Ordinary Friends - Chapter 2

A woman’s sixth sense is often sharper than a radar.

In fact, my relationship with Qin Zheng had already grown bland before all this happened. We’d been together for too long-since sophomore year in college, and now it had been seven years.

We knew each other as well as the lines on our own palms, so any change in him could never escape me.

The first sign probably appeared when a new Intern joined his department-a pretty girl named Li Qingqing.

Her surname was Li. The HR, who managed employee files, once gossiped with me. In the section for her father on her onboarding documents, she wrote Li Nie-that’s the boss of our company.

A rich, beautiful heiress, working in her own department.

At first, Qin Zheng explained his attentiveness to Li Qingqing like this:

“It’s not wise to offend her, and she’s just a childish girl-not my type at all. You’re really overthinking it.”

I didn’t remind him that this “childish girl” was actually two years older than me.

But I silently accepted his explanation.

Later, I couldn’t tell if he simply didn’t care what I thought, or if he never intended to hide anything from me.

Within half a month of Li Qingqing joining, one day I logged into his long-unused music account to find some background music. I discovered that he and Li Qingqing were now following each other-he hadn’t listened to music for a long time in the past two years because of work.

This account dated back to our university days. Back then, we listened to music together, racking up 13,896 hours of online listening.

He even created a playlist named after me, filled with love songs that reminded him of me, songs by my favorite artists, songs I’d shared on my social media, and songs he listened to when he missed me during our long-distance holidays…

I checked and saw that he had deleted that playlist.

In his recent listening history, there were trendy Korean pop songs that only Li Qingqing liked-songs he would never be interested in.

We work in marketing, so I told myself he was just trying to keep up with youth trends. Maybe I was overthinking it.

So I quietly logged out of his account, saying nothing.

I’m not the type to confront someone without concrete evidence.

After all, the ones who last the longest at the table are always those who speak and show the least.

Of course, the “tacit understanding” and “coincidences” between him and Li Qingqing didn’t end there. At the beginning of February, he led his project team to take on a new project.

At the time, I was leading my own team out of town for another project. I’d only heard in passing that his project’s client was a difficult Brit.

After a whole day of work without even eating, I called him to ask about his project’s progress. He didn’t answer-probably busy-so I sent him a WeChat message.

He never replied. Later, I saw a group photo he posted on his Moments: Li Qingqing was standing next to him, flashing a peace sign and a bright smile. The project seemed to be going well.

His caption read, “Know yourself and your enemy.” Li Qingqing posted a similar photo with the caption, “Win a hundred battles without defeat.”

I clicked in and found that their WeChat statuses had both changed to these phrases, as if echoing the tacit understanding only they shared during this project.

His previous WeChat status was: “Set Sail to Gather Stone Flowers, Hoist the Sail to Pick Up Sea Moon.”

Because my name is Shiyue-Xiao Shiyue.

I don’t know if he thought of me when he changed our WeChat status.

Probably not.

Because he never returned my call or replied to my message, but he did comment under Li Qingqing’s post: “Eat soon, take care of your stomach.”

At that moment, I touched my own empty, faintly aching stomach and turned off my phone.

That was the second thing I endured from him.