Love Affairs in Melbourne-Chapter 126 - 123 Another Self

As she disembarked from the plane, Yan Yan received a phone call.

"You’re in Guangdong?" the voice on the other end of the line confirmed with Yan Yan.

"How did you know?" Yan Yan was a bit surprised.

"Wasn’t it from your own Weibo post?" the caller retorted.

"Ah? I only found out about this thing today, just downloaded it, and randomly posted a photo—how did you see it so quickly?" Yan Yan still hadn’t grasped how to use domestic Weibo because it was something new that started after she went abroad.

"What, you’re planning to sneak in and out without anyone noticing, huh?" someone asked rather annoyed.

"How could I? I’m such an open, bright, and sunny person." Yan Yan’s choice of adjectives often tended to stand out from the ordinary.

"Didn’t you say last month you’d come to Shenzhen to treat me to a meal? And you said you had urgent matters to return to Melbourne for—why are you flying from Wenzhou to Guangzhou today?" Jiao Zhifei felt like he had been tricked.

"I came back for two days because my classmate got married yesterday; today, I’m going with my parents to buy furniture in Foshan, then I’m heading back to Melbourne tonight." Yan Yan defended herself; she definitely wasn’t the type to pretend to have already gone abroad just to avoid treating someone to a meal, especially not when the person waiting for a treat was Jiao Zhifei.

"Well, I don’t care. You’re already in Guangdong, aren’t you going to treat me to a meal?" Jiao Zhifei expressed his dissatisfaction that Yan Yan hadn’t informed him before arriving in Guangzhou.

"How come I remember that we agreed—I would treat you to a meal where plain rice is enough to fill you up, and you would take care of the rest of the bill?" Yan Yan had spent quite some time choosing her words carefully when she made that pact with Jiao Zhifei.

"Plain rice is fine, will it fill me up today?" Jiao Zhifei immediately followed up with another question.

"Definitely not today. Buying furniture will take half a day, plus the time back and forth, I’ll barely make it in time for my flight. I want to go to Shunde for some good food but might not even have time for that." Yan Yan admitted her schedule was indeed a bit rushed today.

"Why are you in such a hurry to leave?" Jiao Zhifei questioned Yan Yan’s rushed student itinerary.

Schools are supposed to be the easiest place to get a leave of absence after all.

"I have to rush back for my graduation project, dear little brother." Domestic universities, whether for undergraduates or graduate students, usually schedule the last semester to be relatively free, but Yan Yan’s final semester happened to be the busiest.

"Would dying one day later kill someone?" Jiao Zhifei asked Yan Yan.

"Err—actually, it wouldn’t." Yan Yan’s haste wasn’t just because of the thesis project; she was also a bit worried about Bao Bao.

Bao Bao had been feeling down, and these past few days he had to prepare for the opening of his new store. Yan Yan was concerned that Bao Bao would be overwhelmed and overthink things.

"Then that settles it. If you don’t come to Shenzhen today, I might as well be dead. You decide." Jiao Zhifei gave Yan Yan a "choice."

"If pretense could kill, you would have long been beyond redemption, pierced by a thousand arrows, never to be reincarnated." Yan Yan certainly didn’t take the word "death" that came out of Jiao Zhifei’s mouth seriously.

"Are you coming or not?" Jiao Zhifei’s tone didn’t sound like he was joking.

"Give me a reason that’s worth changing my flight for." Yan Yan decided to directly ask Jiao Zhifei what was so important that she had to treat him to plain rice now.

"Your little brother has had his heart broken," Jiao Zhifei threw out a very valid reason.

"Heartbroken? How could you be heartbroken? When did you start dating? Weren’t you chasing Zhou Yuan in Shenzhen? What’s the situation now?" Yan Yan, in her surprise, rattled off five questions in rapid succession.

"Zhou Yuan dumped me," Jiao Zhifei answered very succinctly.

"Ah? She dumped you? That’s impossible, right? When has she ever paid attention to you? Are you playing some kind of international joke on me?" Yan Yan’s surprise only increased.

"Do I look like I’m joking right now?" Jiao Zhifei asked in irritation.

"It doesn’t seem like it. But you two didn’t have any opportunity to commit the act. When were you and Zhou Yuan together?" Yan Yan started to ask questions seriously.

"Didn’t you say last time that you were coming to Shenzhen? I told Zhou Yuan last month that you would be here by the end of the month, that the junior high classmates from Shenzhen would get together." Jiao Zhifei began to clarify the situation.

"Then what happened?" Yan Yan was puzzled; apart from Jiao Zhifei and Zhou Yuan, she couldn’t remember any other classmates who were in Shenzhen.

"Then you didn’t come, but I still arranged to meet Zhou Yuan. A gathering of two junior high classmates is still a reunion," Jiao Zhifei directly answered Yan Yan’s doubts.

"Can you just get to the point?" Yan Yan had never seen someone who could still play coy with their own heartbreak.

"The point is, I confessed again, and Zhou Yuan agreed to be my girlfriend," Jiao Zhifei finally got to the point. frёewebnoѵēl.com

"Well, that settles it. You could say your patience finally saw the clouds part and the moon shine; you earnestly got together with the person you’ve liked since childhood. Remember not to play games; don’t end up driving her away with your antics," Yan Yan wasn’t petty about Jiao Zhifei not informing her that he had successfully pursued Zhou Yuan last month.

"Antics? I didn’t even have time to start before she’d already drifted away from me," Jiao Zhifei said seriously, still without a hint of humor.

"What happened?" Yan Yan couldn’t quite understand; was this together or not together?

If you told Yan Yan that Jiao Zhifei couldn’t get Zhou Yuan, she’d have considered it normal.

But being dumped so quickly after finally getting together was a bit beyond reason.

"I don’t know, uh, that day we had dinner, everything went well, we had the same interests and hobbies, even liked similar books and music," Jiao Zhifei truly hadn’t figured out the real reason yet.

"And then? When were you dumped?" Yan Yan asked a very specific question.

"Three days after the dinner," Jiao Zhifei answered succinctly.

"What did you do the second day, that you got dumped overnight?" Yan Yan was determined to get to the bottom of this; Zhou Yuan wasn’t someone who would be so irresponsible with her feelings.

"I didn’t do anything; I was in meetings all day the next day, and I talked to her on the phone in the evening, everything was still fine," Jiao Zhifei recounted the facts.

"What about the third day? What did you do to scare her off?" Yan Yan continued to seek the truth of the matter.

"I didn’t do anything. On the evening of the third day, while I was preparing to call her, I received a text message from Zhou Yuan. She said I was too good for her, that we were not suitable, and told me not to hang myself on one tree. After she said that, she hung up the phone and dumped me," Jiao Zhifei said, recounting the event of suddenly getting together and then suddenly being dumped, with a tone full of helplessness that could not be hidden.

"Uh... that’s definitely not the real reason," Yan Yan was the first to disbelieve such a claim; Zhou Yuan was not someone who had just met Jiao Zhifei.

"Right, I don’t believe it either, which is why last weekend I went to see her again, to ask her for a clear reason for ending things," Jiao Zhifei still hadn’t given up on hanging his hopes on this one tree.

"And the result?" Yan Yan asked.

"She thought about it for a long time and then said that our interests and hobbies were too similar, that being with me was like dating another version of herself," Jiao Zhifei stressed the words "another version of herself."