Love Has Fireworks - Chapter 44

Chapter 44: None of Your Business

Qian Fei froze. "What birthday? What gift?"

Li Yifei let out a snort, brushed past her, and walked back into his room. After rummaging around inside for a while, he stepped out again. This time, he was holding an iPhone 5 box in his hand. He handed the box to Qian Fei and said, "I was originally planning to give this to you at the end of next month for your birthday, but your toilet probably couldn't bear to watch me keep it hidden away from you anymore!"

Qian Fei blankly accepted the phone box. She stared at it for a moment, then anxiously tried to shove the box back into Li Yifei's hands. "Are you insane? This thing costs over five thousand yuan, and you're giving it to me as a birthday gift? Don't tell me you're trying to use this to offset your rent—I only want cold, hard cash, not a phone!"

Li Yifei let out a curse. "Put away your petty, suspicious mind! When has this young master ever defaulted on your rent! Last year when I upgraded to the iPhone 5, I saw you eyeing it so greedily I thought your tongue was going to pop out and lick it. I was just afraid that when you go out and see other people using it, you'd act just as embarrassingly. That's the only reason I got you a device to play around with!"

Qian Fei was still thoroughly shocked and anxious. "The gift is too expensive. You might dare to give it, but I don't dare to accept it!"

Li Yifei looked at her as she shrunk her neck and pulled back her shoulders, holding the phone box as if she were a tragic hero making a clean break, desperately trying to return it to him. Yet the sheer envy in the depths of her eyes had absolutely nowhere to hide. He found it incredibly amusing. "You really don't want it?"

Qian Fei took a deep breath and said resolutely, "I want it! I want it so bad I'm practically crying! But if I want it, I have to buy it myself. I can't just accept such an expensive gift from someone for no good reason!"

Li Yifei sighed deeply in his heart.

What an honest, foolish girl. But he felt that this honest, foolish girl—compared to those flower-like past girlfriends who would instantly smile like a blooming bud, throw themselves into his arms to kiss his cheek, and sweetly coo "you're so good to me" the moment he gifted them a phone or a necklace—made him want to treat her well even more.

His mind spun rapidly, and he said, "Actually, this phone was confiscated by a friend of mine who works in customs as smuggled goods. For some reason, a few units weren't recorded in the ledger, so he sold them off to the people around him at a dirt-cheap price. When I was on my business trip, my phone screen shattered, so the moment I got off the plane, I thought of going to his place to buy a new device. As it turned out, because it was so cheap, it was three hundred yuan for one unit and only five hundred for two. So I just went ahead and brought one back for you as well. This means the gift really isn't that expensive at all—it's not even as pricey as a good meal if I were to treat you out!" He paused, shoving the phone box into her arms. "Now do you dare to accept it?"

Qian Fei cradled the box with immense adoration, staring at it intently. After looking at it for a while, she abruptly raised her head and said with absolute finality, "Then I must give you two hundred and fifty yuan! If you don't accept this money, I won't take this phone!"

Li Yifei's eyelids twitched violently from her antics. "So you're saying this phone is basically equivalent to you buying it yourself? Which means I still have to get you another gift later?"

Qian Fei gave a cheerful toss of her head. "Oh, that won't be necessary! This phone is still, of course, a gift you gave me! Because if it weren't for you, there's no way I would ever have the opportunity to buy this phone for so little money!"

Clutching the phone, she returned to her room. When she came out again, she swiftly and decisively slapped two hundred and fifty yuan down in front of Li Yifei.

With a face full of dark lines, Li Yifei dug out a one-yuan coin from the crevice of the sofa and tossed it to Qian Fei. "Giving you one yuan back in change! I don't want to be a total idiot along with you!"

Qian Fei was amused. "You actually hid money inside the sofa?"

Li Yifei said crossly, "Hide your sister! It fell in there the day we bought beer. I was just too lazy to dig it out at the time!"

●︶3︶●

Qian Fei simply couldn't put down her new, bargain phone. Realizing that tomorrow was Sunday and she didn't have to go to work anyway, she didn't even bother rushing to sleep. Instead, she opened her laptop and went onto the Weifeng forum to look up tutorials on how to export and import her contacts list.

Fortunately, even though the device that had just suffered a dip in the toilet water refused to light up its screen, it actually still gave a response when plugged into the data cable.

After fiddling around for a good long while, Qian Fei finally successfully imported all her contacts onto the new phone, and she even downloaded a lot of commonly used apps.

Just as she was admiringly playing around with her new phone, a WeChat message popped up.

Li Yifei asked her: "Are you asleep?"

Qian Fei replied: "No, I just finished transferring my contacts~"

Li Yifei: "Perfect timing. Help me transfer my contacts too."

Qian Fei: "Bring your phones over then~"

Li Yifei brought both his new phone and the one with the shattered screen to Qian Fei. In no time at all, Qian Fei not only helped him transfer his contacts list, but she even transferred his text messages and memos into the new phone as well.

Li Yifei clicked his tongue and said, "You really live up to the title of 'tomboy.' You even know the phone-flashing skills usually reserved for tech geeks!"

Qian Fei crossly shooed him away. "Is that how people in your village praise someone? Get out!"

Li Yifei hung around, refusing to leave. "I reckon if someone at Zhongguancun ran into a tomboy like you, they'd generally praise you exactly like that!" He clapped his hands and said, "Help me wipe everything inside that phone with the shattered screen so I can give it to my friend to strip for parts." As he gave the instructions, he walked back and forth around the room, his gaze aimlessly drifting everywhere along with his footsteps. When his eyes swept over a certain spot at the head of the bed, he suddenly spotted that item with two cups—something that, in principle, a promising young man shouldn't be staring at fixedly. Li Yifei narrowed his eyes, instinctively doing a mental calculation. He had always assumed that a B-cup was her close friend, but who would have thought her true intimate companion was actually a C.

Beside him, Qian Fei spoke up. He rubbed his ear and shifted his gaze away as if nothing had happened.

Qian Fei grumbled, "Young master, could you and your friend be any more of a pair of trust-fund babies! If the screen is broken, just change the screen. To think you're stripping it for parts to play with! Does your old man know you're such a spendthrift?!"

Li Yifei let out a "heh." "As if he has any right to manage me!" As he spoke, he continued to stroll idly around Qian Fei's room.

Having finished fiddling with his phone, Qian Fei began to play with her own phone with great enthusiasm. Paying no attention to him, she kept her head down and said, "Didn't you say just now that you were tired and wanted to rest? Why are you still taking a stroll in my room!"

Li Yifei walked up to a cardboard box in the corner of the room and stopped. Seeing a photo album sitting at the bottom of the box, he bent down, picked it up, and said, "Since I'm already over here, let's have a ten-yuan chat!"

While playing on her phone, Qian Fei countered, "Then who's paying whom?"

A good while passed after her question, but she didn't hear any reply from Li Yifei. Feeling a bit puzzled, she temporarily put down the phone in her hand and raised her head to look for him.

When she saw him standing in the corner of the room, flipping through that very photo album she was most reluctant to touch, Qian Fei bolted upright from her chair, stepped forward rapidly, and snatched the album away in one swift motion.

"Why are you rummaging through other people's things?" It was rare for her to speak in such a displeased tone.

Li Yifei looked down at her. No clear expression could be seen on his face, except for the slight, mocking tilt of his lips. "The guy in there is that cheating ex-boyfriend of yours? You guys already broke up because he cheated on you, yet you're still keeping these photos?"

Qian Fei was a bit angry. "None of your business!"

"You aren't still thinking about this guy, are you?" Li Yifei asked, narrowing his eyes.

Qian Fei grew even angrier. "None of your business!"

"Qian Fei, have some self-respect!" Li Yifei's eyes widened, and a wave of inexplicable hostility suddenly surfaced on his face.

"None of your business!" Qian Fei shoved him toward the door, then walked back to the desk. She picked up his phone, casually scooped up a ten-yuan bill from the pile of spare change resting on the tabletop, walked back over to Li Yifei, and shoved the phone into his hand. "Take your phone!" Then she slapped the money onto him. "Here's ten yuan for you. The chat is over. Goodbye!" With that, she slammed the bedroom door shut with a loud bang.

Clutching the ten yuan, Li Yifei was so full of fury that he wished he could punch a hole right through her bedroom door.

The phone shoved in his hand suddenly began to vibrate.

He lifted it up to check and saw that Dajun was calling him.

He walked back to his own room, shut the door, and answered the call.

"I say, buddy, you said yesterday that your phone screen was shattered and made me rush like crazy to buy two iPhone 5s for you. I thought you and Jin Tian were going to use matching couple phones, but who knew Jin Tian would tell me today that you've taken her in as a younger sister? What on earth is going on here? Who exactly did you buy that other phone for? It couldn't be the tomboy, right?"

Having just accumulated a stomach full of rage from being kicked out of Qian Fei's room and insulted with ten yuan to boot, Li Yifei snapped back at Dajun with an awful tone, "I gave it to her, so what? None of your business!"

Dajun choked for a moment. "Hey, if you want to give it, then give it. It's not like I'm forbidding you from doing it. Why are you being so aggressive!"

Li Yifei continued in his terrible tone, "I'm just being aggressive, none of your business!"

Dajun fired back with an equally awful tone, "Li Yifei, screw your uncle! Did you swallow gunpowder or something?!"

Li Yifei let out a cold laugh. "In our social circle, the only one who can be considered my uncle is your dad! And whether I swallowed gunpowder or not, none of your business!"

Dajun was thoroughly enraged. "Damn it, Li Yifei, you just insulted my dad! I'm breaking off our friendship!"

Li Yifei maintained his cold smirk. "You were the one who insulted your own dad. Go break off your friendship with yourself!"

Dajun was practically driven to tears. "Li Yifei, what the hell is wrong with you tonight!"

Li Yifei remained unmoved. "None of your business!"

Dajun finally broke down. "Li Yifei, go to hell! I'm breaking off our friendship!"

After shouting this sentence, he angrily hung up the phone.

Li Yifei felt the suffocating irritation in his chest clear up considerably. It turned out that having a scapegoat to vent his anger on when he was furious felt incredibly comforting. And saying "none of your business" when he was extremely unhappy felt amazingly gratifying.

Suddenly, he paused.

That wretched girl had said "none of your business" so many times in a row. Just how incredibly unhappy must her mood have been just now? Could she really still be hung up on that cheating ex-boyfriend of hers?

He felt a bit agitated and found himself unable to fall asleep.

●︶3︶●

Qian Fei tossed the photo album back into the cardboard box.

In truth, she had already completely forgotten about this album; she didn't even know how Li Yifei had managed to find it.

She also didn't know why she had felt so angry when she saw Li Yifei flipping through it. Thinking back carefully, it was probably because he had so unscrupulously crashed straight into her painful, unretrievable past, leaving her completely unprepared.

She kicked the cardboard box further into the corner. Venting her frustration, she thought to herself that she would definitely find a day when she was free to burn this photo album to ashes.

●︶3︶●

On Sunday, Li Yifei stayed out the entire day. At noon, Qian Fei sent him a message asking if he was coming back for dinner, but he didn't reply.

Qian Fei endured it for the whole afternoon. Finally unable to hold back any longer, she sent another message to Li Yifei: "You aren't seriously still angry over what happened yesterday, are you?"

After quite a while, the phone finally chimed.

Li Yifei: "Do you think everyone is like you, completely brainless and heartless, turning around and forgetting things instantly?"

Qian Fei: "But you were the one who snooped through my things first. How is it that the anger you're throwing is even bigger than mine..."

A long interval passed with absolutely no movement from the phone.

Qian Fei: "Why aren't you replying?"

No response.

Qian Fei sent another: "Why do you have such a massive temper?"

No response.

Qian Fei sent yet another: "Your temper is so bad, are your little companions still willing to be friends with you?"

No response.

Qian Fei continued to send messages with great relish: "Why aren't you replying? How impolite! Can we still happily play together in the future?!"

This time, Li Yifei finally replied: "Qian Fei, are you a chatterbox? Can you leave a little space for an angry person to vent their temper?!"

Ignoring his complaint entirely, Qian Fei happily replied: "The new phone is really easy to use! Thanks a lot~"

After a brief pause, Li Yifei sent back a message: "I want to eat stir-fried eggplant strips tonight!"

A second later, another message followed closely behind: "And I'm not washing the dishes after eating!"

Qian Fei: "Okay ^^"

●︶3︶●

As Dajun watched Li Yifei set down his phone, the corner of the guy's mouth hooked up into a peculiar angle—an angle that looked like it should be called a "secret delight."

Dajun was utterly shocked.

"Damn it! What did that tomboy send you? Yesterday you were still using me as a punching bag! This morning you were still furiously looking for me to drink! Just a moment ago you were still too angry to even reply to messages! How did you suddenly lose all your temper in the blink of an eye?! I want to see exactly what she sent you!"

Catching Li Yifei completely off guard, he snatched the phone away in one swift motion, clicked open WeChat, and used his life's fastest speed to skim through the chat history.

"Holy crap! Just a single compliment about the phone being easy to use is enough to make your heart blossom with joy and strip you of your temper? Li Yifei, screw your uncle! Can you have a little self-respect?!"

Li Yifei suddenly felt this last sentence sounded a bit familiar, as if he had said the exact same words to Qian Fei yesterday.

He snatched his phone back and said to Dajun, "Get lost! None of your business!" After saying it, he froze.

The tomboy had replied to him exactly like that yesterday.

He couldn't help but shake his head and smile.

That's right, when it comes to self-respect, it stems from one's own heart. Whomever one chooses to discard their self-respect for is entirely one's own business—what does it have to do with anyone else?

He picked up his phone and typed into the reply box: "I want to eat stir-fried eggplant strips tonight!"

After thinking about it, he felt that making peace just like this seemed rather humiliating, so he viciously added a few more words: "And I'm not washing the dishes after eating!"

Click send.

The other party replied almost instantly: "Okay ^^"

The corners of his mouth tilted up once more.

Beside him, Dajun yelped as if his tail had been stepped on, "Li Yifei, you absolute degenerate, no way! Don't tell me that from now on, after every single meal you eat, you're the one responsible for washing the dishes? This is too much of a shock, damn it, I'm going to lose my mind!"

Li Yifei looked at him expressionlessly, and gave a single nod.

Dajun clutched his head and began to bang it against the wall...