The once cold, emotionless skiing machine who never dated could potentially transform into a clingy presence that made everyone in the circle roll their eyes at the mere mention of his name when he fell in love.
Standing in the elevator, Shan Chong called Wei Zhi. The person on the other end was sitting in front of her dressing table, applying various products, so he spoke first: “I’m at the hotel.”
Wei Zhi was applying eye cream. She glanced at the screen, only seeing her boyfriend’s handsome face, which had a unique charm when drunk.
Her eyelashes fluttered as she calmly looked away: “Did you drink too much?”
“No.”
“Tell me your bank card PIN.”
“95643…” he paused, then added, “23.”
Before Wei Zhi could speak, he continued: “That might not be right. It should be 9566323. Or 9567232?”
Wei Zhi: “…”
Wei Zhi: “Which bank has a seven-digit PIN?”
As she finished speaking, she heard the man on the other end slowly “Oh” and then lower his head, starting to count on his fingers the supposed bank card PIN he had just confidently recited three times, each time differently…
He looked genuinely not very intelligent at the moment.
Wei Zhi remembered the first time he showed her his savings, he had to ask Shan Shan for the password.
“Stop counting on your fingers and go to sleep!”
Wei Zhi looked at the phone screen again, paused, and asked, “Is there someone else next to you?”
The man counting on his fingers looked up, making eye contact with the middle-aged, greasy-looking man outside the screen for a few seconds.
He curled his lips slightly, his pitch-black gaze calm: “Oh, just an unimportant passerby.”
Wang Xin instinctively reached for his pocket, wondering if he had brought his 80cm folding knife.
At this moment, the young girl nestled in the man’s phone had finished applying her facial products. Hugging a glass jar of white lotion, she padded back to bed in her slippers…
She tossed her phone onto the pillow.
The downward-facing camera captured her crawling onto the bed on all fours. The rustling sound and the girl’s spaghetti strap nightgown, along with her black hair, provided the only contrast to her fair skin and the white hem of the nightgown hanging just above her thighs.
She opened the lid of the body lotion and began to apply it.
Her soft fingertips pinched the soft flesh of her calf, completely lacking any celebrity pretense—
While others might sculpt their lower bodies into bodybuilder-level definitions through skiing, she was different. Her body fat percentage seemed to be a fixed, immovable number. Ever since Shan Chong had memories of her body, she had always been as soft as cotton candy…
Or something like that.
Her fingertips, reddened by friction, slid down from her calf muscles to her rounded toes.
The man watched intently for a while, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he cleared his throat. He turned to the middle-aged man crouching by his suitcase and said, “You, get out.”
The man crouching by the suitcase had just figured out how to open it correctly and was lifting the lid. At that moment, he was silently marveling at the meticulously folded clothes inside, thinking “as expected of a mama’s boy.” Caught off guard by the sudden dismissal, he looked up bewildered—
Can you detect even my silent judgments?
Shan Chong, holding his phone, said expressionlessly and quite righteously, “Wait outside. My wife isn’t dressed appropriately right now.”
Hearing this, Wang Xin looked around the room confused, as if asking, “Where’s your wife?”
It wasn’t until he heard the girl’s protest “You’re the one who’s inappropriate” coming from the man’s phone that his gaze finally landed on the device—
From his angle, he could only see the black phone case.
Let alone seeing any inappropriate images, he couldn’t even tell if there was a real person inside or if it was just Siri.
…Is he crazy?
After a few seconds of internal struggle, the middle-aged man, considering himself mature, decided not to argue with a drunk. He dropped the half-open suitcase he was holding and stood up with his hands in his pockets: “Be quick.”
Then he turned and left, slamming the door shut with a thunderous bang that expressed his emotions.
Shan Chong didn’t even flinch. After a moment of silence, he strode over and sat on the edge of the bed. By now, the girl in his phone had temporarily paused her body care routine… She scooted on her elbows towards the phone propped up next to her pillow and leaned in to ask: “Who was that? The voice sounded like Wang Xin?”
Her ability to recognize people by voice hadn’t been great before, otherwise, she would have known ages ago that the Glasses Cloth Big Shot was her master’s father…
But now she had recognized Wang Xin.
Perhaps there were truly few middle-aged men around, or maybe she had learned some cleverness from Shan Chong through proximity.
She waited patiently for a moment, heard the man give an “Mm” in response, and wanted to ask “What’s he here for,” but then felt it would be a redundant question—
Wang Xin certainly wasn’t here to wish Shan Chong a happy new year.
Shan Chong is back in Jilin now.
Wasn’t that Wang Xin’s territory?
So she paused, then asked a different question. The girl on the screen gradually became serious. She hugged her legs, resting her head on her bent knees, tilting it to look at the man on the phone beside her.
“Do you have something you want to tell me in private?”
He didn’t deny it.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, his eyes, darker than usual due to the alcohol, seemed to be steeped in the cool night, pitch-black without a single star.
“A bit further from Jilin City is Changbai Mountain,” the man’s voice was slightly hoarse. “Wang Xin saw that I was at Songhua Lake and drove six hours to get here…”
He paused.
“He wants to take me back.”
As he said this, the man’s voice sounded very calm.
It was like a rainstorm hitting a window, making a glass-shattering noise, but in the end, a single raindrop would still silently trace its winding path down the glass…
All emotions were contained.
Becoming silence.
“Should I go?” he asked.
…
Wang Xin crouched outside Shan Chong’s door, waiting for about an hour.
An hour later, the door opened. The man standing inside was fully dressed, holding a closed small suitcase. On his back was a simple board bag called a “dumpling skin,” containing a SIMS snowboard.
SIMS, like Burton, the current flagship brand in snowboarding, is a very old brand with a certain history. Compared to Burton’s commercial approach, SIMS is more focused on preserving snowboarding culture and remains niche. Therefore, this brand isn’t well-known, but it has continued to exist for many years, producing and updating its snowboards.
As a qualified product endorser and sponsored rider, Shan Chong only used this brand’s snowboards when he went out to play on his own, mainly because they were really good.
And very low-key.
Actually, before being discovered, Shan Chong had just wanted to slip away and play around here unnoticed…
Later, when he found out the incident had blown up and everyone knew about his sudden appearance in Jilin from Zhangjiakou, he had a bit of a crooked idea—
He might as well turn a blind eye and let everyone think he was really in Songhua Lake, Jilin.
Always in Songhua Lake.
Back to the point, when Wang Xin turned around and saw the man appear so neatly dressed behind the door, he breathed a sigh of relief but said nothing.
He stood up, reached out to take the man’s suitcase, turned around, and headed towards the elevator.
He was like some kind of immortal.
Driving non-stop for six or seven hours from Changbai Mountain to Jilin without eating or drinking, and now, having caught the person he wanted to catch, he was rushing back as if his pants were on fire…
By the time they reached the ski resort hotel in Changbai Mountain and finished checking in, it was already past seven in the morning the next day.
Shan Chong, having drunk alcohol, wasn’t much use, and Wang Xin had been driving for over ten hours with only a half-hour nap at a rest stop… At this point, he was so tired his eyes were unfocused. He watched Shan Chong enter the room without saying a word, just waved his hand, and went back to his room.
Shan Chong was also tired.
He hastily washed up and crawled into bed, falling asleep almost immediately.
He wasn’t sure how long he slept, probably dreamless at first. Later, at an unknown hour, he drifted into a hazy daydream—
In his dream, he heard the hotel room door open and close, followed by footsteps entering.
Reflexively, he realized it was still daytime. Ghosts surely wouldn’t appear in broad daylight, so he assumed it was housekeeping. He struggled to wake from his deep slumber…
Still groggy and with eyes unopened, he heard rustling nearby. The intruder, seeing someone in bed, didn’t apologize or leave. Instead, they busied themselves beside him.
After a moment, the person stopped moving.
Shan Chong felt the corner of his blanket being lifted. His brow twitched as his notorious morning temper began to surface—
Before he could open his eyes to scold the intruder, they became even bolder. Bringing a rush of cold air and a sweet scent that startled him, they clumsily climbed into his bed.
With practiced ease, they lifted his arm and snuggled into his embrace. Soft, cool arms wrapped around him, a familiar sensation nestling into his chest. Her arms encircled his waist as she contentedly yawned in his arms.
The man’s eyes flew open.
He looked down at the young woman curled up against him…
The person he hadn’t touched or held for two or three days had miraculously reappeared in his arms.
The sensation felt real.
His sense of smell awakened.
If this was a daydream, it was far too vivid.
While he was still processing, her arms tightened around his waist. Her feet, equally restless, hooked around his thigh and rubbed gently. With her nose pressed against his solid chest, she asked in a sweet, sleepy voice, “I took the earliest flight this morning, then a one-and-a-half-hour taxi ride from Changchun… Don’t you want to hug me?”
“…”
Alright.
This wasn’t an illusion.
Shan Chong was at a loss for words. He instinctively wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her closer. He then lowered his head and tenderly kissed the tip of her nose.
“Why did you come?”
His voice was still husky from being abruptly awakened—
Yet his morning grumpiness had completely vanished.
If every rude awakening could be like this, he’d likely never suffer from morning temper again.
“I felt you wanted me to come.”
Oh.
Her intuition was spot on.
“Who told you where I was staying?”
“I asked your sister,” the young woman’s voice was incredibly sweet. She nuzzled closer to him and yawned, her voice soft and drowsy. It was adorable how she, being a young girl herself, referred to the other as “sister”. “She asked Wang Xin for me, then Wang Xin waited downstairs and got me an extra room key. That’s how I got in!”
He raised his hand and gently pinched her nose.
“Hey, stop that,” she swatted his hand away. “Wang Xin said you guys only arrived after 7 this morning. It’s just noon now, let’s sleep a bit more. I’ll accompany you to the ski slopes tomorrow, okay?”
The man paused.
After a while, still seeming a bit slow, he lowered his head and brushed aside the messy strands of hair on her forehead, placing a kiss on her brow. It took him a moment before he slowly mumbled an “Mm-hmm”…
His large hand patted her back gently, as if soothing a child.
“Sleep,” he said, “I’ll hold you.”
The man looked up at the clock on the bedside table—
11:42 AM.
And so.
That day, just as people were finishing their morning work or studies, sitting down to open their steaming takeout lunches, pulling out their phones to watch some entertaining short videos while eating…
They saw something quite eye-catching.
The skiing blogger, known for his constant jumps and pole plants, had changed his content—
The phone camera focused on a fluffy head peeking out from under the covers for three seconds, then panned slowly across her curly hair spread on the pillow, and half of her rosy, sleeping face.
A northeastern Chinese man’s voice narrated: [Woke up to find a strange thing growing in my bed.]
Three-second pause.
[Tell me, fellas, is this normal?]
The comments from the curious audience read—
Normal!!!
And.
Damn it, how unlucky!!!!