Chapter 53. Crimson Taillights. Accomplice Miss, Moving for the New Semester...

Even after the dinner ended, at 10 p.m., Greenwich Village was still bustling with activity.

A group of young people were walking side by side when suddenly a person appeared under the shade of a tree, swaying unsteadily, completely ignoring the vehicles.

Liang Siyu slammed on the brakes. Fortunately, his speed was only 20 miles per hour, but the sudden stop still made Xu Aida in the passenger seat skip a beat. She pressed her chest and slowly exhaled.

"Are you alright?" Liang Siyu asked, his eyes fixed on the road, his brows slightly furrowed.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, just focus on driving,” Xu Aida quickly replied.

Half a minute later, she couldn't help but complain to Cohen in the back row, "The New York style of crossing the street is just horrible."

She still remembers her first visit to New York when she was in junior high school. She was stunned when she arrived in Manhattan because no one seemed to pay attention to traffic lights.

“Ada, it’s not very wise of you to say that in front of a New Yorker, especially since he’s the one in the steering wheel right now.” Cohen raised an eyebrow.

Xu Aida reacted quickly: "Precisely because he's holding the steering wheel right now, he must hate this kind of behavior just like us."

The two bickered back and forth. Usually, Liang Siyu would listen with a smile, but today, perhaps because there were too many pedestrians on the road and taxis weaving and changing lanes too closely, he became unusually irritable.

He certainly wouldn't drive near Midtown Times Square; that's a no-driving zone in this universe, unless you want to see how tourists from all over the world take up the road.

However, the entrance to the western expressway was also crowded with cars, the endless deep red taillights resembling a frozen river.

Damn New York, damn Manhattan, there's never a shortage of reasons to be stuck in traffic. He might as well have called an Uber today; why did he have to drive himself?

His fingers tapped rapidly on the steering wheel unconsciously, and his brows furrowed deeper and deeper.

His friends' laughter and chatter were still ringing in his ears, but the merriment belonged to them; all he felt was a bellyful of car exhaust fumes.

He glanced at the soft green beside him, took a few deep breaths, as if he could smell a hint of sweetness.

Today she wore a fig-scented perfume.

Feeling even more agitated, he slightly loosened his tie and turned the air conditioning up a bit more.

When they finally arrived home, he took her arm and led her through the garden, where she paused slightly.

"Ned, take a look, it seems like my skirt is caught on something." Xu Aida said helplessly, because she couldn't squat down while wearing this skirt.

He crouched down and looked down, and sure enough, a leaning rose thorn tugged at the green gauze.

He tugged, and with a tearing sound, the delicate gauze split an inch, and several rose petals fell off.

"Hey, be gentle!" She couldn't help but pat his shoulder. He was an MD student; tissue separation under a microscope was a piece of cake for him. How could he have messed this up like this?

The next second, she was picked up and carried.

"That's good." He strode towards the elevator.

Cohen was taken aback. This guy hadn't been drinking tonight either.

He shook his head. Never mind. When they first started dating last fall, they were always clingy and inseparable, more annoying than the humidity in New York.

The moment the elevator doors closed, she glanced at the mirror, and he happened to look up as well. For a split second, the whole world seemed to fall into complete silence, leaving only their gazes on each other.

As the elevator ascended, she leaned on his shoulder, feeling a burning heat on her skin, and blushed slightly. Was the dress too thin? She couldn't help but tremble slightly.

Sure enough, as soon as he entered the room, he kissed her without hesitation, much more forcefully than in the previous days.

It felt like time had turned back to when we first fell in love, when everything was passionate, straightforward, and unreserved.

She grabbed his collar tightly.

New York is always like that—energetic, fast-paced, and sharp, leaving you no time to react.

The summer night heat dissipated slightly, and the air was filled with the sweet scent of figs. After being pushed several times, Liang Siyu finally came to his senses and released her.

She leaned against his arm, panting, barely managing to catch her breath from the lack of oxygen. She pressed her hand to her chest, gave him a slight glare, and turned her back to him: "Zipper."

He helped her change out of her dress, prepared hot water for her, and added sandalwood, bitter orange blossom, and frankincense essential oils to the water to soothe her and help her sleep.

However, when he returned from washing up and she snuggled into his arms, he pressed down on her mischievous little hands: "Go to sleep, don't you have to listen to a meeting report tomorrow?"

She thought for a moment, then kissed him: "Then you can wait, you won't have to get up early the day after tomorrow."

He was slightly out of breath and pressed the side-lying pillow into her arms: "Go to sleep, be a good girl."

She fell asleep with a smile, but he couldn't sleep and stared blankly at the dark ceiling.

After a while, he simply picked up his phone and started shopping. First, he bought various nutritional supplements she needed, common vitamins and trace elements. Finally, after hesitating for a moment, he also bought a bottle of valerian extract.

He turned off the screen, but still couldn't sleep. He turned over, opened his phone again, and reordered an Apple Watch Sport.

Her father sent her the standard version, but she wore it for less than a week before refusing to use it anymore, saying it was too heavy and uncomfortable to wear while coding. She thought the sports version would be lighter and she could probably adapt to it.

She has shown significant improvement recently, but it would be best to monitor her heart rate if she resumes exercise next semester.

Even after doing all this, he was still not sleepy. In fact, staring at her sleeping face for a while longer made his heart feel hot again.

He went downstairs to exercise on the rowing machine for an hour, took a cold shower in his brother Ed's empty room, and then quietly returned to his room.

He opened the door slowly, with the meticulousness of a surgical procedure, without making a sound.

Under the moonlight, she curled up in a small ball under the covers, her cheek pressed against the pillow, her expression serene.

He knelt by the carpet and placed a gentle kiss on her shoulder.

The following afternoon, they encountered Alvin again at a breakout session.

During the tea break, he excitedly chatted with Xu Aida for a while about the discriminant function problem of GANs.

Liang Siyu glanced at his watch and interrupted them: "Ada, the next presentation is about to start, shall we go in?"

Xu Aida glanced at the schedule: "Oh, that one's not very interesting, I'm not going. Why don't you go? We can meet at the entrance after it's over?"

Liang Siyu glanced at Alvin, whose gaze was intense, and grabbed her arm: "Excuse me, I have a few words to say to Ada alone."

Alvin forced a smile: "Of course."

Liang Siyu pulled her to the corner of the corridor. Xu Aida looked at his slightly tense jaw and belatedly realized that he was jealous again.

He sighed, "It can only be at the coffee shop, not in his office, okay?"

They were talking so much that they practically wanted a whiteboard to derive the formulas right there. He was afraid the math PhD would just invite her to his office.

"Lower yourself a little." She beckoned, and he bent down, wanting to hear what she had to say.

"Doctor, if someone's adrenaline is surging, they're showing signs of territoriality and aggression, and it happens to be my boyfriend, what medication do you think would be most effective for them?"

His face turned red at a visible speed, from his neck to his ears, and his whole body stiffened like a stuck robot.

"I hope this works." She moved closer to him and, through his shirt, placed a light kiss on his chest.

She straightened his tie: "Don't worry, I'll just go to the next classroom to chat with him for a bit, and I'll come back to find you in fifteen minutes."

She left gracefully, leaving him stunned. When he finally came to his senses and turned around, he saw her enter the next classroom and then look back at him.

Their eyes met, and she gave him a charming smile and winked.

He pressed his hand to his chest. No, why was his heart racing too?

After the meeting, Cohen went to a bar with his new friends. Liang Siyu drove out of the crowded Greenwich Village once again.

Today he felt the sunset was infinitely beautiful, and he even unconsciously hummed a song softly.

Xu Aida looked at his gentle profile and suddenly remembered last night.

His silence in the car, his restlessness in the garden, the swift and passionate kiss, and the restrained goodnight that followed.

Oh, I see. What a childish kid.

She burst out laughing.

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, silently casting a question mark over his eyes.

She smiled even more sweetly: "I've discovered that some people aren't just arrogant, they're also jealous."

He quickly realized what was happening, and his ears turned slightly red.

However, when they got home, he picked her up again and said, "Sweetie, you're so smart, you should have realized long ago that I've also committed the last sin."

She boldly kissed his ear: "Ned, we're accomplices."

"Yes, my dear, accomplice."

She felt as if she were back on the west side of the highway, with a string of deep red taillights in front of her and cars rushing past. She was disoriented.

New York's scorching and long summer never seemed to cool down.

Summer was long, the meeting was over, and the holidays were coming to an end. At the start of the new semester, they returned to Baltimore two days early, and the first thing they did was move.

"Oops!" Xu Aida came out carrying a small basket of toiletries and tripped at the bathroom door, but she reacted quickly and grabbed the door frame to steady herself.

Liang Siyu put down the book he was holding, hurriedly went over to help her up, and pressed her down on the edge of the bed: "Sit for a while."

Dark clouds loomed over the city today, but the rain didn't fall. The air was very stuffy, and she started acting strangely around noon.

He took her left wrist, pressed the heart rate detection button on the Apple Watch, and it was indeed significantly high.

He touched her forehead again: "Do you have a slight fever? Do you have a thermometer?"

She shook her head and hugged his waist.

She thought she was mentally prepared, but when the moment actually arrived and she watched her things being packed into her suitcase little by little, she still felt a little dazed.

He kept stroking her back, and after a few seconds said, "Let's not move today, shall we? You're not feeling well, let's go home and rest. I'll come over by myself tomorrow."

He knew, of course, that moving was a huge change in her life, and that she must be feeling anxious, which led to her exhibiting very typical physical and mental reactions.

He regretted it a little. If he had known this would happen, he shouldn't have been so blinded by greed during the summer vacation, only thinking about confirming her feelings. Instead, he should have given her more space and let her renew her lease.

She looked up and said, "I'm fine, let's finish packing today." She didn't have much stuff, and she could finish packing in two hours.

He firmly forbade her to continue, and turned back to tidy up her books and belongings.

She sat and looked around for a while, then gently pulled open the bedside table drawer. Inside were some odds and ends: a rarely used USB drive, a Yosemite National Park keychain, and a tangled mess of data cables.

She took these out and suddenly discovered that there were several movie ticket stubs at the bottom of the drawer, from the movie they went to see together last year.

As she picked them out one by one, she couldn't help but recall that in her past life, the last time they watched a movie together was before that "transformative work." For the next two years, he never went to the cinema with her again.

She remembered clearly how he looked when he came home after finishing his roadshow that year. His shoulders were slumped, his eyes were bloodshot, and his smile was unpleasant.

She wanted to give him a hug, but he went straight to the second bedroom to take a bath. She hesitated at the door several times, but ultimately didn't go in.

She should have gone in, shouldn't she? She realized belatedly, her eyes welling up with tears.

“Ada?” Liang Siyu glanced back at her every now and then and noticed that she was wiping the corner of her eye.

He sensed that she had been in a very low mood all afternoon, and seemed quite dazed.

She looked up and saw a person in front of her whose brows and eyes held worry, but whose whole demeanor was bright and relaxed, without any gloomy aura.

She stood up, moved close to his chest, and gripped his arm tightly with her left hand.

"Ned, did you have any unrealistic fantasies when you were a child?"

"For example, I fantasized about studying physics and becoming a scientist like Marie Curie, but after visiting Yosemite, I thought being a backpacker wouldn't be so bad either."