YHTD 02

Chapter 02

5
Sometimes, San Ye (Third Master) suddenly acts all pretentious, like a brooding, artsy teenager.
For example, there was a period when he especially loved expressing himself with song lyrics.

But it wasn’t just quoting lyrics in a journal or comment section—he would suddenly, in the middle of a perfectly normal conversation, recite a lyric with dead seriousness! Can you imagine how crazy that feels? Not in a casual tone, no—he used a broadcaster’s voice, enunciating every word perfectly.

For example, when I was preparing for grad school exams, I often couldn’t get up in the mornings. My alarm clock had no power to separate me from my beloved bed. So I asked San Ye to call me in the mornings, but sometimes he overslept too.

Even though neither of us got up, I still put the blame on him:
“Why didn’t you call to wake me up this morning! I said I needed to get up to memorize vocabulary, and you promised to call me!”

San Ye calmly replied:
“The alarm didn’t go off.”

I was speechless. “Get lost… you think I’d believe that?”

He calmly continued:
“Or maybe it did go off, and I unconsciously turned it off.”

Back then, I was so irritable that even the smallest thing could set me off. I roared into the phone:
“You just don’t take this seriously! Even if you weren’t waking me up, shouldn’t you get up early yourself to study? And what time did you sleep until? With this kind of attitude, how are you supposed to pass the exam! %*！#%！#￥……@…%￥Uum—”

San Ye quietly listened as I ranted, starting from “you wet the bed regularly at age three” all the way to “the terrible consequences of not valuing time.” When I finally paused to catch my breath, he calmly recited a line:
“If you want to quarrel with me, I’m not that bored.”

And just like that—pfft—I couldn’t stay mad anymore.

At night, San Ye liked to go jogging. I always reminded him to be careful:
“Just finished running? Walk slowly on your way back, watch out for cars, don’t trip over anything.”

And he would reply, all serious:
“I’m not fragile. Besides, what kind of injury would that even be?”

At that moment, I really wanted to smack him, just so he would get injured a little.

Sometimes I’d casually ask,
“Had dinner yet? Where are you?”

And San Ye would randomly say:
“I’m at People’s Square eating fried chicken, and where are you?”

…I had no idea where I was either. Maybe I had ascended to heaven.

Of course, those were just little things. But when he acted like that even in serious matters, I couldn’t stand it.

One time, I complained to him tearfully:
“All my roommates said I got fat today… boohoo…”

San Ye replied with lyrics:
“Spring breezes, no matter how beautiful, can’t compare to your smile. Those who haven’t met you won’t understand.”

At that moment I was pinching the flesh on my belly, sulking. Hearing him recite lyrics again, I exploded, snapping:
“Enough already!”

But right after I yelled, I felt like something was off. Wait—wasn’t he just complimenting me? So I asked:
“Hold on… what did you just say?”

But by then he had already switched back to normal conversation, and said in a worried tone:
“I said, if you don’t lose weight in winter, you’ll regret it in summer.”

Later, I made sure his knees got acquainted with every single adorable thorn on the durian shell we had at home. Heh.

6
Once, we were walking on the street, and San Ye tripped on a stone and almost fell. With such a commotion, of course I couldn’t ignore it, so I glanced at him. And then he started being unreasonable.

San Ye: “What was that look just now? Why did you look at me like you were looking at a dog!”

Me, baffled: “Huh? Did I? I don’t even know. How do I look at dogs?”

San Ye: “Exactly like you just looked at me!”

Me: “How did I just look at you?”

San Ye: “Like how you look at dogs!”

After being dragged into this endless, circular argument, I had to admit—sometimes San Ye could be as stubborn as a lamppost.

7
Back in college, San Ye paid close attention to all the news around our campus—he knew about accidents and crimes nearby even better than I did.

Once, he read some report again and started lecturing me over and over:
“Don’t go out alone after eight at night. Don’t wear skirts or shorts when you go out. Keep your phone charged above fifty percent at all times. Put my number on speed dial…”

After laying down a whole list of safety rules, he still wasn’t at ease. One day, he suddenly pretended to be a delivery guy and called me.

With a voice stern enough to scare a child, he said:
“Hello.”

I glanced at my screen—his name was right there. So I answered just as seriously:
“Hello…”

Then he began acting:
“You have a delivery. Please come downstairs to pick it up.”

I was confused and blurted out:
“Huh? But I didn’t buy anything.”

San Ye: “Maybe your boyfriend sent it. Please come down, I’m under the tree at the school gate.”

I thought maybe this was some roleplay game, so I put on a fake cute voice:
“But I don’t have a boyfriend~”

(I was in my dorm when I said that. Within three seconds, all my roommates shouted in unison: “GET OUT!”)

San Ye was silent for a few seconds, then went back to his act:
“You have a delivery. Please come down and pick it up.”

I kept playing along while cracking sunflower seeds:
“Which delivery company are you from? Packages for our school should go to the mail room, right?”

San Ye: “I’m from the Tree-Under Delivery Company.”

At that moment, I wanted to fling the sunflower seed shells at his face through the phone. Could he not pick a more normal name? Taking a deep breath, I rolled my eyes and told him:
“Never heard of that delivery company.”

With Oscar-worthy acting, he replied impatiently:
“It’s a new company. Please come down. I have other deliveries. I’ll leave in ten minutes.”

He mimicked the tone of our actual delivery guys so well, I honestly think the Oscars owe him a trophy.

I didn’t want to play anymore, so I said:
“Alright, alright, I’ll be right down.”

Hearing this, San Ye suddenly got angry:
“…! Why is your guard so low! You’d just go like that? What if it was a scam? A delivery company you’ve never heard of, asking you to go to some weird place—it’s obviously a bad guy! Didn’t you realize?”

I was dumbfounded:
“I was just teasing you. Obviously I knew it was fake.”

San Ye: “Nonsense! My acting was so realistic—how could you have known? You must’ve already fallen for it! Think about it—if you really went out, what would happen? You could be… first assaulted, then killed!”

I thought about it, then decided there was no point arguing. So I said casually:
“It’s fine. I look safe enough, nothing will happen to me. Just promise me—like how Erkang promised Ziwei—promise me you’ll stop watching so much weird news, okay?”

But San Ye refused, ignoring my plea. Instead, with righteous indignation, he declared:
“Even if you’re ugly, what if the bad guy’s blind?!”

Me: “……”

In the end, we did argue—but not about his paranoia. No, it became a fight over this instead:

“WHO did you just call ugly?! Who?! WHO?!”