Flying Ash - Chap 25

But someone greeted him and welcomed him, he was already very happy.
In case the other party was waiting, Yi Hui hurriedly replied: Hello [so happy]

As soon as he changed his avatar, there was a message from Dora-hum-hum: The new avatar looks good [rose]

Yi Hui didn’t expect it to be discovered so soon and replied in surprise and joy: Thank you!

After a while, he was asked by the other party: Did you draw it yourself? [rose]

Yi Hui didn’t want to show his pride too obviously: Yes……

Dora-hum-hum replied quickly: It’s amazing [rose] [rose] [rose]

The full screen of red roses made Yi Hui blush and his heartbeat sped up. He had only given roses once when he wanted to propose. He felt that this kind of flower had extraordinary significance. Even though he knew that the other party might have chosen an emoticon casually, he still felt embarrassed.
It was hard to find someone to talk to, so Yi Hui started to look for a topic: Your avatar looks good too!

Dora-hum-hum seemed to be really free and always responded within a few seconds: Do you like it?

He finally stopped sending roses; Yi Hui breathed a sigh of relief: I like it, I like Doraemon the most [so happy]

In the hotel room not far away, Zhou Jinheng, who received this message, stared at the word ”like” for a long time, thinking of the “like” that the little fool had said to him, the “like” he had answered him against his will, and the “like” when he had compared himself to Doraemon in which the little fool eagerly explained that it was a different “like”.

He laughed when he thought of it. Zhou Jinheng felt that he was too childish at that time, he was jealous of a doll and refused to admit it. Had he admitted it earlier……

What happened afterwards was so heartbreaking that he stopped in time not to recall it. He took a moment to slow down, picked up his mobile phone again and called the man who had given him the information to say thank you.

“Not the wrong person, is he? Ha-ha, I knew there was no information I couldn’t find out when I was on the move.”

The man sounded very proud. Zhou Jinheng echoed his words and complimented him mechanically. When he was about to hang up the phone, the man started gossiping: “This Jiang or something, is he Young Master Zhou’s new target?”

Zhou Jinheng thought for a while and said, “There is no new target, it’s still the original one.”
Because of starting Weibo, Yi Hui’s life became very fulfilling recently.

Jiang Yimang bought him a membership for a month. Yi Hui spent most of the day just choosing avatar pendants and backgrounds. He thought this one looked good and that one was cute. He was simply too dazzled to choose.

He tried, one by one, in line on the principle of trying without paying. He didn’t notice that there was a checked “share to Weibo” box below. After trying it a few times, he selected as many as he could. By the time he figured out what was going on, originally a cool blogger who only posts two or three posts, he had become a background-selecting maniac who posted more than fifty posts a day.

Yi Hui finally understood what Tang Wenxi meant when he said, “lowly me wants to cry”. He held his mobile phone and deleted the posts one by one. He was too slow and was caught by Tang Wenxi who had just followed him. A string of “hahahahaha” comments made Yi Hui want to cry even more as he bit his lip and pressed his phone desperately. Delete delete delete, delete all of them.

There were those who didn’t gloat, though, such as Jiang Yimang, who missed the event because she had a class, and Dora-hum-hum, a very kind follower.

“Kind” was the third label Yi Hui put on Dora-hum-hum after “cute” and “very free”.

At first he didn’t know any better and posted his work in HD without watermarks. Dora-hum-hum reminded him to key in captcha authentication codes. Yi Hui asked him what that was and he guided him step by step. It took more than two hours but he never showed any impatience. Yi Hui felt very embarrassed. In a private message, he kept saying thank you, and Dora-hum-hum replied with ‘you are welcome’ and a bunch of rose emoticons.

Moving from comments to private messages was equivalent to a further relationship. Yi Hui also paid attention to Dora-hum-hum. When he hid in the quilt at night, he clicked on his homepage and walked around. When he saw the blue icon next to his name, he thought to himself: he turned out to be a boy.

In the past, Yi Hui had few friends. Since he knew that his classmates at school liked his snacks instead of him, he became even more afraid of socializing with others. Stupid is stupid but he could more or less sense whether the stares and laughter of others were kind or mocking.

So he cherished the people who were kind to him, his mother, brother, sister-in-law, Jiang Xuemei, Jiang Yimang, Tang Wenxi… Now there was Dora-hum-hum. Yi Hui felt he was getting happier every day and he couldn’t help but laugh out loud, smothered under his quilt.

He was so happy that he slowly forgot he was harassed by that man a few days ago. In addition, he accidentally heard Jiang Yimang say, “HengHeng hasn’t posted on Weibo recently. I guess he’s busy filming.” He felt even more relieved and stopped riding the bicycle. He thought: he just thought I looked a bit like him, so he chased me on a whim and naturally left when he got the cold treatment.
That was more like him. He was not the kind of person who could endure this kind of anger.

In the evening of that day, Zhou Jinheng calmly watched Yi Hui, who had finished walking the geese, go back into the house, then took out his mobile phone and liked the newly posted Weibo of Xiao Hui Xia, commenting: Look for the stones that are as flat as possible and they’ll bounce more times.

As soon as he turned off the screen, the phone suddenly vibrated. He thought Yi Hui had replied but when he picked it up, it turned out to be Fang Yuqing’s call.

Living alone in this small town for days, he almost cut off contact with the outside world. When he saw the name, Zhou Jinheng was taken aback for a moment, then frowned, feeling uncomfortable that his illusory beautiful dream had been broken.

“I thought you were on the filming site. I didn’t know you were still on vacation until I got here.” Fang Yuqing on the other end of the phone said with a smile in his voice, “I didn’t quite believe Yang Chengxuan when he said you were a workaholic now, but now I see that you are.”

Zhou Jinheng replied casually, not mentioning his injury.

Fang Yuqing didn’t seem to notice his coldness: “Where did you go to play alone?”
Zhou Jinheng said, “En, just walking around.”

Fang Yuqing smiled and said, “It’s boring to be alone. Next time, you can call Yang Chengxuan or me. I’ll be free once I’m finished being busy this period and can go anywhere.”

“No need.” Zhou Jinheng said, “I want to be alone.”
There was silence on the other end for a while, and when Fang Yuqing spoke again, his tone was still relaxed: “I thought I could see you today. I brought you some food, low in sugar…”
Before he finished speaking, Zhou Jinheng interrupted: “I like sweet food now.”

This time the silence lasted longer; Zhou Jinheng thought that the other party hadn’t understood his implication and was about to explain when Fang Yuqing said, “Zhou Jinheng, do you really not understand what I mean, or are you pretending not to understand?”

Fang Yuqing rarely spoke bluntly like this. He was used to being secretive and enjoyed being tacitly understood by the other party, saying only half of what was on his mind.

But Zhou Jinheng didn’t want to be his “other party” anymore.

“I love sweet things now, especially cream cakes.” When he said that, Zhou Jinheng seemed to be thinking of some beautiful past and his originally cold tone also warmed up a little, “People change.”

The latter sentence was not so much addressed to Fang Yuqing as to himself.

Fang Yuqing thought that he was still angry because he hadn’t told him other things in the past and yielded in a soft tone: “If you are still angry with me for what happened back then, I can wait.” Without giving Zhou Jinheng time to respond, he hurriedly added, “I know that it was my fault to keep you waiting for so long. I will never leave again, okay?”

If he had heard these soft words earlier, Zhou Jinheng might have hesitated. But now all Zhou Jinheng could think about was how much of an *sshole he used to be, how he could make everyone believe that there was not even a small part of his joys and sorrows that belonged to Yi Hui.

“No, I didn’t wait for you, so don’t wait for me either.“ Zhou Jinheng looked up at the sunset breaking through the sea of clouds on the horizon and said calmly, ” I don’t know why other people will change their minds or how many times they will change it. For me it’s only once, and when it comes to him it’s the end of the line and it won’t change again.”
Three years was a short time, but it was actually very long for him. So long that the little fool got tired of waiting and left without looking back.

Long enough for him to finally grow up, to finally see his own heart and drop everything to chase after the little fool who hadn’t gone far.

Jiang Yimang’s birthday was in mid-November, and Yi Hui started preparing early.

He didn’t know what girls liked nowadays. Jiang Yimang didn’t seem to have any other interests except for her fanatical obsession with her HengHeng, which put Yi Hui in a difficult position.
After careful consideration, he decided to make a cake first, one that would be both cute and goddess-like.

For that, he followed several food bloggers on Weibo. When he saw pictures of a beautiful cake, he liked them. If there was a recipe, he patiently copied it down. He also drafted a layer by layer plan for several selected cakes and stored it in an encrypted folder on his computer.

He wanted to surprise his younger sister. He did his best to hide it to prevent others from discovering it, but he didn’t know that other people could see his likes. Jiang Yimang went through a pile of cake pictures he had liked recently. She figured it out very easily but at home, she pretended to know nothing. She was extremely curious. Every day when she came back from school, she laid on the window outside the yard and peeped into the kitchen.

That day, Yi Hui was drawing on the computer in the yard. The picture on the screen looked like a cake. Jiang Yimang was so fascinated that she felt her saliva was about to drip. She was startled when she saw Yi Hui suddenly stand up. When she turned around and wanted to run, she bumped into a person standing behind her and was so shocked that she almost cried out.

“Hush-” Zhou Jinheng put his index finger to his lips, motioning her not to make a sound.

Not only did Jiang Yimang not make a sound; she was completely stunned by the face in front of her eyes.

About ten minutes later, the spirit that flew away returned to the body. The two of them stood by the stone pillar in the shadow of the back door. Jiang Yimang gazed at Zhou Jinheng for a while, pinching herself secretly a dozen times. Only when her flesh felt numb with pain did she believe that what she saw was true and the man in front of her was actually real.

Zhou Jinheng noticed the young girl’s dodging gaze. When he first debuted, the media commented that his appearance was very aggressive and joked that most people didn’t dare to look at him directly. He didn’t think about it before but now, seeing Jiang Yimang’s reaction, he thought it was probably not completely unfounded.

Just that little fool was not afraid of anything. He stared at him the first time he saw him as if he couldn’t help but write the word “like” on his face.

Thinking that everything reminded him of Yi Hui, Zhou Jinheng smiled secretly, overwhelmed by his love, not knowing that Jiang Yimang almost fainted because of his unintentional smile.

After brewing for a while, Jiang Yimang cleared her throat and said, “Heng… I mean you, do you really know my brother?”
“En.” Zhou Jinheng admitted happily.

“It was you who was at our door last time?”

“Yes.” Zhou Jinheng handed her a square box, “Please help me give this to him and do not mention that I gave it to him.”

Jiang Yimang was still immersed in her complex emotions of panic and joy and had already lost at least eighty percent of her thinking ability. She nodded and asked, “Why can’t I mention that you gave it to him?”

Zhou Jinheng pretended to lower his voice mysteriously: “Then it won’t be a surprise.”

Jiang Yimang felt lightheaded from his deep voice, took the box and turned around mechanically, walked two steps and turned back: “Then, then why do you want to give my brother a gift?”

This question was on point.

Zhou Jinheng didn’t think for long. With a smile lifting the corner of his mouth, he swallowed the words “Because I did something wrong and I am begging him for forgiveness” and said: “Because I am courting him.”