Faced with her pickup attempt, Jiang Ji’s eyes were cold and weary. ”I have a girlfriend.”
Su Qian looked embarrassed, her pointed chin nearly poking into her chest. ”…Sorry for bothering you.”
Jiang Ji had rejected her, but he didn’t leave right away. Instead, he stared at her face.
Clearly, he recognized her.
Su Qian put on an awkward expression, pressed her lips together, and tried to think of something to say—something that would make her look nonchalant while also easing the awkwardness.
So she said:
“Okay then. If things don’t work out with her, remember to find me.”
Her face was burning hot. Hugging her oranges, she hurried to the checkout and fled the supermarket.
But she knew.
Someone as proud as Jiang Ji would definitely be furious at being forgotten by his one-night stand.
Back home, Su Qian flopped onto the sofa.
She wasn’t sure her plan would actually work.
After all, she’d been single her entire life, while Jiang Ji was so out of her league that plenty of girls were chasing him.
She shook her head.
To fool Jiang Ji, first she had to fool herself.
From now on, she would pretend she didn’t know who Jiang Ji was.
Every “chance encounter,” she would also pretend not to recognize him.
The persona she’d created for herself was—face blindness.
Just then, her best friend Tong Yue called on video. Su Qian, staying in character, told her what had happened over the past two days.
Tong Yue was stunned. “You’re telling me you slept with someone else’s boyfriend?”
“No.” Su Qian corrected her immediately. “It was an accident…”
Su Qian hugged a blanket, her flushed cheek pressed against the silk fabric.
Fully immersed in her persona, she mumbled quietly, “I figured I’d meet more people and forget about last night. Just now I asked a cute guy for his WeChat, and he said he has a girlfriend.”
Tong Yue comforted her. “That’s a good thing. If he had a girlfriend but still strung you along, wouldn’t that make him a scumbag?”
“Fair point.”
Tong Yue smiled. “My darling, you’ve finally come around. Wanting to date is a good thing—you don’t have to get married. Besides, aren’t you transferring to Gang City next month? Just use this time to practice. Landing a cute guy would be great, but even if you get rejected, it’s fine—you’ll be out of Hai City in half a month anyway.”
“But what if I run into him again after being rejected?”
“Sweetie, do you know how small the odds are of two strangers meeting twice in a sea of people?”
Those words encouraged Su Qian.
Even if she couldn’t win Jiang Ji over, it wouldn’t matter.
The next day, Sunday.
Su Qian took the subway to the City God Temple early in the morning and spotted Jiang Ji in the car.
He wore a white T-shirt under a blue shirt, paired with beige cargo pants.
Broad shoulders, narrow waist—perfect proportions.
He was with a few other guys, all decent-looking.
But none of them shone as brightly as Jiang Ji.
Plenty of people on the subway were sneaking glances at him.
Of course, some deliberately looked away—while caring intensely on the inside.
Su Qian used to be one of those people.
She’d pretend not to care when she saw a handsome guy, her pride and her fluttering heart at war, unable to openly appreciate a good-looking man.
But after her best friend’s pep talk last night, the current Su Qian was terrifyingly bold.
Pretending not to recognize Jiang Ji, she put on an air of forced courage and walked up to him:
“Hi there, handsome. Nice to meet you—can I add you on WeChat?”
Jiang Ji’s dark eyes flicked over to her. He pulled down his mask. “We met yesterday.”
“Huh?”
“At the supermarket.”
“…”
Su Qian froze. “You’re the one who picked up my oranges yesterday?”
Jiang Ji: “Mm.”
Su Qian’s face flushed. “S-sorry to bother you.”
In that instant, she felt like everyone in the entire subway car was looking at her.
Life has no audience, but everywhere is full of judges.
She could already hear people whispering about her.
Thankfully, the subway announcement rang out at that moment: “Chenghuang Temple Station.”
Su Qian had never found the announcement voice so beautiful. She fled off the train in a panic.
But she could still feel Jiang Ji’s gaze on her back.
Su Qian’s flustered expression vanished, and her brow arched slightly.
…
On Monday at work, Su Qian was at the café downstairs from her office, drinking coffee to keep herself alive, when she ran into Jiang Ji again.
He was wearing a dark suit, his bangs swept up, revealing sharp brow bones.
A pair of rimless glasses sat on his high nose bridge. He sat alone on a high stool, leisurely typing on his laptop.
Mature and composed, with an air of high intelligence.
And above all, he had a great figure—a suit-wearing heartbreaker.
Him again.
What a coincidence.
But honestly, Jiang Ji really was her type.
Even back in her teenage years, what Su Qian experienced most was unrequited crushes.
She never did anything about them—she would just slowly wait for the flutter to cool down, and the other person would never know.
But things were different now.
Su Qian deployed her chain of schemes; Jiang Ji walked unknowingly to the gallows.
Pretending to be bad with faces, she sat down next to Jiang Ji and glanced at the PPT on his laptop.
“So we’re in the same field.”
Su Qian’s voice wasn’t loud, but just loud enough for Jiang Ji to hear.
She was in full makeup today, wearing a pale yellow professional suit. A pearl pendant adorned her straight collarbone, her skirt fell to the knee, revealing a pair of slender, shapely calves, and on her feet were white lambskin high heels.
Jiang Ji looked over.
Beneath the plain lenses, a pair of narrow, long eyes glanced at her.
Su Qian’s heart skipped a beat.
How could anyone be this good-looking? He was exactly her type.
She extended her hand, shallow dimples appearing at the corners of her lips.
“Hello, I’m Su Qian. I also work in medical AI. Could we get to know each other? We could exchange ideas in the future.”
Jiang Ji gave her a glance and said nothing.
So cold.
But how could anyone look this good even with a cold face?
Su Qian curved her lips. “This is my first time hitting on someone. I really do want to get to know you.”
Jiang Ji’s thin, crimson lips moved. “First time?”
Su Qian nodded.
Jiang Ji said nothing, his gaze passing over her shoulder. “You’re here?”
It was his companion.
And upon seeing Su Qian, the companion exclaimed in surprise, “We meet again! Aren’t you the young lady who asked for Jiang Ji’s WeChat on the subway yesterday?”
Su Qian: “…What?”
After a long moment, she stiffly turned her head to look at Jiang Ji, despair in her eyes.
“Why is it you again…”
—”Darling, there you are! The boss wants us in a meeting.”
The colleague’s arrival rescued Su Qian from her embarrassment.
Su Qian stiffly stood up and shuffled toward her male colleague.
“Your friend?” the colleague asked, assuming Su Qian and Jiang Ji knew each other.
Su Qian shook her head repeatedly. “Don’t know him.”
With that, she grabbed her colleague and left.
This colleague was Xia Jie—1.78 meters tall, handsome, the heartthrob of the R&D department, and Su Qian’s lunch buddy.
But this man’s gender was male, and his preference was male.
The moment she saw the gleam in Xia Jie’s eyes, Su Qian knew exactly what was going through his head. She quickly pulled him away and murmured, “He has a girlfriend.”
Xia Jie looked disappointed. “What a shame. He looked delicious.”
Su Qian: “…”
The two of them pushed open the door and left, their figures disappearing beyond the glass window.
As they left, Su Qian faintly heard Jiang Ji’s friend laugh and say, “What is this, capturing Meng Huo seven times over?”
With the heated competition against the rival company in full swing, Su Qian got busy again.
Every day she opened her eyes and went straight to work, until she was thoroughly pickled in the stench of the office grind.
But she never expected it.
When fate comes, nothing can stop it.
That day, she got off work at nine in the evening. Unable to hail a taxi, she booked a carpool ride.
To her surprise, the carpool matched her with a handsome puppy-dog younger guy who called her “jiejie” the moment he opened his mouth. He said he was a student at Hai University and asked for her contact information.
Su Qian gave it to him.
The puppy-dog guy was very proactive, sending her photos of his abs every morning.
【Little Bro】: Jiejie, I’m so dumb, I just can’t get my abs to look good.
What she sent back was a meme sticker.
[Let me touch them.jpg]
Over the next few days, the two of them chatted up a storm.
And the topics got less and less suitable for polite company.
Late at night, the guy sent a voice message.
Between heavy breaths, he whined coquettishly: “I can’t get off… I want to see jiejie’s legs.”
A photo of her legs was sent over.
Under the dim yellow light, two long, tender, slender legs were wrapped in a pink blanket, looking soft and inviting.
Three minutes later, the guy sent a photo back.
On the dark gray bedsheet—splattered stains.
On Friday evening, the guy asked Su Qian to meet up, at a famous Western restaurant in Haicheng.
Near the end of the workday, Su Qian and Xia Jie put their fluffy heads together.
“Sweetie, he asked me out. Which outfit do you think I should wear?”
“The gray one?”
“No way, that one’s not sexy enough. Tonight I’m going to win over my little bro.”
“Go get him! I’ll finish writing the rest of your code for you!”
“You’re a lifesaver!”
Su Qian pushed up her black-framed glasses, leaned back over her desk, and kept tweaking her algorithm with a face full of office-drudge weariness, watching Xia Jie sashay out the door.
That’s right—the one going on the date tonight was Xia Jie.
The WeChat account Su Qian had given out from the very beginning was never her own.
The one who’d been flirting with the guy these past few days, sending the leg photos—
It was all Xia Jie.
As for the reason, it was simple—