During the Qingming Festival holiday, the five-person team led by Yan Han, along with two family members who later joined them, went to Ma Jiaming’s territory in T City for a spontaneous trip.

However, they soon found out that all the tourist attractions and historical sites during the short holiday required advance reservations. Hence, the seven of them had nowhere to go. They ended up staying inside the luxury hotel Ma Jiaming had booked for them.

When Liu Leyao lost all her chips for the second time, she became annoyed. “Stop playing mahjong! You’re all grown adults, and all you know is how to play mahjong every day!”

Xu Pengpeng looked up at her. “Then what should we do?”

Liu Leyao said, “Let’s go drink.”

Everyone: …

Ma Jiaming contacted a friend and found a bar with decent live music. The group grabbed a booth and started eating and drinking.

Li Qingze ordered a c0cktail, which Xu Pengpeng mocked. In a fit of anger, Li Qingze downed two vodka shots and quickly got drunk.

He giggled as he leaned into Yan Han’s arms, grinning foolishly, and kissed his side like a little puppy.

Yan Han held him and swapped the alcohol in his hand for a glass of lemon water.

Li Qingze picked up an empty beer bottle from the table and suggested, “Let’s play Truth or Dare!”

Before anyone could agree, he stood up with bright eyes, cleared a space in the center of the table, and started spinning the bottle.

The bottle mouth pointed at Ma Jiaming, and the bottom pointed at Liu Leyao, who was sitting opposite him.

Ma Jiaming gave a command, opened a bottle of beer, and raised it toward her. “Drink!”

Liu Leyao cried out twice, “Can’t I choose? I pick Truth.”

Ma Jiaming was stunned, then turned to his wife. “You ask then.”

Ma Jiaming’s wife gently asked a harmless question, and Liu Leyao answered easily, ending the round.

They played another round, and this time Xu Pengpeng faced Yan Han.

“You ask. I’ll choose Truth,” Yan Han said, raising his dark eyebrows at him.

Without hesitation, Xu Pengpeng asked, “Back then, what was the deal between you and Li Qingze ah? Who chased who?”

Yan Han thought for a moment. “We liked each other mutually. There wasn’t really a case of who pursued whom.”

He lowered his head and looked at Li Qingze beside him, asking in a soft voice, “Right, baby?”

With the alcohol surging through him, Li Qingze’s cheeks were flushed red. His watery eyes stared at Yan Han, and after frowning in thought for a moment, he said, “No, it was me who had a crush on you first?”

Yan Han was stunned. “When did you have a crush on me?”

Li Qingze laughed a little foolishly. “When I first heard your voice.”

Yan Han thought for a moment. “Was it at Xu Pengpeng’s house? The first time we met?”

“No,” Li Qingze shook his head. “Even earlier. I was looking for a roommate to rent a place with back when I was still in the country. I added your WeChat, and you sent me a voice message.”

Li Qingze’s eyes softened as he recalled the past, smiling to himself.

“I still have those voice messages!” Li Qingze picked up his phone, fiddled with it for a bit, and pulled up the chat history that he had apparently transferred countless times. He showed it to Yan Han. “Look!”

It was a chat log Yan Han had long forgotten.

Just a few short texts and voice messages, yet Li Qingze had carefully preserved them for over ten years.

He played one of Yan Han’s old voice messages and heard the voice of his twenty-year-old self, unfamiliar and youthful.

Back then, when talking to a stranger, his voice still carried a trace of coldness.

But to Li Qingze, it was a treasure he had guarded for years.

Yan Han listened to them one by one, and an overwhelming tenderness and love surged in his chest, so intense he could hardly bear it, wishing he could peel open his heart and show it to Li Qingze on the spot.

Li Qingze had once harbored an unrequited love for him, keeping it buried all these years without ever mentioning it.

A sharp, aching sourness gripped Yan Han’s heart.

“F*ck, Old Yan is crying,” Ma Jiaming whispered, only to get elbowed by his wife.

Yan Han pulled Li Qingze into his arms, pressing his face against him and wiping his tears into Li Qingze’s soft hair.

He whispered quietly into his lover’s ear:

“Baby, you’ve worked so hard.”

“I’ll love you forever.”

Li Qingze, still grinning drunkenly, said, “I know. Me too.”