After finally resolving this unexpected mishap, the group was
both tired and hungry, so He Yu asked if they wanted to get a late-night
snack. The first person to raise their hand and agree enthusiastically with
this suggestion was the one who had absolutely nothing to do with them:
Bai Jing. "Okay, okay! How does congee sound? There's a restaurant over by
the Bund that serves the best shark fin sea urchin congee. Why don't we
go there?"
He Yu turned to look at Xie Xue.
Xie Xue dabbed at her tears and shot Bai Jing a disgruntled look. "I
wanna eat barbecue. I wanna eat on Laji Street."
"Then let's go eat on Laji Street."
Bai Jing said, "Ah…isn't that too… All right then…"
With Xie Xue present, He Yu was a bit more courteous to Xie
Qingcheng, asking him, "What about you?"
"I'll pass. I'm taking this dog to get its shots, and then a pre-adoption
health assessment. If you want to keep it, I'll bring it to you later." He shot
a glance at the little yellow dog sitting obediently by his feet as he spoke.
Surprisingly, the dog took a liking to Xie Qingcheng, happily circling
around him and wagging its fluffy yellow tail. "Woof!"
Half an hour later, the other three found themselves at the night
markets of Huzhou.
"Laoban, can I get fifty skewers of chicken cartilage, fifty skewers of
lamb, ten skewers of roasted rice-cakes, ten skewers of roasted mushrooms,
a dozen baked oysters, and five bottles of beer?" Xie Xue started ordering
as soon as she stepped into the barbecue shop, as though she knew the place
inside and out.
"Isn't this sort of place kinda dirty…? I'd never eat here." Bai Jing
extended two fingers to flip through the greasy menu, as if she'd wanted to
touch it with nothing more than the tips of her fingernails.
Irritated, Xie Xue rolled her eyes. "Weren't you the one who forced
your way into the car and insisted on coming along?"
"Aiya, little sis, why are you so angry? I'm hungry too." Bai Jing set
her venerated buttocks onto the seat closest to He Yu without the slightest
courtesy or hesitation as she spoke. "I'd just like to ask that you go a little
easy on the grease. It's so late, I'm afraid of getting fat."
Xie Xue glared at her and viciously slammed a hand on the table,
raising her voice as she shouted, "Laoban, get me another ten fucking fried
rabbit heads!"
Bai Jing exclaimed, "You—!"
He Yu said mildly, "Get twenty instead. I want some too."
Bai Jing could only respond with silence.
Grilling skewers is a skill that's easy to pick up but difficult to master.
The same chicken cartilage would not taste the same—as though some key
element were missing—if the cook were helming the grill. However, all it
took was a jerk of the boss's arm and a jolt of the bamboo skewers to have
the excess fat and grease from the juicy cartilage that had been grilled to a
golden yellow drip onto the charcoal, creating a miraculous chemical
reaction.
The aroma of searing fat and a shower of brilliant sparks flew out in
unison as the boss worked. Enveloped in dark smoke, he was like a
reclusive grandmaster; with a slight flare of his nostrils and the merest whiff
of the air, he could discern the subtle delicious elements within the smoke
that indicated it was time to remove the skewers from the grill.
Then, he plated the food and set the dishes on the table, serving the
food while it was still hot. The preparations were done flawlessly, down to
the degree of heat used for each and every one of the skewers, as if the
platter of comfort food were the personal creation of a master chef from the
world of fine dining. A little less time, and they would be undercooked, but
a little more, and they would be too tough; these were crunchy and scorched to perfection, each crackling bite of fragrant juiciness melting like
snowflakes in one's mouth.
Xie Xue could be considered a regular at this restaurant and had
ordered a full table's worth of barbecue skewers. The little table covered in
a thin plastic tablecloth almost buckled under the weight of the food.
However, while she was working on inhaling the smorgasbord of delicacies,
Bai Jing stayed in character, doing her best to perform a quintessential
Sichuan opera technique: swapping faces.
"It seems that Young Master He isn't a native of Huzhou like me?"
Bai Jing batted her lash extensions, and her lips, coated with shimmery
lipstick, curved into a wide grin. "Your accent doesn't sound like it."
He Yu asked with a smile, "Miss Bai, are you checking my household
registration?"
"Aiya, not at all, not at all." Bai Jing hastily waved her hands,
awkwardly smoothing down her hair. "Um, I did my grad degree with the
School of Business Management at Yanshi University of Economics. Your
Mandarin sounds pretty standard, so I wondered if you were a
northerner."
"You must have been quite a talented student." He Yu smiled with a
refined air as he selected a rabbit head—one with its eyes still wide open in
unresolved rabbity grievances—from the barbecue tray.
Unsure if she could take his comment at face value, Bai Jing kept
rambling, "Right, so my main reason for working at the sales counter is to
gain experience so that I can be promoted to manager in the future. I can
gain a lot of knowledge and experience being on the front lines, and I've
served plenty of celebrities and CEOs. A few days back, I even met an
actor, the one from that TV show that's been airing on primetime—"
With a crunch, He Yu's gleaming white teeth chomped the rabbit skull
into pieces.
Bai Jing choked on her words. She felt as though He Yu had swooped
in and bitten through her windpipe, leaving the shattered remains of her
unfinished speech within. She suddenly felt a slight ache in her neck.
He Yu gave a slight smile. It was only at this moment that Bai Jing
discovered he had sharp canines. They weren't obvious—their tips only peeked out from beneath his thin lips when he gave a crooked grin—so she
hadn't noticed earlier. He Yu ate the rabbit brains slowly, with perfect
composure. "Miss Bai should eat as we chat. Seeing as you've come with
us, we can't have you go hungry. Do you not like rabbit heads?"
Bai Jing waved her hands hastily, "M-my appetite is usually really
small, and I get full with just a couple of sips of Coke, I don't need…"
"Is that so?" He Yu tossed the shattered rabbit bones onto his plate
and smiled. "That's really such a shame."
At the end of their meal, even though Bai Jing had restrained herself a
little, she still couldn't resist temptation and tried to add He Yu on WeChat.
Seeing this, Xie Xue finally snapped. This woman was her older brother's
matchmaking date—what was she adding He Yu's WeChat for?! She was so
disrespectful!
Seething with anger, she said, "So sorry, but he can't give you his
WeChat."
"Why's that? Are you his girlfriend?"
"I-I'm not!" Xie Xue said furiously. She made up some nonsense.
"But He Yu does have a girlfriend, a real beauty with an especially vicious
personality who gets jealous easily. She's way older than him and manages
him strictly. She slaps him when he disobeys and makes me monitor his
behavior when we go out. Isn't that right, He Yu?!"
He Yu's reply was dry. "What you're talking about is a special agent
from the NBIS."
Fuck!
Xie Xue stomped on his foot under the table in anger.
He Yu said, "I don't have a girlfriend like that. I also don't like super
jealous beauties with vicious personalities."
Fucking hell!
Xie Xue stepped down even harder until her own foot began to hurt.
She looked down and—great, she had been stomping on the table's leg.
He Yu smiled, retracting his long legs from where they had been
resting against the table's leg frame without batting an eye as he picked up the grilled skewers covered in Sichuan peppercorn powder and set them on
Xie Xue's plate. Then he turned to Bai Jing, who was brimming with
excitement, and said, "However, Miss, I do already have someone that I
like, so I don't add girls on WeChat so casually. Please forgive me."
Bai Jing couldn't hide her disappointment. "We can't even be
ordinary friends?"
This time, even He Yu's half-hearted smile had vanished. In an
instant, that amiable, youthful quality seemed to disappear completely as he
calmly glanced at the girl.
"Thank you, but I don't think we come from the same world."
With this simple sentence, he had essentially and imperceptibly
eliminated Bai Jing's chances of getting out of this embarrassing situation
unscathed. For a moment, the atmosphere became incredibly strained.
He Yu pulled out a napkin and wiped the oil from the skewers off his
fingers one by one. Then, he tossed the napkin, squinted indifferently at the
flabbergasted woman sitting beside him, and calmly said, "I'm going to go
wash my hands."
Not everyone in this world was a socially incompetent fool incapable
of understanding human speech. Bai Jing had received the message loud
and clear that this handsome rich guy regarded her with nothing but cold
disdain. As for that Xie woman, it was quite evident that after what had
happened earlier, she had no desire to waste any more words with her either.
Unable to bear the awkwardness any longer, Bai Jing finally gave a weak
excuse and left the table in defeat.
After a while, He Yu returned to find Bai Jing's seat vacated.
He raised an eyebrow but didn't even bother to ask after her as he sat down
next to Xie Xue as though nothing had happened.
Xie Xue rolled her eyes and cursed Bai Jing a few more times. Only
then did she begin gnawing on a couple of chicken cartilage skewers,
turning to ask He Yu, "You said just now that there's someone you like? Are
you serious? Who is it?"
"I was just teasing you."
Xie Xue patted her chest in relief and took another tiny sip of beer.
"Oh, well, you really scared me to death there…"
He Yu's hands stilled momentarily as he gazed at this girl's open and
candid profile.
"Whatcha looking at me for?"
"Are you scared of me having a crush?"
"Of course."
"Why?"
"Because I'm still single. Once you're in a relationship, I won't be
able to come and hang with you so often, right?"
…What kind of dumbfuck excuse was that?
"What're you laughing at?" asked Xie Xue.
He Yu reached up, gently thumbing away some black pepper that had
gotten onto the corner of her mouth without her noticing. His expression
cleared, then he acted as though nothing had happened. "How do you
manage to get a mess on your mouth even when eating barbecue?"
Actually, he'd been wanting to tell her how he felt for a very long
time and had planned to do so ever since he came back from overseas. But
when He Yu considered it carefully, he felt that a declaration of love should
be a solemn and serious event. He shouldn't be blurting out all those
feelings he'd kept hidden for so many years in the middle of a noisy street
on a hot-blooded, hot-headed impulse.
So, he changed the subject. "You shouldn't let your brother go on
matchmaking dates with those kinds of young women in the future. He's
not young anymore, and his personality is so stiff that even aunties his age
can't stand him, never mind those girls. The generation gap between her
and your brother is just too wide."
"What are you bad-mouthing my brother for? It's not like he's ever
treated you badly!"
He Yu said, "I'm speaking the truth."
"As if!"
He Yu rolled his eyes, completely baffled by Xie Xue's reverence for
her brother. "Really, just take off your rose-colored glasses and take a closer
look. Your brother's already an old divorcé. It's enough just to find a decent
person with a good personality. Someone so young really wouldn't suit
him."
"Save your breath. My brother is so handsome and great, why should
he settle?"
"He's handsome, but he looks down on and side-eyes everyone all
day long. It's not like they owe him anything." At this point, it was as if Xie
Qingcheng's indifferent face appeared in front of He Yu. He remembered
the way he had opened his mouth slightly, leaned forward, and caught the
straw between his teeth.
His attitude was just like that of a CEO accepting his assistant's
services in a matter-of-fact manner when he didn't even have the money to
pay medical fees. How could he be so calm and unruffled, so contentious
and mocking?
He Yu was angered just thinking about it. He wondered what should
be shoved in "Executive Xie's" face instead to sweep away every shred of
his composure, to make his expression go dazed, for his features to be
subsumed by wretchedness and humiliation.
But would that face of Xie Qingcheng's really reveal such weakness?
He Yu had never seen it before. After pondering for a moment, he
realized he couldn't even imagine it.
"What are you thinking about?"
"Your brother," He Yu said absentmindedly.
"Ah?"
"I'm thinking about whether there's ever been a time when your
brother was helpless, lost control, and found himself bested by someone
else."
"Oh, well. You can give up on that thought because I don't remember
ever seeing him like that. My dage is super awesome; he's so coolheaded
and tough. Nowadays, he's always wearing a suit and carrying a book, but
when he was your age, he was the best fighter on our block. Once, when a gang of hoodlums bullied me, he grabbed a steel pipe and took out a dozen
of them all by himself, dragging them to the police station. After that, those
little punks practically threw themselves down at his feet like a carpet for
him to walk on, bowing down and calling him 'Ge.' Well, all except for one
person… But that's another matter, so it doesn't count."
Seeing her eyes sparkling, He Yu was only more irritated. He
laughed. "How come you're still the same as when you were little? The
moment he's mentioned, your face lights up with adoration. It always feels
like your brother is your savior."
"But he is! You have no idea how difficult it was for him to be my
mom and my dad and my brother all rolled into one and raise me all by
himself…"
"Well, you were also a good kid and saved him a lot of trouble."
"…Ah, I'm no good. He's ten times more capable than me." Xie Xue
shook her head as she ate a skewer. "I'm nothing compared to him."
As the two of them talked in the restaurant's hubbub, he watched her
self-deprecating demeanor. Finding her somewhat laughable, He Yu's
expression slowly softened. He thought, surely, he couldn't be the only
person who would like such a nice girl.
He really couldn't wait any longer.
That night, He Yu didn't return to his dorm. It was far too late, and he
didn't want to disturb his roommates. So after taking Xie Xue back to the
faculty dorm, he had his driver drop him off at a hotel he often visited. He
took a shower and lay down amid the fluffy goose-down pillows.
"I'm back, are you…"
His fingers flew over his phone screen, but his thoughts hit a snag
halfway through the message.
In the end, He Yu sighed and deleted the words in the text box. He
stared at the profile picture of a sleepwalking bear for a while, then sent the
simplest message.
"Good night."
He heard a ding just as he was about to turn off his phone. Thinking it
was Xie Xue's reply, He Yu immediately picked his phone back up.
But the message was from that "savior." It was a bank transfer notice.
"Earlier at the hospital, I hit my e-banking limit. I've sorted it out
now, so here's the money for the bill."
He Yu had always hated it when Xie Qingcheng acted this way. Plus,
the fact that the message wasn't the reply from Xie Xue he was hoping for
made his reply all the more frigid.
"I was just saving someone's life. Why should you pay me back?"
Xie Qingcheng also hated when He Yu acted like this, but he was too
lazy to argue, so he just said, "Then consider it a service fee."
"What?"
"A service fee for driving me. Even if I found another driver on the
spot, I wouldn't be able to find a driver as strong and youthful, as skilled at
revving engines as you."
He Yu was speechless.
How impressive.
How many people in this world truly dared to use Young Master He
as a driver and then pay him a service fee?
Also, why did it sound just like a prostitution fee?!
He Yu's expression grew dark. He was just about to reply when he
accidentally exited out of the conversation and noticed his chat window
with Xie Xue.
He thought again of Xie Xue's sparkling eyes when she spoke of Xie
Qingcheng, and those words she had said, "You really have no idea how
difficult it was for him to raise me all by himself…"
He was quiet for a moment.
Forget it. He was her brother, after all.
Thus, He Yu replied, "You're welcome, Xie-ge. Call me anytime if you
need me again in the future. I'll make sure you have a comfortable ride,
satisfaction guaranteed."
"Show me your car insurance claims report from when you were
abroad first, then we'll talk."
He Yu's expression darkened once more. He shouldn't have been
courteous in the first place!
His phone dinged again.
This time, it wasn't Xie Qingcheng but Xie Xue.
"Good night! Thank you for today."
She had walked out of the bathroom in her Huzhou University faculty
dorm, yawning while toweling dry her dripping hair. She saw the "good
night" He Yu had sent her the moment she picked up her phone. She
couldn't help but smile as she replied to his message.
Then, she sat down at her desk and opened her notebook. Though
hardly anyone journaled their daily life in a physical book these days, there
were always a few eccentrics who held onto this nostalgic hobby of
yesteryear, lingering in the past with the accompaniment of bitter ink, a
sharp pen, and rice-yellow paper.
Xie Xue turned up the brightness of the lamp on her desk and began
to write her bedtime diary entry.
"Today, my brother went on another matchmaking date, but I don't
like the girl, I think…"
She poured out more than five hundred words. Perhaps because she
had touched upon Xie Qingcheng's love life, she couldn't help but think
about how she had always been single up until now.
Xie Xue sighed as she looked out at the night sky beyond her
window, lit by the flickering glow of streetlamps.
She was different from her brother. He was someone who had lost
faith in love and marriage. He was too clearheaded in life, and his peach blossom eyes regarded each person he caught sight of with the same degree
of slight impatience.
But she had someone she liked.
An indistinct figure appeared before her eyes. Ever since her youth,
he had often been in her presence, so close yet so far.
She knew full well that they were worlds apart, that the gap between
their social circles and classes was an impassable void—not to mention the fact that he was even younger than her…
But now, they were both at Huzhou University, and she could tell that
there was no shortage of girls who were interested in him. They came one
after another, turning to him more eagerly than waves of windblown wheat
before the fall harvest.
If she didn't hurry and tell him her feelings, she would soon lose her
chance. If they slipped past each other just like this, then maybe she would
regret it in the future, and she would end up like her brother—bickering
over the trivialities of life with someone she didn't really have feelings for,
speaking an insincere vow and walking into the grave of matrimony. Then,
one day, she too might find herself popping back to life like a reanimated
corpse, alone again and doomed to go on matchmaking dates so as not to
upset her elders.
There were times when she really couldn't bear to see her brother like
this. She felt that Xie Qingcheng was living mostly for other people.
Regardless of whatever he said about not caring about the opinions of
others, he was actually the one who cared about his friends and family the
most.
Xie Qingcheng lived an utterly stressful life.
It wasn't like she hadn't tried to talk to him, but every time she got
the words halfway out of her mouth, her big brother would shoot her a glare
and tell her to study properly and focus on her own future, or he'd scold her
about sticking her nose into the business of adults, saying, What do you
know, a little girl like you?
In fact, the one who understood emotions the least was Xie
Qingcheng himself. Despite having lived through nearly half his life, he'd
only had that one extreme failure of a marriage.
"I want to try expressing my feelings to the one I like. Ever since I
was young, Gege always told me to be brave, and I think this is the same.
Whether I succeed or not, I'll have tried my best. And when I think back on
it in the future, I'll have no regrets."
After writing down her last sentence, Xie Xue closed the notebook.
What she didn't know was that in a hotel suite a few miles away, He
Yu was having similar thoughts…