The porcelain cup hit the table with a dull thud. Xu Su watched the tea spill onto the tabletop.
'He seems angry…'
'Did I go too far?'
"Alright."
Just as Xu Su was about to speak, Zhou Mochen, who had been silent for a while, took her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.
He looked at Shen Chen and let out a soft "tsk." Siding with his girlfriend without a moment's hesitation, he chimed in, "Given your reputation, what girl from a good family wouldn't see getting involved with you as jumping into a pit of fire?"
"Exactly, exactly!" Seeing that she had backup, Xu Su nodded eagerly, her confidence restored. In a loud voice, she said, "'Ten years waking from a Yangzhou dream, only to earn the name of a fickle lover in the brothels.' Just swap Yangzhou for Beijing, and that pretty much sums up your last decade."
Shen Chen was twenty-three. Based on Xu Su's assessment of his moral character—or lack thereof—he might have really been fooling around for a full ten years.
