A beautiful summer night

"What are you doing looking for Sister Wanzi so late?" Xie Tan sat up, touching his nose to hide his embarrassment.

"Enough with the nonsense?" Xie Qiyan pulled a chair over from her desk and sat down, speaking in a commanding tone, "Hurry up."

Xie Tan rolled his eyes and chuckled, "You care about her?"

"I'll give you three seconds," Xie Qiyan said calmly.

The calmer the scene, the more it hints at an impending storm.

Xie Tan was quick to understand and promptly picked up his smartwatch to make a WeChat video call to Xia Wanzhi.

Xia Wanzhi answered quickly, her face covered by a face mask appearing on the small screen of Xie Tan's watch: "You little night owl, what are you doing calling me so late?"

"It wasn't me, it was..." A fierce glare shot down, and Xie Tan's words were instantly swallowed back down.

Xia Wanzhi blinked: "What is it?"

Xie Tan opened her voice with a melodious tone: "Whose heart is it—"

Xia Wanzhi: "..."

Xie Qiyan's face darkened, and he reached for Xie Tan's pen, writing a sentence on the notebook for Xie Tan to see.

Xie Tan read it aloud: "Where is it?"

Her tone was stiff, and Xia Wanzhi thought she had misheard. She chuckled and asked, "What?"

Xie Tan's lips twitched, and she smoothed things over: "Um, I just couldn't sleep and wanted to chat with you, Sister Wanzi. Where is your place? It doesn't look like my cousin's house."

"At the hotel, enjoying some alone time with Sister Yunli." Xia Wanzhi switched the camera, and Yunli, who was also wearing a face mask, greeted Xie Tan in the camera.

The facilities of the five-star hotel are readily apparent.

"How do you guys stay in a hotel?" Xie Tan had already ignored Xie Qiyan's presence and started chatting with the two people opposite him.

Xia Wanzhi tilted her head and lay down on the sofa. After a moment of hesitation, she said, "I have nowhere to go."

Before Xie Tan could say anything more, Xie Qiyan had already written two characters and displayed them in front of Xie Tan.

hang up.

Xie Tan pondered how to fight back against him, but she couldn't withstand the killer gaze from this man. In the end, she gave in and said goodbye to Xia Wanzhi: "Sister Wanzi, I'm sleepy, I'm going to sleep now."

Xia Wanzhi: "..."

"This little brat." Xia Wanzhi tossed her phone aside, and seeing Yun Li get up and walk over, she moved aside to make room for her.

The two of them squeezed into a small sofa to apply face masks. Yun Li looked at Xia Wanzhi meaningfully and smiled. After she finished smiling, she said bluntly, "There must be other people next to the child."

Xia Wanzhi's eyes widened: "How did you know?"

"Intuition," Yunli said cryptically.

"So mysterious." Xia Wanzhi didn't seem to care much.

"Think about it yourself," Yunli said with a smile, without directly pointing it out.

Around 10 p.m., Yunli Flower Shop closed and she was about to drive home when she turned around and saw the elegantly dressed young lady crying and asking her for a hug.

Yunli roughly guessed what was going on, so she teased her, "Running away together?"

So the two eloped to the hotel, where she told him about her childhood sweetheart relationship with Zhou Yu.

Speaking it out means that this chapter is about to be turned over.

On the other side, Xie Tan, who had ended the video call, blinked her bright eyes and stared at Xie Qiyan.

"Turn off the lights, go to sleep. If you're still secretly reading comics, I'll have them all thrown away." Xie Qiyan stood up, his tone brooking no argument.

Xie Tan pouted, inwardly cursing that anyone who helped him again would be a pig.

"Don't tell anyone I made this call," Xie Qiyan warned as he left.

After leaving Xie Tan's room, he went outside to the terrace to enjoy the breeze for a while, a cigar between his fingers. He didn't smoke much, but stood there motionless until the cigar burned out.

What business is it of his where Xia Wanzhi is?

They're just bored and have nothing better to do.

-

Xia Wanzhi stayed at the hotel feeling pathetic until noon before leaving. She didn't go back to the Zhou family home; instead, she took a taxi directly to her studio.

She knew Zhou Yu would be waiting for her here.

"Zhizhi, where have you been? I've been looking for you all night..." Upon seeing her again, Zhou Yu couldn't hide his excitement. He thought he would have to wait here for several days.

His eyes were bloodshot, and he looked listless and disheveled.

Xia Wanzhi felt bitter inside, her eyes sharp as she looked at him, as if trying to see through him to the very core of the earth.

Let's see just how badly his heart has changed.

"Let's talk." Xia Wanzhi said calmly. After thinking it over all night and figuring out many things, seeing him now suddenly made her realize that these things were no longer important.

Unimportant people, unimportant things.

Her tone was so nonchalant that Zhou Yu's heart tightened, and he immediately apologized, "I'm sorry, Zhizhi, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to, please forgive me..."

“You never did it on purpose.” Xia Wanzhi took a step back. “Zhou Yu, don’t apologize to me every time something happens.”

“But you have to listen to my explanation.” Zhou Yu rubbed his face, turned his back to adjust his emotions and state, but when he turned back, he didn’t dare to look Xia Wanzhi in the eye. “That woman was deliberately arranged by someone.”

"It's fine, just enjoy it since someone's arranged it." Xia Wanzhi didn't like standing, so she pulled out a chair, sat down, and slowly poured tea.

Zhou Yu clenched his fist, feeling a sense of defeat: "Zhizhi, don't say things out of anger."

"I wasn't saying that out of anger." Xia Wanzhi took a sip of tea, paused for a moment, looked up at Zhou Yu, lingered on his face for three seconds, and then calmly said, "Zhou Yu, let's end our engagement here."

It felt as if water from a cold pool had been poured directly onto him. Zhou Yu froze. Xia Wanzhi had discovered what happened last night, and he had already considered the worst possible outcome.

But he didn't expect Xia Wanzhi to neither cry nor make a fuss, and she didn't even bother to utter a single curse at him.

She was so calm, as if she had planned this moment all along.

It was as if she had been waiting for this moment to arrive.

Zhou Yu gave a bitter laugh, suppressing the pain in his heart, and pressed, "Xia Wanzhi, do you have no heart? Have you... never loved me?"

Xia Wanzhi avoided his gaze.

This is an unanswerable question.

She agreed to get engaged to him and thought about gradually taking on the role of his fiancée and living with him forever.

But so much has happened during this time that she needs to carefully examine her relationship with Zhou Yu.

“Zhou Yu, I may not know how to love someone.” Xia Wanzhi raised her eyelashes and said seriously, “I will propose the annulment of the engagement. Your Zhou family will not have to bear the consequences. Let’s leave it at that.”

"I've loved you for so many years, and now you want to call off the engagement with just one sentence? Zhizhi, you can't be so heartless..."

"You're the one who wronged me first." Xia Wanzhi hesitated, some words stuck in her throat but she swallowed them back. It was precisely because she knew that Zhou Yu had been sincere to her that she wanted to give him some dignity.

But he was forcing her, determined to make them both suffer.

Zhou Yu looked remorseful, his eyes slightly red. He knelt down and held Xia Wanzhi's hand: "Yes, I was bewitched and couldn't resist temptation, so I did something I'm ashamed of, but Zhizhi..."

He choked up, "I'm a man, I have desires too. No man in this world is perfect. Can you forgive me just this once..."

Xia Wanzhi looked at him in disbelief.

This was the first time in twenty-five years that Xia Wanzhi had seen Zhou Yu like this.

She never imagined that such words would one day come from Zhou Yu's mouth.