Li Qian was stuck at work, otherwise he would have been in the car headed to the school just then. As his texts continued to go unanswered, he yelled for Chen Fan.

"Yes, Young Master?" Chen Fan came rushing in and stopped dead at the ugly look on Li Qian's face.

"You need to go to Jiao Jiao's school. She's not answering my texts, so something must have happened. I'd go, but I've got that damned meeting in five minutes."

Li Qian's heart was pounding. Something was wrong with his little flower, and he was about to erupt.

Chen Fan hesitated. "But boss, don't you need me here for the meeting? Why don't you call Jing Mei – we can tell her what happened."

Chen Fan continued to reason with Li Qian. "They're not going to let me in anyways. Those private schools have super strict rules about who can enter and ex..."

"Yes, thank you, Chen Fan." Li Qian interrupted impatiently and waved him away, already dialing the phone.

As Chen Fan left, he could hear Li Qian explaining his concerns to Jing Mei. 'Go ahead, boss,' he thought. 'Try to explain to your future mother-in-law why you're texting her underage daughter in the middle of the day, hehe.'

.....

When Li Qian got home later that evening, he still hadn't heard back from Jiao Jiao. After the hurried phone call to Jing Mei, he'd received nothing but a brief message of thanks followed by a single line: 'Did I make the wrong decision to bring her here?'

With those ominous words hanging over his head, Li Qian anxiously finished his tasks for the day and hurried home. Finally, he looked at the long string of one-sided texts sitting unanswered and abandoned. He decided to try once more.

(LQ): Can I call you?

It was a tense five minutes before he finally received a response.

(WhisperingBlooms): En.

Those two letters seemed to carry a weight of sadness, and he immediately dialed her number.

"Wei? Hello, Jiao Jiao?"

"...."

Li Qian pulled the phone away from his ear to see the clock still ticking. He sighed quietly and said, "You must have had a tough day."

Helplessness flooded him at a slight sniffle, and he closed his eyes at the bolt of pain that speared through him.

Slumping back against the leather couch, he continued to speak gently. "I was worried about you today, you know? You stopped responding to me all of a sudden, so that's why I called your mom. Are you mad at me?"

A few more shaking sniffles later, she finally replied, "Brother Qian, thank you."

Jiao Jiao was lying on her fluffy bed with a stuffed cat cuddled in her arms. "I really needed my mom today, so I'm glad you called her."

She wiped away a few stray tears. "I'm sorry for not replying to you."

Li Qian swiped his hair in frustration. "Jiao Jiao, no, that's not what I meant. You don't need to apologize." He waited a moment and listened to her breathing softly. "Can you tell me what happened?"

Li Qian's warm voice soothed her nerves, his words lifting the weight of her tears and carrying them away like petals on the wind.

"I've not been feeling well, Brother Qian. And I missed my first math class and had another today, but I felt like I missed a lot. And then some girls were talking about me, and... they're not nice girls, Brother; they were making fun of me, and maybe I'm not smart enough for Huadian!"

The words burst out of her in a torrent of emotion. Jiao Jiao breathed heavily for a moment before squeezing her eyes shut tightly.

"Alright, it's okay, Jiao Jiao," Li Qian soothed, smiling at her cuteness. "Why don't we start with the most important one? Why haven't you been feeling well?"