My Favorite Ship Became My Sister-in-Law - Chapter 29

Seeing Ji Chenchuan head toward him, Shi Yue ran even faster.

However, just as he was about to reach Ji Chenchuan, Shi Yue suddenly stopped running. His body went rigid as he stood in the rain, staring blankly at Ji Chenchuan. He had actually lost his courage at this very moment.

Ji Chenchuan had a girlfriend.

This cruel reality constantly reminded Shi Yue of the courage he had just built up.

Ji Chenchuan held the umbrella over Shi Yue’s head, leaving his own back completely exposed to the rain. He asked anxiously, “Why did you suddenly run out here? And without an umbrella?”

Shi Yue only stared blankly at Ji Chenchuan, offering no response.

“I’ll take you upstairs.”

Seeing that Shi Yue wasn’t speaking, Ji Chenchuan placed his hand on Shi Yue’s shoulder, turned him around, and guided him toward the tutoring center.

As the saying goes, the remedy must match the illness. But this time, Ji Chenchuan couldn’t find the root of Shi Yue’s ailment no matter how hard he tried. He could only watch helplessly as Shi Yue’s condition worsened, and all he could do was stay by his side.

“Don’t run off after your tutoring session this afternoon. I’ll come pick you up,” Ji Chenchuan said.

Shi Yue nodded numbly.

“What do you want to eat for lunch? I’ll order delivery for you,” Ji Chenchuan added.

“I want the taro and sliced pork soup you made last night,” Shi Yue finally spoke in a low voice.

“Alright, then I’ll bring it over to you at noon.”

After finishing this topic, it seemed neither Shi Yue nor Ji Chenchuan had anything left to say, so they walked on in silence.

Ji Chenchuan accompanied Shi Yue to the outside of the classroom. Noticing that Shi Yue’s clothes were a bit wet, he turned back to his car and brought the spare clothes he kept there. He told Shi Yue to quickly change in the restroom so he would not catch a cold, and then he left with Shi Yue’s wet clothes.

Standing at the end of the corridor, Shi Yue could not describe his current state of mind. In short, he felt incredibly frustrated. He did not return to the classroom until he saw Ji Chenchuan’s car drive away.

The math tutor was explaining difficult problems, but Shi Yue was uncontrollably spaced out. The shirt he was wearing still carried Ji Chenchuan’s scent, and this scent completely disrupted his thoughts.

Ji Chenchuan had promised to bring him the taro and sliced pork soup at noon. Would he really come?

Shi Yue did not really want to eat taro and sliced pork soup; he wanted to see Ji Chenchuan. He wanted to see him every second of every day, wanting it so much he felt he was going crazy. He longed for Ji Chenchuan to understand, yet he feared being seen through and rejected.

The tutor noticed that Shi Yue was exceptionally distracted today. After explaining the key difficult points, the tutor instructed the students to practice and ask questions if they did not understand. Holding a workbook, the tutor walked over to Shi Yue’s desk and laid it open in front of him.

“Shi Yue, look at this problem. How do you solve it?”

On the workbook was a math problem.

Shi Yue showed no reaction, his eyes staring blankly into space.

The tutor tapped the desk with a bit of force and repeated the question.

“Ah?” Only then did Shi Yue suddenly snap out of it.

“Solve this problem,” the tutor said, tapping the workbook.

“Oh! I’m sorry, Teacher. I spaced out,” Shi Yue quickly skimmed the problem and immediately picked up his pen to solve it.

Looking at the rough draft Shi Yue was scratching out, the tutor frowned deeply.

“Tang Yao,” the tutor called out softly to Tang Yao, “solve this together with Shi Yue.”

Tang Yao turned around in his seat. He first examined the problem carefully, then stood up to look at Shi Yue’s solution. His brow immediately furrowed as well. The difficulty level of this problem was indeed quite high; he could not solve it right away either. However, Tang Yao could see that Shi Yue’s approach was completely wrong. Not only was it wrong, but he probably had not even read the question; the mistake was far too absurd.

“Shi Yue, are you feeling unwell somewhere?” Tang Yao asked out of concern.

“Ah? No, I’m not.”

“Your solution is completely irrelevant to the question. Didn’t you notice?”

Tang Yao first pointed at the solving process on Shi Yue’s scratch paper, then pointed back to the problem the teacher had assigned.

Only then did Shi Yue look closely. It was so damn far off. He could not help but feel a bit embarrassed. Standing up, he apologized to the teacher and asked to use the restroom. The teacher nodded in approval, and Shi Yue walked toward the restroom with long, rapid strides.

Standing in front of the sink, Shi Yue scooped up several handfuls of water to wash his face. Looking at his terrible state in the mirror and the loose-fitting clothes belonging to Ji Chenchuan on his body, his heart sank back into a painful struggle. He truly did not know what he should do.

Shi Yue felt he was thoroughly cowardly, unable to let go, yet not daring to love. He also felt thoroughly disgusting, not daring to love, yet still wanting to possess Ji Chenchuan’s kindness. Even more, he felt thoroughly despicable, knowing full well that Ji Chenchuan had a girlfriend, yet still wanting to claim his affection.

Shi Yue slapped his own head hard, wanting to beat himself awake. Of course, this slap was useless. The more violently he tried to shake Ji Chenchuan out of his head, the more his mind became completely filled with Ji Chenchuan.

With both hands supporting himself on the sink, Shi Yue lowered his head to watch the rushing water from the tap. He desperately wished someone could tell him exactly what he should do about this completely mistaken affection.

“Whenever I encounter a problem, I do a handstand for ten minutes, and then my mind clears up. Do you want to try?” Tang Yao walked into the restroom and spoke to Shi Yue with a slight smile. “The rain has stopped now, so there should not be anyone on the rooftop. If you need, I can keep you company.”

Three minutes later.

Shi Yue was doing a handstand on the rooftop. The sunlight after the rain spilled across Shi Yue’s face, which was flushed red from the rush of blood.

With his arms crossed over his chest, Tang Yao leaned against the wall next to Shi Yue and squinted at the blue sky. He was wearing the uniform of the No. 8 High School.

“Tang Yao,” Shi Yue turned his bloodshot eyes toward Tang Yao, “if, I’m just saying if, one day you found out you fell for someone you shouldn’t fall for, what would you do?”

“I’ve never been in a relationship, so I’ve never considered this question. But I think,” Tang Yao kept looking at the blue sky and smiled, his smile very gentle, “except for taboo blood relations, there’s no one you shouldn’t love.”

Shi Yue could hear the underlying meaning in Tang Yao’s words; he had seen through it but chose not to say it directly. It seemed the feelings he thought he had hidden flawlessly had already turned into a rushing torrent. He decided to stop beating around the bush.

“There’s no blood relation, but the other party is an older neighborhood brother who watched you grow up and took care of you. Is it okay to love someone in that kind of relationship?” Shi Yue kept his voice very low, as if afraid that if he spoke too loudly, the words might fly into Ji Chenchuan’s ears.

“Do you know why Cupid closes his eyes when he shoots his arrows?” Tang Yao withdrew his gaze and turned his head to look at Shi Yue.

“Why?”

“Because the things that are truly important in this world need to be seen with the heart. Just follow your heart, and you’ll be right.”

Shi Yue naturally wanted to follow his heart, so he asked again, “But what if the other person already has a girlfriend?”

“Then giving up is the best choice.”

“I’ve tried, but I can’t let go no matter what.”

“Do you know about the ‘Buridan’s Ass’ effect?” Tang Yao asked Shi Yue.

“I know,” Shi Yue said.

Having said it, a sudden realization hit him. Yes! Instead of hesitating and wavering, it was better to make a clean, swift decision.

“But he has a girlfriend,” Shi Yue intensified once more. Even though his mind had cleared up, this fact still made him hesitate to take a reckless step forward.

“Did he tell you himself, or did you see it with your own eyes?” Tang Yao asked, because he had seen that Ji Chenchuan’s kindness toward Shi Yue had severely crossed the line of a normal friendship.

“I,” Shi Yue hesitated for a long while before saying, “I guessed it.”

Yes! It was a guess based on clues he had observed.

“A guess isn’t equal to the facts. Why don’t you confirm it with him?” Tang Yao said leisurely.

That was right! Why had he not asked Ji Chenchuan to confirm it himself?

The knot that had been tightly tangled in Shi Yue’s heart suddenly unraveled. Shi Yue decided that if Ji Chenchuan really brought him lunch at noon, he would confirm it with him. If it turned out he had guessed wrong and Ji Chenchuan did not have a girlfriend, he would…

“Thanks, Tang Yao. I know what I should do now.”

Shi Yue brought his feet down from the wall to the ground and stood up, a smile finally appearing on his face.

“You’re welcome!” Tang Yao shrugged his shoulders. “So let’s go down and solve that problem! I really couldn’t solve that one.”

“Yeah.”

Chatting and laughing together, Shi Yue and Tang Yao left the rooftop and returned to the tutoring center.

Ji Chenchuan did not go straight back to his shop. He took a detour to a nearby market to buy the freshest ribs and taro, arriving at his shop an hour late.

Zhang Ping did not dare say anything, only stealing quiet glances at Ji Chenchuan.

By ten o’clock, after handling all of yesterday’s orders, Ji Chenchuan was preparing to go home to cook for Shi Yue and deliver it to the tutoring center when he received a phone call from a client. The client said they were coming to the shop. Ji Chenchuan initially wanted to delegate the reception to Zhang Ping, but the client mentioned they were bringing a new client who was currently working on a construction site and wanted to discuss a partnership. Ji Chenchuan had no choice but to handle the reception personally.

During the process, an old client who was familiar with Ji Chenchuan noticed him frequently checking his watch and teased him, asking if he was in a rush to go on a date with his girlfriend.

Ji Chenchuan smiled, which counted as a tacit admission.

“Money and spiritual needs are equally important.” That old client stood up, patted Ji Chenchuan’s shoulder, and said with a smile, “Go accompany your girlfriend for lunch. We can head to the construction site this afternoon to discuss the specific cooperation details.”

“Alright, thank you for understanding, Brother Li!” Ji Chenchuan quickly stood up and said.

“We’ve all been young, we all understand. If they get angry, they aren’t easy to coax!”

The client winked at Ji Chenchuan, then whispered to the new client. The new client nodded, exchanged phone numbers with Ji Chenchuan, and they left.

After seeing the clients off, Ji Chenchuan saw it was already eleven o’clock. He quickly gave Zhang Ping a few instructions and immediately drove home in a hurry.

Fortunately, the traffic was clear all the way, and he reached home in just half an hour.

As soon as he arrived, Ji Chenchuan quickly washed the rice to cook it. Time was tight and there was not enough time for a slow simmer, so Ji Chenchuan used a pressure cooker to cook the ribs while hastily peeling, washing, and slicing the taro into medium-thick pieces. Once the ribs were pressure-cooked, he placed the taro into the pressure cooker with the ribs to cook for another minute. Taro pressured this way turned out perfectly cooked, neither mushy nor hard, with a soft, sticky texture that carried the savory aroma of the rib oil.

The rice happened to finish cooking right then too.

It was exactly twelve o’clock.

It took twenty minutes to get from Ji Chenchuan’s home to Shi Yue’s tutoring center. Fearing that Shi Yue would be hungry, Ji Chenchuan rushed like he was racing to the front lines, swiftly packing the taro and rib soup into the bottom layer of a double-layered insulated lunch box and putting the rice in the top layer, racing against time to deliver it to Shi Yue.

When heading out the door, he suddenly noticed the two shopping bags of potato chips he had bought for Shi Yue last night sitting on the dining table. Shi Yue had not touched a single bag.

Ji Chenchuan turned back, grabbed one of the bags at random to bring along for Shi Yue, thinking that since Shi Yue was acting unusual, perhaps bringing these chips for him to share and eat with his classmates would make things better.

As luck would have it, the bag Ji Chenchuan grabbed happened to be the one containing the condoms.

Seeing that it was already noon and Ji Chenchuan had not arrived yet, Shi Yue wanted to call him to say that if he was busy, he did not need to come and that he could just eat outside by himself. To his dismay, his phone was out of power and had automatically shut down at some unknown point. Shi Yue went to the office to borrow a charger from a teacher.

Unbeknownst to him, Ji Chenchuan arrived just then to deliver the food. Not finding Shi Yue, and with his phone calls failing to go through, Ji Chenchuan looked around.

The students from the tutoring center had all gone out to eat, leaving only Tang Yao alone in the classroom. Tang Yao was currently eating a lunch he had brought himself.

“Hello there, classmate.” Ji Chenchuan placed the insulated lunch box and the bag of potato chips on Tang Yao’s desk. “I’m Shi Yue’s older brother. I couldn’t get through to his phone. When Shi Yue comes back, could you please trouble yourself to hand these over to him? Thank you!”

“Sure. You’re welcome!”

Tang Yao smiled and nodded.

Ji Chenchuan, however, froze slightly. He recognized Tang Yao as the classmate who had held an umbrella over Shi Yue this morning and had his arm slung over Shi Yue’s shoulder. He could not help but feel a pang of regret in his heart; he had asked the wrong person.

Just then, his client’s phone call urged him again, telling Ji Chenchuan to hurry to the construction site as everyone was waiting for him. Ji Chenchuan had no choice but to rush off to the construction site in a hurry.

Ji Chenchuan left through the back door just as Shi Yue walked in through the front door.

Tang Yao tapped his long fingers against the insulated lunch box and said to Shi Yue, “Your lunch.”

Puzzled, Shi Yue pointed to himself. “Mine?”

“Yeah,” Tang Yao smiled slightly and said, “your brother brought it over. He just left.”

Hearing this, Shi Yue realized Ji Chenchuan had actually come, and he immediately chased out after him through the back door.