Qian Fei heard from the project team that Li Yifei seemed to have broken up with his new girlfriend. The girl was heartbroken, had come to return his things, and left crying.
In the afternoon, Qian Fei saw Gui Lili. She looked radiant, with a hidden joy in her eyes and brows.
After work, Qian Fei let Li Yifei leave first while she went to the pharmacy to buy some medicine to mail back home to her grandfather. When she returned home, she found the security door slightly ajar. Standing at the doorway, she could hear voices from inside.
The voices belonged to a man and a woman. The man was undoubtedly Li Yifei, but to Qian Fei’s surprise, the woman was Gui Lili.
The conversation inside had reached a critical point, and Qian Fei hesitated at the door, unsure whether to enter.
She stood there, listening to Gui Lili cry, “Yifei, let’s get back together! I finally realize that material things aren’t what I want most; I love you the most! Seeing you at the company every day, but you don’t look at me, don’t smile at me, don’t even call my name – it’s so painful!”
Qian Fei shuddered. That long-lost feeling of melodrama had returned with Princess Gui.
She heard Li Yifei coldly reply, “Director Niu would be heartbroken to hear you say that.”
Gui Lili asked between sobs, “Yifei, do you not love me anymore? I don’t believe it! That new girlfriend you found, wasn’t she just to make me jealous? She looks so much like me! Aren’t you just using her as my substitute? I don’t believe your heart is as cold as your words!”
Qian Fei shuddered again. This girl was truly a loss to the acting world.
She heard Li Yifei sneer, “Ha! How can you be so full of yourself? How did I never notice before? You’re making me speechless and bored! Get it straight, I’ve always liked girls with long hair, fair skin, and big eyes. How did that suddenly become looking for your substitute? Gui Lili, you weren’t like this before. How have you become so affected, it’s almost brainless!”
Gui Lili cried heart-rendingly, “I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it! You’ve been living here all this time, refusing to move out. Isn’t that because you’ve been waiting for me to come back? I don’t believe what you’re saying is the same as what you’re thinking! You must be saying this because you’re angry with me, right Yifei?”
Li Yifei’s voice was filled with mockery, “I’m not interested in things others have used. Don’t tell me you haven’t slept with your Director Niu. If you dare say you haven’t slept with him, I’ll agree to let you come back!”
Gui Lili was devastated, “Yifei, don’t treat me like this!”
Li Yifei’s tone became impatient, “How others treat you is all your own doing. Alright, stop crying endlessly here. Before you wear out the last bit of affection I have for you, you’d better leave!”
Qian Fei was stunned, sensing that this drama had reached its finale. She quickly stepped aside to clear the doorway.
Just as she moved, Gui Lili pushed the door open and ran out crying, covering her face and rushing towards the elevator with tears streaming down her cheeks.
Qian Fei stared at the half-open door, unsure whether to enter. Suddenly, she heard Li Yifei say irritably from inside, “You’ve seen the whole show, aren’t you coming in? Waiting for a sequel?”
Qian Fei entered with an awkward chuckle.
“Um, are you okay?” she asked tentatively.
Li Yifei raised an eyebrow, “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Qian Fei pointed toward the door, “Why did she suddenly come back to find you?”
Li Yifei sneered, “Who knows what she was thinking? Pre-wedding jitters, probably!”
Qian Fei didn’t quite understand, “Pre-wedding jitters? With whom? Director Niu?”
Seeing Li Yifei nod, Qian Fei found it unbelievable. Gui Lili was truly a new-age woman with a broad and loving heart. About to marry a tycoon, yet still pining for her past small-time boyfriend.
She asked Li Yifei, “What if you had agreed to let her come back? What kind of ending would I have seen to this sequel?”
Li Yifei’s face was full of derision, “Nothing more than her coming back to sleep with me for a night, then telling me the next morning that she still has to marry the nouveau riche Niu. She’d ask me not to hate her and beg to be able to come back and sleep with me anytime because she loves me!”
Qian Fei felt nauseous hearing the word “sleep.”
For dinner, she had originally planned to make stir-fried eggplant strips for Li Yifei, but for some reason, she suddenly lost her motivation.
She piled the eggplants in the kitchen, took out two cups of instant noodles, one for herself and one for Li Yifei, and told him, “I’m feeling a bit depressed today. This is dinner. Take it or leave it. If you don’t want it, figure something out yourself.”
Li Yifei looked bewildered, holding the instant noodles, and asked dissatisfied, “What’s going on? Is it your time of the month? Is this how you act when you’re depressed?”
Qian Fei walked to her room door with her instant noodles. Before closing the door, she stopped, turned back to look at him, and said ominously, “Show some respect for Aunt Flo, she’s your elder after all!”
Li Yifei went on a two-week business trip, called by his company to conduct due diligence on a company planning to issue corporate bonds in another province. Because he had previously been involved in bond issuance projects, that project team specifically borrowed him.
Before leaving, Li Yifei cockily said to Qian Fei, “Sanitary Pad, I have a feeling you’ll miss me terribly!”
Qian Fei expressed her deep disgust at his repeated use of the nickname, “Li Yifei, just for those two words ‘sanitary pad’, there’s no way I could miss you!”
But Qian Fei found that Li Yifei’s crow’s mouth had hit the mark – she did miss him a bit.
She suddenly felt that being alone at home was lonely.
Without realizing when it had started, from opening her eyes in the morning, to working during the day, to getting off work in the evening, to closing her eyes to sleep at night, she was with Li Yifei almost all the time. Unconsciously, they had been keeping each other company for so long that once he went on a business trip, she felt the house was empty and a bit lonely.
And they, from being strangers who were a bit annoyed with each other at the beginning, had gradually developed to such an intimate stage – like friends, like brothers, like partners.
Li Yifei would call her every few days. The two would always start talking on the phone and then begin to bicker, not stopping until they had reached the heights of absurdity, only ceasing when one side was thoroughly defeated.
Li Yifei said, “Sanitary Pad, you know what? The people at this company say listening to us talk on the phone is enough to give them heart disease! Too many climaxes!”
Qian Fei just laughed.
Being able to meet someone who can bicker with you on equal footing, that feeling is great. That tacit understanding and joy of mutual teasing, one sentence after another, is something others can’t appreciate.
On Saturday evening, after eating a casual dinner, Qian Fei turned on the TV. In the past, when she watched Mango TV, Li Yifei would always criticize it from the side, and the more he criticized it, the more she felt Mango TV was good to watch. Now, without Li Yifei’s criticism, she suddenly felt the TV programs were a bit dull. She turned off the TV and got up to set up the treadmill, planning to exercise a bit after dinner.
Just as she stepped on it, her phone rang.
She ran to her room to get the phone, the screen flashing “Li Drama Queen”. The corners of her mouth curved up.
“Sanitary Pad, I’m coming home tomorrow. Make me something good to eat, and there must be stir-fried eggplant strips!” Li Yifei’s voice came through as soon as the call connected.
Qian Fei felt a bit happy inside, but her tone was grumpy as she asked, “Is your company mistreating you or what? Making you this hungry on a business trip?”
Li Yifei snorted and asked, “Sanitary Pad, isn’t your birthday coming up soon?”
Qian Fei was taken aback, “I think so, why?”
Li Yifei said, “Nothing, just that I’m by the seaside now, I could dig up some rotten seaweed to bring back and make you some seaweed soup or something. Isn’t that what they do in those Korean dramas you watch? Oh, and no need to thank me!”
Qian Fei viciously replied, “I’ll prepare a special dish for you tomorrow – arsenic-fried meat. No need to thank me!”
The two bickered for a while longer before hanging up.
Qian Fei turned off the treadmill and went back to watch TV.
Somehow, she felt Mango TV was good to watch again.
The next evening, Li Yifei returned from his business trip, and Qian Fei prepared a table full of good dishes. Li Yifei ate while praising half-heartedly, “Sanitary Pad, your cooking is better than the five-star hotel where I was on my business trip!”
Qian Fei kicked him under the table, “Saying ‘sanitary pad’ at the dinner table, aren’t you disgusted?” Then she leaned over, asking gleefully, “Has my cooking become that good?”
Li Yifei glanced at her sideways, his eyes wandering as he said, “Actually, I just said that to make you blindly happy. If you take it too seriously and expose my lie, it won’t be fun anymore.”
Qian Fei stood up to grab his chopsticks and bowl, “If it’s so not fun, then don’t eat!”
Li Yifei hugged his chopsticks and bowl, quickly turning away to dodge, “Hey hey! Don’t mess around! I’m telling you, this set of tableware is very expensive. If it falls and breaks, you won’t even have time to cry!”
Qian Fei didn’t believe him, “Come on, it’s not like it’s a golden bowl. If one breaks, I’ll buy ten to replace it!”
Li Yifei snorted, “If you can buy back even half of one, I’ll call you grandma!”
He turned back, tapping his chopsticks on the bowl, then on the plates on the table, “Hear how crisp that sound is? These are all porcelain specially supplied to the central government!”
Qian Fei snatched the bowl from his hand, examining it from all angles.
Li Yifei cursed, “Our bowls are the same, why are you insisting on looking at mine? What’s your mentality?”
Qian Fei ignored him, looked for a good while, and then returned the bowl to him, saying, “The bowl does look nice, but it’s a high-quality imitation, right? I don’t believe porcelain specially supplied to the central government would end up in the hands of a small commoner like me!”
Li Yifei burst out laughing.
He had guessed right; she said the words “high-quality imitation.”
After dinner, Li Yifei helped Qian Fei tidy up the house. Qian Fei realized that over this period, without noticing, Li Yifei had started to voluntarily share some of the housework with her.
After everything was cleaned up, they watched TV for a while. Li Yifei said he was tired and went to the bathroom to wash up. Qian Fei also returned to her bathroom to wash up and use the toilet.
While using the toilet, she was reading jokes on her phone. She laughed too hard, and when she turned back to press the flush button, her hand slipped, and her phone heroically fell into the toilet bowl. Qian Fei was on the verge of tears looking at the colorful toilet bowl. Suppressing the urge to vomit, she used a plastic bag to cover her hand and fished out the phone.
She rinsed the phone and then blow-dried it vigorously. After drying, she tried to turn it on, but the screen remained completely dark.
She painfully consoled herself, thinking it was time to change phones anyway, maybe the heavens were tired of her not using an iPhone.
Lying in bed, she suddenly didn’t know how to fall asleep. She used to play with her phone for a while before sleeping. She got up, opened the door, and peeked out. Li Yifei’s room door was open, and he was still washing up in the bathroom.
She wandered out, walked to the bathroom door, knocked, and asked, “Li Yifei, do you have an extra phone?”
Li Yifei opened the door from inside, his mouth full of toothpaste foam, and asked unclearly, “What do you want it for?”
Qian Fei mumbled, “My phone fell into the toilet…”
Li Yifei looked at her without saying anything, then quickly turned back to the sink to rinse his mouth. When he turned back, he wiped his mouth, looked at Qian Fei, and asked with a raised eyebrow and a half-smile, “Did you guess what birthday gift I prepared for you?”