I Want to Be Your Mrs. Jiang - Chapter 23
Chapter 23
At 4:00 PM, the high-speed train arrived at Songcheng High-Speed Railway Station right on schedule.
The moment Su Xiaomi stepped out of the station, she was delighted to find that Songcheng was blessed with clear skies and bright sunshine.
Ever since she went on her business trip, she had hardly seen the sun.
Encountering such wonderful weather today was a rare treat, and she felt the gloomy mood brought on by days of bad weather lift quite a bit.
Su Xiaomi first took a taxi back to the office with Putao to report in before taking the subway back to her dorm.
Just as she exited the subway station, her phone rang with a call from Jiang Yi.
“Are you back? If you are, grab a bottle of white vinegar on your way up. We’re having sweet and sour fish for dinner.”
Sweet and sour fish!
The words of refusal were right on the tip of Su Xiaomi’s tongue, but in the end, she swallowed them back down.
Ten minutes later, Su Xiaomi rang the doorbell to Jiang Yi’s apartment with a bottle of white vinegar in hand.
When Jiang Yi opened the door, he saw Su Xiaomi standing at the threshold looking travel-worn, not even having had the time to unpack her luggage yet.
While marveling in his heart at how irresistible the charm of sweet and sour fish truly was, Jiang Yi naturally took the white vinegar from her hand.
“Come in and sit down for a moment. Dinner will be served very soon.”
When Jiang Yi said dinner would be served very soon, he really meant very soon.
Su Xiaomi went to wash her hands, and when she stepped out, she found three dishes and a soup already arranged on the table.
Besides the sweet and sour fish Jiang Yi had mentioned over the phone, there was stir-fried cured pork with celtuce, garlic stir-fried A-choy, and right in front of Su Xiaomi sat a small stew pot of chicken soup.
In short, it was a balanced spread of meat and vegetables, appealing in color, aroma, and taste.
Su Xiaomi hadn’t had much of an appetite due to her cold, but looking at the table full of food before her, she surprisingly developed a bit of a craving.
Truth be told, Su Xiaomi knew plenty of people who could cook.
If nothing else, her best friend Xiao Luo alone was a master in the kitchen.
But for someone like Jiang Yi—a man from a very well-off family who was extremely successful in his career, and above all, genuinely looked like a noble young master who wouldn’t lift a finger to cook…to actually be capable of preparing such a delicious meal was enough to make Su Xiaomi question her life.
She looked at Jiang Yi, who was leaning over and attentively setting out the bowls and chopsticks, and couldn’t help but ask, “President Jiang, why are you so good at cooking?”
Jiang Yi replied casually, “I lived abroad for a few years back then and couldn’t get used to Western food. Conveniently, the place I rented had a kitchen, so I bought cookbooks and took my time studying them at home. It tasted awful at first, but after doing it enough, it started tasting good.”
Su Xiaomi knew that Jiang Yi had studied abroad, though she didn’t know much about the details.
Since he had brought it up on his own initiative, she decided to follow his lead and chat with him about his time overseas.
The topics started out very simple—nothing more than which country he went to, what major he studied, and the like.
Jiang Yi wasn’t a particularly patient person.
Had it been anyone else, he might not have had any interest in humoring such dull questions.
But sitting across from him was Su Xiaomi, so that was a different story altogether.
Therefore, even though he didn’t appear particularly interested in these topics, he answered every single question she asked, and with absolute honesty.
In truth, those weren’t the questions Su Xiaomi actually wanted to ask.
Compared to which country he had studied in or what major he had pursued, what she really cared about was whether Jiang Yi had dated anyone during those years abroad… a girlfriend, or perhaps a boyfriend.
However, asking such a question directly would seem far too abrupt.
And so, she had no choice but to beat around the bush, probing from the edges without ever daring to touch upon that sensitive subject.
During dinner, Jiang Yi had noticed that Su Xiaomi’s voice sounded off.
Connecting that to hearing her mention over the phone earlier that she still had a cold, he casually remarked before clearing the dishes to take into the kitchen.
“Are you in a rush to head back? If not, let me brew some ginger tea for you. Whenever I had a cold as a child, my grandmother would make me ginger tea. After drinking it, you just bundle up under a blanket, sleep it off, sweat it out, and the cold will clear up in no time.”
Su Xiaomi was quite tempted by the idea, though she felt mostly embarrassed.
But even if she could resist the lure of ginger tea, it was hard to refuse a gentle Jiang Yi.
So in the end, she swallowed her shame and chose to stay.
“Then I’ll trouble you, President Jiang.”
“It’s simple enough. Take a seat here and rest a bit—it’ll be ready soon. If you get bored, watch some TV.”
Jiang Yi soon went into the kitchen.
After rinsing the dirty pots and pans and throwing them all into the dishwasher, he began searching online for recipes for ginger tea.
It had been many years since he last had it, and having not touched it in so long, he really couldn’t recall the exact steps right away.
Fortunately, with the internet being so convenient nowadays, any recipe could be found.
He quickly stumbled upon a method for brewing ginger tea that overlapped the most with his memories, and then set to work alone in the kitchen.
When he emerged from the kitchen carrying a steaming cup of brown sugar ginger tea, he discovered that Su Xiaomi had unknowingly curled up on the sofa and fallen fast asleep.
Curled into such a small bundle, her posture clearly looked awkward and uncomfortable, yet she was sleeping deeply and soundly—a testament to just how exhausted she had been over the past few days.
Jiang Yi hesitated for a moment, but ultimately refrained from waking her.
Instead, he carried the brown sugar ginger tea back to the kitchen to keep warm, then tiptoed back into the bedroom to fetch a thin blanket.
Although it was already June, the air conditioning was running indoors, and sleeping for a long time without anything covering her would only worsen her cold.
Furthermore, anyone who had kept pets knew that a creature’s belly was its most vulnerable part, so Jiang Yi primarily draped the blanket over Su Xiaomi’s stomach, only casually covering the rest of her body as an afterthought.
Fearing he might wake her, he performed every movement with extreme care—so much so that a task so simple ended up taking him several times longer than usual.
Fortunately, Su Xiaomi remained undisturbed throughout, barely even shifting her posture.
After that, Jiang Yi sat on the bay window ledge holding his laptop, dealing with work emails on one hand while watching Su Xiaomi sleep on the other.
Tsk, her sleeping posture is truly terrible.
She was either kicking off the blanket or letting her legs dangle off the sofa.
Jiang Yi patiently put down his laptop time after time to pick up the blanket for her, feeling as though his patience was being trained into shape by her.
Su Xiaomi slept for nearly two hours.
When she woke up, she found that the living room lights had been dimmed significantly, making the soft white light emanating from the laptop screen in Jiang Yi’s hands appear particularly striking.
She shifted slightly, only to realize that someone had draped a blanket over her at some point.
It had a fluffy texture, and most importantly, it seemed to carry a hint of Jiang Yi’s scent.
She had originally intended to get up, but for some reason, she suddenly felt lazy and reluctant to move.
As a result, she pulled herself further under the blanket until only her eyes were exposed.
Likely hearing the sound on her side, Jiang Yi, not far away, finally tore his gaze away from the laptop screen with some difficulty.
Soon, however, he shifted his attention back to the screen and said calmly, “Wait a moment. Let me handle a few more emails first, then I’ll take you back.”
“No need. It’s not far anyway, I can just walk back by myself.”
Having just woken up, combined with her cold and being muffled under the blanket, Su Xiaomi’s voice sounded rather stifled.
To Jiang Yi’s ears, it inexplicably carried a touch of pitiable vulnerability.
A sick little animal was naturally fragile to begin with.
With that thought in mind, Jiang Yi seized the time to handle the last few emails in hand.
“It’ll be quick. Wait for me a bit, okay?”
That final “okay?” carried a slight upward inflection, paired with Jiang Yi’s slightly deep and faintly raspy voice, sounding inexplicably seductive in Su Xiaomi’s ears.
And so, Su Xiaomi uselessly got distracted by that single “okay?” from Jiang Yi, ultimately missing the best window of opportunity to refuse.
The living room was quiet, with the crisp sound of Jiang Yi lightly tapping on his keyboard clearly audible.
The subtle tap-tap-tap was obviously striking the keys, yet Su Xiaomi felt as though each stroke was tapping directly against her heart.
Su Xiaomi had originally been lying flat facing the ceiling, but at some point, she had shifted her position to face Jiang Yi’s direction.
From her perspective on the sofa, she could see the neon-lit night sky behind Jiang Yi, as well as the side profile of him casually sitting on the bay window ledge typing on his keyboard.
In truth, Su Xiaomi had always preferred Jiang Yi’s side profile and was far more familiar with its contours.
Perhaps it was because the two of them had been seatmates for a period back in high school; after all, Su Xiaomi used to sneak glances at Jiang Yi out of the corner of her eye all the time back then.
Having looked at him so often, the impression was naturally deep.
Presumably because they were at home today, Jiang Yi wasn’t wearing his usual shirt, but rather a set of light-gray cotton loungewear.
It had a loose V-neck design, allowing Su Xiaomi to clearly see a small portion of his collarbone from her angle.
As someone who was a sucker for handsome faces, Su Xiaomi had always been weak for Jiang Yi’s looks. In her eyes, Jiang Yi looked good in shirts and formal suits, and he looked just as good in loungewear—in short, as long as it was Jiang Yi, he looked good in whatever he wore.
So much so that as she watched, she gradually became completely spellbound.
By the time Jiang Yi replied to his final email and closed his laptop, she still hadn’t pulled her glued gaze away from him, continuing to stare without blinking.
It wasn’t until Jiang Yi pushed the computer aside, stood up, and walked toward her that Su Xiaomi withdrew her gaze with a flushed face, feeling that she had made a complete fool of herself.
To actually be mesmerized to such an extent—male beauty truly led people astray!
Fortunately, Jiang Yi didn’t seem to notice anything amiss.
He walked right past the sofa where she was lying and entered his room, emerging shortly after having changed his clothes.
He was back in his usual button-down shirt that he wore when going out, though this time he wasn’t wearing suit trousers, but a simple pair of jeans instead.
Most importantly, perhaps out of concern that Su Xiaomi had been waiting too long, the buttons on Jiang Yi’s shirt were not fully done up when he stepped out of the bedroom, leaving several of them undone.
Su Xiaomi’s gaze subconsciously slid back and forth between Jiang Yi’s unbuttoned shirt collar, thinking to herself that tonight had truly been a worthwhile trip!
