A brief stillness fell over the room. Lin Tao held the yogurt carton in both hands and stared at Jiang Yan with an expression of complete blankness — as though his suggestion had genuinely shocked her.
Having said it, Jiang Yan also became aware that his words carried an unintended meaning, and he quickly clarified: “That’s not what I meant.”
The silent Lin Tao seemed to have someone wind her back up. She came back to herself, and the fingers around the yogurt carton loosened — the previously smooth sides denting inward at one corner.
She cleared her throat softly, working to project a composure she wasn’t quite feeling, her voice a little taut. “……I know.”
The room’s warm, amber light fell over everything. Jiang Yan looked down at her, half his face shadowed. The curl of his lashes left delicate silhouettes along the side of his eyes.
He spoke quietly. “The third floor still has two empty rooms besides mine and Guan Che’s. You could think about whether you want to move in.”
“Oh.” Lin Tao’s heart gradually released the breath it had been holding, and she couldn’t help running her tongue across the corner of her mouth. “I’d need to ask my parents before deciding anything.”
After all, moving into the internet café was, in an indirect sense, moving in with Jiang Yan. Lin Tao wasn’t sure Fang Yisong and Lin Yongcheng would agree.
Jiang Yan had only meant it as an offhand suggestion and hadn’t put too much hope into the idea. He simply said: “Sure. We’ll see.”
Lin Tao leaned over and tossed her empty yogurt carton toward the bin, then stared at the figures moving on the television screen for a moment before something occurred to her. “Wait — doesn’t this place already belong to me?”
“……” Jiang Yan held the remote and glanced up at her, his voice lazy. “So?”
“So shouldn’t you be treating me better?” Lin Tao leaned in close to his face. Perhaps because she had just finished the yogurt, the air she breathed out carried a faint, sweet milk warmth. “For all you know, I could throw you out one day.”
They were very close together. Jiang Yan stiffened slightly for a moment, gave a low quiet laugh, and then shifted back a fraction of distance. “How exactly am I supposed to treat you better than I already do?”
“Bow down before you three times and prostrate nine times, bring you tea and water throughout the day, wait on you like you’re an ancestral spirit?” Jiang Yan leaned back against the sofa and flicked a light finger against her forehead, shaking his head with an exasperated sort of helplessness. “I think I’ve been spoiling you so much that you’ve started to think I have no limits.”
At that, Lin Tao reflected, genuinely, on the time since they had gotten together — and realized she had actually never seen Jiang Yan lose his temper with her. Not once.
At most, he would put on a cool expression as a show of it. Real anger was rare. The arguments and uncomfortable moments had, oddly enough, mostly happened before they were together.
Thinking of when they first met, Lin Tao found herself curious. “Back when I fell in the hallway during the final exam of first year, and you caught me — did you remember seeing me before? At the supermarket?”
“I remembered.” Jiang Yan looked down at her, giving a straightforward assessment. “A girl who could insult someone without using a single crude word.”
“……” Lin Tao scrambled to recover what remained of the impression. “I had no choice at the time.”
Jiang Yan made a sound that acknowledged nothing, which clearly meant he was not particularly convinced.
“……” Lin Tao recognized the lost cause and decided to drag him down alongside her. “Well, it’s not like you looked like anything particularly wholesome back then either.”
“……”
Lin Tao looked at him squarely and said, one deliberate syllable at a time, in a highly exaggerated accent: “You were giving off very much the impression of a certain type.”
Jiang Yan, hearing her strange, stilted emphasis, seemed to land on whatever it was she had found funny about it. The corner of his mouth curved, and he said in a warm voice: “Speak properly.”
“No thanks.”
“……”
That weekend, while shopping, Fang Yisong brought up the housing situation with Lin Tao. “The apartment search might take a few more days. In the meantime, I’ll have the driver take you to and from school, or if that’s too much trouble, I can have a word with your homeroom teacher and get you released early.”
Fang Yisong selected several limited-edition handbags and turned back to the boutique assistant. “Have all of these packaged and sent to the usual address.”
“Of course, Mrs. Lin.”
While the assistant carried the chosen pieces to the counter, Lin Tao let her eyes drift around the shop, then picked up where Fang Yisong had left off. “Mom, actually — I’ve found somewhere to stay.”
“Oh?” Fang Yisong had noticed a men’s wallet she liked and gestured for the assistant to bring it out, then looked at Lin Tao. “Where?”
“It’s just……” Lin Tao chose her words carefully, working to phrase things in a way that held as little ambiguity as possible. “At Jiang Yan’s internet café. I noticed the last time I was there that there are still two empty rooms. The café is very close to the school, and the neighborhood seems alright.”
Fang Yisong gave a thoughtful nod. “The place he transferred over to you?”
“Right.” Lin Tao leaned lightly against the display counter beside her. “Mom, I promise I won’t do anything I shouldn’t. It just seems like the most practical option right now.”
“I know you wouldn’t do anything out of line.” Fang Yisong smiled gently and spoke in a calm, measured tone. “I’m just worried about you being a girl, alone, staying somewhere like an internet café. That’s not the most safe arrangement.”
Fang Yisong’s concern was entirely predictable.
“I know everyone there, and the room is on the third floor — people rarely go up there. There won’t be any safety issues,” Lin Tao said.
“All right then. I’ll come and take a look one of these days.”
Lin Tao was about to agree, and then it hit her. “Mom — wait, you said you’d come and take a look?”
“Yes? Is that not alright?” Fang Yisong had selected two men’s wallets and smiled as she spoke. “What mother wouldn’t want to meet her daughter’s boyfriend? That’s hardly unreasonable.”
“……”
That same evening, Lin Tao told Jiang Yan about Fang Yisong’s intention. “My mom said she wants to come by your place one of these days and have a look.”
There was a brief silence on the other end of the call.
Lin Tao sat on her bed, picking at a loose thread on the hem of her trousers. “My sense is that the café isn’t really what she wants to see. It’s you.”
“……” Jiang Yan, who had only just woken up from a nap, was still not quite fully coherent, and the news landed on him in a series of slow, dazed thuds. “I know. I know she wants to see me.”
Lin Tao ventured cautiously: “So — congratulations, boyfriend. You’re about to meet the parents.”
“……”
For the entire week after Fang Yisong announced she was coming, Jiang Yan slept poorly night after night. During class, he was visibly distracted and listless, drifting.
By Friday, Jiang Yan had gathered Hu Hanghang and the others and taken everyone to a restaurant just outside the school for dinner.
Song Yuan, who was more attentive than most, could tell something was wrong with Jiang Yan but couldn’t quite pin down what. Midway through dinner, he couldn’t hold back any longer. “What’s going on with you lately? You seem completely somewhere else.”
“Nothing.” Jiang Yan looked down and picked up a piece of green vegetable with his chopsticks. The taste registered nowhere.
Guan Che, seated nearby, let out a quiet laugh. “Nothing’s wrong — he’s just nervous about meeting the parents.”
Jiang Yan looked at him. A sharp glance sailed across the table. “Not a word.”
“Meeting the parents?” Hu Hanghang hadn’t quite connected the pieces. “Whose parents?”
Xu Yichuan flicked a piece of fruit peel in front of him. “Isn’t it obvious? Who else’s parents would it be? Lin Tao’s.”
“What?!” Hu Hanghang set down the drumstick he had been holding, looking genuinely stunned. “How are things moving so fast?”
“We were all single when you were single, we were all single when you started dating.” Hu Hanghang counted on his fingers. “And now you’re meeting the parents, and we’re still all single. At this rate, by the time you and Lin Tao get married and have kids, we’ll probably still be single.”
Jiang Yan, Guan Che, Xu Yichuan, Song Yuan: “……”
Xu Yichuan rolled his eyes and picked up Hu Hanghang’s drumstick, pushing it back into his mouth. “Here — just eat.”
Hu Hanghang made a muffled sound of protest, catching the drumstick with his hands. “What was that about? Am I wrong?”
Song Yuan also directed a pointed look his way. “The truth hurts. If you’d just keep it to yourself for once, we’d all live a little longer.”
Hu Hanghang: “……”
The world has forsaken me.
This is the end.
Guan Che had finished the last piece of spare rib. “Though it is a bit odd, isn’t it? Why would Lin Tao’s mother suddenly want to see you now?”
Just mentioning it gave Jiang Yan a headache. Under ordinary circumstances, if Fang Yisong had wanted to meet him, he wouldn’t have been this unsettled.
But the circumstances were not ordinary.
He let out a barely perceptible breath and said at an even pace: “You know Lin Tao has been looking for a place to stay. She’s been having trouble finding something, so I suggested she move into the café.”
Everyone: “……”
Hu Hanghang’s drumstick fell back into the bowl. His voice had developed a slight tremor. “Right, so — if I recall, the birthday we just celebrated for Lin Tao was her seventeenth. Not her twenty-seventh, right?”
Xu Yichuan also looked a little shaken. “And eighteen is still the age of adulthood in this country, isn’t it?”
“……” Jiang Yan looked at them with a perfectly flat expression. “It’s nothing like what you’re imagining.”
He settled back against his chair, a trace of resignation in his posture, and the chair legs let out a faint scrape as they shifted against the floor.
Outside the window, the sky blazed with the last colors of sunset — warm, vivid light streaming through the narrow frame.
The room was quiet for a moment.
Guan Che poured himself a glass of water, and looked at Jiang Yan’s trapped expression with the unhurried pleasure of someone watching a chess piece walk into a corner. “Do you think Lin Tao’s mother is coming over to put an end to things between you two?”
Jiang Yan: “……”
“I actually think what Guan Che said is entirely plausible.” Hu Hanghang, never one to miss an opportunity, launched into his reasoning with great enthusiasm and supporting detail. “Lin Tao’s family seems to have money — real money. That building she lives in, I looked it up online, the price per square meter is over one hundred thousand.”
“The area of just one bathroom in that apartment would be enough to buy a whole flat around here.”
The truth was that none of Hu Hanghang and the others knew much about Lin Tao’s family background — only that they clearly weren’t ordinary wealthy.
“Her mother might show up with a cheque for ten million,” Hu Hanghang continued, slipping into his best impression of a powerful matriarch from a television drama, the kind who thrusts money at an unsuitable match and says coldly: “Here is ten million. Please leave my daughter.”