"What to do When the Pretty Woman I Kissed is My Best Friend's Professor" - Chapter 90

Yan He wasn’t sure if it was her imagination, but she always felt that the closer the car drove toward the sea, the better the weather became, and the air seemed to become moist as well. Since both she and Shen Jinrong had already visited the Leaning Tower of Pisa, they didn’t drive in that direction this time, heading straight for the seaside instead.

Not many people went to the beach in December, which Yan He guessed might be because many people hadn’t started their holidays yet. At the turn-off to the beach, their car separated from the other vehicles, cut through another stream of traffic, and proceeded onto a different side road.

This road was not a very formal highway; both sides were lined with tall trees. Pisa was quite far north, so the temperature was considerably lower, and the ground on both sides was covered with fallen leaves.

Yan He looked up and thought they must be plane trees. The trees were tall, but because it was deep winter, she could see right to the top. A few birds were perched on some of the dry branches—perhaps pigeons, though Yan He thought they might also be seagulls.

“Why are there pigeons everywhere?” Shen Jinrong jumped when a bird dropping suddenly landed on the windshield. She knitted her brows and complained.

“It’s not just pigeons,” Yan He glanced at the navigation; they still had nearly twenty minutes to go before reaching the seaside. “We’re getting close to the sea, so there are quite a few seagulls too.”

Shen Jinrong pouted, “No wonder so many old buildings have wires placed on top of them. Is it to keep pigeons from landing there?”

Yan He snapped her fingers, “That’s exactly right.”

The bird dropping had landed right in the lower middle of the glass, and Shen Jinrong found it terribly distracting. She tried to ignore it but frowned in irritation for a long time, ultimately unable to look past it.

“I’ll wipe it later,” Yan He said just at the right moment.

Shen Jinrong sighed, as if relieved of a heavy burden, “That won’t be too much trouble, will it?”

Yan He didn’t mind, “It’s fine.”

“Thank you then!” Shen Jinrong sighed, “Why are there so many pigeons in winter?”

Jiejie secretly pursed her lips. She didn’t complain often, and her tone was always gentle, not like she was saying the pigeons were annoying, but more like a casual remark such as “The weather is really nice today.”

“They’re around all the time,” Yan He smiled. Seeing that the navigation showed they had to keep driving straight, she unplugged her phone charger and looked down at the map. They weren’t far from the blue sea. “We’ll be there soon.”

There wasn’t much traffic in Pisa, only getting a bit congested in the city center; things were fine once they reached the outskirts. They drove forward along the Arno River, occasionally passing people jogging or cycling on mountain bikes by the road.

“We’ll arrive just in time for the tail end of lunchtime,” Shen Jinrong smiled, pressing her lips together. “Besides mangoes, are you allergic to anything else?”

Yan He’s hand paused, and she turned to look at Shen Jinrong. Actually, her mango allergy wasn’t very serious; she only became aware of it when she thought of mangoes. What Yan He hadn’t expected was for Shen Jinrong to bring up her allergy.

After a brief moment of surprise, Yan He replied, “No, nothing else.”

Why did she feel so taken aback?

Yan He lowered her head, unconsciously rubbing the seatbelt on her right shoulder. She felt it might be because she had unconsciously kept Shen Jinrong at a distance from ordinary people. She had lifted the person she loved onto a pedestal and cared for her meticulously, like she was guarding a unique and priceless treasure.

But she forgot that, perhaps in Shen Jinrong’s eyes, she was also one of a kind. What she wanted to give Shen Jinrong, Shen Jinrong would also want to give her.

Yan He felt slightly dazed. In her ears was still an unfamiliar melody—a type of song Yan He had heard too much of during the last two days of the trip. Sometimes she could understand what the radio host was saying, sometimes she couldn’t. She didn’t understand the local dialect very well, and sometimes it was hard to catch what the host was saying when they spoke too fast.

She reached out to adjust the volume knob, hoping to ease the current awkward atmosphere, but after she adjusted it, the relaxing music suddenly changed into the extremely fast speech of a news broadcast.

She suddenly realized she had pressed the wrong button.

Yan He felt flustered for a moment. She didn’t know what she was doing. When she turned her head, she met Jiejie‘s smiling eyes.

Yan He withdrew her hand and quickly tuned the radio back to the original channel.

Shen Jinrong smiled at her, “It’s okay.”

It wasn’t a big deal, so why was the xiaopengyou (young one) looking at her as if she had done something wrong?

Shen Jinrong had originally wanted to say, You don’t need to be so nervous, but she realized she had said such things to Yan He many times. The xiaopengyou was sometimes still nervous—but when she wasn’t, she was a little hard to handle.

Shen Jinrong raised the corner of her mouth. Yan He couldn’t see the upturned corner on her side and was instead preoccupied with recalling why she had just done something so embarrassing.

The car drove past a field, and Yan He realized she actually preferred the plains to the city. The boundless plain stretched as far as the eye could see. Large patches of crops were planted in the fields, and a scarecrow stood right in the middle of some of them. Looking into the distance, she could even see the remains of ancient buildings in some places. Some were walls of an unknown age, others were tilted wreckage lying on the ground.

Did Shen Jinrong bestow extraordinary significance upon this trip, or was it the trip itself that made it unforgettable for both of them?

Yan He didn’t know.

She looked straight ahead, pretending to watch the road, but her peripheral vision kept stealing glances at Shen Jinrong. She knew that soon, at the next intersection, they would turn left along this road and drive toward the coast.

She gradually saw a bus driving ahead—a dark red bus full of people. The sun was directly in front, making her squint. She couldn’t clearly see which route the bus was, only vaguely feeling that it might be heading the same way they were.

Yan He lowered the window halfway, and the wind rushed in, blowing into the car.

She always felt that the air in the city and the air in the fields were different, not just in humidity—but also in smell. She recalled that in Rome, the air always contained a faint smell of smoke, but here, there was only a faint scent of fresh grass. Perhaps because they were getting closer to the sea, she could even smell the salty, astringent scent in the air.

Shen Jinrong also lowered her window and took a deep breath, “We’ll be at the seaside soon.”

Yan He watched the trees flash by outside the window and quietly said, “The last time I went to the seaside was with my parents.”

Shen Jinrong slowed down, and the wind blowing in from the window also gentled considerably.

Yan He wasn’t sure why she suddenly started reminiscing. Maybe she just wanted an excuse to talk.

“Back then, my parents weren’t as busy with work as they are now,” Yan He shrugged. “We went to the seaside together. There weren’t many people, I think, but I can’t remember clearly; I was still little back then.”

“We went to an aquarium together. I still remember there was a super-large sea turtle inside,” Yan He’s eyes were bright. “Do all aquariums look the same? Three sides are transparent glass, and you can look up to see schools of fish swimming overhead.”

Shen Jinrong softly hummed a ‘yes.’ She couldn’t contribute to the conversation; she had never been to an aquarium.

“The sun at the seaside was too strong. I got sunburned and peeled back then.” Yan He smiled, showing her teeth. She turned to look at Jiejie, “Let’s go to an aquarium together sometime.”

Shen Jinrong agreed with a soft “Okay.” “I’ve never been.”

Yan He couldn’t help but think of what her maternal aunt, He Wei, had told her. Her heart jumped violently, and a sharp pain shot through her chest, making even breathing hurt. Yan He softened her breath, and her tone became cautious, “Then let’s go together.”

Just like everything they had talked about before—all the places they were supposed to go to with Jiejie.

“Okay,” Shen Jinrong smiled, repeating Yan He’s words, “We’ll go together.”

How strange, Shen Jinrong thought. She had never been one to easily make such promises before—how the future would be, what would happen later, she never thought about any of it. She felt as if she was being carried forward, stumbling, by a kind of tide. Where the future lay or what the ending would be, she neither thought about nor wanted to know.

Before meeting Yan He, she thought it was good enough just to live her life routinely. But people always meet another person—she makes your life vibrant. Sometimes you wonder, If I didn’t have her, what would I be like now?

Shen Jinrong refrained from making promises because she felt the future was too illusory. But now, she suddenly realized that every minute and every second spent with Yan He felt like compensation for her past life. All the tenderness she had never received before, Yan He gave it all to her.

She began to look forward to the future, a future with Yan He. So she was willing to make promises, willing to envision with Yan He a future whose edges she could only faintly see right now.

Shen Jinrong suddenly felt a prickle in her nose.

After driving out of an inconspicuous side road, they vaguely saw the sea. Looking to the right was a small harbor, filled with many boats. Some were small yachts, others were ordinary speedboats. Most of the boats had their sails furled and tightly tied to the mast.

“If the bus ahead hadn’t gone this way, and if the navigation hadn’t told us to come here, who would know that such a small road leads to the seaside?” Shen Jinrong snorted softly, expressing dissatisfaction with the road conditions. She drove the car into the parking lot on a raised area and surveyed her surroundings.

From this spot, they had a perfect view of the sea not far away. A slightly elevated observation deck stood further out, and beyond that was where the sea met the sky.

Yan He looked down at her phone, “The hotel is below. Let’s park the car here first.”

They parked the car side by side with many others. Next to the ordinary parking lot appeared to be an RV camp, packed with recreational vehicles of all sizes.

They took their suitcases and walked down the steps. The hotel they booked was easy to find; the entrance was designed like a dock, and an old, rusted anchor was tied to an iron chain hanging down from the third floor.

Both handed their passports to the front desk and received their keys. Their room was at the end of the corridor on the first floor. Looking out through the corridor window, they could see an iron staircase wrapped in vines.

Shen Jinrong lay down on the bed and mumbled, “My back is so sore!”

The next second, Yan He’s hand came down, accurately found the sore spot on her lower back, and began to gently massage it.

Shen Jinrong shivered, but she didn’t refuse. She just lay on the bed, comfortably enjoying the xiaopengyou‘s massage.

Wait—wait a minute! Why was it massaging again?!

Shen Jinrong felt that something was not quite right.

The author has something to say: Yan He: What kind of bad intentions could a xiaopengyou have? Just helping Jiejie rub her waist because she’s too tired, that’s all.

Shen Jinrong: Bullsh*t!