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Easily Set Aflame (Web Novel) - Chapter 18.1 — Prelude to the Wedding (1)
Chapter 18.1 — Prelude to the Wedding (1)
This chapter is updated by NovelFree.ml
The calendar on her computer showed that there was only one week left.
Prior to this, she had used a full week to repeatedly confirm with him what his parents and sister liked. Even for simply selecting a toy, she had shopped for three days. In this last week, after everything was all ready, she had actually begun to feel uneasy and could not even sit or stand in peace.
Such anxiety directly affected her quality of sleep.
At only just past seven o’clock, she was already greeting the freshly risen sun. Struggling, she pulled herself up and blearily groped her way into the kitchen to fry an egg for him. But eventually, when she caught the whiff of something burning, the person behind her took the metal spatula from her hand. “We’ll fry a new one?”
Thus… she had yet again successfully managed to turn an opportunity to butter him up into one of putting her idol through cruel suffering.
A delicious smelling egg was served up on the table and even paired with plain rice congee that was mild and delicate in flavour.
He handed her a pair of chopsticks. “You have work today?”
Mustering her focus to think about this question, she answered, “No, I don’t have any work this entire month.”
Yi Wenze put a spoon into her bowl. “Why are you up so early?”
Again, she tried her best to think. “Couldn’t sleep. Kept having dreams, one after the other.”
He smiled, not saying anything.
Jia He took a sip of her rice congee, then looked very nervously at him. “Will your mom ask me any sort of questions? My English isn’t very good; my skills are limited to listening only. And it seems my Cantonese is about the same…” Fine, she admitted it. Just now she had dreamt that she was meeting his mother, a very gentle, cultured woman, but one who spoke to her only in languages she did not understand. She had known it was a dream, but the more anxious she was, the more she had been unable to wake from it.
With languages and the type of beast that they are, frantic cramming will not make you proficient in them.
He selected a CD of classical music, then walked back amid its strains and sat down in front of her. “My parents were the ones who taught me my Chinese. There should be no issues in terms of communication between you and them.”
Secretly relieved, Jia He very quickly ate her egg and congee and, content now, went back to the room to catch up on shut-eye.
She slept all the way until noon, when a phone call came in. Having not gotten any good sleep for an entire night, she was too lazy to answer it and allowed the ringtone to sing over and over again until Yi Wenze answered it. After saying a sentence of some sort, he placed his hands beside her, propping himself on them, and told her softly, “Honey, it’s a call from your friend.”
Jia He gave a couple of “mmphs” and turned over. “Wait until after I wake up. Then I’ll talk.”
Resignedly, Yi Wenze encircled an arm around her, helping her up, while the other hand placed her mobile phone by her ear. “She said she wants to ask you to be her maid of honour.”
Maid of honour… Maid of honour?! Her eyes flew open. Her heart was spasming from shock. Then, wrapped in the comforter, sitting on Yi Wenze’s thigh, she quavered into the phone, “Who… who’s asking me to be her maid of honour?”
“Me! Me, your bestie!” Qiao Qiao’s voice was charged with excitement.
Taking some deep breaths, Jia He asked tentatively, “Is it that Weibo dude of yours?”
Ever since Xiao Xiao began calling him that, she had followed suit and had been referring to him like so for a long time already. However, this question momentarily struck Qiao Qiao wordless. And then, Jia He heard her say on that end of the line to the person beside her, “Hey, your name’s been changed for you, Weibo Dude.” After these words, Qiao Qiao continued speaking to Jia He. “Weibo Dude got an award. To celebrate, we plan on getting married.”
Jia He fell into a long silence. She tilted her head up and looked at Yi Wenze, wanting to say something, but her brain was utterly blank.
To have a flash marriage[1] to this extent—this certainly was shocking enough.
“Only you and Xiao Xiao are qualified enough to be my maid of honour. Xiao Xiao, though, is taller than me and also prettier than me, so she’s definitely the one being eliminated.” Ecstatically, Qiao Qiao gushed, “So, congratulations, you have risen to the honour of being my maid of honour.”
Jia He first gave a reflexive “mm-hmm,” but then very quickly her mind caught up. “When?”
“This weekend.”
This weekend? Her sleepiness completely cleared. “Is there enough time to book a hotel and get a wedding dress and all that stuff?”
Qiao Qiao laughed. “Before he came to Japan, he prepared everything. It’s all just waiting for me to go back and be a bride.”
Every single word was spoken like all this was only natural and right, yet linked together, they formed something that a normal person absolutely would never do! Before Cheng Hao went to Japan… That was a case of proposing before even dating the girl. And now it turned out that not only had he bought the diamond ring, even the hotel and gown and formalwear had all been prepared, ready when needed. Jia He’s brain was basically a muddled mess, but the actual involved party felt like this was all perfectly normal.
“I’m heading back to China today. When I’m back, we’ll talk in detail.”
With that, Qiao Qiao hung up the phone.
Yi Wenze set her mobile phone off to the side. “Do you still want to sleep?”
How could she sleep anymore? She nuzzled her cheek against his chest a couple of times, trying hard to find a feeling of reality in which she could ground herself. Then she murmured, “Qiao Qiao’s getting married and wants me to be her maid of honour. It’s this weekend.”
A smile could be heard in his voice. “Do you want me to go buy a dress with you? Or should we just go directly to the company’s seamstress and have her make one.”
Dress? That wasn’t the main issue at all!
“Weren’t we supposed to go to New Zealand?” She struggled over the words for a long time before finally stating the key point.
“We’ll go after the weekend. There’s no rush.”
She worked out the schedule. “Aren’t you in KL this weekend?”
He was not all that concerned. As he pulled open the comforter and helped her put on her loungewear, he replied, “I’ll try my best to hurry back.”
She beamed. Qiao Qiao and Cheng Hao both belonged to the entertainment circle. If he could attend their wedding, that lass would be so delighted she would burst. In the space of just this thought, he had already slipped her into a jogging suit. Very happily, she snugged in close and planted a kiss on the corner of his lips. “Thank you.”
He had not expected that she would be this happy. “It seems I really will need to hurry back.”
Qiao Qiao’s one sentence completely uprooted Jia He’s entire week and transplanted it over to Shanghai.
It was only when she arrived at her own home in Shanghai that she realized, since becoming a couple with Yi Wenze, it had been a long time since she last came back here. Dust coated all the furniture. After taking a whole day to clean the apartment, she gave him a call. “What do you think? Should I sell or keep my apartment here in Shanghai? If I keep it, should I rent it out or just leave it empty? It’ll be a lot of trouble if I rent it out, but if it’s left empty, it’ll just get really dirty and I’ll have to hire someone to come clean it regularly.”
She had rattled off a long string of words, but in reality she was merely giving him options “A,” “B,” “C,” and “D” from which to select.
Smiling, Yi Wenze listened to her until she had finished speaking, and then he answered, “I have a house in Shanghai, so there are no problems with where to stay if we want to go back. As for this place of yours, just do with it as you would like.”
She knew it, knew that if she asked him, he would certainly give this answer.
After a long moment of silence, she purposely gave a long sigh. “I’ll just keep it. If in the future we divorce, I’ll still have some property of my own.”
“How about we sign a prenup?”
A prenup? She had actually thought about this particular matter as well. It would be a little fairer to him that way.
“Sure.” Her answer was given with seriousness. “Should we find a lawyer? Or just have the law department in your company help us draft up the agreement?”
After an even longer silence, he had a drink of water and stated, his tone warm, “No need. I can do it. One sentence and that will be enough.” His voice became gentle. “In the event of divorce, Yi Wenze shall leave the marriage with nothing.”
Stunned, Jia He sat on the couch and listened to the sound of her heartbeat, each thump becoming more and more apparent.
In the end, she finally gave a little laugh. “I’m not signing that even if you beat me to death. If you end up on the streets, there’ll be tens of thousands of fans who will hack me to death.”
He chuckled, then told her softly, “Honey, I need to board the plane now.”
The matter of what to do with the apartment could be set aside for the time being, but the car did need to be sold.
When she bought the MINI cooper, she had had to ask Xiao Yu to specially order it in for her, for it was a limited edition. At the time, she actually had not wanted to spend the money on it and Xiao Yu had spent a long time persuading her, but now that she was having someone sell it for her, she discovered that there actually was an advantage to it being a limited edition. She had initially thought that it would not be sold and off her hands until she came back from New Zealand, but to her surprise, two days later there was already someone wanting to test the car.
She had not driven it very much, so though she had had the car for two years, the number of kilometres on it was less than that of other people’s cars that had been bought for two months.
The potential buyer, a young girl, was thrilled as she tested it, sighing over and over again that buying this car was worth it. She asked in passing, “This is such a hard car to even order in. Why would you want to sell it? You haven’t put very much mileage on it either.”
While Jia He was still pondering on what good explanation she could give, Qiao Qiao, spooning out some ice cream and feeding it into Jia He’s mouth, grinned at the girl, “She found herself an impossible-to-get, so this limited edition is not valuable to her anymore.”
That young girl was very envious. “An impossible-to-get? In the future when you sell that one, remember to come find me first.”
Holding her silence, Jia He tossed a glance at Qiao Qiao. The latter, though, had already thoroughly dissolved into a fit of laughter that was about to give her internal injuries.
At the end, when they were doing the car inspection, Qiao Qiao finally gave a light sigh. “It was just during the early spring of this year that I said that if I could somehow happen upon a guy who’s hot and devoted and a ‘yu choy,’ I’d give up on that bass player. Never had I thought, oh, never had I thought. I really did give up on him, but Ol’ Man Heaven gave that type of guy to you instead.”
Her comment brought out giggles of amusement from Jia He. “How about we switch?”
Qiao Qiao mulled on this briefly, then put on an expression of “Oh, please, let me off the hook!” She said, “Forget it. To kiss the idol of the whole nation and then do some for-mature-audiences-only stuff with him? … Forgive me, this little woman that I am, for being unable to accept that.”
In reality, Jia He had once had these same thoughts. But that person just had to be Yi Wenze.
He was too smart. He had practically swept away all the obstacles and shattered every bit of her worry and uneasiness.
During their phone call that night, she casually mentioned Qiao Qiao’s musings, and then she suddenly asked him, “You wouldn’t have some sort of weird child fetish, right? When I was in middle school, I really was not pretty. My hair was short, and I didn’t like to wear skirts either.”
Yi Wenze was currently waiting for a connecting flight, and there was a faint sense of fatigue in his voice. “Are you trying to say that I wanted to raise a Loli for myself?”
Jia He laughed. “It actually does seem like it.”
Yi Wenze seemed to sigh. “My younger sister is definitely going to like you a lot.”
Jia He asked him, “Why is that?”
“She explained that concept to me for a long time and told me that I had to tell it to you.”
Jia He was unable to hold back her chortles. “Tell her, I get it, and I also have grasped the essence of it.”
The two spoke a few more sentences about some arbitrary things, before she remembered that he still had not told her the true reason yet. She, in fact, just wanted to ask him, why? Why me? Why not someone else? Over these many years, of the people with whom he had worked, just the number of screenwriters alone was probably too great to count. If she really were to judge, out of all of his fans, she was absolutely the most introverted and reserved type, and there really was nothing about her or that she had done that was very touching.
She lay on the window seat, both her feet resting on the windowpane. Before long, due to the temperature difference between the interior of the home and the outdoors, two wet prints were stamped on the glass. This entire time, Yi Wenze had been discussing work matters with someone beside him. She waited for a long while before he finally asked, “You’re still not going to bed?”
In a rare expression of displeasure, she countered, “I’m still not done asking.”
He chuckled. “Go ahead, ask.”
“Why did you choose me?”
On his end, there was a momentary silence, as if he was contemplating.
A little voice at the bottom of her heart grumbled, Do you really need to think about it for so long?
“You’ve asked me this before.” He gave a light laugh. “If I posed this same question to you, how would you answer it?”
Jia He had not expected that he would toss the question back to her. Many reasons popped up in her mind, but eventually they were all dismissed and she could only respond vaguely, “Actually, it’s honestly not because you’re my idol. As for why… I can’t say either.”
He seemed to have already predicted that this would be her answer. “This question needs to be talked about face to face. But when we do see each other, there’s no need anymore to talk about it.”
Jia He gave an “oh.” The underlying meaning of that sentence was very obvious: she would have to burn away in her curiosity.
[1]闪婚 “shan hun.” A “flash marriage” or “blitz marriage” is a relatively recent term in China describing couples who have dated each other for a very short period of time or even just met before quickly getting married. The phenomenon is becoming more and more common in China as couples feel pressured to get married for financial reasons, such as rising housing costs, or, sometimes, due to age (and pressure from parents).
This story was translated with the express permission of the author for hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com only. All forms of reproduction, redistribution, or re-posting are not authorized. If you are not reading this from hui3r[dot]wordpress[dot]com, the copy is unauthorized and has been taken without consent of the translator.
