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Feng Xin’s head turns slightly to the side, letting out a questioning hum when his friend who’s been lying her head on her shoulder starts mumbling something under her breath. Feng Xin smiles fondly when she only sees Xie Lian scrunching up her noses, looking slightly annoyed.
A moment later, Feng Xin startles when she hears the sound of sniffling coming from her friend. All heads around the table turn to look at Xie Lian’s sleeping form, concerned.
Almost everybody jumps up when Xie Lian straightens up from where she’s been cuddling to Feng Xin’s side, almost bumping her forehead into Feng Xin’s chin, her eyes red-rimmed as well as her nose. And then she’s rubbing her face with her palms roughly, smudging the makeup Shi Qingxuan had put on her earlier.
When her face emerges from behind her palms, Xie Lian’s friends agree that it might be the time to go home. It’s been a lovely birthday dinner but Xie Lian has maybe drank a little too much than what she’s supposed to.
Xie Lian is dangling off of her best friends, both Mu Qing and Feng Xin supporting her on either side, Xie Lian’s toes barely reach the floor as she has both her arms thrown over their shoulder, they look like they’re carrying a dead body, pretending that the body isn’t dead.
Xie Lian is still muttering nonsensical words under her breath, hiccuping and sniffling. She jumps suddenly, almost making all three of them fall when her phone starts ringing and vibrating in her back pocket. Her toes finally touch the ground when all of them stop for a moment, Feng Xin pulling out the phone and looking at the caller ID, then promptly shoves the phone towards Mu Qing.
Mu Qing looks down to the phone and gives a wide-eyed glare at Feng Xin when she sees who it is that is calling Xie Lian; her girlfriend.
It’s a bad idea to be picking up the phone when Xie Lian can barely let out any coherent words out of her mouth but not picking up would lead to Hua Cheng calling the police and sending out a search party.
Mu Qing puts it on speaker and picks up, she looks at the group they’ve gone out with tonight, Xie Lian’s most close friends —to celebrate Xie Lian’s birthday, an outing to cheer her up because her beloved girlfriend couldn’t make it, somewhere in another country doing work— to make sure they know that they’ll all probably die tonight, together, although it was Shi Qingxuan’s idea to ‘teach Xie Lian’s girlfriend a lesson’, telling Xie Lian to not tell her girlfriend where or how she’ll be spending her birthday.
“Lian-er, hello?” Hua Cheng’s voice comes from the phone, sounding relieved for having Xie Lian pick up the call but still slightly stressed.
“San Niang-jiejie!” Xie Lian whines when she recognizes who’s at the other side of the phone call, a little more awake.
“Where are you right now? Are you okay? Did you drink?” Hua Cheng sounds very much concerned, an underline of anger that’s certainly not directed towards Xie Lian but to hopefully, everybody thinks, to Shi Qingxuan.
Xie Lian starts spewing out meaningless words, whining for her girlfriend, telling her how she misses her until Mu Qing decides to finally speak up, maybe nothing will happen to her, scratch that, maybe nothing much will happen to her if she explains to Xie Lian’s girlfriend where she is and that she’s going to be sent back home soon, tucked in bed after brushing her teeth and making sure she drinks water. But Mu Qing has only told her where the location they’re at before Hua Cheng tells them to hold on and then ending the call.
Three minutes later and they watch with a dumbstruck expression as a woman in a red suit, her sleeves rolled up to her forearm to show off her tattoos, on a red and sleek motorcycle drives by. Xie Lian, as if recognising the sound of the motorcycle’s engine, pushes away from the hold Feng Xin and Mu Qing has on her and wobbles her way towards the woman who’s parked the motor and is taking off her black helmet, shaking her head from side to side, letting her curly hair fall down artistically messy over her neck, barely reaching her shoulders and then she’s there to catch Xie Lian when Xie Lian stumbles on her own feet.
Xie Lian’s friends watch with their eyebrows in their hairline and their jaws dropped open on the floor as this tall and muscular woman gets squeezed in a tight hug by Xie Lian who has her face pressed to Hua Cheng’s cleavage.
Hua Cheng cups Xie Lian’s cheeks in her palms and bends over to kiss her girlfriend on the forehead who’s feeling too many emotions, letting out breathless and wet giggles, hiccuping while she apologises and accuses Hua Cheng. Hua Cheng smiles adoringly at her as if she’s looking at the most precious gem in the world, as if Xie Lian is a world made out of precious gems. Hua Cheng kisses her to stop her from babbling anymore incomprehensible words and answers the unasked questions she knows Xie Lian is trying to voice out.
“I was going to surprise you, Lian-er but you surprised me by not being home, bundled in your mountains of blankets and you didn’t tell me you were going out,” Hua Cheng whispers into Xie Lian’s hair.
“I’m sorry,” Xie Lian answers, wanting to say more but still a bit speechless over the fact that her girlfriend is here with her, flying all the way here to hopefully celebrate her birthday (maybe a little late. Damn the weather for delaying her flight), instead of going to those important meetings she had to attend. Hua Cheng was supposed to arrive back home a few weeks later but here she is now, holding Xie Lian in her arms ever so gently.
“Happy birthday, A-Lian. Let’s get back home, hmm? I have a surprise for you if you’re up for it,” Hua Cheng says mischievously and if not for the fact that Xie Lian can’t think or process anything at the moment, she would’ve been flustered by the seductive way Hua Cheng had said it, scolding her jiejie for being so shameless, especially when her friends are still looking at them, completely frozen to their spot.
Xie Lian nods, still resting her face on Hua Cheng, not wanting to move until Hua Cheng carefully drags her a few steps to get back to her motorcycle. Hua Cheng takes out another helmet, white and covered in stickers. As if she couldn’t stop herself, she ruffles Xie Lian’s hair like a dog and then she combs through it and smoothes it back down, and finally she puts the helmet on her and clasps the buckle to secure it on Xie Lian’s head.
She lets Xie Lian lean on her as she does the same to herself and then she is straddling her motorcycle, Xie Lian sitting behind her, her arms circling Hua Cheng’s lithe waist and clinging tightly, looking like a relaxed and content koala.
“Don’t let go, okay?”
“Uhuh, never.”
Hua Cheng chuckles fondly, endeared by how adorable her girlfriend is when drunk, she’s never witnessed this before so instead of glaring at Xie Lian’s friends from behind her helmet, she nods once toward them and then she’s driving away.
“Well that was cute.”