Chapter 320: Chapter 320: 215: Lin Wanzhou Opens Up About Her Inner Troubles for the First Time, the Collegiate Choir's Rendition of "Rice Aroma" Goes Viral

“All right, with Teacher Xu around, I feel much more at ease,” Qi Ting breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s chaos over there; did you guys not go in?”

“We did, but there were too many people, so Xu Qingyan took me out through the back door of another shop,” Lin Wanzhou said.

“Teacher Xu is awesome. When are you guys coming back?”

“In a while, our car is on the other side.” Xu Qingyan looked up and joined the conversation, “They’re controlling the scene over there. We’ll wait for the crowd to thin out a bit before we go to drive.”

“That will be late, right? How about I drive over to pick you up?” Qi Ting offered.

“No… no need, it’s jammed over here,” Lin Wanzhou blurted out, and after speaking, her heart pounded, fearing that Xu Qingyan next to her would expose her lie.

Fortunately, Xu Qingyan remained silent, only standing up to observe the situation in the distance.

“All right, I’ll wait for Sister Zhou Zhou to come back.”

The video call ended, and Lin Wanzhou still felt a bit guilty; the straw of her milk tea cup had been pinched beyond recognition. The two sat on the roadside for a while longer, chatting about the interview.

The streetlights were bright, illuminating the flower beds and the nearby paved road.

“The words you said on the program… they gave me a lot of comfort.” Lin Wanzhou leaned next to him, holding a napkin in her hand, unknowingly twisting it into a funnel shape.

“That thing, don’t worry about it,” Xu Qingyan turned off his phone, “Some things aren’t your fault; there’s no need to dwell too much on the past, no one knows what the future holds.”

“Anyway, rest assured.”

At that point, the conversation stopped abruptly.

Lin Wanzhou rested her head on her hand, gazing distantly at the noisy scene, slowly chewing over the words “rest assured,” unsure of just how assured she could really be.

“Stop pinching the straw, let’s go back,” Xu Qingyan stood up, grabbed her hand, and led Lin Wanzhou toward the receding crowd, “We just need to get through it.”

They made their way through the not-too-dense crowd, skirting along the edge. A few hundred meters took them a careful ten minutes to navigate successfully.

When they finally got back to the car, Xu Qingyan buckled up his seatbelt and let out a sigh of relief. He leaned back in the driver’s seat without immediately starting the car.

Lin Wanzhou sat in the passenger seat, without fastening her seatbelt.

She sat quietly, looking at Xu Qingyan’s slightly weary expression. When he noticed and turned to look at her with a puzzled gaze, she softly began to speak.

“Thank you for everything you’ve done for me, thank you…”

Xu Qingyan looked surprised, nodding as he replied.

“Why bring this up all of a sudden? You’ve already said it just now, we need not be so formal with each other.”@@novelbin@@

Lin Wanzhou gently bit her lower lip, gathering her scattered hair into place once more. Her pale hand and tear-filled eyes tenderly regarded him as she softly said.

“I’m not talking about the interview, you’ve been looking after me since we were kids.”

“They left me at the reservoir; you were the only one who came to find me. After that, you always protected me. I didn’t understand back then, and then too much happened in between.”

“At the last birthday party, I wanted to dress up nicely to see you…”

As she spoke, the tears she had been holding back involuntarily spilled out, only realizing it when they dripped onto the protruding fabric of her shirt; she reached out to wipe them away.

The more she wiped, the more tears there were, endless and unceasing, and her voice suddenly choked up.

Why did saying more bring more tears? She didn’t want to cry or to bring up these topics. Time and again, it was just by a little bit—if only she had understood back then, if only she had been a bit braver.

Xu Qingyan didn’t know what to say. He had forgotten too much about their childhood. Nor did he know how to respond, with the influence of his songs and movies cluttering his mind.

In fact, the memories that remained were not many. The images from childhood about her were few, countable on one hand. The flood of movie scenes deterred him from looking back.

He pulled out some tissues and handed them to Lin Wanzhou but then felt it somewhat preposterous. He had bought tissues just in case they couldn’t get out and needed to wipe blood.

Who would have thought, after all the twisting and turning, they would still come in handy?

Lin Wanzhou cried while talking, her emotions reaching a breaking point. Her sobbing overshadowed her words, making it impossible to understand what she was saying.

He simply kept passing her tissues quietly, and on his last attempt to reach out, his arm was abruptly grabbed. Pulled and tugged, Lin Wanzhou collapsed into his arms.

In the driver’s seat, with Lin Wanzhou pressing on him and weeping profoundly. Her tears quickly soaked through Xu Qingyan’s shoulder, seeping little by little down his back.

How terrifying, girls truly must be made of water.

In truth, Xu Qingyan didn’t understand what she was trying to express. He thought none of it mattered much, just minor misunderstandings; being separated for so long, hadn’t they still met again?

Things from childhood, once past, are past, perhaps there was liking back then.

Not clearly remembered, and not important.

He was always a pragmatist, focusing on immediate goals. He didn’t seek the snow of Tianshan; he only saw the rice under his head, emitting as much heat as there was light.

Lin Wanzhou cried for a very long time, until her tears almost dried. As if wanting to cry out all the regret that had built up in her heart, the only one who could scold her, her mother, had passed away.

No matter how she felt about the selfish Guan Jin, during those two years at least, she could feel Guan Jin’s love for both her and her late father, even though her way of expressing love was extreme.

Guan Jin was no longer with us, this woman who had lived a life of delicacy was now a skeleton of bones, ugly beyond words. She had been strong-willed her whole life, but in the final moments before her sickness claimed her, she finally softened.

“My child, I’m going to find your father. He’s waiting for me, waiting for me to sing for him, I’m going to continue being his superstar, that was our prom…ise.”

Lin Wanzhou knew her mother, Ms. Guan Jin, had been stubborn her whole life, with a controlling nature that was outrageous. Selfish yet refined, she had loved her father all her life.

Both were at fault, and yet neither was, their love was fierce and passionate. Yet she should not have existed, as if she was born an outsider, merely watching their entangled love and hatred.

Indeed, one’s original family can influence a person’s character, and Lin Wanzhou had been numb for many years. She longed to get her act together and meet him like a normal person.

But she found she simply could not, as those intangible things deeply affected her. She didn’t cry at her mother’s funeral, nor did she cry thinking of it at night.

She always felt like an outsider, as if she had no emotions. She feared she would become like Guan Jin, tormenting Xu Qingyan even more mercilessly.

Dragging her feet, she wanted to sort herself out, to walk in the sunlight and be a normal person. The more she feared, the more anxious she became, always trying to find solace in the past.

After Guan Jin’s death, she never cried in front of others again; now she could only cry in front of him.

“I don’t want… don’t want to become like my mom. Every time… every time I dream, I always… don’t want to become like her, I…”

“You won’t, you are you, and you won’t become anyone else,” Xu Qingyan gently patted her back, carefully comforting, “Don’t think about it.”

Twenty minutes later, Lin Wanzhou gradually calmed down, feeling somewhat embarrassed as she got off him. Looking at his wet shoulder, she averted her gaze.

“Your clothes…”

“It’s fine, there’s no law that says wet clothes prevent you from driving,” Xu Qingyan said with a smile, patting the half-empty pack of tissues, “But you did waste a bit of paper.”

Lin Wanzhou’s face turned red, and she felt quite angry again.

This man truly lacked a sense of romance.

…..

The next day.

Xu Qingyan woke up refreshed and invigorated.

What had happened last night was too shocking, but fortunately, it had not resulted in any serious casualties. Police in the area had responded quickly, and in the end, about seven or eight people were injured in the stampede but no lives were lost.

While washing up, he browsed the news and found that the stampede at last night’s night market had made the headlines and was a trending search. Some of the street shops along the night market had their front doors smashed and even vandalized.

The cause of the incident was still under investigation and had not been disclosed yet.

With such a big incident, the people involved in the night market were bound to face accountability and fines. After all, even the fire department went there, and it was likely that a few exemplary cases had been caught.

At nine o’clock, as usual, he showed up on the second floor of the studio.

Pei Muchan had arrived even earlier, her face unusually made up with light makeup, and she glanced at him as she sat in front of the computer.

“There’s a dinner tonight, want to join me?”

“What dinner?” He was slightly startled, as Pei Muchan rarely attended dinner parties in his memory.

“Just a casual meal with a few friends, if you can even call them that,” Pei Muchan said, looking down, “It’s just a formality; we’ll have lunch and then come back.”

“Okay, I’ll go with you,” Xu Qingyan agreed readily.

At his response, Pei Muchan seemed a bit surprised; Xu Qingyan was not usually so agreeable.

“I heard there was a stampede at the night market yesterday, did you see the news?”

“Is that so?” Xu Qingyan pulled out a pen and paper, pretending to be oblivious, “I haven’t had the chance to see it yet, how could such an incident occur, it’s truly regrettable.”

As he spoke, Xu Qingyan took out his phone, ready to feign browsing for a while.

“Yeah, they say it was uncontrolled, and the situation became chaotic in less than ten minutes,” Pei Muchan clicked and clacked the mouse, getting ready to sum up this month’s sales data.

The TV drama crew of “Path of Flowers” had been criticized, leading to a decline in public favor, backfiring on their intentions. They managed to offend Xu Qingyan, the last person they should provoke.

The majority of netizens still had a positive view of Xu Qingyan, with “hot temper” almost becoming one of his trademarks. In an entertainment industry full of pleasantries, he stood out as interesting.

After all, everyone loves to see a good man take a wrong turn, or a fallen woman turn virtuous.

In their eyes, Xu Qingyan probably fell somewhere between a naïve calf unafraid of tigers and a somewhat capable newbie boss with a bit of a newbie protection period.

People are always lenient towards geniuses, admiring those who despise evil and have a straightforward nature.

Xu Qingyan casually scrolled and suddenly came across the official account of Xinghai University. The prelude of “Rice Fragrance” had been epic and grand, with the choir students beginning to sing.

“Go home, back to the original happiness.”

The video had received a staggering hundred thousand likes, two thousand shares, and three thousand comments. Among the past works of Xinghai University, it ranked as the highest, having been released yesterday afternoon at six o’clock.

Xu Qingyan lingered in the comments section for a while before exiting to keep scrolling. The next video was still a choir performance of “Rice Fragrance,” but this time the publisher was another university.

With sixty thousand likes and fifteen hundred comments, the numbers were explosive as well.

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