He was not too happy at first after being dragged along for the New Year’s visit. He heard his mother said that the family they were visiting had a young woman who was single, but he was not expecting much because his standards were high. He was a very proper person, with a stable job, a good salary— he had a home and a car too. He did not fancy most women.
However, he got very excited when he laid eyes on Song Yu. He did not expect that the Song daughter—whom his mother constantly talked about—was actually that beautiful. Furthermore, she was not like other women who were high maintenance. She had a quiet and delightful temperament, and she was certainly not the type whose beauty is only skin-deep.
If he went out with her, he would definitely be able to show-off to his bros.
Seeing that Song Yu did not answer, Yu Qianying elbowed her subtly, forcing Song Yu to put on a smile and say, “If there’s a chance.”
“You youngsters have a lot in common. Take the opportunity to talk more.” Noticing how Song Yu was playing dumb, Yu Qianying might as well open up the topic herself.
“Song Yu, what’s your number? You mind exchanging numbers with me?”
Song Yu did not expect Wang Yifeng to be so direct. Since she was in front of both their parents, she felt that it would not be nice to decline, but the truth was that she really did not want to give it to him.
Wang Yifeng’s intentions were clear. If she gave it to him, what would happen if he bothered her in the future?
She was not the type of girl who would want a fallback guy. She and Qi Chengzhi were already together, so she wanted to be honest with him.
Even if she was still apprehensive of their relationship, she would not find a way out just because of that.
Moreover, she did not want to give Wang Yifeng false hope.
Just as she was thinking of an excuse to refuse, her phone rang.
She saw that it was Qi Chengzhi, so she smiled and apologized, “I’m sorry, it’s the company. I have to take it.”
Song Yu held her phone and answered it only after entering her room.
“I’ll be at your home in half an hour.” As a result of talking through the phone, she could not see him, but could only hear his voice. A certain kind of magnetism was apparent.
His calm and mature voice sounded much more mellifluous after she had just heard Wang Yifeng’s voice. It caressed her ears and made them feel hot.
“About that…don’t stop at the entrance to my home! Yesterday, during the day, my neighbor saw us and my mom even asked me about it.” Song Yu sat beside the window and occasionally pressed her finger on the windowsill.
“…” Qi Chengzhi kept quiet on the other end of the line. She only heard his unhappy sighs, and they sounded quite heavy.
Song Yu drew circles on the windowsill with her fingers. She knew he was unhappy for certain, so she explained hurriedly, “It’s because of my connection to Chengji. After the Song family’s bankruptcy, the Qi family’s reaction left my parents bitterly disillusioned. I’m worried that my parents wouldn’t be able to handle it if they saw you.”
The Qi and Song families had a long history. From what she knew, they were on very good terms before she was born. Yu Qianying and Xia Wenna were best friends, which was why they made the decision for her and Qi Chengji to get married. It was not merely because of marriage, the relationship between the two families was very good indeed.
When the Song family went bankrupt, not only did the Qi family not help out, they ghosted the Song family completely. Song Donglin and Yu Qianying were very depressed, but Song Donglin fared better because he could control his feelings. For Yu Qianying, bringing up the Qi family would be like striking a nerve, and she still felt that way.
“…” Qi Chengzhi still remained silent. Song Yu thought that he did not agree since the man was one that was particularly persistent with his own views.
It was the same with sending her to the company. She clearly told him to stop farther away, but he would still drop her in front of the company by keeping quiet about his intention to do so.
She sighed silently and was about to tell him that he should forget about what she said if he was unhappy. Instead, Qi Chengzhi’s cold voice then spoke, “Qi Chengji.”
Song Yu thought she heard wrongly, “What?”
“Qi Chengji. If you mention him, say his full name. You don’t have any relationship with him now. There’s no need for you to call him Chengji so intimately,” he exclaimed.
‘Childish! He wants to have a clear distinction between himself and his brother.’
“Understood.” Song Yu had no choice but to agree, and she did not know whether to laugh or cry.
“I’ll wait for you at the entrance to the residential area.” Qi Chengzhi spewed out that sentence and hung up.
Song Yu dilly-dallied for a while before going back into the living room. She did not bring up the topic of her phone number, and Wang Yifeng—knowing that it was a silent refusal—did not ask about it anymore.
She had just taken her seat when Qi Chengzhi’s message came. He wrote only two words: “Come down.”
Song Yu went into her room to take her jacket. She noticed that Qi Chengzhi’s leather gloves were jutting out of the down jacket she wore the night before. Recalling that it belonged to Qi Chengzhi and that she forgot to hand it back to him, she took them and placed them into her bag.
Returning to the living room, Song Yu smiled and apologized, “I’m really sorry, our company has arranged for us to pay our new year’s visits to some clients. I have to go.”
“You should go. Work is important,” Mrs. Wang replied with a smile. She then turned and looked at Wang Yifeng. “You should send Song Yu.”
“It’s okay, my company is nearby. There aren’t many cars today, so the road will be empty. I’ll reach there in no time.” Song Yu feared that she would really be unable to wiggle herself out of the situation if Wang Yifeng really wanted to send her.
“There’s no one on the road because everyone’s having a holiday. How are you going to go to the company?” Mrs. Wang asked.
Wang Yifeng stood up and put on his jacket without saying a word. He smiled at Yu Qianying and Song Donglin. “Uncle, auntie, I’ll send Song Yu.”
“Really, it’s okay…” Song Yu was expressing genuine opposition, but no one seemed to care.
“Hehe, thank you for the trouble,” Yu Qianqing remarked and considered the matter as settled.
Song Yu was forced to the point where she could not decline his offer. When they went down, Song Yu stood and remarked seriously to Wang Yifeng, “I’m really okay with going by myself, please don’t go through all the trouble.”
“There’s no trouble. My car is parked here. I’ll send you to the company.” Wang Yifeng pointed to a row of cars in the parking lot. She did not even know which one belonged to him exactly.
“I…” Song Yu doubted whether to tell him she had a boyfriend.
Regarding that matter, however, Wang Yifeng did not bring up that topic and did not know whether it was something she should be saying.
It would only create awkward tension if she mentioned she had a boyfriend without him even asking.
Wang Yifeng however, did not wait for her to finish her sentence. He left her while waving at her, and said, “I’ll bring the car over.”
Song Yu stood there, mouth agape, and unable to stop him. There was nothing else she could do except to take out her phone and send a message to Qi Chengzhi. She told him the whole thing, but omitting, of course, that it was a covert blind date. “He insists on sending me to work. No matter what I said, it was no use. Maybe you can wait for me at the company?”
Wang Yifeng drove over in his red Toyota Camry, but Song Yu still had not received Qi Chengzhi’s reply.
She sighed and forced herself to sit in the front passenger seat. Deep down, she was nervous about how she had to face Qi Chengzhi.
He did not even reply to her message. Being a man with a short temper, it was certain that he was very much infuriated at that moment.
Letting him wait outside was bad enough. If he was told to make a journey to her office, he might even be so angry that he would just leave.
Once the Camry has driven out of the residential area, Song Yu saw the Range Rover parked there. She breathed a sigh of relief that he had yet to depart.
Song Yu lowered the mirror and looked at the Range Rover. She saw Qi Chengzhi sitting in the car and looking at her direction. Naturally, he saw her and Wang Yifeng.
Song Yu cast a helpless expression toward him, but Qi Chengzhi simply scoffed and ignored her by looking away.
She sat back upright and wound up the car windows again. She lowered her head and felt her scalp hurting badly.
Glancing at the side mirrors of the car, she noticed Qi Chengzhi tailing them.
Seeing that he followed them instead of just leaving her, Song Yu breathed a sigh of relief. She was even happy because he did not just desert her there in his moment of anger, and she thought about how she would apologize nicely to him.
Her happiness, however, was short-lived, because it only took a moment for her heart to sink.
Qi Chengzhi overtook the car abruptly, and it became apparent that he had decided to leave.
Song Yu looked downcast and her eyelashes obscured her eyes. They concealed the boundless disappointment in her heart, and almost involuntarily, her hands grasped her phone even tighter.
All of a sudden, there was a loud clatter, and the car shook violently. Under the inertia, Song Yu fell forward and knocked herself before falling backwards again.
The sudden impact left Song Yu feeling shocked, and her face turned pale. Panicked and flustered, she looked over and saw that the front of the Camry had rammed into Qi Chengzhi’s Range Rover.
Wang Yifeng huffed angrily. He released his seatbelt and flung it toward the door, after which he opened the door and left the car.
“How the hell did you drive!” Moments after Qi Chengzhi got down from the car, Wang Yifeng rushed to him, pointed to his nose, and exploded in anger.
Wang Yifeng’s driving was pretty alright. There were no traffic lights throughout the strip of road, and because it was the first day of the new year, everyone went home for the holidays, leaving B City looking like a ghost town. Cars were scarce on the road, so it was one of those rare days that the driving speed could somewhat be upped.
However, the Range Rover went from eighty miles an hour to a sudden halt. Since there was no indication that the car would stop, Wang Yifeng did not manage to brake in time. Although he braked immediately after noticing the halt, it was impossible for a car that was going eighty miles an hour to stop within such a short distance. In the end, the Camry rammed the rear end of the Range Rover with a significant amount of force.
Song Yu went down and saw that the Range Rover was not in too much of a bad shape. Other than a dent in the bumper and broken rear lights, everything else seemed alright.
On the other hand, the Camry was in far worse condition, as if it was a testament to the unreliability of Japanese cars. The bonnet was crushed to the point of it being opened up, akin to the distortion of the earth’s surface during movement of tectonic plates, whereby the curves and bends would render them split wide open.
The front lights were shattered all over the ground, and the front end of the car was so dented that it was completely unroadworthy.
“You’re asking me how the hell did I drive?” Qi Chengzhi leaned on the door and spoke coldly.
He took out a cigarette and placed it between his lips. One hand sheltered the cigarette from the wind while the other lit it, and throughout the whole process of lighting up the cigarette, he did not even look at Song Yu.
She knew that he did that on purpose because he was still angry.
How petty!
Upon keeping the lighter, Qi Chengzhi took a puff and used his slender fingers to hold the cigarette. White smoke escaped his lips and disappeared with the cold wind.
“Tailgating is your responsibility. You crashed into my car, and yet you ask me how the hell did I drive?” Qi Chengzhi snickered. Such mocking laughter incensed Wang Yifeng even more, and he no longer cared about keeping up appearances with Song Yu.
He was incensed to the point of being red in the face, and the finger he pointed at Qi Chengzhi was trembling. Qi Chengzhi however, did not seem to have a care in the world while smoking the cigarette.
Only then did Qi Chengzhi’s slightly squinted eyes looked askance at Song Yu. The expression was a thoroughly teasing one, and it seemed to be telling her, ‘Did you really ride in this coward’s car?’
“You’re the one who braked without warning in the middle of the road! That’s the reason I bumped into you!” Wang Yifeng’s eyes were red, and his heart was full of sorrow when he saw how terrible his car had turned out.
“Which eye of yours saw that happen?” Qi Chengzhi raised an eyebrow and asked.
“BOTH MY EYES!” Wang Yifeng raised his forefinger and middle finger to point at both his eyes.
“Pity, there are no CCTVs here that could’ve recorded the incident. If the police came, you’re still going to be in the wrong,” Qi Chengzhi said while exhaling a puff of smoke.
“You…” Wang Yifeng eventually calmed down and scrutinized his surroundings.
All of a sudden, he realized that if it really was his fault, then the compensation for the Range Rover…would involve a huge sum of money…
Wang Yifeng’s face turned blue and white, finally realizing that it was an extortion.
Qi Chengzhi took out his phone at a moderate pace and called a number. “Lawyer Song, I got into a car accident. I’m okay, but the car’s been hit. Come over and deal with it.”
After that, he called Chang Lai and ordered him to drive another car over.
During Qi Chengzhi’s phone call with Chang Lai, Wang Yifeng was so infuriated that he could care less about Song Yu. He was occupied with examining the condition of the crash, while also making the necessary calculations. If his luck was so bad that the responsibility was spread between both parties, he wondered how much his insurance was able to cover and how much extra he would have to fork out.
Rotten indeed was his luck, for him to suffer such a terrible accident during the first day of the New Year!
Qi Chengzhi stared impertinently at Song Yu while making his call. His enigmatic eyes narrowed ever so slightly.
Song Yu understood the warning in his eyes, “Do you still want to stay here?”
His actions made her feel numb in her head, so she compelled herself to say, “That…Mister Wang…”
Wang Yifeng was in an absolutely foul mood. He was crestfallen when he looked at Song Yu. She said to him, “By right, I should be waiting with you here, but I’ve already made an appointment with my director. If I don’t go now, I’ll be late. It’s only because you sent me that the car suffered an accident, so after everything’s settled, I’ll bear the responsibility. Just tell me how much I need to pay.”
“It’s not your responsibility. I can’t possibly ask you to pay.”‘It’s obviously the responsibility of this man right here, who’s currently smoking without a care in the world!’
Moreover, even if it was Song Yu’s responsibility, Wang Yifeng took a liking to her, so he would not let her bear the burden of these kinds of stuff. He did not want to leave her with the impression that he was a petty man.
“I’m sorry, I forgot you had something to attend to. Please go ahead, don’t mind me.” Wang Yifeng forced a slight smile.
Song Yu was genuinely sorry. Her smooth, soft fingertips tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and she apologized, “If it weren’t for sending me, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“It has nothing to do with you. No one could’ve predicted that a madman would be allowed to drive on the road.” Wang Yifeng shot Qi Chengzhi a frigid stare.
Song Yu said goodbye to Wang Yifeng and walked over to the corner of the street.
On the first day of the New Year, no shops would be open during the morning. The earliest they would begin business was in the afternoon, so all of the shops on the street were still closed. Song Yu could only stand on the side of the road.
She sent Qi Chengzhi a short message, “I’ll wait for you at the corner of the street.”
The message was sent, and since she was not wearing any gloves, her hands became red and cold despite only holding her phone for a brief moment.
She placed it back into her pockets along with her hands. After a while, she remembered that she still had Qi Chengzhi’s pair of gloves in her backpack, so she took them out and wore them.
Wearing them in the daytime, she saw clearly that they looked much bigger than they seemed the previous night.
They were exceptionally comfortable, so she did not place her hands into her pockets. Instead, she took her phone out for fear that she would miss any texts from Qi Chengzhi.
Looking down at the leather gloves, she could not help but think about how she underestimated his temper.
She thought that at most, he would just leave if he was angry enough. It came as a total shock that he would purposely get into an accident and turn the tables on Wang Yifeng.
That Lawyer Song, whom Qi Chengzhi phoned, was the best and most famous lawyer in the country. With him around, Wang Yifeng would definitely have to make compensation.
She stood for half an hour in the cold. Even a scarf could not prevent her face from being so frozen that it started to go numb. Her jaw became stiff and she felt as though she could not even say a single word.
A black Audi Q7 drove over, made a turn at the corner, and slowed down until it stopped in front of her.
The rear window was lowered down to reveal Qi Chengzhi’s stern face. He glanced coldly and ordered, “Get in.”
Song Yu’s head was lowered, and she went in like an obedient housewife. She did not care that she felt hard done by because of her half-hour wait in the freezing cold.
Qi Chengzhi remained angry at first, but seeing her cold and shivering face, his anger had subsided to half the original amount.
He shifted his eyes downward and saw her wearing his large gloves. The rest of his anger subsequently disappeared.
Sensing his stares, Song Yu’s face turned embarrassed as she took off the gloves and explained, “I forgot to return them to you last night.”
Her face was still red, and having taken the gloves off, she stuffed them into his hands. He received them and tossed them to one side, then stretched his hand and wrapped her hands with his palms.
Slowly but surely, her cold hands became warmer and warmer.
Song Yu stared at his fair, delicate, and large hand. It resembled the hands of aristocrats—people who never undertook any hard work since their birth.
Hands like his were suited to playing the piano. Putting it another way, he was someone who could strike the piano keys with grace and elegance.
Her heart was beating furiously and she was blushing. She mustered up the courage to take his hands in hers and wrap them inside her palms.
Soft and satiny, her thumb rubbed gently against the web between his thumb and forefinger. Her movements seemed to treat him as a beautiful piece of art.
Her actions of entreating him were coupled with feelings of intimacy that were slowly beginning to develop. It was vastly different from the restraint and uncomfortableness that she had in the very beginning.
Even though her movements were only light brushes, the web of his thumb and forefinger felt ticklish, as though a feather was tickling him, stroking the fire that was growing within him.
Qi Chengzhi then turned his hand and grabbed hers with a bit of force. “Would you still have the nerve to get on another man’s car in the future?”
“…” Song Yu was taken aback. Did he mean that he would cause an accident to every car that she went into?
Qi Chengzhi cast a sideways glance at her obedient demeanor. However, dissatisfaction slowly began appearing in his heart.
Keeping her relationship with him a secret led to her family introducing her to other men. He was like a shameful lover that was she kept outside of the home.
He introduced her with sincerity to his clique and acknowledged her status openly. He did not mind as much if she did not introduce him to her family, but she even forbade him from meeting her friends.
Qi Chengzhi’s stare was like a sharp knife. Song Yu felt flustered upon seeing it, and she wondered what was it she did that made him unhappy again.
She stretched out her hand. The fingers of her left hand were still intertwined within his fingers, while her right hand wrapped itself around his arm. With a fawning smile, she asked, “Where are we going?”
It was her first time she took the initiative and became flirty. Her face was red and her scalp felt numb. Although she did not dare to look at him directly at first, she was already looking directly at his face by then.
He looked down at her and saw her docile, delicate, and yielding expression. Her tenderly-pink face melted his heart and knowing her intentions, a slightly pleased expression flashed through the depths of his eyes, but on the surface, he still put on a very solemn look.
“We’re going to a movie.”
Song Yu blinked her eyes in disbelief. She found herself unable to relate a person of his magnificence with an activity as mundane as watching a movie.
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