Chapter 40: To Lock or Not to Lock

Chapter 40: Chapter 40: To Lock or Not to Lock

Around seven in the evening, Yu Zhiming led Su Tong to his home in the Yushuiwan District.

"Should I take my shoes off?"

"No need!"

Yu Zhiming replied, then amended, "You can wear my sister’s or my niece’s slippers to make your feet more comfortable."

Su Tong bent down to take off her sneakers but then stopped.

"I’ll keep them on for now, so I don’t stink up the place."

Su Tong followed Yu Zhiming past the entryway and saw a spacious, simple, and clean living and dining room.

"Zhiming, this place is pretty big!"

"It’s a small city. Housing is relatively cheap."

Yu Zhiming placed the cooked foods, vegetables, eggs, ginger, green onions, garlic, and other things he was carrying onto the dining table. "Su Tong, let me give you a quick tour," he said.

"This is my room!"

Yu Zhiming pushed open an unusually thick, soundproof wooden door, noticing Su Tong’s surprised and confused expression.

"Yeah, I’m a light sleeper. The slightest noise wakes me up, so I had the room specially soundproofed."

Su Tong let out a long "Ohhh" of understanding.

"No wonder you always looked so tired and sleep-deprived in college. It turns out you weren’t resting well at night."

She scanned the room and found that the bed, desk, and bookshelf were quite tidy, with everything arranged in an orderly fashion.

This was quite rare for a guy.

Su Tong also noticed there was no air conditioner in the bedroom.

Instead, a pipe about ten centimeters in diameter was set into the wall, continuously channeling cool air in from the living room’s AC unit.

This convinced Su Tong.

Yu Zhiming hadn’t been lying. He really was a light sleeper, easily startled awake. Otherwise, he wouldn’t use the air conditioning this way.

Su Tong suddenly saw an erhu hanging on the north wall, which took her by surprise.

"Hey, Zhiming, you can play the erhu?"

Yu Zhiming chuckled and explained, "When I was a kid, my eyes weren’t very good. My dad said I had to learn a skill to make a living."

"So I studied the erhu for a few years."

"I haven’t touched it in years, so I’m pretty rusty."

Su Tong took the erhu down from the wall and toyed with it.

"Zhiming, I thought I knew you pretty well, but I’m making all sorts of new discoveries today."

"It’s not every day I get to visit. You have to play a song for me on this erhu, good or bad. Let me treat my ears, okay?"

Yu Zhiming took the erhu, his voice tinged with resignation. "I really haven’t touched it in years. I’ve forgotten all the songs."

He sat on the edge of the bed and started tuning the strings, then casually bowed a few notes to reacquaint himself with the long-lost feeling.

It was true what they say. A learned skill is like riding a bicycle; it’s already ingrained deep in your bones.

After a little practice, the feeling came back.

Yu Zhiming thought of a simple tune, "The Moon Represents My Heart," and began to play it offhandedly.

Objectively speaking, the erhu had been sitting for quite some time. The pitch was slightly off, and the sound wasn’t smooth.

Yu Zhiming’s skill had indeed grown rusty and regressed.

So, his performance of "The Moon Represents My Heart" was just so-so.

It stumbled along, barely listenable, but at least not jarring to the ear.

Fortunately, Su Tong hadn’t had high expectations to begin with. For her, it was an unexpected bonus, a small, pleasant surprise.

She clapped her hands a few times and smiled. "Zhiming, if you’d shown off this erhu skill in college, you wouldn’t have stayed single for so long."

At this, Su Tong suddenly realized she’d overlooked something.

"Zhiming, you said your eyes were ’not good’ when you were a kid. How bad were they, exactly?"

Yu Zhiming said casually, "I had an accident when I was two. A blood clot in my brain affected my visual cortex."

"Before I was thirteen, I was basically blind."

Su Tong’s mouth fell half-open in shock. She stared blankly at Yu Zhiming, not knowing what to say.

Yu Zhiming re-hung the erhu on the wall and waved a hand in front of Su Tong’s eyes.

"See? I’m all better now."

Yu Zhiming changed the subject. "Su Tong, didn’t you say you were going to show off your amazing cooking skills?"

"I’m getting hungry!"

Su Tong took a breath, fighting back the stinging sensation that threatened to well up from her nose into her eyes.

A smile appeared on her face. "I’ll go cook right now. You can handle slicing the cooked meats, right?"

"Oh, right, I brought you some Jinling Board Duck."

"Hey, do you have any wine?"

With that, the two of them left the bedroom.

Su Tong carried the cooked foods, vegetables, and eggs from the dining table to the kitchen.

Meanwhile, Yu Zhiming took a bottle of red wine from the refrigerator and showed it to Su Tong.

"This is the only red wine I have. It was a gift from my teacher, Qi Yue from Binhai."

Su Tong took the bottle and her eyes widened.

"Whoa, it’s from Chateau Haut-Brion in France! This is a really good wine. It must have been expensive."

"You’re willing to open this?"

Yu Zhiming replied succinctly, "For you, I am."

Su Tong rolled her eyes at Yu Zhiming. "Good red wine needs to be decanted to breathe first."

"Let me."

After a bit of a struggle, Su Tong managed to pull out the cork without incident.

Then, she completely filled a glass *baijiu* pot that Yu Zhiming found, which could hold about half a *jin* of liquor.

Next, Su Tong started cooking...

The vegetables they had bought were very simple: tomatoes, cucumbers, bitter melon, and chili peppers.

The supposedly master chef Su Tong was going to make chili stir-fried eggs, bitter melon stir-fried eggs, and a tomato and egg soup.

As for the cucumber, she’d slice it to be eaten raw, counting it as a cold dish.

Yu Zhiming was in charge of slicing the braised beef they had bought, as well as the board duck Su Tong had contributed.

After all, as someone who had held a scalpel, a small task like slicing cured meats was more than easy for him.

Adding a plate of braised chicken wings that didn’t need slicing, the two of them had prepared a rather sumptuous six-dish, one-soup meal in less than half an hour...

Su Tong sipped her red wine and ate, chatting freely about old times with Yu Zhiming, who only ate and didn’t drink. The atmosphere was extremely pleasant.

"Hey, Zhiming, there’s a question I’ve always wanted to ask you. That girl from our class, Wang Wei, she did try to get close to you later on."

"How come you just ignored her? She was the recognized beauty of our class."

Yu Zhiming said flatly, "She talked bad about me and a lot of other people behind their backs. I don’t like her."

Su Tong was slightly taken aback. "So that’s the reason. Her mouth really is a bit nasty."

"But you can’t really blame people for talking about you."

"During our freshman and sophomore years, not only did you always look half-asleep, but you were also aloof and ignored everyone. You were just... weird."

"I have to admit, I talked about you too."

Yu Zhiming said slowly, "I know. And I also know you were just making normal comments and observations."

"Unlike them, whose words were mostly slander and malicious speculation."

Su Tong asked curiously, "How did you know what we were saying?"

"Did someone snitch on us?"

Yu Zhiming gave a mysterious, feigned smile. "If you don’t want anyone to know, don’t do it in the first place."

"Anyway, I knew all about your discussions."

After a brief pause, Yu Zhiming changed the subject. "Su Tong, did you have a fight with your boyfriend?"

"A really serious one?"

Su Tong’s expression stiffened. "Why do you ask?"

Yu Zhiming pointed at her phone on the table. "It’s been two or three hours since we met up. I haven’t seen you contact a certain someone."

"That’s a little unusual."

Su Tong took a sip of red wine and said slowly, "He and I... we broke up."

"Broke up?"

Yu Zhiming couldn’t help but lean forward slightly. "Why? Was it because of me?"

Su Tong scoffed lightly. "Zhiming, don’t be so full of yourself."

"Of course, I can’t say it had *nothing* to do with you!"

She took another sip of wine. "I found myself becoming less and less able to tolerate some of his flaws and habits."

"The arguments started piling up."

"A few days ago, we had another huge fight. After we calmed down, we had a long talk and decided to break up."

Yu Zhiming nodded in understanding. "That makes sense. When you have someone like me, who has both talent and good looks, to compare him to, everyone else just looks like a pile of scum."

Su Tong burst out laughing, a look of mock disgust on her face.

"Yu Zhiming, I’m discovering that your narcissism is ten times more impressive than your talent or your looks."

"Come on, let’s not talk about this. Let’s drink."

"But I have to say, this wine is really good..."

Su Tong drank the entire half-*jin* of red wine by herself, and her face became flushed.

After dinner, while Su Tong was taking a shower in the bathroom, Yu Zhiming quickly tidied up his niece’s room...

Half an hour later, a sexy young beauty wearing a spaghetti-strap nightgown and exuding the fresh scent of soap walked out of the bathroom.

Yu Zhiming didn’t quite dare to look directly at her.

"Su Tong, you can sleep in my niece’s room. It’s a bit tidier than my Fourth Sister’s room."

Su Tong said "Oh," and reached out to push the bedroom door.

"Does it have a lock?"

"It has a lock!" Yu Zhiming answered honestly.

"If I lock it, it means I don’t trust you. But if I don’t, what if you barge in in the middle of the night?"

"Zhiming, what do you think? Should I lock it or not?"

Yu Zhiming opened his mouth to speak, but the words got stuck.

He thought of the dilemma: to be a beast, or to be worse than a beast.

As he struggled with the thought, Yu Zhiming smelled the rich, clean scent of her shower and heard the sound of increasingly rapid breathing...

P.S.

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