When Xu Yan woke up in the morning, he felt a tiny weight resting on his chest.
Opening his eyes, he saw Xu Miaotong fast asleep against her father, a glistening trail of drool at the corner of her mouth.
Her cheeks, already naturally plump with baby fat, were squished completely flat.
Xu Yan closed his eyes for a moment to enjoy the quiet atmosphere before carefully peeling her off, getting up to wash up while trying his absolute best not to wake her.
Afterward, he went downstairs to buy breakfast.
By the time he returned, Xu Miaotong was already awake.
Still half-asleep and not fully emerged from dreamland, she sat kneeling on the bed in a daze.
Her smooth black hair was slightly tousled, with a single, silly-looking cowlick sticking straight up.
"Daddy..."
She pouted, looking thoroughly aggrieved. "Give Tongtong a kiss."
Xu Yan placed the breakfast on the table. "Tongtong is a big girl now. You can't be this clingy with Daddy."
"Hmph!"
Looking thoroughly displeased, Xu Miaotong yanked hard on the rabbit ears of her cap. "I hate Daddy!"
"......"
Xu Yan was taken aback.
He sat there in a dazed silence for a moment, trying to figure out what he could possibly have done to make her mad.
This was the first time he had ever heard Tongtong say she hated Daddy.
Could this little girl... be suffering from morning crankiness?
"Come eat breakfast."
"Oh."
Even as she sat down at the table, Xu Miaotong kept a grumpy puff to her cheeks.
Xu Yan looked at her with amused interest. "Does Tongtong not like Daddy anymore?"
Morning crankiness was no joke.
Nobody in the Old Xu family had that kind of habit, so who on earth could she have inherited it from?
"Hmph."
Xu Miaotong puffed out her lips.
After breakfast, she finally woke up completely and gradually returned to normal.
She transformed right back from an angry little pufferfish into her usual soft, adorable little dumpling self.
However, it was time for Xu Yan to go to school.
She looked rather aggrieved. "Daddy, it's so boring for Tongtong to stay home all by herself."
Kids her age were naturally lively and active, and back in elementary school, she used to have so many friends.
"Just bear with it for a couple of days, okay, Tongtong?"
Xu Yan put on his shoes, then squatted down to pat her head. "You'll be able to make new friends soon. Daddy will come back at noon. If you get hungry, there are strawberries in the fridge and snacks on the coffee table."
"Mm-hmm!"
Xu Miaotong was a very sensible child.
She opened her arms and planted a loud *muwah* right on her father's cheek. "Tongtong will definitely be a good girl at home! Daddy has to bring Mommy home real quick, too!"
The little girl's soft, warm lips gave Xu Yan an inexplicable sense of reassurance.
He gave his daughter a hug and then left the house.
Indeed, he couldn't just keep leaving her cooped up at home by herself.
Figuring out how to get Tongtong enrolled in school was going to be a very important task.
During morning study hall, Xu Yan felt a bit out of it and kept yawning.
His mind remained preoccupied with Tongtong back home.
Having a daughter suddenly appear out of nowhere, waiting for him to come home, was a truly wondrous feeling.
"Yanzi, you've got some explaining to do."
During the break, Chen Hao walked over with a stern face to interrogate his good buddy.
His eyes were filled with the resentful grief of a man betrayed by his best friend—the look of a scorned soul ready to hang himself if he didn't get a clear explanation.
Xu Yan glanced at him. "What is there for me to explain to you..."
Chen Hao put his hands on his hips, interrogating the cheating scumbag: "What's your relationship with campus belle Wen Ning?"
Yesterday, you straight-up ditched me!
"We don't have any relationship."
Xu Yan flipped open his math workbook. "We have a daughter."
Chen Hao: "......"
"Just kidding. I'm the sanitation commissioner, and Wen Ning is the math class representative for the advanced class. It was just a school-related thing with the teacher."
Xu Yan said casually, "She's a campus belle, would she ever look twice at a guy like me? Don't overthink it."
Hearing that, Chen Hao was satisfied.
Though he had no idea what connection a sanitation commissioner and a math representative could possibly have.
It was common knowledge that best friends could suffer together, but they couldn't go cruising in a Land Rover.
"Why wouldn't she look twice at you?"
The girl sitting next to Xu Yan didn't even look up from her book. "Ayan, you actually look pretty good."
The girl's name was Li Youyou. With short hair and a petite build, she had a forthright personality and was also a good friend of both Xu Yan and Chen Hao.
"Who?"
Chen Hao scoffed. "You mean Yanzi?"
The two of them had been classmates since elementary school, following each other all the way through middle and high school.
They were childhood friends in every sense of the word.
"Haven't you noticed?"
Li Youyou thought for a moment. "If Ayan actually bothered to dress up, he'd have total potential to be a kept boy. I reckon aunties fifty years older would love his type."
Xu Yan was the picture-standard adolescent boy.
He didn't bother styling himself, kept his hair long enough to half-conceal his eyebrows, and liked wearing a pair of huge, thick-framed black glasses.
It gave the impression of a face that had its looks legally sealed away.
Combined with his low-key personality, he had never drawn much attention to himself in class.
Yet, strip all of that away, and his underlying features were exceptionally striking.
Not flashy, but definitely sculpted within the optimal range of human design.
On top of that, his skin was so pale it sometimes made girls envious.
"When did you go blind?"
Chen Hao looked deeply depressed. "Don't tell me you have a crush on Ayan?"
If you call my best friend ugly, I'm going to attack your parents.
But if you're going to say my best friend is handsome...
Then I'm going to attack you even harder.
"Go play somewhere else."
Li Youyou frowned. "What I mean is, Haozi, you're the ugliest one here."
"What did you say?"
Chen Hao's eyes widened. "Four-eyes, say that again?"
With a calm expression, Xu Yan sipped his water while watching the two of them mutually assassinate each other's appearances.
Under the crushing pressure of the college entrance exams, they truly needed something to loosen their tightly wound nerves.
The first period was math, and their head teacher Old Wu handed back yesterday's graded tests.
Since it was just a routine quiz, it was graded out of a hundred.
The questions this time were rather difficult, and Xu Yan only scored 80 points.
"Glasses, what did you get?"
Chen Hao casually tossed his test aside and leaned over to check his good friend's score.
Li Youyou coldly pressed her test flat beneath a textbook. "Buzz off, what are you looking at?"
Among the three of them, Xu Yan and Chen Hao came from similar family backgrounds—not poor, but by no means wealthy either.
Therefore, the college entrance exams were one of the most important milestones in their lives.
Li Youyou, however, was different from the two of them.
She had to consider whether the college entrance exams were her one and only shot at life.
If she bombed the test... she'd have to go back home and inherit the family business.
Leaping straight from the starting line of life directly to the finish line.
Yes, she was a little rich kid.
A genuinely wealthy little heiress.
Li Youyou's father owned dozens of chain restaurants, and their business was booming.
Whenever the Old Xu family hosted a banquet for the Lunar New Year, they held it at one of Li Youyou's family restaurants.
Yet, this girl was an absolute study maniac—the type who practiced dark demonic arts in reverse.
Basically, every time Xu Yan saw her, she was holding a book and reading.
Even when she was standing in line for lunch at noon, she still had an English vocabulary booklet in her hand, memorizing words.
Xu Yan felt that even the students in the advanced classes weren't a tenth as diligent as she was.
It was almost as if she had become obsessed to the point of madness; Li Youyou had stated herself that she studied twelve hours a day.
She practically wanted to split every single minute into two pieces to use.
Her level of effort was undisputed number one across the entire No. 1 High School.
Chen Hao glanced over and saw that Li Youyou's score was 72.
"......"
Chen Hao fell silent.
"The questions were really hard this time. What did you get?"
Li Youyou looked utterly dissatisfied. "You haven't been studying lately, have you? I saw you go run off to the internet cafe to play League yesterday. Old Wu's been breathing down your neck every day—did you even pass?"
Chen Hao was the classic example of a student who was clever by nature but loathed studying.
"Yeah, haven't studied much lately, my grades slipped."
Chen Hao dejectedly picked up his test paper.
A glaring red 75 points.
Li Youyou looked at the sports star poster taped to his desk, then back at the densely packed *Five-Three* test prep books covering her own.
"It's fine,"
Chen Hao offered comfort. "You've already worked hard enough."
Li Youyou snapped. "Who the hell are you calling an idiot?"
Her mental defenses shattered and she felt like flipping the table right then and there.
Damn it!
I study twelve hours a day, and I still can't beat Chen Hao, a guy who never cracks a book outside of class!
To hell with studying!
At noon, Wen Ning sent him a message asking where they should meet up.
Xu Yan thought about it and decided they should meet at the entrance of the small convenience store at the very end of the alley behind the school.
Fewer people around.
After waiting for about five minutes, Wen Ning finally arrived.
She was dressed in her usual style: a neat, clean ponytail, blue-and-white school uniform, and a pair of freshly washed white canvas shoes.
The most eye-catching feature was still those slightly upturned, fox-like eyes of hers.
The contrast with her pure appearance was so striking that even Xu Yan couldn't help letting his gaze linger for a long time.
It seemed that in all his memories, this campus belle had always dressed just like this in school.
As pure as a white flower.
Yet even so, she firmly held the number one spot as the girl of every No. 4 High School boy's dreams.
Her pedigree was simply too high; that was one fact nobody could dispute.
Xu Yan handed her a bottle of mineral water. "Do you suffer from morning crankiness?"
Wen Ning looked startled, her expression slowly shifting.
After a long pause, she asked hesitantly, "How... how did you know?"
Her morning crankiness was severe.
The kind where she woke up feeling furious at everything in the morning, wanted to kick passing dogs twice, and would straight-up destroy the world if she had a button for it.
That was why Wen Ning always woke up extremely early and left the house every morning, just to avoid angering her stepmother and stepsister.
But this was her biggest secret.
Even her father didn't know.
"Then Tongtong definitely inherited it from you."
Xu Yan confirmed it. "When Tongtong was mad at me this morning, I didn't even dare utter a single word."
Wen Ning: "......"
Xu Yan figured that Tongtong's future father must have a pretty miserable time every morning when it came to his standing in the household.
Of course, that future version of him was himself.
Xu Yan pondered for a moment and said in as polite a tone as he could muster, "That habit... is actually not very good."
"......"
Wen Ning grew slightly unhappy, her lips pressing into a thin, straight line. "I was born with it, can't change it."
If you didn't like it, why did you marry me and bring me home?
Then you damn well deserve to suffer the morning crankiness.