Chapter 05

Jiang Yimiao touched the tip of her nose and snorted, “It’s actually nothing.”

“Miao Miao ……,” Zhao Shuming pursed his lips, looking at her with a serious look that he rarely saw.

Jiang Yimiao really couldn’t lie, she slightly opened her lips in some surprise, “Well, is it true that those who read psychology all have the ability to read minds, how do you know?”

Zhao Shuming held back from interrupting her, of course he knew that Jiang Yimiao was just joking with this statement.

He didn’t have the ability to read minds, and those who studied psychology didn’t have the ability to completely analyze a person’s true personality and life experiences just from their appearance.

This is only because he understands her too well.

Jiang Yimiao said and waved her hand again, “I’ll make a long story short, in fact, it was one night Cheng Wenyao and I went out shopping, and on the way back to school I saw a man dragging a girl, a night road and alley, there weren’t too many people, but that girl kept shouting for help ……”

She gulped, “I happened to have a vernier caliper in my bag, so I just pulled it out and smashed it into his head.”

“Are you alright.” Zhao Shuming asked after him somewhat nervously.

Jiang Yimiao still remembered that fierce and mesmerizing gaze when that man turned to look at her, but she still pretended to shake her head in a cloudy manner.

“I’m fine, although that road usually has very few people on it, but luckily at that time, it seemed like the students from the nearby police academy were on vacation as well, and someone came over to help just as soon as I smashed my way through.”

Jiang Yimiao smiled, “Luckily there was that vernier caliper, and it wasn’t a plastic ruler, it was stainless steel, and it directly smashed the man blind.”

She was glad that she went out with Cheng Wenyao that day, she was a software engineering student who couldn’t use something like a vernier caliper, which belonged to Cheng Wenyao.

Cheng Wenyao is Jiang Yimiao’s high school classmate, the university happens to be also the South University, but she is the College of Biology, the two have always been very good relations.

That day was just an ordinary Friday afternoon, Jiang Yimiao went to her laboratory building to wait for Cheng Wenyao to go out together.

A student in the same lab borrowed Cheng Wenyao’s vernier calipers to measure the ring of inhibition, and coincidentally returned the calipers to Cheng Wenyao that day. Cheng Wenyao bought it herself, not a public tool in the lab, so she and Jiang Yimiao took the calipers away from the lab in the evening when they went out to play.

But the bag Cheng Wenyao was carrying that day was a bit small and couldn’t fit the vernier caliper. Jiang Yimiao was carrying a big tote bag, so the calipers went into her bag.

Jiang Yimiao could not have imagined that the calipers would be used for her defense.

After the man was brought under control, the police were called. Although there are few people there, but there are cameras on the road, Jiang Yimiao belongs to the righteousness of self-defense, with the statement has been over the school’s access control, or the police sent her back to school.

But then Jiang Yimiao has a bit of psychological shadow, sometimes walking at night to see strangers turn back to always be a bit anxious, her bag also began to prepare a variety of self-defense appliances.

If you have to recall that night, Jiang Yimiao only remembers the sound of bugs chirping in the grass by the roadside, the dark sky with a few stars, and the sticky feeling of her skin after coming into contact with the hot air…….

She couldn’t remember how she pulled out the vernier caliper from her bag and smashed it, nor could she remember the specific appearance of the person.

Jiang Yimiao was obviously a person with little guts, when she spoke on stage as a student honorary representative she would be so nervous that her fingers would turn white, and at night when she slept she would shrink her feet and head under the quilt when she heard any noise.

She felt that night had been her bravest moment. It was something that her parents were later shocked and scared to find out about.

“How come I didn’t hear you tell me about it.”

Zhao Shuming was a bit scared, if she hadn’t asked today, she might never have told him about it.

“Why, you were abroad at the time, wouldn’t talking to you just make you worry for nothing, there’s nothing to say.”

Jiang Yimiao picked up the hedge machine again and put it in the long drawer of the foyer cabinet, “Is it okay if I put this machine here?”

“It’s fine.” Zhao Shuming lowered his eyelashes.

“But you used to talk to me when you encountered something like this, even if I was no longer with you at that time ……”

Jiang Yimiao squatted in front of the entryway cabinet, the movement of placing the hedge trimmer in her hand pausing for a split second as she realized that Zhao Shuming was telling the truth.

Jiang Yimiao herself couldn’t remember when she was so distant from him, couldn’t remember when the content of the WeChat dialog box between the two of them changed from an all-day conversation to a raw conversation.

Jiang Yimiao is an only child, counting up to three generations of collateral blood relatives, she is still the biggest child in the family, so she does not have a cousin who dresses stylishly, has all kinds of beautiful things, will give her old Barbie dolls.

She also didn’t have a neighbor’s sister that everyone had but her – a neighbor’s sister who would sneak her to the supermarket to buy snacks, and who would quietly explore the changes in her biological period together.

Zhao Shuming seemed to have replaced all of these people in her youth.

She would wave her report card in front of Zhao Shuming that she got first in the class, would tug on his arm when she was scared of watching a ghost movie, and would secretly talk to him about the gossip in her class.

But that didn’t mean the two of them would always be close, much less that she would always rely on him.

Her relationship with her parents wasn’t as close as it had been when she was a child, let alone a friend who had been separated from her for several years.

Jiang Yimiao pushed up the drawer and touched the tip of her nose, “It’s all in the past, talking about it is just a waste of time to make you worry.”

She stood up, but she got up too hard, and her postural hypotension made her vision go black.

Jiang Yimiao subconsciously reached out to find a support to stabilize herself, but her palm fell into Zhao Shuming’s warm palm.

His hand followed Jiang Yimiao upwards, turning to hold her wrist, “Dizzy?”

Zhao Shuming still knew her body well and was not surprised by this.

“Fortunately okay.” Jiang Yimiao blinked, and the image in front of her finally became clear.

Zhao Shuming held her wrist, her wrist bones didn’t seem to have changed much, and the feeling of holding it was still familiar.

“Miao Miao, can I have a hug?” He loosened his grip and held out his arms. The downward-pressing brow gave the gaze a pleading edge, but it was a little hard to resist.

“A hug?” Jiang Yimiao slightly tilted her head sideways, looking at his arms stretched out in mid-air, and welcomed him without much thought.

The feelings of the country’s people under the general environment were always a bit introverted and awkward, hugging was a bit strange to most people, but hugging seemed to be a very warm and encouraging gesture to her.

In her vague memories, she had hugged Zhao Shuming many times since she was a child, and actions and behaviors like hugging were not unfamiliar to her.

Not to mention that she had grown up treating Zhao Shuming as her own brother, and the two of them would be more likely to forget about gender boundaries compared to ordinary friends.

“Hmm?” He waved his hand as if waiting for a rabbit to jump into the hole.

Jiang Yimiao blinked, caught in someone’s trap she wrapped her arms around his waist.

When Jiang Yimiao’s head leaned against him, she truly felt that Zhao Shuming was much taller than her.

He had left the country at the age of eighteen, and Jiang Yimiao was a little puzzled as to how he managed to grow while he was still in college.

Zhao Shuming lowered his head, his cheeks stained with her fine, soft hair.

His broad palm lightly patted her back, “Miao Miao, you’re very brave.”

Jiang Yimiao, who was quietly calculating how many centimeters taller Zhao Shuming had grown, was stunned, and she realized why Zhao Shuming was hugging her.

He must have also thought it was cool that he had helped the girl who asked for help by slamming down a caliper.

“But everything should put your safety first.”

“I’ll pay attention.” Her face was pressed against his shoulder, and her speech sounded a little muffled.

Zhao Shuming remembered when Jiang Yimiao asked him when she was a child, “Brother, do you think there are more people who die from accidents or old age in this world.”

At that time, he replied to her that it was the latter.

But Jiang Yimiao asked, “But why do all the people who die in TV dramas die because of accidents and illnesses? It feels like I’ve never seen anyone die of old age before.”

She said with some trepidation, “It feels like there are accidents everywhere, it seems hard to live well eh.”

She was only in elementary school at the time, but what she said was true.

Sometimes life is full of accidents, and Zhao Shuming felt that he was very lucky to be able to survive.

He was really afraid of what would happen if Jiang Yimiao was unlucky and met with an accident.

In the face of such a crisis, it was difficult to quickly find a way to both help the victim and ensure one’s own personal safety.

Zhao Shuming thought, and his arm around her body unconsciously tightened.

Jiang Yimiao’s body stiffened for a moment, and she felt a very subtle and ineffable sensation as if his chest was pushing against her.

His figure was even better than when he was a teenager, causing such an embrace to feel a little strange to her.

She looked down and inhaled, Zhao Shuming had gotten up early this morning to go to the gym, so he had taken another shower in the morning.

The scent of his body that was hard to ignore came out of his nose, and such a scent wasn’t simply the result of a compounding effect of chemicals, but rather an inexplicably comforting odor.

Jiang Yimiao came closer to inhale again and spoke coldly, “You smell good, but how does it smell different from the shower gel I used?”

Zhao Shuming’s hand around her waist instantly loosened, “Well, we’re not using the same body wash ……”

Jiang Yimiao remembered that the body wash at home was still the one she had bought a while ago when she had gotten together a shopping festival purchase. It was a brand she had been using.

She wasn’t the kind of person who hated new things, nor was she the kind of person who liked to try new things out of hand.

That’s why she was able to hit one window for lunch for several days in a row, and she would also keep using the same shower gel, to the point where she was already familiar with the smell of this shower gel to the point where she couldn’t feel too strong of a scent every time she used it.

The scent on Zhao Shuming’s body clearly had some sense of familiarity, but it wasn’t at all the same as the milk-scented body wash she’d gotten together to buy.

“Oh……” Jiang Yimiao responded, she hadn’t noticed last night that there was an extra bottle of shower gel on the shelf, right next to her bottle of shower gel.

She looked up, and right in front of her was Zhao Shuming’s neck, one of the most vulnerable parts of a human being.

Jiang Yimiao subconsciously gulped, feeling a bit toothy for some reason.

Zhao Shuming let go of this hug that he had actively requested, “I’ll go pack up the express box.” As he said this, he bent down to pack up all the express packages that he had just opened.

Jiang Yimiao’s five senses were naturally sharp, she inhaled her nose and felt that the scent of Zhao Shuming’s body still lingered in the air.

She was a little curious, she didn’t know which type of shower gel Zhao Shuming used, why it smelled so good, she decided to take a look at it when she took a bath at night.

However, in a place Jiang Yimiao couldn’t see, his expression changed from puzzled and flustered to smug.

A pleasant scent stimulates the nerve excitation center, and smell is also an important factor in attracting a person, so of course he would have a scent on him that she liked.

Whether it was a genetic mechanism or he did it on purpose, as long as she liked it, it was enough.