A CERTAIN SOMEONE ( THE ON1Y ONE )

Chapter 098 - Breaking the Silence

Ge, I Just Drank.

Calling a cab to Guangdong would truly be insane.
Jiang Tian switched to a different app subconsciously, and his fingers flew as he tapped on the screen. Until his fellow PhD tapped him, and said hushedly, his hand covering his mouth, “I thought there would be a chance to rest, get look around for a bit for a couple of days before we begin and stuff. Great, now that’s ruined.”
Jiang Tian then came back to himself. He looked through the arrangement for the next few days projected onto the screen, and looked at the flight information he was checking on his phone again. He pinched the bridge of his nose, thinking, I’m not too far off from insanity too.

He closed the app and switched the screen off. Just as he was about to keep his phone, he received Zhao Xi’s phone call.
“I need to receive a call,” he informed the professor, and left the discussion room.

“Xi-ge.”
“Oh, I was getting worried after you didn’t reply for so long,” Zhao Xi said languidly. He had been on a break for the past few days, and drove to the mountain to enjoy the hot springs. He was living quite a relaxed life, whatever he said to Sheng Wang was purely made up — he even received a few glares and finger pointing from Boss Zhao, who was listening at the side. “I thought you really are taking a cab there.”
“No way.”
“That’s great then, there’s at least some rationality left, you’re not at the point that you’ll recklessly go there without even finding out the hotel name yet,” Zhao Xi said.
“......”
Jiang Tian, who was this close to doing exactly that, strategically opted for a few seconds of silence.

Zhao Xi then continued, “Speaking of this, I’m a little puzzled.”
“What?”
“Why do you have to go all the way to me to get me to prod at him? Why don’t you ask him yourself,” Zhao Xi, as someone who had been through that, could relate oddly well enough; on the other hand, he wanted to just smush the two of them together already. “Just say give an address, I’ll go look for you. Does he have any other choice?”
Before Jiang Tian could even speak, Zhao Xi arrived at the conclusion all by himself. “Oh yeah, I forgot. You’re the secretly shameless type.”
Jiang Tian: “......”

“It’s not that.” He was silent for a moment, and his voice took on the tone of a headache, “He’ll run.”
Zhao Xi: “Huh?”
“Give him additional time and he’d overthink, and if he couldn’t come around to it, he’d run away.”

Jiang Tian could totally imagine that scenario — just like how someone wrapped himself up and mailed himself away to another class without saying a single word.
His cat inherited that point nearly perfectly; it was it who reached its paws out to claw at the edge of his pants, but it was also it who slipped away faster than an arrow after teasing like that.
Back then, Jiang Tian could compile a notebook to capture him back; but what does he have now?

“What to do then? Catch him off guard and ambush him? Not give him the chance to overthink and run away?”
“When he’s back from the business trip, I’ll wait for him after work,” Jiang Tian said. He did not know other addresses, but he did know the location of the company at the very least.
Zhao Xi imagined it, and found it a little amusing. He teased, “Why do I feel like you’re trying to catch a sparrow.”
Jiang Tian did not want to be the source of amusement for him, and said stiffly, “I’m hanging up.”
“Eh—” Zhao Xi stopped him.
“There’s still something else?” Jiang Tian stopped his climb up the stairs.

This time round, Zhao Xi stopped joking, He deliberated before asking, “About your mom……”
“She’s in a better state recently.” Otherwise, he wouldn’t have come back here on impulse. After he said that, his brows quickly furrowed for a split second, and added, “Maybe because she heard how Ji Huanyu’s health is failing him.”

“You would tell her this sort of thing?” Zhao Xi was the one who informed Jiang Tian of Ji Huanyu’s ailing health after hearing about it. He thought Jiang Tian wouldn’t bring it up even after he knew, seeing that this name should be the biggest landmine for Jiang Ou.
“I didn’t tell her, she found out from other people,” Jiang Tian said.