Attempted first love

After graduating from university, Xia Yan determined to step into the art industry.

Both his parents are outstanding talents in the field of rare metals, and they have devoted half their lives to academic research. They believe that art is just the seasoning of life, and they are quite critical of his choice.

During that time, Xia Yan and his parents fell into an unprecedented stalemate, but the two were far away in the research institute in the Northwest. After several phone calls to no avail, they entrusted Xia Yan to his friend Ji Qilin.

Ji Qilin is well-known in the art world, and Xia Yan's airborne team, no matter how the outside world evaluates him, he is under a lot of pressure.

When participating in the first project, the cooperating artist was Shen Qi.

At that time, Shen Qi was the only one who was already well-known, not only because of his extraordinary creativity, but also because of his bad personality.

The seniors of the team revealed to Xia Yan openly and secretly that Shen Qi was difficult to get along with, so let him be prepared.

After some contact, the two unexpectedly hit it off.

Xia Yan attributed the flaws in Shen Qi's character to the nature of an outstanding artist, and tolerated him a lot. Shen Qi also went from being resistant to communicating with others at the beginning, to talking to him all the time.

Xia Yan lived with his grandmother in the town when he was a child, and he was the oldest in the younger generation of the family. He was born with a sense of responsibility as an elder brother. Seeing that Shen Qi had become no longer closed, he was sincerely happy for him, and therefore indulged him even more.

Until the project of Mirage Art Museum cooperated again, Shen Qi aggressively asked for a relationship.

Only when he was on a whim again, Xia Yan coaxed: "We'll talk about it after the exhibition is over."

He regretted this casual remark—not only because Shen Qi refused to let it go, but also because he ruined his own future.

Xia Yan rode a bicycle all the way, his physical strength was exhausted, his legs were already at their limit to bear their own weight, and when Shen Qi rushed up, his knees softened, and he was about to fall forward.

In front of him was a shared bicycle with a complicated metal frame structure. When he fell on it, he didn't know where it hurt first, so he closed his eyes resignedly.

A puddle of water was squeezed out of the mineral water bottle in his hand and hit the ground, throwing out thousands of beams of water.

Shen Qi used to play this trick of jumping behind Xia Yan with Xia Yan in the past, but this time he obviously didn't expect the unexpected situation, he let go quickly, his feet fell to the ground, and his arms reached for Xia Yan's waist.

A pair of hands was faster than him, clamping the sides of the ribs with the jaws of the tiger, picking up the person like pulling a carrot, and planting it back to the ground.

Most of Xia Yan's long-sleeved T-shirt was soaked by the splashed water, and the fabric was tightly attached to his waist and abdomen.He is afraid of heat, especially he doesn't like sports, his thin lines appear slender.

The palms covering both sides of his body were broad and thick, with slender fingers, and the veins on the back of his hands were raised due to the force, and it seemed that the two ribs under his hands were about to be crushed.

Shen Qi was startled when he saw it, and then he rushed forward again, wrapping his arms around Xia Yan's waist, and brought him into his arms, his provocative eyes passed Xia Yan's shoulders, and landed on Lu Zhouyu.

The expected pain didn't come, but instead he felt his body being pulled by two forces. Xia Yan opened his eyes, and the water stains on the ground reflected the strong sunlight, making his eyes white.

Shen Qi was concerned behind him and said: "Mr. Xia, are you alright?"

While Xia Yan secretly made up his mind to put exercise and fitness on the agenda, he pushed Shen Qi back with his elbow and said, "You should let go first."

"You let him loose first!" Shen Qi shouted.

Reminded by his words, Xia Yan realized that the two forces on his body came from two people.He looked down, his scalp was numb for a moment, and he didn't know how to speak.

"Stand firm?" Lu Zhouyu looked indifferently, looking straight into Xia Yan's eyes, as if he didn't see the hostile Shen Qi at all.

"Stand still."

Hearing this, he let go of his hands, took out the bottle of mineral water that Xia Yan was holding flat, and threw it into the trash can not far away.

Kitty was watching the whole process, and at this moment he was very excited to bite the bottle, his leash was still wrapped around Xia Yan's wrist, before being pulled down again, Lu Zhouyu tightened the leash for him, and said to the dog: "Be good, sit down. "

The dog's tail shook back and forth a few times, then sat back in its original position, with a pair of big eyes rolling around.

"Thank you." Xia Yan broke free from Shen Qi's arms, straightened his clothes, and thanked him rather awkwardly.

"You're welcome," Lu Zhouyu smiled, glanced down at his half-wet shirt, handed over a pack of tissues, and added, "Ms. Xia's physical strength is not good enough."

Xia Yan couldn't refute it, and returned with a sarcastic smile, took apart the paper towels and pasted them randomly on his clothes to absorb water.

Reasonably, as friends of the two parties, he should introduce each other, but the current situation made him worry that Shen Qi would say crazy things, so he bit the bullet and didn't speak.

Shen Qi who was behind him suddenly stepped forward, squinted his eyes and said to Lu Zhouyu: "I have seen your work, it is very good."

Lu Zhouyu expressed his gratitude in a flat tone, "Thank you."

The window on the second floor of the art museum was opened, and a voice came out. The assistant photographer asked: "Mr. Lu, have you bought water? Come up to eat, and we will continue shooting soon."

Lu Zhouyu said "Hmm" to her, let go of the rope in his hand, nodded to the other two, and stepped up the steps.

"Wait a minute," Xia Yan called to stop him, and passed the rope in his hand again, "Can I trouble you to look after the dog, I'll come over later."

Kitty seemed to sense that she had been transferred custody, and immediately rubbed Lu Zhouyu's waist like a dog.

Lu Zhouyu was silent for a moment, then patted the dog's head and said, "Okay."

After he left, Xia Yan turned around to look at Shen Qi, pulled the hem of the clothes out of his hands, and walked silently to the lawn behind the art gallery.

Shen Qi followed behind him step by step.

"Tell me." Xia Yan stopped under a tree, and leaned back against the tree with all his strength, "What are you doing here?"

"Come and see you."

"Now that you see it, you can go."

"Mr. Xia, it was you who said, stay with me after the exhibition. You can't go back on your word like this."

There have been no fewer than ten similar conversations, Xia Yan numbly stopped repeating that he had no such intention, but said: "This exhibition has nothing to do with you, does it?"

The finale exhibit at the opening of Mirage Art Museum was originally Shen Qi's work, and Xia Yan personally worked on the whole process from the proposal of the creative proposal to the landing of the exhibit.

Not long before the exhibition, when it was publicized to the outside world, it was revealed that the exhibits were plagiarized, from the creativity to the display form, which completely copied the works of a foreign minority artist.

Xia Yan thought it was a misunderstanding at first, but Shen Qi admitted frankly, "I just don't want to mess up, I'm afraid that if I can't do well, you won't be with me."

His family mobilized contacts and paid huge compensation, which managed to suppress the incident, but it still caused quite a stir in the circle.

The whole team devoted themselves to the exhibition for a year, and almost suffered a catastrophe for it. Shen Qi didn't feel ashamed at all, but turned to Xia Yan again and again to fulfill his promise.

The evergreen plants around the art museum are still green, and the weeds and vines hanging on the building seem to be random, but in fact their shapes are quite elegant.

The fragrance of carved plants floats in the sunlight.

Perhaps because of the rare relaxed atmosphere, Shen Qi reverted to his old ways and said to Xia Yan: "Actually, I lied just now. I think the things he made suck."

After the incident happened, Xia Yan blamed himself for a long time, thinking that it was his casual promise that caused Shen Qi to be deceived and make wrong choices.

Until just now, he was still taking Shen Qi's self-esteem into consideration, and did not mention his name that had been blacklisted by the art circle in front of Lu Zhouyu.

Xia Yan stood against the tree without saying a word, allowing Shen Qi to babble maliciously.

Suddenly, a seabird spread its wings and passed by, casting a shadow in the golden sunlight.

Those chaotic sounds in my ear were all pushed away by the flapping of the bird's wings.

The bird landed lightly into a second-story window, its tail flicking past.

Inside that window is Lu Zhouyu's exhibition hall, and there are feeders specially arranged for seabirds. These birds that fly here on occasion are also part of the art installation.

Following his gaze, Shen Qi looked up and recognized the window, "It should be my work."

"Your?" Xia Yan asked back, he didn't say the second part of the sentence "you copied it", he still couldn't be cruel to Shen Qi, as if knowing that he was afraid of dogs, he specially sent Kitty away.

This kind of subconscious care has become a habit over the years, making Xia Yan feel powerless.

Shen Qi paused, then asked: "Is he doing that well?"

Xia Yan was tired of coping, and simply said: "Yes."

"Then you should go to the Biennale," Shen Qi said contemptuously, "It's a shame to be in such a small pavilion."

"Yes, participating in this exhibition has wronged you." Xia Yan said lightly.

"Mr. Xia, that's not what I meant."

"I heard that your family is going to send you to study abroad." Xia Yan looked at him and said sincerely, "Study hard in the future..."

"You don't want to get rid of me." In the four years of cooperation, he had never encountered a wall with Xia Yan. Shen Qi put away his obedient appearance, interrupted him, said "see you next time", and then left angrily.

The clothes were already half-dried, Xia Yan walked under the sun, lifted the hem of his clothes to bake in the sun, his eyes were suddenly dazzled by a spot of light.

He staggered his head, turned his direction, and the spot of light followed, like a feather falling on his clothes, shining and trembling.

No matter how he moved, the light always followed him.

Xia Yan sluggishly climbed his eyes along the light source, not long ago when he landed on the window on the second floor of Asuka, Lu Zhouyu leaned out his upper body, with his arms resting on the window sill, and was using the phone screen to reflect the sun's rays onto him.

With intertwined eyes, he put away the mischievous smile on his face, tapped the screen with his fingertips, and signaled Xia Yan to look at the phone.

In the chat box lay a video that had just been sent.

Click on it to see that the huge Alaskan dog is chasing after the silver-gray seabird that flew into the window, and the exhibition hall is very lively.

After exiting the video, I received another message: "Come and take Kitty away."

When I looked up again, the window was empty.

After Xia Yan replied "Come right away", he hurried into the art gallery, one step at a time.

When he reached the corner of the second floor, his footsteps faltered, and he realized that after meeting today, he didn't seem to have called Kitty's name.

How did Lu Zhouyu know?

Before he could think about it, the sound of dogs barking entered his ears, and he quickened his pace.