So on New Year’s Eve, Long Qi spent it together with Jin Yiken.

She didn’t refuse.

It seemed that because their relationship had changed, the feeling became different. Although at the beginning she was muddled and not in the right state, to be honest, later on she half-heartedly went along with it. Jin Yiken’s arms always pressed beside her hair, pressing down until she lost several strands. At that time she had gotten into the mood, so she didn’t say anything. Jin Yiken did say something though, saying her body was hotter than when she was in bed before.

Stupid—even at that point he hadn’t realized she had a high fever.

Originally she thought that after going through this baptism, his personality would change, his whole person would become more composed. But actually Jin Yiken’s low mood only lasted one night. After taking complete advantage of Long Qi, by morning he had returned to that naturally born young master appearance again.

As usual, he fried an egg for her. At that time, Long Qi had just come out of the bedroom and saw he was already sitting in the living room eating breakfast with his legs crossed. When he saw her, he even tapped the plate containing the poached egg with his chopsticks, showing off his prowess.

Every time he finished frying a poached egg, it was like he had completed an entire Manchu-Han Imperial Feast. Who knew where that bursting sense of confidence came from.

But it probably came from the whole packs of instant meal bags and bread slices in her refrigerator.

However, Long Qi’s head was terribly dizzy. She ignored him, walking while leaning against the wall. Just then the doorbell rang. She slowly stepped on the glass shards on the floor and walked over, looking through the peephole and seeing the landlady.

She turned back to glance at Jin Yiken. Jin Yiken didn’t even look at her, eating breakfast slowly and leisurely, with a lordly manner, not showing any intention of avoiding the situation.

When Long Qi opened the door, she kept it ajar to only half her body, very narrow. Making eye contact with the landlady outside, the landlady first called out, “You’re home!”

Then shouted, “I’m here to collect this month’s rent. You said last month’s would also be given together, right Long Qi?”

She nodded.

The landlady looked at her.

She made no move.

So the landlady said, “Girl, pushing it to next month really won’t be possible. Just tell me whether you can pay it now or not. Give me, your auntie, a straightforward answer, okay?”

Long Qi hadn’t yet figured out how to organize her words, but she also didn’t want to appear too overbearing. She shifted her stance. The floor immediately made creaking sounds. The landlady looked down and her whole voice rang out, “Oh my! What happened here?”

“Oh, I just broke two cups.”

The landlady immediately wanted to push the door open. Long Qi blocked tightly, not letting her in. This made the middle-aged woman sense something. She glanced sideways through the gap, asking with considerable meaning, “You brought someone here?”

The four words “brought someone here” were really interesting. Long Qi had lived here for a long time and had never chatted with the landlady about her life. The landlady had rented the apartment to her at half price because she saw she was a student. Later, seeing that she always returned late after school, she thought she was working part-time jobs. Later, seeing her occasionally return with makeup on, her view of her changed somewhat. Once she even pulled her aside to ask what kind of work she did. From her eyes, Long Qi could see what kind of work she thought she was doing. At that time she gave a perfunctory answer saying she was a sales clerk at a convenience store, but the landlady obviously didn’t believe it.

Now her questions were becoming more and more obvious.

Jin Yiken had watched her show for a while. Now he was finally willing to move his body. He walked behind Long Qi and pulled open the door. The landlady immediately saw him. While slowly moving to stand in front of Long Qi, he blocked the landlady’s view of her, took out his wallet from his pants pocket, and said, “How much? I’ll pay.”

“Right, ask him to pay,” Long Qi took the opportunity to say.

So her previous silence had been waiting for Jin Yiken’s reaction. He had his fun yesterday, making her look so disheveled now, so he should suffer a bit for her. After Long Qi finished speaking, Jin Yiken actually laughed, the kind of laugh while pulling out a card and shaking his head. He said to her, “You go inside and eat breakfast. I’ll go swipe the card.”

At the end, he didn’t forget to tell the landlady, “I’m her boyfriend.”

Originally, she thought that according to the normal script development, Jin Yiken’s card should be frozen at this time. But who knew he smoothly paid the rent and came back. This indirectly proved that his family didn’t really take her seriously either, still indulging Jin Yiken in spending money on her.

Later, Long Qi brought up this issue. She first asked, “Does your family know of my existence or not?”

“It’s impossible they don’t know. They can guess it’s you.”

According to this answer’s meaning, they had known all along, just indulging him until now. And the current situation was probably because this was the first time he brought up the matter with Bai Aiting. His family was startled for a moment, but just that small moment. Then they calmly threw both him and Bai Aiting abroad together. Verbally going along with him, but actually having him and his fiancée spend time together in foreign loneliness, hoping something would happen—rekindling old feelings, turning raw rice into cooked rice, the prodigal son returning—all the same things one after another.

In any case, Long Qi couldn’t get there. Distant water couldn’t quench immediate thirst. The relationship couldn’t progress either. Perhaps after a few years, Jin Yiken’s passion for her would fade.

“Your family doesn’t understand you,” Long Qi said directly. “Even if you don’t cultivate feelings with me, there are hot girls lining up to cultivate feelings with you. With your conditions, you won’t lack company. At most you’ll truly forget about me, but there will always be a second me following. The problem is that your heart isn’t on Bai Aiting.”

“There’s no second one,” Jin Yiken said something not on point.

Long Qi said, “Come on, I really don’t believe we can make it to the end. At most we’ll just date for two or three years.”

When she said this, she sat at the table, her knees against the table edge, scrolling through her phone in her hands. Jin Yiken saw she wasn’t focused at all and directly took away her phone. She immediately became impatient, “What are you doing? Give it back.”

He looked at her phone now, continuing to scroll down from the campus network homepage she had been browsing. What he saw were all students tagging friends to send New Year’s blessings early in the morning. While looking, he said, “How boring.”

“But I really want to receive some,” she took back her phone, continuing to adopt that previous attitude of divided attention while scrolling down. “But no one gives me any…”

Jin Yiken turned his head and sneezed.

Her words were interrupted. She glanced at him sideways, “Oh, finally getting a reaction. Your immune system isn’t that strong either.”

“How can it be strong after being intimately intertwined?”

Because of Jin Yiken’s particularly explicit and disgusting answer, Long Qi threw chopsticks at him. He moved his body aside and wasn’t hit. Then he got up and went to the coffee table to take medicine.

She continued looking at her phone, her finger slowly sliding on the screen. Before long, she slid to Dong Xi’s status.

Her finger paused for a moment. Dong Xi hadn’t deleted her as a friend. This time she had uploaded a status. There was no picture and no text, just a punctuation mark—a comma.

She looked at it quietly.

It was a comma. Why wasn’t it a period?

At this moment, after looking at all her medicine, Jin Yiken shook his head, murmuring lightly, “Don’t even know how to buy medicine.”

Long Qi instantly pulled back her thoughts and threw the second pair of chopsticks over, “Go buy it yourself! Why are you eating mine!”

Jin Yiken then threw the medicine she bought into the trash can, took his jacket from the sofa, and when passing the table took his phone and wallet, smoothly touching her forehead. She quickly turned her head away. He continued stroking the back of her head and said, “You go sleep for a bit. I’ll buy medicine and come back.”

Of course she didn’t listen to him, still sitting in place browsing web pages.

Jin Yiken went out.

While Long Qi had chopsticks in her mouth, not finding it boring as she slid down the phone page. The campus network was really lively. Every family felt very lively. Although heavy snow had fallen last night, early in the morning there was again a feeling full of vigor and vitality. Everyone was saying “Happy New Year” to each other, with an appearance that the new year could truly be filled with new hopes and new opportunities.

Although this festivity was superficial, she quite liked it.

Just as she was about to move her finger up to return to Dong Xi’s status to study it carefully, the webpage suddenly flashed with a tag notification. She slowly opened it, but as soon as she opened it, her finger stopped and her body went numb for a moment.

Jin Yiken, who had just gone out not long ago, had tagged her account on his homepage, with four words attached:

Happy New Year.