Chapter 56: Let's get acquainted all over again. My name is Liu Xiaoli!

Deep within the performance hall of the Jiangcheng Song and Dance Theatre, inside a pavilion in a small garden.

"How did you suddenly come to Jiangcheng? It's not even time for a holiday yet, is it?"

Liu Xiaoli could feel a slight stinging sensation from her knees and elbows, but she had already resumed her usual calm and elegant composure.

Sitting face to face with Cheng Kaiyan, she chatted with him while carefully observing the remarkably handsome man before her.

He was wearing a black woolen overcoat, with his elbows resting on the stone table. Reclining slightly, he looked at her with a smile in his amber eyes. The scene was just like the pose in that old photograph of his.

However, he was no longer the thin, fifteen or sixteen-year-old boy, but a twenty-year-old, gentle-looking young man.

This gave Liu Xiaoli a dazed feeling, as she sensed a kind of magic brought by time.

After all, in her mind, Cheng Kaiyan's image had always been that of a fifteen or six-year-old boy.

Perhaps this was where Cheng Kaiyan's craftiness lay...

"Of course I came here specifically to find you. After all, some matters cannot be left unclarified in person."

"I'm sorry..."

Liu Xiaoli lowered her head and remained silent for a long while before whispering with full apology.

Hearing Cheng Kaiyan's words, she knew he was referring to the letter she had sent to call off their engagement.

Come to think of it, for such a major matter, sending merely a letter was indeed rather disrespectful to the other person.

"Well, that's all in the past. I came to Jiangcheng this time to see you and give you a surprise."

Cheng Kaiyan waved his hand; he hadn't come here to listen to apologies.

In Liu Xiaoli's heart, there was both guilt and relief—relief that the person she had encountered was him.

Had it been anyone else, she wouldn't have dared to imagine what kind of conflict might have broken out.

Comrade Cheng is truly a good person...

The young girl tugged at her skirt and thought to herself.

"Then... when did you arrive? Yesterday? Today? Have you found a place to stay yet?"

Liu Xiaoli was in a much better mood now and asked with concern, assuming that Cheng Kaiyan had come to find her the moment he arrived.

"A few days ago, I suppose. I'm staying at a guesthouse right now."

"Mm-hmm."

It seemed their conversation had fallen into an awkward lull. Silence descended between them for a moment, neither knowing what to say.

After quite a while, Liu Xiaoli broke the silence: "Is our agreement still valid?"

"Of course. Wasn't that decided long ago?"

Cheng Kaiyan nodded.

"That's good."

The girl suddenly stood up, looked at Cheng Kaiyan, and said with an extremely serious expression, "This agreement wasn't a way to stall for time. I am serious—very, very serious. Do you know that?"

Cheng Kaiyan looked up at her in surprise and said with equal seriousness, "Alright, I'm serious too."

Hearing the answer she desired, the girl's jade-white, pretty face suddenly blossomed into a brilliant smile. Her dark, beautiful eyes fixed on Cheng Kaiyan, and then she gracefully extended her hand, "Comrade Cheng Kaiyan, then... let's introduce ourselves again! My name is Liu Xiaoli, and I am a dance actor."

"Comrade Liu Xiaoli, I am Cheng Kaiyan, an utterly ordinary university teaching assistant."

Cheng Kaiyan also smiled, and with a clean and decisive motion, he grasped the slightly blood-stained little hand before him. Her touch felt boneless and delicate, making his heart skip a beat.

Perhaps for the rest of his life, he would always remember this heart-stirring moment.

"You forgot that you're also a writer! Mister Great Writer!"

"Aren't you the same, Madam Dancer!"

"Hahaha!"

"Giggle..."

Holding hands, the two looked at each other and smiled. In the reflection of each other's eyes, they felt as though their very souls were trembling.

Liu Xiaoli suddenly thought of a saying: gazing into each other's eyes is a kiss without carnal desire...

In an instant, a flush of crimson rose across her fair, pretty face, adding a touch of enchanting allure to her gentle and poised demeanor.

The two felt the warmth from each other's palms, the texture of skin, the brushing of bones, and the quiet drawing closer of their two hearts at this very moment...

At that exact second, it seemed as though red threads were gradually intertwining between them, slowly melting into one...

"Sister Xiaoli, where are you?"

"Xiaoli!"

At this moment, the voices of several girls came from afar, breaking the hard-won peace between the two.

The two hastily released the hands they had been tightly clasping and looked toward the source of the voice, spotting several girls jogging over from the corridor.

"They're my friends. Earlier, our teacher wouldn't let us meet people from outside the theatre alone, fearing something might happen. So when I came out to find you just now, they got a bit worried."

While explaining, Liu Xiaoli put her hands behind her back and secretly wiped her palms, which had grown damp from nervousness. Fortunately, Cheng Kaiyan didn't notice, which made her breathe a sigh of relief.

"Well, you should mind your safety afterwards too. Don't go doing something like this again."

"That's different... You are..."

"What am I?"

...

Wang Danping, dragging Zhang Yi, Xiao Caiyun, and the others, had searched the theatre for quite a while before finally discovering bloodstains near the wooden flooring of the corridor.

These traces frightened the group, and they hurriedly searched the surrounding areas of the theatre, worried that something might have happened to Liu Xiaoli.

Fortunately, not far from the bloodstains, they spotted Liu Xiaoli's figure—though she had a young man accompanying her.

"Is this the man looking for our Sister Xiaoli?"

"Must be. He looks so tall."

Wang Danping bit her fingernail and muttered.

"Northerners do seem to be taller than us. Look at Xiaoli, she's from Harbin, and her figure is more slender than ours too, right?"

"That's true. Who do you think this man is?"

"No idea. Judging by the looks of them, they seem pretty close."

Though everyone was worried about disturbing Liu Xiaoli and the man, they were even more concerned for her safety, so they trotted over all at once.

...

"Danping, why are you all here?"

"We came to look for you. We saw a lot of blood in the corridor just now and were worried something happened to you, so we came over. Sister Xiaoli, are you alright? You were bleeding earlier."

Wang Danping walked over and keenly noticed that Liu Xiaoli seemed to have blood stains on her.

"I'm fine. I was running too fast earlier, stepped on my dress, and took a fall."

Liu Xiaoli patted the young girl's back and explained.

"That's good. You scared us to death."

The group chimed in with a flurry of overlapping concerns.

At this moment, Xiao Caiyun looked at Cheng Kaiyan and asked, "Who is this male comrade?"

"Yeah, Sister Xiaoli, who is this male comrade?"

Liu Xiaoli glanced back at Cheng Kaiyan and generously introduced him to her friends: "This is Cheng Kaiyan, my younger brother."

The two could not truly be considered a couple yet; a few letters and a single meeting were not enough to foster deep romance between them, but calling each other siblings was not crossing any lines, leaving room for their relationship to develop further.

"Oh, oh!!"

"It's you! Cheng Kaiyan, I've seen your name on the envelopes!"

"That's right, that's right. Just last week we were saying you were a li—" Wang Danping blurted out.

Xiao Caiyun, standing beside her, quickly covered Wang Danping's mouth and asked, "But aren't you in Beijing? How did you end up in Jiangcheng? It's a journey of over a thousand kilometers."

"I came to Jiangcheng on some business and stopped by to check on our Sister Xiaoli."

Leveraging his height advantage, Cheng Kaiyan gently patted Liu Xiaoli's hair.

"So unpolished."

Liu Xiaoli's gentle and poised expression remained unchanged, a smile still gracing her face as she swatted away his mischievous hand, perfectly embodying the image of a gentle elder sister in everyone's eyes.