At home.
His parents were asleep.
Zhang Ye did not dare make too much noise. He quietly went to wash up before going back to his room to change into his pajamas. He was totally comfortable now.
Ring, ring, ring.
His cellphone rang.
The caller ID showed that it was from his third cousin, Cao Mengmeng.
Zhang Ye picked up with a smile, “Hello, what’s the matter?”
Cao Mengmeng said angrily, “Brother, why didn’t you pick up the phone an hour ago?”
“An hour ago? Hai, it was because I had a meeting with the Vice President from school. My phone was switched to silent and I didn’t notice.” Zhang Ye usually switched his cellphone to silent before a meeting or whenever he was meeting a leader, if he remembered, because it would be inconvenient to pick up the phone and also to show respect to his leaders, “Why were you looking for me?”
“Hmmph.” Cao Mengmeng was less angry now, “Tomorrow, my school will be attending the New Year Gala at Peking University. Come over and fetch me.”
Zhang Ye said, “Are you participating in the performance too?”
Cao Mengmeng giggled, “I’m not performing, but our school does have something lined up. So I went over to our form teacher, Teacher Leng, and asked her to bring me along. So many teachers in our school know that you are my bro, so they specially gave me a ticket for a seat!”
Zhang Ye was angered and tickled at the same moment. “Hey, you little girl. Don’t keep taking favors from others under my guise. If you are coming, then come. Follow your school’s group and come. I have no time to go and fetch you. I have an exam tomorrow and I also have to grade the papers.”
Cao Mengmeng pouted, “You don’t care for your sister! I will complain to First Aunt!”
Zhang Ye happily replied, “You can tell anyone and it wouldn’t affect me. I will definitely be busy tomorrow afternoon. That’s all then. It’s already so late, so go to bed early.”
“OK. You petty man.” Cao Mengmeng reluctantly hung up the call.
Zhang Ye smiled a little inside. He browsed through his cellphone casually to see if there were any other missed calls before suddenly realizing that he was still logged into his chat app. With a shift in focus, Zhang Ye quickly opened the app and looked at his ‘Friends List’. Oh right, he had not added her yet. So he went over into the “Blossoms in Beijing” group chat, searched through the members, and finally found “Water Lotus Moon”‘s avatar.
He clicked.
Add Friend.
Du du, a response came quickly.
Zhang Ye had been used to his previous world’s QQ app tone — the one that resembled a coughing sound. He was still not used to this world’s chatting app’s ‘Du Du’ tone yet. The interface was unfamiliar to him as well and the design of it looked a bit off compared to what he was used to. Only after he clicked on the notification did he realize that his friend request was accepted.
Alright!
She’s online!
Zhang Ye sent a message over, “Big Sis, what are you doing?”
The reply was a little slow. After about a minute, a message came in: “Taking a bath.”
Zhang Ye: “Bathing and still on your phone?”
Water Lotus Moon: “In a bathtub, the phone won’t get wet.”
Zhang Ye: “Oic, are you going to rest soon?”
Water Lotus Moon: “Yeah, and you?”