As soon as the time was up, two people immediately disappeared from the lab.
The sound of suitcase wheels rolling along the road through campus was unusually clear.
Two girls who had just returned from outside gazed enviously at the pair dragging their suitcases. But when they saw their faces, both of them froze.
“Ji Zhaoxi, where are you two going?” The two girls clutched their popsicles and stared at Ji Zhaoxi in disbelief.
Actually, judging by how happy Ji Zhaoxi looked, they had already guessed. They just couldn’t bring themselves to believe it.
Ji Zhaoxi pretended to be puzzled. “You’re not on break? We’re off for an entire month.”
The girl holding the popsicle trembled. “But our supervisor said graduate students don’t get vacations!”
The girl beside her took a bite of her popsicle and said angrily, “And only we don’t get a break? Then who’s the one who gets a whole week off?”
Their supervisor really did treat them like slaves.
Under everyone else’s envious gazes, Ji Zhaoxi’s mood reached its peak.
Lu Huainan’s eyes remained fixed on her the entire time. Looking at Ji Zhaoxi’s face beside him, he couldn’t stop his ears from turning red.
In the past, he had only watched her from the sidelines. Now, he was standing beside her. The thought made his heart tremble.
The two of them even ate together at the airport. Lu Huainan spent the entire meal in a daze.
This was too much. He almost didn’t want to wake up from this dream…
Ji Zhaoxi assumed he was simply exhausted from running around, so she kindly looked after him the whole way. He could even help pull her suitcase, freeing up her hands.
It wasn’t until they were actually on the plane that Lu Huainan finally came back to his senses.
Ji Zhaoxi handed him a bottle of water and looked at him with concern. “Lu Huainan, are you all right?”
Lu Huainan had probably never experienced anything this intense in his entire life.
He took the water, tipped his head back, and gulped down a mouthful. He finally felt a little better. Then, almost instinctively, he turned his head—and happened to meet Ji Zhaoxi’s gaze.
His heart clenched. The water he hadn’t had time to swallow went straight down the wrong pipe.
“Cough, cough…”
Lu Huainan began coughing violently. He turned away awkwardly, his face visibly turning red.
Ji Zhaoxi quickly patted him on the back. Feeling the warmth of her hand behind him, Lu Huainan only coughed harder, as though he were about to cough up his lungs.
He tried desperately to hold it in, but the more he suppressed it, the worse his throat felt. And the worse it felt, the louder he coughed.
The passengers nearby began casting suspicious looks in their direction. Could he have some kind of contagious disease?
Ji Zhaoxi hurriedly explained on his behalf, “He just choked on some water!”
In the end, even a flight attendant was drawn over by the commotion. It took quite a while before Lu Huainan finally calmed down, but by then, his entire body had wilted.
Ji Zhaoxi looked at him hesitantly. Although Lu Huainan had his eyes closed, he could still feel her gaze.
He silently turned his head away.
Ji Zhaoxi leaned closer and whispered, “It’s okay, Lu Huainan. I’m the only one who saw it. No one else did.”
So he didn’t need to feel embarrassed.
Lu Huainan was utterly despairing. The reason he felt embarrassed was precisely because she had seen him.
If anyone else had witnessed it, he wouldn’t have felt embarrassed at all.
But before long, Lu Huainan’s emotions settled down. After all, this was the first time he was returning home with her. He couldn’t let himself be ruled by such negative feelings the entire time.
Once Ji Zhaoxi fell asleep beside him, Lu Huainan secretly posted a message on Weibo.
L: Happy.
The accompanying image was a cropped close-up of their two suitcases. Only the colors on top could be seen, so it was impossible to tell what the suitcases looked like as a whole.
But if someone looked closely, they could still figure it out.
He couldn’t resist showing off.
His Weibo account had long been secretly monitored by Ji Zhaoxi’s fans. As soon as he posted, someone took a screenshot and sent it to the fan group.
“This sixty-year-old geezer is dating too. No wonder he’s been behaving himself lately.”
“How can you tell he’s dating? What’s in the picture?”
“Obviously! He’s started posting random little things like this. He thinks he’s hiding it perfectly. I feel sorry for the person he likes—one second of silence for them. How pitiful.”
“Forget the sixty-year-old geezer. Is she streaming these days? [Bored] [Bored]”
After posting, Lu Huainan kept opening Weibo every now and then to check.
He wanted Ji Zhaoxi to see it, but he was also afraid she would see it. And he was even more afraid that she wouldn’t realize what it meant.
Although the latter was the more likely outcome.
He didn’t have the heart to sleep during the entire journey. He thought about a lot of things—from middle school to high school, from high school to university, and then to the present…
The two of them hadn’t actually talked much on the plane, since Ji Zhaoxi had been asleep the whole time. She only woke up when they were nearly there.
As the plane descended closer and closer to the ground, Lu Huainan suddenly felt hollow inside.
“We’re finally here. I’m going home to sleep,” Ji Zhaoxi said listlessly.
Lu Huainan lowered his eyes. They had arrived so soon.
Ji Zhaoxi had to wait for her parents to come pick her up, while the driver from Lu Huainan’s family had already arrived. He insisted on waiting until her parents came before getting into the car.
People streamed past them in every direction. The two of them didn’t have much to say to each other. Ji Zhaoxi sat on top of her suitcase, watching anxiously.
When was her mother coming?
Lu Huainan stood quietly to one side, his gaze occasionally drifting toward her.
They were about to part. Should he say something? Maybe tell her to take care of herself or something like that.
But weren’t those the kinds of things elders said to younger people? Still, he had to say something to her.
The problem was, he didn’t know what to say. He had never been good with words.
Not far away, the driver silently watched the scene.
He saw Lu Huainan repeatedly look at Ji Zhaoxi as if he wanted to say something, only to turn away again and again.
His head had probably turned back and forth countless times, yet he still hadn’t managed to say a single word.
“Dad, where are you? I’m practically dying waiting here,” Ji Zhaoxi complained into the phone.
Her father’s voice came from the other end. “Almost there, almost there!”
Ji Zhaoxi: “…”
He had said “almost there” so many times already. It was always “almost there, almost there.”
She looked at Lu Huainan and hesitated. “Lu Huainan, why don’t you leave first? My parents still aren’t here.”
Lu Huainan avoided her gaze, his throat tightening. “It’s fine. I… I’m worried about you being here alone.”
The moment he said it, his heart nearly stopped.
He had actually said it.
Ji Zhaoxi paused at his words and gave him a quick glance. “Oh.”
She was sitting on her suitcase when it suddenly slid forward. Lu Huainan instinctively stepped in front of it to block it.
Ji Zhaoxi obediently stayed seated and didn’t slide forward again. Lu Huainan stood quietly beside her, and neither of them spoke.
Not long afterward, Ji Zhaoxi finally spotted her family’s car.
Just as she was about to get in, she turned around and smiled at Lu Huainan, who was still standing in the same spot.
“Lu Huainan, if you want to hang out with me, just send me a message.”
Lu Huainan stared blankly at her retreating figure, momentarily at a loss for words.
He really had become someone a little different to her now, hadn’t he?
At the very least, he was no longer as insignificant to her as he had once been…
