The Beautiful Time With You

The other end of the phone was completely silent.

Shi Yao felt more and more unnerved.

Just as she was wondering whether she should apologize once more, she vaguely heard a sigh on the other end of the phone, and she froze.

It didn’t seem like Lin Jiage was angry. On the contrary, he seemed to be a little upset. But what was he upset about?

Very soon, Lin Jiage spoke up, and his tone was no different from usual, “Are apples your favorite fruit?”

Ah? Did I hear him wrong?

Shi Yao was silent for a moment before responding, “That’s not it. There are only apples in our dormitory room.”

“Then, what do you like to eat the most?”

“Fruits?”

“Mm.”

“Passion fruit, loquat, watermelon, pineapple, pomegranate…”

“What about other things? Snacks?”

“Oh, I love potato chips, roasted duck, milk tea…” Shi Yao listed a long list of food without getting breathless. At the very end, she added, “… But, I still love ice cream the most, especially vanilla!”

“Ice cream?”

“Yup…” Shi Yao paused for a moment before asking. “… Do you like ice cream too?”

“That’s not it. I have a friend who loves to eat too, and the two of you are rather similar in terms of preferences…”

“Ohhh…” The windows along the corridors of the dormitory weren’t closed, and the night gale was a little chilling. Shi Yao was only dressed in her pajamas, so she couldn’t help but shiver because of it, causing her original question of “Who’s your friend?” to freeze on her lips.

On the other end of the phone, Lin Jiage noticed her strangeness and asked, “You’re outside?”

“Mm. My roommates are asleep, so I was afraid of waking them up.” Shi Yao’s voice shivered a little from the cold.

“I see,” Lin Jiage replied.

Shi Yao didn’t know how she could respond to those words.

Less than two seconds later, Lin Jiage spoke up once more, “I’ll be hanging up now.”

…

Lin Jiage stood on the balcony of his dormitory room. There were several other words that he wanted to add after saying that he’d be hanging up, but he swallowed them back when they were right on the tip of his tongue.

In that moment of hesitation, he heard her soft voice, “Goodbye.”

He didn’t reply to her words, choosing to take the phone away from his ear and hang up straight.

He didn’t go back to the room right after hanging up. Instead, he allowed the cold wind to batter him for a while before raising his hands to claw at his hair in irritation.

In the end, she was only calling him to explain how she revealed their relationship to her roommates.

Actually, when he first heard her words, he didn’t think too much of it. In fact, when he heard that she had caved in due to an apple, he nearly burst into laughter. However, his happiness didn’t last for too long…

“I already warned them not to talk about it with other people, and you can be assured that no one will hear me say your name!”

Recalling those words, Lin Jiage pressed his lips tightly together, and he felt even more irritated inside.

What made him feel even more frustrated was that he didn’t seem to have the right to be irritated. After all, he was the one who made that request.

There must’ve been something wrong with me back then!

Lin Jiage angrily exhaled a deep breath. In that moment, the phone in his hand suddenly lit up once more.

Shi Yao: Right, I forgot one last thing.

Shi Yao: Thank you.

Shi Yao: For what you did on the forum.

She sent three messages consecutively. Three sentences that didn’t link up, but he understood.

Inexplicably, the irritation he felt mellowed down because of her three sentences.

He didn’t reply to her message, but he did stare at the screen for a very long time. After which, he tapped into his phone’s notebook and typed out the following lines:

[Passion fruit, loquat, watermelon, pineapple, pomegranate.]

[Potato chips, roasted duck, milk tea, ice cream.]

He paused for a moment before typing an additional word after ‘ice cream’. And thus, the second line became: [Potato chips, roasted duck, milk tea, ice cream (vanilla).]