7 Chapter 7: The start of something

The male voice seemed very angry.

Amy Shen gave her brother a questioning look. Her brother was staring blatantly towards Qiao An.

Since Qiao An said that she was currently single, the Shen siblings wondered who that man could be. Could it be the ex?

Qiao An distanced herself from the Shen siblings, but the Shen siblings could still hear her soft voice. She answered the phone calls meekly with short word answers like 'okay', 'no', 'yes' and 'of course'.

Then Shen siblings were looking at Qiao An when suddenly Qiao An turned to face them.

Then Qiao An walked towards Shen Jun Shan; she mouthed 'help me' before pressing the loudspeaker button.

"Xiao An, I am only looking out for you. Auntie asks me to do that. So, you shouldn't blame me when I get angry because you are with a man. Who is he?"

Qiao An smiled awkwardly towards the Shen siblings "Jun Shan is a friend. I am having dinner with them."

The voice from the other end paused for a few seconds. "Them? Who do you mean by them? Why is it plural now?"

Amy Shen thought that she should step in now or the man will be furious about it. She was curious about the man, but she needed to save Qiao An first. "Hello there, I am Amy. The male voice you heard just now is my brother. An is my friend, so we are having dinner together — the three of us. So, don't worry about it. We didn't do anything other than eating".

After the man heard a female voice, he seemed to be relieved. Qiao An talked a bit with him before she hung up. Shen Jun Shan waited for Qiao An to finish her phone call so that he could apologise for accidentally pressing the answer button. Since Qiao An seemed to be quite troubled by the phone call, he felt terrible as well.

"Qiao An, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to trouble you" Shen Jun Shan looked sincere when he apologised. Qiao An looked at Shen Jun Shan, and the two of them were staring right into each other eyes.

"An An, who's that? He's a young man, am I right? A family member?" Amy Shen came out from the kitchen with a plate of fruit with her.

Qiao An and Shen Jun Shan broke their eye contact, so Amy Shen missed the staring contest between Qiao An and Shen Jun Shan. Qiao An sat down next to Amy Shen and took a slice of apple from the plate.

"My stepbrother. My mother married his dad when I was in high school, and we move to the neighbouring city, City T. I moved out of their house and settled down here. My mother wants me to stay with my brother because he is working here, but since we are not biological sibling, I think it would be weird for me to stay with him. Mother told him to take care of me, so he has been doing that diligently".

That piece of information was something new for the Shen siblings. It turned out that they did not know a lot of things about Qiao An. Shen Jun Shan kept on looking at Qiao An because she has not said that she forgave him. Shen Jun Shan wanted to apologise once again, but Amy Shen kept on asking Qiao An about her family.

Amy Shen remembered that Qiao An suddenly went missing during the half-year of their junior high school. She never knew why she went missing, but she heard from the students in Class 1 that Qiao An transferred school.

When it was around 8, Qiao An excused herself to go back to her house. Amy Shen waved at Qiao An before she went into the kitchen. Qiao An waved back without any emotion in her face and went out of the house.

Seeing that his sister was not around anymore, Shen Jun Shan head out, and he saw that Qiao An was on her way to D2006 while twirling her keys. He walked out barefoot and up the stairs to catch up with Qiao An.

"An!" Shen Jun Shan called her. "I'm sorry about just now".

Shen Jun Shan spoke suddenly, so Qiao An was startled. She dropped her keys. "Oh, sorry about that, too".

"It's nothing. My stepbrother is being paranoid" Qiao An paused and looked at Shen Jun Shan, who was three steps down from her. Upon seeing that he went out barefoot, Qiao An let out a small giggle.

This would be the first time Qiao An giggled because of him. Of course, he'd seen her smiling and laughing with Amy Shen before, but he could only watch from the side. Now that Qiao An smiled because of him, she looked beautiful. Much more impressive than how she looked when she was laughing with his sister.

"Why are you not wearing slipper" Qiao An pointed towards Shen Jun Shan's feet. Shen Jun Shan was still staring at her without looking at his feet.

"I'll miss you out if I'm not fast enough" Shen Jun Shan kept on looking at Qiao An's face. Previously, Qiao An won't look at someone heads on. She will always avoid eye contact with people. But now, since Qiao An was three steps up, no matter how much she cast down her head to avoid eye contact, he could still see her face.

"I'm not going anywhere. I live upstairs to your house. Bye Jun Shan" Qiao An took one step up to go back to her house, indicating that she was finished talking.

Shen Jun Shan did not know why but he wanted to talk more with Qiao An. Out of the blue, without thinking, his hand reached out to stop Qiao An from walking away.

Qiao An stopped and looked at Shen Jun Shan's hand who was preventing her from walking away. She had a confused look on her face. She was about to ask Shen Jun Shan about it.

"Why are you holding my sister's hand?" A stern voice sounded from the stairs below. A handsome man who was wearing a navy polo shirt looked at Shen Jun Shan with a resentful face.

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Ten years ago.

Mrs Wong returned the test paper to the students in Class 2.

"Congratulations to Amy for placing first in your grade. Please give her a big hand" Mrs Wong seemed very happy to announce the ranking to the students.

The other students congratulated Amy Shen for being the top students in their year. They were very proud that someone from their class ranked first beating those from Class 1.

While the rest of the students were happy, Amy Shen was not pleased about it. She was more shocked than happy about it.

"How about Qiao An? What's her rank?" Amy Shen could not believe that she beat Qiao An in school ranking.

One of the students heard her question and answered her truthfully. "You didn't know? She transferred to another city. I heard it has something to do with her family circumstances. But don't bother about her. Now that you are number one, we can proudly say that we are from Class 2."

Class 1 was considered the class with a lot of smart students in it. Class 2 was second. Some students from Class 1 looked down on people from class 2. The students from Class 2 kept on going on and on about how the students from Class 1 were arrogant.

Upon hearing them trash-talking about others, Amy Shen wanted to refute that claim. Not everyone has an attitude problem in Class 1.

One of them would be Qiao An.