Back Then, I Adored You

“Mhm.” Gu Yusheng just nodded without saying anything, then raised his hand again to put the cigarette back into his mouth.

After a short while, some smoke started floating out of his nose.

Since he wasn’t saying anything, Qin Zhi’ai just walked by him and stopped at the taxi station.

She stared at the street in front of her for a while, where a single car drove by every so often. At last, she plucked up the courage and turned her head to look at Gu Yusheng.

Regarding some of her questions, she was eager to know the answers.

She and him didn’t live in the same world. Only disguised as Liang Doukou could she appear in front of him, but for Qin Zhi’ai, it was hard to find a reason to see him. So if she chose not to ask, she might never have the opportunity to know the answers.

Thinking that, Qin Zhi’ai took a breath secretly, then smiled like she had suddenly remembered something, and said casually, “Did you misremember your phone number just now?”

“Hmm,” Gu Yusheng responded to her, apathetic. When he thought about why she would ask that question, he raised his eyes in confusion, “Mhm?”

“When we were in the Majestic Clubhouse, I heard you telling the others your phone number. We went to the same high school. You gave one of my friends your phone number before, but it wasn’t the same as the one you just gave out…” Qin Zhi’ai, with her head tilted, pretended like she was trying very hard to recall, then continued, “The last two numbers, you said they were five and six, but I remembered them as six and five…”

Qin Zhi’ai had thought directly asking him why the number on the note that he had given her was wrong, but when the words came out of her mouth, she still changed tactics.

Since she was afraid… that she would receive an unfavorable response… she had changed “I” into “one of my friends.”

Qin Zhi’ai paused for a bit, turning all the things that had happened years ago into a casual topic, and added, “My friend liked you. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I do know your number, since she was so excited and murmured it to me everyday. So I remembered your number…”

Hearing that, Gu Yusheng finally understood what she meant. He even lifted the corners of his mouth when she was almost done talking, then snubbed the almost finished cigarette between his fingertips and responded in a flat tone, “About that phone number, except for the first three numbers, the last eight numbers are the same as the last eight numbers of my ID card number, so I couldn’t be more familiar with them…”

He couldn’t be more familiar… So that means he did give me the wrong number on purpose?

As Qin Zhi’ai was thinking about how to get further answers from Gu Yusheng, he continued, “But I know the phone number that ends with a six and five that your friend got before. It’s not in service. I might have told her the wrong one deliberately, to avoid being disturbed…”

When he had been young, he had been annoyed by the girls who had tried every day to badger him, so the phone number that ended with six and five had become a shield for him.

Not in service, on purpose, to avoid being disturbed… Those words kept reverberating in Qin Zhi’ai’s ears. After quite a long time, she finally knew what he had meant.