Qin Nuan frowned and took a sip of her cold drink. "Are you going to eat or not? If not, let’s go."
Luo Qianqian quickly sat down next to Qin Nuan without a word and ordered some ice cream balls, while Lin Jiayou ordered an iced coffee and sat across from Luo Qianqian.
"We just ran into Xiu Ran, and Zhang Yun followed her," Luo Qianqian said calmly, looking at the tissues on the table. "I’m not much to look at, am I the one who was written about in the ’red trousers’ article?"
"You sly little thing," Qin Nuan narrowed her eyes slightly as she asked, "Why would Xiu Ran come here?"
"How would I know?" Luo Qianqian gave an unwilling-to-say-more look in front of Lin Jiayou. "Are you coming back with us later? There will be pig’s feet to eat."
Qin Nuan ate at home alone as well. Her boyfriend didn’t have time to come home for meals every day, and sometimes he was so busy he wouldn’t even come home to sleep.
Qin Nuan nodded nonchalantly. "Remember to save a portion for me, I’ll take it back for my brother to eat."
Lin Jiayou was speechless. They were already thinking about takeout before having their meal? Luckily, Huang Yueran had the foresight to bring a few extra portions.
"By the way, Brother, what do you think of Zhang Yun?" Luo Qianqian suddenly asked.
"She’s alright. Why do you ask? She’s quite straightforward, no beating around the bush; when she makes excuses, it’s quite obvious," he said, recalling the guilty look she had when they met at the school gate and she mentioned that Luo Qianqian had come along. Although he sensed it was fake, he still found a place to secretly call Luo Qianqian to confirm.
Qin Nuan also nodded repeatedly. "To put it nicely, Zhang Yun is forthright; to put it unpleasantly, she’s lacking in tact."
...Is it really okay to talk about her when she’s not around?
Before Luo Qianqian could utter a word, she saw a boy approaching their table. Realizing he was coming for Qin Nuan, she didn’t say anything amusingly, watching to see how Qin Nuan would handle it.
"Hello, I am from the neighboring school. Can I... Can I have your phone number?" he asked, extending his own phone.
"I have a boyfriend, so I prefer to keep my distance from other men, sorry," Qin Nuan said coldly, without a trace of politeness.
"I see, so if you break up in the future... can you give me a chance to pursue you?" the boy continued.
Lin Jiayou was instantly choked by his coffee, coughing uncontrollably.
Luo Qianqian’s eyes widened. Was this some kind of curse?
As expected, Qin Nuan’s face turned cold: "Get lost!"
The boy left sheepishly, and the other boys at his table watched him return with mocking smiles.
Qin Nuan calmly wiped the table in front of Luo Qianqian with a tissue that had a number on it, crumpled it, and tossed it into her finished cold drink cup.
"Tsk tsk, the power of a beauty," Luo Qianqian remarked repeatedly, then turned to Lin Jiayou. "Brother Jiayou, you really lack presence. You’re sitting right here and still, other people come to hit on her."
Qin Nuan rolled her eyes. Wasn’t it obvious he was just playing the role of a protective big brother? Obviously, a boyfriend would sit not just next to her but across from her too. What does it mean when he’s sitting across from Luo Qianqian?
"Alright, hurry up and eat." With the ice cream served, Lin Jiayou urged them.
"Qianqian!" Qin Nuan suddenly spoke up. "Do you remember what Fang Rou said about Xiu Ran...?"
Luo Qianqian nodded, puzzled. Fang Rou had said that Xiu Ran had a boyfriend, but they hadn’t noticed it. She didn’t even return phone calls, let alone skip classes to go out, and they had never seen her go out alone. Today was an exception, though. Cong Rong and Cao Yingying had gone home, Zhang Yun was out too, and Cong Rong went out with her as well.
"So today...." The unsaid words lingered in silence, but Luo Qianqian understood.
There are closer malls; there was no need to come so far. Why did she come here?
"Why think too much? It must be that she didn’t want to run into you and ruin the surprise," Luo Qianqian said, not wanting to reveal the issues of their dorm in front of Lin Jiayou, although he had already sensed something.
"You girls really think too much," Lin Jiayou commented succinctly.
"You don’t think enough," your brain is missing a screw. Luo Qianqian silently added in her mind.
"Shall we go shopping and then head over? You all don’t have class in the afternoon?" Lin Jiayou asked with a puzzled face.
Luo Qianqian nodded calmly, and Qin Nuan nodded guiltily. She wouldn’t admit that she actually had classes but just didn’t want to attend them.
"By the way, who’s picking us up today?" Qin Nuan asked. Usually, on weekends when the two of them went home, it was either a brother from the Luo Family or Qin Wen waiting nearby to pick them up.
"Comrade Luo Yanwu, but he’s probably going to be late. I’ll give him a call later and tell him to just wait at home; we’ll go back by ourselves," Luo Qianqian said. Luo Yanwu wanted to pick them up simply as an excuse to see Cong Rong, but since Cong Rong wasn’t around, it would be unfair to disappoint him.
"Just have my brother come pick me up so I can go home with him, and I won’t have to bring him pig’s feet," she remembered that Qin Wen didn’t seem to like eating animal extremities and preferred lean meat when it came to meat.
"Sure," Luo Qianqian immediately took out her phone from her bag, sent a message to Luo Yanwu about their plan to go shopping and then return with Qin Wen, and emphasized that Cong Rong had something to attend to at home and wasn’t at the school.
Unexpectedly, Luo Yanwu replied soon after, indicating he knew.
Knew what? That he didn’t need to pick them up, or that Cong Rong wasn’t at school???
Qin Nuan also received a response: "Just call him after we’re done shopping; he seems pretty free right now," Qin Nuan said, looking at the smiley face symbol on her phone.
Agreeing quickly, Luo Qianqian finished off her ice cream in a few bites and cheerfully left the building, naturally leaving the bill to Lin Jiayou.
While shopping at the supermarket, Qin Nuan frowned, "You don’t look like you’re here to buy fruit; you look like you’re here to buy groceries." Gazing at the potatoes and tomatoes in the shopping cart, she couldn’t understand who would bring such things when visiting someone else’s home.
"I want to eat these vegetables tomorrow. It’s more sincere to buy and bring them myself," Luo Qianqian declared matter-of-factly.
"Then you carry them yourself later, don’t just shove everything at your brother," Qin Nuan emphasized in a low voice.
Luo Qianqian blinked, saying nothing. Soon all these items would be packed together; what was the point in separating them?
Lin Jiayou was engrossed as he held a box of bone powder, planning to put it into the cart, when Luo Qianqian abruptly stopped him: "What are you doing?"
"Isn’t this stuff pretty good for elderly people?" He remembered his father always bringing something similar when visiting his grandfather.
"You’d be better off buying honey than this." However, mentioning honey reminded her of the soy milk in the dormitory and then the calcium pills, and she dully added, "Buying calcium pills would be better than this stuff."
The heaviest purchase was a small box of lychees. They also bought cherries, bananas, and apples, because she always remembered someone saying that gifts should never come in pairs. Additionally, they purchased a box of yogurt and a bottle of wine. The wine was Qin Nuan’s choice; Luo Qianqian and Lin Jiayou didn’t understand it.
After finishing the shopping, Lin Jiayou went back to school to get the pig’s trotters, filling a medium-sized shopping bag. Qin Nuan called Qin Wen to give him their location and soon saw the familiar car parked in front of the mall.
Luo Qianqian and Lin Jiayou sat in the back, Qin Nuan in the front passenger seat, with the things they bought next to Luo Qianqian.
"Hello." Qin Wen nodded lightly as a greeting when he saw Lin Jiayou.
"Hello," Lin Jiayou nodded back, without a hint of nervousness or reserve.
"Second Brother Qin, this is Qianqian’s..." Qin Nuan began but didn’t know how to introduce him properly. Besides Shufan, Qin Wen had met all the other Luo brothers, but referring to him as a blood brother was not quite right, and calling him a cousin or a distant brother made even less sense.
"Second Brother Qin, this is my brother, Lin Jiayou, my mother’s husband’s brother." Knowing the reason for Qin Nuan’s hesitation, Luo Qianqian smiled and eased the situation. "Brother Jiayou, this is Qin Wen, Nuannuan’s second brother, who has always taken good care of me."
"Thank you for always taking care of Qianqian," Lin Jiayou said, smoothly following along and not minding Luo Qianqian’s introduction, as apart from their parents’ relationship, they weren’t particularly close.
"Not at all," Qin Wen smiled. "Qianqian is just like a sister to us in our family."
Isn’t that the truth? His own sister was about to become Luo Qianqian’s sister-in-law, so she indeed felt like a sister to them.