Stepping out of the building, the cold wind brushed against Jiang Ran’s blank face. Recalling the previous moment, she still found it hard to believe that she had actually gone to deliver vegetables to someone—
In those five minutes, he had done way too much.
He was like a stray dog that had gone three days without food and finally stumbled upon a midnight feast. On her face, he kissed every spot he could reach without being scolded…
He nibbled on her earlobe, kissed and sucked, his hot breath almost making her jump up from the heat.
She could feel something pressing against her, and the clarity of it was becoming absurdly intense.
When she tried to lift her hips to escape him, he kissed her earlobe, his voice hoarse beyond belief: “I’m about to explode.”
Jiang Ran didn’t understand at first—what was about to explode?
She slightly turned her head, and a few seconds later, realization dawned. Just as she was about to say, “Then go ahead and explode like fireworks,” he backed down first.
“Forget it,” he mumbled. “It’s someone else’s office. It’ll smell too bad.”
Jiang Ran couldn’t comprehend—truly couldn’t—how someone could actually say something like that out loud. Just hearing it made her ears feel like they were rotting. What was wrong with him to actually voice such words?
So dirty.
The three words popped into her mind, perfectly overlapping with the exact words Qiu Nian had shouted at Li Xingnan that day. In that instant, her face paled, and she suddenly understood what her two friends had eaten that day at the mountain-top restroom…
A stream of vulgar curses flooded her mind, spitting out “damn it, damn it” repeatedly. The woman’s lips, kissed to a reddish hue, opened and closed weakly—she wanted to curse but didn’t even know what to say.
Finally, even when Beijiao took out her lip balm from her pocket and opened it, she didn’t react.
Mumbling softly, “This one’s really sweet,” he first smeared a thick layer onto his own lips, then leaned in to rub the melted balm from his warmed lips onto hers—
Sticky, with a minty sweetness.
He really liked that scent.
Smearing it onto her soft lips, it tasted like candy, sweet indeed.
He took the chance for a few more nibbles.
This time, the movements weren’t hurried anymore, even gentle, as if the thought of her lips bleeding had deeply embedded itself into his mind. As he kissed her lovingly, he couldn’t help but glance into her eyes…
Her long lashes, curled and delicate, covered most of the light in her dark brown irises, yet one could still glimpse a shimmer of moisture and redness at the corners of her eyes—
Beijiao thought of the photo of her in a high school uniform and couldn’t help thinking how beautiful she was.
So delicate and hard to please.
But she really was beautiful. Even the curl and density of her lashes were perfectly balanced—not like some people who wore fake lashes that made their eyes look big but dark and not that attractive.
He had already mentally delivered a thousand angles of his straightforward male gaze and endless praise when Jiang Ran finally snapped back to reality: “Are you really going out like this?”
He stopped kissing her, blinking in confusion.
Jiang Ran shifted her hips slightly, and the innocence on his face shattered, emitting a muffled groan somewhere between pain and pleasure: “It’s okay, the snow pants are pretty loose.”
And besides, it wouldn’t go away anytime soon either.
Unless you help me.
Then it might go fast.
He slowly added the last three sentences, ending the last one with a teasing tone.
Jiang Ran’s response was to shove his shoulder hard, stand up with a cold expression, and watch him collapse bonelessly onto the sofa. She grabbed her snowboard, opened the door, and went downstairs.
Now standing outside the door, Jiang Ran took a deep breath, exhaling a thick white cloud. Probably because her body temperature was too high, the contrast with the cold air outside was extreme, making the vapor unusually clear.
She hugged the snowboard tightly. Just as she was about to walk away, the door behind her opened again. The club owner peeked out like a thief, whispering: “Ran Jie, do you think if I give Beijiao a snowboard backpack to replace his old one, he might feel too embarrassed and agree to consider joining our club?”
Jiang Ran turned around. Through the window glass, she saw Beijiao crouched at the spot where she had stood earlier, one hand in his pocket, the other holding up the black bag she had picked up and then discarded.
Her lips twitched slightly as she said, “He’ll agree.”
Club owner: “Huh?”
“Go get the contract for him to sign,” Jiang Ran said in a hoarse voice. “He’ll sign it, trust me.”
Then, as the club owner stood there, utterly confused, she turned and walked away.
…
Jiang Ran spent the whole afternoon doing parallel turns with her snowboard. When others saw her, they laughed and joked about her trying so many tricks, even mocking her parallel turns as “smooth and lucky.”
She had a strong mentality in this aspect, so she just kept her expressionless face and let them laugh, even compulsively trying her drivespin, managing a 900° rotation.
Coming down from the steepest part, she casually did a nollie 720° on a blunt-nosed board—actually a 900° with a tail drag—then landed and switched to a drivespin 900°, a set of tricks with a difficulty level of 3.0 that left the snowboard novices on the slope stunned—
And also left Zhao Keshan, who was teaching some newcomers, equally stunned.
“I was wondering who the bold girl was,” Zhao Keshan said. “Thank goodness you joined the professional team. Otherwise, if one day you got bored and decided to play freestyle, you’d put us out of work.”
You have to admit, this playboy really is great in every way except being a playboy.
For example, Zhao Keshan always knew how to compliment people so well. Jiang Ran immediately felt better after his words, feeling warmed up and ready to bounce around on her red tree board again tomorrow.
She slid straight down the mountain.
Usually, Jiang Ran and others would slide from the summit to the halfway station and then take the cable car down, only sliding all the way to the lower section on the last run of the day. Today, passing through the beginner and intermediate slopes again, she slid faster than usual in a vengeful mood.
Her mind was full of thoughts like, “That’s more like it.”
When she arrived at the villa, Qiu Nian was waiting with his arms crossed, watching over a pot of soup that A Ju had prepared before leaving. His only role was to occasionally check the pot to prevent it from boiling over.
The warm temperature of the house and the aroma of the bone soup improved Jiang Ran’s mood a bit. Qiu Nian took the snowboard from her hands and looked at the binding angle, making a few “tsk tsk” sounds.
When he looked up and saw Jiang Ran’s relaxed expression, he assumed her afternoon date had gone well, even changing the binding angle. Isn’t that ridiculous? No sense of shame at all.
“Is the new little brother that good?”
She was a bit surprised, thinking the mutt was about to cool off?
Jiang Ran took off her snow jacket. Upon hearing this, she looked back at her in confusion, then realized what she meant and told her the whole story of meeting Long Da—
When she mentioned that she had caught Beijiao teaching a girl on the intermediate slope, causing her to catch an edge, she couldn’t help but smile widely as she imagined the scene.
Jiang Ran: “He just took me down a slope once, adjusted the binding angle— I still need to change it back later— and then we left. I played parallel turns on the mountain by myself in the afternoon. I’m almost doing a nollie 900° on a blunt-nosed board.”
That was the real reason for her good mood.
Qiu Nian was disappointed, feeling that this person just couldn’t grow up: “Didn’t you go on a date?”
“No, I spent the afternoon deepening my skills on the mountain.” The unchanging expression said, “Playing tricks is way more fun than dating.”
As she spoke, she took advantage of the fact that there were no men at home to take off her snow gear down to her moisture-wicking base layer, grabbed a hairband from the coffee table, tied her hair into a bun on top of her head, and prepared to take a shower.
As she tied her hair into a bun, she noticed Qiu Nian staring at her right cheek, so she asked curiously: “What are you looking at?”
Qiu Nian said: “You spent the whole afternoon deepening your skills on the mountain?”
Jiang Ran said: “Yeah.”
Qiu Nian nodded: “The mosquitoes in Jilin winters are really strong. They can survive even at minus twenty degrees. They must be iron-blooded mosquito warriors.”
Jiang Ran didn’t understand what she meant until she went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror—this afternoon, a certain dog had held her in his arms, kissed and nibbled her for five whole minutes. When she left, she had checked the mirror and noticed a slight redness, thinking it would fade soon and no one would notice…
But this dog had bitten pretty hard. Now some of the redness had turned into bruises, and there was even a small tooth mark on her right earlobe.
As Jiang Ran leaned over the mirror in disbelief, touching the marks that looked like she had been beaten, Qiu Nian pushed the door open: “I know you decided to leave that dog and start a new relationship is a good thing, but getting marked up like this on the first encounter is a bit too much—”
Jiang Ran blinked, but before she could finish speaking, suddenly both phones—Qiu Nian’s in her hand and Jiang Ran’s on the sink counter—vibrated at the same time.
It was the club owner tagging everyone in a group chat, asking them to come out and welcome the new member.
Sliding open the phone, she saw that the club owner had added Beijiao to the group, excited as if he had struck gold.
Qiu Nian still didn’t understand.
Until the club owner mentioned Jiang Ran.
[UMI, Target 200-pound Crab Boss: @WhoIsRanRanDuck I originally thought we couldn’t get him, until Ran Jie descended from the sky and witnessed the entire signing process. My lucky goddess, muah muah muah!!! =3=]
Jiang Ran: “…”
Qiu Nian: “…”
Qiu Nian: “So you went back to the dog farm for more training this afternoon?”
That “back” was really hurtful, implying that she kept going back to the same place, lacking any innovation.
“Does the boss know you’ve been working so hard for the club…” Qiu Nian, with an expression of mixed emotions, pointed at her ear, “…to this extent?”
“It’s not him!”
“If not him, then who else? I thought you had grown up and dared to try fast food now—”
“How can I not dare! But fast food is all gutter oil, right? It’s bad for your health!”
Qiu Nian let out an “oh,” then lowered her head to type in the group chat.
Niannian: @Beijiao Hello, Jinlongyu oil.
Jiang Ran: “…………………………”
When Beijiao inexplicably sent question marks to Qiu Nian, Qiu Nian, who was laughing so hard her whole body was shaking, was finally shoved out of the bathroom door by Jiang Ran in a fit of embarrassed fury.
……
The next day, at noon, at the mountaintop restaurant of Songbei Ski Resort.
Qiu Nian, A Ju, Zhao Keyan, and the much-disliked Li Xingnan, along with their group, occupied a corner of the cafeteria for lunch.
After just a few bites, a tray suddenly landed in front of her. Qiu Nian leaned forward to look and saw a plate of stir-fried winter melon and another of shredded potatoes—so plain that she almost thought a monk had come begging for alms… But when she glanced up, a strikingly handsome and delicate young man removed his face covering right before her eyes, exuding a wintry chill as he squeezed in next to Li Xingnan.
Li Xingnan leaned over to glance at his plate, then silently placed the bowl of braised chicken from his own tray onto the other’s. “Anyone who didn’t know better would think Songbei Ski Resort was going bankrupt—no visitors, and the ski instructors starving to death here,” he remarked.
The whole table burst into laughter, led by Aju. The joke was told by Li Xingnan. Originally, Qiu Nian didn’t want to laugh, but she couldn’t hold back and subtly curled her lips.
Bei Jiao lowered his head and quickly shoveled rice into his mouth. After eating just two pieces of meat, he respectfully returned the bowl of meat and half the plate of rice had already disappeared.
“Probably saving up,” Qiu Nian said, resting her cheek on her hand that held the chopsticks. “Jiang Ran said that when she gets married, the engagement ring has to be HW’s First Lady. Without that, there’s no way she’d agree to marry.”
Beijiao had no idea what HW was.
Qiu Nian thoughtfully opened the Xiaohongshu app to show him the search results. He hesitated for three seconds, questioning whether the price unit displayed was in RMB, his expression momentarily blank.
“It’s over,” Aju said. “Tomorrow we’ll probably be down to just one dish.”
“But if Brother Bei becomes malnourished, he won’t look good anymore. He won’t even meet the threshold to buy a diamond ring,” Zhao Keyan pointed at Qiu Nian. “Aren’t you harming him?”
Qiu Nian grinned as he put away his phone, while Li Xingnan asked beside him, “Want some?”
Qiu Nian’s smile vanished instantly, his expression turning blank as he stared at him.
“I can buy it for you.”
Li Xingnan said.
He doesn’t teach many classes and doesn’t earn a particularly large amount of money, but that’s because he grew up surrounded by wealth and has very little desire for material things.
There aren’t many occasions where money is needed in daily life, so I can’t be bothered to go through the trouble of earning it.
Now there’s something important to buy. If he doesn’t have enough money, he can always go teach classes—as long as he’s willing, students are never a problem.
However, faced with material temptations, Qiu Nian remained completely unmoved and simply said, “Get lost.”
Li Xingnan was unfazed, as if nothing had happened. Having just finished eating, he leaned against the wall and started browsing the official website of the jewelry brand to see if there were any other attractive designs.
“What about her?”
Bei Jiao finally looked up from his plate and asked in a relatively calm tone.
None of the people present except Qiu Nian knew what this dog had done to Jiang Ran yesterday.
So everyone was a bit baffled. Just a few days ago, the dog had been avoiding Jiang Ran like the plague, not even daring to go near the advanced slopes. What on earth got into it today, swaggering over and even taking the initiative to approach someone?
Qiu Nian thought about the tooth marks on Jiang Ran’s ear and wondered why the kid’s teeth were so sharp, biting without restraint. Under the table, she kicked him and asked, “Didn’t you see her today?”
“I’m at G-Suo,” said Beijiao. “Not a soul in sight.”
Oh.
Dalong plays flat tricks and usually doesn’t go to the G lift.
Qiu Nian narrowed his eyes into slits and said in a jargon no one at the table could understand, “To prove she can stomach gutter oil too, she’s been keeping herself busy, huh?”
Beijiao didn’t understand.
But subconsciously, I felt that this probably wasn’t anything good to say.
Just as he was about to ask in detail, two passersby drifted past their table, chatting animatedly—
Passerby A: “I saw Jiang Ran with some unfamiliar guy. While skating, she suddenly fell on purpose and sat on the ground whining and whimpering. She said, ‘I can’t get up, pull me up.'”
Passerby B: “Which Jiang Ran? The one who made me pay 2,000 yuan for her class last time and scolded me so badly I couldn’t even lift my head?”
Passerby A: “Yeah, I went up to ask her what was wrong, and she told me to ‘piss off and mind my own damn business.'”
(Note: The translation captures the original meaning while adapting the crude language to natural English slang with equivalent intensity.)
Passerby B was so absurdly amused that they burst into a series of “hahaha” laughter, then asked, “And who is that little brother?”
“I don’t know, haven’t seen him much. He’s really good-looking, like a Korean celebrity. He also uses MACH, speaks nicely, and is teaching Jiang Ran how to carve turns—”
“Jiang Ran? Learning to switch edges?” Another burst of absurd laughter followed. “Only Sister Ran would pull something like this, huh?”
The two of them were laughing happily, gossiping nonstop, when suddenly they heard a loud crash behind them.
Someone knocked over their own chair.
Turning back, I barely had time to see a tall figure at the silent table behind me—someone swiftly pulling a helmet over their head, striding over an overturned chair with long legs, and hurrying toward the door.
As I passed by a pillar, I casually picked up the red tree that was leaning against the wall and dripping with water.
That look was like a warrior galloping to the battlefield, mounting his sniper cannon, ready to leave no blade of grass standing wherever he went.
Passerby A was confused: “Who?”
Passerby B was also bewildered: “If I’m not mistaken, that’s Jiao Shen.”
Passerby A: “He came to Jilin? Rushing off somewhere in such a hurry doesn’t fit his usual persona.”
Passerby B: “Aren’t there plenty of big shots whose public personas have crumbled today?”
Passerby A: “Need to use the restroom?”
Passerby B: “Why do you look like you’re about to kill someone just to use the bathroom?”
The two of them were completely dumbfounded, staring at each other in confusion.
Not far away, the table of silent people finally snapped back to reality. Qiu Nian quietly picked up the chair that had been knocked over by Bei Jiao, paused for a moment, and then murmured, “No, he went to catch someone cheating.”
Tai Sui Yellow Amulet Paper FuLu Taoist Love Talisman Traditional Chinese Spiritual Charm Attracting Love Protecting Marriage