When I Meet the Moon - Chapter 44

Chapter 44

Yun Li took a photo, tucked the cardholder into her pocket, and started the car, driving a few laps around the residential compound. Having never driven this model before, the feel of stepping on the accelerator was completely different from what she was used to when driving previously.

Yun Li didn't recognize car brands, but based purely on the few minutes of driving experience just now, she knew this vehicle was in the mid-to-high-end tier.

She had always thought Fu Shize's family background was decent, but since Xia Congsheng had mentioned his parents were both professors at West Ke University, her assessment of his background had always been limited by the notion of impoverished intellectuals.

Right as she walked back into the house, she received a message from Fu Shize letting her know he had arrived in Yihe.

Yun Li cropped the photo of the cardholder so that only his profile picture remained, and sent it to Fu Shize: [This person seems a little good-looking.]

Fu Shize: [Mn]

She sent a photo of herself: [What about this person?]

When Fu Shize received the message, he could easily picture the person on the other end wearing a feigned look of innocence. In the photo, she was holding a beanie hat that had slipped halfway off, half-lifting her gaze to smile at the camera. He saved the photo to his local storage and typed two words: [Good-looking]

Barely after exchanging a couple of sentences with him, Yun Li received a new friend request. The profile picture was a landscape of mountains and seas in an oil-painting style, and the other person's note read Yin Yucheng.

Her immediate intuition was—Yun Ye was stirring up trouble again.

Once the addition was successful, Yun Li stared at their chat interface, falling into the dilemma of whether she should say hello. Greeting him meant opening the door to subsequent communication...

Yin Yucheng didn't give her a chance to stall: [Hi Yun Li. I'm Yin Yucheng. Over the past couple of days, Yunyi received your younger brother's New Year postcard.]

At the same time, he sent a screenshot showing part of the postcard's content: [Yun Ye will be going to Nanwu this winter break to see her older sister, and will meet you as the representative of our Class 15 then ^^]

He even tossed in a commentary: [Your brother really knows how to chase girls.]

[A bit envious.]

"..."

Yun Li was left speechless. Last time they had collectively condemned Yin Yucheng for peeping at the postcard, yet Yun Ye still dared to blatantly write on it that he was coming to Nanwu to find Yin Yunyi.

She was genuinely worried about Yun Ye's brain.

How on earth was someone with that kind of brain supposed to date?

Yin Yucheng cut straight to the point: [Before they meet up, would it be convenient to find a time to chat in person? I'm not in Nanwu these past few days, but I'll let you know once I'm back.]

This sounded like it left Yun Li with zero room for refusal.

After all, the wild boar from their household was about to go root up the cabbage on the other side.

Yun Li sighed and replied with a single word: okay.

She swiped back to the WeChat interface, but Fu Shize hadn't sent her any new messages. During classes that afternoon, Yun Li intentionally or unintentionally raised her phone several times, but still saw no message from him.

It wasn't that her life lacked substance; the classes she took weren't slack-off sessions—on the contrary, the formulas and diagrams were extremely complex. After class, she still had to buy groceries and cook. She had homework to write in the evening. And there were still some videos she hadn't finished editing.

Yun Li packed her day full to the brim.

Yet, seeing that the timestamp of their last chat stopped a few hours ago gave her a sense of dispensable, mutual detachment.

She wanted to monopolize his entire world.

Yun Li decisively sent over an emotionless sticker: three bears of different colors standing harmoniously in two rows with blank expressions.

Fu Shize didn't reply. An hour later, she sent another sticker—the same blank-faced bears, but they had swapped positions.

After a while, her phone buzzed.

[In a meeting]

Yearning desperately for a message from him, Yun Li would periodically spam Fu Shize with stickers she dug up online, all of which she scavenged from the web. Whenever Fu Shize had a free moment, he would reply with a couple of words.

After returning to the apartment following evening classes, Yun Li took the initiative to place a video call. Within seconds, Fu Shize answered, and his face appeared on the screen. The background looked like a hotel room, and he pushed aside a half-unpacked takeout bag.

Having just returned to the hotel after finishing work, he looked somewhat tired, yet still kept his focus locked onto the camera lens.

"You're eating dinner so late." Knowing his stomach was sensitive, Yun Li suggested, "After you get back to Nanwu, we can have dinner together."

Fu Shize: "Mn. When?"

Yun Li thought about it: "If I'm free, I can cook for you."

"If you're willing, I can do it every day." As soon as she finished speaking, feeling as though she had been a bit too forward, she added as if trying to salvage her pride, "Even though I kind of get the short end of the stick that way, you're my boyfriend after all."

"So, do you think that's okay or not?"

Fu Shize listened patiently until she finished. She wore an expression as if she were negotiating state secrets with him. He placed his phone on the edge of the bathroom sink and gave a casual, laid-back response: "Mn."

That way, the two of them could see each other every day.

That wouldn't be bad either.

Fu Shize washed his hands, returned to the desk, and moved the phone a bit farther away so the takeout boxes could fit within the frame. He unwrapped the packaging and began eating in a leisurely, unhurried manner, his gaze never returning to the camera.

His relaxed demeanor made Yun Li feel a lot less constrained. She brought up what Tang Lin had said earlier about Fu Zhengchu winning the basketball tournament championship, and naturally asked, "How's your physical stamina?"

"..."

After a good moment, Fu Shize said, "You don't need to worry about that."

The person on the screen looked at the lens with innocent eyes, seeming entirely unaware of the other implications hidden within her question. Fu Shize chuckled softly, unwrapped a soup container, raised his eyelashes to glance at her, and then lowered his head again.

As if he were utterly helpless against her.

Though it was just an exchange of a few glances, Yun Li's heartbeat accelerated wildly. She shifted onto her bed, rested her face against the pillow, and asked him, "My desk-mate saw you today and even told me you looked good. Can I just tell her straight up next time that you're my boyfriend?"

Fu Shize looked up and wiped the corner of his mouth with a tissue: "What else would you say?" He stopped using his chopsticks, leaned back against his chair, and asked, "Friends?"

Meeting his gaze, Yun Li's mind flashed back to the day they returned from the guesthouse, when he hadn't avoided the presence of Xu Qingsong and Fu Zhengchu at all. To be precise, Fu Shize had never really cared about the opinions of others.

It seemed she was the one who was overly cautious in her words and deeds.

"Friends is fine too," he answered his own question calmly. "Say whatever you want to say. You don't need to hold back on my account."

By the time he finished eating, half an hour had already passed. Yun Li browsed Bilibili for a bit, where the trending search list featured a replay of past snow-scenery masterpieces in the suburbs of Nanwu. She lingered on it for quite a while—after all, a pure-bred deep-southern native had never seen snow in person.

Fu Shize stood up to tidy things up. Seeing his white shirt tucked into his dress trousers, the loose fabric shifting around his waistline in front of the camera made it feel as though she could catch a glimpse of the slender waist beneath.

"..."

His voice drifted over: "It's going to snow in Nanwu in a couple of days."

Yun Li snapped out of it as his face moved back into frame to announce: "Going to take out the trash."

He briefly vanished from the screen.

Checking her phone, she saw that Nanwu was indeed bracing for a heavy snowfall over the next few days. Yun Li had never seen snow before, and the news had her buzzing with excitement for a long time. Once Fu Shize sat back down, she spent ages talking his ear off about how they would shoot videos when it happened and what the theme content should be. Though he wasn't deeply versed in video production, he quietly stared into the camera and listened with rapt attention.

"—Though there's one problem."

Fu Shize tilted his head: "What?"

She brought up a topic completely unrelated to video production: "The frequency of our chatting seems a bit too low."

"..."

Fu Shize gave her a long look.

Yun Li seemed to have tossed the line out on a whim before seamlessly shifting the subject back to Yun Ye, rambling on everything from gift-giving to his upcoming winter-break trip to Nanwu. She briefly reverted to her nonstop, chatty persona from back when she was around her younger brother.

Fu Shize offered the occasional response, doing nothing else except lowering his gaze to listen to her talk.

Without even realizing how much she had spoken, Yun Li laughed in exasperation: "I feel like I'm Yun Ye's unpaid coolie. He's so blunt, he's not even afraid of scaring other girls away."

The moment the words left her mouth, Fu Shize shot her a glance.

Yun Li belatedly realized that Yun Ye's courtship strategy was pretty much identical to her own—in fact, she was even more direct. She was practically talking about herself in a roundabout way.

Just as Yun Li was racking her brain for how to salvage her words, Fu Shize suddenly remarked, "He's just like you." He thought about it for a moment: "She probably couldn't bear to refuse him."

"Well, even if my brother can be a bit punchable, he's still pretty cute." Yun Li smoothly rode his coattails to praise Yun Ye. "He still doesn't know I'm dating someone. If he finds out, he might just beg me to send him red packets."

Fu Shize tilted his head slightly.

"Or maybe he'll beg you."

"..."

Having had the privilege of witnessing the siblings' dynamic back in Xifu during his last trip, Fu Shize recalled that scene, along with the stolen taste of forbidden fruit, and casually said, "When you come back, help me prep some strawberries."

After Yun Li acknowledged the request, Fu Shize asked with apparent nonchalance, "What's her brother's name?"

She paused for a second and answered truthfully: "Yin Yucheng."

"..."

Noticing his sudden silence, Yun Li asked, "Am I not supposed to meet other guys alone?"

Without changing his expression, he spoke insincerely: "It's nothing."

It was only later that Yun Li learned the true meaning of those words—it's nothing, as long as I'm there to witness it.