Chapter 34 Wife with the Ring Mark, Where's the Ring?
"Carter?"
Dai Lan squeezed to the side, and inadvertently glanced at the unfamiliar note at the top of the screen, and read it aloud with a cheerful smile.
"Cat? You actually use such a cloying nickname? Who is it? Who told you to..."
Yin Xiao quickly turned off the screen, raised her hand to hold Dai Lan's chin, pinched her cheek, manually muted her microphone to avoid the probing gaze, and pretended not to hear the teasing in her words.
"Senior, is it convenient to add me on WeChat?"
Yin Xiao stood up, walked around Dai Lan, and held her phone out to her senior, Zhang Qingyue, successfully adding her on WeChat.
The music paused for a moment, then burst forth with the crisp sound of drums and strings, as a new rock song brought the atmosphere to its peak.
Dai Lan and Zhang Qingyue chatted for several tens of minutes, gaining a lot of insights. Satisfied, she put her computer into her backpack and pulled Yin Xiao, who was eating melon, to a nearby booth. There, she found many familiar classmates, who were drinking and chatting in a circle.
"Dude, are you trying to suffocate the whole class with your smoke?" Dai Lan rudely pushed aside the sunglasses-wearing boy smoking in front of her, and pouted, "Behave yourself, smoke further away."
The boy took off his sunglasses, drunkenly exhaled a puff of smoke, and before he could speak, Chen Xi, the class representative, grabbed his collar and pushed him down the steps.
The smoke in front of her was blown away by the wind, spreading out into a white haze. Yin Xiao wrinkled her nose uncomfortably, letting Dai Lan pull her to sit on the brown sofa chair.
The coffee table was laden with fruit and snacks. After sorting out her thesis, Dai Lan had a hearty appetite and kept stuffing things into her mouth. She also slipped a chocolate-covered liqueur into Yin Xiao's hand.
Yin Xiao's expression was blank; she held the phone in her hand without moving, her gaze fixed on the screen.
"What are you thinking about? You're out having fun and you're just spacing out?" Dai Lan shrugged her right shoulder and gently bumped into her, glancing at her lit screen. "You changed your profile picture again? I thought you stopped changing them. You'd been using that same picture for two months already. Knowing your old habits, you would have changed it eight hundred times over..."
"Dai Lan".
Before she could finish speaking, Chen Xi, the class representative, suddenly returned to the booth with a glass of blue-purple fruit wine, casually raised her hand, and put it on Dai Lan's shoulder. "Can I ask you something?"
"What?" Dai Lan's finger was still hovering over the edge of Yin Xiao's phone when she was suddenly interrupted, and she turned her head blankly.
"You know him, right?" Chen Xi pressed the screen to zoom in on the photo and tapped the screen mysteriously.
Dai Lan craned her neck to glance at him, her face full of confusion. "Who...who is this? I don't know him."
"Give me a break, you didn't recognize yourself before you used that as your profile picture? You're kidding me."
Dai Lan hadn't quite caught on yet. Hearing her say that, she looked down again, swiped the photo with her thumb, zooming in and out repeatedly, until finally the conspicuous headphones pulled her back to her memory.
"Yes, it's my profile picture. It was the punishment for losing the game last time..." Dai Lan suddenly stopped, took the phone and looked at it again and again, then held it to her cheek and asked Chen Xi, "You're saying I know him?"
“Okay.” Chen Xi nodded helplessly.
"Who is he?" Dai Lan remained bewildered.
"You don't know Yi Zhiyan? He's a top student who does scientific research." Chen Xi's eyes widened, looking even more bewildered than her.
"Of course I know him." Dai Lan's neck suddenly stiffened, and she asked incredulously, "Is that Senior Yi in the photo?"
"Nonsense, you don't know? You don't know why you would use his photo as your profile picture, you wouldn't..."
Dai Lan couldn't help but interrupt, spreading her hands to explain, "It wasn't me who used it, it was originally Xiao's..."
She froze, words stuck in her throat for a long time, staring intently at the photos on her phone. After a while, she slowly turned her head, raised her hand and pressed it against Yin Xiao's thin shoulder, her tone suddenly shifting in surprise, and she blurted out a curse, "Holy crap!"
"You, you..." She wrapped her arms around Yin Xiao's neck, forcefully turned his chin, and looked him in the eye. "Your profile picture before, the one you changed as punishment for losing, was Yi Zhiyan!"
"..." Yin Xiao's attention was still on the several messages that Yi Zhiyan had sent in a row. The light in front of her flashed, her pupils slowly focused, and she nodded absentmindedly, "Mm."
Dai Lan released her, covered her mouth with both hands, and the silent shock gradually faded in her flickering eyes. Many details that she couldn't understand before were now incredibly clear.
"Do you even know him or not?" Chen Xi pressed on relentlessly, having somehow found a piece of Basque food. She used a small fork to poke off a piece and sipped it with her lips.
"I know him." Dai Lan suppressed the turmoil in her heart, grabbed a nearby cushion for support, and then looked at Chen Xi with a puzzled expression. "Why are you asking me this? What's wrong, senior?"
"I just wanted to ask you..." Chen Xi put down her fork and asked softly, "Is he married?"
"Huh?" Dai Lan immediately threw away the cushion, straightened her shoulders, and thought she had misheard.
After a few seconds of silence, she suddenly remembered seeing her senior in the library and quickly patted the dazed Yin Xiao, "Xiao Xiao, didn't we see your senior wearing a wedding ring in the library last time? It seems we weren't mistaken, he really is married..."
Startled by Dai Lan's movements, Yin Xiao didn't quite catch up with her train of thought and vaguely replied, "Which senior?"
"Yi Zhiyan." Dai Lan covered her mouth with her hand and whispered three words, "Your profile picture."
Yin Xiao caught the key words, quickly turned to look at Dai Lan, and frowned, "Yi Zhiyan?"
Chen Xi, who had just finished eating Basque cake, heard the name and, holding an empty plate, took the initiative to approach.
"Yes, Yi Zhiyan, that senior from the Computer Science Department, I saw him wearing a ring, and I heard some classmates asking about it. He said it was a wedding ring..."
Chen Xi pulled out a tissue to wipe her hands, glancing at Dai Lan with resentment, "But it's all just hearsay. I saw you used his photo as your profile picture, so I thought you two were close. I was even going to ask you about it, but it turns out you know less than I do..."
"How would I know..." Dai Lan awkwardly tugged at the corners of her mouth, but couldn't resist her gossip-loving curiosity, "So you're really married?"
"I heard it was a marriage arranged by his family. I doubt this aloof senior has much feeling for it," Chen Xi said with a shake of his head and a sigh.
“It was arranged by the family. No wonder I only saw the ring and didn’t see anyone.” Dai Lan took a sip of the lychee wine in front of her, licked the wine stains off her lips, and suddenly stopped.
Yin Xiao's crush is none other than Senior Yi Zhiyan...
She swallowed the sweet wine in her mouth with difficulty, and cautiously observed Yin Xiao's expression out of the corner of her eye.
Yin Xiao's expression remained unchanged. She tapped the screen with her finger, making a few quick taps as if typing, then deleted them in the blink of an eye.
The flickering, shifting light cast shadows on her eyelashes, slowly blurring them, and creating distinct, bright patches of color around her cheeks, further obscuring her true emotions.
Dai Lan rubbed her forehead in frustration, then made up her mind and slapped Yin Xiao's shoulder hard, saying each word clearly, "Yi Zhiyan's marriage is definitely not genuine, don't you think, Xiao Xiao?"
Yin Xiao's hand trembled when she was slapped, and the message in the chat box was sent accidentally.
[Do not make the relationship public.]
The few words were cryptic and delivered in a harsh tone, leaving no room for negotiation.
Yin Xiao clenched her fist, then, feeling it was inappropriate, long-pressed the screen to retract her message, when her phone suddenly vibrated.
[Carter: Where are you?]
Yin Xiao released her grip and let out a long sigh of relief.
Since Yi Zhiyan has seen it, there's no need to retract it. Just be frank about her thoughts. After all, continuing to hide it is also to help him.
[Golden Eagle team building activity; discuss matters at home.]
Yin Xiao sent the message in one go and immediately turned off the screen. She planned to discuss it seriously with Yi Zhiyan when she got home, to see how to hide their relationship in order to better cooperate with his plan.
She held her phone in her palm, her fingers unconsciously rubbing together, touching the ring mark on her ring finger. Perhaps because she had just taken it off, the faint ring was easily noticeable.
"Xiaoxiao?"
Yin Xiao looked up and met Dai Lan's worried gaze. Remembering to answer her question, she smiled gently to cover it up, "Yes."
Dai Lan bent her arm and rested it on the back of the chair, observing her up and down for a few seconds before touching her chin meaningfully. "You're not acting right today. What are you hiding from me this time?"
No way.
Yin Xiao stretched out her arm, grabbed a bottle of apple juice from the table, pressed down on the still-spinning dice, and deliberately changed the subject, smiling at Chen Xi next to her, "Class monitor, didn't you say in the group yesterday that you wanted to play dice?"
"That's right!" Chen Xi slapped his forehead, stood up with his hands on his hips, "I was so busy gossiping that I forgot to invite people to join the gathering... Where did everyone in our class go?"
She rushed into the dance floor in her high heels, grabbed one person in each hand and pushed them back to their booths. In the blink of an eye, the area around the coffee table was surrounded by people.
"It's all fun, but shouldn't we set some rules? What happens when you lose?"
"Since we're graduating anyway, let's play truth or dare!"
"support!"
Dai Lan gripped the dice cup, rolled up her sleeves, and struck a pose ready for a big battle, loudly echoing, "Come on! Let's make it clear first, no fighting during dares, it's a gentleman's game!"
Yin Xiao took a mint from the tray, tore open the wrapper, put it in her mouth, and nodded silently.
After several rounds, almost everyone had to take a dare, and the shouts grew louder and louder. As the drinks flowed and the smoke filled the air, the boy in sunglasses who had lost the previous round was angrily calling out "Daddy" all over the place.
Yin Xiao, who had never lost before, leaned leisurely against Dai Lan and drank apple juice.
"Keep going! The next loser has to go to the dance floor and do some calisthenics! I have a video, come and see!" the boy in sunglasses shouted defiantly.
"Damn, that was such a nasty move, hahaha!"
The surrounding laughter was drowned out by the cool rock music, and all eyes were drawn to the spinning dice in the center.
The lights came on, revealing the final score.
Yin Xiao twitched the corner of her mouth, took a sip of apple juice, put down the glass bottle, and asked directly, "How long do you want to jump, one or two sessions?"
"Two sections won't do! You have to do the whole routine!" the boy protested, looking up at you all. "I've called all of you 'daddy'!"
"Hey!"
"roll!"
"One period is fine." Chen Xi raised her hand and pressed down on the neck of the boy next to her, speaking gently to control the situation. "Any period will do."
Yin Xiao nodded, turned around, took a deep breath, and walked towards the dance floor.
The dance music was clear and the rhythm was lively, and people in the dance floor were dancing happily to the music.
The colorful light bulbs above her head spun wildly, their light blinding. Yin Xiao closed her eyes, slowly stretched out her arms, and began to do some stretching exercises.
Turning her head, she saw a flash of light above her head, and her gaze froze, fixing on a figure not far away.
Having been in a confined space for too long, her brain was somewhat oxygen-deprived, and her reactions were noticeably slower. But her heart tightened without warning, and she squinted uncertainly.
Wearing a camel-colored long trench coat, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist, and sharp eyes, his handsome face looked vaguely familiar...
No, it's not that it seems like... that's Yi Zhiyan.
Yin Xiao hurriedly turned her head, glanced at the classmates sitting around the booth, and without thinking much, simply turned around and squeezed into the crowd, pretending to dance to the music.
Her waving wrist was suddenly gripped tightly, and the familiar woody scent forcefully assaulted her nostrils. Warm fingertips brushed against the back of her hand, the gentle touch carrying muscle memory, slowly sliding down to her fingertips.
Yin Xiao froze for a few seconds, then stiffly turned around to look.
Yi Zhiyan's face was cold, and the interplay of light and shadow made his facial features appear even sharper, but his tone remained as gentle as ever.
"Honey, where's the ring?"
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Author's Note: There will be another chapter of the main story on Sunday! Starting next week, bonus chapters will be released regularly!
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