On a certain famous anonymous forum, at 3:45 AM, someone posted a thread.
Thread title—”Place your bets, which young actress or big-name actress is the Butterfly sampling this time?”
Within just seconds, this thread gained pages and rapidly built into a tall tower.
Original poster: “[Image], someone at a bar took this photo. The guy isn’t wearing a mask—it’s confirmed to be Zhui Ye. The woman is wearing a mask so you can’t see clearly. Now let’s start a no-prize guessing game!”
1L: No way, no way, is the Best Actor at it again?
2L: hhy, who else could it be? Last time the photos were so obvious, they must be dating
3L: He Huiyu was filming on location today, there are set photos, it’s not her
4L: Speechless, why is it zy again? Isn’t he filming that new Wang Cheng movie? Is it already finished so he’s out chasing girls?
5L: Mind your own business. He can film and date at the same time. When you have real achievements, you can be that arrogant too
6L: The topic’s veering off again, pull it back. So who is it? Can anyone tell? She looks quite tall and slim.
7L: Could it be Tang Yingxue?? …That hairstyle is very subtle.
8L: An idol dating an actor dating dating dating dating dating a Cannes Best Actor—would zy be interested in a nobody idol? That’s not how you ride coattails. Stop being delusional, nobody idol fans!
9L: Speechless, can some people stop with this fan circle mentality? Does dating also depend on status? You think it’s a matchmaking session?
10L: Stop stop stop, haven’t you all thought of the most likely possibility?
11L: Replying to above, I thought of it, but I think it’s the least likely.
12L: wm right? Aren’t they filming together?
13L: Anyone who knows a bit about her and her financial backer knows it’s impossible, unless both she and zy don’t want to work in the industry anymore
14L: Maybe they already broke up, it’s been so many years
15L: Broke up my ass. Wasn’t it obvious enough when Ji Zhou just released that press release with Wu Man and immediately lost resources? The prince is serious—who could steal someone from his hands?
16L: So here’s the question—if none of them are possible, did Zhui Ye hook up with some internet celebrity?
In the end, the entire thread pulled out every female celebrity in the entertainment industry for discussion without reaching any conclusion.
Zhui Ye, who had unknowingly been assigned multiple girlfriends, was at this moment sleeping alone in the courtyard house—simple and innocent.
*
By the time both had woken up, the sun was already setting in the west. Without phones, they couldn’t even order delivery and could only get up hungry to cook for themselves.
Wu Man remembered her cooking skills, which Yu Jiaze called “animal feed,” and felt a bit timid, not wanting to show off. Zhui Ye said if she was afraid and didn’t do it, wouldn’t she never improve?
So the two fully armed themselves and went out, sneaking into a nearby supermarket as night fell.
They each pushed a cart. Wu Man had already planned what dishes to make in her head, so she very purposefully grabbed the ingredients she needed: eggs, tomatoes, vegetables, eggplant…
She quickly got everything she needed and turned to find Zhui Ye. His cart was empty—he was standing at a counter taking samples from the salesclerk, slurping them under his mask like a little hamster secretly eating.
“…”
Wu Man gently bumped his cart with her own. Just as she was about to ask if he was buying anything, he crossed over to her in a few strides. Before she could react, his hand pulled down the bottom of her mask and stuffed a cheese stick into her mouth.
Wu Man glared at him angrily, but he asked, “Is it sweet?”
The scolding she was about to voice somehow went down with the cheese stick, and she mumbled three words sheepishly: not bad.
“You picked yours out so fast?” He glanced at her cart. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“Do you have decision paralysis?”
“Because I didn’t get a chance to ask what you like to eat and what you don’t. I didn’t want to presume.”
Wu Man was slightly stunned. She’d instinctively bought all vegetarian food according to her own mental menu, without considering Zhui Ye’s tastes.
She suddenly realized that in this regard, she’d already been assimilated by Yu Jiaze. Just like how he always forced her to eat spicy dishes—even though she couldn’t handle it, he said eating more would make her get used to it.
So what did her own tastes matter? Aside from her assistant asking her, no one truly cared. But between her and her assistant was a contractual relationship based on money. Without money to sustain it, there was no need to consider it.
Over time, she stopped considering others either.
“So what does Sister like to eat?”
Wu Man came back to her senses. “For me… nothing spicy, I like celery, everything else is fine.”
“Got it, then I know what to buy.”
Wu Man pushed her cart behind him, asking quietly, “What about you? What do you like?”
“Me?” The two were passing through the beverage section shelves. Zhui Ye scanned around, reached up to grab a bottle of orange juice from the upper right shelf, and gently tossed it into Wu Man’s cart. “I like this.”
Wu Man looked down at that bottle of orange juice—on the yellow bottle was printed the upper body of a woman wearing a fitted yellow T-shirt with a cinched waist, hair in a ponytail, body slightly turned, mouth corners lifting toward the camera in a perfect arc.
That was the twenty-nine-year-old Wu Man from the orange juice brand she’d been endorsing for two years.
“Can you answer seriously? I’m genuinely asking.”
She reached up to put the drink back on the shelf, but Zhui Ye took it down again, his fingers inadvertently resting on her image, stroking it.
“I really do like drinking it.”
Wu Man noticed this small gesture. Her five fingers gripping the cart handle tightened as she feigned calmness. “You should have said so earlier. The brand sent me a lot. I’ll have my assistant mail some to you later.”
*
The two carried large and small bags of groceries home, agreeing that each would make two dishes. She made the most homestyle tomato scrambled eggs and a cold dish. Zhui Ye made wood ear mushroom stir-fried celery and sweet and sour ribs.
He carried the small dining table out to the courtyard, dug out an old radio and set it under the tree, put in a tape, and an old-style saxophone prelude echoed in their small square of heaven—Glenn Frey’s classic “The One You Love.”
That radio clearly had some years on it. Wu Man came out carrying dishes, glancing at it. “Your way of listening to music is quite retro.”
“Because some songs can only be heard through tapes.”
Wu Man was puzzled. “Really? What songs can’t be found in platform libraries now?”
“Of course…” Zhui Ye was dazed for a moment. “Like songs someone recorded just for you—those are one of a kind.”
“Who still records on tapes? Strange sense of ritual?”
The expression on Zhui Ye’s face darkened all at once. He seemed dispirited as he sat down listlessly. “Let’s eat.”
He picked up a bite of her tomato scrambled eggs with his chopsticks. Wu Man’s attention instantly focused on his chewing expression.
Zhui Ye had no obvious emotional fluctuations and commented, “Not bad for a beginner. You could add a bit more sugar.”
“You sound like a master chef…”
Wu Man picked up a bite of his wood ear stir-fried celery. Although it was a very simple stir-fry dish, she could clearly taste that the heat control was excellent—both the celery and wood ear were crisp.
She immediately conceded with pursed lips.
Zhui Ye said proudly, “I have nine years of cooking experience.”
“…Ha, you started cooking at nine years old?”
He waved his chopsticks in the air like a little dragon. “Please call me Little Master of China.”
This obviously didn’t make sense—what family would let a nine-year-old child start cooking? But asking further would be inappropriate, so Wu Man praised him a couple of times and silently ate her food.
Xiao Huang smelled the aroma of the food and came running out of Zhui Ye’s room barking. Wu Man reflexively hid behind the table.
Zhui Ye laughed and grabbed Xiao Huang by the neck. “Don’t worry, it won’t bite you.”
Wu Man pointed at it. “It’s clearly baring its teeth at me again.”
“It’s just hungry.”
Xiao Huang barked twice in denial, immediately proving Zhui Ye wrong. Then it turned its dog head toward Wu Man and barked twice more.
Wu Man slowly moved back two more steps, looking like she was questioning her life.
“Am I really that disliked by dogs?”
“Maybe…”
“Maybe what?”
Zhui Ye stroked Xiao Huang’s head. It slowly became docile, frolicking under Zhui Ye’s palm.
“Maybe it knows you took away its favorite thing.”
The song in the radio finished playing. In that brief silence, Wu Man heard the frantic beating of her own heart.
There it was again—that ambiguous insinuation.
If this was Chen Nan teasing Deng Lizhi, it was infused with marks belonging to Wu Man and Zhui Ye. Deng Lizhi wouldn’t endorse orange juice, and Chen Nan wouldn’t raise a dog. Mixed together, it left her utterly unable to distinguish—her heartbeat accelerating, breathing quickening, accidentally knocking over paint, black and white merging into ambiguous gray.
Because all of this was buried beneath Chen Nan and Deng Lizhi, unspoken and secret. Even if there were unreasonable aspects, they were all indulged.
She asked knowingly, “How would I know I took something it likes?”
Zhui Ye’s beautiful chin lifted, pointing at her bowl, also asking knowingly with a low laugh, “That piece of rib.”
*
In Wu Man’s villa, the housekeeper was finishing today’s cleaning and preparing to lock up and leave when she turned to face a tall man in a suit.
Yu Jiaze loosened his tie while asking, “Where is she?”
“Miss Wu went to the crew to film two days ago and hasn’t returned.”
Yu Jiaze lazily hummed and sat on the sofa. “Didn’t say where she went?”
The housekeeper shook her head.
He was silent for a while, swiping on his phone, when he suddenly asked an unrelated question.
“Do they catch wild birds where you’re from?”
The housekeeper was stunned, then nodded. “Of course. Sparrows always steal grain. We have to catch them.”
“Do you know how to domesticate them?”
The housekeeper was baffled. “No idea. Usually after catching them, we just kill them.”
“Then let me teach you a trick.” Yu Jiaze looked at the blurry candid photo from the bar on his phone, hands resting on his crossed dress pants, gently stroking the pinky ring on his little finger. “To tame a wild bird, you generally pluck all its feathers so it can only perch at your feet and can’t go anywhere. But that’s actually quite boring. If it were me, I’d deliberately leave it a bit of room to rebel, appreciating its joy thinking it can fly away from me, only to fall heavily back down…”
“Then this little bird will find it very hard to leave you ever again.”