Every word Yan Ming wrote was like small but powerful raindrops from an inescapable spring shower, falling onto Yu Tian’s eyes and striking her heart.

Yu Tian felt the entire world had become moist and tender because of this, while some wonderful seeds carrying secret love were secretly sprouting and growing wildly.

Yu Tian could hardly imagine that the cold man who had scolded her and given her no pleasant looks when they first met could say such sweet words.

Although the love message book had been closed and returned to its place, Yu Tian’s heart still felt like it had been sprinkled with popping candy, crackling with successive explosions that couldn’t be suppressed—not lethal, but deadly in their own way.

Yu Tian suddenly felt an urgent desire to see Yan Ming, even though they had only been apart for a few minutes.

It was just settling a bill—she didn’t know how Yan Ming could be so slow.

Though Yu Tian urgently wanted to see Yan Ming, she didn’t want to seem disadvantaged or appear too eager and dependent, so she deliberately turned her back to the cashier counter, forcing herself not to look at the situation there, not wanting to seem clingy.

After what felt like an eternity to Yu Tian, Yan Ming finally walked to her side.

But compared to Yu Tian’s inner joy at finally seeing him, Yan Ming’s expression was indifferent.

They say that when a relationship is newly established, it’s the honeymoon period, when the love in both parties’ eyes is as impossible to hide as a cough. But how had Yan Ming entered the cooling-off period so quickly?

Just before their meal, Yan Ming’s gaze toward her had carried some shy, nervous avoidance like someone approaching home after a long journey. How had he returned to his usual calm after just one meal?

Yu Tian felt somewhat unhappy, especially since Yan Ming showed no intimate gestures whatsoever, while other couples in their honeymoon period held hands.

They say that the less love one feels from their partner during romance, the more one tends to “act up,” hoping to prove their partner’s love through various details. Yu Tian had previously scoffed at this, but now she thought there was some truth to it.

When it came to romance, she was just an ordinary person, unable to avoid convention.

If Yan Ming didn’t seem to love her that much, then she’d have to seek that sense of security herself.

Yu Tian stepped forward and grabbed Yan Ming’s sleeve.

Yan Ming indeed stopped, looking at Yu Tian with a questioning gaze.

Though there were no intimate gestures, his tone was gentle: “What’s wrong?”

This proved that one must find a handsome boyfriend, because with Yan Ming’s face speaking like this, Yu Tian’s anger had already dissipated by more than half.

This kind of thing wasn’t worth making a fuss over.

So she might as well just act a bit coquettish.

She shook Yan Ming’s hand: “I want a kiss.”

After she had already given him an easy out, this guy Yan Ming didn’t take it properly. He looked somewhat awkward, lowering his voice: “Here? Let’s wait until we get back.”

Yu Tian had rarely built up her psychological preparation like this, but Yan Ming pulled this move—she immediately became angry.

What was wrong with kissing her outside? Was there something shameful about it? Hadn’t he just said earlier during dinner that he couldn’t help but kiss her?

Seeing that Yu Tian was about to get angry, Yan Ming finally became sensible. He pulled Yu Tian close and quickly pecked her cheek.

Could anything be more perfunctory than this?

Yu Tian got serious about it.

“Don’t you like me?” she said unhappily. “I feel like you’re not even excited. I heard some people have romantic single-mindedness—going crazy with feelings during the ambiguous stage, but once the relationship is established, they immediately cool off rapidly and start avoiding.”

Yan Ming looked somewhat helpless: “I’m not like that. I don’t dislike you, haven’t cooled off, and I’m not avoiding anything.”

“Then why, when I ask you to kiss me, won’t you give me a proper kiss? This isn’t the old society anymore—passionate couples kissing outside isn’t a crime of indecency…”

Yu Tian pointed to her lips: “I want a proper kiss.”

Yan Ming looked somewhat hesitant, but finally seemed to throw caution to the wind, cupping Yu Tian’s face and kissing her.

It was a very intense, deep kiss.

“Satisfied now?”

Yan Ming released Yu Tian, who was still slightly breathless.

That was too much.

Either don’t kiss at all, or kiss like that.

Yan Ming had been moved as well, slightly averting his gaze and directly taking the sunflowers from Yu Tian’s hands.

“Didn’t you give them to me? Why are you stealing my sunflowers?”

Yan Ming’s tone was somewhat unnatural: “Let me help you carry them for now.”

But sunflowers were very light—Yu Tian didn’t mind holding them herself. She reached out toward Yan Ming: “No need, I can do it myself.”

However, Yu Tian quickly withdrew her outstretched hand.

Because when her gaze wandered, she suddenly realized why Yan Ming needed that bouquet.

He had reacted to the kiss.

He needed the flowers to block others’ view.

Yu Tian’s gaze swept over his lower body, then scattered and fled like startled fish.

Her heart felt like pitiful mushrooms in a boiling hot pot, bobbing up and down aimlessly without direction. The spicy oil seemed to have floated into her brain, making her face red and heart hot, nervous enough to sweat.

Yu Tian opened her mouth, about to say something to break the awkwardness, when she saw people successively approaching from behind Yan Ming, greeting him and bringing even greater embarrassment—

“Xiao Yan, I’m leaving.”

“Yan Ming, see you next time.”

“Come visit the school when you have time.”

Yu Tian watched as the medical school department head, university president, several deputy directors from the First Affiliated Hospital, and several renowned medical research experts from Rong City’s medical community filed out, followed by several graduate students. The group’s gazes swept over Yu Tian’s face like searchlights.

Yu Tian was completely stunned.

How could they encounter these people here?

Even after all these people had left, Yu Tian was still in chaos and disbelief: “They didn’t see anything just now, did they?”

“They saw everything.” Though Yan Ming had been the awkward one earlier, now he was the one calmly stating facts. “They were behind me from the moment you asked me to kiss you.”

“When I was paying the bill, I noticed they were all there, so I greeted them. They followed me out together. I was just thinking of introducing you to them, saying you were an alumnus from our medical school doing social media science education entrepreneurship.” Yan Ming said expressionlessly, “Didn’t you mention several times wanting to find some authoritative experts to do a few programs? I thought this was a perfect opportunity.”

“…” Yu Tian regretted it so much her intestines turned green. She blushed: “Why didn’t you say so earlier?”

No wonder Yan Ming had been so serious earlier, showing no intimate behavior—he had encountered these big shots from his workplace and industry.

Yu Tian wailed: “Now it’s all ruined…”

“It’s not completely ruined. It counts as an introduction, just with a different identity.”

Yan Ming regained his composure: “They should have a pretty deep impression of you. These directors, deputy directors, and several professors in the field all have good relationships with me. Next time you go to leverage connections with your current identity, I think there shouldn’t be a problem—they’ll have to give me some face.”

What identity! Yu Tian thought to herself that in their eyes, she must be a femme fatale, a fox spirit who hindered Yan Ming’s dedication to medicine and entangled him with worldly affairs—and a super spoiled and willful fox spirit at that.

“Why didn’t you remind me?”

“Wasn’t my restraint and propriety reminder enough for you?” Yan Ming looked somewhat helpless. “I did say to wait until we got back to kiss, but you got angry.”

“Just because I got angry doesn’t mean you should kiss me! Yan Ming, people need to have bottom lines and principles! You should have just persisted in ignoring me!”

Yan Ming pressed his lips together: “Some people are exceptions to principles and bottom lines.”

He glanced at Yu Tian and stuffed the sunflowers back into her arms: “Alright, here you go.”

Yu Tian secretly glanced over—good, Yan Ming and his body had both calmed down.

Yu Tian’s glance was probably a bit too obvious, because Yan Ming looked somewhat annoyed: “What are you looking at?”

Yu Tian muttered: “Just… looking at whatever seems strange.”

Yan Ming didn’t argue with her further, pulling Yu Tian out of the restaurant.

The night breeze was gentle now. Yu Tian looked up to see stars scattered across the sky, sometimes hidden and sometimes visible behind cloud cover, like scattered gold dust spilled on a canvas wrinkled by the night wind.

Looking at the vast night sky, her mood finally calmed somewhat.

But some people seemed determined not to let her have peace.

“Don’t make me kiss you outside anymore.”

The man beside her said seriously, “Always doing this is a form of torture to my health.”

Yu Tian was stunned for a moment before realizing what Yan Ming meant.

Her face immediately turned red, and she was so angry she wanted to stamp her feet: “How can you be like this! I used to think you were the aloof type, but what are you thinking about every day?”

“Yu Tian, I don’t think about these things all day, but I am a normal man. You’re a medical student—you should understand this better than anyone.”

Yan Ming’s tone remained aloof: “Alright, let’s not discuss this topic. Let’s talk about something else.”

“…” Really!

Yu Tian gave Yan Ming a small glare. This man really couldn’t handle teasing—so serious.

But perhaps he didn’t realize that when a serious person talked about such things, it was the most alluring and devastating.

However, Yu Tian soon had another mischievous idea to tease Yan Ming—

“Why did you give me sunflowers earlier? Everyone else gets red roses.”

“Did you write anything in the love message book?”

Yan Ming didn’t pause for even a second, directly denying: “What could I write? Just those things. Nothing special.”

He glanced at Yu Tian: “Definitely not as unique as what you wrote.”

Yu Tian was stunned before reacting. She widened her eyes in disbelief: “You didn’t go look at what I wrote back then, did you?”

Yan Ming pressed his lips tightly together without answering.

So he had looked.

“Was it… was it that time you looked?”

Yan Ming said expressionlessly, “Let’s change the topic again.”

Yu Tian almost laughed out loud.

She teased, “Did you know about the love message book that time and then couldn’t wait to go look?”

And he said he hadn’t been planning this for a long time.

This time Yan Ming couldn’t keep his composure: “I didn’t go look. When I was paying the bill, the server actively handed me your ‘love poem,’ saying you wrote it for me.”

He glared at Yu Tian: “Don’t you think about what nonsense you wrote? How embarrassing.”

“…”

This answer caught Yu Tian completely off guard.

She hadn’t expected that after that meal, her casually written “love poem” had been given to Yan Ming…

“Then, when you received such a strange thing, why didn’t you mention it to me or ask me to verify it?” Yu Tian was somewhat frustrated and puzzled. “What normal person would write something like that to give to someone for no reason?”

Yan Ming glanced sideways at Yu Tian: “Are you a normal person?”

“…”

Yu Tian protested: “Birds of a feather flock together. If I’m not normal, then you, who’s dating me, are you normal?”

Yan Ming actually said shamelessly: “I’m a philanthropist. Because my normal concentration is relatively high, I specifically came to neutralize your abnormally high concentration of abnormality.”

“…”

Yu Tian wasn’t giving up and wanted to win back a round while teasing Yan Ming: “So you didn’t write any special sweet words for me this time?”

She didn’t want to tell Yan Ming that she had already secretly looked earlier, pretending she knew nothing.

“No.” Yan Ming was almost getting embarrassed into anger. He looked at Yu Tian with a stern warning: “Giving you sunflowers doesn’t have any other meaning either—sunflowers are just practical. When the flowers wilt, you can eat the sunflower seeds from the flower head.”

“Really?” Yu Tian deliberately looked at Yan Ming with disappointed eyes, then suddenly changed direction: “Then I should go back and look to see what you wrote, whether you didn’t write anything decent. This time the server is something—why didn’t they actively hand me your love poem? It must be because what you wrote was so bad that even the server was too embarrassed to present it.”

Just as she made a gesture to turn around, Yan Ming grabbed her.

“Yu Tian, you’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?”

“Hm?”

Yan Ming’s expression became unnatural, looking somewhat helpless but with no intention of getting angry with Yu Tian.

“I wrote something.”

He confessed as if admitting defeat: “I wrote sweet words.”

Yan Ming added: “Not nonsense like yours.”

After saying this, he directly pulled Yu Tian forward, his expression composed but his ears slightly red: “So you don’t need to go back and look. It’s getting late, the streets are dark—let me walk you home quickly.”

Yu Tian looked at the brightly lit, bustling street scene and found it somewhat both funny and exasperating.

She deliberately wanted to oppose Yan Ming: “Since you wrote something, I want to go back and look even more!”

“I wrote something, but nothing special—just ordinary stuff, nothing worth seeing.”

Though he had written the sweet words himself, he was the first to become shy and uncomfortable about it.

Fine, she wouldn’t go then.

After all, Yu Tian had already secretly looked.

Yu Tian looked at the sunflowers in her hands and suddenly discovered that this previously unremarkable flower now looked particularly pleasing, so brilliantly radiant and passionate.