When I Meet the Moon - Chapter 56

Chapter 56

Yun Li hadn't expected that she would still mess up her retroflex and dental sounds, considering she had practiced for over ten minutes beforehand.

Seeing that he looked a bit weary, Yun Li put on a stern face and said, "You don't look very happy."

Fu Shize found it amusing. "I am very happy."

Yun Li was unsatisfied. "If you're happy, you have to show it."

"How should I show it?"

In front of the camera, Yun Li brought her index and middle fingers together, pressed her fingertips against her lips, flipped them upward, and made a flying kiss gesture toward him. After demonstrating, she stared straight at him. "Show it like this."

"..."

Fu Shize had no idea how she had come up with such an over-the-top movement. Seeing her stubbornly staring at him, he pulled out an excuse to reject her. "You didn't even say my name right."

"..."

Directly hitting her weak spot, Yun Li awkwardly muttered, "I'll practice more and make sure I get it right next year."

Fu Shize asked, "What if you still get it wrong next year?"

"Then I'll celebrate your birthday with you every single year. Sooner or later, there'll be a year I get it right." Yun Li said earnestly, "Don't underestimate me—"

Fu Shize thought she was going to talk about her Mandarin again, but Yun Li smiled instead. "I'm going to spend my whole life with you."

So there would naturally be plenty of opportunities.

"I'll make it up to you and bake you a cake when I get back." Yun Li had only found out yesterday that his birthday fell on New Year's Eve, so she had hastily put together the light strands for a remote celebration.

"Those are all secondary," Fu Shize said indifferently, maintaining a calm facade while a hint of urgency laced his tone. "Come back early."

...

After running into Yin Yunyi in Nanwu, Yun Ye spent the rest of his vacation primarily studying. The siblings only crossed paths during their three daily meals.

Yun Yongchang and Yang Fang's holidays weren't as long as the students', so once the New Year passed, only the brother and sister were left at home.

Remembering that Fu Shize had a weak stomach, Yun Li took advantage of the winter break to learn a few tricks for boiling porridge and published a series of porridge-making videos on E-site.

Ever since she made up her mind to correct her personality flaws, Yun Li had been livestreaming for half an hour almost every night, mostly just chatting with her fans about various topics.

Gradually, the number of regular viewers grew larger and larger.

Among them, one fan caught her attention. This user, named efe, never came on the audio chat, but frequently replied to her in the bullet comments.

For instance, Yun Li would say: "—The streamer is the ultimate overthinker, it takes her half a day just to figure out what to say to someone."

efe: [Wife is so observant.]

Yun Li: "—The streamer always makes conversations awkward when talking to unfamiliar people."

efe: [Wife hits the nail right on the head.]

Yun Li: "—The streamer is a bit socially anxious, she always makes her younger brother answer calls for packages and food deliveries."

efe: [Wife is so meticulous.]

"..."

A mere wild chicken could be hyped up into a phoenix with commentary like that.

However, this bit of self-revelation actually sparked a lot of resonance. Fans chimed in one after another to share that they also disliked making and receiving phone calls, especially when strangers were on the other end.

The very things she had once used to judge and beat herself up over happened to countless other people. The things that had made her feel so inferior all this time now suddenly seemed completely unremarkable.

It turned out she was just living inside her own little bubble.

Arbitrarily classifying herself as a special kind of person, blindfolding herself, and indulging in self-pity—wasn't that a form of conceit in its own right?

Quite a few fans jumped on the audio chat to share their own introverted experiences—some involving relatives, others involving coworkers, complete with plenty of socially dead-on embarrassing stories. Throughout it all, the bullet comments were filled with support and encouragement from everyone else. Even though they were complete strangers, they were all willing to use warm words to comfort one another.

Watching the chat, Yun Li felt a warmth bloom in her chest.

The topic gradually derailed.

[Wife, where is the younger brother ahhhhhh]

[The salted fish's social training is over for today, time to open an exhibition for the younger brother]

[Younger brother, mother loves you]

Back when Yun Li first started recording videos, Yun Ye had frequently made appearances. Over the past four years, many old fans had witnessed his growth, while she had watched him for sixteen years. Ever since he was born, Yun Li had clear memories of him.

She had watched him step-by-step grow from a babbling two-chi toddler into the lively teenage boy he was today. Yun Li fell into deep thought; if she truly ended up staying in Nanwu in the future, her chances of seeing Yun Ye would become very slim.

Yun Li ended the livestream.

After finishing dinner today, Yun Ye had complained of a stomachache, prompting Yun Li to jokingly ask if the dishes cooked by Yang Fang had poisoned him. At the moment, he was tucked into his quilt sleeping. Yun Li walked in to watch his sleeping face for a moment and ruffled his hair.

Yun Ye woke up, and seeing it was her, turned his face away. "Go away, I want to sleep."

She had originally intended to play the role of a proper, competent older sister for once, but this attitude instantly reignited Yun Li's temper. "Fine, I'm leaving. I'm heading back to Nanwu tomorrow."

Yun Ye immediately sat straight up. "I told you to go away, I didn't tell you to leave."

He frowned. "Today's only the eighth."

Yun Li declared, "I'm going back to make up for your brother-in-law's birthday." She added deliberately, "Oh right, my little brother probably won't understand, seeing as I'm the one in a relationship."

Unwittingly catching a faceful of dog food, Yun Ye speechlessly pulled the quilt right over his head. Yun Li clapped her hands and stood up, only for Yun Yongchang's cold voice to suddenly ring out from behind her. "Who are you in a relationship with?"

"..."

The soundproofing at home wasn't great. Whenever Yun Li talked to Fu Shize on the phone, she usually had to keep her voice down, which was why Yun Yongchang had never discovered their relationship.

Yun Ye poked his head out from beneath the quilt, revealing a look of pure sympathy. Yun Yongchang glared daggers at him. "Nice going. Grown wings now, teaming up with your sister to lie to us."

"..."

The silent night brewed an undercurrent of surging anger.

"Who is it?"

"A colleague of mine."

"How long have you been together?"

"A month."

"Where is his family from?"

"Nanwu..."

Yun Yongchang's expression instantly darkened. "Not only did you run off to Nanwu for graduate school, but now you're planning to marry down there too? Are there no men left in Xifu?"

Anticipating this exact outcome, Yun Li tried to reason with him in a calm tone. "Dad, can you please give me a little more freedom when it comes to dating..."

"Freedom, my foot! What if you get bullied down in Nanwu and we aren't there to back you up?" As usual, he laid down the law with a final decree. "Break up with that guy the second you go back. How old are you anyway? If you're going to find someone, find someone from Xifu."

A sharp pain stabbed at Yun Li's heart.

"I don't need anyone to back me up, I can protect myself," she snapped, her anger flaring up.

She didn't understand why, despite tiptoeing around and never causing Yun Yongchang any trouble since she was a child, he always insisted on viewing her as incompetent.

Why did some parents always assume their children had to walk down the exact life path they had mapped out?

"I've met his parents. They aren't unreasonable people either—they're both professors at Xike University."

She had originally hoped this would help Yun Yongchang accept them a bit more, but dropping those words only poured fuel on the fire. Furious, he cursed a few times and stormed out, slamming the door behind him.

With a frosty expression, Yun Li went back to pack her luggage. Thinking back on those few vicious remarks he had thrown at her, a bitter ache wrung her heart.

—You even went behind my back to meet his parents?

—Do I even exist in your eyes anymore?

—Are you just looking down on my low educational background now so you can go climb some high branch?

Yun Yongchang was entirely unreasonable, but this time, Yun Li refused to submit the way she used to. As luck would have it, a relative was hosting a first-birthday banquet, and both of her parents had gone out early in the morning to help. Taking advantage of their absence, Yun Li dragged her suitcase toward the door, only to look up and see Yun Ye stepping out of his room at the same time.

Seeming to have just finished washing up, Yun Ye had messy, tufty hair clinging with water droplets, and a faint sleep crease pressed against the side of his face. Drooping his eyelids, he asked, "You're really leaving?"

Yun Li gave a soft hum.

Yun Ye stood in the doorway with his hands shoved in his pockets.

The hallway was narrow, and the lighting dim and murky.

The teenager possessed dark, striking brows and eyes, and stood quite tall inside an oversized baseball jacket.

Goodbyes always stirred up some indescribable sentiment. The atmosphere, heavily rendered by silence and dim light, conjured up a strange layer of subtext that shouldn't have existed.

Combined with this empty, echoing house, Yun Ye suddenly seemed to take on an extra identity at that moment.

—A neglected, delinquent, left-behind child.

Hesitating for a moment, Yun Li started nagging out of habit. "Mom and dad won't be back until the night after tomorrow. You're on your own these two days, so just grab something outside to eat."

Yun Ye looked at her. "Oh."

Yun Li: "Or order takeout."

Yun Ye: "Oh."

Yun Li: "Or if worst comes to worst, go over to our aunt's place for a meal."

Yun Ye: "Oh."

"..." Three consecutive one-syllable responses, dripping with attitude. Clueless as to what was bothering him, Yun Li kept her temper remarkably in check and asked, "Why are you only giving me that reaction? Do you have some kind of problem with your sister leaving?"

"No," Yun Ye said. "Just feels like the holidays finally started."

"?"

Yun Ye turned his head slightly and slowly recited, "Eat something outside, order takeout, eat at aunt's..." He paused before asking, "Amazing, right?"

Not following his train of thought, Yun Li asked, "What is?"

Yun Ye shrugged. "With you gone, I don't even have to cook anymore."

"..."

Struck out of nowhere by his thinly veiled sarcasm, Yun Li rolled her eyes. After she finished packing, Yun Ye grabbed her suitcase and walked toward the entryway.

Yun Li genuinely hadn't expected that forcing Yun Ye to cook instant noodles twice could leave him with such deep-seated resentment.

After heading downstairs, Yun Li checked her phone. Turning back to Yun Ye, who was helping her haul the luggage, she said, "Alright, I'm heading off. Go back and do your homework, the station is just a short walk away."

"You're taking the bus?" Yun Ye dropped the suitcase back to the ground. "You're still dragging a heavy luggage case with you, you know."

"It's not that heavy."

"Aren't you tired? I'll send you to the airport."

"How are you going to send me?" Yun Li amusedly asked. "Take the public bus with me?"

"As if." Yun Ye arrogantly raised an eyebrow, fished a set of car keys out of his pocket, and tossed them between his hands. "I'm driving."

"..."

That statement sounded deeply touching.

Provided, of course, that Yun Ye wasn't a minor.

Feeling that she really needed to set him straight, Yun Li gave his head a light knock in disbelief. "Where on earth did you fish dad's car keys out from this time?"

The strike caught him completely off guard, and Yun Ye frowned. "Right on the table."

"Then let them stay right there on the table," Yun Li muttered, unable to resist tapping him on the head once more. "Did they wave at you or something? Why do you always have to go messing with them?"

"Can you stop hitting me?" Taking two hits in a row, Yun Ye suppressed his rising anger. "It's not like I don't know how to drive."

And Yun Ye wasn't lying.

Their father, Yun Yongchang, had been a driving instructor for over a decade, and Yun Ye had hung around the training grounds all the time. Having absorbed it all by osmosis for so many years, he had learned how to drive long ago.

For the rest of the journey, Yun Li put on her big sister airs, earnestly lecturing Yun Ye while trying to drill into his head what things he could and couldn't do at his age.

Yun Ye kept his mouth shut the entire way.

By the time they reached the bus station, Yun Li had finished her lecture. Catching sight of Yun Ye's expressionless face, she couldn't help wondering if she had gone a bit overboard.

Sighing, Yun Li softened her tone. "I'm not trying to nag you just to yell at you, I'm just worried about your safety—"

Before she could finish, Yun Ye suddenly reached out and flagged down a taxi.

Without a word, he yanked open the back door and shoved her inside first. Then, he spoke directly to the driver on his own accord. "Master, please open the trunk. We're heading to the Xifu Airport."

With a stranger present, Yun Li instantly fell silent. Sitting on the left side of the backseat, she self-consciously pulled out her phone and messaged Yun Ye: [?]

Yun Li: [???]

In a moment, Yun Ye had loaded her luggage and climbed into the cab as well.

Yun Li: [What are you even doing?]

Yun Ye: [I'm paying for this taxi ride.]

Yun Li: [I could've just gone over myself, think about how much you're wasting on this round-trip fare.]

Yun Ye: [I'll take the public bus back.]

Yun Ye didn't text her anything else for the rest of the trip. It wasn't until he dropped her off at the ticket-checking gate that he finally spoke up. "Just stay in Nanwu. Don't come back to Xifu unless things get truly unbearable."

After a brief pause, he added on his own, "Though, hanging around with our dad is probably the most unbearable thing of all."

"..." -

The moment she stepped out of the arrival gate, Yun Li spotted Fu Shize standing off to the side. The gloom of the past two days instantly dissipated. Dragging her luggage, she rushed forward and collided straight into his embrace.

Losing his footing for a second, Fu Shize took a half-step back. "Easy."

Yun Li smiled. "Eat more meat, otherwise people are going to say my boyfriend is frail."

"Frail?" Fu Shize repeated the word. Realizing Yun Li had only meant it as a joke, but seeing how intensely focused he looked, she opened her mouth to explain, only to be pulled away into a quieter corner out of sight.

Yun Li gasped. "In broad daylight, you can't possibly—"

She never finished the sentence.

Fu Shize had already lifted her chin, dark eyes churning with an aching, bone-deep yearning. He picked up right where her words had left off: "Can't I date you?"

"..."

Once they got into the car, Fu Shize asked, "Did you intentionally come back today?"

"Mm..."

A few old streetlamps lined the roadside, casting flickering headlights across the front windshield. Yun Li sat silently in the passenger seat, the memory of her shouting match with Yun Yongchang still swirling violently in her mind.

"Should we go back to Qixiangdu to drop off your things first?" Fu Shize glanced at her a few times. Yun Li gave an absent-minded, listless nod.

Having not seen each other for two weeks, Yun Li didn't show the expected joy upon reuniting. Parking the car downstairs at Qixiangdu, Fu Shize turned to her and asked, "Did something happen?"

"No, just a bit tired from the flight." Recovering her wits, Yun Li looked up at his face and suddenly asked, "How long have we been together?"

"46 days."

Not even two months.

It seemed they weren't quite at the stage where they should be fretting over these kinds of burdens yet.

Back inside the apartment, Yun Li only packed up her absolute necessities and a few changes of clothes.

"The landlord said terminating the lease early forfeits three months of security deposit, which basically only saves two months of rent, so I figured we'd keep this apartment. If we have early morning classes, we can just sleep here."

"I'll bring some more of my clothes over to your place later too. Even though that pervert hasn't been caught yet, with you around, he probably wouldn't dare show his face anyway."

As Yun Li neatly organized her plans, she noticed Fu Shize sitting on the sofa watching her intently. She paused in her tracks. "What is it?"

Fu Shize asked, "There's only one bed here."

Yun Li replied, "I didn't tell you to sleep on the sofa."

"..."

Fu Shize stared blankly for a long moment before slowly asking, "We're sleeping in the same bed?"

Slightly hesitant, Yun Li nodded. She trusted Fu Shize's character, and besides, the chances of them staying over here overnight probably wouldn't be very high anyway.

Just as she climbed into the car, she heard him ask, "When are your morning classes?"

"..."

His expression was deadpan and entirely serious when he asked. Yun Li felt a delayed wave of heat rush to her face as she murmured, "I haven't even finished picking my courses yet."

Upon arriving at Jiangnan Garden, Fu Shize walked straight to the fridge to pull out some meat to thaw. He had grown so adept at cooking that he whipped up dinner without needing Yun Li to lift a finger.

Yun Li wanted to drink a little alcohol, so Fu Shize opened a bottle of whiskey and poured a small measure into a glass, diluting it with Sprite for her.

A small nightlight glowed warmly over the dining table.

Fu Shize kept his eyes on Yun Li the entire time. Her mind was wandering, making her responses noticeably sluggish. After downing two small cups, Yun Li's expression remained unchanged, but her eyes grew hazy and damp.

"..."

The night had barely begun, and Fu Shize had no intention of letting it end just yet.

He reached out to take Yun Li's glass away, but Yun Li threw a sudden fit. "You drink so much all the time! If you dare stop me from drinking right now, I'll, I'll—" She stumbled over her words, failing to finish the threat.

Completely sober, Fu Shize looked at her with amusement. "You'll what?"

"I'll delete you on WeChat!"

"..."

That sentence carried genuine deterrent power. He stopped trying to block her. Staring fixedly at his calm expression, Yun Li felt a fierce, destructive urge welling up inside her. She grabbed his collar and hauled him over onto the sofa.

"Why do you always wear that exact same expression?" she demanded, thoroughly annoyed.

Fu Shize asked, "What expression should I be wearing?"

Yun Li had never drank before, so she had no idea that not only was her alcohol tolerance terrible, but her drunk behavior was equally atrocious. The two of them locked in a stalemate for a moment. Failing to come up with an answer, she stubbornly declared, "Anyway, not that one!"

The man on the sofa let her keep a grip on his collar as he let out a soft chuckle.

Hearing what she imaginedwas contempt hidden within his laughter, Yun Li stared straight at him and reached out to pinch his cheeks aggressively.

"This is your house." Once she had finished pinching his face to her satisfaction, Yun Li straightened up and surveyed her surroundings. Fu Shize corrected her: "It's our house."

Once she grew tired, he pulled a small box out from behind his back. "A gift." Similar to the mother-of-pearl box he had given her before, Yun Li stopped acting drunk and took the box.

Tilting her head, she asked, "Is it my birthday?"

Fu Shize: "...”