Chapter 19

“Didn’t I already tell the class monitor earlier? This is my good friend. She specially came from out of town to see me today.” Huo Wan raised her brows and did not say Lin Dang’s name as Zuo Ming wished. She looked around the table, preparing to find two connected seats and sit down.

A trace of regret very clearly flashed through the other party’s eyes.

The class monitor could be considered the organizer of today’s event, so both emotionally and logically, Lin Dang should greet him. Lin Dang did not notice that Huo Wan was a little unusual. She lifted her eyes to look at Zuo Ming and politely smiled at him.

“Sorry for disturbing everyone.” Elegant and proper.

When she had first taken over the Lin Group, she had been rather unused to this kind of fake, formal, official smile. Later, after she slowly grew accustomed to it, it came easily to her too.

Huo Wan pulled Lin Dang to sit down across the table from Zuo Ming. Sitting beside them were Huo Wan’s roommates, who were on fairly good terms with her and had saved seats for them earlier. When Lin Dang came in, they had also curiously sized up this older sister for quite a long time. Now that she was sitting beside them, naturally, they refused to let the chance slip away.

So they began familiarly chattering away, asking all kinds of questions.

Seeing Lin Dang’s cool professional outfit, the girls were curious and mostly asked about her career. Huo Wan grew a little annoyed. Asking someone such private questions this frequently—couldn’t they see that Lin Dang’s answers were very perfunctory?

Lin Dang kept smiling the entire time.

“Business.”

“A small company. Nothing worth mentioning.”

Were these people stupid from studying too much?

“Stop always asking her such private questions. If you’re going to chat, then chat properly.”

Huo Wan opened her mouth in warning. Under the table, she pinched the back of Lin Dang’s hand to show her displeasure.

This little action was a small secret between the two of them. Huo Wan had had a bad habit since childhood: whenever she was unhappy or about to get angry, she liked pinching her own hand. If Lin Dang was there, then she would pinch Lin Dang’s hand.

Don’t look at how only a few people on this side were asking questions. Who knew how many people at the table were secretly pricking up their ears to listen?

Under the table, their fingers tangled together. Lin Dang stretched out her pinky and gently hooked Huo Wan’s, showing that she was soothing her.

The girls were not people who could not read the room either. They had been roommates with Huo Wan for several years, so they still understood her temper to a certain degree. Everyone seemed to have a pretty good relationship usually, but in truth, it was only acceptable on the surface. Going any deeper than that was out of the question.

“Then… let’s talk about something else. Since you won’t let us talk about this pretty older sister, we’ll talk about you instead, Huo Wan.”

One of the girls with little dimples on her face deliberately said this in a low voice.

The girl’s name was Huang Yao. Just hearing it, one could tell she had the name of a medical student.

Huo Wan glared at her. This person usually had a pretty good relationship with her. Among people other than Lin Dang, this person could probably be placed inside Huo Wan’s central friend circle.

It was just that Huo Wan had never told her about Lin Dang. Every time she left school, she only said she was going to Fengda to find a friend and never gave a name. But now, seeing how fiercely Huo Wan was protecting her own, Huang Yao could roughly guess that this was Huo Wan’s childhood sweetheart.

“Sister, do you want to hear about Huo Wan’s deeds at school?”

Huang Yao turned her head to look at Lin Dang, smiling with an innocent face.

“She doesn’t want to hear!”

“I want to hear.”

Almost in unison, Huo Wan and Lin Dang answered the question at the same time.

Two different answers. Huang Yao looked a little troubled, though of course, this troubled look was very obviously put on. So should she say it or not?

Lin Dang thought for a moment, then raised her hand and covered Huo Wan’s mouth.

Mm… this way, she would not be able to object aloud, right? Lin Dang felt that this move of hers was very clever. She tilted her head and said to Huang Yao again,

“I want to hear. Go ahead.”

Huo Wan’s pupils widened slightly. She opened her eyes wide and looked at Lin Dang. This unexpected action left her unable to react.

Her lips were pressed against the other girl’s palm. Lin Dang’s hand still carried a faint fragrance lingering at the tip of her nose. It was probably the hand cream she had applied before going out in the morning.

At the table, everyone seemed to be doing their own things, but in truth, they were all secretly paying attention to this side. This was the first time in four years of university that they had seen Huo Wan suffer a loss. Zuo Ming lowered his head and took a sip of wine from his glass, unable to resist secretly smiling.

However, Huang Yao’s next words made his body stiffen.

“Then I’ll say it. I think Sister should want to hear some gossip, so I’ll say something everyone knows. For example, our great class monitor Zuo once confessed to our department flower.”

She really was bringing up the exact thing that should not be brought up.

Huo Wan truly felt that if she were given a scalpel and cut Huang Yao open, the inside would probably be nothing but black… just like herself.

And Zuo Ming was not the only one who froze. Huo Wan froze along with him.

Her first instinctive reaction was to turn her head and explain to Lin Dang, just like back when Lin Dang had misunderstood that she and Zhao Yangyang were early dating. In her heart, Lin Dang was the person she liked, so she could not let the person she liked misunderstand that there was any rumor between her and someone else!

The moment Huang Yao finished speaking, the private room suddenly erupted into noise, with teasing cheers and whistles. Zuo Ming choked on a mouthful of wine and nearly coughed himself to death. The male classmate sitting beside him quickly slapped his back hard to help him breathe.

How long ago had that happened?! He had long since stopped having those kinds of thoughts about Huo Wan!

“You’re the department flower?”

Lin Dang, however, did not care about that issue. The point she cared about really was very different from everyone else’s. For example, in such a long sentence, her focus was only on the final two words: “department flower.” Her tone was a little teasing, and a strange smile hung on her face.

As for the confession, she did not need to think to know that it had definitely failed.

Otherwise, how could the name Zuo Ming have never once appeared around her?

Being asked this by Lin Dang, Huo Wan’s ears suddenly reddened for no reason.

What should she do? She really did not know how to answer this question… Although in the past, she had often bragged shamelessly in front of Lin Dang about being a natural beauty too beautiful to abandon, this was different!

The title “department flower” was not something she had given herself. It was something others had randomly called her.

One year, for some unknown reason, a selection for the department flowers of each college had appeared on the school forum. Then Huo Wan’s name had been included. Although there was not even a single decent photo of her, she had somehow inexplicably been pushed to the top of the list anyway…

And she had beaten the second-place girl with an absolute advantage.

And so, while the person herself was still completely unaware and utterly confused, the title of department flower descended onto her head just like that.

Before Huo Wan could defend herself with a sentence or two, Lin Dang, right in front of everyone, calmly followed up with another fatal sentence that struck straight into Huo Wan’s heart.

“That makes sense. The little flower raised in my family’s courtyard can indeed be called a department flower.”

Author’s Note:

Huo Wan looks up and covers her mouth back: No, you don’t want to hear!