Ning Zhen and Guo Xia were thoroughly enjoying their girls' trip together.
After years of grinding away as office workers, they both knew all too well that opportunities like this were rare—maybe in the long years ahead, they wouldn't come around many more times.
The two of them captured countless photos and videos of themselves goofing off and having a blast together.
They sat on the city's sightseeing bus, whispering secrets to each other in a constant stream of giggles, collapsing into laughter.
Over the two days of the weekend, Ning Zhen had shown restraint and kept her social media posts to a minimum, but on Monday—when most people had to get up early for work—she wore a sly grin and posted one update after another, cranking the jealousy factor to maximum.
"So childish it's ridiculous."
Ning Zhen scrolled through the sea of envious and exasperated comments on her feed, then muttered under her breath, "He's not twenty-nine—nine at best, no more."
Guo Xia leaned against her shoulder, feeling the warm breeze brush her face, listening to her grumbling, and asked curiously, "What did he do to you this time?"
"I've found a pattern!"
Ning Zhen's expression was one of disdain, but her eyes sparkled with barely contained amusement. "These posts I make—the ones related to him, the ones that mention him—he likes those. The ones that have nothing to do with him? He ignores them. So childish."
Guo Xia fell silent for a few seconds.
Then she covered her face, looking thoroughly fed up, and sighed dramatically: "Babe, I get why you hate Ye Chuyang now. I'm also getting annoyed with your husband."
"..." Ning Zhen put her phone away, holding back a laugh as she deliberately scolded her, "This is nothing. How long have you two been together? I've been putting up with it for that long. Me and Meng Xianwen... it's only been such a short time—so, you, deal with it!"
During these few days away, she and Meng Xianwen rarely called each other.
Of course, he was busy, and he didn't reach out to her much either.
Compared to Ye Chuyang, who was like a broken record going "Xia, Xia, Xia, Xia" endlessly, Meng Xianwen was remarkably quiet.
Guo Xia couldn't help but laugh. "Fine, fine, tit for tat, right?"
"You know it." Ning Zhen raised her chin, looking satisfied.
After they'd had their fill of the city scenery, they put on matching sunglasses and got off the bus, strolling along idly until they wandered into narrow streets and alleys populated mostly by tourists, with vividly colored wall murals everywhere they looked.
On the sightseeing bus, Ning Zhen and Guo Xia had each solemnly pledged to keep the other in check—they were here to take gorgeous pictures, not to buy souvenirs you could find in any city across the country. Yet as they wandered, before they knew it, they'd already bought three or four decorative fridge magnets.
"The flowers on that shop's rooftop are so pretty—come on, let's go line up for a photo!"
Guo Xia dragged Ning Zhen over, and they unexpectedly discovered it was a small shop specializing in postcards, decorated in a retro style. Lots of customers wandered in to browse, but few actually bought anything.
Ning Zhen's eye was caught by a postcard tucked away in the corner.
A towering mountain, capped with pristine white snow, beneath a brilliant blue sky.
It reminded her of someone.
No one could suit this scene better than him.
She bought it, along with an envelope, and found a quiet corner where she wouldn't let Guo Xia peek. With a frown here and a stifled smile there, she wrote on the postcard, blew on it to dry the ink, sealed it in the envelope, and sent it off.
...
At four in the afternoon.
Having just wrapped up a meeting, Meng Xianwen returned to his office. Instead of heading back to his desk to dive into work, he sank into the visitor's sofa to catch a brief moment of rest.
Out of habit, he leaned over and picked up his phone from the table.
Aside from a few work-related messages from Chang Yi, there was a location she'd sent him. Flipping through it casually, it felt almost as if he were living through her colorful day along with her.
He tapped into her Moments.
From eight in the morning until now, she'd added four new posts.
Knock, knock, knock—an ill-timed knocking came at the door, the kind that was both careless and rhythmless, unmistakably Meng Jiaran.
A flicker of exasperation crossed Meng Xianwen's brow. He turned his phone screen-side down on the desk, stood up, and went to open the door.
Meng Jiaran slipped in nimbly, and once the door was closed again, he cleared his throat and announced, "Hello, your delivery has arrived. Please give me a five-star rating."
Meng Xianwen furrowed his brow, about to ask him why he wasn't doing his job during work hours and what he was playing at, when his gaze fell on the takeout paper bag in his hand and paused. He softened his tone slightly. "Give it to me. You can leave."
"Don't be so ungrateful and kick me out the moment you've got what you need." Meng Jiaran sauntered over to the desk, pulled two drinks out of the bag, glanced at the labels on the cups, and handed one over, grumbling, "Whenever she needs me, it's never for anything good. When she has something to ask, it's 'Jiaran, are you there?' When she doesn't, it's 'get lost.' I swear."
"Bro, just give me a couple of minutes—I need to take a photo to get this done."
"..."
"Bro, so here's the thing—Zhenzhen said you have to hold it with your left hand, and I need to get your watch in the shot."
"..."
Meng Xianwen's head throbbed with a headache. He said flatly, "Out."
"Got it."
Meng Jiaran had been his younger brother for over twenty years—there was no way he couldn't tell that his brother's tone was already teetering on the edge of irritation. He quickly snapped the photo, grabbed his own drink from the desk, and turned to leave without a second word, the whole motion seamless.
Are you kidding me?
Zhenzhen isn't in Beicheng right now, and with the extra layer of long-distance longing on top of that, his brother wasn't about to take it out on her. But he, as the actual blood-related little brother, would be cannon fodder if he stuck around any longer.
Meng Jiaran rushed back to his own workstation.
The assistants and secretaries were all busy, so he snatched a moment to send the photo to Ning Zhen.
Ning Zhen replied instantly: [Did you take this with a Nokia?]
Meng Jiaran: [I took it with my life, thank you very much.]
Ning Zhen had no choice but to grudgingly save the photo. Her taste in drinks usually differed from Meng Xianwen's, but this photo—she'd looked at it so many times that it ended up piquing her curiosity. She went ahead and ordered one online. The first sip was awful, the second sip was strange, but after a few more sips—it was actually pretty good.
Her eyes curved into a smile. She had Guo Xia snap a photo of her and posted it on Moments.
This time, she only posted two photos.
Caption: [1217 kilometers apart, but we can still cheers to each other, clink clink]
-
In the days Ning Zhen was away, Meng Xianwen stayed at a hotel suite near his office. He had more time to pour into work, and since there was no one messaging him asking when he'd come home, he didn't rush to leave even after finishing his day.
He paced over to the floor-to-ceiling window, gazing out at the city lights with a calm, unreadable expression.
Perhaps the office really was a bit too stuffy—he actually reached out and cracked the window open a sliver, letting the wind whistle through.
After standing quietly for a while, he pulled out his phone and opened her Moments, and there it was—the post she'd put up four hours earlier. He smiled to himself, wordlessly, and tapped the like button.
Not even a minute after he liked it, her message popped up: [Off work already?]
Meng Xianwen's brain had been running all day, and he barely had the patience for a long text conversation, so he dialed her number directly.
The call connected in no time. There was some background noise on her end, and her light, cheerful laughter came through the line: "Meng Xianwen, guess how I knew you'd gotten off work?"
"Do I even need to guess?"
"I've figured out that you're really full of yourself. You only like posts that mention you." Ning Zhen chuckled.
Meng Xianwen neither confirmed nor denied it.
He switched topics and asked her, "It sounds loud over there. Where are you?"
“Loud?” She paused, half-teasing, half-sarcastic. “Oh right, I forgot this lazybones didn’t send the location to the super-busy big shot. Hold on—”
With that, Ning Zhen moved the phone away from her ear, tapped into their chat, and sent her location.
It had become a habit ever since the day she hung up on him, using bad signal as an excuse.
Meng Xianwen glanced down at the location she sent—a quiet bar in the city center—and asked, “What time are you heading back to the hotel?”
“Nine-ish.”
Ning Zhen sat in a window-side booth, popping nuts into her mouth one by one, listening to the singer on stage strumming a guitar. The thought that Meng Xianwen was only getting off work now while she was this relaxed only made her feel more smug.
She drawled, “By this time tomorrow night, I’ll already be back in North City. Any thoughts on that?”
“No time to pick you up.”
Ning Zhen choked on his calm four-word reply. “Excuse me, who asked you to pick me up? But you know what, now that you mention it—I wasn’t going to ask at first, but now you have to come pick me up tomorrow!”
He rarely let her go on without interrupting. This time, unusually, he stayed silent.
She was about to push further when a young man with delicate features approached her table. The bar’s dim lighting, along with his hair falling by his cheeks, meant he didn’t immediately realize she was on the phone.
Here he was, purely driven by a sudden burst of courage. She looked up at him, puzzled. He blushed, and as if reciting lines, blurted out, “I’m also here traveling. You might not have noticed, but this morning when you and your friend got off the sightseeing bus, I was getting on. You almost twisted your ankle because you lost your balance, and I caught you.”
Ning Zhen blinked. “Ah, really?”
That happened? She didn’t remember that at all.
The young man steeled himself and said, “This morning… I didn’t get a chance to ask. Now that we’ve run into each other again—could I add you on WeChat?”
Ning Zhen saw him fumbling and understood exactly what was going on. She smiled at him and shook her phone. “It’s quite a coincidence, isn’t it? But I already have a boyfriend. Anyway, safe travels—hope you have a great trip.”
The young man nodded and walked away, looking utterly deflated.
Guo Xia, who had just returned from the restroom, caught sight of this and shrugged as if she’d seen it a hundred times, sitting down across from her.
Ning Zhen realized Meng Xianwen hadn’t spoken, but he also hadn’t hung up. Suspicious, she asked, “You still there?”
“Still here.”
It seemed something suddenly came up on his end. He didn’t have the mood to keep chatting, and gave her his usual reminders—stay safe, get back to the hotel early—before ending the call.
Ning Zhen poked her phone screen and snorted lightly. “Work yourself to death, why don’t you!”
Guo Xia leaned in, brimming with gossip-fueled curiosity and a touch of regret that she hadn’t gone to the bathroom earlier or later—she’d missed such a scene. Charged with excitement, she pursued, “Is he jealous?”
“As if—” Ning Zhen laughed at the very idea.
Sure, it was dark out, but they hadn’t been drinking, so why was Guo Xia starting to act like this was some drama?
Before she could finish, the phone on the table lit up with a message from Meng Xianwen: “Send your flight number to Xiao Ding.”
Ning Zhen blinked blankly, looked at the message, then looked across at Guo Xia.
Could she actually have been right? Was he really jealous?
“Why is that impossible?” Guo Xia propped her chin on her hands and reasoned with her with complete confidence. “Someone hits on you, and he caught it all on the line. If he were here, the next step would be to— ”
The next second.
A beaming bar manager grabbed the mic from the resident singer and said mysteriously, “One good piece of news, and one bad piece. Which do you all want first?”
It was a Monday, so there were far fewer customers than on weekends.
But there were still plenty of office workers who had come to unwind after work. A regular shouted, “Give us the bad news first—don’t tell me the AC is broken!”
“Haha, we’ve got generators,” the manager chuckled. “The bad news is, I’m not sure if anyone hasn’t had enough to eat tonight. If you haven’t, well, you’re about to be fed dog food.”
This little disrupttion cut off Guo Xia’s analysis.
Ning Zhen too had been drawn by the manager’s playful words and looked up with everyone else, a smile of anticipation on her face.
“This place is fun,” she said to Guo Xia.
The mood was heating up when another voice called out, “Stop teasing us! What’s the good news?”
The manager laughed heartily. “The good news is that tonight’s bill is on Miss Ning and her boyfriend.”
“Wait, what, is it April Fools’ Day or something?”
“Hold on, who’s Miss Ning? Raise your hand. I’m your long-lost best friend!”
“Oh my god!”
Guo Xia was sipping her drink through a straw, grinning as she said, “I can’t stand these rotten rich people, but tonight they’re forgiven. Wait—what did she just say? Miss Ning? Haha, what a coincidence, same last name as you, right?”
Her expression shifted slightly as she exchanged a stunned look across the table with Ning Zhen. In unison, the two let out screeching screams: “Ahh!!”
Fortunately, by then most of the crowd was cheering.
No one noticed the odd silence that had fallen over their table.
After a moment, Guo Xia spoke softly, breaking the quiet. “Still think he’s not jealous?”
