Chapter 257
The photographer faced the greatest challenge of his career.
After that group photoshoot, he felt as if he had shed a layer of skin.
These people came up with a new skit every three minutes, their leaps of logic so wild he simply couldn’t keep up.
In the end, things got so abstract that four of them pretended to be rocks while the other four acted as monkeys leaping out of those rocks, running wild along the beach…
And of course, all those harebrained ideas came from Teacher Xie. The scary part was that the others actually went along with it.
Well, part of them cooperated willingly, and the rest… were forced into it by sheer violence.
The livestream audience and the on-site staff were already laughing until their stomachs hurt. The photographer kept complaining, but the smile on his face never left.
To be fair, this really was the happiest job he had ever experienced.
Some people were just like a virus of joy, spreading laughter to everyone around them.
“With that, today’s group photoshoot is complete. Next is dinnertime—teachers, feel free to have dinner on your own!”
After filming, the exhausted guests all returned to Love Observation Town. Some rested, others went to eat.
Meanwhile, the forcibly handcuffed pair—Xiao Jingxi and Xie Mi—walked side by side down the town’s street.
Night was gradually falling. The afterglow of dusk painted the horizon purple and red, and the lengthened shadows on the street gave the scene an atmospheric feel.
“Do you still remember back when we were in school?”
Xiao Jingxi lifted his head to the sky, his eyes brimming with longing. “Every day after class, you’d wait for me at the classroom door. It was also at this kind of dusk. We’d walk home together—it was so warm and beautiful…”
“You remembered wrong. Every time I waited for you at the classroom door, didn’t you always tell me to get lost?” Xie Mi exposed his fake sentimental act in a second.
As Xiao Jingxi’s number one anti-fan in the original novel, she of course knew every single one of his black marks.
Those storylines between him and the original Xie Mi—she had long since memorized them backwards and forwards.
Xiao Jingxi’s eyelids twitched slightly, but with strong conviction he pressed on with his deep tone. “There were a lot of girls chasing me back then. I didn’t want to be distracted from my studies, so I acted tough with everyone. I treated you the same way. But in my heart, you were already different from the others…”
“Of course I was different. You rejected gifts from everyone else, but you accepted all of mine.”
“Yes.” Xiao Jingxi smiled again, lost in his memories. “Because they were from you…”
“No.”
Xie Mi interrupted sweetly with a grin. “Because mine were the most expensive.”
This time, Xiao Jingxi truly broke character. “?”
“Since we’re on the topic, why don’t we settle the accounts now?”
Xie Mi suddenly pulled out her phone and opened the calculator app. “In high school, every so often I gave you gifts. All of them were name-brand—watches, sneakers, laptops… let’s round it off and call it 500,000.”
“After we started dating, we always went Dutch, right? Then let’s tally up the gifts.”
“When I gave you that 180,000 luxury bracelet, you gave me a little handbag worth 8,000. When your new movie premiered, I booked twenty screenings. When my TV drama aired, you used an alt account to give me a like…”
“When I treated you to Starbucks, you treated me to Mixue Bingcheng.”
“When I treated you to a fine dining restaurant with an average spend of 50,000 per person, you cooked me a pot of plain congee and said it ‘tasted like home’…”
Once Xie Mi opened the floodgates, she couldn’t stop. Words poured out like bullets, her speed leaving Xiao Jingxi no chance to interject.
Watching the numbers on the calculator climb higher and higher, Xiao Jingxi visibly panicked.
“What nonsense are you spouting! How can feelings be measured by money? Everything I gave you was true from the heart—I never cared about the value of material things…”
“Oh? Then pay me back,” Xie Mi raised an eyebrow.
The corner of Xiao Jingxi’s mouth twitched, nearly grinding his teeth. “Fine, I’ll pay! I already said I don’t care about material things. What you’re doing right now is breaking my heart…”
Xie Mi ignored him completely and kept calculating. “And for my birthday, you sent me a ‘Happy Birthday’ on WeChat…”
That broke Xiao Jingxi’s defenses entirely.
“Isn’t the handcuff time up yet? Wasn’t it supposed to be two hours?”
Why did two hours feel so endless!!
#I treat you to Starbucks, you treat me to Mixue Bingcheng
#Xiao Jingxi’s birthday gift to Xie Mi was a “Happy Birthday”
#Xiao Jingxi the stingy schemer
#Xiao Jingxi pay her back
The scene of Xie Mi suddenly pulling out her phone to tally debts went viral, and Xiao Jingxi’s stingy behavior from the past drew countless onlookers.
[BanShadyPeopleFromBegging]: Teacher Xie suddenly starting to calculate accounts had me laughing like crazy. Was their relationship always this explosive??
[WangzaiCowCandy]: The earlier parts were okay, but when it got to Starbucks vs Mixue Bingcheng, I lost it. If Xiao Jingxi is that stingy, shouldn’t he have just bought her a cup of lemon water?
[PurelyDesirefulRecruit]: No, could’ve been just a soft-serve cone.
[MidnightFingerGod]: Honestly, I’m curious now—how did he ever maintain that “aloof flower on a high mountain” image? His fans kept saying he was otherworldly, but he’s been pocketing hundreds of thousands in gifts since high school. You call that otherworldly??
[FallDownNeedMaleModel]: I don’t get it. Stingy in high school is one thing, but after debuting as a Movie Emperor, he should be loaded. How can he still treat his girlfriend like this?
[CurlyRadish]: Feels like he never respected his girlfriend. He’s used to putting himself on a pedestal and saw her devotion as a given. In relationships, he only takes and never gives.
[StickyTape?]: Damn… the more I think about it, the worse it is. He even hyped CP rumors while already having a girlfriend, and let CP fans attack her. That alone shows how little he cared about her.
[HealthyYoungster]: Exactly. His team always tried to whitewash it by saying “it’s just work, not cheating.” But the real issue is his lack of respect for his partner—it’s a character problem. They’re deliberately blurring the truth.
[Melancholy195Cutie]: Same on the show. Before the romance reveal, he was aloof and kept up his act. Once the relationship was exposed and his reputation started crumbling, he immediately switched to “deeply in love” mode, acting like he adored Xie Mi… so fake.
[CivilizedKiddo]: Him cuffing himself to Xie Mi this time was just another attempt to whitewash through her. But he hit an iron wall.
[LonelyToenail]: Never underestimate the determination of someone awakened by love-brain!!
The moment the handcuff timer expired, Xiao Jingxi made an excuse to leave right away, terrified that if he stayed longer, Xie Mi would expose even more explosive dirt.
But even so, he couldn’t escape the fate of being branded the “stingy man.”
Watching his figure flee in embarrassment, Xie Mi sighed and rubbed her forehead with a wry smile.
“Xiao Jingxi, really… insisting on reminiscing with me, even though he hates hearing the truth.”
Inside a café by the street, Liu Woxing, who had witnessed the whole scene, typed a line into her laptop.
[Xiao Jingxi dated just to drink free Starbucks.]
New entry. Sent!
