"Okay, I’ll come over after I finish this problem."
"Then... I’ll wait for you."
Jiangg Yao’s face was already beet red by the time she finished speaking. She hurriedly turned and walked toward the bedroom. When Chen Yuan turned his head, he only caught a glimpse of a few strands of her hair vanishing around the doorframe, followed by the sound of her fading footsteps.
The same shy blush appeared on both their faces. They both knew exactly what the other was thinking.
If it weren’t for this unexpected rain, their relationship naturally wouldn’t have progressed so quickly. Lying shoulder-to-shoulder counting stars at night—that was something that would probably only happen in their imaginations.
But reality was always unpredictable, far more absurd than imagination.
This sudden, extended time together might be an opportunity to understand each other better.
At least, that was what Jiangg Yao thought.
She lay on the bed, pulling the covers over herself. The mattress was soft beneath her, and her heart was pounding—THUMP-THUMP-THUMP—without a single pause, faster than she could have imagined. She would occasionally peek out before hiding her face under the blanket again. If you looked closely, you could see her hands were trembling.
A girl, sleeping at her boyfriend’s house for the first time.
It was a kind of nervousness that someone who’d never experienced it couldn’t possibly understand. A tangle of emotions was woven together in her heart... shyness, anticipation, fear, and apprehension—she felt it all.
Jiangg Yao was twenty-six years old. To be honest, the novel experiences Chen Yuan had given her in the past two weeks were more than she’d had in the previous twenty-six years combined. Every day felt like she was walking on clouds.
’What a miserable life I was living before! So this is how happy being in a relationship feels!’
Jiangg Yao didn’t hear Chen Yuan coming, so she couldn’t stop herself from kicking and punching the air under the covers or wriggling around like a maggot. Before long, an intoxicating blush appeared on her face, and her neatly combed hair was now in disarray. But this only added a kind of messy beauty.
CLICK—
The living room light was turned off.
She heard the sound and frantically pulled the blanket up higher. ’He’s coming.’ In that instant, she curled her toes into the covers, felt her whole body grow warm, and her breath caught in her throat.
Then, the bedroom door was also closed.
Even though there was no one else in the entire apartment, closing the door was a necessary habit. Some people just don’t feel secure without it. Chen Yuan was like that. He’d developed this habit back in middle school because his extremely controlling mother would constantly find excuses to come into his room, over and over, endlessly.
The rain hadn’t stopped.
Outside the window, the night was pitch-black.
The soft light cast a glow on the light-colored blanket. Two small, fair hands clutched a corner, the fingertips turning pale from the force of her grip. Out of sight, Jiangg Yao pressed her legs tightly together. All her earlier thrashing had caused a button on her blouse to come undone, but the beautiful sight remained hidden, unappreciated.
Chen Yuan composed himself and tried to act natural as he walked to the bedside, his arms and legs moving stiffly in unison.
"I’m... going to change."
"Go ahead. I won’t look."
A muffled voice came from under the covers. Chen Yuan could only see her forehead and hair, and he found it a little amusing. He opened the closet and started looking for his pajamas, a strange feeling blooming in his heart.
He nonchalantly took off his shirt. As he picked up his pajama top to put it on, Jiangg Yao, at some point, had peeked her head out. Her eyes were narrowed slightly, blinking rapidly, her pupils shimmering like rippling water under the light.
He turned his head, and Jiangg Yao quickly pulled the blanket back up.
What Chen Yuan couldn’t see, however, was that she was trying to suppress a grin that was harder to control than the recoil on an AK-47. Her face was about to split from smiling so much.
Jiangg Yao herself didn’t even know why she was this happy—the kind of joy that was impossible to hold back.
She waited in silence, ready to feel the unfamiliar warmth beside her, to feel a presence she had never experienced before wash over her, to feel the soft bed sink under a new weight.
But none of that happened. All Jiangg Yao heard was a RUSTLE RUSTLE, followed by the sound of something landing on the floor. She peeked out from the blanket, and the expression on her face immediately turned to astonishment.
"What are you doing?"
"Making a bed on the floor!" Chen Yuan said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. He was holding a thick blanket, the makeshift bed already half-prepared.
"Huh??" Jiangg Yao was dumbfounded.
"We can’t actually sleep in the same bed, can we? I know we’ve been dating online for half a year, but like you said, girls take these things very seriously." Chen Yuan was truly a model student, "born under the red flag and raised in the spring breeze"—his moral awareness was exceptionally high. He said seriously, "This way, I’m still sleeping here with you."
"You’re so... considerate!" Jiangg Yao forced a smile, then turned away, her expression freezing over.
’Chen Yuan... even the most *yasashii* protagonist in an anime isn’t as damn *yasashii* as you.’
Jiangg Yao was dying to start cussing.
Not that cussing was a big deal to her. If Jiangg Ning was defined as the highly educated, high-class, intellectual older sister type that everyone adored, then Jiangg Yao had never aspired to be liked by everyone.
She was who she was: a hardcore otaku, an anime junkie, a crass girl from social media—you could describe her with any of those terms.
At least a "crass girl" dared to boldly pursue the person she liked. Where did that leave Jiangg Ning? Why didn’t she dare to do the same?
But thoughts were just thoughts. Jiangg Yao didn’t say anything, keeping it all bottled up inside. ’You have to be at least a little reserved in front of the boy you love.’
"It won’t be too cold tonight, will it? Don’t catch a cold."
"Yeah, I’ll lay out a couple more blankets. I should be fine."
"Go to sleep."
All her anticipation vanished in an instant, and Jiangg Yao’s mood sank. She silently curled up, finding a position that felt more secure, and lay there blinking her eyes.
"I’m going to turn off the light."
Chen Yuan finished making his bed on the floor and, with a CLICK, turned off the light. The room instantly plunged from brightness into darkness. He took a moment for his eyes to adjust, but he still couldn’t quite see the bed he’d just made, so he had to turn on his phone’s flashlight to get a look.