Chapter 35. [First Update] "It's not that you can't drink alcohol..."
Wen Xue received the call from an unknown number just as she and her roommate were leaving the cafeteria.
Monday was packed with classes, leaving her feeling dizzy and overwhelmed with information. So when the caller said they would be at her dorm in a few minutes, she instinctively thought it was a spam scam and didn't take it seriously at all.
However, just as she climbed five flights of stairs to her dormitory, before she even had a chance to drink some water, the phone rang again.
She was stunned. "I'm sorry, you've dialed the wrong number. I didn't buy any clothes."
As soon as she said that, she immediately thought of someone, "Wait, was it bought by a Mr. He?"
There was a rustling sound on the other end of the phone, probably someone flipping through a delivery slip. The person hesitated and said, "No, hello sir."
Mr. Wei?
Wen Xue looked bewildered. She did have someone with the surname Wei in her WeChat Moments, but that person was a girl, and also her elementary school classmate. "Are you sure you're not mistaken? I don't know anyone with the surname Wei."
"It's not that 'wei,' it's the 'hello' in 'calling.'" The deliveryman was also puzzled, even trying to recall if that surname was actually in the Hundred Family Surnames.
There was a few seconds of silence on the phone.
Wen Xue, who was standing in front of the table to get a water glass, instantly lost her composure and burst out laughing.
This drew the attention of everyone in the dorm, who wondered what hilarious joke she had heard, otherwise she would be laughing so hard she couldn't stand up straight.
Wen Xue hung up the phone, not bothering to explain to her roommate. Her eyes were full of laughter as she hurriedly ran outside, her steps light and quick. She wasn't sure if the little incident had worked, but she couldn't feel angry at all about He Yan buying her clothes without consulting her.
As I came out of the dormitory building, I immediately saw the deliveryman standing to one side with a large paper bag printed with the brand logo.
Wen Xue hurriedly stepped down the stairs, thanking him while also apologizing: "I'm sorry to have kept you waiting. He didn't tell me beforehand, I thought..."
The saleswoman, a young woman, chuckled upon hearing this: "It's alright, take a look, the receipt is all in there. If the size is correct, please sign for it."
When Wen Xue found the shopping receipt and saw that he had bought the exact same coat, she was both puzzled and amused.
What was he thinking?
After checking that the coat had no stains or defects and that the size was correct, she signed her name on the receipt, watched the clerk leave, picked up the paper bag, turned around and went inside, climbing five floors in one go without feeling tired at all.
Her roommates were all busy with their own things, but when they saw that she had brought back new clothes, they teased her to change into them.
The atmosphere became incredibly lively.
However, after Wen Xue put on the beautiful coat, the three of them frowned. Ye Manni touched her chin and asked, "Didn't you wear this before? Why did you buy two identical coats?"
Wen Xue was also helpless.
She sighed with a smile, "I don't understand either."
She didn't understand it, but that didn't stop her from cherishing the new dress even more. She carefully hung it up, and when she looked at the tag, she still felt a pang of heartache. After thinking it over, she sent He Yan a message: 【Received the dress^^】
She still couldn't help but chuckle when she thought of that "Hey".
She really didn't know how to address He Yan.
He didn't seem too happy to be called by his first name.
But she felt a little resistant to calling him "brother" deep down, though she couldn't tell him the specific reasons.
She knew perfectly well that he wanted to take care of her the way he took care of He Heng, but she didn't actually need his selfless devotion. So, she didn't want to trap him with one "brother" after another.
Wu Yuejiang said that only responsibility can keep He Yan here.
She didn't want to become He Yan's responsibility.
Because those two words are too heavy; he has already shouldered such a heavy burden, so don't add "her" to it.
Her phone vibrated. She glanced down and saw his reply: a simple "Mm".
In Changya's office, He Yan leaned against the windowsill. The number of people sunbathing downstairs had decreased from four to three. He held his phone in one hand, the screen showing his chat with "four missing one." Looking at the smiley face she sent, he smiled wryly.
…
The days passed peacefully, and everyone who knew Wenxue was happy for her; her overall condition was gradually improving.
She is also very grateful for her current life. To her surprise, she originally thought that she would be fired from the tutoring job after a short time, but she did it week after week and accumulated three envelopes today.
"Thank you." She accepted it with both hands.
Aunt Zhang, the nanny, liked her very much and said reproachfully, "Why are you being so polite? This is what you deserve."
Wen Xue smiled shyly.
Aunt Zhang leaned closer to her and, seeing that Fang Lingwei's room door was closed, whispered, "There's still a long way to go. Weiwei likes you a lot. If she can successfully get into high school, maybe President Fang will continue to ask you to tutor her."
Wen Xue was surprised.
Fang Lingwei likes her? How come she didn't know?
This was probably just Aunt Zhang being polite, and she didn't take it seriously. So she politely replied, "As long as Weiwei makes steady progress, she will definitely be able to get into high school."
The two walked to the entrance as they talked.
Wen Xue was changing her shoes while holding onto the shoe cabinet when her gaze drifted to the family photo hanging on the wall.
She had no intention of prying into other people's private affairs, but since she started tutoring Fang Lingwei, she had only seen Aunt Zhang and Fang Lirong and her daughter in this house. As for the tall man in the photo, she had never seen him.
But she knew that he was Fang Lirong's eldest son.
Ye Manni mentioned it once or twice during this period. The Fang family's family relations were not very harmonious. The son neither listened to his mother's wish to get a green card to settle down, nor was he willing to take over the company. However, he had an impressive resume and outstanding abilities, and he received a very good offer when he returned to China.
She looked away and squatted down to tie her shoelaces.
The doorbell rang suddenly. Aunt Zhang muttered who it was, peeked through the peephole, gasped, and hurriedly opened the door. A strong smell of alcohol hit her. Fang Lirong's driver, supporting her, gasped, "Ha...Ms. Fang, she...she's had too much to drink..."
Aunt Zhang said in her dialect, "What a terrible thing!" and quickly helped Fang Lirong from the driver's arms.
She couldn't handle it alone, so Wen Xue immediately stepped forward to lend a hand. The two of them struggled to help the drunk Fang Lirong lie down on the sofa.
"Xiao Wen, could you please take a look at this for me?" Aunt Zhang was clearly very familiar with handling this kind of situation. "I'll go find some hangover medicine!"
"good."
Aunt Zhang turned and went elsewhere to find medicine. Wen Xue bent down to take off Fang Lirong's boots. The black leather boots were knee-high and took quite a bit of effort to remove. Just then, the phone rang. It seemed a bit unusual, so unusual that Fang Lirong, who was already drunk and unconscious, immediately opened her eyes and answered the phone while holding on to her breath.
But that was all he had left.
After the call connected, her wrist went limp, and the phone fell onto the carpet.
Wen Xue hurriedly went to pick it up and saw that the call had not been interrupted. She could vaguely hear the person on the other end speaking, and the screen showed "son".
She hesitated for a few seconds, then held the phone to her ear. A clear male voice came through: "I was in a meeting this afternoon, my phone was on silent, so I didn't hear you—"
"Excuse me." Not wanting to pry into other people's phone calls, she interrupted softly, "Ms. Fang has had too much to drink, she probably can't answer the phone right now."
There was a few seconds of silence on the other end. "Who are you?"
"I am Weiwei's tutor. Mr. Fang has arrived home safely."
"Okay, thank you."
"You're welcome."
Wen Xue waited until he hung up the phone before putting the phone back in Fang Lirong's hand.
Aunt Zhang hurried over with a box of hangover medicine and some water, seemingly talking to herself: "I really don't know what's wrong with people these days, forcing them to drink excessively when doing business!"
Wen Xue stared intently at the strong woman Ye Manni had described, curled up on the sofa, overwhelmed with mixed feelings.
Ding-a-ling—
Her phone rang in her coat pocket.
It was He Yan calling.
Aunt Zhang turned around and saw Wen Xue still standing by the coffee table. She wiped the sweat from her forehead, smiled, and said, "It's alright, Wen, you should go ahead if you have something to do!"
Wen Xue nodded and walked towards the entrance. Remembering something, she stopped and said, "Aunt Zhang, please tell Ms. Fang that her son called her after she woke up."
Aunt Zhang replied, "Okay."
After leaving the Fang family home, Wen Xue tried to call back the phone that had been automatically disconnected, but the elevator signal was poor and kept cutting out.
She had no choice but to hang up the phone, lower her eyes and type a message to him, telling him not to worry.
bite.
As soon as the elevator door opened, she stepped out, only to be blocked by a wall of people. She hastily looked up, stopped abruptly, nearly bumping into him, and exclaimed in astonishment, "You…"
As usual, He Yan arrived at the entrance of the community to pick her up around 5:30 every Sunday. Five minutes passed, and he thought that maybe the girl had asked him a question, which had taken up a little time. It was nothing.
Ten minutes later, he could no longer stand and entered the residential area with a somber expression.
She waited patiently for two minutes, then dialed the number. The call went through, but no one answered. She dialed again, but he couldn't hear what she was saying.
Wen Xue lost her balance, but He Yan had already reached out and firmly supported her. Being so close, he couldn't help but smell the faint scent of alcohol on her. He frowned, leaned down at her with a serious expression, his high nose almost brushing against the top of her head, and asked uncertainly, "Have you been drinking?"
"ah?"
He Yan released her, and she immediately raised her arm to sniff her clothes.
How much did Mr. Fang drink? She was just jealous that her clothes smelled of alcohol from the doorway to the sofa.
"What happened?" he asked.
"No..." she explained, "I didn't drink. She's my student's mother. She must have had too much to drink at the dinner party. I got into the alcohol when I was helping her out."
He Yan's brows relaxed, and he said slowly, "Let's go."
As he spoke, he walked out of the elevator lobby first, with Wen Xue following closely behind, carrying her bag. She glanced at his back and then secretly looked at her watch, realizing that it was almost six o'clock without her noticing. No wonder he had followed her into the residential area.
When she was a child, she read the idiom "a snake in a cup" and wondered how anyone could think that a snake could be in a small cup.
That's so silly.
But looking back now, it seems that both she and He Yan have become that person.
When she received his message around 5 a.m., she would think something had happened to him and panic.
He is too.
She immediately felt a pang of self-reproach and secretly reminded herself that if something similar happened in the future, no matter how urgent it was, she should always put He Yan, who was waiting for her outside, at ease first.
After getting in the car, she fastened her seatbelt, sat sideways, and whispered earnestly, "I'll say so next time. Also, I didn't drink, it's impossible for me to drink."
Seeing her anxious expression, He Yan guessed that his inexplicable actions had frightened her.
To ease the tension, he paused for a few seconds and said seriously, "It's not that I can't drink, but there's one condition."
Wen Xue was slightly taken aback: "What?"
"I am here."
She hadn't expected He Yan to be more concerned about drinking. When she met his no longer serious gaze, the tension in her heart eased. Just as she was about to nod in agreement, her heart stirred slightly, and she looked directly at him and said, "Then you have to promise me one thing too."
He Yan could hardly remember how well-behaved and sensible she used to be.
At that time, no matter what he said, even if she had objections, she would keep them to herself and obediently nod and say okay.
He felt a mix of emotions.
Ultimately, I felt mostly relieved.
"Okay," he readily agreed.
Wen Xue hesitated for a moment: "I haven't said what it is yet..."
He Yan chuckled faintly, seemingly unconvinced.
He didn't even need to guess what she was talking about; he knew it was something trivial. Someone like her would rather make things difficult for herself than for others.
"Then I'll say it." She carefully chose her words, the image of Fang Lirong lying unconscious on the sofa flashing through her mind. "When you need to drink a lot while you're out doing business, and Yuejiang and the others can't take care of you, can you call me?"
She had never drunk alcohol before, but she could guess that getting drunk would be very uncomfortable.
Fang Lirong had a driver take her home, and Aunt Zhang helped her rest and found her some hangover medicine.
What about him?
She still remembered that time he was so drunk that he couldn't even hold his keys properly.
She knew she had no right to persuade him not to drink or to drink less, nor could she persuade him otherwise. Although she was still a student who had not yet entered society, she knew what it meant to be powerless to control one's own destiny.
Their eyes met, and He Yan slowly suppressed his smile, shaking his head: "This won't do."
Wen Xue was stunned for a few seconds before blurting out, "Why?"
Seeing her wide-eyed, silly look, He Yan said helplessly, "You'll behave when I throw up all over you."
That's secondary. The most fundamental reason was something he didn't want to say, but seeing her lips trembling as if she wanted to argue, he said seriously, "From now on, when you see a drunk man, stay as far away as possible. Your brother Yuejiang is a civilized person, right? That's because you haven't seen him when he's drunk and acting crazy."
Wen Xue's attention was successfully diverted. "Huh? Will Brother Yuejiang go on a drunken rampage?"
"Yes, once when he was drunk, Li Jingru met him downstairs and kindly helped him upstairs. Drunk people are strong, and she couldn't hold him steady, so Lao Wu fell and hit the wall."
"Then what?"
"He cried and screamed, trying to extort money from Li Jingru. She slapped him in return."
After a brief moment of shock, Wen Xue burst into laughter. "Really?"
Seeing that she was no longer insisting on him agreeing to that matter, He Yan breathed a barely perceptible sigh of relief. He calmly started the engine, and on the way back to school, he picked and chose, telling her all the examples he knew and had seen.
It was a well-intentioned effort to keep her away from alcohol and drunk people.
To his surprise, as he walked her to her dormitory and was about to say goodbye, she asked him in the darkness, "Will you be like them?"
He talks nonsense, throws things, curses, and even hits people...
He Yan: "..."
He was speechless.
Are all math students this focused?
So all that talk he said was useless? What was the point of all that talking?
He really wanted to trick her and scare her by saying that he would.
But as the words were about to come out, with her eyes fixed on him, he couldn't help but say, "No."
Wen Xue smiled and said, "Isn't that enough?"
At this point, she even joked with him, "It's okay if you spit on me, because you'll definitely buy me a new one, so I'll be the one who benefits."
She's always been the one who profits.
She remembered every bit of effort he put into her.
…
After taking a shower, Wu Yuejiang came out of the bathroom and ran into He Yan, who was coming upstairs. The two chatted and walked in side by side.
It was already past nine o'clock at night. By the light coming through the other windows, Wu Yuejiang keenly sensed that He Yan was in a good mood. To some extent, He Yan was a person who did not show his emotions. His joys and sorrows had become very faint after more than ten years of hardship. He had ten parts in his heart, but only three parts showed on his face.
"Tell me, what good news is there?" Wu Yuejiang asked.
He Yan raised an eyebrow, clearly wanting to speak, but then closed his mouth and changed his words, saying, "Never mind, it's nothing."
Wu Yuejiang looked at him suspiciously.
Really nothing?
He Yan stopped at the door, turned his head, and said casually, "Old Wu, I'll buy breakfast for tomorrow."
After saying that, he opened the door and went inside.
Wu Yuejiang stood there for a moment, his face stiffening: "Damn it, he must have done something to betray me again!"
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