Chapter 13 Gratitude of an Ungrateful Female Lead 13, Always Doing Mortifying Things

That afternoon, Xie Qingjia bought a lot of groceries and made Zhou He a lavish feast.

Seeing how happily she was eating, he tested the waters and asked, “What do you think about me going back to the Provincial Capital to look for work after this busy stretch is over?”

In the past, she would never have allowed him to go back.

Her boyfriend’s cooking had clearly inherited her mother’s true skill. Zhou He didn’t even look up as she ate, and casually replied, “Sure. If you’re closer, Mom and Dad will be more at ease too.”

“What about you? Forget what Mom and Dad think. What would you want me to do?”

Zhou He was having a great time pulling apart shrimp heads. “I’m fine with anything. If you stay here, then after I graduate, I’ll come over here and look for a job. Going somewhere else works too. Anyway, I’m a fresh graduate, so it doesn’t really matter where I go. But if you go back to the Provincial Capital… then I’ll apply to stay at the university and teach.”

“Stay at the university?” This was the first time Xie Qingjia had heard about it.

“Yeah. Actually, my advisor’s been suggesting it for a while. He thinks my personality is better suited for working at a school, and he’s been helping me with the application the whole time. All the materials are already prepared. If I tell him I’m willing to stay, he’ll definitely be thrilled. I used to think teachers didn’t make enough money, but now that I think about it, it’s actually not bad.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve realized that going out into the workforce doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll earn more. At least working at a school is stable, and there are winter and summer breaks. That’s the biggest draw. You work so much overtime. If I’m busy too, then who’s going to take care of the kids later?”

“Kids?” Xie Qingjia froze.

“Hey, Xie Qingjia, what’s with you?” Zhou He wiped her hands with a wet wipe, then scooted her chair over beside him. “Don’t tell me you’ve never even thought about this before. If that’s the case, I’m going to be very mad.”

“No…” Xie Qingjia didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. How had the conversation gotten here?

“If that’s not it, then why haven’t you married me yet?”

Xie Qingjia: “I…”

“At the very least, you should propose first. Don’t tell me you think that just because we’ve already had an engagement banquet, we can skip the proposal part? Absolutely not. That’s a sense of ceremony. You can’t leave it out.”

Xie Qingjia: “No, listen to me…”

“No? Then propose. I’m ready.”

Xie Qingjia: “Right now?”

“Of course. Better now than later.”

Xie Qingjia: “…”

That was not how “better now than later” was supposed to work, was it? In a rental apartment, next to a dinner table still covered in used dishes?

But Zhou He looked at him with a completely serious face, as if saying, Hurry up and propose. The moment you say it, I’ll say yes.

At that moment, Xie Qingjia couldn’t bring himself to refuse. He suddenly stood up. “Wait for me a minute.”

Then he left. Just… left…

Even if it had all come out in the heat of the moment, Zhou He still felt just a tiny bit disappointed. She kept peeling shrimp heads and eating shrimp meat. Even though her push for marriage hadn’t succeeded tonight, her boyfriend really was excellent at making braised prawns in oil, so that balanced things out a little.

Ten minutes later, Xie Qingjia reappeared in front of Zhou He.

He was wearing a dress shirt and suit, with a tie as well. His hair had obviously been combed again, and he’d even changed into leather shoes.

Zhou He was eating with both hands covered in oil, and seeing him dressed like that made her a little unhappy. Seriously? She had only given him a tiny nudge about marriage, and he was already planning to use overtime as an excuse to escape?

She puffed out her cheeks, saying nothing and not looking at him.

Who would have thought that the next moment…

Xie Qingjia, standing beside her, suddenly dropped to one knee. He pulled a small object from the inner pocket of his suit and held it out in front of her. When she focused on it, she saw that it was actually a diamond ring.

Now it was Zhou He’s turn to be stunned. So he was serious? And there was even a diamond ring? When had he prepared that?

“Will you marry me, okay? Xiao He.” Xie Qingjia was so tongue-tied at this moment that this dry little sentence was all he could manage.

Zhou He was still holding up two greasy little claws.

Zhou He: “…” At least wait until I’ve washed my hands.

Xie Qingjia: “…” Weren’t you the one who told me to propose right now?

It was just… awkward…

If someone described this scene to other people, they would probably get laughed at, right?

Zhou He didn’t even want to remember how the two of them managed to stumble through the rest of the proposal process.

That night, when they went to sleep, she forced Xie Qingjia to swear once again, “If you dare tell anyone what happened tonight, you’re dead! Extremely dead!”

Sigh. Why was she always doing things this mortifying? Even getting proposed to felt like being shoved onto the stage.

Helpless, Xie Qingjia could only go along with her and declare his loyalty for the nth time. “Okay. Tomorrow morning I’ll wake up and forget everything. I won’t even remember it myself.”

Zhou He was still dissatisfied. “Then if someone asks whether you’ve ever proposed, or how you did it, what are you going to say?”

“Uh…” Xie Qingjia had a terrible headache. How had things ended up like this? Wasn’t she making things difficult for him?

Zhou He gave him an idea. “Later, go online and look up other people’s proposal stories. Learn from them, then we’ll get our stories straight. If anyone asks, our answers have to match.”

Xie Qingjia: “…”

The very person who had started all this was still complaining. “You had the ring ready, so why didn’t you take it out sooner? This is all your fault. If you’d proposed earlier, how could things have turned into this today?”

Xie Qingjia: “…”

Fine. Miss Zhou was always right.

–

After playing around for two more days, Zhou He went back to school and started preparing for graduation. Her thesis had already gone through several drafts, so there was basically no problem with it.

When she told her advisor that she was willing to stay at the university, the old man was delighted, just as expected. With his recommendation and backing, all the procedures went through very smoothly, and she would directly take a position in the department as a teaching assistant.

Most of the work was stuff she had done before anyway, so it wasn’t unfamiliar.

More importantly, staying at the university meant she could be assigned staff housing. In other words, after summer break, she could move straight from the graduate dorms into faculty housing, without having to worry at all about finding a place to live after graduation. She could also keep eating in the cafeteria. It was practically perfect.

During the May Day holiday, Xie Qingjia came to the Provincial Capital, and as soon as they met, he said to her, “I found an apartment online. It was renovated for the owner’s own use and hasn’t been lived in yet. It’s also close to your college. Let’s go take a look together and see if you like it. If you do, we’ll buy it.”

“Huh?” Why were they suddenly buying a house?

Xie Qingjia looked at her helplessly. “Xiao He, did you forget that we’re getting married?”

It wasn’t that she had forgotten, but buying a house would cost a huge amount of money, wouldn’t it?

The apartment really was nice, with a simple Nordic design. Three bedrooms, two living rooms, and two bathrooms, plus a study and a parking space. There was also a utility balcony and a terrace.

The original owners were a married couple. When they bought the apartment, they had just found out they were expecting, so the renovation materials they used were the best they could afford within their means. But just when the place had finally been renovated and aired out enough to be ready for move-in, the government transferred them away from the Provincial Capital for work. Left with no choice, they reluctantly put the apartment up for sale.

Xie Qingjia asked, “Do you like it?”

What was the point of liking it? The price was way out of reach. It was close to the school and part of a newly developed complex. Added all together, it would cost around 1.6 million. Even with only a 30 percent down payment, that was still 500,000.

Xie Qingjia understood her expression and reassured her, “It’s okay. If you like it, we’ll take it.”

Then he started negotiating with the owner and paid the deposit on the spot.

When the agent said that if they wanted both of their names on the property deed, they would need to provide a marriage certificate, Xie Qingjia said they hadn’t registered yet and might have to wait for the elders in the family to choose an auspicious date first. To avoid delaying the home purchase, he directly said, “Just put it under my girlfriend’s name.”

Zhou He was dazed the entire time.

It wasn’t until they walked out with the contract in hand that Xie Qingjia explained, “Over the years, I’ve saved up some money from part-time work and freelance jobs. Since we’re saving on renovation costs, we can put down 50 percent on this place. That way the monthly mortgage payments won’t be as much pressure. With the money left over, we can even buy a car.”

“Then why didn’t you buy one before?”

Xie Qingjia smiled. “Before, we still hadn’t confirmed where you’d be working. If I’d bought one in advance, wouldn’t that have wasted the first-home buyer quota¹? Besides, it wouldn’t have been cost-effective for me to buy a car over there by myself. I usually took the subway to and from work. And when I came to see you, the high-speed rail was faster too.”

Well, that did seem to make a lot of sense.

Zhou He was still immersed in the shock of discovering that her boyfriend had secretly saved up such a huge private stash of money behind her back.

Well, calling it a private stash didn’t seem quite right either.

Xie Qingjia watched her expression shift again and again, and could more or less guess what she was thinking. He teased her, “From now on, all the money I earn will be yours to manage.”

“Hmph, who wants that? You manage it yourself. I’m not taking on that kind of trouble.”

When she got back to the dorm, Fang Ya accidentally caught sight of the home purchase contract.

“Wow… no, seriously, girl, you lied to me when you said you weren’t some rich second-generation heir². Don’t tell me all those stories you told me before about your boyfriend were fake? You haven’t even graduated yet, and you’ve already bought such a huge apartment…”

Zhou He said expressionlessly, “Actually, my boyfriend bought this too.”

Fang Ya also went expressionless. “What a scheming man. He’s actually trying to lock you down with just one apartment… Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh…” In the end, she couldn’t hold it in and started losing her mind. “Zhou He, for the sake of our pretty good three years as dormmates, how about introducing me to your boyfriend’s younger brother? I also really want to be locked down like this~”

Honestly, Zhou He kind of wanted to lose her mind too…

–

Seven days after Zhou He published her book on the Little Green Website³, she finally received her first bookmark and comment.

Reader comment: “This reminded me of the days when I lived in the countryside with my grandma and grandpa when I was little.”

Because she was recording her own story, Zhou He wrote with remarkable ease. Of course, that still involved some censoring and a bit of artistic embellishment. She didn’t know whether her readers found it enjoyable, but she herself was certainly enjoying writing it. So ever since she started publishing, she had been uploading two to three thousand words every day without fail.

As the chapters and word count increased, the views and bookmarks also slowly began to climb. Her bookmarks had reached double digits, and reader comments were several times more numerous than her bookmarks.

Those adorable readers shared their childhoods in the comments, discussing some of the rustic dishes and childhood games mentioned in Zhou He’s writing…

Separated by the internet, Zhou He had no idea where these lovely commenters were or how old they were. But it felt as though she had suddenly gained a very special group of friends.

There were no other entanglements or complications. They had simply gathered because of that shared bit of beauty in everyone’s heart. What Zhou He might have been recording was not only herself, but also helping fragments of other people’s memories come back to life.

Writing was even more interesting than she had imagined.

On the twentieth day after she started publishing, she received a message in the backend. The sender was a site editor.

Translator’s Notes