Page 34 of He Is My Bride
Great, my tits will literally melt off.
Luckily they didn’t have to go far until they heard someone call out to them:
“Hanjun!”
“…Hanrong?” Hanjun answered in recognition. “You wouldn’t have needed to come for us.”
Yet Li Ying could tell Hanjun was happy to see his closest cousin.
“I wanted to surprise you.” Hanrong smiled.
He looked so much like Hanjun, but his whole way of being was different: he was leaning casually on the white BMW Gran Coupé, a hand in his pocket, and his smile was charming. Li Ying thought he had kind eyes and an approachable presence, whereas Hanjun was more reserved. They couldn’t have been more different, even if they almost looked like brothers.
“Hanrong, this is Li Ying, my girlfriend.” Hanjun looked at him with soft eyes as Li Ying removed his sunglasses and smiled at the older cousin. “Li Ying, this is Wu Hanrong, my cousin.”
“Nice to meet you, Miss Li.” Hanrong held his hand out for him.
Li Ying took his hand and gave it a shake. “Nice to meet you too, Wu Hanrong!”So, this is one of thecousinsfromHanjun’sgrandfather’s side.Li Ying recalled.The oneHanjun grew up with and trusts like a brother.
“Strong arm,” Hanrong noted, still smiling.
“Ahaha, I know!” Li Ying then introduced Anne as his assistant, and she and Hanrong shook hands.
“Let’s get in the car, I’ll drive you where you need to go.” Hanrong gestured towards the car and they all got in, Anne being aided by the man in a suit while Hanjun helped Li Ying sit next to her in the back.
“Myself and Li Ying will go to my place. Miss Lü will stay at this hotel nearby.” Hanjun showed Hanrong the address from his phone and he fed it to the GPS.
Hanrong drove them out of the airport and up to the motorway.
“How was your flight? Did you sleep?” he asked.
They chit-chatted on the way, and as Li Ying didn’t shy away from conversation, Hanjun fell quiet and let him and Hanrong carry on. They seemed to get along.
They both are the kind of people who get along witheveryone,Hanjun thought.
Hanjun was looking out of the window at the familiar cityscape for the first time in almost a year. He was feeling a longing of some kind, but why? He was home, wasn’t he? And the ones he loved were sitting right there. Maybe he was simply tired after the flight.
“So, Uncle Yiheng has arranged for afternoon tea tomorrow at The Peninsula hotel,” Hanrong said. Li Ying noted he, too, called the man ‘uncle,’ implying a level of familiarity with the current head of the family company. “It will be us, him, and your grandmother.”
“Very well.” Hanjun acknowledged as if he’d receive a mission briefing.
Tea. That was something women like Mrs. Qian did with other upper middle-class wives, and which Li Ying knew nothing about. Hanjun often made tea at home the traditional Chinese way, but Li Ying recalled the Western porcelain tea set in the Qians’ cabinet and expected a fancy kind of tea occasion would be of the British sort. The mental image Li Ying conjured of posh people drinking with their pinkies up didn’t seem at all out of place for the Wu caliber, so he braced himself to read up on tea etiquette.
Li Ying was taking guesses as to which ultra-modern high-rise or perhaps Art Deco residential building they would pull up to. They had just crossed a bridge over the Huangpu River, which divided the peninsula roughly in two: the East bank with Pudong and its towering landmarks, and the West bank, Puxi, with the city’s historical and commercial center, their current location.
Soon they were driving along more parksy roads lined with platanus trees and small boutiques and cafés. It reminded Li Ying of Europe, although it wasn’t exactly like any town he’d seen before.
“Welcome to the former French Concession.” Hanrong tour-guided.
“Looks like a nice place to live,” Li Ying noted.
“It’s nice that you would think that, because it’s going to be your neighborhood for the week.”
My new hoods?Not bad, Li Ying thought. The Concession felt less like a busy metropolis and more like a village.
They slowed and turned to drive through the gates of a neoclassical apartment building, and that’s where Hanrong left them. An inconspicuous black car parked nearby. Li Ying realized it must have been following them all the way from the airport, but neither Wu paid any attention to it. He put his sunglasses back on and kept an eye on the tinted windows from the corner of his eye, but there were no sneaky cameras peeking out; these must have been their guys.
“Miss Lü,your hotel is just a ten-minute walk away from here,but I’ll be happy to drive you.”
