Love Has Fireworks - Chapter 29

Chapter 29: A Beautiful Appearance

Wearing high heels that were nearly ten centimeters high and clutching a paper bag stuffed with her old clothes and shoes, Qian Fei shuffled down the street, teetering with every step while biting her back teeth.

Whenever she thought about how much money had been swiped from her card during checkout just now, her heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys all ached in unison. In front of the cashier, she had wanted to back out and call off the purchase, but Li Yifei had threatened her from the side: "If you don't buy it, I won't pay rent!"

She had no choice but to swallow her pride and check out with tears in her eyes.

Thinking of those departed pink hundred-yuan bills, her heart ached so much that her feet felt faint, and her gait became increasingly winding and unstable.

Li Yifei stayed right beside her, ready at any moment to prop her up. "From now on, stop blindly buying clothes for yourself on Taobao. Everything you buy looks like a tattered gunny sack or a laborer's uniform when you wear it. In the future, you have to let me review things before you buy clothes, got it! To put it bluntly, with you dressing so hideously every day, the person who suffers the most injury is me! I'm practically being blinded by your ugliness!"

Qian Fei felt her lower abdomen trembling as she balanced precariously on the stiletto heels. She pleaded with Li Yifei, "Fine, fine, fine, whatever you say! I'm saying, since we've already ruined the family fortune, let's just go back now! Wearing these contraptions with thin sticks propped under my feet, I almost don't know how to walk anymore!"

Li Yifei gave her a white eye. "Don't be ungrateful. This young master has never accompanied a woman shopping before. It's only because I saw you getting your period every month yet still living your life like an old man that I felt you were truly too pitiful, which is why I broke this exception! I haven't even said I'm tired yet, but you have the nerve to clamor about going home first!"

Qian Fei was both angry and amused. "Oh! Young Master, so you've bestowed another precious 'first time in my life' upon me! Then what? Should I dedicate my body in marriage to repay you?" She was focusing so much on bickering that her footing slipped, and she suddenly turned her ankle.

Just as she was about to fall, Li Yifei, with quick eyes and fast hands, caught her.

"Exactly how deep is your grudge against me that you want to dedicate your body in marriage and ruin my entire life? I say, have you never worn high heels before? How can you walk like this? Are you even a woman?" he asked in a succession of questions laced with endless mockery.

Qian Fei took her steps carefully. "Very rarely, and the highest I've ever worn was only five centimeters. Scraping the sky on towering heels to ride the subway every day in Beijing—what difference is there between that and self-torture?"

Li Yifei let out a "tsk" and said, "As a woman, you can't even figure out how to wear high heels properly—what difference is there between that and living in vain?"

Qian Fei was choked up.

Li Yifei dragged her in the opposite direction of home, saying as he walked, "Since you can't figure out how to wear them, you need to walk a few more steps to practice all the more! So don't be in a hurry to go home either, I'm taking you to another place!"

Giving Qian Fei no time to speak, he pulled out his phone and made a call on his own.

Qian Fei heard him spit out an English word. "Hi, Steve, are you busy right now? I want to bring a friend over to get her hair done and do some styling, is that alright?"

After saying a couple more sentences, he hung up the phone, tugged Qian Fei, and continued walking forward.

Stumbling along as she tried hard to control the high heels, Qian Fei asked, "Where are you taking me?"

Li Yifei said, "To sell you off for some candy!"

Qian Fei glared at him. "May it be so sweet it chokes you to death!"

Li Yifei glared back. "You aren't worth that much money, so you can't buy too much candy. Rest assured, you won't reach the level of sweetness that chokes me to death!"

Just like this, they bickered back and forth with half-hearted remarks, fighting all the way from the street into a taxi, and then from the taxi to the entrance of a small alleyway.

Getting out of the car, Qian Fei looked at the ancient, charming little alleyway and asked Li Yifei, "What kind of place is this? What's inside?"

Li Yifei led her inside. "There's a Water Curtain Cave!"

Leading her through seven twists and eighth turns, he arrived before a wooden door. The wooden door had great charm, matching the style of a grand mansion gate of a wealthy family in ancient times. Looking at the wooden door before her eyes, Qian Fei felt as if a pair of delicate jade hands would stretch out from inside at any moment to gloomily open this door.

Her mind drifted. Suddenly, it was as if the illusion became reality, and she saw a hand pushing against the door. The five fingers were fair and slender, the nails cut short, and the white crescents on the fingernails were curved like smiling faces.

Qian Fei thought, this door set against this hand is truly beautiful.

Suddenly, she heard Li Yifei's teasing voice by her ear: "Have you looked enough? If you've looked enough, I'm pushing the door open!"

Qian Fei snapped back to reality.

She had actually been staring blankly at Li Yifei's hand just now.

How had she never noticed before that his hands were so worth looking at?

She spoke roughly to Li Yifei, "I thought it was some young lady's hand, which is why I took a couple more looks. Tell me, for an old man's hand to grow so delicate, isn't that effeminate!"

Li Yifei let out a cold laugh of "ha," picking up Qian Fei's hand to look at it. "As if your hand isn't manly! Look at your hand..."

He scrutinized Qian Fei's hand, and his words suddenly cut off. Only after several seconds did he say again, "Damn! How come I never noticed that a tough woman like you actually grew a pair of a woman's hands!"

The most womanly place on Qian Fei's entire body was precisely this pair of hands. What Yao Jingjing envied most was her hands; no matter how much she soaked them in water to wash vegetables and do chores, after casually smearing a bit of Dabao lotion on them, they would become smooth and tender. The ten fingers were slender and long like scallion shoots, without a single prominent joint.

Qian Fei snatched her hand back, proudly raising her chin. "Of course! There are still plenty of things you don't know!"

The wooden door in front of them was suddenly pulled open from the inside, and Qian Fei saw a handsome man with semi-long curly hair and a beard.

"Yifei, how long do you plan to play the hand-holding game at the door with your little girlfriend?" the man asked with a smile on his face.

Qian Fei rushed to speak up: "We weren't holding hands! And I'm not his girlfriend either!"

Li Yifei looked at her, then looked at the handsome man. "Hi, Steve!" He casually draped an arm over Qian Fei's neck, throttling her as he said to Steve, "Trouble you to give this big brother a styling, so she won't look as hideous as she does now!"

※※※※※※

Steve led Qian Fei and Li Yifei into the house.

Qian Fei looked around as she walked, coming to realize that this place should be a styling studio.

Entering the room, Steve told them to sit first, saying he would go out to grab some things and come back.

Qian Fei looked around the room, asking Li Yifei, "With this place opened so covertly, can it make money?"

Li Yifei curled the corner of his mouth to mock her: "You're a country bumpkin, aren't you! The high style of this place lies precisely in the fact that not just anyone can find it, not everyone who finds it can get in, and not everyone who gets in is someone Steve is willing to entertain!"

Qian Fei clicked her tongue: "For real or for fake? Making it sound like some secret organization!"

Li Yifei said, "Of course it's real. The customers entertained here usually fall into only two categories: either they are wealthy people, or they are powerful people."

Qian Fei glanced at him. "Then how did you mix your way in?"

Li Yifei looked at her, saying with a serious face, "Since things have reached this point, I won't hide it from you anymore. Actually, I am a second-generation rich kid."

Qian Fei also looked at him, echoing with an earnest face: "Right, I know that actually your family is wealthy, your dad is the president of a financial conglomerate, and because you didn't choose the well-matched wealthy young lady he arranged for you to romance, he cut off your financial resources. You also severed ties with him because of this, and from then on, the prince turned into a frog, reduced to the streets and renting a room from me!"

Li Yifei revealed an astonished expression. "So you knew everything all along!"

Qian Fei looked at him, her cheeks trembling faintly. "Yes, I know everything! Actually, you are Li Ka-shing's secret grand-nephew, and me, I am Qian Xuesen's collateral grand-niece!"

Li Yifei looked at her, his expression gradually twisting.

Qian Fei finally couldn't restrain herself from bursting into loud laughter: "Big brother, you really cooperate! It seems you didn't accompany your ex-girlfriend to watch melodramatic Korean dog-blood serials less in the past!"

Li Yifei's face turned fierce, looking at her as he said, "Qian Fei, sooner or later, there will come a day when I will make you willingly admit that I am your young master!"

Qian Fei patted his shoulder and laughed out loud: "I admit it right now, you are the young master, you are absolutely the young master!"

Li Yifei looked at her huffily, let out a very forceful cold snort, said a sentence of "you might as well just be stupid to death," and turned his head to the side, never looking at her again.

Looking at his proud and spoiled demeanor, Qian Fei felt that besides being lazy, cheap, gluttonous, proud, and tongue-destructive, and having a bit of vanity while coveting enjoyment, he was actually quite cute sometimes.

Laughing, she thought to herself that her tastes were truly becoming heavier and more perverted; she had actually begun to think Li Yifei was a bit cute.

※※※※※※

While Steve was styling Qian Fei, Li Yifei waited in the outer room while drinking tea.

Steve glanced outside, saying to Qian Fei with a smile, "I've truly never seen him have this much patience!"

Qian Fei felt these words had some deep meaning. After thinking about it, she explained, "I am definitely different from those girls he brought before! I'm not his girlfriend, I'm his landlord!"

Steve looked at her from the mirror. "Landlord? Heh-heh, interesting!" He paused, then said again, "With that temper of his, he's famously impatient. How could he accompany a girl here? You are the first one!"

Qian Fei couldn't help but let out two dry coughs: "Aiya, he just didn't view me as a female. If he truly regarded me as a female, he probably wouldn't have brought me here!"

Steve smiled and didn't speak.

Qian Fei asked him, "Steve, how did Li Yifei find your place here anyway?"

Steve recalled for a moment and said, "Hmm, I seem to remember his childhood friend brought him here! His childhood friend's mother frequently gets styled at my place."

Qian Fei let out an "oh," and asked again, "Is his childhood friend someone who's quite capable of topping up mobile phone credit?"

Steve pursed his lips and smiled: "Right, it's exactly him! He frequently tops up a lot of phone credit to play online games! He even told me that this matter must absolutely not let his mother know!"

Qian Fei couldn't help but click her tongue: "This kid is truly ruinous enough to the family fortune!" Then she couldn't help but complain, "Li Yifei even told me himself that he could come here because he's a second-generation rich kid. Didn't he rely on his local-tycoon childhood friend to come here?!" She asked Steve, "Would you say Li Yifei is a second-generation rich kid?"

Steve blinked and smiled genially: "Interested in him? Alright, I'll just leak a bit of my client confidentiality to you! I only know that Yifei's childhood friend's parents open a jade shop, so he can be counted as a second-generation rich kid. As for Yifei," he shrugged, "he hasn't spoken concretely about what his family members do, only saying they are self-employed. However, his spending has always been very generous, so looking at it this way, the family should at least be a fairly wealthy self-employed household! If you get along with him, you won't have to worry about a house or anything; his family should have all of these!"

Qian Fei hadn't expected Steve to be this gossipy. She curled her lip. "Isn't he just generous? He hasn't saved up any money, and even now he's still renting a room to live!" After finishing, she couldn't help but emphasize once more, "I truly don't have much interest in him. That difficult-to-serve energy of his could drive even a benevolent master crazy! I am a mortal, unable to withstand this kind of life tempering, so you must absolutely not misunderstand, okay!"

Steve smiled without speaking.

Qian Fei looked toward herself in the mirror, suddenly asking, "Steve, would you say I look quite ugly?"

Steve shrugged. "How could that be? You are very beautiful, just not good at grooming. With a little dressing up, you will become very eye-catching and outstanding!"

Qian Fei was so excited she almost felt the urge to become sworn siblings with him. "Really? But Li Yifei said I'm an ugly-looking tough woman!"

Steve blinked at her. "In a moment, I will turn you beautiful and pretty, making him slap his own face!"

Qian Fei almost had hot tears fill her eyes. "Don't forget to help me trim my eyebrows nicely!"

Steve burst out laughing.

※※※※※※

Two hours later.

Steve supported Qian Fei's shoulders, standing behind her, looking together with her at her reflection in the mirror.

"How is it? Do you still recognize the person inside?"

Looking at the person in the mirror, Qian Fei suddenly didn't dare believe that was herself.

Her permed long hair no longer frizzed and tilted everywhere; they draped obediently over her shoulders, softly forming a curl at the very bottom, emanating a quality she had never possessed before called "sensuality."

Steve had trimmed her eyebrows and applied a light layer of makeup; her facial features instantly became beautiful and vivid.

Looking at her, Steve said with a smile, "Look, these features, this figure! Whoever dares say you are an ugly woman again, you just slap him!"

Li Yifei, who had finished drinking three pots of tea in the outer room, had already waited until he was extremely impatient, continuously craning his neck to ask "Is it ready yet."

Steve answered him: "Coming out right now."

He pushed Qian Fei out.

Li Yifei had just poured a cup of fresh tea and was currently holding it to drink. When he saw Qian Fei come out, he seemed to be startled as he looked up, his hand shaking, spilling half of the tea.

Looking at the gaze in his eyes, Qian Fei was so bashful she straight up wanted to hide behind Steve.

"What's wrong?" Steve asked while pulling her out from behind him.

Qian Fei said in a small voice, "I feel he is using his gaze to scold me for how I can still look so hideous even after putting on makeup!"

Steve couldn't help but laugh.

He asked Li Yifei: "How about it? Satisfied or not, give me a word!"

Li Yifei let out a cough, and Qian Fei felt her heart lift a bit toward the back of her throat. She prepared her psychological state to hear words of criticism.

Instead, she heard Li Yifei say to Steve: "Steve, bring me a set of the cosmetics you used to apply her makeup just now, and by the way, teach her how she can rely on her own two hands to spruce up her face to look like it does now!"

Qian Fei blanked out for a moment, raising her head.

Li Yifei was currently looking at her, wearing a demeanor that seemed like a smile yet wasn't a smile.

"With you looking like this now, it can at least be called having a bit of a human appearance!"