Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Gu Yunzhi took me out to buy a whole pile of fireworks.

There were Gatling-gun ones that went “rat-tat-tat” and spat blue flames.

There were handheld ones, like sparklers.

…

And there was one that went “pew pew pew” and shot out bubbles. The shop owner swore it could produce a thousand bubbles per second.

We were full of anticipation.

As it turned out, it really did produce a thousand bubbles per second.

And then that was it.

Me: “That’s it? Seriously?”

“Boss, this is false advertising!”

The owner tucked his hands into his sleeves and watched me with a cheerful grin.

“Just tell me whether it was a thousand bubbles in one second or not.”

Visually speaking, it did feel like there were that many…

Me: “It only lasted one second. How am I supposed to count them?”

The owner handed us another one.

“No problem. Take your time setting it off, take your time counting.”

Then he turned to Gu Yunzhi. “Hey, you. You’re her boyfriend, right? Hurry up and pay.”

Gu Yunzhi paid with his face bright red.

And I noticed, with razor-sharp precision, that he did not deny it!!!

And so, feeling like we’d been scammed, we were stuffed with another firework and ran off to an open space to count bubbles.

Just then, the kid who had been playing with the Gatling firework earlier passed by us again, wearing a puzzled expression.

“Uncle, Auntie, why don’t you take a picture and count the bubbles in the photo?”

Me: “…”

Gu Yunzhi: “…”

Kid, has it ever occurred to you that Uncle and Auntie are simply bored out of their minds?

You don’t understand the ways of older unmarried single men and women.

That night, Gu Yunzhi and I set off fireworks for a long time.

Mainly because the owner had shoved too many at us, and I was also a little reluctant to part with Gu Yunzhi.

When we finished, we each went home and went to sleep.

Early the next morning, the whole family got up at the crack of dawn, saying we were going out to pay New Year’s visits.

To my surprise, the moment my cousin’s son saw me, he started shouting and reporting me at the top of his lungs.

“Auntie stole my snap pops yesterday! She stole three boxes!”

Oh no. How awkward.

I immediately covered my face and whispered to my little cousin-nephew, “Do you have proof? Any witnesses? Any physical evidence?”

My cousin-nephew shouted even louder.

“Liang Xuxu saw it! He saw you playing with my snap pops yesterday, and you even went into the woods with… with Uncle Gu Yunzhi!”

What the hell? Who was Liang Xuxu?

Just then, a kid in head-to-toe sporty clothes came over, his little hair slicked back until it gleamed.

From the look of him, he was dressed up to go pay New Year’s visits too.

It was the kid from last night who had been playing with the Gatling firework.

No physical evidence, but there was a witness.

As adults liked to say, children don’t lie.

So I bought my cousin-nephew a huge box of snap pops as compensation.

But even though I’d already paid him back, the matter wasn’t over.

My grandparents brought my eldest uncle, second uncle, and third aunt’s husband and marched over to the Su Family.

They demanded that Gu Yunzhi give an explanation for going into the woods with me last night.

Gu Yunzhi looked at me. I looked at Gu Yunzhi.

Under the gaze of dozens of eyes from his relatives and friends, plus dozens more from my relatives and friends, we saw the cold sweat on each other’s foreheads.

My dad asked me in a low voice, “Daughter, what’s going on here?”

I originally wanted to say that we’d just happened to run into each other and set off some fireworks together.

But in a rural place like this, gossip traveled fast.

Both of us had hidden identities that couldn’t be made public, so in theory, there was no way we could know each other.

If I said that and people started spreading rumors that the Shen Family’s daughter had no sense of propriety, that she’d gone into the woods with a man after only meeting him once, how embarrassing would that be for me?

After thinking it over, I could only pretend to blush shyly and bump Gu Yunzhi with my shoulder.

“I just… took a liking to him.”

“I think Gu Yunzhi is pretty great.”