Chapter 32: I'm Infatuated With Her

Ruan Jing did not move in with Zhao Qiyan.

But something had shifted, and Qiyan felt it. He wasn't so self-absorbed as to think that physical intimacy alone settled anything — but Ruan Jing was still here, still choosing to be, and he had both the patience and the disposition to make that mean something over time. He was privately aware that this line of thinking was not entirely flattering to himself.

As they spent more time together, she began to see past the surface of him. The surface was polished and consistent — easy manners, the right smile at the right moment — but underneath it, things were less orderly. When they went out and ran into people he knew, she noticed how his shoulders changed, how the smile stayed perfect while something behind it went very slightly tight. He didn't like being interrupted when he was with her. He went to the sports center three times a week without inviting her, but he always sent a text saying where he was — a gesture that was gentlemanly in form and unmistakably possessive in intent. He disliked social obligations and went anyway, showing up correctly, leaving at the earliest defensible moment. It was difficult to call him calculating, because there was nothing hidden about it once you knew where to look. If anything, the small inconsistencies only made him more interesting.

Ruan Jing turned the question of their future over occasionally and came to the same conclusion each time. It was worth continuing.

---

Zhao Qiyan had made it his practice to have dinner with her every day, barring genuine emergencies. He understood she was newly employed and busy. He still needed to see her once daily or something in him went slightly wrong, which he considered a reasonable position and did not examine too closely.

One afternoon, after finishing a conversation with the deputy manager, his phone moved in his pocket.

He opened it.

Come to the school and have lunch with me.

Ruan Jing's instructions were, uniquely, irresistible.

---

The Sichuan restaurants near N University had reputations that preceded them, and the lunch crowd reflected this — full tables, noise, the particular warmth of a room where everyone is eating something they genuinely wanted. Running into someone you knew was a regular possibility. Ruan Jing walked in without concern, located an empty table, and sat down with the expression of someone who had been looking forward to this.

"Good day?" Qi Yan asked, settling across from her.

"Maybe." She considered it. "A strict boss told me I was 'quite capable.' First time."

"You've always been capable."

Ruan Jing tilted her head at him. "Is that what they call seeing through rose-colored glass?"

A waiter passed within arm's reach and she caught him, ordering without a menu — fish head tofu, twice-cooked pork, hot and sour soup, and several more — the fluency of someone who knew this menu the way she knew her own handwriting.

Zhao Qiyan counted the dishes. "Can two people actually eat all of that?"

She looked at him pleasantly. "You're particular about food. I ordered variety so you'd have options."

His eyes shifted slightly. There was something in them that might have been amusement. "You know me that well already." He had believed his preferences were not especially visible. Being seen — it turned out — was not as uncomfortable as he'd expected.

The dishes arrived in sequence. Ruan Jing's appetite announced itself before she'd made a conscious decision, and she reached across, picked up a piece of braised beef with her chopsticks, and set it in his bowl. She watched him with anticipation. "Try it."

Zhao Qiyan picked it up and ate it. A pause. "It's alright."

"Just alright?"

"...Very good."

Ruan Jing laughed. "Zhao Qiyan, you're genuinely cute."

He had reached his early thirties without once being described this way by anyone. Coming from her, it produced a reaction he had no prepared response to. A faint warmth moved up toward his face — rare, and inconvenient. "Stop that. Eat." He picked up a piece of fish, methodically worked out the bones, and transferred it to her plate without comment.

"My parents are coming from England this Friday," he said. "Would you like to meet them?"

Ruan Jing considered this for approximately one second. "Sure. Do I need to bring anything?"

The relief was small but real. He kept it off his face, mostly. Something at the corner of his mouth gave him away. "No gift necessary. You'll be receiving them."

"That sounds like a good deal."

"It is," he agreed, without irony.

A figure stopped at their table. Ruan Jing looked up and found a colleague from the office — smiling, eyes moving between them with the particular interest of someone who has just found something to think about.

"Ms. Ruan, what a coincidence." Her gaze settled briefly on Zhao Qiyan. "Out for lunch with your boyfriend?"

Ruan Jing smiled. Zhao Qiyan looked at the woman, produced a light, courteous nod, and said "Hi" with a perfectly calibrated friendliness that somehow landed as slightly intimidating. The colleague looked mildly flustered, heard her name called from somewhere behind her, smiled, waved, and left.

Ruan Jing turned back and looked at Zhao Qiyan for three full seconds.

"Zhao Qiyan. Honestly. Am I out of your league?"

He understood immediately what she meant. He looked at her with something between exasperation and warmth and said, half-joking, "You could always hide me at home, if that helps."

"I couldn't possibly afford to keep you."

Zhao Qiyan let out a soft sound that was almost a laugh. "Ruan Jing. You must be the most difficult person I've ever encountered."

Actually, I quite like it.

He caught the thought before it became words. Something in his expression shifted anyway. He leaned across the small table and kissed her — brief, unhesitating, and over before she had processed that it had happened.

Ruan Jing came back to herself and looked around the restaurant. They were in a corner. The nearest tables were occupied with their own conversations. She turned back to him.

"That was reckless."

Zhao Qiyan had already resumed his posture as though nothing had occurred, the picture of composure. "It was a corner."

"Still."

He smiled at her. "It's your birthday this weekend. What are your plans?"

Ruan Jing looked at him. "How do you know my birthday?"

I looked at your ID card when you weren't paying attention.

He offered a smile instead of the answer, and she laughed at whatever she read in it, apparently finding the truth more charming than she'd expected.

---

After lunch they walked out together. At the intersection, Qi Yan took her hand in the natural way of someone who had decided this was simply what happened now.

A man came toward them from the opposite direction. Zhao Qiyan's expression registered something — a slight tightening, brief and controlled. The man passed without acknowledgment. Ruan Jing showed nothing, barely glanced. Qiyan noted this and felt, quietly and without particular pride in the feeling, a small satisfaction.

"Ah Jing."

"Mm?"

She had been somewhere else for a moment. He looked at her profile and chose, deliberately, not to ask where.

There were things in this relationship Qi Yan preferred not to examine too directly. A certain amount of self-assurance, he had decided, was not the worst approach.

---

On Friday, Zhao Qiyan reserved a private room at a Chinese restaurant and arrived ahead of his parents.

Mrs. Zhao was elegant in the particular way of someone who has always been and no longer thinks about it. She set down her barley tea and looked at her son. "You said you were bringing your girlfriend. Where is she?"

Qi Yan's expression remained easy. "She had something come up at the last minute—"

His younger sister Zhao Lin, seated beside their mother, made a sound of transparent skepticism. She shifted closer and said, in a voice calibrated to be overheard: "Mom, I think he's covering. I'm around him constantly and I've never once seen evidence of a girlfriend." She paused, tilting her head at her brother. "If we're discussing anyone at all, there was a college classmate I introduced him to once. He spent a fair amount of time with her back then. But—" she looked at him with the fond ruthlessness of a younger sister — "didn't you turn down Ruan Xian?"

Zhao Qiyan put his teacup down.

He looked at his mother's expression — patient, waiting, prepared for any outcome with the calm of someone who had been waiting a long time — and said, simply: "I'm with someone now. Her name is Ruan Jing." A brief pause. "I'm infatuated with her. If everything goes as I hope, she could be your daughter-in-law."

Zhao Lin's expression underwent several changes in rapid succession.

Mrs. Zhao settled, something loosening around her eyes. She had half-expected her son to remain alone by preference, indefinitely. She said, warmly: "Bring her over soon then. She's clearly doing something right, captivating a son of mine."

Qi Yan nodded. "I'll ask her."

The words were understated, offhand even. They gave no indication of how much the answer would matter to him.

The room continued — conversation, warmth, the ordinary occasion of a family reunited — and Zhao Qiyan sat at the center of it, composed and still.

Behind his composure, something else was turning over quietly.

Earlier, he had called her. She hadn't picked up. The voice on the other end had been Jiang Yan's.