The Brightest Star in the Night Sky || 时代少年团

🖤CHAPTER 20💛

They all rushed out to see why Meiqi was on Jiaqi's back. "What happened", asked Yaowen. "She hurt her ankle", Jiaqi replied.

Yaxuan gasped, "Jiejie are you ok?". "What were you guys even doing that made her hurt her ankle", Haoxiang asked. Jiaqi looked at Meiqi for a second before turning back to them and not saying anything. "Sooo, you gonna tell us?"

"Nope. Anyways Meiqi needs to rest tonight. Leave her alone". Jiaqi turned over to Meiqi and whispered, "This is our secret, don't tell them". "What'd you say?", asked Junlin. Jiaqi just shrugged it off and walked away. The rest of the night consisted of TNT pestering Jiaqi about what he and Meiqi did but his mouth would not budge. Meiqi was so happy that night she couldn't sleep much. It was the same for Jiaqi. This time Chengxin was the one asking why Jiaqi couldn't sleep but all he got was an "I don't know". Chengxin on the other hand, couldn't sleep because the scene he had seen of Jiaqi and Meiqi had been bothering him a lot, a lot more than he had expected. It wasn't like Meiqi was his girlfriend but he couldn't help but feel jealous and envy seeing them together.

He had wanted to ask her how she was feeling with her ankle but decided to wait till the next morning.

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They gathered around the table for breakfast. Both Chengxin and Jiaqi were cooking since they couldn't sleep. It was a rather restless night for them but for different reasons. "Where's Meiqi?", asked Yaxuan as they were all eating breakfast.

"I'm here", she said, hobbling downstairs. "Sorry, kind of slow today".

"I think we need to take you to see the doctors", Junlin commented. Haoxiang chimed in, "Yea, you seem to be in a lot of pain". Meiqi didn't really know what happened to her ankle, she just knew she was in pain. TNT's manager's heard about what happened to Meiqi and decided that she should rest for the day, which meant no dance practice, only vocal.

Chengxin and Meiqi got called into the office to hear the news, "Meiqi, don't dance for today till your ankle gets better. We don't want you to get hurt anymore". Chengxin's face was visibly disappointed though he didn't want her to get hurt anymore either. Meiqi wanted to say she was fine but she was really not fine, the pain was only getting worse by the minute.

"Chengxin will bring you to the doctors today", TNT's manager continued. Chengxin's face lightened at the mention of that, at least he could still spend time with Meiqi today.

They arrived at the hospital, waiting for their turn. Chengxin wanted to talk to Meiqi but was unsure of what to say. He found himself staring at her for a while until she turned to him and he quickly looked away.

"So how did you get hurt?", he finally decided to ask. "I tripped yesterday", she briefly answered. "You tripped while walking??". This seemed kind of absurd to Chengxin.

"Oh no, I was running and tripped and then fell down", Meiqi said pointing to the bandaid on her knee. "Why were you even running to begin with? And where'd you go with Jiaqi". Meiqi hesitated answering, after all Jiaqi told her not to tell anyone. She decided to just curveball the question, "Nothing much, we just went for a walk". Chengxin wanted to ask more but it seemed like Meiqi wasn't going to say anything else so he stopped. After a minute, Chengxin decided to tell her that he had been looking for her yesterday.

"I wanted to find you yesterday after practice to talk about the dance but couldn't find you".

"Oh sorry about that. What did you want to tell me?".

"Nothing much, I just wanted to discuss how we could dance better. Feel like we're not going to give a good performance at the rate that we're going..", Chengxin trailed off. "Not that you're not good but it's a couple dance after all and we seem rather uncomfortable with each other...".

Meiqi's face expressed guilt, although she wasn't good at these types of dances she knew it had been extra difficult dancing with her. There were so many awkward moments. "Yea, I agree but what can we do to be more natural?".

"Spend more time together", Chengxin whispered. He had actually meant to say that to himself, he didn't know why he said it out loud. Meiqi was caught off guard, it wasn't the answer she expected but if she thought it through it made sense. She didn't want to think there was more meaning to it than just for the performance. Meiqi nodded, "Then what do we do? I'm kind of crippled right now..", she said awkwardly laughing. Before Chengxin could answer, Meiqi got called up to see the doctors. He decided he would figure it out after they go back home.

Meiqi was originally supposed to go back to practice with Jiaqi but he had a schedule pop up so she was told to go back to the dorms to just rest for the day. Chengxin went home with her, worried that she would have difficulty getting around the house if no one was there to help her.

It was already 1 and both of them hadn't eaten yet. Chengxin's stomach let out a rumble, causing him to be embarrassed. He headed to the kitchen thinking Meiqi must be hungry too, "I'm going to make lunch for us". Meiqi followed him there."What are you doing here? You can just watch TV and wait".

"I wanna watch. Maybe I can finally learn". Chengxin let out a smile. "I can tell you're not the best from last time when we made dumplings". Meiqi pretended to be offended with furrowed brows but released them, "Yea we don't talk about that...". A majority of her dumplings had exploded because there was too much stuffing and Chengxin ended up having to clean up after her.

Chengxin went and took the ingredients out of the kitchen. "We're gonna make fried rice and tomatoes with eggs. Very easy, you should be able to learn". Meiqi nodded and observed. Chengixn was quite skilled in everything that he did, after all he had been cooking for TNT all these years. He'd wished they would learn too, so he didn't always have to be the one cooking, but seeing the times that Yaowen missed putting the egg into the pan, Yaxuan not cooking noodles properly, Haoxiang almost burning the house down, he thought it would just be easier if he and Jiaqi did the cooking. Meiqi looked at Chengxin handling everything with ease, he looked quite charismatic, and Meiqi couldn't help but admire him.

"Do you wanna try?", Chengxin asked, handing the ingredients to her. She took it and attempted to put it in the pan but jumped from the oil splattering everywhere, bumping into Chengxin. He laughed, guiding her hand like last time, "You can't throw it in like that, it's going to splatter everywhere". She continued to put ingredients in, but there was suddenly a burst of flames from the pan, not only burning the food but also Meiqi's hand. "AHHHH", yelled Meiqi.

The pan was now on fire and the fire alarm was going off. At that moment the door opened and Jiaqi saw the disaster that was brewing. He had left his clothes for his other show at home and came back to get it but was faced with something much worse. He ran to get the fire exhauster and put out the fire.

Little did they know how much trouble this fire would cause...