Extra 2
Although Cui Qingshu had said that, Wen Ci still returned home the following weekend—with Zhou Wu.
Zhou Wu now refused to let her go back alone under any circumstances. In the end, he and Wen Ci agreed that he would only wait outside her front door.
But Zhou Wu stood out far too much.
He was tall and long-legged, and before long, Cui Qingshu received a call from one of her neighbourhood mahjong friends saying that an extremely handsome man was standing outside her house.
So Cui Qingshu opened the door, let him inside as well, and scolded both of them together.
Afterwards, they were thrown out of the house side by side.
Once they returned to the car and fastened their seat belts, they exchanged a glance and both burst out laughing.
“If I’d known I would be allowed inside, I would’ve brought gifts.”
Zhou Wu pressed the accelerator, his tone light.
“Next time.”
“You’re strange.”
Wen Ci smiled.
“Why do you enjoy being scolded?”
Zhou Wu answered as though it were obvious.
“Otherwise, how could I have fallen in love with a teacher?”
“…”
Wen Ci’s heartbeat accelerated slightly.
She defended herself.
“I never scold my students.”
Zhou Wu laughed deeply and reached across the centre console to hold her hand.
…
Once the busiest period passed, Zhou Wu finally no longer needed to fly abroad.
Most problems could now be resolved through online meetings.
During the day, the two of them handled their own work, then met at home again in the evenings.
On weekdays, Wen Ci generally stayed at her own flat.
At weekends, she went to Zhou Wu’s.
On the first Friday of December, Zhou Wu brought Yeye, as usual, to collect Wen Ci and take her back to his home.
He arrived early and, in a rare act of mercy, took Yeye to eat beef-brisket noodles again.
The food was too salty, so he only allowed the dog one piece of beef, and even that had to be rinsed twice in water first.
It was not yet mealtime, so the noodle shop was quiet.
The owner had become familiar with them.
After bringing over the noodles, he remained beside the table and chatted with Zhou Wu.
“Here to collect Teacher Wen again?”
“Mm.”
Zhou Wu looked at the Samoyed eating with great enthusiasm and casually asked,
“What do you put in these noodles? Why does he love them so much?”
“Hey, this is a recipe that’s been passed down for decades. I’m not joking around.”
The owner laughed.
“Even a young woman like Teacher Wen used to eat two bowls from time to time.”
“Two bowls?”
Zhou Wu lifted his eyelids.
“Her?”
“That’s right. When she was in high school.”
“I used to sell noodles in the Jiangcheng Middle School canteen back then, remember?”
“Teacher Wen often came to buy them during the lunch break. Several times, she carried away two bowls. When I asked, she said she was going to eat both herself.”
With Wen Ci’s appetite, sometimes even one bowl left her painfully full.
A corner of a long-buried memory had been pried open.
Zhou Wu skilfully pulled out the entire thing by the roots.
There had been a period in high school when the school strictly cracked down on food deliveries.
His group also hated squeezing into the crowded, hot canteen.
Sometimes, when their deliveries were confiscated by school security, they simply bought biscuits from the convenience shop to fill their stomachs and ate something better after school.
Once, their food had been confiscated again.
Qin Yun invited him to buy snacks, but Zhou Wu had no appetite that day and waved him away.
Unexpectedly, after returning from the bathroom, he found a bowl of beef-brisket noodles on his desk.
He assumed Qin Yun had bought it and finished everything.
Only afterwards did he discover that Qin Yun had not.
No one ever admitted to leaving the noodles.
After receiving anonymous bowls several more times, their group finally found a new place from which they could secretly collect deliveries.
So one lunchtime, before leaving to pick up his food, Zhou Wu wrote on the first page of his English textbook:
**I’m not eating noodles anymore. Thanks.**
He left the book open on his desk.
The other person indeed never brought him noodles again.
There had only been three or four bowls in total.
After so many years, Zhou Wu had almost forgotten them completely.
No wonder the first time he visited the shop several months ago, the flavour had felt strangely familiar.
…
“Are you especially happy today?”
Before going to sleep that evening, Wen Ci raised her head from beneath the blanket and finally asked.
Zhou Wu sat against the headboard replying to emails.
He lowered his eyes.
“Why do you ask?”
“You’ve been smiling all evening,” Wen Ci stated.
The smile at the corners of Zhou Wu’s lips widened.
He hummed lazily, then suddenly called,
“Teacher Wen.”
“Mm?”
“Dating you feels like digging for treasure.”
The treasure seemed endless.
Every time he uncovered another small piece, the psychological satisfaction made his scalp tingle.
“…”
Before asking, Wen Ci had not expected the answer to concern her.
She froze for two seconds and was about to ask what he meant when her phone chimed.
Dou Yiqing had sent a voice message saying that she and Qin Yun were drinking at Blue Note and asking whether the two of them wanted to come.
Wen Ci rested her head against Zhou Wu’s thigh.
“Do you want to go?”
“No.”
Zhou Wu placed his palm against her cheek.
His hand was warm.
“You can’t drink these next few days anyway.”
“Me?”
Wen Ci shifted her head and looked up at him in confusion.
“Why?”
“Isn’t your period due around now?”
“…”
Wen Ci froze.
She quickly picked up her phone and checked the date.
It really was.
She had been so busy recently that she had completely forgotten.
But—
Wen Ci lowered the phone and looked at Zhou Wu with even greater confusion.
“Zhou Wu, my period hasn’t come.”
Zhou Wu paused.
After several seconds of silence, he asked,
“How many days late is it?”
“…A week.”
Zhou Wu threw his laptop aside, picked up his phone and ordered pregnancy tests for delivery.
Wen Ci sat up too.
She had originally been slightly sleepy.
Fridays were filled with classes, and she was exhausted.
Zhou Wu bought several tests.
The little plastic bag arrived bulging with them.
Wen Ci stood blankly outside the bathroom.
Only when she saw him return carrying the bag did she recover.
Although her face remained confused, her voice had already become calm.
“It probably isn’t that, right? You… always used protection.”
Although Zhou Wu often said they would continue until she became pregnant, he had always been meticulous about contraception.
“It isn’t one hundred per cent effective,” Zhou Wu said. “Test first.”
“All right.”
Wen Ci accepted the bag and was about to enter when Zhou Wu wrapped an arm around her neck and drew her closer.
He lowered his head, kissed the tip of her nose and then her lips, as though comforting her.
“Don’t be frightened.”
In that instant, Wen Ci genuinely became much calmer.
Although they only needed to wait several minutes for the results, the time felt extremely long.
Many test strips lay across the sink.
The two stood side by side.
Looking at their reflections in the mirror, Zhou Wu suddenly called,
“Teacher Wen.”
“Mm? Are the results ready?”
Wen Ci leaned forwards to look.
“No.”
He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her closer to his side.
Smiling, he said,
“We look as though we’re waiting for our university entrance examination results.”
Wen Ci looked at herself in the mirror.
It genuinely did look slightly like that.
Then she looked at Zhou Wu’s reflection.
A smile rested on his lips, but his eyes contained many complicated emotions.
There was nervousness, anticipation, worry and excitement.
She wanted to ask what result Zhou Wu hoped to see.
But the test strips answered first.
Every one showed a single line.
She was not pregnant.
The strength left Wen Ci’s body.
She leaned against Zhou Wu’s arm and released a heavy breath.
They waited a while longer to ensure no second line suddenly appeared.
Then Zhou Wu threw everything into the bin.
He casually lifted Wen Ci as though she were a parcel and carried her back to bed.
She was already exhausted from work and had just been frightened.
Now Wen Ci was genuinely drained in both body and mind.
The moment she reached the bed, she lay down again.
Zhou Wu loved seeing her like this.
No one else ever did.
In front of outsiders, Wen Ci was always calm and composed, making it seem as though she never became tired, overheated or angry.
“What does that mean, Teacher Wen?”
Zhou Wu lay beside her, resting one bent arm on the pillow as he glanced sideways at her.
His voice was lazy.
“You look relieved.”
“Mm.”
Wen Ci admitted it and slowly said,
“If I became pregnant now, then three people would eventually be thrown out of my family home.”
Zhou Wu burst out laughing so hard that even the bed moved.
“What about you?”
Wen Ci turned onto her side and rested her cheek in her palm while looking at him.
“What did you think?”
The corners of Zhou Wu’s lips lifted faintly.
He quietly held her gaze.
Wen Ci expressed understanding.
“You don’t have to tell me. I was only curious.”
“I should tell you.”
Zhou Wu imitated her sentence structure again, but his tone dragged lazily at the end and sounded far from serious.
“I thought about too many things. I’m organising them.”
“To be honest, my first reaction was happiness.”
“Perhaps it was a man’s instinct. The woman I love might be carrying my child…”
“But that only lasted an instant.”
Zhou Wu lowered his bent arm and began playing with Wen Ci’s hair.
His fingers slipped through it, massaging her scalp.
“Then I became irritated.”
“My girlfriend is still this thin herself. How could she carry a baby?”
“I’ve gained weight recently,” Wen Ci objected.
“Mm. The amount you gained weighs less than one of my dinners.”
Zhou Wu’s tone was indifferent.
“Then I thought, you’ve only been working for just over a year. Your career hasn’t stabilised yet, and you’d already have to give birth. That doesn’t seem appropriate.”
“Even if you didn’t want the baby and ended the pregnancy, it would still affect your health.”
“I thought about how I was flying everywhere a while ago. Sometimes, when I was exhausted, I smoked a cigarette…”
“Would that affect the child?”
“I thought, there’s already a dog competing with me for your attention. If a child appeared too, I’d be finished.”
Zhou Wu spoke slowly, his voice almost hypnotic.
Wen Ci felt sleepy yet also wanted to laugh.
Zhou Wu poked her cheek and said seriously,
“Don’t laugh. If you hadn’t kissed me before meeting the dog, I’d suspect you only dated me because of him.”
Wen Ci could no longer restrain herself.
She leaned closer, laughing as she kissed him.
“I didn’t.”
Zhou Wu naturally wrapped his arms around her.
“Those were only my first thoughts.”
“It was only a few seconds, but I thought about all of that.”
“Afterwards, I only thought about one thing.”
“What?”
“What would we do if you genuinely were pregnant?” Zhou Wu said.
“I haven’t even proposed to you yet.”
“…”
“That concludes all my thoughts.”
Zhou Wu said, “Report complete, Teacher Wen.”
“Zhou Wu.”
“Mm?”
“Can we have s*x?”
Zhou Wu laughed.
The question was unexpected yet undeniably typical of Wen Ci.
“…Didn’t you say you were exhausted today?”
“I genuinely am.”
Wen Ci raised her head, her nose touching his chin as she pleaded,
“So can we just do it face-to-face once?”
Sometimes, Zhou Wu genuinely believed Wen Ci would seduce him to death.
He removed his shirt, lifted her chin and kissed her.
They had been kissing for a while and were just beginning to become aroused when Wen Ci suddenly pushed him away.
She cupped his face and murmured,
“…Sorry.”
Zhou Wu:
“?”
“It came.”
“I can feel it.”
“?”
“My period.”
“…”
Leave a Reply