Water and Fire~Chapter 23.3: Talking About Ex-Boyfriends

 

Chapter 23.3: Talking About Ex-Boyfriends

After returning home, Chu Qianmiao sat on the sofa in the living room, holding up a peeled apple, and began to complain about Ren Yan.

She wasn't even finished when she turned a tender, white apple into an old, brown one.

Gu Miaoyu couldn't stand it anymore and scratched the ball on her head, begging Chu Qianmiao to stop.

"Shuishui, please shut up! Seriously, haven't you noticed that every time you get home for the past month, you've been raving about that brokerage agent being a pervert? He's so inhumane, forcing you to work overtime, clearly targeting you, and yet he's interfering with you even though he's not your boss... You're so excited every day complaining to me about how he doesn't even work half an hour. Do you realize the reality of the situation?"

Chu Qianmiao was stunned by this.

"So, my hatred for him is so deep? Has it permeated my daily life? He really is a perverted cancer!"

Gu Miaoyu disagreed. "Why do you take him so seriously?"

You keep obsessing over him every day. I'm saying…" Gu Miaoyu's eyes suddenly widened, her voice trembling with excitement. "…You don't like him, do you??? I remember you once told me back in our freshman year that you secretly had a crush on a senior. Let me do the math… Oh, isn't that perverted insurance agent Ren Yan your senior? Hey, isn't that the object of your erotic dreams, also him?"

Chu Qianmiao tucked her hair behind her ears. "Bah! He's such a pervert. Why would I like him? Am I being masochistic? "

The ceiling light in the living room flickered with unstable voltage, making Chu Qianmiao's expression tremble, as if she'd said something guilty.

Meeting Gu Miaoyu's scrutinizing gaze, Chu Qianmiao stiffened her neck, raised her chin, and even her nostrils became forcedly proud. "To say I was naive back in school, I did like him for a while... that cool, domineering, and aloof type. But now I'm graduated, I've matured! No, I don't like him."

The apple Chu Qianmiao was holding, now discolored, rolled to the ground after she finished speaking.

"Look, even the apple doesn't believe you. It said, 'I don't listen, I don't listen,' and ran away!"

Gu Miaoyu chased the air-stained apple, picked it up, took it to the kitchen, rinsed it, and brought it back, stuffing it back into Chu Qianmiao's mouth.

Suddenly, Gu Miaoyu high-fived.

"Shui Shui! I remember now! I think you had a relationship in college, right?!" Chu Qianmiao had only vaguely mentioned it to her then. At the time, she was preoccupied with her crush on Tao Xingyu. Since Chu Qianmiao hadn't elaborated, she didn't ask.

But even if she had asked, she wouldn't have gotten anything out of her. Given Chu Qianmiao's personality, if she didn't want to talk, even if she'd found ten of the world's most beautiful, muscular men to seduce her, she wouldn't have gotten a single word out of her.

It would be better to wait until later, when things had changed, to ask again. Maybe she could even elicit some truth.

"I did have a boyfriend in college," Chu Qianmiao, now a changed woman, told Gu Miaoyu frankly. "Then we decided it wasn't right, so we broke up."

Gu Miaoyu, intrigued, slumped over the coffee table, eagerly demanding, "What happened? Tell me more!" Chu Qianmiao took a mindless bite of her apple and said, "That's right. At the time, I was just brimming with pent-up hormones, and I impulsively started dating a senior from the Finance Department for several months." "

She munched on an apple while recounting the past to Gu Miaoyu.

Back then, as a freshman, she'd met a senior in his third year of graduate school by chance upon enrollment. He was incredibly cool and domineering, captivating her to the point where she even ranked him above the F4, bestowing upon him the distinction of F0. She wrote him a letter, hoping to arrange a relationship, but it didn't work out. Upon graduation, the senior went abroad.

The huge plane bound for imperialism took the senior away, along with her, her first love of her freshman year. Entering her sophomore year, she missed F0 for a while. But then she realized that even though F0 had once been someone she could see and touch, he was essentially the same as the distant F4—they were both imaginary illusions, to be fantasized about but not truly played with.

"When I was in college, the school assigned me to a mixed dormitory. My other three roommates were all seniors from the Finance Department, two years my senior year. When I was a sophomore, they were seniors. Seniors have fewer classes, so they were acting strangely. They said they hadn't gotten their hands on the hottest guy in their class and department in four years, and they were so unwilling to give up that chance that they had to trick him into giving them a try. So, they conspired with the hottest guy in their dorm to organize a social. Strangely enough, there were plenty of girls in the dorm who wanted to have a social with that guy, but none had ever been successful.

But her three seniors were incredibly capable and actually pulled off the social.

Although she wasn't in the finance department, she tagged along as their roommate. After the social, she was surprised—

"I didn't expect that guy to be attracted to me and even asked me to date him," Chu Qianmiao said, munching on an apple.

"What happened next?" Gu Miaoyu pressed on impatiently, her eyes changing, like a kindergartener watching a kissing scene on a TV show, shy yet eager. "Are you two inseparable?"

Chu Qianmiao was practically bowing down to Gu Miaoyu's mastery of idioms.

"Later, we discovered we were both too talkative. After a day together, by the time we went to bed at night, we'd wonder, 'What happened to that day? Why did it feel so noisy?' It just so happened that he was graduating from his senior year and going abroad, so we decided to break up."

Gu Miaoyu wasn't entirely satisfied with this uneventful process. She scratched her head, unwillingly pressing for more details. "Is he handsome?"

"Handsome."

"What about his personality?"

"Sunny."

"Is his name nice?"

"Tan Shen. His name. Do you think it sounds nice?"

Gu Miaoyu rubbed her hands. "Not bad! It's the name of the male lead in the novel. Are you still in touch?" "

Chu Qianmiao casually replied, "Yes."

"So who contacts who more often?" Gu Miaoyu was on full gossip mode tonight.

"He contacts me regularly, and I wish him well on holidays."

"Will he return to China?" Gu Miaoyu couldn't stop asking.

"I don't know." Chu Qianmiao tossed the apple core she had just finished eating, and it brushed the edge of the wastebasket and landed on the ground outside. She wanted to kill the wastebasket, why was it standing there so carelessly.

"Whether he'll return to China or not, why are you asking?" Chu Qianmiao retrieved the apple core, unwillingly preparing to throw it again.

"I want to confirm whether you've been single for so long because you're waiting for him!"

Chu Qianmiao's hand trembled, and the apple core went astray again, flying directly at Gu Miaoyu.

Gu Miaoyu looked down at the stain on her shirt. "...Okay, Chu Qianmiao, sit still. I'll go sharpen the knife!" After I chop you down, answer this question for me!"