You're dumping me, huh? Fine, then I'll just pick up the school beauty and make her my wif

As Jiang Che ran, he gritted his teeth and kept cursing himself in his mind for being such an idiot.

What strange thing is he so obsessed with?

What good is a perfect sense of ritual? What good is a so-called amazing surprise?

Compared to her tears, what are these things?

Even if he had given her a definite answer in front of everyone at the dinner just now, would the sky have fallen?

No way, they insist on using those clichéd setups, waiting until the venue is all set up before planning some kind of surprise confession.

The results of it?

All the grievances were piled up in the little girl's heart.

Jiang Che sighed helplessly to himself.

Su Qinghe is probably thinking about some random, nonsensical things right now, isn't she?

Given her terrible, insecure personality, she would probably think that he disliked her and planned to drag her to some secluded corner and cruelly abandon her, right?

Ugh, the more I think about it, the angrier I get.

Jiang Che felt like he had something wrong with his brain.

Jiang Che only slowed down slightly when he reached the entrance of the residential area.

He swiped his access card, grabbed Su Qinghe's hand, and strode across the garden path, heading straight into the lobby of the apartment building.

After the elevator doors opened, Jiang Che led Su Qinghe inside.

Then, Su Qinghe subconsciously raised her hand, wanting to press the floor button for their apartment.

Jiang Che stopped her movement first, and then, under the girl's gaze, he reached out and pressed the button to go to the top floor.

Su Qinghe's finger hovered in mid-air, and she was stunned for a moment when she saw this scene.

"...Ah Che, you pressed the wrong button."

"You didn't press the wrong button."

Upon hearing those two words, Su Qinghe opened her mouth as if to say something, but then swallowed the words back down.

She was afraid that if she asked any more questions, she would hear something from A-Che that she couldn't bear.

For example—"Let's talk."

Such an opening is never good news in any context.

So Su Qinghe chose to keep quiet and stood quietly beside Jiang Che, watching the elevator floor numbers jump up one by one.

17...18...19...20...

Her heartbeat rose rapidly along with the numbers on the screen, each beat faster than the last.

"bite--"

The elevator reached the top floor.

The door slowly opened, and Jiang Che stepped out first. After hesitating for a second, Su Qinghe obediently followed.

Whatever the outcome, now that we've come this far, we have to face what we have to face.

There was only one gray fire door in the rooftop corridor, with a thin layer of dust on the doorknob, indicating that not many people usually came up here.

Jiang Che walked to the door, reached out and grasped the handle, and pressed down hard.

"Squeak—"

The fire door was pushed open.

The summer night breeze, carrying the warm scent of June, swept over Su Qinghe, causing the stray hairs beside her ears to flutter slightly.

The sight that came into view made her freeze in place.

Before me was a huge rooftop.

Half-opened cardboard boxes and packaging bags were scattered all over the floor, and a few strings of warm-toned light bulbs were piled up haphazardly in the corner, with the wires tangled together, clearly indicating that they hadn't been hung up yet.

There was also a projector next to it, with its power cord dangling on the ground, and a folding white screen next to it, which was also in a semi-open state.

In the very center of the rooftop stood a folding table, covered with a dark blue tablecloth that was wrinkled and hadn't been smoothed out at the edges.

On the table were several balloons, some round and plump, others deflated before they could be inflated.

The entire rooftop looked like a construction site that had been halfway through a project but was abruptly halted.

Messy, sloppy, and disheveled.

It has virtually no aesthetic appeal.

Su Qinghe couldn't utter a single word.

She stood there at the fire door, her eyes scanning every single thing on the rooftop.

Cardboard boxes, string lights, projector, tablecloth, balloons...

These things, pieced together, formed a vague outline.

That silhouette told her—

Someone had originally planned to prepare a surprise for her here.

Su Qinghe turned her head to look at Jiang Che behind her.

Her eyes were churning with so many emotions that she couldn't even tell them apart herself.

There was disbelief, bitterness, heartache, and a lingering sense of grievance.

There is also a kind of joy that is spreading wildly.

Jiang Che stood behind her, his gaze slowly sweeping over the chaotic scene on the rooftop.

There was a silence for several seconds.

His expression was also very complicated.

To be honest, it was a little embarrassing...

The original plan was this: after the college entrance examination, he would spend two days transforming the rooftop into a small open-air cinema.

The entire railing should be covered with string lights, the warm yellow kind, so that once the power is on, the whole rooftop will transform into a scene from a fairy tale.

The projector should be set up on the table to play the movie on the screen, and the cake and flowers that were bought in advance should be placed on the table.

Then he would deliberately press the pause button halfway through the movie.

Su Qinghe would definitely turn her head to look at him in confusion.

At that moment, he would look into her eyes and say to her, word by word, a sentence he had rehearsed in his mind no less than fifty times recently.

"Su Qinghe, I like you."

"From today onwards, you are my girlfriend."

"It's not an agreement, it's not temporary, it's official."

Well... at least in his mind, the image was perfect.

But now?

The lights weren't hung, the flowers weren't bought, and the projector wasn't even plugged in.

He hasn't even finalized the lines for his confession yet.

Because he kept complaining that the wording in some parts wasn't good enough, he rewrote it four or five times. He even thought that when he got home tonight, he would send it to Bai Yuning and ask her for advice.

Who would have thought that plans could never keep up with changes?

So to put it bluntly, he hasn't prepared anything yet.

Look at this place in front of me, it's as shabby as can be, and as perfunctory as can be.

That's why Jiang Che never intended to carry out his confession plan today.

Just as he was racking his brains trying to figure out how to explain the mess to Su Qinghe, he heard a series of slightly hurried footsteps coming from the stairwell behind him.

"Are you Mr. Jiang, whose license plate ends in 9527?"

A food delivery driver wearing a yellow windbreaker appeared breathlessly at the fire door, carrying a large bouquet of red roses.

Jiang Che turned around, looked at the flowers in the delivery guy's hand, and secretly breathed a sigh of relief.

I finally made it.

He secretly used his phone to order flowers from a nearby flower shop on a food delivery app on his way back, while he was pulling her along.

After all, although the original confession plan has been completely ruined, as the most important part of the standard confession process, even if other things can be cut back, the money can't be reduced.

Lincheng is not comparable to big cities like Haicheng, and the quality of flowers and packaging offered by flower shops in the evening is generally average.

It certainly can't compare to the Juliet roses that Jiang Che had previously ordered online.