Back Then, I Adored You

Who is she cursing at?

Gu Yusheng slightly furrowed his brows and, ignoring Lu Bancheng, made his way toward the door. Passing by him on his way, Gu Yusheng paused as he held his lifted foot briefly and then stomped it down onto Lu Bancheng’s uninjured foot.

“She’s referring only to you. It doesn’t include me,” Gu Yusheng said neutrally as Lu Bancheng whimpered.

After a moment, he snuck a glance at the grimacing Lu Bancheng and then shouted, “Jerk!”

Lu Bancheng growled and grumbled under his breath, “You make it sound as if you’re not Haozi’s friend.”

“Starting now, I’m not.” With his back facing Lu Bancheng, Gu Yusheng then strode unhurriedly toward the door where everyone else was waiting.

Upon reaching the entrance of the Jiayuan Tea Restaurant, he coincidentally spotted Qin Zhi’ai scurrying anxiously into a taxi. Silently watching her taxi drive away, he ignored his friends, who had been talking to him incessantly, and turned to walk to the waitress stationed at the entrance who had handled Qin Zhi’ai’s bill.

“Just now, there was a lady who did not order anything and left after paying for the service charge. What’s the name of the person who reserved her table?”

Charmed by Gu Yusheng’s handsome looks, the waitress was eager to please him and began to check through the restaurant’s reservations’ log. “Are you referring to the lady from Table 52? She arrived at 6:00 p.m.”

Because Qin Zhi’ai had been there so early and had asked to wait for her friend before ordering anything, the waitress remembered her well.

“That table had been booked two weeks ago. The reservation had been made for 7:30 p.m. tonight… Oh, and that lady arrived an hour and a half early.” Scrolling through the log with her perfect pale pink nail polish manicure, the waitress continued. “The person who reserved the table was Mr. S.”

Gu Yusheng nodded with a straight face and stood there silently without any reaction until someone standing at the door called out, “Brother Sheng.” Snapping out of his daze, he replied “mm” to the waitress and turned and left.

In the car, Lu Bancheng and two other friends were chatting animatedly.

Gu Yusheng, however, remained reticent in the backseat of the car, staring out of the car window at the night landscape flashing by. Suddenly, the memory of the scene when he had received A’s letter of reply 20 days ago drifted into his mind.

Throughout these years, although he had remained in touch with A, he had never revealed much about his real life to her, owing to the fact that he didn’t understand why he had initiated writing to A in the first place.

This had been true even after he had left the army. He’d never informed her about his change of address, and his ex-comrades had forwarded her letters to him in Beijing.

He had only received A’s letter after he had sent Qin Zhi’ai back to Hangzhou, finished with his business matters in the Shanghai branch office, and returned to Beijing.

If he hadn’t managed to finish his work early that day, he probably wouldn’t have even had the time to read A’s letter any time soon.

Upon opening the envelope, the first thing that caught his attention was not the content but the paper that A used.

Where have I seen this before?

After repeatedly inspecting the paper for some three minutes, it suddenly hit him that the paper was similar to what Qin Zhi’ai had used when they were in the hospital.