Xia Qing didn’t know what she actually expected, coming all the way out there to Yu Tu’s neck of the woods. By the time eight o’clock rolled around and she had waited for the better part of two and a half hour, she was really questioning her own sanity. After all, why was she doing this, sitting here in a deserted café in the middle of nowhere, staring at a cold cup of tea for the last two hours, looking for all the world like she’d either been dumped or stood up, waiting for someone that might never show?

~*~

He did show up, though, and for a second, Xia Qing’s heart lifted with hope – perhaps her patience and suffering had moved him after all.

That hope vanished almost as quickly as it’d come, as he was stony-faced and impatient, sullen and silent, and Xia Qing wondered what he would have deigned say to her if she had not brought up Qiao Jing Jing, which obviously hit a nerve with him.

Realising this, she saved her most devastating words for last – “No wonder you went back to the research institute, it’s not like you have to worry about those material things anymore” – and the way his jaws twitched and his brows drew together, just for a second, gave Xia Qing a flash of spiteful pleasure.

Except, that spiteful pleasure vanished, just as quickly as it’d come, too, when she forced herself to admit, out in the drizzling cold, that all between them must now be at an end.