When Huo Zhixing arrived at Tong Qiu’s school, it just so happened to be half past four. The students were still in class but a certain teacher had already snuck out.
“I’m not disturbing your work, am I?” Huo Zhixing asked. He and Tong Qiu stood shoulder to shoulder on the curbside as they waited for a cab. “I remember you used to keep the students company every day and would only leave after their evening self-study session.”
“Teachers can occasionally take a break too,” Tong Qiu said as he struggled to give himself a good excuse. “My mental health has been under a lot of stress these days, which is why I always get migraines. The doctor said I shouldn’t overexert myself.”
Huo Zhixing suppressed a smile and though he didn’t speak, he could still see right through Tong Qiu’s little pretexts.
An empty cab arrived and the two climbed in. They sat together in the backseat, shoulder to shoulder and elbow to elbow. Even their legs were touching, with barely an inch of space in between. There was clearly plenty of room on either side but they were squished together in the middle, almost as if they were worried that others would notice that their relationship wasn’t quite so ordinary.
“Oh right, what happened to Fang Baicheng? He didn’t actually get detained, did he?”
“Are you worried about him?” Huo Zhixing tilted his head and looked at Tong Qiu. “I might get jealous, you know.”
Now that he and Huo Zhixing have slept together, Tong Qiu figured it wouldn’t be that easy for Huo Zhixing to make his ears turn red with embarrassment. Who would have known that the guy would actually admit to being jealous out loud? It actually made Tong Qiu all the more embarrassed.
However, no matter how wildly Tong-laoshi was dancing on the inside, he didn’t show a trace of it on the outside. Within the span of a few seconds, he organized his thoughts and settled down. A teacher was a teacher, and he was well-practiced when it came to putting on an act.
“I was only asking,” he replied.
“He was released last night,” Huo Zhixing said. “Zhao Heyu kept him until midnight and in the end, he finally admitted he was wrong and said he wouldn’t bother you in the future.”
Fang Baicheng must really have been scared. Before, he didn’t listen to a word whenever Tong Qiu tried to talk some sense into him. However, after entering the Sanhu Police Station, he realized that the police officers there treated Tong Qiu as their own. Moreover, Tong Qiu was considered an officer’s ‘family member’ so Fang Baicheng didn’t have the guts to continue his pursuit.
Tong Qiu actually felt a bit bad about the whole thing. While it was true that he could have reported Fang Baicheng to the police for stalking, he technically shouldn’t have dragged police officers from another district into the situation. It would look bad if word got out but privately, he was rather pleased and everything Huo Zhixing had said and done the night before had made him extremely happy.
He really should give himself a slap in the face.
After giving himself a mental scolding, he suddenly thought about a certain lyric from a song: ‘You were the one who wanted to break up at the time. If you wanted to break up, so be it. And now you want to use real love to woo me back again……’
He lifted a hand and rubbed at his temples. His mental state today was truly unstable and even though he was trying to convince himself to calm down, he realized with a start that Huo Zhixing was actually wearing a ring.
Tong Qiu knew the ring like the back of his own hand – it was their wedding ring. When they had gotten divorced, Tong Qiu took his own wedding ring with him. Afterwards, he kept saying he’d return it to Huo Zhixing but over the past little while, the two of them simply hadn’t brought up the topic.
He subconsciously rubbed at the finger that he used to wear his ring on. Before, the imprint of the ring refused to fade and Tong Qiu had once thought the mark was almost like their marriage – it had been stripped from his body but the imprint would never go away.
However, when he felt his finger, he realized that the patch of skin had already evened and there was no trace of the imprint to be seen.
Tong Qiu suddenly felt a little disappointed and was almost reluctant to give up that imprint.
That being said, two months had already passed. And who could have known that after these two months, he’d actually experience such a blissful fuck with his ex-husband and become so muddleheaded that he developed actual feelings for said ex-husband?
What’s the meaning of this?
Tong Qiu really wanted to ask, ‘Officer Huo, is it possible that you plan on marrying me again?’
However, he merely opened and closed his mouth, then swallowed, and didn’t say anything in the end.
Tong Qiu’s heartbeat was as erratic as before and even breathing had become a bit difficult. His mind couldn’t seem to function properly either. He had a feeling that Huo Zhixing definitely liked him, but that didn’t make sense. Shouldn’t Huo Zhixing be disillusioned at this point?
What version of ‘Tong Qiu’ did Huo Zhixing like anyway? It must be the mature, steadfast version of Tong Qiu, the version that was bland and gentle and hardworking.
And yet, what type of person was he in actuality?
Repressed.
The single word could be used to describe his entire being.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Overall, Tong Qiu felt that flirting was flirting, and fucking was fucking, but the person that Huo Zhixing actually liked was that falsely well-mannered Tong Qiu.
“P kjca ab jrx sbe j defralbc.” Kbcu Hle vlv tlr yfra ab jnblv ibbxlcu ja Leb Itlzlcu’r olcufg.
“Zw, jrx jkjs,” Leb Itlzlcu rjlv mjrejiis. “Dea sbe’gf cba jiibkfv ab jrx jybea jcsatlcu atja gfijafr ab Mjcu Djlmtfcu.”
Kbcu Hle ijeutfv, “Qts kbeiv P jrx jybea tlw!”
He raised his hand and rubbed at the tip of his nose. He mentally rephrased his question, then said, “It’s kind of a personal question, so you can choose not to answer.”
“Say it. I’ll do my best.”
“What type of person do you like?”
—
If life was an idol drama, then when Tong qiu asked Huo Zhixing “what kind of person do you like?”, Huo Zhixing would reply, without the slightest hesitation, “You’re the type of person I like.”
This was the kind of perfect scene that could make the audience clap their hands and yell out compliments.
However, they didn’t live inside an idol drama – the truth was, they lived inside a drama where the script hadn’t been written in its entirety and anything could happen as long as ‘God’ willed it.
As a result, as soon as the words left Tong Qiu’s mouth, the driver suddenly slammed on the breaks. Huo Zhixing subconsciously shielded Tong Qiu from harm. After they finished listening to the driver cuss out the car in front of them that had ignored traffic rules, Huo Zhixing turned to Tong Qiu and asked, “What did you say just now?”
Tong Qiu’s head began pounding. God knows how much courage he had summoned to ask that question. Now, his courage had already fled and disappeared entirely. He wasn’t going to say or ask anymore, to hell with it!
“I asked what you wanted to eat later,” Tong Qiu replied. “I want fried chicken.”
Huo Zhixing flashed an indulgent smile and his tone was just as indulgent when he spoke. “Sure, we’ll go eat whatever you want to eat.”
The current Officer Huo had no idea he had missed out on a golden opportunity to confess. Fate truly was a cruel mistress sometimes.
—
The movie theatre was on the top floor of the shopping center. It was still early when they got out of the car and they weren’t in a rush to get the tickets either. Tong Qiu stood on the ground floor and gazed at the directory for quite a while, but still didn’t know what to eat.
“Didn’t you say you wanted fried chicken?”
“I was just joking.” Tong Qiu remembered that Huo Zhixing didn’t like eating chicken. He had merely been sulking and had said it offhand.
He was taking out his anger on someone else even though he had been sulking on his own – Tong Qiu knew he was acting childish. However, he was only childish in front of Huo Zhixing. The majority of the time, he acted with the maturity of a teacher.
“How about this one,” Huo Zhixing said, pointing to a restaurant with a Japanese cuisine. “I remember you mentioned it before.”
It took a while for Tong Qiu to remember. He had indeed told Huo Zhixing about this restaurant before. It was about six months after their wedding and the restaurant had just opened. There was quite a buzz around the place and he had suggested they give it a try. Huo Zhixing had agreed at the time, but the both of them had forgotten about it and neither had brought up the subject again.
If Huo Zhixing hadn’t mentioned it, Tong Qiu wouldn’t have remembered it even when he had looked at the restaurant’s name.
“You have a pretty good memory,” Tong Qiu tilted his head and smiled at Huo Zhixing. “We’ll go to this one then and let’s say you owe me a meal.”
Though they had made plans way back when, who could have imagined that they’d actually realize those very plans two months after their divorce.
Speaking of irony, the last time they had watched a movie together was before their wedding.
Tong Qiu was suddenly baffled and he really wished he could travel back in time to see what exactly he and Huo Zhixing had gotten up to during their year of marriage. They had probably been busy putting on an act to portray that damned ‘gentleman’s demeanour’.
He suddenly realized that he was even worse than the idle little brats in his class when it came to wasting time. In the future – he truly had no right to lecture them.
—
When Huo Zhixing followed Tong Qiu upstairs to the restaurant, it just so happened to be dinner time. There were already around fifty people in line ahead of them. The server asked them to leave a phone number and told them that they’d call when it was time. Simply waiting outside the restaurant was much too boring, so Tong Qiu suggested that they shop around.
It was a date anyway, so they of course had to shop around.
No matter what Huo Zhixing thought, Tong Qiu was already treating tonight as a date.
Tong Qiu said, “You don’t shop around a lot, do you?”
Tong Qiu used to be the type who loved to shop. When he and Chu Yao had been in university, they would go shopping together as soon the weekend came and the day would pass by in a flash. However, the number of shopping trips eventually dwindled and he gradually got used to hanging around at home. But if someone were to drag him outside and give him the opportunity, he still had plenty of strength to do some shopping.
“Mm.” Huo Zhixing was walking next to him but his eyes didn’t dart back and forth between the shops. He simply smiled as he gazed forward, almost as if he was just accompanying his partner on a stroll and was only responsible for carrying the bags. “I come about once every five or six years.
Once every five or six years.
Tong Qiu was impressed. After holding back for a while, he still couldn’t help but say, “Your un-straightness sure is straight-like.”
Huo Zhixing really didn’t enjoy window-shopping. If he needed to buy something, he would go directly to the store to pick it out and would retreat as soon as he bought it. He moved as swiftly as the wind and didn’t dawdle for a single minute.
He used to think that shopping was a waste of time, but it was different now. How could anyone say that keeping Tong Qiu company while he shopped around was a waste of time? No, it was called ‘fostering love’!
They walked around aimlessly and wandered about. Tong Qiu felt that something was off – he suddenly realized that they were in the underwear area.
The fact that it was the underwear area wasn’t an issue – after all, who hadn’t bought underwear from the mall? The problem was, the shop that they were walking past had thongs of all different colours on display. There was even a sign hanging in the display window that said ‘Perfect for flirty guys’.
Shopping malls sure didn’t hold back these days.
Tong Qiu’s head hurt every time he saw the word ‘thongs’ these days. He wanted to sneak away but Huo Zhixing suddenly spoke up, “I almost forgot to tell you. I’ve washed your outfit so why don’t you come over to my place to get it some time?”
Tong Qiu licked his lips and thought mentally, ‘I’ll come if I must’. He chuckled and replied, “Ah, alright then.”
He said a mental prayer in the hopes that his ex-husband would spare him and avoid the topic of thongs at all cost.
Tong-laoshi still remembered the night he had let himself go in front of his ex-husband. His upstanding, righteous and stern ex-husband had pulled off his thongs and smiled against his ear as he whispered, “Don’t these thongs belong to your friend?”
At that time, Tong Qiu hadn’t given a direct answer and had simply pulled Huo Zhixing forward for a kiss. He had managed to dodge the question and the next day, Huo Zhixing hadn’t investigated the matter further so Tong Qiu had hoped the whole thing would be wiped clean.
However, Officer Huo didn’t hear his prayers at all. Huo Zhixing nodded at the thongs in the display window and said, “Don’t wear your friend’s in the future. If you like them, I’ll buy them for you.”
Tong Qiu nearly fainted on the spot. He waved a hand and said, “Thanks, but there’s really no need.”
Huo Zhixing was delighted by the teasing but he knew where to draw the line. When the salesperson came out and asked if they wanted to take a look at the latest spring styles, he quickly pulled Tong Qiu away.
Tong Qiu said, “Actually……”
“Mm?” Huo Zhixing was still holding Tong Qiu’s hand and hadn’t let go. He continued walking forward and acted as if nothing was out of the ordinary. “What’s up?”
“Those thongs……” Tong Qiu almost bit off his own tongue after he spoke.
Huo Zhixing hadn’t even brought up the subject, so why was he bringing it up?
“Your friend has a good eye,” Huo Zhixing said, flashing him a smile. “But next time, you should wear a pair that I buy for you.”
Tong Qiu had no strength left for mockery and was so ashamed that his soul felt as if it had been separated from his body. In fact, his soul was already on its way to ask Su Daji about some bedroom tips.
—
After leaving the underwear area, Tong Qiu finally released the breath he had been holding. He mulled over what Huo Zhixing had said. There was no way that Huo Zhixing would gift him a pair of thongs – it went against Officer Huo’s public image.
However, he wasn’t aware of the fact that between the two of them, the words ‘public image’ had long become obsolete. Tong-laoshi had already started acting on his reflexes when it came to his ex-husband and his ex-husband was no longer ‘that boring person’ to him.
The two of them went downstairs and Tong Qiu said he wanted to go look at maternity items. Huo Jiao was pregnant and in a few months, the little one would pop out of her stomach. Since they were here anyway, Tong Qiu figured they should see if there’s anything they could buy ahead of time to help Huo Jiao’s preparations.
“You’re very considerate,” Huo Zhixing said as he followed Tong Qiu to the maternity area. “A few days ago, Jiao Jiao even said you should pick a name for the baby. A name that sounds cultured as soon as you hear it.”
Tong Qiu leaned closer and smiled at Huo Zhixing. “What do you mean by ‘cultured’? I think your name is pretty good.”
When the two of them first met, Huo Zhixing had introduced himself as ‘Huo’ – as in Huo Yuan Jia – and ‘Zhixing’ as in knowledge as action. It had had a lasting impression on Tong Qiu and he had felt that it was a great name.
“Your name sounds good too,” Huo Zhixing said. “Every time I say your name, it puts me in a good mood.”
Tong Qiu gazed at him and suddenly thought of a saying that was something along the lines of, ‘when you like someone, their name will become the most beautiful word in the world’.
Isn’t this what Huo Zhixing was trying to say?
Tong Qiu was too embarrassed to ask but the palm of his hand – which was still being held by Huo Zhixing – grew a little damp.
—
They bought a little blanket for Huo Jiao’s unborn baby as well as a few cute bibs. When they were done, the restaurant server still hadn’t called so the two of them chatted about baby names. If one didn’t know better, one would think they were about to have a baby themselves.
“Oh hey, there’s a claw machine for plushies here!” Tong Qiu was extremely sensitive to these types of machines, not because he was particularly gifted or had the accuracy to grab one on each try. It was because when he had taken his class of teenagers on an excursion, they had passed by a claw machine. Every student had managed to grab a plush toy but Tong-laoshi, the person in charge, hadn’t gotten any.
At the time, Feng Kaiwen – the little punk – had said, “Tong-laoshi, you’re really dragging down the class. Our class average has sunk to the very bottom because of you.”
Tong-laoshi had lost all credibility and from that point on, he vowed that he would never touch a claw machine again.
“You want to play?” Huo Zhixing noticed the gleam in Tong Qiu’s eyes as he stared at the machine and assumed Tong Qiu liked it. He had already dug out some change and was about to go exchange it for game tokens.
“Ah, no, I don’t want to play.” Tong Qiu didn’t want to lose face even more in front of Huo Zhixing. “I’m not a little girl.”
However, Tong-laoshi’s refusal wasn’t very convincing. In Officer Huo’s eyes, his refusal was actually a helpless ‘yes’ that he didn’t want to speak aloud because of shyness or embarrassment. Hence, the ‘thoughtful’ Officer Huo strode forward to exchange tokens.
It was too late for Tong Qiu to stop him, so Tong Qiu could only rub at his temples as he silently prayed that Mistress Fortune would watch over him today.
He didn’t have many people left to lose.
—
Huo Zhixing exchanged a hundred game tokens. Beside him, Tong Qiu carried the token-filled plastic basket with little confidence.
“That kitten,” Huo Zhixing said as he stood in front of the claw machine with Tong Qiu. He pointed to a white kitten plushie with red cheeks and its butt sticking up in the air. “Looks like you.”
Tong Qiu didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “How does it look like me? My face isn’t that round.”
Huo Zhixing burst into laughter at his teasing. He stepped forward and pressed his face against the glass door to look inside, “Let’s go for that one. Today, we have to get Tong Xiao-Qiu out of there and you can bring it home tonight to keep you company.”
It even had a name now. Tong Qiu suddenly realized that Huo Zhixing was actually pretty childish too.
However, men who acted childishly actually seemed endearing sometimes.
“Alright then,” Tong Qiu said. “Then I’ll just wait for you to fetch it for me.”
Huo Zhixing turned to look at him and smiled as he began to insert coins into the machine. “Tong-laoshi, let’s make a bet.”
“Mm? What do you want to bet?”
“If I can grab it in one try, you have to let me kiss you. And if I don’t grab it, I’ll let you kiss me. How’s that?”
—
The author has something to say:
Tong Qiu: Officer Huo, you really have no sense of shame, do you?!
—
Translator’s note
Thanks so much for reading! I’ve subbed the ~exam scene from Chapter 18 and 19 and you can find it here! It’s one of my favourite scenes from the audio drama (and has some great implied papapa!) so I hope you enjoy! I will be subbing more cuts going forward so if you want to be notified as soon as a new video is released, you can check out the Chrysanthemum Garden Discord channel, subscribe on YouTube, or follow me on Twitter!
Once again, I just want to stress that the police officers depicted in this novel are very idealized and shouldn’t be confused with the atrocities that IRL police officers have committed. I understand that novels are an escape for many people (myself included), but if you do find the time I encourage you to learn about BLM and racism/police brutality faced by black and POC communities.
Ahhh they’re getting even more lovey dovey 🥰🥰
Thank you for the chapter and the audio clip ❤❤
Yes yes the romance is getting so sweet now~ No problem, thanks for reading and listening!
Tong Qiu will be happy only if he’s honest with Huo Zhixing. Why bother with insecurities? If officer Huo didn’t like Tong Qiu as a whole, he won’t be on a date with him!!
Is that kitten similar to Tong Qiu for the butt sticking up in the air? XD
Thanks for the chapter!
hahaha yes the TQ is a little wildcat after all 😆😆 thanks for reading!
So much subtle flirtation all over! ah these two are just…😆 thanks so much for the chapter ❤
Yeah! Their romance is definitely fluffier now! Thank you for reading!
Gimme more dogfood please!😍😍
Thank you so much for the chapter!(๑´>᎑<)~❤
There’s more delicious food to come hehe. Thanks so much for reading!
@ the author’s note: oh please Tong-laoshi, as if you don’t love it when he’s like that xD
Thanks for the chapter! 🙂
OHohohoho! This is so cute >_< it’s so fluffy and I feel so squishy~
Thank you for the chap!💕
Huo Zhixing , you are really good at making bet, lossless bet. 🤭
I’m just wanted to say that I can wear little few clothes some years but he said that he can don’t attend shops so long. Huo Zhixing, I’m your fan! And how he know what you will buy, and do this so quickly.
And I happy that they becoming closer and Tong-Laoshi accepting thought of remarriage.
This joke about the friend who choose thongs really kills me, Tong-Laoshi, this is will accompany you all your whole life, as long as you won’t confess for this.
I already fallen for These police-teacher duo .. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
The flirt game is too strong on this one
The conditions are very beneficial it was like a yes or yes lol
Buy them!
Thank You for the chapter ♡(ŐωŐ人)