But if she hadn’t tried to block the door, Dong Jiaoyan wouldn’t have been so convinced that she was sneaking around doing something shady.
Dong Jiaoyan’s temper flared up instantly.
She thought to herself: We’re best friends, so you shouldn’t keep any secrets from me.
Rage surged through her like a spark catching fire, burning away any pretense of being a proper lady. She shoved Qiao Liuyue aside with force.
The door of the private room slammed heavily against the wall with a loud bang.
Dong Jiaoyan stepped inside, sweeping her gaze across the room, and then…
Her eyes landed on a man dressed in a casual shirt with sunglasses hanging from his collar.
Zheng Qingyuan was lounging there without a care, sunlight filtering through the half-closed blinds and striking his sharply defined profile.
The bridge of his nose cast a small, pleasing shadow across his cheek.
A flicker of admiration quickly flashed through Dong Jiaoyan’s eyes.
Her gaze traveled from his lean jawline to his deep-set eyes, then to the clearly expensive shirt he was wearing.
Then she glanced at Qiao Liuyue, who was standing by the door, looking plain and dowdy with her bangs covering her eyes, dressed in cheap market-stall clothes.
Her expression shifted from admiration to confusion, and then from confusion to a kind of scrutiny.
"Handsome, who are you?"
Dong Jiaoyan tilted her head, her tone laced with curiosity and a hint of testing.
Zheng Qingyuan felt as if he had been struck by lightning.
He had probably never expected that, right after confessing everything to Qiao Liuyue and planning to find a "right moment" to come clean to Dong Jiaoyan, fate wouldn’t even give him a choice and had shoved the real deal right into his path.
To make matters worse, footsteps echoed from the end of the hallway at that very moment.
His assistant, "Sui Feng," probably saw both girls gathered at the door of the private room, curiously poked his head over to see if something had gone wrong.
He was wearing his signature black suit, with his usual polite, slightly professional smile plastered on his face.
He asked:
"What’s wrong? Is something the matter?"
His tone was light and casual, as if he saw nothing unusual about the scene.
Until his gaze passed over Dong Jiaoyan’s shoulder and landed on his boss, who was sitting deep inside the room, staring at the ceiling with an utterly hopeless expression.
Assistant Sui Feng’s mouth went from "open" to "closed" to "tightly pressed."
A look of despair crept onto his face, screaming, It’s over, it’s over, my year-end bonus is gone!
Crap!!!
It was the first time he had ever been caught red-handed while "on duty."
In the past, his test subjects would only send breakup texts to the boss after they finished their meals and went home. There had never been a case where they ran into each other right in the restaurant.
Assistant Sui Feng quietly took half a step back, his mind already racing to calculate whether this month’s performance review would screw him over.
The atmosphere in the room was silent for about three seconds.
Zheng Qingyuan was so flustered that he didn’t dare look at Dong Jiaoyan at all.
Finally, as if grasping at a lifeline, he instinctively walked over to Qiao Liuyue.
Lowering his voice, he said:
"I’m… her neighbor from next door growing up."
Dong Jiaoyan’s meticulously lined eyes flicked back and forth between them several times.
Her gaze was suspicious, full of scrutiny.
"Liu Yue’s neighbor from next door? How come I’ve never seen you before?"
Zheng Qingyuan broke out in a cold sweat at the question, casting a desperate look for help.
Qiao Liuyue sighed inwardly and reluctantly picked up the mess.
Her tone was natural.
"Oh, right, that’s how it is."
"He used to live near my place when we were kids, but then his family moved away when I was in middle school. It’s so coincidental bumping into him again after all these years."
"Right, right, very coincidental." Zheng Qingyuan nodded repeatedly.
Dong Jiaoyan gave a skeptical "hmm."
Assistant Sui Feng, smart for once, quickly stepped in to change the subject.
"Well… how about I drive you both back to school? Didn’t you say you had class this afternoon?"
He said this with a professional smile on his face, but his eyes carefully avoided looking in his boss’s direction, terrified that a single glance might reveal something he shouldn’t.
"Okay, thank you for the trouble," Qiao Liuyue said with a polite smile.
Dong Jiaoyan shot another glance at the handsome guy who claimed to be Liu Yue’s childhood neighbor.
Zheng Qingyuan’s chiseled face looked far too good under the warm yellow light of the hallway.
So good that it made her heart itch.
She was genuinely tempted, wanting to add him on WeChat.
But then she thought again: Sui Feng was still standing right there. She couldn’t ask for another man’s contact info in front of him—that wouldn’t look right.
After all, in the persona she had built, she was supposed to be a girl completely devoted to "Brother Suifeng."
Oh well, I’ll just ask Liu Yue to forward his contact info to me when we get back.
We’re best friends, after all. Liu Yue wouldn’t refuse me something this small.
With that thought, a bright smile bloomed across her face again.
Her voice was syrupy sweet:
"Alright, then we’ll be in your hands, Brother Suifeng."
Back at school, Dong Jiaoyan kept skirting around the topic, chatting vaguely about this and that.
She jumped from the cafeteria food to next week’s weather, from club activities to gossip in the neighboring class.
After making about seven or eight detours.
She linked her arm through Qiao Liuyue’s and casually asked, as if it were an afterthought:
"Liu Yue, what’s your neighbor’s name?"
Qiao Liuyue thought for a moment, but instead of answering directly, she tilted her head slightly and glanced at her.
In an indifferent tone, she shot back:
"Why? Is something wrong?"
"Oh, nothing, nothing." Dong Jiaoyan waved her hand instinctively.
"I just thought he looked familiar, kind of like one of my ex-boyfriends."
Qiao Liuyue listened and thought that excuse sounded awfully familiar.
Wasn’t that the exact trick Dong Jiaoyan had taught her to get close to her online boyfriend "Xie Xie Zai Jian"?
After saying that, Dong Jiaoyan probably realized the flaw in her own words, and a flicker of stiffness crossed her face.
Then she laughed it off, bright and carefree:
"Oh, come on, it’s only natural to want a guy’s contact info when you see a handsome face."
Qiao Liuyue lifted her head and shot her a glance through the lenses of her black-rimmed glasses.
"That doesn’t seem right."
"Ah?" Dong Jiaoyan didn’t catch on, still keeping her smile.
"Aren’t you already in a relationship?"
Dong Jiaoyan didn’t get annoyed at all. She didn’t even show any guilt or hesitation.
Instead, she said bluntly:
"That’s just my online boyfriend."
"We haven’t even met in person yet. Who knows—maybe we’ll break up before we ever do, so it doesn’t really count anyway."
"I think when it comes to real-life relationships, you should focus on people you’ve actually met face to face. Don’t you agree?"
