Ye Kai took a shower and climbed into bed. His phone was cluttered with messages. He opened WeChat out of habit, and just then Ye Jin’s video request popped up.
"So early?"
It should be less than seven o'clock Beijing time. Ye Jin likes to sleep in during holidays, so it is really crazy to get up at this time.
"I'm awake now. I missed you. Let's talk before going back to sleep."
Ye Kai was shocked by her corny words: "I got goose bumps."
Ye Jin rubbed her sleepy eyes and looked at Ye Kai's face filling the screen in a disorderly manner. This deadly angle would have made an ordinary person look crooked, but Ye Kai was still good-looking, with a delicate nose, eyebrows, chin and even teeth. Ye Jin could even count his eyelashes that were naturally curled up like a small fan. She envied and hated: "We are born of the same mother, why do I think you are better looking than me?"
Ye Kai lowered his head and smiled, revealing a thin white collarbone under his T-shirt: "You must have slept silly, who is prettier than you? You are the most beautiful among the five members of the Ye family, the most beautiful on Siyuan Road."
Siyuan Road is a secluded mountain road along the sea. The families living there are more prominent than each other. To praise Ye Jinliang as the most beautiful woman in Siyuan Road would be to outdo the entire upper class circle of Ning City.
Ye Jin couldn't help laughing after hearing this flattery. She said "You" in a reproachful way, and then asked casually with her hair curled, "I heard that Chen Youhan went to Canada?"
Ye Kai's smile faded a little and he said "hmm".
The news spread so fast. In fact, when he and Chen Youhan were discussing the flight attendant in the hotel, the news spread like wildfire across the Pacific Ocean, all thanks to Ms. Lanman, who had spread the news about how Chen Youhan had suddenly appeared from nowhere and how he was a gentleman and suave in the group with a small loudspeaker. Even Qu Jia was shocked and said, "Mom, I will pay you double the amount that Chen Youhan gave you. I don't care about that kind of dirty money." Unfortunately, Lanman fell in love with Chen Youhan at first sight and announced in a high-profile manner that she would invite him to a family dinner tomorrow night, and even tagged Ye Jin.
"What is he doing in Canada? Isn't he going on vacation to an island in the Indian Ocean?"
Ye Kai closed WeChat, randomly opened an English learning app and started practicing reading. He said perfunctorily, "I don't know. He said he came to inspect the project temporarily."
Ye Jin didn't know what expression he had. After a while, he said, "When will you be back?"
"You're asking even though you already know the answer," Ye Kai quickly translated in his mind, smiling faintly, "There's still more than a week left."
"Then you will go back with him then?"
Ye Kai finally gave up on The New Yorker, which he hadn't read for a few paragraphs, but he didn't switch back to WeChat. He lay on his back facing the ceiling, his arms stretched out and folded behind his head, and whispered, "I don't know. Do you want to come to Canada?"
Ye Jin hesitated for a moment: "Grandma asked me to come yesterday."
Ye Kai curled his lips silently: "Then are you coming?"
"No." Ye Jin said neatly, "If I come, Ms. Lan will definitely let me take Chen Youhan around. I have nothing better to do than to fly for a day to accompany him."
The conversation ended here, and Ye Jin went back to sleep. Ye Kai was not sleepy, so he turned on the desk lamp and casually opened a foreign novel. He read it until the second half of the night, and when he woke up the next day, the two dark circles under his eyes scared Ms. Lan.
"Why don't you stay up late at night to take the Harvard exam?"
Ye Kai slowly finished a glass of milk, let out a slow "ah", licked the milk stains on his lips, and said, "Is it not possible to take the Cambridge or Oxford entrance exams?"
"Okay, run wherever you want." The English Channel had left a deep wound on Lan Man, who had rheumatic leg pain. She sat opposite, watching Ye Kai chopping bacon and scrambled eggs slowly, and asked casually, "Do you really want to study in the UK?"
Ye Kai hadn't thought much about this question. He was only in the first year of high school, and many important events in his life had not yet entered his memory. He said casually, "No, let's go to Harvard, so that we can be closer to our noble and elegant Ms. Lan." Lan Man smiled dignifiedly and sighed, "You and Ye Jin are both more opinionated and stubborn than each other. Look at her, she is over 30 and still not married."
"Grandma, Mom is picking for my sister."
Speaking of Qu Jia, Lan Man became even angrier: "I was wondering if you two little ancestors were so difficult to please. It turns out that you only inherited my daughter's skills."
Grandpa Qu Zhongli came back from his morning walk with a few newspapers and letters under his arm, like an old gentleman with classic manners. He opened the local Chinese Business News, took a sip of black tea and asked, "When will Youhan come?"
"In the afternoon."
Qu Zhongli groaned and sank into the sofa: "Hearing your praise, I want to see what kind of good son this Chen Feiyi can teach."
Lan Man covered her hands and whispered to Ye Kai, "I'm jealous."
"I heard it." Qu Bozhong shook the newspaper and snorted deliberately, making the grandfather and grandson laugh.
Ye Kai lost his appetite when he didn't sleep well. He licked a little breakfast like a cat and went upstairs to practice the competition questions. After two hours of hard work, he couldn't stand it anymore and fell back on the bed and fell into a deep sleep. When he woke up, the setting sun shone through the west window, rendering the wooden desk and white gauze golden. He tiredly reached out from under the quilt for his phone and saw several unread messages.
Two of them were from Chen Youhan, one asked him if he had gotten up, and the other asked him what kind of flowers his grandmother liked.
Oops. Ye Kai rubbed his hair and jumped off the bed, leaping to the window in one step. His window faced the flowerbed in the front yard, and he saw his grandmother pruning roses. Then he glanced again, and his grandmother's hunched back straightened up, and she waved at the door. Ye Kai's sight drifted over and saw Chen Youhan, bathed in the sunset, pushing open the fence door and walking in. He was wearing a casual suit, a very British style, and holding a large bouquet of flowers in his arms. Ye Kai didn't know much about flowers, and from a distance, he only felt that it was a purple like mountain mist.
Grandma likes purple, and Chen Youhan guessed it after only seeing her once.
Ye Kai watched him walk calmly through the courtyard, stop, and hand the bouquet to his grandmother. Two seconds later, his grandfather also came out, strode towards him, and patted his shoulder affectionately. The sound of the three people laughing and talking could be heard faintly on the second floor, floating in the beam of warm sunlight. He watched them chatting in the sunset, and was mesmerized.
Chen Youhan seemed to sense something, and slowly raised his eyes, accurately catching sight of the person behind the second-floor window sill. The two looked at each other quietly from a distance, their eyes meeting in the air. Chen Youhan smiled, and nonchalantly withdrew his gaze, as if he had just inadvertently glimpsed a flying bird.
Ye Kai left the windowsill, his face red from the sunset.
He kept dreaming about this sight later. He dreamed that he saw his grandparents walking towards him with flowers in their hands in the sunset, but their grandparents had disappeared. The beautiful flowers and the beautiful smile had all become his.
Ye Kai washed up and went downstairs. He said nothing about what happened just now and pretended to have just woken up. He was wearing a loose cream-white fine wool sweater and a pair of cute rabbit cotton slippers on his feet, which were forced on him by Ms. Lan to satisfy her bad taste. Chen Youhan was chatting with Qu Zhongli in the living room. Ye Kai sat over quietly and picked up a cherry.
Chen Youhan glanced at him with a smile, as if he was looking at someone's child.
After a while, Lan Man came over holding the vase: "Youhan, take a look, is it beautiful?"
A simple white glass vase is covered with a large purple cloud. When you look closer, you can see that it is purple in different shades, a light dream made up of dozens of flowers.
"It looks good." Chen Youhan smiled, "It matches your earrings today."
Ye Kai raised his eyes and found that his grandmother was wearing retro earrings with mother-of-pearl inlaid with amethysts.
It's like a spirit. No wonder anyone he coaxes surrenders and anyone he flirts with falls for it.
Ye Kai asked: "What flower?"
"The light purple one is Astilbe, the taro-colored rose is Edith, and the light green one like smoke is Rose."
Ye Kai interrupted: "Remember all the way. Isn't it difficult?"
Chen Youhan said, "More than that, I wrote it down in my memo. I knew grandma would ask about it, so I just reviewed it."
Lan Man and Qu Zhongli both laughed.
The small family dinner for four people was filled with a warm atmosphere. Exquisite vintage tableware, perfect lighting, matching candlesticks, brilliant flowers, and laughter without barriers or awkward silences. Most of the topics revolved around Ye Kai and Chen Youhan, especially those embarrassing moments in childhood, which were brought up for the hundredth time. Things like being carried away by Alaskans while wrapped in swaddling clothes, racing with corgis, being thrown a ball by Chen Youhan like walking a dog, getting lost in Disneyland and crying while saying that he wanted to find Brother Youhan... Even though they could recite them by heart, grandpa and grandma still laughed their heads off.
In such occasions, the young have no human rights except to be teased. Ye forked a piece of thick-cut beef and said quietly, "How many more years will this kind of thing last?"
Chen Youhan happened to be sitting opposite him, and the light and shadows flowed on Ye Kai's delicate and thin face. Behind him, a bunch of sunset corals were placed in a gilded ceramic vase. Hearing Ye Kai's small complaint, he laughed softly and said, "Let's talk about you when you are twenty years old."
"...More than that." Ye Kai raised his eyes to look at him. His cold gaze set off the heavy colors behind him, and the picture was as beautiful as a movie.
"It's more than that," Chen Youhan said lazily, "... even talking about eighty years old is still fresh."
After dinner, they chatted for a long time and drank two cups of tea. When the city was immersed in the shadow of lights, Chen Youhan stood up to say goodbye. He rented a car from the car dealership, but he had just drunk a bottle of red wine worth hundreds of thousands of yuan from Qu Zhongli that night, so he obviously couldn't drive back home drunk. Ye Kai, the only person who didn't drink, took on this glorious responsibility.
Ye Kai started the car and saw that Chen Youhan was not wearing a seat belt, so he reminded him. Chen Youhan responded, lowered his head, closed his eyes, pinched his eyebrows, and looked tired. Ye Kai had no idea what to do with him, so he leaned over and pulled out the seat belt and fumbled for the buckle.
With a slight "click" sound, Ye Kai loosened his hand and turned around, but was caught off guard by Chen Youhan who grabbed his wrist.
Chen Youhan opened his eyes at some point. He looked normal and sober, but his eyes had become more profound after drinking, and against the backdrop of the bustling neon lights of the city, they looked like scattered stars.
The feeling of emptiness in his heart reappeared, seizing all of Ye Kai's senses. He seemed to be floating in a ball of light, his fingertips connected to the trembling of his ventricles, and the young man's Adam's apple rolled subtly.
"What's wrong?" he heard himself ask.
"Not going back to the hotel." said Chen Youhan.
"...Then where are we going?" Ye Kai stared into his eyes, for one second, two seconds, then his gaze moved downward, his thick black eyelashes drooping in panic.
Chen Youhan thought for a moment and said, "Ye Kai, come watch the sea with me."
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
