Love Has Fireworks - Chapter 60

Chapter 60: A Little Angina

—

Xiao Yuan asked Qian Fei, "Did you notice that the hunk from the partner company has started coming to our company frequently again lately?"

Qian Fei only returned a five-word reply: "Didn't notice. I'm blind."

Xiao Yuan said, "Why do you say he keeps coming over all the time?"

Qian Fei said, "Maybe he's fallen for you."

Xiao Yuan cupped her face in pleasant surprise. "No way, right? I always felt I should save him for you, so I've been holding back and didn't lay my ruthless hands on that delicate flower. Since you put it that way, I'm not going to control my emotions anymore!"

Qian Fei rolled her eyes and said, "Go ahead and take him for your enjoyment then. I certainly can't handle that kind of proud, delicate young master."

Just as she said those words, she saw Xiao Yuan urgently twitching her brows and winking at her.

She thought about it, turned her head around to look, and found Li Yifei standing right behind her with a face as dark as rusted steel.

With an expression of sanctimonious gravity, she nodded, called out "Director Li," and clutched the documents she had just photocopied, intending to return to her workstation.

As they brushed past each other, she was decisively blocked by Director Li, who had a sullen face.

"Manager Qian, can we chat for a couple of sentences?" Having finished speaking, he entered the meeting room first. (Note: Project manager is the most basic entry level, not some high executive position.)

Qian Fei knit her brows and followed him inside.

"Close the door," Li Yifei said to her just as she entered.

Qian Fei closed the door.

"Come over and sit down." Li Yifei tilted his chin to signal for her to sit across from him.

Qian Fei walked over, sat down briefly, and immediately stood right back up.

"'Close the door,' 'Come over and sit down'—the two sentences are finished. I'm leaving." Without giving Li Yifei another chance to speak, she twisted around, opened the door, and exited the meeting room.

Sitting in his chair, Li Yifei stared through the glass door at Qian Fei's departing figure, feeling both angry and irritable.

The way she walked those few steps, who was she displaying it for? Swaying so attractively with her slender waist and long legs—she was truly infuriating.

He felt he was truly becoming cheaper and cheaper. To be thrown such a cold shoulder by someone to this extent without even flipping his lid, his principles of being a human being had truly all been fed to the dogs.

●︶3︶●

After Li Yifei chatted for a few sentences with Qian Fei's supervisor, just as he rushed toward the elevator intending to leave, he was unexpectedly intercepted by Qian Fei.

"Li Yifei, let's chat for a couple of sentences."

The speed at which Li Yifei retracted his foot stepping into the elevator was faster than lightning.

He instantly turned around and walked back to stand in front of Qian Fei.

Qian Fei raised her head, looked at him, and said, "From now on, don't let me go to your company, and don't you come to our company anymore either."

Qian Fei succinctly finished speaking her two sentences and twisted around intending to return to the office, but her arm was grabbed and she was pulled back in a halt by Li Yifei.

"Where's the other sentence?"

Qian Fei was startled, knitting her brows. "'Don't let me go to your company,' 'don't you come to our company anymore either'—aren't these two sentences?"

Li Yifei said seriously, "There is a comma between those two clauses, so it can only count as one sentence. Say one more sentence."

Qian Fei looked at him, tugged the corner of her mouth, and let out a mocking laugh. "You're truly boring. I'm finished speaking. You can leave now, right?" She turned around to leave yet again.

Li Yifei pulled her back in a grasp once more.

"'You're truly boring' is the second sentence. 'I'm finished speaking. You can leave now, right?'—this sentence is already the third sentence. You spoke past the limit."

Qian Fei was completely defeated.

"Li Yifei, what on earth do you want to do?"

Li Yifei arched his eyebrows and said, "It's very simple. I want you to listen to me say a couple of sentences too."

Qian Fei took a breath. "First sentence."

"Let's make up."

Qian Fei shook her head. "Second sentence."

"I want to eat stir-fried eggplant strips."

Qian Fei tilted her head up to look at Li Yifei. "Finished speaking? Don't come back tomorrow. If you come again, I will resign."

●︶3︶●

When Qian Fei returned home that evening, as if possessed by ghosts and gods, she made stir-fried eggplant strips to eat. As she ate, for some unknown reason, she actually ate until she cried.

She thought that perhaps she had put too much salt in it, forcing out all her tears.

●︶3︶●

When he returned home that evening, as if possessed by ghosts and gods, Li Yifei bought a lot of eggplants. He sat staring at the eggplants with wide eyes for a while, then stood up, picked out a few good-looking ones from the bunch, went to Dajun's house, and begged Dajun's family nanny to cut them into strips and stir-fry them for him.

When the nanny brought the stir-fried eggplant strips up, he took only one taste with his chopsticks and simply couldn't swallow any more.

It wasn't that flavor.

He thought sorrowfully that he had lost that flavor.

He wanted to retrieve that flavor.

But what was he supposed to do?

●︶3︶●

Dajun squatted on the side watching Li Yifei.

"This expression of yours, sorrowful to the very marrow of your bones—I saw it once back when the two of us were in kindergarten and your mother left, and I've never seen it again since. What's wrong? Do you miss your mother?"

Li Yifei rolled his eyes at him. "Miss your sister."

Dajun blinked. "You miss that masculine woman, don't you?"

Li Yifei used his chopsticks to poke at the eggplant strips in the dish, his movements filled with a desolate flavor.

"What kind of method must I use to get her to make stir-fried eggplant strips for me again?"

Dajun scratched his cheek and said, "I reckon you have to admit to her that you did indeed commit an error regarding the matter she believes you committed an error on."

Li Yifei said, "But I feel I wasn't in the wrong."

Absolutely nothing had happened between him and Jin Tian. Forcing him to admit wrongdoing would make it seem as though something really had happened, which he couldn't accept either psychologically or in terms of his self-esteem.

Dajun scratched his cheek again and said, "Then just make do with it and try to accept my family's nanny's cooking from now on! Rest in peace!" He stood up, patted Li Yifei's shoulder, and sat back down in front of his computer to begin playing online games to dull his senses.

Li Yifei narrowed his eyes, staring at his departing back.

That night, before Li Yifei departed from Dajun's house, he took advantage of the moment the Little Prince of Phone Bills went to the restroom to give away every single piece of his server-dominating, awesome equipment to random people. It was the kind of random giveaway where it could never be requested back.

That very night, Dajun carried a kitchen cleaver, howling that he was going to chop off Li Yifei's hands and officially sever their friendship from then on, chasing him in a car through half of Beijing.

●︶3︶●

Two days later, the members of the hotel project team from both of the companies Qian Fei and Li Yifei belonged to had to go to the hotel project site to hold an intermediary coordination meeting.

Both Qian Fei and Li Yifei went, along with Zhao De.

Revisiting an old haunt, thinking of the lunch break hours last year when the three of them had harmoniously played Fight the Landlord together right here, and then thinking of how now when he met Qian Fei he could only get a nod, unable to say even one extra word, Li Yifei felt sighing and despondent in his heart.

This kind of emotion was something he had never experienced before.

During the meeting, by pure coincidence, he and Qian Fei sat right next to each other. Midway through, Qian Fei's pen accidentally dropped onto the floor. Like a conditioned reflex, before she could even bend her waist, he had already picked it up for her.

When he handed the pen to her, she said "Thank you" very politely.

He instantly felt an extreme bitterness in his chest.

She had already become this polite to him. If she kept being this polite, she was practically going to treat him like a stranger.

When the meeting concluded, everyone left the meeting room one after another, moving over to the dining room.

He deliberately delayed, wanting to drag things out so he could walk together with her.

As a result, she didn't pay the slightest attention to him, packing up her things and standing up to leave entirely on her own.

After raking a hand through his hair, he stood up as well, silently following behind her.

Her phone rang. She answered it as she walked.

He heard her ask, "Wang Ruohai, what business do you have with me?"

His heart gave a sudden leap.

She stopped her footsteps.

He stopped behind her as well.

He heard her say, "Are you talking about that bank card from a long time ago that we opened together at our former company? Why, are you still using that card? Oh, you remembered the account number too easily and transferred the money into the old card by mistake... Ah, you forgot the password, is that right... Let me think what that password was... Was it my birthday for the first three digits and your birthday for the last three digits? That's not right, what about the reverse? Not right either? Let me think again... Oh, I remember now. The first three digits are my solar calendar birthday, and the last three digits are my lunar calendar birthday. Is it right this time? Haha, no need for thanks. Then let's just leave it at this for now, goodbye!"

After she hung up the line, she continued to walk forward.

He froze on the spot, his chest feeling suffocatingly miserable as if a knife had been plunged into it.

Her ex-boyfriend asked her for the password to their old bank card. And that password actually had all six digits consisting of her birthday.

He was truly becoming a bit violent. That guy surnamed Wang, if he couldn't remember the password, he could just take his identity card to the bank and spend a bit of processing fee to get it handled. Why did he absolutely have to make a phone call to ask Qian Fei? What right did he have! And she was the same—why did she still remember that broken password! Was she intending to remember the matters between her and her ex-boyfriend for a lifetime?!

He thought resentfully. As he thought and thought, his entire chest suddenly shuddered.

He couldn't even stand the fact that she remembered her ex-boyfriend's bank card password; it would be a miracle if she could accept him claiming his past ambiguous partner as a younger sister.

Looking at it this way, he truly was in the wrong.

He suddenly seemed to understand a little something faintly.

Matters between men and women weren't evaluated based on him believing he wasn't in the wrong. Whether there was a wrong or not depended on whether it brought harm to the person one cared about.

If he did something that made her sad, then no matter what, he had done a wrong thing.

●︶3︶●

Over the weekend, Li Yifei was suffocatingly miserable and wanted to find Dajun to hit the bars to relieve his boredom. As a result, Dajun told him over the phone, "My mother said that compared to you, I'm just a piece of trash who can't attract women! In order to prove that what she said is wrong, I have already signed up to participate in today's three-minute speed dating event! I plan to stick ten or eight big young ladies back for her, making her cry and say sorry to me!" Highly excited, Dajun hung up the phone.

Li Yifei stared at his phone in a daze for a full minute.

What should he do?

He turned on the television, watching the financial channel. The commentator gabbled on about his opinions on the economic situation, and the more Li Yifei listened, the more irritable he felt.

He muted the television, reached for his phone, tapped open WeChat, and entered the chat interface with Qian Fei.

The time of their last conversation was already many days ago, on the very night he escorted Jin Tian home. He had sent: Finished handling the business and returned home. This young master observed the celestial phenomena tonight and discovered that my mood will be very good tomorrow, so this master has decided to take you out to eat something good.

He had originally wanted to wait until she returned from her business trip to take her out to eat smelly mandarin fish, but he hadn't expected that waiting for this meal would actually take this long, remaining unfulfilled even up until now.

He swiped downward on the screen, scrolling through their past chat history bit by bit.

Looking at those words she had sent over in the past, he could practically dub in various voices, tones, and expressions for her automatically in his heart. He looked through them message by message. Looking and looking, he couldn't help but smile; smiling and smiling, he couldn't help but feel sad.

He felt he was truly about to get intermittent angina.

He rubbed his chest, dispelling that suffocating sensation welling up from the bottom of his heart, pressed the home button, entered the dialing page, and without any hesitation, long-pressed the number key 1.

That was her speed dial.

He had placed her in this position—a unique, peerless position. He had never told her, and he himself hadn't performed too much analysis on this action either.

He had previously thought it was merely for convenience. But he understood only today that this was a sign that she had already walked into the bottom of his heart and occupied that important position right on the tip of his heart.

He long-pressed the number key 1. Just as he anticipated, after two brief rings, it was the busy signal of a rejected call.

He felt a bit frustrated and a bit irritable.

She still refused to pick up his phone calls.

Rubbing his temples, he thought: if she forever refused to pick up his phone calls, would he ultimately suffer from angina until he died?

Unwilling to give up, he picked up his phone, using the tactic he had used before to spam-send her WeChat messages, filling the screen line by line.

"Pick up the phone." Copy, paste, sent five times.

"Can we have a good chat?" Copy, paste, sent another five times.

"There's a restaurant on Wanshou Road that makes smelly mandarin fish exceptionally well, I'll take you to eat it!" Copy, paste, sent five times as well.

After sending fifteen WeChat messages, Li Yifei paused. After hesitating for a moment, he chose to comply with the most genuine feeling at the bottom of his heart, honestly typing a few characters into the dialogue box: "Pay some attention to me, alright? I was wrong, it was my fault, alright? Jinjin, I miss you!" After typing, his finger hovered above the phone for five seconds, and finally, grinding his teeth, he at last pressed the send button.

Isn't it just that bit of face? If I don't want it anymore, won't that do?

As a result, the notification message returned by WeChat said that the other party had already added him to the blacklist.

Vexed, Li Yifei tossed his phone onto the sofa.

●︶3︶●

Toward dusk, Li Yifei kept lying on the sofa like a corpse, too lazy to even think about whether he should eat dinner after all, and if he did eat, what he should eat.

Right when he was pondering that life truly was damn well devoid of any joy, Dajun called him.

He connected it half-deadly. After letting out a "Hello," before he could even utter a second word, the entire earpiece transmitted Dajun's voice, which was highly excited to a somewhat abnormal degree.

That degree of high excitement was practically like he had been caught red-handed by his mother while playing online games.

"Buddy! You will absolutely never guess who I ran into at that three-minute speed dating event today!!! The second speed-dating partner I rotated to turned out to be that masculine woman, oh my god!!! It scared me to death, do you know! At that moment, I felt like I was stealing my big brother's woman behind his back, holy crap!"

With a carp-skip, Li Yifei stood up from the sofa. With a dark face and a deep voice, he almost crushed his phone as he asked, "Say it one more time, who did you run into?"

Dajun said, his excitement remaining unabated, "That masculine woman! That Qian Fei of yours!"

Li Yifei was stunned.

She had actually started going out on blind dates again!!

He wasn't even dead yet!!! She had already started going out on blind dates again!!!

He clutched his phone with one hand and thumped his chest with the other.

He felt he truly was damn well about to get angina.