Chapter 60: Not Very Attentive
The National Day holiday was over, and the classmates who had played to their hearts’ content returned to the classroom.
Qin Yue came back with a big bag of chocolates and handed them out one by one. When he got to Gu Qinghuan, he even asked specifically whether she had seen his Moments.
Gu Qinghuan took a chocolate from the bag, unwrapped it, and popped it into her mouth. “Yeah, I saw it. Looked lively. Did you have fun?”
Qin Yue was satisfied. As long as Gu Qinghuan had seen it, that was enough—he didn’t want to be the only one suffering from the time difference, watching her food posts in the middle of the night and feeling attacked.
Then he remembered something and quietly asked, “What do you think of my brother?”
“Huh?” Gu Qinghuan’s hands paused mid–unwrapping her second chocolate, looking a little blank. “You mean I should thank him for helping me with the student council application?”
“No!” Qin Yue said. “I mean, don’t you have any thoughts after seeing my brother?”
Gu Qinghuan looked even more confused. “When did I see your brother? Weren’t you guys in Germany over the holiday?”
“In the photos! The photos!” Qin Yue pulled out his phone and scrolled to his Moments. “Look, this is my brother, Qin Min!”
Gu Qinghuan leaned over and finally realized, “Ohhh, so that guy is your brother!”
She had noticed that young man in several of the photos, but he wasn’t in every shot, and when she browsed Moments, she didn’t just look at Qin Yue’s posts. With the photos spaced out like that, she had mostly focused on Qin Yue himself, plus the scenery and food—not the other people in the background.
Qin Yue’s feelings were… complicated. How to describe it? A faintly weird sense of… superiority?
He pressed his lips together but couldn’t help the corners from lifting slightly. “My brother’s this handsome, and you didn’t even notice him?”
Gu Qinghuan looked at the phone again and gave her verdict: “Yeah, he’s handsome. The kind of mature, proper-looking handsome that makes you feel he’s steady and dependable.”
She was just giving an honest evaluation and didn’t probe further about Qin Min, but Qin Yue was already overjoyed.
He shoved the rest of the chocolates at her. “They’re all yours!”
She had just been thinking about how to sneak a few more pieces—mainly because they were exactly her taste—and suddenly having the whole bag dumped into her arms startled her. “Huh?”
“He’s showing off!” Jiang Chuchu, unable to watch anymore, spoke in exasperation. “In the past, whenever people saw photos of him and his brother, they’d ask, ‘Who’s this?’ or ‘Is this someone you know?’ and he’d get all disappointed.
“But since you didn’t pay any attention to his brother, he feels you haven’t ‘betrayed’ him, so of course he’s happy!” She exposed Qin Yue’s little mindset.
Qin Yue looked a bit embarrassed and muttered, “Well, if someone keeps stealing your spotlight, anyone would be annoyed.”
Hearing that, Gu Qinghuan fell into thought.
“What’s wrong?” Qin Yue asked curiously.
Gu Qinghuan looked up at him seriously. “Sorry, I need to correct what I said earlier.”
“What?” Her solemn tone made Qin Yue a little nervous.
“Over the break, a lot of people were posting pictures on Moments. I basically just skimmed them, so I didn’t look at your photos very carefully,” Gu Qinghuan admitted openly.
“It’s not just that I didn’t notice your brother in the photos—I didn’t notice the rest of your family either. I only paid attention to you, the food, and the sights.”
“So?” Qin Yue still didn’t quite get it.
“I think that as a friend, it’s normal for me to focus on you. But ignoring my friend’s family altogether is also a kind of negligence,” Gu Qinghuan said. “So—sorry.”
It was also possible that because she already knew Qin Yue had an older brother named Qin Min, when she saw an older male in the group photos, she subconsciously assumed it was him.
But she knew very well—she just hadn’t been paying enough attention.
If Qin Yue wanted her to focus more on him than his brother, then, according to Jiang Chuchu’s explanation, he had misunderstood.
She couldn’t let that misunderstanding continue, because misunderstandings could lead to disappointment.
Qin Yue was stunned. After a pause, he said hesitantly, “So… what you mean is, it’s not that you don’t care about my brother—it’s that you’re not very attentive to me either?”
“Right,” Gu Qinghuan nodded. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”
Qin Yue went quiet and stayed that way until the bell rang.
This spooked Jiang Chuchu—had Gu Qinghuan just given him a psychological blow? Thinking he’d found a friend who cared more about him than his brother, only to realize she wasn’t all that invested in him either…
Ugh, Jiang Chuchu imagined being in his shoes and felt a little sad herself.
When the first English period finally ended, Jiang Chuchu didn’t even look at the monthly exam papers being handed out. She was just about to talk to Gu Qinghuan about Qin Yue when—unexpectedly—Qin Yue grabbed Gu Qinghuan first.
“I’ve thought about it!” His eyes were bright. “You’re right—we’re not that close!”
Jiang Chuchu: …What on earth is he saying?
“We’ve only known each other for a month, and you mainly hang out with Chuchu and Yu Xin. I haven’t spent that much time with you guys. Honestly, I’m closer to Chuchu,” Qin Yue said.
Gu Qinghuan nodded. “Exactly. I think we get along fine, but we’re not at the point of sharing everything.”
“You’re not wrong. In fact, you’ve actually paid a decent amount of attention to me—you’ve looked at my Moments carefully and even sent me food pics. That’s already pretty good.”
Jiang Chuchu: Wait—what’s this about sending him food pics?
“But my biggest misunderstanding wasn’t that! If you don’t care much about me, it makes sense you wouldn’t care about my family either. Which means I was wrong all along thinking my brother stole my friends’ attention—it’s not like that!” Qin Yue said passionately.
“It’s exactly because people know me and care about me, that when they see someone unfamiliar around me, they ask—not because they want to know Qin Min, but because they’re curious about ‘Qin Yue’s brother’!”
A brilliant, relieved smile spread across his face. “I can’t believe I wasted years tangled up over this. I’m such an idiot!”
Gu Qinghuan nodded in agreement. “Exactly. It’s not about stealing attention—if there’s a stranger, people will always ask who they are.”
In short, Qin Yue’s own insecurity about his brother had made him assume that anyone asking about him was more interested in his brother and not in him.
Qin Yue kept laughing, until Gu Qinghuan started to think he was losing it.
Then he suddenly glared at her and accused, “But what you said was still too much! We’ve hung out for so long—can’t you pay a little more attention to me?”
“Ew—” Gu Qinghuan bared her teeth in mock disgust. “No. You scored higher than me in English this time.”
What kind of reason was that?! Qin Yue bared his teeth right back. “Oh? And you still got such an easy question wrong~”
A vein throbbed on Gu Qinghuan’s forehead. Ugh, that smug tone!
It was only a two-point difference—just one multiple choice question. She’d beat him next time for sure.
She was just plotting her comeback when she suddenly felt a hand clamp on her shoulder. Turning her head, she came face-to-face with Jiang Chuchu’s smiling face.
“Qinghuan,” Chuchu said sweetly, “is there something you’d like to explain to me?”
“Huh?” Gu Qinghuan felt a sudden chill, like goosebumps prickling her arms.
“That food photo Qin Yue mentioned—what was that?” Jiang Chuchu’s smile didn’t waver.
“Uh… just some pictures I took while eating out over the holiday. I sent them to Qin Yue to make him jealous…” Gu Qinghuan mumbled.
“Why didn’t you send them to me?”
“It wasn’t anything special…”
“Why didn’t you send them to me?”
“…I was wrong.”
The resolution to this “missing photo” incident was that Gu Qinghuan swore, the moment she got home and connected to Wi-Fi, she’d post the original high-res images in their three-person group chat—without leaving out a single one.
