the things i hide for your sake (and the things i seek when you're gone)
Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/36988801.
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F/F
泾渭情殇 - 请君莫笑 | Clear and Muddy Loss of Love - Qǐng Jūn Mò
Xiào
Nangong Jingnu/Qi Yan | Qiyan Agula
Nangong Jingnu, Qi Yan | Qiyan Agula
Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Exes to Lovers, Getting Back
Together, Nangong Jingnu/Male Character, for like a second, he gets
written off so fast, Bisexual Nangong Jingnu, Lesbian Qi Yan, Car Ride,
Gongyang Huai - Freeform, Bayin is there in spirit, Minor Nangong
Shunu/Xiao Die, Happy Ending, Angst, i guess?, compared to jwqs
nothing feels like angst
Published: 2022-02-09 Chapters: 1/2 Words: 5160
the things i hide for your sake (and the things i seek when
you're gone)
by orlalalando
Summary
Jingnu does not want to call this person an insurmountable amount, not even if dead, or
drunk, or high off her mind. No matter she has tried and failed to delete her contact info
numerous times, if Jingnu knew the number you’re supposed to call when you hit a deer,
she would dial that instead and give whoever shows up half her wallet to drive her to the
city safely. She considers, even, calling the emergency line and– and say what? She does
have principles, no matter how much she wants others to believe her ruthless, she can’t just
make up a story so they will dispatch somebody to pick her up, can she? Will they send
someone over if she just says she’s stranded?
Just to not talk to this person, for this life and this world…
One does have to wonder if Nangong Jingnu is familiar with the term "digging one's own
grave".
Notes
See the end of the work for notes
There are many sorts of highways in the outskirts of a city. Fancy highways that have been recently
renovated or opened, dilapidated highways riddled with potholes that whatever jurisdiction that is
in charge of them has paid very little attention to, busy highways that serve as the main road for
vehicles carrying both goods and people and are, as a result, populated by a 24 hour diner or motel
every mile or so, and finally, the sort of highway you want to might yourself stranded in the least:
the desolate kind. And this is, precisely, the very sort of highway Nangong Jingnu has managed to
strand herself in.
And she has no one to blame but herself, acutely aware of it at least until she recounts the series of
events that led to it in the first place, and then she finds her actions to be quite warranted, really,
until she feels yet another chilly wind seep into her thin jacket and the cycle of self-reprehension
and vindication repeats.
Her crime? Standing up for her own person at the worst moment, which happened to be right in the
middle of a highway with no sign of civilization for miles. On a good day, Jingnu would say the
guy she’s dated for the last two months is actually not that bad, and that half of the things he
accused her of –obsessive and explosive, amongst them– do have some level of truth to them. But
this isn’t a good day, her job has been taking a lot out of her recently, all she wanted to do was take
a nap in the passenger seat, and all he wanted to do was have a talk, a talk that she was sure was
going to be full of things she didn’t want to hear .
The past year has been humiliating for her love life, and to no fault of her own! Maybe a little bit of
the fault. It’s just that men are too intimidated by her job and her take-no-shit approach to
everything, which is exactly what she had said to him right before demanding he stopped the car,
hopping out of it and ignoring all of his coaxing to get back in, for god’s sake, it’s freezing outside
for the sake of getting the last word and for the sake of getting the last word only.
Eventually, he had driven off.
And Jingnu couldn’t care less about it. Screw him, she had thought, as she dug in her bag for her
phone to beg/bribe/threaten one of her many ges to come pick her up effective immediately. Her
stomach had sunk, however, as she fished out her phone and the screen remained stubbornly black,
no matter how many times she pressed the button at the side to turn it on. Her phone had been dead
way before she had even clocked out. And she was screwed.
Because she’s a woman of principles –more like dead stubborn– she didn’t even lend an eye to the
direction where her –potentially now ex– boyfriend just drove off, but instead began to head the
opposite direction, thoroughly ignoring the chilly wind making the hairs in the back of her neck
raise. She remembered quite clearly, and she trusts her memory a good deal, they had passed a
phone box in the way over. All she needed to do, then, was to make her way there and put all her
spare change to good use. Call the emergency number, maybe. Tell them she ran over a deer.
The phone box was there right enough, but as flawless as her memory was for small details, one
couldn’t possibly hope to memorize information one has never cared to pay attention to for more
than one quick once-over, not even Nangong Jingnu. And the fact of the matter was that, after she
had breathed in relief and inserted the coin and picked up the handle and raised her finger to the
number keyboard, she realized, belatedly, she did not know any phone numbers but her own. And
the pizza place around the corner.
She considered trying a few tentative guesses at er-jie’s number, one she had seen once or twice,
but as she was used to carrying big money, her spare change was limited and needed to be used
wisely. She rummaged in her wallet and bag for any scrap paper that might contain a phone
number –anybody’s, at this point– but all she could get a hold of was old receipts, a little more
spare change, half a package of crackers she started chewing to appease her empty stomach and…
other things she ought to get rid of once and for all, honestly.
The thing is, Jingnu is very good at lying to herself. There is another phone number she knows, and
she knows it by heart, could dial it with her eyes closed, has dialed it in various levels of
intoxicated in the past, cannot make herself banish it from her memory to matter how hard she
tries; just as she can’t bring herself to throw away the crumpled sticky note with a little poem
scribbled on it that she keeps in her wallet.
Jingnu does not want to call this person an insurmountable amount, not even if dead, or drunk, or
high off her mind. No matter she has tried and failed to delete her contact info numerous times, if
Jingnu knew the number you’re supposed to call when you hit a deer, she would dial that instead
and give whoever shows up half her wallet to drive her to the city safely. She considers, even,
calling the emergency line and– and say what? She does have principles, no matter how much she
wants others to believe her ruthless, she can’t just make up a story so they will dispatch somebody
to pick her up, can she? Will they send someone over if she just says she’s stranded?
Just to not talk to this person, for this life and this world…
She squashes the thought of sitting around to wait for the man who just drove off to grow a
conscience and come back for her as soon as it takes form, because she is not the kind of woman to
sit and wait around, for starters, and also because how long will that take? She’s very underdressed
for this sort of climate, at this hour, with no source of heat– and they had their first snow of the
season only a week ago. If snow catches her like this, she might not have to worry about much
more than catching pneumonia and dying at the very ripe age of twenty two, at the side of the road,
like a dog!
A chilly wind deviously licking at her neck and the shiver it sends through her body makes up her
mind for her. Before she has time to think too much about it, her fingers punch in the number
before she notices it, like they have been itching for it, just waiting for her permission. Ridiculous.
Qi Yan doesn’t pick up on the first try, or the second. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Jingnu
is aware that this is because Qi Yan generally just doesn’t pick up unknown numbers, but it
somehow feels like the universe is laughing at her. On the third ring of the third and last time she’s
willing to take this, she hears a click and breathing on the other end.
“Hello?”
Jingnu’s stomach makes a vigorous attempt at swallowing itself. That is a man’s voice. She can’t
even allow herself to feel… whatever it is she feels at the fact Qi Yan dared to change numbers,
and how the many little existential crisis she has whenever she tries to delete her contact info all
seem stupid now, because the dread that she has now ran out of options is more insistent at the
present.
She collects herself enough to reply to the stranger. “Forgive me, wrong number”
Before the stranger can say anything else, Jingnu hears some conversation happening in the
background. “Sorry, Tiezhu. Rang like three times. Thought it was important” The man says to
whoever has spoken to him on his end.
Some shuffling follows it, and Jingnu frowns, worried about her spare time and her dwindling coin
supply, and gets ready to hang up, when– “Jingnu?”
Jingnu’s stomach does a ridiculous, stupid, useless flip at the soft tone that still plagues her
nightmares, if picnic dates and odd wet dreams that so happen to have her ex girlfriend in them can
be called nightmares. “Agula” There is a startled silence. “Good evening”
“It’s almost eleven” Qi Yan points out.
Jingnu would roll her eyes if there weren’t so many stupid feelings pooling in her chest. “I need a
favor. Do you still do taxi service?”
Qi Yan pauses. “Yes, why?”
“I need– I w– I need a ride. I’ll pay you” She shuts her eyes, mortified. What the hell is she
stuttering for?
There is a longer silence. “Sure. Where should I pick you up?”
“I’m” She looks around for any sort of landmark, to no use. “I’m somewhere at the outskirts. A
highway by my work, very empty”
Qi Yan seems to think for a second, says a highway that Jingnu recognizes and she confirms it.
“What are you doing there so late?” Qi Yan asks, and Jingnu refuses to acknowledge the worry
intermingled in her puzzled voice.
“Long story. How long will you take?”
“Thirty minutes if I hurry” Her voice is leveled and pleasant to the ears even over the static of the
call. Jingnu wants her to shut up and also to never stop talking.
“Make it twenty and I’ll pay you double”
Twenty five minutes and three lone cars with no Qi Yan in them have passed by the time Jingnu
sees lights in the horizon, and upon straining her eyes manages the familiar beat down black car Qi
Yan has driven since college out of some misplaced loyalty to it, going considerably slower than
the past three cars. Jingnu extends her arm and waves widely, and the vehicle slows down a tad
more to pull up next to her. Almost half an hour of wait has made a popsicle out of Jingnu, so she
damns her composure and very inelegantly makes a beeline for the passenger seat and sinks into
the warmth of it, rubbing her hands together and blowing gratefully on them.
A thermos is being shoved into her hands before she has any chance to say anything.
“I have whisky too, if you fancy” Qi Yan says quietly. “Where to?”
Jingnu is staring so hard at the thermos and biting her inner cheek so forcefully that the words
escape her. “What?”
“Where should I drive us?”
Jingnu rolls her eyes, and is opening her mouth to say something along the lines of “you know
where I live, you big dork” but then she remembers her newly dumped boyfriend will be there, no
doubt wishing to retrieve his stuff, and that she doesn’t want to talk to him if it can be avoided.
“Just take me to er-jie’s”
Jingnu tries really hard, she does. But when she does take a sip of the contents of the thermos in her
hands, out of some misplaced wish to be polite to her ex, of all people, the tea inside warms her up
so thoroughly and so deliciously that she can’t help but lower her guard down, if just a little, and
she chances some askance glances at Qi Yan.
She drives comfortably, calm and capable, her back straight and her gaze on the road, her hands
resting at eleven on the wheel and on the gear change clutch. Her face is hard to make out, in the
same darkness Jingnu is relying on to obscure her curious analysis, but Jingnu finds, with a little
indignation rising in her chest, that Qi Yan actually looks infuriatingly the same as she had last
time she saw her.
Jingnu’s hair is many inches shorter since then and the hairs of her nape are still a sad minty blue
she’s wishing to outgrow all together, because not a week after their break up she had chopped off
most of her hair and a month later she dyed it all blue herself, in her bathtub. Da-jie had giggled in
her face and er-jie had called it “bold”, and she had regretted it just as much as she regretted the
first girl she rebounded with, somewhere post haircut and pre hair-dyeing.
But Qi Yan’s inky, soft hair is still gathered at the top of her head in an easy bun tied by a lovely
ribbon, her golden eyes calm like pools of honey, the same scar in her cheek, same chipped nail
polish and calloused hands from too much writing, same black turtleneck, same infuriatingly
tranquil air about her that used to drive Jingnu up the wall. Here she is, in her messy not-quite-blue
bisexual bob, one or two more piercings in her body (maybe?), a work addiction, apparently, a
dying love life, still stupidly hung up on someone who seems fine, seems to not be affected by her
in the slightest, not now, and not ever.
“Who picked up the phone?” she finds herself asking.
Qi Yan looks startled to be talked to, but she recovers quickly from it. “My roommate, Baishi”
“Mm” she hums. “Why were you away from your phone?”
Qi Yan gives her a look. “If you must know, I was in the bathroom”
Jingnu is getting ready to decipher that look, but as they pass a street light, her eyes land on a
shimmering gleam by the gear change and her mind stirs somewhere else. “Did you just offer me
whiskey?”
Qi Yan looks down at the bottle and holds it by the neck, handing it to her. “To dispel the cold”
“You keep alcohol in the car?” Jingnu says, baffled. And here she thought Qi Yan to be a stickler
for rules. “Isn’t that illegal?”
Qi Yan shakes her head. “I looked it up. It’s fine as long as it’s not the driver’s”
“But it is the driver’s!”
“But they don’t know that”
Jingnu presses her lips. Crafty fox. “So I suppose it’s mine, then?”
“Naturally” Qi Yan nods, looking askance at her, and Jingnu knows, even in the limited light of the
quiet road, a conspiratory curve is pulling at the corner of her lips. All Jingnu has to do is smile
back, and they will be sharing an inside joke no one else in the world is in on, on the same
wavelength for once. A rare occurrence, back then. Maybe impossible, now.
Jingnu tears her gaze away, suddenly finding the black label in the bottle very interesting, and she
considers the liquid inside for a minute; but she minds her empty stomach, which will probably
push out the alcohol before it has an opportunity to get there, and she decides against it. “Thanks,
but I’ll pass”
When Qi Yan looks at her for a beat too long, Jingnu turns back to tell her to keep her eyes on the
road, but Qi Yan is back in her usual, proper position before she gets a chance to. She shouldn’t be
so startled to remember Qi Yan is a good driver. She keeps the ride down the highway smooth and
fast, the low rumble of the car and the tranquil tempo of the music in the radio lulling her to sleep
as the buildings become less scattered throughout, and as her toes slowly thaw off, her body finally
finishes warming up through and through.
She’s so comfortable, in fact, that she almost forgets how hungry she is, having skipped dinner for
the sake of getting some work done after her very small, very unassuming lunch. No worries,
though, her body is happy to remind her, as she’s pulled right out of her drowsiness by a rather loud
grumble coming straight from the pit of her stomach.
The blood rushes to her face, and she chances a very mortified look in Qi Yan’s direction. Qi Yan
still has her eyes on the road, seemingly none the wiser, but she does notice Jingnu’s gaze.
“What?”
“Nothing” she lies, willing her stomach to shut up as she changes the subject. “How’s Bayin?”
“Bored” Qi Yan replies, seemingly startled at the new attempt at small talk. “He got laid off last
month”
“Still unpleasant?” Jingnu says, with no real bite behind it.
“Still straightforward” Qi Yan corrects with a huff, and Jingnu rolls her eyes. “Probably not
unrelated, the two”
“What two?”
“Being fired and being… unpleasant” Jingnu laughs, small. Qi Yan’s smiling minutely again, as
she does that thing with the steering wheel that always made Jingnu’s stomach flutter. “Forgive
me, but do you mind if I make a stop?”
Jingnu’s eyebrows knit. “A stop where?” she asks wearily.
“Somewhere to get food. I didn’t have a chance to eat”
Jingnu blinks, and then, rather ridiculously, she feels her cheeks heat up. Is this person being
serious? Did Jingnu’s call catch her right as she was about to eat, and she still rushed out to speed
out of the city at almost midnight in freezing cold weather? “Thirty minutes if I hurry” And wasn’t
she pulling up twenty five minutes later? If Jingnu had known she was in the middle of eating, then
she would’ve told her to take her damn time!
“It’s not like you think” Qi Yan says, perceptively, and Jingnu glares at her. “I was about to drive
somewhere to get food anyway. I have an order from Baishi and everything”
Jingnu crosses her arms and shrinks in herself. “Do what you want. But your pay will suffer from
it”
“The miss is most understanding,” Qi Yan says, condescending. Jingnu wants to strangle her. “and
am I not being paid double? There is no loss”
“You must be joking. You took twenty five minutes, not twenty”
“Five minutes to get down the stairs and to the car. Twenty minutes to get to you”
The heat in her cheeks does not seem to be receding, and she pointedly scowls at herself. There is
no reason that last sentence should’ve sounded so romantic, but here she is, isn’t she? Blushing at it
like a schoolgirl. And didn’t she have a stern talk with herself about paying Qi Yan what she’s
promised, so there won’t be any debts between them? What is she being so difficult for?
Qi Yan eventually pulls next to a fast food restaurant and methodically locks all the doors,
unfastens her seatbelt and puts her keys in her belt before stepping out of the car. And yes, Jingnu
would very much like to ask her if she would be so kind to bring her some fucking food as well– or
rather, that Qi Yan asked her if she can bring her anything, but that food business is skidding too
much in the lines of romance for the two of them, something Jingnu would like to avoid altogether
if possible. So she will just assault er-jie’s fridge when she gets there and keep her stomach quiet
by sheer force of will. No trouble at all.
To Jingnu’s credit, she lasts a good five minutes before her urge to snoop around gets the better of
her, which is saying something, especially because of how good she’s been this entire car ride,
holding her tongue when she could’ve been wringing information out of Qi Yan about her love life,
or how her career is going, or who the hell is this Baishi guy that keeps coming up for some
reason. Nevermind just how sure she is that Qi Yan would answer honestly, if at all.
And well, the glove compartment is right there , right in front of her , she can’t be blamed if she
opens it with a slap without thinking about it too much. Qi Yan gets weird about stuff piling up,
which is presently great for her, because there are very few things inside she can recognize quickly
without needing to stick her nose in too much. There is a journal, a half empty water bottle, some
chewing gum, a pen, a flashlight and some spare change.
So, normal glove compartment things. In the back there is a stack of old receipts tied with a ribbon
that makes Jingnu frown, the oldest one being about three years ago. The journal hardly has little
more than some pressed flowers and some missing pages Jingnu will just have to learn to let go of,
and some dates are marked with yellow highlighter.
With a huff, Jingnu stretches to check the sun visor, and finds more of the same in terms of
uselessness: some pictures of Xiao Die, an adorable –but useless– one that also includes Qi Yan as
a child, and some money that must be for emergencies only.
“Well, that was stupid” she sighs, settling down on the seat again with a scowl, which leaves the
small stack of receipts at eye level. That is a bit curious, at least. Why does Qi Yan keep all of
these? It cannot be accidental, as Qi Yan is not an accidental sort of person, and she’s gone through
the trouble of tying them together with a red ribbon like a bouquet.
Cringing at her own flower analogy, she absentmindedly studies the receipt on the top, for a
restaurant at the center of the city Jingnu has been to a couple times, and the ones under are more
of the same. The fifth one is a bit more interesting: it’s for two tickets at the movies to watch a
movie that rings a bell in Jingnu’s mind, and after some consideration she remembers it as a bad
horror movie about some siblings at a waterpark or something. As a matter of fact, this was a
movie she went to see with Qi Yan, and she had had much to say about the hole-ridden plot as they
left the theater. Jingnu checks the date with a frown, confirming it to be over a year ago, right
before everything went to shit.
There’s a rapt at the window that makes Jingnu jump, and the sight of Qi Yan at the other side
makes her jump again. She rearranges the receipts swiftly, not having untied the ribbon, and after a
second of consideration, she shoves them in her bag and slaps the glove compartment shut.
Qi Yan slides in the driver’s seat easily with a few paper bags in her hands, one of which she places
next to the gearbox before closing the door. “Can you believe they were out of salad” she
comments, apropos of nothing.
“It is pretty late” Jingnu points out, pointedly not thinking about warm yummy food.
“I had to get the combo with the wrap. Do you want it, by any chance?”
Jingnu eyes her carefully. “You don’t want it?”
Qi Yan smiles. “You know me, I’m more of a meat guy. It’s gonna go to waste”
She is concerned that if food keeps being dangled in front of her face her stomach is going to groan
again, and so after one last careful study of Qi Yan, she agrees. “I’ll take it off your hands then”
She makes a valiant effort at not letting how ravenous she is show too much as she devours the
wrap, which is as warm and filling as it promises to be, but she has a feeling Qi Yan can tell
anyway. She suspects, for a second, this may be one of Qi Yan’s elaborate schemes to get her to eat
–she had once exaggerated a migraine so Jingnu made her some chicken noodle soup and then
ended up feeding half the bowl to her – but she decides, for once, to not chase that particular train
of thought, for her own sanity.
“What” Qi Yan asks, and her jaw is set in a way that tells she just lost a battle with her own brain.
“were you doing out there so late, anyway?”
Jingnu stops in the middle of a bite, surprised that Qi Yan has asked so straightforwardly. She must
be really curious about the answer. “I got… stranded”
“How?”
Jingnu has never wanted to lie to Qi Yan, especially when one of the things she hated most about
her was her borderline addiction to hiding things from her, but as she recalls the succession of
events that winded her up with no coat, no phone and no ride home in the middle of nowhere, with
a clearer mind and a full tummy, she starts feeling rather bashful about it. Talk about being
explosive.
“Lost my ride” Jingnu says over her mouthful of tortilla and veggies, when there is a straw
hovering in front of her face, and she slurps the cola from Qi Yan’s cup gratefully. Her heart
softens at the attention. “Yelled at my driver”
Qi Yan gives her a surprised look, but she’s smiling. “I’m sure there was a perfectly sensible
reason”
Jingnu rolls her eyes at Qi Yan’s condescending amusement. Flatterer. “Of course there was”
“Allow me to tread carefully, then”
Jingnu snorts. “You wouldn’t drive off, even if I yelled at you”
The weight of what she’s said lands only after she’s said it. Qi Yan is seemingly unaffected by the
many implications of the statement, but the way she lets the words float uncomfortably between
them in the dead silence that follows tells enough of her awareness.
Qi Yan likes fundamental truths, and this particular guess at what Qi Yan would do and say if
Jingnu was to lash out, and yell, and storm out of the car, is fundamentally true. No, Qi Yan would
stay, would coax Jingnu in that gentle, leveled voice, would pull a clever trick Jingnu wouldn’t
figure out until the next day to get her back in the car and to stay put until they were home. And
Jingnu would feel guilty at her lash out and make a clumsy attempt at an apology, and Qi Yan
would smile her infuriatingly unaffected smile and eat whatever dinner Jingnu had made her in a
roundabout way to make amends.
“I wouldn’t” Qi Yan says, so suddenly that Jingnu has to stare openly at her with an anguished
wrinkle between her eyebrows.
“Agula–”
“We’re here, Jingnu”
Indeed, the familiar street where her er-jie lives can be seen outside the window, and Qi Yan is
stopping the car and turning off the engine right in front of her building. The fact Qi Yan
remembers where to find her house shouldn’t make honey seep into her heart so easily, because
Xiao Die lives here too and Qi Yan would naturally know the address of her little sister. But it
does, her heart does beat indignantly in disagreement at being separated from Qi Yan so soon, at
the inevitable end of this silly window into all they used to have.
“Jingnu”
Qi Yan has those still and quiet eyes on her, and she looks so unperturbed and unaffected by this
whole ordeal, when Jingnu feels like the butterflies inside her stomach may storm out of her and
rush to surround Qi Yan at any moment, mesmerized by the dying flame in her eyes. She quickly
gathers herself, feeling silly and out of sorts, and folds the paper around the wrap once and twice to
shove it in her bag and pull out her wallet in one same motion.
“How much do I owe you?” she asks.
“Nothing”
Jingnu bites her lip hard enough to leave a mark. If Qi Yan doesn’t let her make this a perfectly
indifferent transaction, she might just go insane. “Don’t be silly. You provided me a service and I
must compensate you for it”
“I haven’t done taxi service in a few months” Qi Yan says, putting a hand over the hand Jingnu is
using to pull a couple of bills that she’s ready to deem as enough pay, and she’s is too caught off
guard by Qi Yan’s warm fingers in her wrist to be angry at being lied to once again. “This was a
favor, for a friend”
Qi Yan is fully facing her now, after having only slightly turned her head towards her the whole
trip, and Jingnu is decidedly not ready to have those enchanting, quiet eyes fully focused on her,
fond like they’re dripping honey but otherwise devoid of any clarity, any transparency; but then
again, she might never be ready for it, she decides. And Jingnu really wants to kiss her, but she
doesn’t know if Qi Yan wants that, because she has never known what Qi Yan wants, what she’s
thinking, how much she feels and hides and how much she simply doesn’t feel at all.
Jingnu has to break the eye contact or she might die, and in doing so, her eyes land on the side of
Qi Yan’s face that has been obscured by the position of the driver and the passenger seat the entire
car ride, thus finally seeing Qi Yan’s scar under her eye, noticeable and wild, and a shimmering
pearl hanging brightly on her ear.
Purposeful, is the first thing that comes to Jingnu’s mind. Qi Yan is not a jewelry sort of person,
and took to wearing that bright white pearl solely because Jingnu had gifted it to her. If she’s
wearing it now, right at this moment, it must mean something. And there’s the stack of receipts.
And the fact she recognized her number, which means she’s had an equally hard time getting
around deleting it. And she was there, at Jingnu’s beck and call, within twenty minutes, because
she asked her to. “Thirty minutes if I hurry” and she’s still pulling tricks at her to get her to accept
food, and help–
Watching that earring dangling off Qi Yan’s ear, Jingnu decides she cannot let her escape again.
“Right” Jingnu agrees, her voice shaky and weak. “Okay” Qi Yan smiles a sad sort of smile and
eases her grip on her wrist, going back to her position in the driver’s seat. “Open the door for me,
at least?”
Qi Yan nods easily. “Sure”
And Jingnu has five seconds to find something to leave behind. She’s not even wearing a scarf!
Rookie mistake! After rummaging through her bag for a while, she finds a folding fan that’s been
in there since God knows when, and she easily drops it to her feet.
Qi Yan doesn’t even get in the car until er-jie has answered the buzzer and unlocked the door for
her, and if Jingnu is imagining the reluctance to leave in her movements or it is legitimately there,
that remains to be seen.
She hopes she’s not wrong.
End Notes
my first qijing fic *cheers* be mindful this is a two part fic, i still have to provide the
"getting back together" to my exes fic. no worries! i will be keeping my happy ending end
of the bargain in part two! and yes an actual happy ending not whatever that emotional
damage dealer was at the end of jwqs
i do art at tounlio !! check out my portfolio here
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