She stepped back slowly under the store clerk’s strange gaze and retreated outside the cafe.
Taking a deep breath, she blinked hard, and walked right back in!
Sitting by the window, Ji Siming caught every single one of her little maneuvers, a faint trace of a smile blooming in the depths of his eyes—why was she so ridiculously adorable?
Re-entering the cafe, Yun Qingwu discovered that Ji Siming was still sitting right there!
And the spot he was occupying was the exact table Gu Yi had sent in the message: the innermost window seat on the left-hand side as you walked through the front door!
Even though she hadn’t looked closely at the photo Gu Yi sent, that guy had clearly been rocking a head of red hair—how on earth could it possibly be Ji Siming?
Besides, a man like Ji Siming wouldn’t struggle to find a wife even if he wanted to.
Did he really need to resort to an arranged marriage?
Utterly bewildered, she stood frozen in her tracks, her feet refusing to move an inch.
The two of them remained locked in this stalemate.
In the end, Ji Siming was the one who broke the silence. “What? Do I look that terrifying?”
“As if!” Yun Qingwu forced herself forward and sat down across from him.
It wasn’t that she was scared of him; it was mostly just a lingering sense of awkwardness after shamelessly clinging to him for hugs while plastered the night before!
Yet looking at his calm and collected demeanor, he didn’t seem to be holding it against her at all.
“Professor Ji, I’m actually here to meet my arranged marriage match. But… he hasn’t arrived yet, and it looks like you might be sitting at the wrong table.”
At her words, the man’s lips curved upward slightly. “I’m in the right seat. I’m the one you’re here to meet.”
Yun Qingwu: “???”
Come again?
“Professor Ji, you’ve definitely got the wrong person. The guy I’m supposed to meet has red hair.”
Looking completely unfazed, the man replied, “That was the hairstyle from my rebellious youth.”
“……?”
Staring at him, Yun Qingwu tried her absolute hardest to picture Ji Siming with a head of bright red hair and utterly failed!
Guessing what was running through her head, Ji Siming pulled out his phone, tapped a few times with his well-shaped fingers, and slid the device across the table toward her.
Puzzled, Yun Qingwu lowered her gaze and saw a photo of Ji Siming—sporting red hair and straddling a heavy-duty motorcycle.
Boastful, handsome, and practically oozing youthful rebellion.
Was he pulling out photographic evidence just to make sure she believed him?
Taking a deep breath, Yun Qingwu picked up her coffee and took a sip. Good grief, she was going to have an arranged marriage with Ji Siming?
No matter how you looked at it, a man like him didn’t seem like the type whose family could force him into an arranged match!
“Professor Ji, are you really sure you didn’t mix up the dates or the person?”
“No mistake.”
He certainly hadn’t mixed up the person.
His target had always been her.
Granted, the person she was originally supposed to meet wasn’t him; he had just pulled a few little strings to swap places.
His phone buzzed repeatedly with incoming notifications, and he casually picked it back up without a trace of haste.
Ji Xingchuan: “Uncle! My race is over, I took first place!”
Ji Xingchuan: “Uncle, if you hadn’t agreed to go on that blind date in my place today, I never would’ve made it to the race! I was too drunk yesterday, my mom told me the girl’s name, but I didn’t catch a single word. Did you meet her? Take a photo and send it to me so I can report back to my mother!”
Lifting his gaze to glance at the girl across the table, Ji Siming snapped a random, haphazard photo with his phone and sent it over to Ji Xingchuan.
The camera angle was ridiculously tricky—it only captured a tiny sliver of an arm, a fraction of a shoulder, and some loose strands of hair. Her face wasn’t in the frame at all!
Though deeply unimpressed with the photo, Ji Xingchuan didn’t dare ask Ji Siming to retake it, so he simply forwarded the picture to Her Majesty the Queen Mother: “Met her, saw her, but we didn’t click.”
With that sent, he pinged Ji Siming with another photo—this one of him kneeling on the floor: “Uncle, thank you so much for today!”
Ji Siming typed out a reply: “Really don’t want this arranged marriage?”
Ji Xingchuan: “I don’t want an arranged marriage, I’d rather die than take part in one! I want freedom! Long live freedom!”
“Even if she’s a celestial fairy descended from heaven, I will never bow down to oppressive evil forces!”
The “oppressive evil forces” in question were, naturally, his parents.
Silently taking a screenshot, Ji Siming put his phone down.
He lifted his eyes to look at the girl sitting before him. Her bright eyes were darting around as her fingers flew across her screen, a faint smile curving the corners of her eyes as she happily texted someone.
Recalling how she had crashed straight into his arms the previous night, the warmth in Ji Siming’s eyes deepened.
Yun Qingwu was busy texting Wu Yuxuan about running into Ji Siming on her blind date, prompting a reaction from Wu Yuxuan that was ten times more shocked than her own!
Xuanxuan: “Holy cow, how could Professor Ji possibly be forced into a blind date? My five years of experience reading Tomato web novels tells me he has definitely set his sights on you!”
Yun Qingwu’s mouth twitched as she typed back: “What kind of trashy romance novels have you been reading?”
Xuanxuan: “The ‘He chases her as she flees, and she has nowhere to fly’ CEO romance trope! Or those ‘old men who look abstinent on the outside but are absolute perverts on the inside, stopping at nothing to trap their wives into a post-marriage romance’ stories!”
Yun Qingwu: “…………”
An old man who was a pervert on the inside?
Lowering her phone, Yun Qingwu lifted her gaze to look at the man sitting across from her.
He was lounging lazily against the sofa booth, the slanting rays of the setting sun casting a soft, golden sheen across his frame.
At that moment, he was gazing sideways out the window, his profile lines impeccably flawless.
Damn it! This was her Ah Ming right here!
Even their age matched down to the exact number—twenty-eight!
Who said he was old? He wasn’t old at all!
He was in the absolute prime of his youth!
As Yun Qingwu stared away, getting more and more engrossed, the man gazing at the sunset suddenly turned his head, catching her in the act of peeking without a moment’s warning.
Feeling somewhat guilty, she dropped her gaze and took a tactical sip of her coffee.
Observing her little reaction, Ji Siming’s lips slowly curved upward. “Staring so intently? Do you find me more appetizing than your coffee?”
“???”
Yun Qingwu snapped her head up to look at him, completely unprepared for someone who usually looked so upright and proper to utter something like that.
Xuanxuan was right—this guy was definitely a low-key romantic pervert!
“Professor Ji, you really don’t look like the kind of person whose family could force you into a blind date.”
Glancing at her, Ji Siming slowly spat out four words: “Hard to disobey parental commands.”