[What the hell? Who did you say is there?]
[Wait—who is this white moonlight you’re talking about? Ming Qi’s white moonlight?!]
[…I thought you were childhood sweethearts, then you told me Yu Qinzhou had been scheming for a long time, and now there’s suddenly a white moonlight? So what this actually is, is tragic romance?!]
[Hold on, I think I suddenly understand why Yu Qinzhou was secretly in love.]
[Exactly! Why didn’t he confess? Because Ming Qi already had someone in his heart!!]
[Now that I think about it, “long-planned” and “lying in wait” really do hit differently…]
[Thanks, I analyzed it with you guys and now my brain is fried]
[I’ve already started imagining a 100k-word “white moonlight comeback arc + second male lead ascends” BL novel. Not gonna lie, I’m that kind of reader.]
[It’s fine if you like that, but I think Yu Qinzhou’s face looks a bit dark right now / hehe]
The man being directly named in the bullet comments narrowed his eyes slightly at the words “white moonlight.”
Then, using the height difference, he silently looked down at Ming Qi’s suddenly brightened eyes.
Ming Qi’s eyes were beautiful—usually, when he was pressed beneath him in bed, the corners of those narrow eyes would be flushed red, his gaze misty and damp like a thin layer of fog over water, enough to soften Yu Qinzhou’s heart every time.
But now, the same eyes were making him uncomfortable.
He slowly curved his lips.
So the Wen family matter really hadn’t been cleaned up properly after all. Wen Yulan was still showing up in front of Ming Qi because of Wen Hegeng’s incompetence. If he had known Wen Hegeng handled things this poorly, he never would have bothered working through him in the first place.
He clicked his tongue inwardly and sent a message to Xi Yixiu: What is Wen Yulan doing lately?
Xi Yixiu frowned when he received it.
Wen Yulan?
He had almost forgotten that name. Why was Yu Qinzhou asking about him?
Although confused, Xi Yixiu searched his memory and replied: Not sure recently. After the Wen family incident ended, he seems to have resigned from his teaching job and opened an art studio. I heard he even volunteers at an orphanage every week.
Volunteering? Sounds like he’s at least acting human now.
But—
Yu Qinzhou looked back at Ming Qi again, a trace of doubt rising in his heart.
Would Ming Qi really be that soft-hearted?
And logically speaking, now that they were together, why would Ming Qi look so happy just because he saw Wen Yulan?
A cool fingertip gently touched Ming Qi’s wrist. Yu Qinzhou suppressed his emotions and said casually, “Let’s go together?”
“Let’s go.” Ming Qi grabbed his wrist and eagerly led him toward the back street.
The back street was the strip behind Jing City No. 1 High School. Students called it the snack street.
Stepping out of the school gate and crossing the road immediately brought them into a completely different world. Long walkways were lined with food carts and small shops.
Ming Qi quickly stopped in front of a scallion pancake stall. It was lunchtime, so there weren’t many customers. The boss lounged in a chair basking in the sun. Seeing them, he smiled lazily. “Want pancakes?”
Ming Qi nodded, then turned to Yu Qinzhou. “Is that okay?”
Yu Qinzhou gave a quiet “mm.”
Ming Qi said, “Two deluxe ones, no scallions, add cilantro. Vice class monitor, you don’t eat chicken strips, right? One deluxe without chicken strips?”
Zheng Weiyan was surprised that Ming Qi still remembered his preferences after so many years and smiled. “Sure.”
But before the pancakes were ready, Zheng Weiyan was called away by a teacher from the same office.
Ming Qi immediately said, “It’s fine, I’ll bring it over for you later.”
Zheng Weiyan didn’t stand on ceremony.
The boss made the deluxe first. Ming Qi stood by the griddle watching the process while speaking to Yu Qinzhou. “This was my favorite during high school. I loved it a lot. I think no other place makes it as good as him.”
The boss immediately looked proud. “Of course. Our sauce is homemade.”
Then he added, “You’re lucky today. My wife was sick recently, so I stayed home taking care of her. We only reopened yesterday after her checkup said she’s fine. Otherwise you’d have come for nothing.”
The freshly made pancake was handed to Ming Qi, who passed it to Yu Qinzhou.
Yu Qinzhou lowered his gaze to it, then looked at Ming Qi. The young man was staring at him expectantly, eyes practically saying: eat.
Yu Qinzhou took a bite, hitting only the wrapper.
Ming Qi immediately asked, “How is it? Good?”
Yu Qinzhou, who had not tasted anything at all, paused for a second and nodded anyway.
Then he turned off his microphone and asked in a low voice, “Didn’t you say we were going to find Wen Yulan? Why are we buying pancakes?”
Wen Yulan?
Ming Qi blinked blankly, clearly confused, trying hard to recall when he had ever said that name. After a moment, he still couldn’t remember.
And… why would he go looking for Wen Yulan in the first place?
Ever since the Wen family matter was exposed and they had met briefly at a café near the Yu Group building, they had not contacted each other again.
He had never even heard that Wen Yulan was coming today.
Ming Qi said, “When did I say I was going to find Wen Yulan? Weren’t we just here to buy pancakes?”
The two looked at each other in silence.
Then Ming Qi suddenly remembered Zheng Weiyan’s words—“Let’s go together. I heard your white moonlight is here today too.”
A crack seemed to form in the fog of confusion.
He hesitated. “My white moonlight?”
Then he pointed at the pancake in Yu Qinzhou’s hand. “This?”
Yu Qinzhou: “……The scallion pancake?”
Ming Qi: “……Ah, scallion pancake.”
After a pause, he pointed toward a small tilted blackboard.
Yu Qinzhou looked over.
The stall name read: “White Moonlight Scallion Pancake Shop.”
Yu Qinzhou: “……”
Ming Qi: “……”
The atmosphere became awkwardly silent.
Until the boss handed over the second pancake, and Ming Qi took it, still thinking about Wen Yulan’s name. So… Yu Qinzhou had always thought he had a white moonlight, and that white moonlight was Wen Yulan?
That realization hit his heart hard.
He couldn’t help recalling Yu Qinzhou’s earlier disdainful tone whenever Wen Yulan was mentioned.
Ming Qi: “……”
He tried to hold it in.
Failed.
He burst out laughing.
Yu Qinzhou: “…Baby.”
Ming Qi raised a hand, signaling him to stop talking, and laughed even harder.
…
After discovering such a ridiculous misunderstanding, Ming Qi’s gaze toward Yu Qinzhou became increasingly strange.
Finally, Yu Qinzhou could not endure it anymore. He turned to the follow PD and asked, “Sorry, we need to discuss something private. Could you turn off the livestream for a bit? Or film the school instead.”
The follow PD naturally did not refuse.
That was their sponsor.
Once the camera disappeared and the microphones were removed, Yu Qinzhou pulled Ming Qi into the small grove behind the school, pressing him against a tree trunk.
He lowered his eyes, pinched Ming Qi’s cheeks, and asked, “Is it funny?”
Ming Qi’s cheeks were squished into a pout. His speech came out muffled. “Do you want the truth?”
Yu Qinzhou saw the laughter in his eyes and suddenly lost his anger. Instead, he leaned down and buried his face against Ming Qi’s neck, unable to help laughing as well.
“Baby,” he said softly, “I always thought you liked Wen Yulan before me.”
Ming Qi couldn’t help asking, “Why would you think that?”
He didn’t think he and Wen Yulan had ever crossed any line. Their distance had always been appropriate.
“Because people joked that he was your white moonlight.”
Ming Qi’s eyes widened.
Since when? Why didn’t he know?
He poked Yu Qinzhou’s waist. “Explain properly.”
And so—
It turned out that two years earlier, after the deaths of Elder Min and Elder Cheng, Yu Qinzhou had once again come to Jing City No. 1 High School.
That time, without Min Zhengyue, he came specifically to see Ming Qi.
He had coincidentally passed by Ming Qi’s classroom. Ahead of him was Wen Yulan, and inside the class there was only one other boy besides Ming Qi. That boy saw Wen Yulan enter and joked, “Your white moonlight is here.”
Yu Qinzhou didn’t know what he felt at the time. He only remembered that when he looked at Ming Qi, the boy had already grown brighter than before. He smiled at the teasing.
His narrow peach-blossom eyes curved slightly, beautiful beyond words.
But he did not look back at Yu Qinzhou.
Ming Qi had already forgotten most of that moment, but he could clearly tell Yu Qinzhou one thing.
“If I remember correctly,” he said, “Wen Yulan was holding a pancake at the time.”
During that period, he had been focusing on exams and returning to school after time away for acting preparation. Wen Yulan sometimes helped him bring meals, and Ming Qi only ever asked him to bring scallion pancakes when he went to the back street.
“Yu Qinzhou,” Ming Qi suddenly said.
Looking at the man in front of him, at his brows and eyes, he finally understood what “long-planned” and “lying in wait” had meant.
Then he said softly, “I don’t think it’s funny anymore.”
Yu Qinzhou paused.
“Even though it was just a ridiculous misunderstanding… did that misunderstanding bother you for a long time?”
“Are you feeling sorry for me?”
Yu Qinzhou lifted his face, meeting his bright eyes, and chuckled softly.
“Baby, that’s just me being stubborn and not talking things through. But I’m glad I’m not that generous of a person—after all, I carry the blood of the Yu family.”
“So even if I thought you had a white moonlight, I still didn’t let go.”
Then he raised his brows. “But—your white moonlight really was just a scallion pancake?”
Ming Qi paused, then laughed, wrapping his arms around his neck.
“There’s also a boy who once treated me to candied hawthorn on a street overseas many years ago.”