Zhao Yulong narrowed his eyes slightly, looking somewhat confused.
He had clearly helped Gu Qiu solve a problem, yet this kid didn’t even say thank you and was instead wearing a resentful expression.
“I didn’t say anything wrong either. You were chatting so enthusiastically with that girl online… isn’t it only a matter of time before it turns into a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship?”
Hearing this, Gu Qiu’s face shifted from helplessness to utter despair.
He turned his head and glanced at Qin Zhiyi.
She was all smiles, seemingly enjoying her coffee very happily.
“Sigh!”
“With this so-called ‘online girlfriend’ title, she’s probably going to become even more brazen in the future.”
While complaining inwardly, he also shot an irritated glare at the “culprit”!
Zhao Yulong still didn’t understand where Gu Qiu’s strange mood was coming from. After thinking for a moment, he guessed:
“Don’t tell me you don’t like the one online either?”
“Then what were you doing all that for before?”
Gu Qiu couldn’t be bothered to explain any further, lest he make a fool of himself again.
He drained the drink in his cup in one go, then said:
“Are you still busy?”
“If not, I’m leaving first. I still have to go buy groceries. I promised to cook a meal for Grandma!”
Zhao Yulong raised his eyes and glanced around.
The cleanup in the hall would probably still take quite a while. Luckily, the supervisor who had gone to the police station to give a statement had already returned, so there was naturally nothing else for him to worry about.
Then he briefly gave the supervisor a few instructions. Just as he was about to call Gu Qiu to leave, he caught sight of Qin Zhiyi again.
“We’re leaving. What about her?”
“Why do you care about her?”
Gu Qiu would have been delighted if Qin Zhiyi stayed seated there a while longer.
Otherwise, if she chased him all the way to Grandma’s place, that would be real trouble!
Thinking of this, he didn’t care about anything else and simply stood up to leave.
Zhao Yulong was about to follow, but happened to meet Qin Zhiyi’s gaze as she turned her head. He froze for a moment and said politely:
“Hehe, Teacher Qin, A-Qiu and I still have things to do, so we’ll head off first.”
“If you’re not in a hurry, you can stay a bit longer. Just tell the waiter whatever you want to drink. It’s on me!”
Qin Zhiyi’s beautiful eyes blinked slightly, and she waved her long, fair hand.
“Bye-bye!”
Zhao Yulong smiled back and quickly hurried after Gu Qiu.
Only after the two of them left the hall did Qin Zhiyi slowly turn the round stool around.
Looking toward the entrance, she curled her lips and gave a faint smile.
“Silly A-Qiu, do you really think you can escape?”
…
A moment later.
Zhao Yulong drove a black SUV out of the parking lot and merged onto the main road.
He had just been about to speak to Gu Qiu when he noticed that Gu Qiu was staring intently at the rearview mirror, still seemingly uneasy. Gu Qiu even leaned slightly out of the window and looked back a few times.
“Seriously?”
“Are you afraid she’s following us?”
Gu Qiu watched for a while and, not seeing any sign of the Mercedes, finally relaxed.
After slightly adjusting his sitting position, he glanced sideways at Zhao Yulong.
“How do you think she got into the bar?”
The odds were very high that she had followed him in, though he also couldn’t rule out the possibility that the woman had connected the bar’s name to A-Long.
Still, in this life, he hadn’t yet talked to Qin Zhiyi in detail about Grandma’s situation, so he refused to believe she would be able to find the shop!
Seeing how tense Gu Qiu was, Zhao Yulong joked:
“If you’d learned to drive sooner, you wouldn’t have had to trouble her, and there wouldn’t have been so much going on!”
But as soon as he said that, he immediately realized something, and the smile on his face was replaced with apology.
He let out a soft sigh and asked quietly:
“Still can’t get past it?”
Gu Qiu didn’t think this was something he couldn’t talk about, so he calmly shook his head.
When he was two years old, his parents took him out and got into a car accident.
Under his mother’s protection, he became the only survivor and was left an orphan.
Although he survived, cars had become a psychological shadow ever since.
Over the years, through constant adjustment and overcoming his fear, he at least dared to ride in a car and could barely manage to ride a low-speed little e-scooter to get around, but that was the limit!
In his previous life, right up until he died, he had never gotten a driver’s license…
In this second life, he absolutely had to make up for that regret!
Seeing Gu Qiu fall silent, Zhao Yulong assumed he was once again brooding over his background and quickly tried to comfort him.
“Hey, I was just mentioning it casually. You know me… I talk without thinking!”
“Honestly, driving is pretty boring anyway. Once your brother here has a bit more money, I’ll hire a driver, and I’ll arrange one for you too. When you need a car, it’ll just be a phone call away…”
As his good brother, how could Gu Qiu not understand his thoughts?
In fact, he had long since lost the memories of his early childhood. He only gradually learned about his background after he grew up.
Even though he didn’t have his parents’ love, the affection he received was in no way lacking, and a lot of it came from this guy beside him!
A-Long, just like him, had also been sent to the orphanage as a child because of a family misfortune.
That was how the two of them played together and grew up together.
But the good times didn’t last. An accident happened when they were in first-year high school. Because of a false rumor report, Aunt Lan killed herself, and the orphanage ran into problems. At the time, A-Long used “My grades aren’t good anyway, so I might as well go out and work early” as an excuse to enter society and make a living, using the tiny salary he saved by living frugally to support Gu Qiu’s education.
Fortunately, the two of them eventually came through the hardship, and each had a decent future.
Gu Qiu got into a good university.
A-Long, through a stroke of luck, earned the favor of a big brother in society and gradually began to thrive.
But in the end, Gu Qiu always believed that without A-Long, there would be no present-day him.
So from the bottom of his heart, he acknowledged this brother!
Suddenly, he remembered that in his previous life, A-Long’s career had always been developing well, but his love life was a complete mess, and that traced back to the girl who had been inseparable from A-Long during first-year high school!
Immediately, Gu Qiu interrupted Zhao Yulong, who was still muttering to himself.
“A-Long, have you been in touch with Song Qing?”
Zhao Yulong’s expression stiffened. His wrist instinctively tightened, which caused the steering wheel to move.
The car beside them, which was driving alongside them, quickly swerved away, and the driver did not forget to curse through the window.
“Fuck your mother, are you looking for death!”
Zhao Yulong snapped back to his senses and quickly stabilized the car.
He took a deep breath, then forced out a silly smile.
“N-no.”
“Why would I contact her for no reason!”
Gu Qiu raised an eyebrow slightly.
According to the script of his previous life, A-Long would wake up after turning thirty and frantically search for Song Qing, only to receive the news that she had jumped into the river and committed suicide because of depression.
Unfortunately, by then he and Qin Zhiyi had entered a period of frequent conflict, so he never looked into what had caused Song Qing’s depression.
But now they were still seven years away from thirty, so Song Qing was definitely still alive!
This time, he couldn’t stand by and watch his good brother be left with regrets!
Thinking of this, Gu Qiu continued:
“Weren’t you two really close back then, always calling each other brother and all that?”
“By now, she should’ve graduated from university. Haven’t you thought about asking her out for a meal, or a movie, or something?”
The road ahead was an intersection, and traffic conditions were fairly complicated.
Zhao Yulong was very focused on holding the steering wheel and didn’t overthink Gu Qiu’s words. Instead, he thought of how Qin Zhiyi had also once told him to go find the person hidden in his heart, and couldn’t help but smile.
“Do all teachers need to know fortune-telling now?”