Yan Chengli stopped at the doorway, facing the slightly discolored security door — aged with time — and didn’t go in right away. He also put out a hand to stop his wife, who was coming up behind him, signaling her to wait a moment.

Yan’s mother looked at him with complete bewilderment as he raised his hand to adjust the collar of his dress shirt, then patted at his hair that had been set with pomade. Her skin crawled, and she asked: “What are you primping yourself up for?”

Yan Chengli’s expression cooled, and he pressed his lips together: “Once we’re inside, please, whatever you do, don’t say something like that.”

“You’re welcome to act exactly the same way inside if you have the nerve — you haven’t been right all day.” Yan’s mother did him the courtesy of keeping her voice low and asked: “Is this really necessary? Anyone who didn’t know better would think you were meeting your future in-laws. You weren’t even this nervous when you met my dad.”

Yan Chengli was rendered speechless by several consecutive verbal blows, and could only say with agitation: “Stop talking nonsense! What does this have to do with that!”

Yan’s mother gave him a dismissive sound, pushed him aside with an elbow, and pressed the doorbell herself.

The bell didn’t ring.

This door was probably too old — the bell had been out of battery for ages.

Yan’s mother knocked instead, and, afraid no one would hear, gave it a firm series of raps and called out: “Little Ye! We’re here!”

This time a response came from inside almost immediately: “Coming, coming! Just a moment!”

Then came the sound of footsteps moving from far to near.

Yan Chengli immediately straightened his spine, cleared his throat, and arranged his face into the commanding air he habitually wore when conducting company inspections.

He was, in truth, a little nervous.

To be precise — although they had known each other for some time now, he had never spoken with Ye Yuncheng face to face.

The best opportunity had been the parents’ meeting in their final year of high school. Unfortunately, a work commitment had kept him from attending, and he had narrowly missed Ye Yuncheng at that time.

Afterward, by going through the parent group chat messages, he had pieced together a certain picture of Ye Yuncheng’s life.

After that had come their gaming alliance during the epidemic…not to be underestimated, truly — games really did close the distance between people in these modern times, especially when the other person had a patient temperament.

By now, through his wife’s social connections, he had gathered information on Ye Yuncheng’s daily schedule and interests. This left his feelings toward Ye Yuncheng in a very complicated state — one that even he couldn’t quite untangle.

Yan Chengli was still going back and forth in his mind when the door was pulled open from inside. Before he had fully made out who was there, he instinctively raised a smile he had practiced many times. The flash of alarm that briefly crossed Ye Yuncheng’s face, however, made it clear his performance was not entirely natural.

So Yan Chengli quickly pulled the expression back.

Ye Yuncheng greeted them warmly: “Please come in, both of you — it’s so hot today.”

The room had air conditioning — the cool air a welcome comfort. Fang Zhuo had insisted on getting it installed two summers ago.

City A was simply too hot. Relying on a fan to bring down the temperature during the height of summer made heatstroke a real risk. Once the air conditioner was installed, the landlord had even proactively offered to split half the cost, so in the end they hadn’t spent much.

Ye Yuncheng straightened the indoor slippers at the entrance and indicated they should make themselves at home.

The room had accumulated quite a few more items, but the aesthetic sense had not improved accordingly. To save money, most of the furniture Ye Yuncheng had added was wildly mismatched in style.

Yan Chengli looked around and genuinely could not find anything complimentary to say — it would have been both dishonest and insincere. After a long moment of hesitation, he finally seized on that one universal adjective, his eyes brightening as he offered: “This decorating style looks very lively!”

He gave a satisfied nod and made his way to the sofa.

“I haven’t really decorated — there’s just too much clutter to clean up easily. Please forgive the state of things,” Ye Yuncheng said, carrying over a plate of cut fruit and setting it on the glass coffee table.

Yan’s mother reached to take it from him, saying: “Little Ye, sit down — stop bustling around. No need to be so formal with us. We’ll chat for a bit and then go straight to the school — don’t go getting your outfit dirty.”

Today was the day Fang Zhuo and Yan Lie were collecting their graduation certificates. Ye Yuncheng had dressed a little more formally than usual.

He had bought a well-fitting dress shirt from a large department store, carefully ironed his trousers, and even had his hair trimmed at the barbershop. He gave the impression of someone gentle, refined, and quietly warm.

Ye Yuncheng couldn’t sit still and went to the kitchen again to brew tea. Yan’s mother exchanged pleasantries with him a couple of times but couldn’t stop him.

Once he was gone, Yan’s mother turned to sneak a glance toward the kitchen, confirmed that he was boiling water, then swung around and landed a punch on Yan Chengli’s thigh.

It wasn’t a hard one, but Yan Chengli had been lost in thought, and the sudden attack startled him nearly off the sofa. He glared at her and said in a hushed growl: “What was that for?!”

Yan’s mother gave no ground: “I’d like to ask you the same thing! You’ve barely said a word since we walked in — lost your tongue? Sitting there with that face — who are you taking issue with? On such a lovely day, would smiling kill you?”

“I didn’t!” Yan Chengli shot an anxious glance toward the kitchen. “I did smile when we came in!”

“I could tell you had a look about you, so Little Ye would have noticed too!” Yan’s mother rattled on: “You come as a guest to someone’s home and carry on like that — what is Little Ye supposed to think? Will he feel like you look down on Fang Zhuo? You show no respect for others, and then Little Ye might just decide he doesn’t think much of your son!”

“He might not think much of my son?” Yan Chengli said, indignant beyond all measure. “He’s practically already stolen my son! If I were ever gone from this world, I’d fully expect that boy Yan Lie to immediately go and change his surname!”

Yan’s mother was so exasperated she laughed, and gave him another pinch, wanting to say that he had no one to blame but himself and should do some serious reflecting. But she heard Ye Yuncheng’s returning footsteps and swallowed it all back, adjusted her posture, and put on a warm and welcoming smile for the approaching figure.

Yan’s mother patted the empty space beside her and said: “Little Ye, sit — we’ll help ourselves if we get thirsty.”

Ye Yuncheng set the cups on the table. Unable to fend off Yan’s mother’s hospitality, he sat down beside her.

The secondhand sofa was a little snug. With three people sitting side by side, their arms were nearly touching.

Even Ye Yuncheng, for all his social ease, had reached the outer boundary of comfortable proximity. Using the pretext of reaching for the remote control, he shifted his position to Yan Chengli’s side, then turned on the television.

Yan Chengli glanced at him sideways, several things starting and stopping in his throat. That complicated expression left Ye Yuncheng thoroughly at a loss.

He was about to initiate a conversation himself, but then Yan Chengli looked away, and in the end simply lifted the ceramic cup from the table and buried his head in drinking it.

Yan’s mother rolled her eyes inwardly and stepped in to smooth things over: “Don’t stand on ceremony with him — this is just how he is. He takes time to warm up with strangers. He was already terribly nervous before we left and even got in the wrong car.”

Ye Yuncheng said with polite amusement: “Why would he be nervous?”

Yan Chengli was a man of considerable business dealings. Ye Yuncheng might have believed him nervous looking at a falling stock chart. Being nervous to come see him made no sense at all.

Yan’s mother paused, then asked carefully: “They still haven’t told you?”

Ye Yuncheng said, puzzled: “Who?”

“Never mind, never mind.” Yan’s mother also quickly lifted her tea cup from the table and shifted the subject: “Let me taste the tea Little Ye brewed — oh my, it smells wonderful.”

Ye Yuncheng said, with a touch of shyness: “I’m not really a tea person, and I don’t usually drink it myself. This was given to me by a business partner. I brewed it the way he showed me. If you like it, I have another two packets here.”

Yan’s mother laughed brightly: “Then I won’t be shy about it! You see, our Old Yan especially loves this kind of thing too!”

Yan Chengli stared at the pale amber liquid, blew on the surface, and privately thought the tea was actually fairly unremarkable.

Through the fragrance rising with the steam, he caught a slight note of bitterness.

The water had been too hot. He hadn’t paid attention on the first sip, and his tongue had already raised a blister — just the same as the day he had been drinking coffee.

By the time he remembered to put it down, the inside of his mouth was burning. It had taken a full week to heal.

That day, Yan Lie had come home with gifts in hand — a rare occurrence — and just as Yan Chengli was feeling genuinely pleased, he said out of nowhere: “Mom, Dad — I want to get married.”

He had brought two bouquets.

One was carnations interspersed with sunflowers.

The other was spray roses nestled in baby’s breath.

He gave one to each of them.

His mother had been bent over sniffing at the faint sweetness of the roses. Hearing this, the smile on her face stiffened. She and Yan Chengli exchanged startled looks.

Yan’s mother recovered first, smiled, and said: “It’s a bit early, but if you’ve made up your mind, then all right.” She took the flowers and went to find a vase.

Yan Chengli was quiet for a long stretch, managing only a few repetitive, meaningless sounds: “Oh… I see… is that so?”

Then he gave a small nod to indicate he had registered the news.

Yan Lie said happily thank you, gathered his things, and went to sort them out.

Once he had finished his coffee, the burning in his mouth finally brought Yan Chengli back to full clarity.

He remembered something he’d wanted to say, found Yan Lie, and sat beside him: “You’re still so young. Why do you want to get married so soon? Aren’t you of the generation that’s supposed to be afraid of marriage and children?”

Yan Lie looked at him in surprise.

Yan Chengli, worried Yan Lie might take it the wrong way, quickly explained: “I don’t mean anything by it — I just hope that for something as significant as marriage, you’ll think it through carefully. After all, the decision you make will affect the entire future life of both you and Fang Zhuo, and that is a very long… Oh wait — you haven’t done something reckless, have you? Forgot to take precautions, and that’s why you’re in a hurry to get married?”

“No! It’s nothing like that.” Yan Lie’s voice went up slightly. “I just want her to be my family. That’s why I want to marry her.”

Yan Chengli said quietly: “Alright.”

Yan Chengli looked Yan Lie up and down, and still somehow thought of him as a teenager. Now, hearing him bring up marriage so matter-of-factly, he had a disorienting realization — Yan Lie had grown that much.

Taller than him. Broader than him. Capable of having a composed discussion about life’s major decisions.

Yan Chengli felt as though time had taken him squarely in the face, leaving him momentarily at a loss for what to do with his hands.

Yan’s mother came out of the small storage room with a pink vase, and added: “I think it’s perfectly fine. If you hadn’t proposed quickly enough back then, I might not have agreed to marry you either.”

Yan Chengli glanced over and said quietly: “Different situations entirely.”

He pulled out a cigarette, held it between his fingers without lighting it, just turning it back and forth a couple of times, then asked, out of nowhere: “Well then, if you’re getting married now, when do you plan to have children?”

Yan Lie said: “Not for a while.”

He glanced at his phone and added, with a note of mild concern: “Dad, please don’t bring up children in front of Fang Zhuo. She’s young and has just started her postgraduate studies — bringing that up will make her anxious.”

Yan Chengli said quickly: “Understood. You’re both still young — no rush on that.”

Yan Lie asked patiently: “Any other questions?”

Yan Chengli shook his head.

That evening, when Yan Chengli turned it over again, he realized that the way Yan Lie had spoken to him was not a request for permission, but a calm statement of fact. The meaning was: I am going to do this — I hope to have your support.

But Yan Chengli had no grounds on which to object, because it was Yan Lie’s own life.

And Yan Chengli had no intention of challenging the already precarious father-son connection they shared.

Yan Chengli lay in bed, thinking it all over, his mind turning restlessly. He rolled over — consciousness beginning to drift somewhere between sleep and waking.

Then the person beside him rolled over too. In the darkness, a hand reached out and settled on his shoulder, and in a languid voice that had a spectral quality to it, began to speak:

“Old Yan — I’ve been lying here thinking for ages, and the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Let me tell you.”

“This girl Fang Zhuo — you see — high academic achievement, sensible, independent, intelligent, pretty, good at taking care of people, and genuinely straightforward. We also know her well enough. Yes, her family background is lacking, but if you look at it another way, there’s actually an upside to that — no family conflicts. We don’t have to worry about managing relations with in-laws, and her family situation won’t have any effect on us at all. Isn’t that right?”

Yan Chengli was jolted by her hand, his breath catching for a second. He followed her line of thought slowly and began to consider.

Fang Zhuo herself was genuinely an excellent person. The fact that she had made it from a poverty-stricken mountain village all the way into University A was proof enough of both her natural ability and her hard work.

And she wasn’t stubborn, or plagued by inferiority, or sycophantic, or vain. Poverty had left very little of its darker marks on her — instead it seemed to have refined her, like the intensity of heat in a forge, shaping out her resilience and composure.

A person like that, in whatever circumstances they found themselves, would find a way to climb upward step by step.

Even if she wasn’t skilled at socializing or didn’t know how to ingratiate herself — what did that matter? Sincerity and candor have always been terms of praise.

Yan’s mother chose her words carefully and went on: “Now let’s talk about Little Ye. His character is sound, he’s easy to talk to, he handles things clearly, he’s steady and reliable, and his care for Lielie goes above and beyond — he’s more like a proper guardian than either of us. His shop and his account are both going quite well now. His income is extremely stable — in fact better than most salaried workers. He’s had no formal degree, but he’s read widely. And even with some difficulty in his leg, that doesn’t diminish his strengths one bit.”

Yan Chengli found himself in quiet agreement.

To be honest, he genuinely admired Ye Yuncheng. Especially the remarkable warmth that radiated from him — one might even say he was a little envious.

Perhaps only someone who was truly optimistic and open-hearted could carry that quality of making everyone around them feel at ease.

Yan’s mother said: “You see — is our family short on money? Basically no. We’re both in business. What our family has been short of is a bit of scholarly atmosphere. These two are both top students — if they accumulate some intellectual depth over time, who knows — we might even become a family with real academic standing?”

The Chinese reverence for academic achievement had been deep-rooted across generations, one might even say it was ingrained in the bones.

And only knowledge could ensure that a person wouldn’t be left behind by the progress of society. With technology advancing so rapidly, Yan Chengli was becoming increasingly clear-eyed on this truth.

“I think she’s wonderful,” Yan Chengli said quietly. “I never said I was against it.”

Even if he’d had some reservations a long time ago, he hadn’t felt that way for quite some time now.

Yan’s mother had no intention of listening to him. She continued musing to herself: “In a world as dazzlingly materialistic as this one, where do you go looking for a girl like her? And most importantly — Lielie adores her. You couldn’t find better even with a lantern searching!”

She grew increasingly impassioned, tugging at Yan Chengli: “I think she’s wonderful. Don’t you?”

Yan Chengli, caught up in her urgency, suddenly felt as though Yan Lie had stumbled upon a wonderfully fresh and unspoiled find, and if they didn’t act quickly enough, it might be gone.

After talking it all through, Yan’s mother felt completely at ease and began to indulge in optimistic long-term visions. She patted Yan Chengli on the shoulder and asked: “We’ll be in-laws eventually — what should we bring him when we come to visit? Whatever we do, don’t hold your son back. And how much should we give for the betrothal gift? I don’t know what their customs are like — we’d better not do anything that goes against them.”

What remained of Yan Chengli’s sleepiness was entirely swept away by these several impossible questions. He thought about it for a long time, came up with no answers, pulled the blanket over his face, and said: “Let’s sleep first. I’m begging you. Don’t start all this right now — I have two important meetings tomorrow.”

Yan Chengli’s tea was finished, and he had surfaced from the memory.

There was still a trace of warmth in the ceramic cup. He set it back on the coffee table. Ye Yuncheng noticed, bent forward, and started to rise to refill it.

Yan Chengli was a step ahead, pressing his hand down, and said: “Let me — Little Ye, let me pour you a cup.”

Ye Yuncheng looked back at him in surprise, his motion suspended.

Yan Chengli said: “Oh, I mean — let me pour you tea. Consider it me showing my respect.”

Ye Yuncheng, bemused, accepted the cup offered with both hands, and wasn’t entirely sure he should drink from it. Under the man’s eager gaze, he slowly raised it to his lips and took a sip.

Yan Chengli broke into a smile and said, pointing beside him: “Come — sit.”

Yan’s mother lit up her phone screen, then quickly tucked it back into her bag, stood up, and announced: “No need to sit — it’s about time. Let’s head to the school. We can talk more in the car.”

Yan Chengli, with familiar ease, draped his arm around Ye Yuncheng’s shoulder: “Then let’s get going — this way, Little Ye.”

Ye Yuncheng went along with the movement in a mild daze, his mind still puzzling over what had prompted Yan Chengli’s sudden shift.

…Could the tea really have been that good?

The back seat of Yan Chengli’s car held two bouquets. Once Ye Yuncheng sat down, the faint fragrance floated around him.

He wiped his hands on his trousers and realized, belatedly, that he hadn’t brought any gift. He glanced out along both sides of the road, wondering if there was anything he could pick up.

Yan’s mother called Yan Lie, and learned that his department had been the first to take graduation photos, and that it was already done. He was currently in front of the library taking photos with classmates. Fang Zhuo’s department was still queued up — when Yan Lie came out, her class had only just started gathering. It would probably take another hour or more.