Xiao Yuan asked Qian Fei, “Have you noticed that handsome guy from the partner company has been coming to our office more frequently lately?”
Qian Fei replied with just five words: “I haven’t noticed. I’m blind.”
Xiao Yuan said, “Why do you think he keeps coming?”
Qian Fei responded, “Maybe he’s interested in you.”
Xiao Yuan cupped her face in surprise, “No way! I’ve always thought I should save him for you, so I’ve been holding back from ruining this flower. If you say that, I might not control myself anymore!”
Qian Fei rolled her eyes and said, “Please, go ahead and enjoy him. I can’t handle this kind of tsundere young master.”
As she said this, she noticed Xiao Yuan frantically winking at her.
She thought for a moment, then turned around to see Li Yifei standing behind her with a rusty knife-like expression.
She nodded politely and said “Manager Li,” then hugged the newly photocopied documents, intending to return to her workstation.
As they brushed past each other, she was decisively stopped by the stern-faced Manager Li.
“Manager Qian, can we talk for a moment?” He entered the meeting room first after speaking.
[Note: Project Manager is the most basic level, not a high position.]
Qian Fei frowned and followed him in.
“Close the door,” Li Yifei said to her as she entered.
Qian Fei closed the door.
“Come sit down,” Li Yifei gestured with his chin for her to sit opposite him.
Qian Fei walked over, sat down briefly, then immediately stood up.
“‘Close the door,’ ‘Come sit down’ – two sentences done. I’m leaving.” She didn’t give Li Yifei a chance to speak again, turned, opened the door, and left the meeting room.
Li Yifei sat in the chair, watching Qian Fei’s retreating figure through the glass door, feeling both angry and frustrated.
The way she walked those few steps, who was she showing off to? With her slender waist and long legs swaying gracefully, it was truly infuriating.
He felt he was becoming more and more pathetic, not even losing his temper after being given the cold shoulder like this. He had thrown all his principles to the dogs.
After chatting with Qian Fei’s supervisor for a few moments, Li Yifei was heading towards the elevator to leave when he was unexpectedly intercepted by Qian Fei.
“Li Yifei, let’s talk for a moment.”
Li Yifei stopped his step into the elevator faster than lightning.
He immediately turned and walked back to Qian Fei.
Qian Fei looked up at him and said, “Don’t ask me to go to your company anymore, and you shouldn’t come to our company either.”
Qian Fei finished her two concise sentences and was about to turn back to the office when Li Yifei grabbed her arm, stopping her.
“There’s one more sentence, isn’t there?”
Qian Fei was stunned for a moment, then frowned: “‘Don’t ask me to go to your company,’ ‘You shouldn’t come to our company either’ – aren’t these two sentences?”
Li Yifei said seriously, “There’s a comma between these two sentences, so they only count as one. Say one more sentence.”
Qian Fei looked at him, her lips twitching into a mocking smile: “You’re childish. I’m done talking. Can I go now?” She turned to leave again.
Li Yifei once again grabbed her.
“‘You’re childish’ is the second sentence; ‘I’m done talking. Can I go now?’ is already the third sentence. You’ve said too much.”
Qian Fei gave up.
“Li Yifei, what do you want?”
Li Yifei raised an eyebrow and said, “It’s simple. I want you to listen to me say two sentences too.”
Qian Fei took a breath, “First sentence.”
“Let’s make up.”
Qian Fei shook her head, “Second sentence.”
“I’m craving stir-fried eggplant strips.”
Qian Fei looked up at Li Yifei, “Are you done? Don’t come again tomorrow. If you come again, I’ll quit my job.”
That evening, when Qian Fei got home, she inexplicably made stir-fried eggplant strips to eat. As she ate, for some unknown reason, she started crying.
She thought maybe she had added too much salt, causing the tears to flow.
When Li Yifei got home that night, he inexplicably bought a lot of eggplants. He stared at the eggplants for a while, then got up and picked out a few good-looking ones from the middle and went to Dajun’s house, begging Dajun’s housekeeper to cut them into strips and stir-fry them.
When the housekeeper brought out the stir-fried eggplant strips, he only tried one bite before he couldn’t eat anymore.
It wasn’t the right taste.
He sadly thought that he had lost that taste.
He wanted to get that taste back.
But how should he do it?
Dajun squatted nearby, watching Li Yifei.
“That expression of yours, sorrowful to the bone marrow, I’ve only seen it once before when your mom left while we were in kindergarten. What’s wrong? Missing your mom?”
Li Yifei glared at him, “Missing your sister.”
Dajun blinked, “You’re missing the tomboy, aren’t you?”
Li Yifei poked at the eggplant strips in the plate with his chopsticks, his actions full of desolation.
“What method should I use to get her to stir-fry eggplant strips for me again?”
Dajun scratched his face and said, “I guess you’ll have to admit to her that where she thinks you made a mistake, you did indeed make a mistake.”
Li Yifei said, “But I don’t think I did anything wrong.”
There was nothing between him and Jin Tian, forcing him to admit he was wrong was like saying something had happened. He couldn’t accept it psychologically or in terms of his self-esteem.
Dajun scratched his face again and said, “Then you’ll just have to make do and try to accept my aunt’s cooking from now on! My condolences!”
He stood up, patted Li Yifei’s shoulder, and sat back down at his computer to lose himself in online gaming.
Li Yifei squinted at his back.
That night, just before Li Yifei left Dajun’s house, while the phone bill king was in the bathroom, he gave away all of Dajun’s server-dominating equipment. Random giveaways, the kind that can’t be taken back.
That night, Dajun, screaming and holding a kitchen knife, threatening to chop off his hands and officially end their friendship forever, chased him in a car across half of Beijing.
Two days later, the project team members from both Qian Fei and Li Yifei’s companies, working on the hotel project, had to go to the hotel project site for an intermediary coordination meeting.
Both Qian Fei and Li Yifei went, along with Zhao De.
Revisiting the old place, thinking of how the three of them had happily played cards together during lunch breaks last year, and now he could only nod at Qian Fei when they met, unable to say anything more, Li Yifei felt both nostalgic and gloomy.
He had never experienced these emotions before.
During the meeting, he and Qian Fei happened to sit next to each other. Midway through, Qian Fei accidentally dropped her pen on the floor. He reflexively picked it up for her before she could even bend down.
When he handed her the pen, she politely said “Thank you.”
He suddenly felt a sharp pain in his heart.
She had become so polite to him. If she continued being this polite, she would soon treat him like a stranger.
As the meeting ended and everyone was leaving the conference room to head to the dining hall, he deliberately lingered, hoping to walk with her.
But she ignored him completely, packed up her things, and left on her own.
He ran his hand through his hair, then stood up and quietly followed behind her.
Her phone rang. She answered while walking.
He heard her ask, “Wang Ruohai, what do you want?”
His heart suddenly skipped a beat.
She stopped walking.
He also stopped behind her.
He heard her say, “You mean that bank card we set up together at your old company a long time ago? What, you’re still using that card? Oh, you accidentally transferred money to the old card because you remembered the account number too well… Ah, you forgot the password? Let me think what that password was… Is it possibly the first three digits of my birthday and the last three of yours? No? How about reversed? Not that either? Let me think again… Oh, I remember now, the first three digits are my solar calendar birthday, and the last three are my lunar calendar birthday. Is that right? Haha, no need to thank me. Well, let’s leave it at that for now, goodbye!”
After hanging up, she continued walking forward.
He stood still, his heart feeling as if it had been stabbed, filled with suffocation and pain.
Her ex-boyfriend was asking her about the password to their old joint bank card. And that password, surprisingly, was all six digits of her birthday.
He was getting agitated now. If that Wang guy couldn’t remember the password, why didn’t he just go to the bank with his ID and pay a small fee to reset it? Why did he have to call Qian Fei? What right did he have? And her, why did she still remember that stupid password? Was she planning to remember everything about her ex-boyfriend for the rest of her life?!
As he fumed over these thoughts, suddenly his whole body shuddered.
If he couldn’t even stand her remembering her ex-boyfriend’s bank card password, how could he expect her to accept him recognizing a former love interest as his sister?
Looking at it this way, he was in the wrong.
He suddenly vaguely understood something.
In matters between men and women, it’s not about whether he thinks he’s right or wrong, but whether he has caused hurt to the person he cares about.
If he did something that made her sad, then no matter what, he had done something wrong.
On the weekend, Li Yifei was feeling restless and wanted to find Dajun to go bar-hopping to relieve his boredom. But Dajun told him on the phone: “My mom said compared to you, I’m just a loser who can’t attract women! To prove her wrong, I’ve signed up for today’s three-minute speed dating event! I plan to bring back ten or eight young ladies to make her cry and apologize to me!” Dajun hung up excitedly.
Li Yifei stared blankly at his phone for a full minute.
What should he do now?
He turned on the TV and watched the financial channel. As the commentators babbled on about their views on the economic situation, Li Yifei felt increasingly irritated.
He muted the TV, picked up his phone, opened WeChat, and entered his chat history with Qian Fei.
The last conversation was from many days ago, the night he sent Jin Tian home. He had sent: “Finished the errand and headed home. This young master has observed the night sky and found that I’ll be in a good mood tomorrow, so I’ve decided to take you out for a nice meal.”
He had originally planned to take her for some stinky salmon when she returned from her business trip, but he never expected this meal would be delayed for so long and still hadn’t happened.
He scrolled down the screen, looking back at their previous chat records bit by bit.
As he read the messages she had sent before, he could almost automatically hear her various tones of voice and see her expressions in his mind. He read them one by one, and as he read, he couldn’t help but smile. As he smiled, he couldn’t help but feel sad.
He felt like he was about to have intermittent angina.
He rubbed his chest, trying to dispel the suffocating feeling rising from the bottom of his heart. He pressed the home button, entered the dialing page, and without hesitation, long-pressed the number 1 key.
That was her speed dial number.
He had set her in this position, a unique position, without ever telling her or analyzing this action much himself.
He used to think it was just for convenience. But today he understood that this was a sign that she had already entered his heart and occupied that important position at the top of his heart.
He long-pressed the number 1 key. As he expected, after ringing briefly twice, it was the busy tone of a rejected call.
He felt both frustrated and irritated.
She still refused to answer his call.
He rubbed his temples, thinking that if she never answered his calls again, would he eventually die of angina?
Unwilling to give up, he picked up his phone and used a tactic he had used before, sending her WeChat messages one after another, flooding her screen.
“Answer the phone.” Copy, paste, and send five times.
“Can we talk properly?” Copy, paste, and send another five times.
“There’s a restaurant on Wanshou Road that makes excellent stinky salmon. Let me take you there!” Copy, paste, also sent five times.
After sending fifteen WeChat messages, Li Yifei paused, hesitated for a moment, then chose to follow the most genuine feeling in his heart. He honestly typed a few words in the dialog box: “Please talk to me, okay? I was wrong, it’s my fault, okay? Jin Jin, I miss you!” After typing, his finger hovered over the phone for five seconds before he finally gritted his teeth and pressed the send button.
It’s just a bit of pride, can’t he let it go?
However, the WeChat return message said that the other party had already blocked him.
Li Yifei frustratedly threw his phone onto the sofa.
In the early evening, Li Yifei had been lying on the sofa like a corpse, too lazy to even think about whether to eat dinner or what to eat if he did.
Just as he was pondering how Freaking meaningless life was, Dajun called him.
He answered listlessly, managing a “Hello,” but before he could get out a second word, Dajun’s abnormally excited voice came through the entire receiver.
The level of excitement was almost like when he was caught red-handed by his mom while playing online games.
“Bro! You’ll never guess who I met at that three-minute speed dating event today!!! The second person I rotated to for a date turned out to be the tomboy, oh my God!!! I was scared to death, you know! I felt like I was stealing my big brother’s wife behind his back, damn!”
Li Yifei sprang up from the sofa like a carp, his face dark and his voice low, almost crushing the phone as he asked, “Say that again, who did you meet?”
Dajun, still excited, said, “The tomboy! Your Qian Fei!”
Li Yifei was stunned.
She started going on blind dates again!
He wasn’t dead yet!!! And she had already started going on blind dates again!!!
He held the phone with one hand and pounded his chest with the other.
He felt like he was really about to have a freaking heart attack.