006 Refusing Help at a Critical Moment

Ayoub caught sight of me and waved enthusiastically. After whispering a few words to the handsome man in the white robe and receiving a nod in return, he stood up and walked toward me. In his hand, he held a USB flash drive decorated with a traditional ink-wash painting.

My eyes lit up instantly. I took the drive from him, exclaiming with pleasant surprise, "So you were the one who found it! I thought it was gone for good."

Ayoub laughed heartily and explained, "It wasn't me. It was Musa."

"Musa?" I had no memory of that name, so I instinctively cast my gaze toward the handsome man in the white robe standing behind him.

Ayoub followed my gaze, understood immediately, and smiled with the warmth of a spring breeze. "Right, I forgot to tell you yesterday. His name is Musa, and he’s been my close friend since childhood."

Musa. I murmured the name to myself. It carried a thick, lingering Arabic resonance; as my tongue slid from the back of my upper teeth to my lower, it felt both intimate and forbidden.

I steadied my nerves and glanced at Musa, who was sitting in the back row of the classroom. The sunlight was exceptionally bright, spilling over his pristine white robe and lending him an air of effortless grace, clarity, and gentleness. Yet, beneath that gentleness, there was a faint, untouchable distance that made me feel a sudden sense of apprehension.

As I pondered this, I recalled what Yin Qianyan had said yesterday about local Emiratis just coasting through their degrees, and I couldn't help but ask, "Is Musa also a student of petroleum geology?"

Ayoub nodded. "Yes, he's in the same major as us. We'll be attending classes together from now on." He glanced at the flash drive in my hand and added, "You left in such a rush yesterday. Musa noticed you had left something on the bench in the hallway and asked me to return it to you."

Hearing this, I felt a little more at ease. That meant Musa hadn't needed to open the drive to know who it belonged to—and perhaps, he had never even seen the photos of me in a qipao inside.

I let out a sigh of relief and smiled at Ayoub. "Then thank you, and please thank Musa for me."

"Don't be so polite," he said, winking with an even deeper smile. "Musa and I will likely need your help often in the future, especially Musa. He studied business as an undergraduate and is quite a busy oil merchant now, with several companies under his name. Coming here to study for a master's in petroleum geology is just his way of gaining more professional knowledge and picking up a diploma along the way; he doesn't really have a foundation in this field. As for me, although I studied this major before, I wasn't a very good student. So, from now on, I’ll be counting on you, Cece."

I froze, my body stiffening slightly as I struggled to find a response. This was exactly what I had feared. Only last night, Yin Qianyan had warned me repeatedly not to get too close to the locals in Dubai, and here was Ayoub, making such a brazen request. On the surface, it was framed as "help," but the message between the lines was clearly that he expected me to do all the heavy lifting.

As a proud Chinese overachiever, I didn't mind helping those who struggled, but I loathed the idea of others reaping the rewards of my hard work. Yet, being on someone else's turf, I couldn't just brush him off rudely. I offered a dry laugh and stalled, saying, "You know I’m new to Dubai, and I’m not quite used to the teaching and research methods here yet. Besides, what I learned in China might not even be applicable here. It’s hard to say who will be helping whom."

With Yin Qianyan’s warnings fresh in my mind, I was deeply wary of this situation. My refusal was subtle but clear. However, I had forgotten that Ayoub was Middle Eastern; he didn't grasp the nuances of a Chinese-style polite decline and instead took it as an opportunity to push further. "That’s fine," he comforted me. "We’ll help you adapt to Dubai, and you help us keep up with the coursework. We’ll help each other."

I rested my forehead in my hand, feeling utterly helpless. But between the camel milk from the night before that had left me with a terrible stomachache and the exertion of climbing several flights of stairs, I lacked the energy to argue. After a moment of recovery, just as I was about to make my position clearer to Ayoub, I felt a tall, sturdy shadow loom beside me.

Musa’s eyes were like deep, gentle pools of water. While he maintained a respectful distance, his magnetic voice still reached me clearly. His gaze was filled with concern as he asked, "Cece, you don't look well. Are you feeling sick?"