Author's Note: I thought it was cute how intiially, we got to learn about Qiu Ying's feelings through her conversations with Jiang Jiang, the stuffed bunny she won through that variety show.  But at a certain point Jiang Jiang went away, only to reappear briefly at the end when she decided to move out of the Phoenix training base and return to her job at GDV.  As for XIang Kong's bunny, we never saw it again after he took it home and I've often wondered where would he keep his?  This story is the product of those wonderings. 

Story #3 – The Case of the Missing Bunny

When Ji Xiang Kong arrived home one afternoon and stopped by his room to drop off his bike helmet, he was stunned to find it looking like it had been ransacked.  He was even more surprised when instead of Lin Yi Xuan, whom he had immediately assumed to be the culprit, Qiu Ying popped her head out from underneath the side of his bed.

“Oh, you’re back,” she greeted. 

“That’s not—This – You –“  Xiang Kong cocked his head in confusion.  “What are you doing?”  He finally asked, unable to mentally comprehend what was going on or understand how she could welcome him back so nonchalantly when his room looked like this.

Collecting herself from the floor, Qiu Ying stood up and wiped her dusty hands on the front of her pants before answering.  “I’m looking for something.”

Xiang Kong twisted his body and looked around.  “In here?”

“Mm.”

As she started to straighten the covers on his bed and put the things she’d moved back in their place, he asked with a disbelieving laugh, “What could you be looking for in my room?”

Not answering, Qiu Ying continued to clean up the mess she’d made while sneaking peaks around his room at the same time.  Xiang Kong couldn’t begin to guess what his girlfriend was up to, but he could tell she wasn’t going to say and he wasn’t the type to press.  He trusted her to have her reasons just as he knew she would share them once she was ready or wanting to.  Setting down his bike helmet on the corner of his desk, he shook his head and let her be.

Meanwhile, Qiu Ying watched Xiang Kong exit his room with her hands on her hips and wondered in a mutter, “He wouldn’t have thrown it away, would he?”

=//=

Several days passed and Xiang Kong hadn’t given much more thought to what had happened in his room the other day.  When he’d gone to bed later that same day, he’d found it restored to its normal order and so he’d put it aside.  But now that he was sitting at the kitchen counter with his teammates crowded around, he couldn’t help but be reminded of Qiu Ying creeping and crawling around his room when Yi Xuan used his chin to point at the living room behind them and ask in an audible whisper, “What is she doing?”

Xiang Kong swirled around in his seat and watched Qiu Ying circle the perimeter of their living room, her body half bent as she rummaged through and peered in various storage boxes.  “I don’t know,” he answered, while Sun Ze Yi recalled that he’d noticed her doing something similar the day before.

“She was going through the cabinets in the training room yesterday morning, but when I asked if she was looking for something and whether there was anything I could do to help, she just shook her head and wouldn’t answer.”

“Did she leave something behind when she moved out?” Pei Xi asked.

She might have, Xiang Kong thought to himself, but that wouldn’t explain why she was so unwilling to explain or why she’d been searching through his room the other day.  Particularly when, normally, she didn’t enter the team’s personal domains except for maybe when she was helping out with the housework.<