Inside the car, Chaochao saw the boy in the dark, loose T-shirt approaching quickly with his long legs. Excitedly, she pressed the window button, her short arms struggling to reach the windowsill, making a grand entrance that looked like she was carrying a rose in her mouth.
"Hi! Brother Jingcheng—"
What are you doing here?
"It's you?!"
Three different voices rang out almost simultaneously.
Chaochao stared wide-eyed, looking left and right: "???"
Were those all echoes of her voice?
Xie Jingcheng lowered his phoenix eyes and frowned as he looked at Pei Yushen, who was sitting in the back seat. His indifferent tone carried a subtle hint of hostility.
The other voice, "How come it's you?", came from Yu Ning.
Shouldn't they be here to pick up Yu Ci?
Her gaze shifted uncertainly between Chaochao and Xie Jingcheng, her wide, bright eyes revealing intense surprise.
Yu Ning really didn't expect that Xie Jingcheng, the male protagonist in the novel, also had a connection with Chaochao, and it seemed that the relationship was not inappropriate.
She vaguely began to unravel the mess, and a sense of unease and crisis rose within her.
She felt things were getting a little tricky.
She originally thought the little dumpling belonged only to her family, Yu Ci, and herself, but it seems... this dumpling actually belongs to most people?
Xie Jingcheng's tall and slender figure stood by the car door, blocking half of the sunlight and casting a long, slanted shadow over the two people in the back seat.
"Aren't you at your home?"
Xie Jingcheng first raised his hand and rubbed Chaochao's head, then his dark, slightly narrowed gaze swept over the carefully posed little dumpling and fixed directly on the quiet and indifferent boy inside.
Upon hearing the voice, Pei Yushen turned his dark eyes to look at the person who had come. His calm face showed no extra expression. He said, "Oh, I just went back to school with Chaochao and came to pick you up on the way."
As he finished speaking, his tone rose very slightly, which Chaochao couldn't detect, but Xie Jingcheng clearly heard a hint of boastfulness in his words.
Xie Jingcheng: "..."
He raised an eyebrow and calmly replied, "Indeed, it's a rare opportunity. There won't be many chances like this in the future."
The implication is that you'll only do it once or twice.
Pei Yu took a deep breath and almost imperceptibly choked, then pursed his lips and looked away from his cold gaze.
The system was having a great time watching the drama unfold; it seemed Xie Jingcheng's extra three or four years hadn't been wasted after all.
Just as the two boys were secretly vying for supremacy, and the air was thick with tension, Chaochao, shrouded in her brother's shadow in the corner, looked at the patch of sky that was peeking through and sighed wistfully.
She was heartbroken that her carefully planned, dazzling entrance had gone unnoticed.
As soon as she finished sighing, a small question mark slowly rose above her head—
Wait, she thought she just heard a familiar voice?
"...Xie Jingcheng?"
Although it was a question, the voice behind him sounded with absolute certainty and landed.
Xie Jingcheng paused, then turned around to look.
Yu Ning frowned and walked forward, stopping only when she reached the car. Her eyes swept over Xie Jingcheng with a rather complicated expression.
She had just thought about it many times.
...Could it be that she misunderstood everything before?
"Sister Ningning!"
The little dumpling's delighted baby voice suddenly burst out. Yu Ning, who had been silently feeling annoyed, subconsciously looked up and saw that the little dumpling was tugging at the boy's clothes with its two little hands, with a third of its body sticking out of the car window, and its round eyes shining even brighter in the sunlight.
"Sister, you're out of school too! Didn't you say you were going to do that thing called an experiment today?"
With each sentence Chaochao spoke, she couldn't help but lean forward another centimeter. Xie Jingcheng's tightly furrowed brows relaxed slightly, and he helplessly pressed down on Chaochao's shoulder, "Don't go any further."
Yu Ning's questioning gaze briefly swept over Xie Jingcheng, but when she met the little dumpling's focused gaze, as if he were her whole world, she could only hold on for two or three seconds before looking away as if she couldn't take it anymore. "Well, today's experiment went smoothly and ended early."
But her gaze, which she had immediately looked away from, suddenly stopped.
Out of the corner of my eye, I inevitably caught sight of another black-haired boy I'd never seen before in the car. His pale, handsome face exuded a faint air of illness, like an ice statue just carried out of the attic.
Yu Ning: ...Another one?!
She quickly turned her head, her professional smile coming naturally, but perhaps because she had been without her mask all day, or for some other reason, it now had a forced, insincere quality. "—And this is?"
The boy sitting inside was sitting upright, and at this moment he was reaching out his right hand to hold Chaochao's calf to prevent her from getting too excited and falling out of the car with a thud.
Noticing another gaze lingering on him, he lifted his eyelashes and looked back.
"This is Brother Yu Shen! Just like Brother Jing Cheng, he's Chao Chao's brother!"
"That's Sister Yu Ning! She's the one who gave me the little snowman cake!"
The innocent little dumpling quickly shook off her previous gloom and busied herself introducing her proud older brothers and sisters to each other, almost to the point of stacking their hands together for a game of Jenga.
Yu Ning silently repeated the boy's name in her mind, feeling as if she had heard it somewhere before, or perhaps seen it before...
Moreover, given her exceptional physical attributes, she shouldn't be completely unknown in the original work.
Pei Yushen and Yu Ning locked eyes. Pei Yushen's dark eyes held a more scrutinizing and gloomy look than when he had looked at Xie Jingcheng, along with a hint of hostility that was not easily detected.
I just talked about her at home, and now I've met her in person.
Xie Jingcheng, who always had a quick mind, immediately realized that the girl Chaochao had been talking about these past few days was Yu Ning.
Once he realized this, his brows furrowed even more deeply.
Because he knew that Yu Ning was not as simple as she appeared on the surface.
Although things seem to have changed now, who knows how long these changes will last.
Xie Jingcheng's first reaction was almost the same as Pei Yushen's: he suspected that Yu Ning's approach to Chaochao was for ulterior motives.
Yu Ning smiled and said, "Hello."
Pei Yu nodded deeply: "Nice to meet you."
Xie Jingcheng stood to the side, arms crossed, watching the two people inside and outside the car putting on a show of feigned innocence. He narrowed his phoenix eyes, lost in thought, and remained silent.
Sparks flew as their eyes met.
As Chaochao watched her older siblings greet each other amicably, a smile of contentment spread across her innocent face.
That's great! She'll only be missing Yu Ci; all her dear brothers and sisters will be together soon, and then she can—
"What a coincidence, everyone's here."
A clear and melodious voice flowed like a spring through everyone's ears. Chaochao, who was leaning against the car window, suddenly perked up her ears, and her eyes, which had been sighing just a second ago, suddenly shot out two laser beams!
That voice! She knew it all too well!
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