Chapter 13: Free to Contact Me

Yang Dai didn’t dare look at Qin Yingxia. She kept her head low, her voice choked with tears, “I’m sorry… I’ll pay for your phone…”

Qin Yingxia looked at her deeply, but before she could speak, Xu Siwan pushed the door open.

The atmosphere in the dorm was strange. Xu Siwan was taken aback, “What’s going on here?”

She had just returned from her tutoring job and didn’t know what had happened.

Yu Zhizhi spread her hands, her face full of helplessness.

“It’s just that the screen is broken, this time Senior Yang doesn’t need to pay for it.”

Qin Yingxia paused, giving a distant smile, “But Senior Yang, I want to tell you, it’s my freedom to choose which club I join. I joined the media club because there are things I want to learn.”

Her gaze rested quietly on Yang Dai, not giving an inch, “And there are people I want to see…”

Qin Yingxia had been timid for many years, and the most she had ever seen was Jin Zhuo’s back.

To see him, to see the scenery he saw, she had worked hard for a long time.

This time, she didn’t want to back down anymore.

As soon as she finished speaking, the other three looked at her in shock.

Especially Yang Dai, as if she had been stimulated, “You…”

She had discovered a secret that no one else knew. Her intuition told her that the person Qin Yingxia wanted to see was Jin Zhuo!

Qin Yingxia liked Jin Zhuo!

Yang Dai felt a little unsteady. Her gaze wandered over Qin Yingxia’s face, overwhelmed by a huge sense of inferiority.

She was terrified.

Because she knew that Jin Zhuo would also fall for Qin Yingxia.

It was just a matter of time…

Yang Dai remembered the scene she had seen in the corridor just now, the rare gentleness in Jin Zhuo’s eyes, all given to Qin Yingxia…

She lowered her eyes in embarrassment and ran out of the dorm in a panic.

Leaving the three of them staring at each other.

Yu Zhizhi: “I have a bold guess…”

She seemed to smell something big.

Qin Yingxia pursed her lips, her tea-colored eyes sparkling. She breathed slowly, her heart beating too fast to calm down.

She was really not good at arguing with people.

After her mother’s death, Qin Shan sent Qin Yingxia to her grandmother’s house.

Qin Shan told her softly that staying in China would remind him of his time with her mother.

He said he would be back soon, he wouldn’t make her wait too long.

Unexpectedly, the father and daughter met again two years later, Qin Shan returned to China with Huang Li, who was pregnant.

That day, Qin Yingxia got a stepmother…

Not long after, she had a younger brother, and everyone in the family doted on him.

Qin Yingxia didn’t like them, they were the ones who were like a family.

The whole family’s partiality forced her to learn to accept her fate. No matter how much she defended herself, no one was willing to listen to her.

•  

Half a month passed quickly. It had been raining for a long time, the temperature had not dropped at all, and the air was unbearably humid.

Fortunately, the next few days were sunny, so it wasn’t so damp and muggy.

Jin Zhuo seemed to have been busy these days, and he hadn’t shown up at the media club.

Qin Yingxia stared at her chat page with him, still stuck at a week ago.

[You Xia: Jin Xuechang, are you free these days? I promised you last time, I’ll treat you to dinner.]

[Jin: I might not be free these days, I just started college and there are a lot of things going on, how about we push it back?]

[You Xia: Okay, remember to contact me when you’re free… ]

[Jin: Okay.]

This went on for a week, and military training was about to begin, but Jin Zhuo hadn’t contacted her.

Thinking of this, Qin Yingxia sighed softly as she lay on the table.

Was her “gradual approach plan” a complete failure?

Yu Zhizhi looked up from her game and glanced at her, “What’s wrong, my dear, are you unhappy about the upcoming military training?”

Qin Yingxia shook her head dejectedly. She leaned closer and whispered, “Zhizhi, have you ever been in love?”

“Yes, I found it very boring.” Yu Zhizhi answered casually, her expression indifferent.

“Why do you think so?” Qin Yingxia was puzzled. Shouldn’t it be happy and joyful to be with someone you like…

In the game, Yu Zhizhi was headshot by the AI opponent.

Yu Zhizhi: “…Well, not only is dating boring, but gaming is also boring now.”

Qin Yingxia smiled brightly, her eyes sparkling.

“Seeing how eager you are to learn, I’ll tell you about it…” Yu Zhizhi put down her phone and said in a deep voice, “I think people are quite forgetful. Once they get what they want, they forget how they used to tiptoe to look at me through the window…”

Her eyes flashed with a hint of complexity, as if she had thought of something.

“…This is just my personal feeling. Maybe it won’t happen to you. Maybe you’re luckier than me!”

Since the last unpleasant incident with Yang Dai, Qin Yingxia’s little secret had been exposed to Yu Zhizhi.

When she heard Qin Yingxia say that she had been secretly in love with Jin Zhuo since the first year of junior high, Yu Zhizhi’s mouth was wide open, as if she could swallow her fist.

“So, this is your seventh year of secretly liking Jin Zhuo?!”

Qin Yingxia nodded obediently.

…

“Why are you suddenly asking me this? Is your strategy not going well?” Yu Zhizhi propped her chin and looked at her.

Qin Yingxia was full of worries, “…Not very well, it’s full of difficulties.”

“Actually, you can just go for it with this face.”

“That wouldn’t be good, would it?”

Yu Zhizhi shrugged nonchalantly, “What’s wrong with that? Just corner Jin Zhuo, wall him, kiss him forcefully, and tell him that the bitter fruit is also a fruit!”

Qin Yingxia: ?

“Oops, I got carried away, I overacted～” Yu Zhizhi was embarrassed.

“But seriously, this face is quite wronged to be with you. Using this face to play the secret crush game, what happened, didn’t you charm him in high school?”

“Jin Zhuo doesn’t look at faces. Many beautiful senior sisters and classmates chased him in high school, but none of them succeeded.”

Every time Qin Yingxia heard rumors of Jin Zhuo being confessed to, she would secretly be sad for a long time.

Yu Zhizhi was dubious, “I don’t think so.”

Last time at the recruitment event, Jin Zhuo’s repeated cries of ‘Qin Yingxia, give me a kiss’ were still fresh in her memory.

She had a feeling that Jin Zhuo would fall, and he would fall hard for Qin Yingxia.

•  

Jin Zhuo had been very busy these days. He helped the professor with a lot of analysis materials. When he finally had some free time, he had to join the military training.

He opened the chat window with Qin Yingxia, his fingertips tapped lightly on the screen, and he was about to send the message but stopped.

He didn’t know what bad idea he had, so he deleted all the edited text and directly sent a voice message.

“I really want to eat barbecue… Xiao Qin Xuemei.”

The young man’s voice was clear and clean, now it seemed to be tinged with a bit of coquettishness, transmitted through the receiver, causing a tingling sensation.

Qin Yingxia covered her phone, even with the Bluetooth on, she couldn’t help but feel nervous.

She stammered and took a long time to send the message.

【Youxia: Good, good.】

Jin Zhuo stared at her reply, then looked at the time, five o’clock in the afternoon.

He typed, 【Are you in class?】

【Youxia: Yes, yes, elective class, it’s a bit boring, I can look at my phone.】

【Jin: Which lecture hall?】