Love Has Fireworks - Chapter 33

Chapter 33: Yao Jingjing's Return

On the final day of this year, Qian Fei truly did not degenerate into spending it completely alone.

At eight o'clock in the morning, she was awakened by the ringing of her cell phone.

Cradling her head, which felt like it was about to explode from a hangover, she answered the phone. On the other end, Yao Jingjing spoke to her in a tone more solemn and majestic than singing the national anthem: "Baboon, I'll arrive at Capital Airport in two hours. Come pick me up!"

Qian Fei's heart jolted, and she sobered up by more than half. "Alright! Send over the flight details, I'll be there on time!"

Hanging up the phone, she noticed her eyelid was twitching.

She figured that something must have happened to Yao Jingjing over in Dalian.

She got up to wash and rinse. Just as she finished packing up and was about to head out the door, Li Yifei emerged with a head of messy hair to use the restroom.

After a moment's thought, she stopped him. "Li Yifei, I might not be able to fry eggplant strips for you tonight. Why don't you just eat out with your girlfriend?"

Li Yifei looked at her with a dazed face. "Huh?"

Qian Fei was in a hurry to go out. "What do you mean 'huh'? I'm just saying, I have to spend the evening with someone else, so you don't need to come back specially to eat with me!"

After she finished speaking, she watched as Li Yifei stared straight at her. A few seconds later, he tossed three words at her without any expression: "Got it." Then, he stiffly turned around and went into the restroom.

Qian Fei had no time to savor exactly what kind of emotion lay behind those three words and hurriedly left the house.

After Li Yifei came out of the restroom, his drowsiness vanished completely, and he could no longer fall back asleep.

He sent a message to Da Jun: I'll take Jin Tian out to play during the day. Organize a KTV gathering tonight so the guys can ring in the New Year together.

A moment later, Da Jun replied to him: Li Yifei, screw your uncle! You called me at two o'clock in the middle of the night, drunkenly telling me that we weren't gathering tonight, and now you're telling me to continue organizing a gathering for tonight! You jerk, are you betting on the fact that I won't sever ties with you?!

Li Yifei replied: Stop messing around, your older brother is feeling quite displeased in his heart right now.

Da Jun asked garrulously: What's wrong? What's the situation? Did Jin Tian provoke you? So you don't want to spend tonight with her? Wait, that's not right, you just said you were going to take her out to play during the day!

A burst of irritability surged in Li Yifei's heart: Stop asking and go organize the gathering!

How was he supposed to tell him that he was vexed because he had been stood up by a masculine woman? They would mock him for a whole year over this.

●︶3︶●

Qian Fei was startled when she picked up Yao Jingjing at the airport.

"What kind of foundation did you apply? This face is a bit too white, isn't it?" Qian Fei stared hard at Yao Jingjing's face and asked jokingly.

Yao Jingjing looked as if she had just pulled off some earth-shattering event, appearing thoroughly exhausted. "Stop messing around, I'm tired! Hurry up and take me to your place to let me sleep!"

The apartment Yao Jingjing rented had already been returned by her during her second month in Dalian. Now, her only place to land was Qian Fei's doghouse, which was buried under a mountain of debt.

Qian Fei took her to hail a taxi. Sitting in the car, she asked Yao Jingjing, "What's wrong, Vixen? Why are you so spiritless during the grand New Year?"

Yao Jingjing said weakly, "I'll tell you in detail once we get home. Let me sleep for a bit first. I barely slept last night, and just now on the plane, I was kicked the entire way by the kid next to me. Up until now, I haven't had a single chance to close my eyes!"

Qian Fei pulled Yao Jingjing's head onto her own shoulder. "Poor thing, hurry up and pillow yourself on big sister's shoulder to sleep for a bit!"

Pillowed on her shoulder, Yao Jingjing wrapped her two arms around one of Qian Fei's arms. "Baboon, it's so good to have you!"

Qian Fei reached over with her other hand to pat her shoulder. Yao Jingjing quickly fell asleep. Looking at her pale face and the dark circles beneath her eyes, Qian Fei's heart began to sink, and she could no longer maintain that playfully relaxed front from earlier.

She felt that Yao Jingjing must have suffered some grievance in Dalian.

●︶3︶●

By the time Qian Fei brought Yao Jingjing home, Li Yifei had already gone out.

She made a pot of porridge for Yao Jingjing and blanched a dish of broccoli. After eating, Yao Jingjing lay down on Qian Fei's bed and fell into a deep, unconscious sleep. By the time she woke up, it was already evening.

Qian Fei was preparing dinner, and Yao Jingjing washed her face before heading to the kitchen to help out.

"I'll make a few hearty meat dishes tonight, and the two of us can ring in the New Year together!" Qian Fei said excitedly.

While cleaning the vegetables, Yao Jingjing sized Qian Fei up. "Baboon, are you dating again?"

While scrubbing the wok, Qian Fei shook her head at her. "No, why would you ask that?"

Yao Jingjing tilted her head, looking at her thoughtfully. "Impossible! You've become better-looking than before, and you have more of a feminine touch too!"

Qian Fei burst out laughing. "So you're saying dating makes a person look better? Then back when I was with Wang Ruohai, why did you say I looked more and more like a village girl!"

Yao Jingjing scrutinized her closely. "If it's not dating, then someone must be fixing you up! Just like how it was when Auntie was around!" She paused, then added, "Baboon, I noticed that you can mention Wang Ruohai proactively and calmly now!"

She had only been away for a few short months, yet many changes seemed to have occurred in Qian Fei's body, changes that filled her with a bit of wonder.

Qian Fei lit the stove and poured oil into the wok. Waiting for the oil to heat up, she thought about it. "It seems so. Mentioning that grandson of a gun Wang Ruohai doesn't seem to make me flare up anymore!"

Yao Jingjing smiled. "That's great, you've finally let him go!"

Qian Fei dropped the fish into the wok to fry. After cleaning the vegetables, Yao Jingjing stood to the side holding a plate, waiting to scoop out the fried fish.

"Vixen, why did you suddenly come back from Dalian?" Qian Fei wanted to ask as casually as possible.

"It's nothing, I'm tired," Yao Jingjing said briefly.

Qian Fei felt that things were taking a turn for the worse. She had never seen the garrulous Yao Jingjing be so sparing with her words, nor had she ever seen a time when Yao Jingjing didn't shoot the breeze and joke around with her.

She asked no further and concentrated on cooking.

She fried a fish, stewed beef brisket with potatoes, stir-fried shrimp with bamboo shoots, tossed a cucumber and jellyfish salad, and made an egg drop soup. Once the dishes were all prepared, she pressed Yao Jingjing down to sit at the dining table. After a brief thought, she ran to the kitchen to fetch the leftover beer she had previously drunk with Li Yifei.

"I gave it some careful thought, and even though the two of us have been close for so many years since school, it seems we've never had the chance to welcome a New Year together. Today, we absolutely must fix up a drink!" Qian Fei opened a beer and handed it to Yao Jingjing.

Yao Jingjing took the alcohol and looked at it. "Imported goods? Baboon, whose provocation did you suffer to be willing to improve the quality of your life!"

Qian Fei played it off. "I didn't buy this, that spendthrift boy bought it!" She pointed toward Li Yifei's room as she spoke.

Only then did Yao Jingjing recall the matter of Li Yifei. "Right, how come I haven't seen him? Me staying at your place won't cause him to have any objections, right?"

Qian Fei rolled her eyes. "He's just a tenant, how dare he have objections! I'd chase him out!" She placed a piece of fish into Yao Jingjing's bowl. "He probably went out to play with his girlfriend. I reckon it's not even certain whether he'll come back tonight."

Yao Jingjing asked a line: "Did he and his girlfriend reconcile?"

While shaking her head, Qian Fei let out a sigh. "Just how long has it been since you properly chatted with me! You've actually started to lose touch with the situation around me! Reconcile what, he found a new one!"

Yao Jingjing let out an "oh" and asked, "Then does he still have contact with his previous girlfriend?"

Qian Fei thought about it and said, "From the looks of it right now, it seems not."

Yao Jingjing lowered her eyelids. "If he's dating a new one on this side while still being inextricably entangled with the old one on that side, it must make the current girlfriend so heartbroken!"

Listening to these words, Qian Fei gradually detected a bit of an underlying flavor.

"Vixen," she softly called Yao Jingjing's name. "Is it that tycoon—did he and his ex-girlfriend get back together?"

Right after she finished asking this, she discovered that two drops of water had fallen onto the back of Yao Jingjing's hand.

Qian Fei was stunned.

This grand old auntie Yao Jingjing, who feared neither heaven nor earth and had never lost a fight while standing with her hands on her hips, was actually crying.

●︶3︶●

Qian Fei went to the kitchen and carried out all the remaining alcohol. She decided to get Yao Jingjing drunk and let her speak the truth after drinking.

As it turned out, Grand Old Auntie Yao's alcohol tolerance was truly excellent; she was indeed an outstanding representative of the Central Business District white-collar elites, as her complexion didn't even change after throwing down two cans.

Qian Fei had no choice but to risk her life to accompany her friend, downing several more cans along with Yao Jingjing.

Later, when she saw Yao Jingjing with a bit of double vision, Yao Jingjing's chatterbox was finally flushed open by the alcohol.

Wrapping her arms around Qian Fei's arm, she began to sob. "Baboon, he and I met through a blind date, you know this. Originally, I didn't take it too seriously either; I just felt he was quite rich. But I've seen plenty of rich men, and it wasn't necessarily true that it had to be him! However, there was a kind of energy on his body, a kind of energy as if he was teasing me for fun. I refused to submit to this energy, and I wanted to smooth this energy out and break it until it was compliant, so I followed him to Dalian!

"Once we arrived in Dalian, he wouldn't say whether he wanted to be with me or not. But I'm not stupid, I understand men too well, okay! I knew he was dangling me along! I said in my heart, let you dangle me, let's see if this old auntie won't tame you into compliance one day!

"He asked me what I saw in him, and I said I saw that he was rich. I said it on purpose; I just couldn't stand that dead look of his where he teased me every single day. You tease me for fun, so on what grounds can I not tease you for fun!

"The two of us just went back and forth teasing each other like this. One day, a woman came to find him, saying she was his ex-girlfriend. I asked him indirectly whether there was still a possibility between him and his ex-girlfriend; if it was possible, I wouldn't mix myself up inside, and I'd immediately return to Beijing to play by myself.

"He told me, no. He also said, but if you want to return to Beijing, you can return to Beijing. I said since you don't even plan to rekindle an old flame, what would I go back for? How interesting it is for me to stay behind and pester you relentlessly. Then he smiled.

"He is a person who rarely smiles. That day he gave me such a smile, and I said in my heart that things had gone bad; I seemed to be playing for real! Previously it was all just shouting, but that smile of his made my heart tremble; I seemed to truly like him.

"Furthermore, the more I looked at his ex-girlfriend, the more vexed I became, with sour water rising straight up in my stomach. That woman always came to find him, and she always did it right in front of my face. On Christmas Day, he called to ask me, are we eating dinner together? I said alright. As a result, I waited in the restaurant for over two hours and he didn't show up. I called, but he didn't answer. Later he came, and when I asked him what happened, he said a bit of a situation occurred, and that was it.

"Yesterday, I received a multimedia message from his ex-girlfriend. She sent me a photo, which was a photo of them eating dinner together on Christmas Day. Baboon, do you understand clearly? He went to eat dinner together with his ex-girlfriend, and that's why he was late!

"I felt exceptionally uncomfortable last night, suffering from insomnia the whole night. This morning, I suddenly saw the light, and I decided to let things end right here between him and me!"

After Yao Jingjing finished speaking, she wiped away a handful of tears. "This old auntie won't play along with him anymore!"

Qian Fei looked at her blankly.

"Vixen, can you let me see that photo?"

Yao Jingjing handed her cell phone to Qian Fei.

Qian Fei saw the icon for blocked text messages on the 360 security app. Looking at Yao Jingjing, she asked, "Did you put the tycoon on your blacklist? It looks to me like he sent you text messages! Why don't you take a look?"

Yao Jingjing said, "I'm not looking. Since I've decided not to play anymore, what is there to look at? I'll change to a new number tomorrow!"

Qian Fei knew her temper; provided she made up her mind to do something, nobody could dream of changing her mind.

Qian Fei went to look at that photo.

It was a very bizarre angle, neither a selfie nor taken with the help of a third person. She felt as if she had seen that kind of angle somewhere before. Thinking about it carefully, she finally recalled that in the past, when visiting a client who had a bit of litigation trouble with the company, in order to guarantee safety and retain evidence, she had once quietly propped her cell phone at an angle beside her computer to record a video during the conversation. Looking again at that photo on Yao Jingjing's cell phone, she understood clearly in her heart.

This should be a frame captured from a secretly recorded video.

The tycoon in the frame was quite handsome, frowning slightly with a cold expression and thin lips lightly pressed together; the tycoon's ex-girlfriend was also quite pretty, yet no matter how Qian Fei looked at her, she felt from a subjective standpoint that there was a bit of pretentiousness within her aura.

She looked at the image again and again, and the more she looked, the more she felt she should secretly click open the blocked text messages to see what the tycoon had said.

She thought this way and did exactly so.

She saw that the tycoon had sent a string of text messages:

"Why aren't you answering the phone?"

"Where did you go?"

"Why can't I get through when calling your phone?"

"Stop messing around, call me back!"

"Yao Jingjing, where are you?"

"Yao Jingjing, tell me where you are!"

"Yao Jingjing, do you want to drive me crazy? Tell me where you are!"

Through the cell phone screen, Qian Fei felt as if she could see a man who was already so anxious that he was stomping his feet in a thunderous rage.

She faintly felt that perhaps the tycoon's feelings toward Yao Jingjing weren't just as simple as dangling her along for fun, ah.