his woman since very early on!”

*

Bei Yao felt her cheeks burning hot. Pei Chuan’s hand was especially warm.

In her heart, it was like a little person kept spinning in circles, extremely excited. That year in high school, he’d said if she wanted to know what romance felt like, she could find him, but they couldn’t go public.

But she never expected that one day, he would be the one to go public.

The man carried her small schoolbag over one shoulder and didn’t speak the whole way.

So silent, as if those words he’d just said in front of the entire college weren’t said by him at all.

She had originally been holding his hand, half a step behind him, when she suddenly took quick little steps to run in front of him, wanting to see what expression he had.

Pei Chuan stopped walking and lowered his eyes to look at her: “What’s wrong?”

She tilted her head: “I wanted to see what expression you have.”

“Did you see it?”

Bei Yao blinked: “I saw it, but I don’t quite understand. Does this count as happy?”

He moved the corners of his lips slightly, forming a two-degree upward arc, then pressed his thin lips together again.

Her almond eyes curved. For the first time, she understood what mood this man with obscure thoughts was in. She also felt happy along with him.

He reached out to stroke the corner of her almond eye and said in a low voice: “Silly.”

She asked softly: “So we’ve gone public?”

“Mm.”

“Didn’t you not allow it before?” Bei Yao had always found his thoughts hard to understand. Sometimes they just suddenly changed.

Pei Chuan said: “Now I’m allowing it.”

“Why?”

He said: “Before, I felt I couldn’t accompany you for a lifetime and couldn’t give you many things. Now I feel that whatever you want, I can slowly earn it over a lifetime.”

Without a sound body, he could have an even more passionate and sincere heart.

If he treated her well for a lifetime, so well that no other man could compare to him, then he would have that qualification. So everything that should be his, he wanted—the title, her heart, the normal intimacy of husband and wife.

Her eyes were dewy, and she couldn’t help but smile again. Three parts shy, seven parts foolishly joyful. Rippling in the early summer season, making those who saw her also feel joyful.

*

Bei Yao’s mood didn’t turn bad during her period, but one morning she woke up to discover she’d gotten blood on Pei Chuan’s pants.

This day happened to be the Xiaoman solar term, and also Pei Chuan’s birthday.

She was extremely embarrassed: “Take them off, I’ll wash them for you.”

He said: “You go wash up. I’ll wash them.” He’d raised his girl delicately. Not only did he wash his own pants, he also washed her soiled pajama pants together.

He glanced at that little bit of red on her pants, the water color faintly spreading.

For the first time, Bei Yao felt so annoyed at her period.

She hadn’t yet told Pei Chuan about celebrating his birthday, but Pei Chuan brought up another matter to her.

“I’ll take you on a trip during summer vacation.”

Bei Yao didn’t react: “Where are we going?”

“Where would you like to go?”

Bei Yao thought about it and after quite a while remembered they still hadn’t had their honeymoon.

She asked Pei Chuan: “Is it for our honeymoon?”

Pei Chuan responded: “Mm.” He paused. “Before the end of the year, we’ll also have a proper wedding ceremony here.”

The previous wedding had been too hasty—just going through a ceremony and exchanging rings. When he got serious, he was meticulous about almost everything.

Bei Yao was, after all, a young girl and felt both curious and expectant about things like honeymoons.

She was looking at her iPad when Pei Chuan glanced at it a few times, then gently hugged her from behind: “Are you used to being married?”

Bei Yao froze slightly.

She felt somewhat embarrassed. When Pei Chuan had suddenly proposed marriage before, it had actually been quite scary. In her eyes, marriage was just a concept of completing formalities. Because it was so sudden to live together with him, many things needed slow adjustment.

However, Pei Chuan, silently and soundlessly, saw everything clearly.

She nodded: “I’m used to it, and I’m very happy too.”

He didn’t speak, just curved his lips slightly.

He knew his girl was working especially hard to integrate into his life. However, she was still young—over twenty years of habits were hard to change. Sometimes in the middle of the night, she would find his embrace too hot and roll out of his arms.

He would open his eyes, pull her back, and place her hand on his waist.

This also led to this morning’s scene of her soiling his pants.

Pei Chuan also hoped she would get used to having him in her life. Warming milk for her in the morning, occasionally putting on her shoes for her, letting her tie his tie, picking her up from school to go home, getting used to his embrace when sleeping at night…

Day after day like this, she would also learn to miss him the way he missed her.

Pei Chuan sometimes felt that love wasn’t equal.

He’d been moved very early on. That heavy rain in their first year of high school—that was the first time he’d torn his own heart apart to leave Bei Yao.

That year, he knew she didn’t miss him, perhaps not even once.

Pei Chuan believed Bei Yao liked him now.

But compared to his intense feelings that were difficult to speak of, she was still somewhat tender and inexperienced.

He turned her around: “Kiss me, okay?”

Bei Yao stood on tiptoe and planted a kiss on his cheek.

He smiled without fussing about it and accompanied her to choose a place together.

He loved this summer. He was learning well how to be her husband, and he also hoped that this summer, she could completely become his wife.

~

During the Xiaoman season, the Huo family’s stock prices fell again and again.

Besides Huo Xu, the anxious person also included Shao Yue, who felt like she was sitting on pins and needles, sensing that tense atmosphere.

Jiang Huaqiong didn’t seem in a hurry to destroy them. Like a cat toying with a mouse, she suppressed their spirits.

Huo Xu used to be an elegant young gentleman who rarely lost his temper.

Now he came home many times irritably pulling at his tie and cursing.

Shao Yue wasn’t a fool—she wouldn’t approach him when he was in a bad mood. But this was also the first time she’d felt so closely the atmosphere of impending bankruptcy.

Shao Yue advised him: “Why don’t we stop fighting with Jiang Huaqiong? Let’s go abroad and hide like we did before.”

Huo Xu said angrily: “Hide? Where do you want to hide? Back then we could smoothly go abroad because Jiang Huaqiong couldn’t determine for certain who killed Huo Nanshan, and because my dad used the divorce matter to hold her off. Now, once we show weakness, that crazy woman Jiang Huaqiong will make sure not even our bones remain.”

Shao Yue, having been scolded, also felt somewhat unwilling.

However, from Huo Xu’s words, she suddenly remembered something and asked in confusion: “Why was it that Jiang Huaqiong couldn’t confirm before that Huo Nanshan’s death was related to you… to us, but then recently she suddenly became certain and started biting people like a mad dog?”

They had guilty consciences and hadn’t thought in that direction, spending this time only thinking about preserving the Huo family.

But thinking about it now, there was no reason for Jiang Huaqiong to suddenly go crazy after so long, right?

Huo Xu froze, then his face darkened.

Yes, someone behind the scenes was sitting on the mountain watching tigers fight, calmly and coldly orchestrating for him to be destroyed by Jiang Huaqiong.