𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮

thirty-three

"Are you serious about earlier?" Ruibin asked. He still hasn't gotten over from Lifen's confession about Jihyu.

"Yanyu's mouth slip and she accidentally told me." Lifen answers and stops in her tracks. "Don't tell anyone or else I'm dead. Jihyu doesn't want Peiyao to know."

"But why?"

"Because Peiyao likes Mingzhu - and no, he didn't say it. We all observed it. Even Yanchen once talked about this with me."

"You have conversations with Yanchen that I don't know about?"

"Yanyu and Kaihao were also present that day."

"Where was I?"

"Taking care of Yijun." Lifen squeezed his cheeks. "You're such a great dad."

Ruibin smirked, "Well of course, I was raised right. Now back to Peiyao?"

"Oh, right." They continued walking, "The way Peiyao actually treats Mingzhu is the same as what Zimo does back then. When you know you can't cross the line but you still like the girl, that kind of tactic."

"You know so much about flirting,"

Lifen shrugs, "I learned that from Yanchen, when he was still dating Shuzhen and Shu would complain about him and his girls."

.·:*¨¨*:·. .·:*¨¨*:·.

It was already lunch time and the crew quickly noticed the awkward air between Mingzhu and Yanchen. Although they were sitting right next to each other, no one was talking.

"Uhm, Yanzhu, is everything alright?" Yilong asked, a bit curious of what happened.

"Yes/No." The two answers simultaneously.

Zhou Rui rested his chin on his palm, "Who's telling the truth?"

"Me." Both said at the same time.

Mubo sighed, cutting his pork, "This is gonna be a long day."

"Speaking of long day -!" Jeffrey announced, catching their attention. "Today's the last day of the month and we kind of have a party, some jamming. It's like a tradition we do here."

"Aahh," Xingjie nods, pointing at the stage in the middle, "I was wondering what that was for."

"And Yanchen, you're gonna be practicing your duet later, okay?"

Yanchen just gave him an okay sign.

Yanchen is gonna sing? Mingzhu thought to herself.

"So its done in every last day of the month?" Fen asked, pretty interested in the so called tradition.

"Yes, but you can also enjoy small parties on Saturdays," Jeffrey explains. "Take last night as an example.. There was a band when we were drinking -"

Zimo started to laugh, "Wait.. Do you wanna know what you did last night?"

Jeffrey covered Zimo's face with his hand as he pushed him back on his chair, "I don't want to talk about it. Let's not talk about what happened last night. At least we enjoyed and had a good night sleep."

"Lucky for you then! I was sleeping on sand! And no one even bothered to drag me inside?!" Peiyao started to protest.

"Hey, you said to leave you," Chunhua shrugs as she took some more bread

"Yeah, you were the one insisting to come back for you after 10 years," Zimo adds, earning a laugh from the group.

"You're never gonna let this die now are you?"

Zimo shook his head, giving him a smug look, "Never."