"Hm?" Ji Ting paused before realizing what he meant. "Not exactly. I was actually a little too nervous to sleep myself."
"You were nervous?" Ji Yanzhi raised his eyebrows in surprise and leaned closer. "We've known each other for so long and been through countless things, big and small. How have I never noticed that in you?"
"I have been."
"For example?"
Ji Ting thought back seriously. The last time he had been nervous was during the final data verification for the controlled nuclear fusion criticality experiment, but he couldn't talk about that. The time before that...
"When I went home with Uncle and met Grandpa for the first time," he said softly, his tone earnest, "I was very nervous."
Ji Yanzhi froze for a moment, then couldn't help laughing softly. "Were you worried Grandpa wouldn't like you? Or that he wouldn't approve of us being together?"
"Both," Ji Ting answered honestly.
A warm, aching tenderness filled Ji Yanzhi's chest. He took Ji Ting's hand and rubbed the back of it with his fingertips. "I mean it, Ji Ear. You can't keep indulging me without any limits. Don't you know? That's how people develop all sorts of bad habits."
Ji Ting blinked, then replied in the same matter-of-fact tone, "But I don't feel that way."
"You don't?" Ji Yanzhi decided to give an example. "Take the day before yesterday, when we went to have our photo taken against the red backdrop for our marriage certificates. We took it seventeen or eighteen times..."
"Twenty-two times," Ji Ting corrected precisely.
"Right, twenty-two times." Ji Yanzhi chuckled. "Didn't it occur to you that I was being so picky and making so much trouble that another partner might have lost patience long ago, or even started an argument?"
"But you really weren't satisfied with