An Yangning's amber eyes were misty with tears, making her usually cold and ethereal self look somewhat endearingly foolish.
"Don't shed those little pearls, baby. Whatever went wrong, it's all my fault."
Jiang Han offered an earnest apology.
When a woman feels wronged, there's no point in reasoning with her—you just need to apologize.
Aside from a few extreme cases, anyone will gradually calm down.
Jiang Han walked over and pulled the delicate campus belle into his arms.
Her damp hair stained his chest.
But Jiang Han didn't care at all.
"Why are you crying anyway? Didn't I just call you Student An at school today?"
An Yangning asked in astonishment, "You knew?"
Jiang Han released her shoulders and tapped the tip of her nose.
"I saw your WeChat Moments post, how could I not know?"
He patiently explained to An Yangning:
"I called you Student An today mostly because Old Xu keeps too close an eye on us. Plus, with so many students and so many ears in the classroom, there's no guarantee someone wouldn't run and tell on us."
"You girls just love overthinking things. You little ingrate, I treat you so well!"
Hearing these words, An Yangning felt as though she had been given a shot of adrenaline.
"I'm sorry, I was just overthinking." She belatedly felt a sense of awkwardness.
Striking while the iron was hot, Jiang Han offered her some more reasoning.
"Baby, you need to understand that men and women are different. Men are naturally rational animals; no matter how much a man loves you, he still needs his own space and his own social circles."
"I'm definitely going to start my own business in the future, which means I'll inevitably meet all kinds of people, and some of them are bound to be women."
"So if anything ever upsets you, you must communicate with me right away instead of keeping me in the dark and jumping straight to conclusions."
Jiang Han delivered these words with great rationality; he genuinely hoped An Yangning could understand some of the inherent differences between men and women.
An Yangning lowered her gaze, seriously pondering Jiang Han's words.
That's right, couples must communicate promptly when they're together.
If she had just asked Jiang Han earlier today, she wouldn't have spent the whole day miserable.
It had even made it impossible for her to focus on studying.
"Mm, I know. I won't do it next time."
Jiang Han smiled, his expression shifting abruptly.
"To make it up to me, baby, don't lock your door tonight."
An Yangning's cheeks flushed slightly.
"But..."
Jiang Han wrapped his arm around her waist and walked into the master bedroom.
"No buts, it's not like I'm going to do anything to you."
Ten minutes later, Jiang Han was holding An Yangning, who had gone as soft as tofu.
He felt a mixture of satisfaction and frustration.
If this were ancient times, at eighteen years old, who would sleep under a pure cotton blanket by themselves?
He was already exploring human philosophy with his girlfriend.
Yet right now, he could only hold her to curb his cravings.
"Baby, when are you going to give me your first kiss?" Jiang Han leaned close to An Yangning's ear and gently blew a puff of air.
"No..." An Yangning shivered with sensitivity.
Jiang Han looked innocent: "Wife, I just blew a breath near your ear, aren't you being a bit too sensitive?"
An Yangning pushed him away, her voice turning somewhat coquettish.
"Get away from me, it's too hot."
Jiang Han was like a giant space heater, radiating a temperature so high it felt frightening.
Seeing this, Jiang Han had no choice but to put some distance between them.
Yet his mouth refused to let up.
"Tell me, when are you giving me your first kiss?"
An Yangning thought for a moment, then simply pulled the pillow over her head.
"Figure it out yourself, don't ask me."
Jiang Han blinked, stunned. "What do you mean by figure it out myself? I've never been in a relationship before either?"
Only a night of silence answered him.
The next day, as soon as Jiang Han sat down at his desk, Sun Deming hurried over to tell him.
"Brother Jiang, our school forum got hacked yesterday. The whole site has completely vanished."
"That website was set up only after some former student council president begged the principal for ages. Now that it's been wrecked, we probably won't ever have a No. 3 Middle School forum again."
Jiang Han smiled, silently giving Chen Fei a mental thumbs-up: Big Brother Chen is amazing.
A crappy forum like that existed purely for students to gossip, and it had zero value.
Closing it was for the best.
Still, he'd forgotten to ask Fei-ge yesterday to look into who posted that thing about An Yangning.
Jiang Han felt a mild sense of regret.
"A rumor-mongering forum like that should be shut down anyway. What good is keeping it open?" he said with a straight face.
Sun Deming, however, looked rather dejected.
"But we won't have anywhere to gossip anymore. What a shame."
The only other person sharing his regret was the site administrator, Su Yuhan.
At that moment, her mental state had completely collapsed.
"Who on earth did we offend to get the whole website wiped out...?"
As she spoke, she suddenly recalled yesterday's events.
"Could it be because of that post about Senior Sister An? After all, it had the highest traffic by far. Could it actually be her mysterious boyfriend who hired someone to wreck it?!"
Jiang Chenyu let out a sneer.
"Taking down a website requires hackers. Where would a bunch of high schoolers find people like that?"
Su Yuhan blinked. "Is it possible—since our school has quite a few wealthy students—that her boyfriend just had so much money he straight-up hired someone to trash the site?"
Jiang Chenyu said dismissively, "Destroying a little forum is a piece of cake. I'm not short on cash either; if worst comes to worst, I'll just make another one."
Having been played by him once already, Su Yuhan replied with some irritation, "Then go hire someone to do it instead of complaining. It's such a pain now that any school activities just have to be printed out to notify everyone."
She grumbled, completely losing any further curiosity about An Yangning's mysterious boyfriend.
Anyway, this was Jiang Chenyu's problem; she wasn't going to meddle or worry blindly ever again.
Right at that moment, she received an anonymous message from a classmate:
"I know who An Yangning is dating. It's Jiang Han from the senior Rocket Class."
Seeing the message, Jiang Chenyu wore a look of shock that lingered for a long time.
***
The hype surrounding the forum incident died down after a few days. Jiang Han kept An Yangning well-protected, shielding her from even the slightest whisper of it.
It was hard enough to get his girlfriend to actually post something on WeChat Moments; he didn't want to scare her back into her turtle shell.
However, he still needed to go warn a certain busybody.
Jiang Han offered a cold smile.
It was lunch break, so he walked right up to Lu Xing's desk and grabbed him by the collar.
Lu Xing jumped in fright. "Jiang Han, what are you doing? Thinking of hitting someone?"
Jiang Han gave a mirthless smile. "Why would I hit you? I just want to have a little chat."
Without caring whether Lu Xing consented, he forcibly dragged him out of the classroom.
He hauled him off to a secluded spot and shoved him aside.
Lu Xing lost his footing and nearly took a nasty tumble.
Furious and flustered, he snapped, "Jiang Han, you're dead. I'm going to tell Teacher Xu that you hit me and get you disciplined!"
Jiang Han said flatly, "Go ahead and report me. Do you really think he'll still buy your bullshit? Do you have any injuries on you right now?"
Lu Xing choked, realizing Jiang Han was right.
He genuinely had no grounds to report him to a teacher since Jiang Han had merely grabbed his collar.
Jiang Han walked over with a smile and patted his shoulder.
"I know all about the little tricks you've been pulling behind my back, including telling Teacher Xu that I'm in a relationship."
"I can let your past actions slide, but if you run your mouth again, I won't mind dealing with you the moment the college entrance exams are over."
Panic crept into Lu Xing's heart, though he put up a tough front. "Hitting people is illegal!"
Jiang Han chuckled. "Who said I was going to hit you? You know, there's a saying in this world: with enough money, you can make ghosts push grindstones. Ruining your reputation online wouldn't be very hard, would it? Did you forget about your little attempts to take advantage of female students, or the way you kept pestering the campus belle?"
"Lu Xing, I have plenty of ways to deal with you, understand? And I mean ways that will make you genuinely miserable. So stop sticking your damn nose into my business!"
Hearing this, Lu Xing felt his heart turn cold. He suddenly realized how terrifying society could be.
Jiang Han had money; he could easily spend a bit of cash to ruin his reputation online. How would he ever be able to face people then?
"Fine..." he agreed, feeling thoroughly humiliated.