A green leaf avatar was bouncing with particular prominence.
Chu Yao's brow twitched.
She glanced around and found her roommates had all transformed into curious little detectives.
Fu Qifang had been writing her thesis on her laptop moments ago, but now she'd stopped. Cheng Buning had just taken out her professional textbook, and she set it down too.
Jiang Yuncheng silently returned the clothes-drying pole to its place.
Chen Xiuyuan and Zhang Xiuli quietly dragged their chairs over beside her, ears perked.
Even Cheng Yunxiu's eyes were filled with shock and uncertainty.
They were all saying—how did you actually end up dating Zhou Wenshi, when did this happen, you hid it way too well.
Chu Yao felt immense pressure; her roommates were way too invested.
She had no choice but to grab her phone and retreat from her seat: "Someone's looking for me, I'll head back first."
As she walked, she fished out her Bluetooth earpiece and put it on.
The Bluetooth connected automatically, showing the indicator. Chu Yao heard a beep before she answered the voice call.
"Chu Yao."
Zhou Wenshi's voice—comparable to an internet heartthrob's—came through the earpiece and into her ear, exceptionally crisp.
Compared to the typical heartthrob voice, his had more texture, just like the man himself.
Chu Yao covered her right ear. The voice in the earpiece was especially clear; compared to in person, it was even cleaner over the line.
"Calling me at this hour—something up?"
She couldn't figure out why Zhou Wenshi would directly call her voice when less than an hour had passed.
According to his persona, he shouldn't.
He shouldn't be paying attention to anyone other than the female lead.
"Or… are you here to remind me of something?"
On Zhou Wenshi's end, it sounded like someone was saying something—the audio was slightly distorted through the earpiece, but his voice came through with striking clarity.
"Yeah."
She thought she detected a very faint note of pleasure in that single syllable.
Zhou Wenshi's voice was soft, as if he were whispering secrets, which made it feel intimate.
"I acknowledged in the post that we're currently dating."
How do you dodge a basic attack thrown straight at you?
Chu Yao thought to herself—you can't.
Zhou Wenshi briefly explained the whole situation.
"Today, someone posted about our meeting on the forum."
"After it happened, I asked for your input, but you might have been busy and didn't reply."
"To avoid unnecessary trouble, I took the liberty of clarifying things."
"So now—what's your opinion?"
His gentle breathing pressed against her ear. Chu Yao felt something strange about it, like he was blowing air right beside her ear—unsettling.
It created the illusion of no distance between them, of whispering secrets intimately.
Were they… close enough for this?
Chu Yao didn't think so. She pulled off one earpiece and held it in her palm.
She asked an unrelated question: "What are you doing? Your… breathing sounds a bit odd."
Chu Yao felt a little awkward, like she was nitpicking.
Zhou Wenshi fell into a strange silence.
Chu Yao pressed on: "Is it inconvenient? If it's inconvenient, forget it—I don't need to know. I'm just not used to it."
Zhou Wenshi's tone remained cool and clear: "Am I bothering you? Sorry, the earpiece's microphone pickup is too good."
On that note, Chu Yao felt he had a pretty good temper. She went, "Oh, oh—it's fine. You, you can just be a bit quieter next time, or switch earpieces. Not a big deal."
"About the post—I heard about it from my roommates."
Zhou Wenshi's breathing grew even clearer.
Chu Yao's mind wandered: "…You're not feeling unwell, are you?"
Zhou Wenshi didn't answer immediately. He was silent for a few seconds, then said in a low voice: "…Is it that obvious?"
Chu Yao: "How should I put it… it's a bit presumptuous of me to ask, I suppose."
Zhou Wenshi: "Sorry."
His attitude was so excessively good that Chu Yao found it hard to keep pressing the point. She said, "It's fine, this wasn't your intention."
"Actually, I didn't plan on doing it this soon. Originally, I wanted to spend some time together privately first, but since it's already public now, let's just go with it. Time can't flow backward, and I can't blame you either—it was my fault for not looking. It's not wrong of you to make the call."
What Chu Yao was considering was how to wrap things up later.
The male lead suddenly going public now was completely unexpected. She had wanted to keep a low profile, but it looked like that was no longer possible.
She just hoped fewer people would pay attention going forward; otherwise, there would be another round of sighs and gossip.
She sighed.
"I can completely imagine what's going to happen next," she said, emphasizing her point deliberately, "Really."
Zhou Wenshi: "Sorry."
Chu Yao paused for a moment. "No need to keep apologizing. It's not like you did something wrong—you're making it seem like I'm bullying you."
She made a "oi" sound. "That's not good."
She asked in confusion, "Is this worth a voice call? You could have just sent a message on WeChat and I would have seen it."
Zhou Wenshi said, "It's worth it."
Chu Yao was speechless.
His clear, distant voice came through the earpiece, reaching her left ear with perfect clarity.
"Girlfriend, why wouldn't it be worth it?"
"I don't think it's right to be in a relationship without making it public."
The morning sunlight slowly rose into the sky, its golden warmth streaming into Chu Yao's eyes, the warmth seeping into her body, leaving her feeling utterly comfortable.
She tightened her grip on the earpiece in her palm, which was beginning to sweat slightly.
"…Your values are actually pretty normal."
She said in a low voice, "Much better than those scumbags who string people along and just enjoy the ambiguity."
"Is that so?" Zhou Wenshi seemed to let out a very light laugh.
Suddenly—just for a split second—it was as if an electric current brushed past her heart.
Hearing it, Chu Yao was caught off guard and squeezed the earpiece in her hand.
She really wanted to take off the left earpiece right now to catch her breath.
Otherwise, otherwise… how could someone's voice carry an electric current that danced on the tip of one's heart?
Weird, it felt weird.
A slight tingling numbness ran through her fingertips.
Chu Yao was silent for over ten seconds, her palm growing hot from being wrapped around the earpiece.
Then, suddenly, he said, "I can hear it—the sound of your breathing."
Chu Yao: "…"
Zhou Wenshi: "It's very warm."
She thought to herself, he really knows how to charm people. Those two words carried an indescribable, ambiguous quality.
For some reason, her throat felt a bit dry. Chu Yao wanted a drink of water. Holding her phone, she pushed open the balcony door, calmly poured herself a glass of water, drank it all, and licked her lips.
Mm, much better now.
Zhou Wenshi was surprisingly patient as he waited, not asking a single question, only judging by the sounds: "You're drinking water."
Chu Yao finished gulping down another glass, then set the cup on the counter. "Mm."
Zhou Wenshi snapped back to attention, pushed back his chair, and stood up. "I thought about it too."
Through the other end of the line, Chu Yao could hear the sound of footsteps moving around, along with a male roommate's bright laughter, the clatter of keyboard keys—it seemed something joyful was happening.
She laughed along. "Your roommate sounds like he encountered something really happy. His laughter is quite infectious."
At that moment, Chu Yao heard a clear sound of swallowing—water flowing past a throat, slow and quiet, pulsing against her eardrums, drowning out the bright laughter.
The world fell silent.
With a soft clink, the bottom of a cup tapped against a table. Zhou Wenshi set down his water glass.
"…What?" he said, then began apologizing again. "I didn't catch that just now."
Chu Yao simply felt that he apologized a bit too frequently—she'd heard it several times already in this voice call.
"Oh, nothing. I was just saying your roommate has a very infectious laugh." She summarized briefly.
Zhou Wenshi said casually, "I didn't drink enough water earlier. Mind if I take another sip?"
Chu Yao thought to herself, Do you really need to ask me that? If you want to drink, just drink. It's not like I'd stop you.
She was puzzled but still said, "Go ahead. You don't need to ask my opinion about something like this."
Through the earbuds, only the sound of gulping water remained.
The water seemed to flow through her ear canal, resonating clearly—as if, as if they were sharing a single cup of water.
Was Zhou Wenshi really that dehydrated?
He'd been drinking for a full minute and still hadn't had enough?
Chu Yao counted the time flowing on her screen as she minimized the call interface and opened the chat window.
9:55
[Male Lead]: Someone told me the campus forum mentioned us.
10:01
[Male Lead]: I explained it.
10:25
[Male Lead]: I made it public.
10:40
[Male Lead]: [Hello?]
[Male Lead]: Busy?
10:40 Voice call initiated, Chu Yao answered.
The call interface displayed 40:19:27, and the time was still increasing.
Chu Yao was surprised. "We've been talking this long? Over forty minutes?"
But they hadn't really said much… how had forty minutes already passed?
Chu Yao was confused. She could talk this much with the male lead too?
She'd thought she could only find things to talk about with other girls, but now she felt it was actually pretty amazing.
This fully proved that the male lead was a normal person she could communicate with.
Chu Yao thought to herself, Jackpot. It's rare to meet a normal person these days.
With that thought, her tone noticeably lifted, and she laughed twice. "I never thought we'd be able to chat so pleasantly. This is really great!"
Zhou Wenshi's tone was also slightly different. "Mm."
Chu Yao's tolerance was infinitely high for people she enjoyed talking to. She said with a smile, "Do you just say 'mm' to everyone you talk to?"
Zhou Wenshi seemed not to quite understand. "Mm?"
Chu Yao leaned against the railing, the warm sun baking her back, wind threading through her long hair behind her ears. She said lazily, "Just like now."
Zhou Wenshi: "Mm."
Chu Yao: "Pfft—"
She laughed and said, "That's very much like a robot… ah… this weird thing I find adorable—I wonder if you can get it?"
Zhou Wenshi hummed lightly, adding two more words: "I can."
Chu Yao then cheerfully started talking about a web novel she'd read recently, whose male lead was very much like a robot.
The female lead showed him kindness, and he thought she was issuing a challenge. He deliberated seriously, then finally told the female lead that fine, he accepted.
The female lead was shattered.
She never wanted to like the male lead again—he was too dense, too robotic. He wasn't just a block of wood; even wood understood more than him.
The male lead had no idea why she'd stormed off in anger, standing there bewildered, fixated on only one thing—so, was the battle still on or not?
Chu Yao commented, "He really loves battle. He should just live with his battles for the rest of his life. Robots deserve to only win their wives over very late in the game."
Zhou Wenshi listened to the entire thing—everything Chu Yao said.
She chattered on by herself, brimming with enthusiasm, a one-woman show just from talking alone. She didn't need anyone else at all—she was already enough.
As a listener, he felt the abundant, overflowing emotions flowing easily from her end to him.
He pressed down on the Bluetooth earpiece in his right ear, covering it, as if by doing so, he could hold onto it.
He was fortunate to feel her energy alongside her.
Zhou Wenshi said, "A humanoid robot can't catch a wife."
Chu Yao found resonance: "You think so too, right?"
Zhou Wenshi agreed: "Yeah."
Chu Yao chuckled. "Good taste, good judgment, nice."
She then chattered on about another cute romance novel involving humanoids, and since she rarely met someone who shared her enthusiasm, she naturally wanted to talk to her heart's content.
Huang Chuying pushed the door open and passed by, almost thinking she had stumbled into a large-scale web novel recommendation session.
She: ??
So it really wasn't a sweet call with Zhou Wenshi after all.
She had thought it was Zhou Wenshi's voice, which was why A'Yao had specially come out here, and everyone had deliberately not disturbed them.
Unexpectedly, it wasn't.
Huang Chuying felt a pang of regret.
If only it were, what a wonderful sweet time—such a shame to have missed it.
Since it wasn't Zhou Wenshi, it was probably some netizen.
A'Yao had always loved talking about these things with people she clicked with.
Sure enough, she still couldn't imagine how A'Yao dated in private. She always felt these things had nothing to do with A'Yao, yet she somehow had a boyfriend—that was what shocked Huang Chuying the most.
A'Yao's boyfriend was actually Zhou Wenshi!
Would she discuss dirty things with someone? Would she ask polite questions? She simply couldn't picture the specific scenario.
A'Yao had a good temper, was soft to hold, would whimper and whine, sometimes like acting coy, and was unguarded with those close to her.
No one could have imagined that behind that face written with detachment and serenity, she was like this in private.
Not even interested in romance, and probably not in… getting dirty either.
These days, people who dated would get a little dirty, whisper sweet nothings, ask private questions—like… how big are you.
Huang Chuying silently gazed into the distance.
Mm… not being a pervert in a relationship was the real problem.
She considerately closed the door for Chu Yao.
If she wanted to talk, let her talk to her heart's content. It wasn't easy to meet someone you could chat with and share things with.
Huang Chuying tactfully withdrew from the balcony, leaving this little corner of the world to Chu Yao.
Chu Yao had already talked herself into bliss, oblivious to heaven and earth, completely unaware that Zhang Xiuli behind her had come and gone, then backed up to listen again.
What, what? What's going on?
Zhang Xiuli crouched low, hand cupped behind her ear, listening intently.
Quick… quick! Keep going! She wanted to hear more!
This web novel story was too exciting—she had to finish it!
Chu Yao felt a creepy sensation and turned her head, only to find Zhang Xiuli almost plastered against her back: "…"
Their eyes met, and both were startled.
Zhang Xiuli urgently said, "Don't—don't stop, wife… From now on, I'm your wife too, Chu Yao, quick!"
Finish it!
She was an impatient person, and once she got worked up, she threw caution to the wind, even blurting out "wife."
Before Chu Yao could react, Zhou Wenshi on her earpiece seemed not to have caught the situation clearly, his voice clear and cold, in a puzzled tone.
"…Wife?"
He paused oddly.
"Don't stop?"
He asked uncertainly: "Is it… me interrupting you two?"
Chu Yao: "…" How come you make me sound like a fickle, two-timing woman?
Is this right?