Ni Sitian moved closer, leaned against his chest, and nodded.
Xu Tingchuan put his arm around her shoulder and held her quietly.
After a while, Ni Sitian took his hand, played with his long, slender fingers with distinct knuckles, looked up at Xu Tingchuan, and said expectantly, "Tell me about your childhood."
Xu Tingchuan intertwined his fingers with Ni Sitian's, quietly holding them together, and said calmly, "I don't have anything special to say."
“How could there not be? Jia Yue said you got into a foreign university when you were thirteen. Isn’t that the legendary genius?” Ni Sitian leaned against him, resting her chin on his chest, looking at him with adoration.
Xu Tingchuan smiled helplessly: "It seems Jia Yue told you a lot. What else did she say?"
"She also said that because of your grandfather, you went back to China to attend high school after graduating from university." Ni Sitian was very curious about him during his school days and asked, "Was it during this time that you received those two truckloads of love letters?"
She could easily imagine how attractive he must have been to young girls when he was seventeen or eighteen, especially since he was so smart.
"More or less," Xu Tingchuan said with a faint smile.
Ni Sitian pursed her lips, hesitated, and tentatively asked in a low voice, "Did your ex-girlfriend also send you love letters?"
Actually, she wanted to know who pursued whom between her ex-girlfriend and him, but that would be too direct, so she was a little more subtle about it.
“She didn’t.” Xu Tingchuan shook his head.
So, he's the one who won her over?
As Ni Sitian thought about it, her heart tightened. How outstanding must a girl be to make Xu Tingchuan take the initiative to pursue her?
"What's wrong?" Xu Tingchuan looked down and saw that she was sullen, so he reached out and pinched her cheek.
Ni Sitian didn't say anything, burying her face in Xu Tingchuan's chest. Reason told her that this long-standing jealousy was completely unnecessary, but she still felt a little uncomfortable.
After a while, she couldn't help but ask, "Were you together since high school? How did you meet? Is she your junior?"
Xu Tingchuan fell silent, not because he wanted to hide it from her, but because he didn't know where to begin.
Ni Sitian assumed he was unwilling to answer, so she pouted and muttered, "If you don't want to say, then forget it."
She got off him, rolled herself up in the blanket and covered herself with it. The pangs of sadness in her heart were hard to ignore. She had fallen for Xu Tingchuan, and perhaps she should say she really liked him.
Seeing that she had covered her head, Xu Tingchuan reached out and pulled it off, letting her peek out to breathe. He patted her head and sighed softly, "It's not that I don't want to talk about it, but I don't know where to begin."
He pulled Ni Sitian, blanket and all, into his arms from behind, resting his chin on her shoulder, and slowly said, "She's not a junior. We're the same age and in the same class in high school, but we didn't get together in high school. We established our relationship in the summer when we were twenty."
I remember when I graduated at eighteen, my grandfather's health improved, so I went back to the United States to continue my studies.
Two years later, Grandpa suddenly suffered from heart palpitations and passed away.
Because his parents were busy when he was young, he spent the most time with his grandfather and had the deepest bond with him.
That summer was the hardest summer he had ever endured.
As Ni Sitian listened to Xu Tingchuan's slow narration, she turned around and pursed her lips: "So she was there to help you through the pain of your grandfather's death, and then you two got together?"
“Not entirely.” Xu Tingchuan shook his head and said, “I really didn’t have many thoughts at the time. She told me that she had always liked me, and so we got together.”
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