First Encounter

Qi Wuchen laughed out loud when he heard the name, then looked at Ling Jianghan and asked, "Are you sure?"

"Why are you not sure?" Jiang Han was a little unhappy: "If you don't like it, just give it your own name."

"I didn't say anything bad." Qi Wuchen explained with a smile: "I don't like these cats and dogs in the first place. Of course, you have the final say on this matter."

"Really?" Ling Jianghan tilted his head and glanced at him, his eyes slightly raised as if with a hook: "Do I have the final say in everything?"

Hu Chen next to him took a sip of Coke silently.

Someone is about to be fooled.

However, his buddy didn't realize the seriousness of the matter. He simply said "hmm" and replied confidently, "You have the final say."

"Okay." Ling Jianghan almost blurted out: "From now on, I'll trouble you with Chuyi and Maotai."

After drinking the Coke, Hu Chen silently tightened the bottle cap.

"How can that be?" Qi Wuchen said with a half-coquettish, half-coaxing smile: "At least you should take care of one."

"Ahem." Hu Chen threw the empty bottle in his hand into the trash can in front of him, pointed at himself and asked, "Are you two going to stop pretending in front of me?"

After a moment of silence, Qi Wuchen and Ling Jianghan's voices rang out at the same time: "Didn't you know this a long time ago?"

Hu Chen: “?!”

The two men's reactions obviously shocked him, and their voices unconsciously rose a little: "How do you know I know?!"

"Hu Chen, what tongue twister are you talking about?" Sheng Yao, who had just come out of a small supermarket, stared at him in confusion.

"I didn't." Hu Chen denied it without hesitation: "You heard it wrong."

"Oh." Sheng Yao didn't ask any further questions, as if he wasn't interested in the question. He turned to look at Qi Wuchen and Ling Jianghan beside him and said, "The hot pot restaurant the squad leader chose is a bit far from here. Do you still want to go?"

"Since you are here, why don't you go?" Jiang Han asked in some surprise.

"I'm worried you won't be able to go home at night." Sheng Yao explained, "Students whose homes are far from Ximen won't go. They won't be able to get a taxi home after dinner."

Jiang Han suddenly remembered what he said - there were basically no taxis at the west gate of the north city, and people usually had to rely on buses or driving to get to and from the city. The buses at the west gate would stop running at 5:30 pm in the winter.

"We're fine," Qi Wuchen said confidently, "Someone will come pick us up after dinner."

"Who will pick me up?" Jiang Han felt a little panicked for some unknown reason when he heard his words.

"Uncle Wang," Qi Wuchen seemed to have guessed something and looked at him with amusement: "Who do you think it is?"

I thought it was your dad. Ling Jianghan muttered quietly in his heart.

-

Just as Sheng Yao said, there were not many of them who could stay for dinner, and in the end, only Xu Yao and Xia Ran were left.

There was just enough room for several people to sit at one table, so Jiang Han ended up sitting between Xu Yao and Qi Wuchen by mistake.

Hu Chen was sitting on the other side of Qi Wuchen, pouring Sprite into his own cup.

"Hey, Wuchen," Hu Chen said as he finished pouring his drink. He suddenly had a bad idea and nudged the person next to him with his elbow. "How about you two take my dog ​​back with you? I don't have to walk it out during my vacation."

"Shall we take it back?" Qi Wuchen stared at him with an expression that said, "What nonsense are you talking about?"

"Yeah." Hu Chen didn't notice anything wrong at all. Instead, he looked at him innocently: "Doesn't Jiang Han like dogs?"

Ling Jianghan, who was playing with his mobile phone, was stunned when he heard this, and raised his head to look at them with a puzzled look.

He stared at Hu Chen in silence for a long while, and finally asked a very insightful question: "Which dog are you referring to?"

"Huh?" Hu Chen was stunned. "Isn't it just a dog that walks on four legs? What other kind of dog is that?"

Qi Wuchen, who was standing nearby, vaguely heard someone moving beads on an abacus. He looked at Ling Jianghan with a somewhat resentful expression, "Ling Jianghan, stop scolding me in a roundabout way."

"Who scolded you?" Ling Jianghan didn't intend to admit it: "I didn't say anything."

Qi Wuchen didn't say anything else. He chuckled softly, then picked up the water next to Ling Jianghan, unscrewed the bottle cap and drank the remaining water.

The water was the one that Jiang Han hadn't finished on the road. Qi Wuchen put the empty bottle back on the table after he finished drinking it.

Jiang Han glanced at the empty bottle calmly, then lowered his head to continue playing his parkour game.

Seeing that the three of them had stopped talking, Xu Yao spoke carefully, "Ling Jianghan, do you like puppies too?"

"I used to like it," Ling Jianghan replied casually, his fingertips constantly swiping the phone screen. "After being bitten by a dog, I became a little afraid of it."

Xu Yao was surprised to hear this: "Have you been bitten by a dog before?"

Jiang Han looked at least 1.85 meters tall. Could such a tall person be chased by a dog?

"When I was little, my legs were too short," Ling Jianghan added, "I couldn't run fast enough."

Xu Yao immediately smiled in understanding.

Qi Wuchen, who was overhearing, suddenly felt someone touch his elbow.

He frowned and turned his head, seeing Hu Chen approaching mysteriously. He asked in a low voice, "Wu Chen, did Jiang Han want to scold you just now?"

Qi Wuchen: “…”

Can you be so smart after eating?

-

Because they had to listen to the teachers’ online lectures early the next morning, the group of people finished the birthday party happily and then went home.

Qi Wuchen and Ling Jianghan needed to pick up Chuyi and the others before 7:30, so they said goodbye to Sheng Yao and the others and left in a hurry.

It was already dark when they came out of the pet shop. Now, one of them was holding a dog and the other was holding a cat, standing side by side on the street waiting for Uncle Wang's car.

"Qi Wuchen," Ling Jianghan suddenly asked a question: "Is Ling Yiyan's imprisonment related to you?"

Qi Wuchen hummed, "Will you blame me? He is your father after all."

"No." Ling Jianghan answered the question without hesitation, "I'm just a little curious."

"Are you curious about when my dad made a move on him?" Qi Wuchen asked, staring at him.

"No," Jiang Han's expression became unusually serious as he corrected her word by word, "When did you tell your dad about it?"

"The night Ling Yiyan called you," Qi Wuchen answered truthfully, "from the moment I knew he wanted to take you away, I couldn't bear to see him anymore."

"You are quite decisive." Ling Jianghan asked again: "But how did you know he was doing those things?"

"I guessed," Qi Wuchen said, "The Shen family's huge compensation is enough to make Ling Yiyan live comfortably for the rest of his life, but he still wants to cooperate with Cheng Huan to persuade you to go abroad. You said before that he was imprisoned for a moment of playfulness, so I guess this person is likely to have bad habits."

"So smart." Ling Jianghan laughed.

"That's right." Qi Wuchen paused after he finished speaking, and the smile on his face faded a little: "Did you hear any sound?"

"Um?"

Jiang Han listened attentively for a moment, then turned and looked towards an alley next to the pet shop.

The sound came from the alley, intermittent, and sounded like a child sobbing softly inside.

Jiang Han frowned at the deep and dark alley.

"I'll go take a look first. Turn on the flashlight on your phone and come back." After saying that, Qi Wuchen walked into the alley with Maotai in his arms.

He followed the sound deeper into the alley, the sobbing becoming clearer as he approached. Qi Wuchen quickly passed several tricycles parked crookedly against the wall, and finally found a small, slender figure huddled on the ground at the far end of the alley.

Before Qi Wuchen could say anything, the little head with twin ponytails buried itself in her knees again, crying out in fear, "Don't hit me! I know I was wrong, I know I was wrong! I won't do it again!"

"I'm not a bad person," Qi Wuchen said in a soft voice, "Little friend, please don't cry."

The little girl stopped crying immediately when she heard his voice and carefully raised her tear-stained face.

She raised her head and looked at Qi Wuchen for a few seconds, then moved her small body a little further inside.

Qi Wuchen opened his mouth to offer some words of comfort, but Jiang Han's voice rang out behind him, unhurriedly, "Why are you crying even harder?"

Ling Jianghan looked at the little girl for a while in the light, then turned to look at the person next to him: "Did you scare her?"

Without waiting for Qi Wuchen to answer, the little girl on the ground got up without warning and rushed towards Ling Jianghan, crying out loudly, "Brother Ling!"

Jiang Han subconsciously caught the person with one hand, and after a while asked in surprise: "Do you know me?"

The little girl was crying breathlessly in his arms, forcing Jiang Han to use his other hand to pat her back. He patted her for a long time but did not get a single response from her.

"Ling Jianghan," Qi Wuchen suddenly called out to him, "you were on the balcony watching Zhou Yuyi's video call earlier, and there was a little girl saying she wanted to be your girlfriend when she grew up. Do you remember that?"