'My first kiss... is gone.'
Jiangg Ning felt the world around her go silent. It was as if a film had formed in her ears, and all sound WHOOSHED away, tens of thousands of light-years into the distance.
Her brain shut down. For a brief moment, the only sensation she could register was on her lips.
A first kiss is bound to be clumsy, but the moment their lips touched, the soft sensation stirred many wonderful feelings in Chen Yuan's heart.
He could also smell a unique perfume. Everything within his reach was soft, be it Jiangg's cheeks or... other things.
HUFF—
The two pulled apart. Jiangg Ning gasped for air like a dying fish thrown back into a pond, her face deathly pale.
Her entire body was stiff, completely motionless.
She stared at Chen Yuan without blinking, her expression an unreadable mix of emotions.
'Disbelief? Humiliation? Anger?'
Chen Yuan could see a crimson blush rapidly climbing Jiangg Ning's fair cheeks, spreading across her face like spilled ink. Even her earlobes were so red they looked like they were about to drip blood.
Her chest heaved, and her finger trembled as she pointed at him.
"Do you have any idea what you're doing?"
As awareness flooded back into her mind, Jiangg Ning felt like she was going crazy.
'I was just kissed by my own student! My first kiss, with an eighteen-year-old boy!'
In her daily work, Jiangg Ning was always mature and composed. In her lectures, she was poised and confident. Whether facing her superiors or her students, she had never once lost her composure. But right now, with her embarrassment meter about to explode, she couldn't care less about etiquette. What she really, really wanted to do was beat Chen Yuan to a pulp.
Now it was Chen Yuan's turn to be confused. 'Isn't this the one thing you wanted before we broke up?'
"You told me to kiss you."
"So you just kiss me because I told you to? You've got some nerve, Chen! Have you ever considered that when I was in college, you were only in the fourth grade? Not to mention, I'm your teacher!"
They locked eyes. Jiangg Ning looked just like a cat with its fur standing on end.
Chen Yuan couldn't understand it. He thought for a moment and could only attribute Jiangg Ning's sudden change to the old saying: "A woman's heart is a needle at the bottom of the sea." You can never figure out what they're really thinking. One moment she was being all pitiful, and the next she was putting on her stern classroom demeanor.
He threw up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "What's wrong with that? I've been listening to my teachers since I was a kid."
The comeback choked her, making her forget what she was about to say. 'I'm definitely not letting that brat Jiangg Yao off the hook when I get home,' she thought, reaching into her pocket for her bank card.
It was time to end this absurd affair.
From now on, she would focus on teaching and her work.
She hated herself for letting the fleeting sweetness of romance cloud her judgment, which led to this situation. It wasn't Chen Yuan's fault at all, really.
Jiangg Ning was more angry with herself.
The less experience one has with love, the harder it is to resist the fantasy of it. But in reality, romance is a monster, a raging flood! It completely disrupts an otherwise orderly and organized life.
She was learning that lesson the hard way.
...
Suddenly, voices could be heard from outside.
"Haha, Chen is usually such a cheapskate, but he was really generous this time. I thought he was taking us to some little dive, but this place isn't bad at all."
"I wasn't exaggerating, was I? Of all the Hunan restaurants in Lanjing, I've never had any more authentic than this one."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was definitely worth coming today."
"Wanna go belt out a few tunes later? Chen, show us your tenor?"
"Nah, I have a heavy class schedule tomorrow, and I still have to prep my lessons tonight..."
Just outside the restroom was the escalator leading to the second floor. The sound of shuffling footsteps mingled with the chatter of several people.
Just as Jiangg Ning was reaching into her shirt pocket, their words reached her ears.
She suddenly thought the voice sounded familiar... a bit like Professor Chen from the university!
'Oh no!'
A chill ran down Jiangg Ning's spine. She remembered that afternoon, Li had invited everyone to a group dinner. Supposedly, more than half of the faculty from their office who knew each other would be there. Could they have possibly chosen this restaurant?
How could it be such a coincidence!?
Jiangg Ning's mind was in chaos. She lifted the restroom curtain and peeked outside.
Sure enough!
A group of teachers she knew were on the stairs, heading down. A few of them were walking straight toward the restroom!
"It's over..." A few drops of cold sweat had already appeared on Jiangg Ning's forehead.
If she were discovered acting suspiciously in the restroom with a student, wouldn't half the teachers at the university find out?
At that point, her teaching career would truly be over.
"What's wrong?" Chen Yuan asked, puzzled.
"My colleagues from the university are out there! If they see us, I'm really done for!"
"No way. They know you, but they don't know me. Just pretend you're here to eat. How would anyone figure out our relationship?"
"Easy for you to say," Jiangg Ning said, so angry she completely forgot her image. She grabbed Chen Yuan and viciously pinched the soft flesh of his waist, almost making him cry out in pain. She stared at him resentfully. "You have my lipstick color all over your mouth. Female teachers are all gossips. Who wouldn't be able to tell?"
Chen Yuan froze. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and saw a clear smear of bright red.
He hadn't thought about such a small detail.
"Stop wiping it! You're just smearing it and making it redder!" Jiangg Ning was so exasperated she could have rolled her eyes into the back of her head.
"Then what do we do?"
"I... I don't know."
Jiangg Ning stared at the floor in a panic, pacing back and forth a few times. As she heard the footsteps getting closer, her heart began to race even faster.
"You're not going to try and find a crack in the floor to crawl into, are you?" Chen Yuan asked, bewildered.
"Stop making sarcastic remarks!"
If there really were a crack in the floor, Jiangg Ning would have crawled into it.
She imagined herself shrinking to the size of a bean, squatting on the ground and drawing circles, guiltily watching her colleagues' giant feet stomp past overhead. She'd spy on them until they left, then quickly change back.
But the key problem was, there wasn't one!
"Hide. The men's room is empty."
Without another word, Chen Yuan grabbed Jiangg Ning's hand and pulled her into the men's restroom. He found a stall, and the two of them hurriedly ducked inside, locking the door behind them.
The occupancy indicator on the outside of the door flipped from green to red: Occupied.
Less than half a second later, the footsteps were right outside, and the voices of several male teachers were so clear it was as if they were right beside them.
"I'll get a designated driver later. I've already booked one. I'll have them take you home first, then Chen."
"Either way is fine with me."
"We drank well tonight. Full of food and wine, ah~"
The sound of rushing water started and stopped in fits and starts, a clear sign that the teachers' prostates weren't in the best of health.
The restaurant's restroom stall was narrow and cramped. It was big enough for one person, but two was a tight squeeze.
Chen Yuan had no choice but to sit on the toilet. Jiangg Ning stood eavesdropping on the sounds outside, pressed tightly against the partition with her back to him... Of course, they couldn't face each other in this situation. That would be mortifyingly awkward.
However, this position wasn't much better.
Chen Yuan was 1.8 meters tall, and even though he tried his best to pull his long legs back, his knees would still occasionally bump the back of Jiangg Ning's. Every time they touched, she would flinch.
After two or three times, she pursed her lips and glared back at him. Her long hair covered half her face, but the anger on her delicate profile was still visible.
"Don't... move!" Jiangg Ning mouthed silently.
"I'm... not trying to!"
As they spoke, Chen Yuan's legs began to feel tired, and he shifted them unconsciously.
The moment they touched, Jiangg Ning's whole body tensed up instantly. Her body temperature began to rise rapidly, as if she'd been tickled.
She suspected Chen Yuan was doing it on purpose, but when she looked back, he also had a look of innocent suffering on his face.
This close, and in a bathroom stall no less... the feeling was simply indescribable. From the moment she discovered the identity of her online boyfriend after her morning class, Jiangg Ning felt this whole day had been bizarre beyond belief.
Chen Yuan felt the same way. He looked at Jiangg's back. The truth was, she looked good from any angle, whether it was her figure or her face.
But everything that had happened today was enough to make an eager heart gradually turn cold.
Right now, both of them were praying for the PSHHH-ing sounds outside the stall to end quickly. Otherwise, they felt like they would suffocate in this oppressive space.
Jiangg Ning was about to give out. She was afraid that if she leaned too hard against the flimsy partition door, she might push it open, and then the truth would be revealed to the world.
...All she could say was, that situation would be a hundred times more terrifying than just being caught in a relationship with a student.
She turned her head, strained to reach out a hand, and steadied herself on Chen Yuan's shoulder. Only then did she feel she had some support, and she let out a small sigh of relief.
But this made the posture far too intimate.
She tucked her annoying, loose hair behind her ear. Paired with the blush on her cheeks, she looked all the more enchanting.
"I... need to sit." The middle-aged men's prostates had outlasted Jiangg Ning's stamina. She couldn't hold on any longer and whispered to Chen Yuan.
Chen Yuan was speechless, but he shifted his thighs to the side.
So, holding onto the partition, Jiangg Ning shakily sat down. When she finally sat on his lap, she felt as if she'd been reborn.
'That almost killed me!'
"I have a bank card here," she said, her voice low as she rustled the card out of her pocket. "One hundred thousand yuan, as compensation. I know I'm only breaking up with you for my own sake..."
"Chen, you've just started university. You have so many possibilities ahead of you. I'm sorry for wasting six months of your time."
"No one expected things to turn out this way... If you can, please don't tell anyone about our online relationship."
She kept talking, but Chen Yuan's expression grew uglier and uglier. He didn't take the card Jiangg Ning held out to him.
"That's enough."
Chen Yuan's coldness brought Jiangg Ning's words to a sudden halt. She froze, slightly stunned.
"There's no need to say any more. I understand what you mean. I agree to break up."
"Chen, are you sure?"
"I'm much more sure than you are, Jiangg. From the very beginning, I just wanted to be in a real relationship with a girl I liked. Age and status were irrelevant." Chen Yuan looked at the card, and suddenly, any good feelings he had for Jiangg Ning vanished. "You make it sound so nice, but you're just making excuses for yourself so you won't have to feel guilty after the breakup."
"I..."
"Don't get me wrong. I never planned on clinging to you, and I never thought dating a teacher was something worth showing off."
Chen Yuan was young, but he wasn't stupid.
Thanks to his parents' upbringing, he had always been self-disciplined, diligent, hardworking, polite, and kind-hearted, even if he wouldn't say he was the best among his peers. He wasn't vain enough to show off the fact that his girlfriend was a university teacher, because his values were, at the very least, normal.
When he had a goal, he worked hard for it. He burned the midnight oil in high school because he knew he wanted to get into Lanjing University.
He didn't date casually. Even though girls confessed to him constantly—there were three or four who pulled him aside to bare their souls at class reunions alone—he believed that "only people who truly like each other should be together."
Love isn't kids playing house. It's not some casual online request for a partner. It's not something you jump into when you're excited and drop when you're not.
Chen Yuan believed in pure love because that's how his parents got together, and they had always been very happy.
He hoped for that kind of love, too.
But Jiangg Ning, apparently, had treated this online relationship like a game. Whether it was her pretending to be pitiful earlier or pulling the teacher card now, it was probably all just to avoid being resented.
Now that he realized this, he was disgusted.
"You want a respectable breakup so you can pretend none of this ever happened, right?"
As Chen Yuan spoke, the teachers outside left the restroom. The footsteps faded into the distance, leaving a terrifying silence.
Jiangg Ning was silent.
Chen Yuan took out his phone. As she watched, he deleted her contact information, then flipped the lock on the stall door.
"I haven't told anyone about our online relationship. Your life can go back to normal now. You can go, Jiangg."
A damp breeze blew in through the restroom window.
Jiangg Ning stood up awkwardly. There was nothing she could say. She had gotten the result she wanted.
But she suddenly felt that she... was being so incredibly dramatic.