After explaining, the other person was understandably unhappy, having made the trip for nothing. Pei Qi apologized and quickly left the private room.

After all that, he was hungry. He randomly found a nearby noodle shop and sat down to eat. He hadn’t taken a few bites when his phone vibrated twice. He was afraid it might be Jiang Shulin.

Luckily, it wasn’t. It was Guan Yue.

G: [Where are you eating?]

Seven: [Gonglin Road.]

He was sitting at a small plastic table by the roadside, facing the street sign.

G: [Finished eating?]

Seven: [Almost.]

G: [I’m done too.]

G: [I’ll pick you up on the way.]

G: [I’ll be there in about ten minutes.]

He had no room to refuse.

Seven: [Okay.]

Ten minutes later, standing under the street sign, Pei Qi saw the Panamera approaching.

Pei Qi got in the car and quickly fastened his seatbelt.

“Here,” the man handed him a bag of medicine.

Pei Qi took the bag: “What’s this?”

“You have night blindness,” Guan Yue didn’t turn his head, calmly watching the road ahead, gently pressing the accelerator. “This is fish oil and vitamin A. Both are quite effective. I asked my ophthalmology colleagues, but you should still see a doctor when you have time. We can’t be sure if it’s acquired later or due to vitamin deficiency.”

“Thank you.” Pei Qi, already feeling guilty, was now utterly ashamed. He’d snuck out without telling Guan Yue, yet Guan Yue was concerned about his night blindness. He was terrible.

After several seconds of mental preparation, Pei Qi decided to confess.

“I… I have something to tell Doctor Guan.”

Guan Yue: “Mm, go ahead.”

“Actually, I didn’t go to dinner with classmates,” Pei Qi bit his lower lip hard. “I went to meet the blind date my mother set me up with.”

Guan Yue’s hand holding the steering wheel paused; his foot pressed on the brake, slowly reducing the speed.

“What did you say?”

“Doctor Guan, please scold me.” The little capybara hung his head, his voice soft.

The man parked the car on the side of the road. After turning off the engine, he finally spoke: “Didn’t you tell me the blind date thing was a misunderstanding?” Then, Guan Yue added a strongly interrogative sentence: “You lied to me?”

“No,” the young man denied it decisively. He really hadn’t lied. It was just…

“I haven’t told my mother that we’re married, so she insisted I go,” Pei Qi also heard the slightly evasive tone in his own sentence, so he added, “But I know… this… this is all my fault.”

Guan Yue glanced over, giving him a slightly cold look.

“So, how was the blind date? Satisfied?”

Pei Qi didn’t know why his nose was twitching; he suddenly smelled vinegar. It was like the Shanxi aged vinegar he’d had at the canteen during his internship in Shanxi.

“I just explained it to him in person. There was no… no blind date. We’re married; I wouldn’t really go on a blind date with someone else,” the little capybara explained with some difficulty.

“You know we’re married,” Guan Yue’s tone was calm, his eyes fixed on Pei Qi, like a calm lake about to become turbulent.

The little capybara was full of remorse: “I’m sorry.”

“Why didn’t you tell your family? Am I not good enough?” This was something Guan Yue had wanted to ask last night.

“Of course not,” Pei Qi gripped the slightly scratchy seatbelt, his eyes meeting Guan Yue’s directly for the first time. “My relationship with my parents isn’t close; Doctor Guan should know that.”

Guan Yue: “Mm.”

“So, getting married was my own decision. I didn’t want them to be too involved, but if I suddenly told them, they’d definitely want to meet, have a wedding, etc., and they’d be angry that I acted on my own,” the little capybara’s eyes were sincere. “It might also affect Doctor Guan. Doctor Guan doesn’t like being disturbed, and my parents don’t have much sense of boundaries; I’m worried they’ll constantly bother you.”

Guan Yue’s tone softened: “So that’s your concern?”

The little capybara beside him pursed his lips, then his dimples appeared, but they seemed filled with bitterness: “Not all of it.”

“Actually, I don’t really want to meet them.” He didn’t know when it started, but he increasingly didn’t want to go south for the New Year. Since college, he’d only gone back once.

“I’m sorry, Doctor Guan. I didn’t explain my complicated family situation clearly before we got married.”

Pei Qi still spoke with a smile. But Guan Yue wanted him to stop smiling.

“Unbuckle your seatbelt.”

“?” Pei Qi froze. Doctor Guan wasn’t going to make him get out of the car, was he? Even if he did, he’d accept it.

The young man obediently unbuckled his seatbelt. The next moment, he was pulled into a hug. The scent of cedar enveloped him.

“Um.” The little capybara stiffened, not daring to move, enveloped in the man’s warm embrace. Why was Doctor Guan suddenly hugging him? And hugging him so tightly. But he didn’t feel uncomfortable; instead, he felt like an empty space in his heart had been filled.

He didn’t move, just obediently staying in the man’s arms. He didn’t know how long it lasted; he only felt the temperature in the car rising because of their closeness.

“Don’t worry about it if you don’t want to talk about it,” the man said after a while.

“Thank you,” Pei Qi lightly inhaled the scent of the man’s neck; it smelled wonderful. “But it’s okay if Doctor Guan minds; anyway, no one knows we’re married. We can just go to the Civil Affairs Bureau again.”

Guan Yue: “…”

Pei Qi: “Guan…”

Guan Yue: “Don’t talk.”

Pei Qi was immediately subdued and obediently shut his mouth. After a long while, the man released him and started the car again.

“Did you eat dinner?”

“I had noodles by the roadside,” Pei Qi answered, refastening his seatbelt.

Guan Yue: “Want anything else? Should I make braised beef with potatoes? And buy some navel oranges?”

Pei Qi nodded happily: “Okay.”

Guan Yue had discovered that besides oranges and other vitamin C-rich fruits, the little capybara also liked potatoes that were stewed until soft and mushy.

“But I’m not hungry anymore; Doctor Guan doesn’t have to bother,” Pei Qi remembered that the last few times Guan Yue made braised beef with potatoes, it took a lot of effort; the process was quite complicated.

Guan Yue: “I want to eat it myself.”

“Then I’ll have a few bites, haha,” Pei Qi replied.

Soon after dinner, Pei Qi quickly showered and went to bed, preparing to rest early for his lecture at He University the next afternoon.

At that moment, he received a message from Jiang Shulin.

Mom: [Xiaobai told me you went out of your way to tell him you weren’t going on blind dates.]

Mom: [That makes him think you look down on him.]

The little capybara’s ears drooped again. After a moment of contemplation, he typed a reply.

Seven: [I didn’t want to deceive him.]

Seven: [I already apologized.]

Mom: [He has such good conditions; what’s not to like?]

Mom: [You’re always like this.]

Mom: [You were like this when you were choosing your major.]

Mom: [Why can’t you be more obedient like your brother?]

Pei Qi didn’t know what to say, so he stared at the screen for a long time. After a while, his finger gently touched the screen.

Seven: [I know, Mom.]

Seven: [Get some rest.]

After he sent the message, there was no reply. He clicked on her profile picture; it was a childhood photo of his brother, Pei Xi. Pei Xi was eight years younger than him and was about to take the college entrance exam. Jiang Shulin’s Moments also frequently featured Pei Xi.

Pei Qi scrolled through a few posts and silently exited. He decided not to look anymore.

He burrowed into the covers; he wasn’t very sleepy. After a long time, he finally fell asleep.

On Monday, Doctor Guan always left early, probably because the department had a large ward rounds and morning meeting. Pei Qi also got up early, leisurely finishing the millet porridge Guan Yue had made, and took the subway to work. This morning, he planned to complete the documentation for the repaired artifacts and ideally glue another page, so he could feel at ease going to class in the afternoon.

Luckily, the class went smoothly. Pei Qi’s worries about the classroom atmosphere were unfounded. No students were playing on their phones or sleeping; the students in the front row kept raising their hands to ask questions. He felt that two hours of class wasn’t enough.

After class, the little capybara walked briskly along the tree-lined avenue below the teaching building, taking out his phone to report his first lecture to Lao Jiang.

His phone rang. It was Guan Yue. The man rarely called him directly; he usually texted.

“What’s wrong, Doctor Guan?” Pei Qi answered.

The man’s voice on the phone was slightly hurried: “Are you free now? Are you still at work?”

“No, I had a class at He University today; it just finished,” the little capybara’s tone was cheerful. “What’s up?”

“I have a file on a USB drive; I forgot to take it this morning,” Guan Yue finally got to the point. “But it’s also troublesome for you to go back and bring it, so forget it.”