During the New Year holiday, Qi Jingtao took Shang Yu to visit several scenic spots, for which tickets had been purchased in advance. When Shang Yu asked about it, Qi Jingtao candidly admitted that he had planned it all along.
The following days passed with their usual routine. Although some things seemed to have been spoken openly between them, nothing much had fundamentally changed. Qi Jingtao merely noticed that Shang Yu would slip one or two notes containing romantic messages into the breakfast he brought him. Some of the phrasing was quite blunt, certainly lacking the polish of a scholar who had traveled to Shangjing for the imperial examinations at fifteen; the rhetoric was forced and the vocabulary was merely passable. As for the artistic conception—in the past, he wouldn't have given it a second glance, but he found it quite fitting now.
However, Qi Jingtao felt uneasy about constantly having Shang Yu provide breakfast. So, starting the next day, he began buying breakfast for Shang Yu while he was out on his morning exercise, a habit he kept for the remaining days of their stay in Shangjing.
Chapter 115