Chapter 342 — A Chance Encounter on the Road

Chen Shutang had no choice. She knew that if she did not make a start, with Lin Yanhe's temperament the girl might drag things out indefinitely—and time was short. The less practice one had, the more likely something would go wrong once they were truly on stage. Better to practice solidly at home than to make a mistake then.

Gritting her teeth, she picked up a knife and said to Yang Ce, "All right, then I'm going to throw..."

"Mm, go ahead." Yang Ce shrugged. "Relax a little. I'll be fine."

Chen Shutang did not dare be careless. She deliberately threw the knife a little high, afraid of striking Yang Ce. Even so, after she let it fly she could not help clenching her heart tight. She knew perfectly well that at that height it could not hurt Yang Ce, yet she still felt a flutter of dread, watching without blinking the knife she had thrown.

Yang Ce watched the direction the knife came from and felt rather helpless. That was thrown a little too high, wasn't it? If it had been lower, he could have bent and caught it, but this high...

There was nothing for it—at the instant the knife came at him, Yang Ce had to leap up. The knife sank into the apple, neither too high nor too low, and Yang Ce landed steadily on his feet.

Yang Ce let out a breath of relief, thinking that if the training camp in Europe had not been even more brutal than this, he probably could not have caught that knife. Jump a little lower and he would have missed it; jump a little higher and the knife would have buried itself in his forehead...

Watching Yang Ce's perilous maneuver, Chen Shutang truly regretted it. Why on earth had she thrown it so high? Had she known Yang Ce would catch the knife in that way, she would rather have risked throwing it lower than have Yang Ce leap up to catch it!

Yang Ce smilingly took the apple from his head, cut it open with a knife, and handed half to Chen Shutang and half to Lin Yanhe. "Eat some apple. See, Zhiyun, nothing happened, right?

Your sister Mengyan threw it so high, and I caught it easily."

Lin Yanhe had naturally seen the danger in what had just happened, and she also knew that Yang Ce was truly unharmed. Seeing how relaxed he looked, Lin Yanhe breathed a sigh of relief too. As long as her throw did not stray too far off, Yang Ce should have no trouble catching it.

After finishing the apple, with Chen Shutang's earlier demonstration before her, Lin Yanhe grew bolder as well. She knew she would have to take this step sooner or later—it was only a question of when. But if she did not make good use of the time to practice now, there truly would be no time left.

At first Lin Yanhe was cautious, afraid of hurting Yang Ce, but later, seeing how easily Yang Ce caught them and that nothing had really gone wrong, Lin Yanhe relaxed too, and her throws grew careless.

Yet the more careless she became, the more smoothly Yang Ce caught them. It seemed that, often enough, attitude was what mattered most. By the time they were ready for bed, Lin Yanhe had grown quite adept; the timidity of before was gone, and she could fling the knives out with ease—though she had wasted a whole table's worth of apples.

Though Lin Yanhe was no longer short of money, deep down she was still frugal and treasured things, and the sight of the table covered in cut apples pained her: "So many—we can't possibly eat them all, can we? They're all cut open, they'll go bad before long..."

Yang Shuxuan knew Lin Yanhe's temperament; she would never say to just throw them away, for that would make Lin Yanhe miserable. Yet he could not think of a good solution either. He himself might have a decent appetite, but four or five apples was his limit, and even if Lin Yanhe and Chen Shutang ate themselves half to death, they could manage only two or three apiece. How could anyone get through dozens of apples?

As Yang Ce and Lin Yanhe were fretting, Chen Shutang laughed and said, "What's so hard about that? When I was little, Mama always made fruit preserves for me. I'll go turn all these apples into preserves, freeze them in the fridge, and pack them into little plastic containers—like, one each for Lin-meimei to take to school every day, and they'll be gone in a few days!"

"Now that's a good idea!" Yang Xutang nodded again and again. His own mother had done something similar, only a grown man like him had never paid such things any mind and would never have thought of it—it was Chen Shutang who hit the nail on the head. "I didn't know you could make preserves."

"What's so hard about it?" Chen Shutang pursed her lips. "Or is it that you can't do anything at all? Preserves are simple—just boil them in sugar water. Come on, Lin-meimei, let's the two of us go do it. Yang Ce, you go to sleep first, no need to wait up for us."

Yang Lanxu said, "How am I supposed to sleep if you don't come? I've barely been home two days—how could I go to bed by myself?"

"Let me help you..." Yang Ce had no choice but to join the labor. "I may not be much use with the details, but surely you need someone to do the heavy lifting? Carrying this many apples to the kitchen will take you a while; with me, it's one trip."

"That's true enough." Chen Shutang nodded. "Then I'll grant you the chance to be a porter."

Yang Ce sweated. Even being a porter required someone to grant him the chance... It was no easy thing, serving beautiful women.

Yang Ce fetched a large cardboard box, and together with Chen Shutang and Lin Yanhe, they loaded all the apples from the table into it. Then Yang Ce hugged the box to his chest and headed for the kitchen.

The rest of the work had little to do with him. Chen Shutang and Lin Yanhe first peeled the apples, then cut them into small pieces, discarded the cores, put them all into a basin, and finally boiled the lot in a pot.

Yang Ce noticed that Chen Shutang and Lin Yanhe worked together with remarkable ease, no doubt because they had spent this past stretch of time cooking, studying, and living side by side.

"Done. I've set the timer—once it's ready in a bit, we'll box them up," Chen Shutang said, washing her hands.

"Then let's sit in the living room a while and watch some TV." Seeing that Lin Yanhe still wanted to tidy the kitchen, Yang Ce took her by the hand and pushed her into the living room.

Chen Shutang turned on the TV, and it happened to be showing a promotion for Shu Ya's new album. When Chen Shutang and Lin Yanhe watched TV, the channel they watched most was the entertainment channel, so that was what came on; no need to change it. Seeing that it was news about Shu Ya, Chen Shutang set the remote aside, hugged her knees, sat down on the sofa, and watched along with Lin Yanhe.

"Sometimes it feels so unreal, seeing Sister Su Ya on TV—it's hard to imagine she's part of our family too..." Chen Shutang said with some feeling. "Things that should feel so far away are within our reach; just yesterday I was texting her."

Yang Ce was grateful for Chen Shutang's present attitude and mood. That she could think and speak this way set his mind at ease. Chen Shutang seemed never to have been jealous of Su Ya, which rather surprised Yang Ce.

"So you two are still in touch," Yang Hengye said. "At school, has anyone asked you for Xiao Ya's autograph?"

"How could they not? My classmates know the company I'm working for has Shu Ya as its spokesperson, so they've been asking me for autographs..." Chen Shutang said. "I'm getting a little annoyed, honestly..."

"Heh, I'd have thought they'd seen you and Xiao Ya singing on the same stage," Yang Hengye said. "You said you're working at the company? You didn't say the company is your own?"

"Who remembers a concert? Not many classmates watched it anyway." Chen Shutang shook her head. "As for the company, I don't want to say too much, to avoid being envied."

Seeing Chen Shutang say this, Yang Xutang said no more. In truth, keeping a low profile at school was no bad thing—it saved one from all manner of baseless envy.