Half an hour later, Xu Yan and Wen Ning were sitting in a cake shop.
Xu Yan ordered two cups of lemonade and a mango crepe for the little girl.
Tongtong looked delighted, sitting next to Xu Yan and swinging her two short little legs back and forth. Even the cowlick on top of her head seemed to sway along with them like a little antenna.
It made Wen Ning, sitting across from them, feel an urge to reach out and smooth it down.
"She's so adorable."
The young waitress placed the cake in front of her with a curious look. "Are you her older brother and sister? She looks so much like you two."
Wen Ning: "......"
Xu Yan smiled and nodded. "Yes."
Xu Miaotong ate her sweet cake while humming some unfamiliar nursery rhyme in a soft, sweet voice. A bit of cream was smeared on her cheek, making her look even more adorable.
To be honest, neither Wen Ning nor Xu Yan had much resistance to such a cute child.
"Um..."
Xu Yan shifted his gaze. "Can I just call you Wen Ning?"
Wen Ning held her lemonade with both hands, trying her best to calm herself down. "Mm, sure."
To be honest, even now she still couldn't accept it. Time travel or whatever—it was just too preposterous; no one would believe it if she told them.
Yet when Tongtong hugged her, the fluttering feeling in her heart could not be faked.
"I think we need to resolve this matter as soon as possible."
Xu Yan took a sip of lemonade to clear his throat. "My thought is that we should do a DNA paternity test with Tongtong."
This was the simplest and fastest way.
To find out whether this was all an absurd farce or something truly beyond human understanding.
"Mm."
Wen Ning had no objections, her gaze never leaving Tongtong. Seeing the little girl eating her cake with the satisfied look of a hamster, Wen Ning felt her own heart being healed as well.
She was just too cute...
"If..."
Wen Ning hesitated for a moment. "If the results show it's true, what should we do?"
Today was her very first day knowing Xu Yan. If it had been yesterday, she never could have imagined discussing a paternity test with a boy in a cake shop booth.
Fortunately, Xu Yan wasn't some weirdo; in fact, he seemed very easy to talk to.
So Wen Ning's tension finally began to ease, and she started thinking about how to solve the problem.
Maybe it was just a false alarm... she comforted herself inwardly. But a woman's intuition told her that the possibility of a coincidence was slim.
"I don't know," Xu Yan answered honestly.
Two high school students didn't have the capability to raise a child. Not to mention, the two of them were currently in the crucial crunch period leading up to the college entrance examinations.
They looked at each other in dismay, then their gazes simultaneously fell back on Tongtong.
Seeing the cream on Xu Miaotong's face, Wen Ning instinctively pulled out a tissue and gently wiped the corner of her mouth.
The little girl obediently tilted her chin upward, enjoying "Mommy's" care.
It was only after finishing the gesture that Wen Ning suddenly snapped back to reality.
Just now... I really acted just like a mother who dotes on her daughter.
"Mommy," the little girl asked innocently and naively, "please don't be mad at Daddy anymore. Let's go home together, okay?"
"...What?"
Wen Ning looked at Xu Yan in bewilderment.
"She thought you weren't coming home because you were fighting with me," Xu Yan explained with a helpless sigh. "I didn't know what to say, so I just went along with it."
Fine then.
Wen Ning accepted this explanation. She thought for a moment, her fingers tightening slightly around the cup of lemonade. "The cost of the test..."
Xu Yan placed his phone on the table. "Altogether it's around two thousand. I think we should split the cost evenly."
After all, this wasn't just Xu Yan's business alone. He wasn't the only one who wanted to find out the truth.
"Sorry, things might be a bit difficult for me on that front..."
Wen Ning hesitated for a moment, her voice dropping lower. "My living allowance usually isn't very much..."
One thousand yuan was no small sum.
"Then I'll spot you for now?" Xu Yan thought about it. "You can pay me back whenever you have some spare cash."
Lin Hui had just slipped him a thousand, and with his own two thousand in living allowance, it would be enough. There was nothing to feel awkward about.
If Tongtong really was his daughter, then Lin Hui had just become a grandmother ahead of schedule. Spending money on her granddaughter shouldn't be a problem, right?
"Thank you..." Wen Ning's voice held a trace of embarrassment. "I'll pay you back as soon as possible."
However, she had a rather aloof temperament and couldn't pull off overly delicate or soft expressions.
The identity of parents was far too heavy. Dropping it onto them so suddenly placed a bit of pressure on both of them, to be honest.
"Mommy talks so strangely," Xu Miaotong tilted her head and said in a crisp voice. "Mommy is always the one who manages the money at home, so why are you suddenly offering to give Daddy money?"
It was only at this moment that Wen Ning and Xu Yan remembered a question they had both overlooked.
Or rather, a question they had both deliberately avoided bringing up.
The two of them... were very likely to be a married couple in the future?
"......"
The words Xu Yan wanted to say stuck in his throat.
Wen Ning averted her gaze, having no idea how to respond to the little girl's remark. The tips of her ears carried a faint, hard-to-detect flush.
It lacked a sense of reality.
She and Xu Yan had no intersection in high school; why on earth would they get married in the future?
Looking at the clean, pure, lily-like campus belle across from her, Xu Yan also found it hard to picture that scene.
"Tongtong, do you know why Mommy and Daddy got together?"
Xu Yan asked, "Was it through a blind date, or something else..."
Xu Miaotong didn't quite understand. Her small brows furrowed as she let out a labored hum. "Tongtong doesn't understand. It's just that sometimes Mommy and Daddy would argue over who fell in love with whom first."
So it wasn't a blind date—they had gone all the way from romance into the grand hall of marriage.
Besides, was that even an argument?
That was clearly just showing affection in front of their child.
Wen Ning felt her scalp tingle.
She found it very hard to imagine that she would ever have a day like that—a day where she smiled as gently and happily as the woman in the photograph.
"I have to go back now."
She looked down at her watch unnaturally, trying to find an excuse to leave. "I can't be home too late."
She still needed time to digest everything that happened today.
"Xu Yan... tell me the moment the results come out."
Wen Ning took out her phone. "Let's add each other on WeChat. Contact me directly if anything comes up."
Compared to Xu Miaotong, the person she probably found even harder to accept was the boy sitting right in front of her.
"Sure, give me a hair."
The two added each other on WeChat and set their remarks.
After that, Wen Ning prepared to leave. Her gaze fell once more upon Xu Miaotong's face.
"Is Mommy not coming home with us..."
Xu Miaotong instantly felt that the cake in her hands had lost its appeal, and she looked like she wanted to cry again. "Does Mommy not like Tongtong anymore?"
"How could that be..."
Xu Yan's voice was gentle. "Mommy... she has very important things to do. Tongtong needs to be a good girl."
Wen Ning paused in her tracks, then grabbed her schoolbag and fled in a silent panic.
She stood a full one hundred and sixty-eight centimeters tall, considered tall even among girls, and her long, straight legs gave people endless room for imagination.
If the Wen Ning in the photograph was like a brilliantly blooming Chinese flowering crabapple, mature and full of charm...
Then the campus belle Wen Ning right before his eyes was like a flower bud about to open, pure and clean.
Watching her retreating figure, Xu Yan felt that she was actually rather flustered.
And only Wen Ning knew that, as a girl, her feelings were far more intense than Xu Yan's.
Even though the test results weren't out yet, the very first moment she laid eyes on Tongtong, she felt that...
This must be my daughter.
Yet this also brought up a problem.
Her future husband... happened to be at No. 1 High School as well.
No matter how she thought about it, this whole situation was just too bizarre!