Chapter 23: Chen Fangli and the Roly-Poly

Before leaving, Wang Zhao accompanied Li Zhenguan to the restroom at the restaurant. She waited outside, occasionally glancing at her phone.

She had already settled the restaurant bill. After they returned, they could leave directly, but it was still early, and the two families could have some other activities.

After Li Zhenguan came out, they could discuss further, perhaps taking both families for a stroll around the area. At this thought, Wang Zhao suddenly remembered there was a small hill nearby that could be climbed in about ten minutes. At the top was a temple, providing a unique charm amidst the bustling city.

This temple was usually very popular, partly due to its excellent location. People came to burn incense and worship Buddha seven days a week, with weekends being particularly crowded. Once, Wang Zhao passed by here and heard a subway station called Qingyuan Temple. Curious, she decided to visit.

Her timing was unfortunate as it was a weekend. The entire temple was buzzing with noise, mostly men and women holding various types of incense, preparing to offer them before the gilded Buddha statues.

Wang Zhao stood at the entrance, leaning against the wall, her gaze falling carelessly on the opposite wall. The flickering lights cast a blurry shadow. She seemed to stand still for a moment, then startled, turned around to find that the blurry shadow was from Li Zhenguan.

“Done?” Almost instinctively, a gentle smile appeared on her face.

“Mm.” Li Zhenguan nodded, shaking off the excess water from his hands. He then took his phone from Wang Zhao’s hand. At that moment, the phone screen lit up with a message from his father.

He glanced at it: “Let’s go. No need to return to the private room. My dad says they’ve been sitting there too long and it’s stuffy. They’ve gone downstairs with the others. Apparently, they heard about a nearby temple and want to go burn some incense later.”

This coincided with her earlier thoughts. Wang Zhao couldn’t help but smile, though her mind wandered a bit. When she had visited before, there seemed to be more young couples burning incense together in the temple, although there were also many middle-aged men.

As she and Li Zhenguan walked out of the corridor to go downstairs, just as they turned the corner, two young men emerged from a private room.

The two were dressed casually and their conversation was equally informal.

“So you’re back for good this time?” one of them said with a smile.

“Yes, I don’t plan to leave again,” the young man being asked replied with a gentle smile. “After staying abroad for so long, I’ve come to miss the food from home.”

The other man smiled noncommittally: “Have you contacted Wang Zhao since you’ve been back?”

“I heard she quit her job at the law firm earlier. Now, who knows what she’s doing? Her resignation surprised quite a few people. She gave up such a good job without a second thought. I heard she was already able to take on cases independently, with a bright future ahead. Who knows what happened for her to suddenly quit that job.

At the time, several classmates tried to ask her about it, but got no response. You know Wang Zhao, she’s just a pretty face that can fool some young boys, but she’s actually quite stubborn. No one could persuade her. After she left, we didn’t hear of her joining any of the well-known law firms in the industry. Classmates tried to find out a few times but couldn’t get any information. Now, we have no idea what that person is doing.”

“Is that so?” The young man seemed a bit dazed upon hearing this, as if he hadn’t heard that name in a long time. Then he let out a faint laugh and sighed, muttering to himself, “How is she still the same old way, not changed at all.”

She seemed like quite a mild person, but her temper was really unyielding. When she did things, there was a kind of reckless decisiveness, but this determination often made people feel insecure.

“Among all of us, you were the closest to her. Now that you’re back, are you thinking of rekindling the old flame?” the man teased. “In all these years, you were the only boyfriend she ever had. I’ve had people ask around, and even after she started working, she was always alone, quite solitary. Maybe she just can’t get over you.”

Chen Fangli smiled noncommittally, but in his heart, he was indeed moved by these words.

He still hadn’t fully figured out Wang Zhao’s personality. That person was sometimes too cold, inexplicably making people feel a sense of defeat. Even the talented Chen Fangli couldn’t avoid feeling powerless multiple times, and this sense of powerlessness made him constantly examine and doubt Wang Zhao’s feelings for him.

Perhaps, she might really have liked him.

Even to this day, he still harbored this subtle expectation.

As they talked, they walked out of the private room. Just as Chen Fangli heard the other person finish speaking, he heard a familiar voice. Following the sound, he only saw a man’s figure and half a body hidden in the corner of the wall, somewhat familiar.

Almost instantly, Chen Fangli froze in place.

The man asked, “What’s wrong?”

He followed Chen Fangli’s gaze but could only see the back of a man disappearing around the corridor corner. It didn’t seem to be someone they knew. He turned his gaze back to the person beside him.

“Did you see someone you know?” Hu Yanyou teased again.

Chen Fangli also withdrew his gaze, lowering his eyelids for a moment, and smiled palely: “I must have seen wrong.” Wang Zhao never got too close to young men, let alone speak in such a gentle tone. Moreover, the back of that man just now was also unfamiliar – it probably wasn’t someone he knew.

Suppressing the unease and speculation in his heart, Chen Fangli said to his friend beside him: “Alright, I just landed today and you called me over here. My head is still aching. I need to go back to the hotel to get over the jet lag.”

“You haven’t found a place to stay yet?” Hu Yanyou was a bit surprised. He thought for a moment, “How about I ask some friends to help you look?”

He had many friends, most of whom came from well-off backgrounds. Children of the rich, second or third generation, old money families – they were bound to have a few properties. Helping a friend wouldn’t be a difficult task, as those places were just sitting empty anyway.

Chen Fangli was a bit tired, but he still mustered the energy to speak: “After all, it’s for long-term living. I hope to find a place that’s more pleasant to live in. I have many requirements, and I’m not very satisfied with the houses the agent has shown me. As for your friends, let’s forget about that. I can’t really communicate with them. I’ll have someone look for me again.”

Hu Yanyou was good at making friends, but most of his friends, in Chen Fangli’s view, were just fair-weather friends, unemployed loafers, acting like spoiled rich kids. The fact that Hu Yanyou could deal with them was thanks to his ability to talk, his high emotional intelligence, and his decent family background, just barely allowing him to mix in that circle.

Having been rejected, the man wasn’t angry. He just shook his head with a smile.

Ever since he had known Chen Fangli, the man had been like this. That’s why, during university, many people were surprised when he got together with someone like Wang Zhao.

As for others saying that Chen Fangli had a good nature and was gentle in his dealings with people, Hu Yanyou just smiled without saying anything, only complaining inwardly that it was like in the F4 of “Meteor Garden”, where the seemingly gentlest one, Hua Zelei, was actually the most difficult to approach.

Chen Fangli was more arrogant than anyone else. Sometimes, the quality in one’s bones is hard to change.

Meanwhile, Wang Zhao, who had walked out of the restaurant, was completely unaware of the two men talking about her behind her back, one of whom was her ex-boyfriend. Otherwise, her head would start aching again, and if this continued for long, she might even suspect she had some illness and need to visit the neurology department at the hospital.

At this moment, she was arranging for everyone to get into the cars. The Qingyuan Temple was quite close, only about a ten-minute drive.

The Li family had two cars, while the Wang family needed to call for another car. To save trouble, Uncle’s family rode in their own car, Li Zhenguan sat in the front passenger seat, and the back could seat three people. Wang Xuechun and Zhang Ke sat with the Li family.

This was arranged by Li Zhenguan, and Wang Zhao wouldn’t embarrass her in front of everyone. Seeing that her parents didn’t object either, she agreed.

Coincidentally, not long after they drove away, Chen Fangli arrived at the parking lot alone. By chance, his car was parked right next to where Wang Zhao had parked earlier.

At this moment, fate seemed to play a silent joke, making this pair of man and woman go round and round, like a roly-poly toy on a table, never quite touching the ground. Just like Chen Fangli and Wang Zhao now, their meeting always missed by just a little bit.

Their cars merged into the traffic at the exit and disappeared into the flow of vehicles.

While driving, Wang Zhao noticed a spring doll placed under the windshield at some point. Every time the car shook, it nodded and swayed, looking quite cute. Without thinking much, she glanced at the person beside her.

“Did you put this doll here?” Wang Rong in the back also noticed the doll, which he found a bit eerie. The doll’s cheeks were bright red, and a high school student who had read too many Chinese horror stories could immediately come up with countless terrifying thoughts.

However, the two adults in front didn’t have such thoughts.

Li Zhenguan nodded, smiling as he poked the doll: “I bought a pair. Yours is wearing green clothes, mine is wearing red clothes.”

He had seen the dolls in an online brand store. The moment he scrolled to them, he thought of the saying “green for women, red for men,” and bought the pair of dolls without any hesitation.

Just now, while Wang Zhao was exchanging greetings, he had placed it under the windshield as a decoration.

After speaking, he couldn’t resist poking the doll’s forehead hard, causing it to stick to the car surface and then spring up violently.

Wang Rong, sitting in the back, caught a glimpse of this and couldn’t help but twitch the corner of his mouth, feeling a bit speechless. It was just a spring doll, not a roly-poly. Li Zhenguan had managed to play with it like a roly-poly.

However, seeing Li Zhenguan’s smile, Wang Rong suddenly shuddered. He suddenly felt that his future brother-in-law was a bit off, and remembering the glance they exchanged earlier in the private room, Wang Rong started to hesitate.

Should he tell his cousin that her boyfriend seemed a bit abnormal?

Author’s note:

ing~ Thank you for your support