Jiang Baizhou promptly fell silent, instinctively glancing towards her, only to see her roll her eyes and pursing her lips as she asked, "What’s up?"
"You’re really in the late stage of your professional disease of liking to give lectures, aren’t you? I just finished listening to one of your classes, and how long has it been and you plan to give me another lesson? I’m just an amateur, you explain things so clearly and thoroughly to me yet I’m not the one taking exams." Cen Jin drooped her little face, puffing out her cheeks as she replied, "But speaking of which, your class is really strict—no one dared to raise their hand to answer your questions at the back, didn’t you find it awkward?"
"Not awkward." Jiang Baizhou responded calmly, seemingly already accustomed to such situations.
Cen Jin was speechless: "Then, pretend I didn’t say anything."
At that time, she shouldn’t have stood up to answer that question, being watched like a monkey. In the end, she was the one overthinking.
"Are you going to the studio tomorrow?" After a period of silence in the car, they stopped at a traffic light at an intersection, and Jiang Baizhou turned to look at her, asking in a calm voice.
Cen Jin listened, turned her head to look over, and shook her head: "Nothing for me tomorrow, not going, staying home to sleep, and tomorrow night Feici invited me to dinner, and you? Are you working tomorrow?"
"Yes, I have to come to school in the morning, and in the afternoon, I have two appointments with patients."
"Won’t you be very busy tomorrow?"
"Mm." Jiang Baizhou responded lightly. As the green light turned on, he restarted the car and, after a pause of about half a minute, spoke again: "Tomorrow night at Yu Feici’s family store?"
"I think so! Anyway, for so many years, gatherings with Feici and Shi Shu have always been at her family’s store; it hasn’t changed."
"I’ll pick you up when I finish early."
The next day at ten in the morning, Cen Jin was awakened by the beams of sunlight refracted through the floor-to-ceiling windows but had no intention of waking up, still lying in bed with her eyes closed. After about five minutes, as she was nearing sleep again, Cen Jin suddenly had a spark of inspiration, abruptly opened her eyes, and sat up like a spring from the bed, rubbed her messy hair, and stared vacantly at the half-drawn curtains’ floor-to-ceiling window, shaking herself awake.
Recalling Ms. Qin’s instructions before leaving home this morning, reminding her to vacuum the house upstairs and downstairs, and to go to the supermarket to buy groceries, as she would come back to cook lunch.
After sitting for about two minutes, Cen Jin swiftly pulled off the quilt and picked up the phone next to her pillow to check the time, angrily slapped her forehead, suddenly finding a WeChat message on the screen, sent by Jiang Baizhou two hours ago.
The tense feeling suddenly calmed down, she clicked into the WeChat chat with Jiang Baizhou, seeing only a simple word ’Morning’.
This morning, Cen Jin suddenly felt a gust of cold wind ruthlessly grazed her face, without leaving a trace.
After thinking for a moment, Cen Jin also replied with the same word ’Morning’.
After waiting for about a minute, seeing no response, she thought of him saying yesterday that he was going to school today, he should be busy, so she didn’t think too much about it, put down the phone, and hurried to freshen up, following Ms. Qin’s instructions to start working.
At eleven o’clock past ten, Cen Jin finally finished cleaning both floors, exhausted and breathless, she collapsed on the bed, slowly complaining: "This big house really is exhausting to clean."
As soon as she finished speaking, the phone tossed aside started ringing, the caller ID showed ’Jiang Baizhou❤’.