Ding dong, ding dong.
Before Ye Meng reached home, she received a WeChat message from Fang Ya’en.
Fang: I just remembered, the entire Alley Street is being demolished. That crab restaurant you mentioned wasn’t doing great business and rented a small storefront. I’ll ask around tomorrow about where exactly they relocated.
Fang: Where are you now? Don’t tell me you’re already having a romantic encounter.
She sat in a Didi premium car, the scenery outside flashing by. The flowing car lights intermingled with the night, casting an ambiguous play of light and shadow across her face.
Lemon Leaf: You have a mysterious confidence in the town’s younger brothers.
Fang: Today’s younger brothers, each one more handsome than the last. With my many years of child-raising experience, when finding a husband, definitely choose one with beautiful eyes. If the eyes aren’t good-looking, it can easily affect the next generation’s genes. Look at neighbor Wang’s kid, now he’s constantly demanding double eyelid surgery at home.
Reading this conversation, Ye Meng’s mind somehow suddenly conjured up the eyes of the man by the lake. He had somewhat slender phoenix eyes with slightly downward-curving outer corners that should convey gentleness when he wasn’t speaking or dejected. Yet he had precisely the kind of arrogant, haughty disposition she disliked most.
She preferred gentle boys.
As soon as Ye Meng walked through the door, she saw her entire family sitting neatly on the sofa. At first glance, it was like walking into an eagle’s nest, with five or six pairs of eyes staring at her like hawks. She was long accustomed to this and ignored them, heading upstairs to her bedroom: “The ladies and gentlemen are still up? If you get dark circles tomorrow, don’t steal my eye cream, Grandma.”
The old lady closed her eyes and fell backward straight against the sofa.
“Mom!”
“Mom!”
“Darling!”
Everyone rushed over in panic, one after another. Only Ye Meng remained motionless. But she couldn’t withstand her eldest aunt’s red-faced scolding: “Why are you just standing there? Come over quickly and check on her! Your grandmother has always loved you most since you were little!”
Ye Meng had no choice but to move closer. As soon as she approached, her arm was predictably caught. The old lady’s strength was astonishing as she grabbed her: “Sit down!”
Ye Meng rolled her eyes. She’d known it—this trick never failed. Well, no sleep tonight.
The old lady held her firmly with incredible strength. Ye Meng sighed; a seventy-year-old who could eat three bowls of rice at once—you wouldn’t find many like her in the whole country.
“Tell me, what exactly do you mean? Every single one I find for you, you’re not satisfied with.”
“I’ve told you before,” Ye Meng gave up struggling, grabbed the remote control beside her, and said self-deprecatingly, “I like younger men.”
“You’re already so unorthodox, and now you want someone younger than you. Are you two getting married or planning to break up the family?” The old lady snatched away the remote control and turned it off.
Ye Meng silently rolled her eyes, her gaze slanting toward the two silent men nearby. The old man and her father remained speechless, perfectly demonstrating the Ye family men’s talent for being ornamental.
Her youngest aunt, however, quietly stood behind her: “I quite support Meng Meng finding someone younger.”
“You shut up. You always unconditionally take her side,” the old lady rebuked, turning to the eldest aunt. “You speak.”
She specifically wanted her most capable and elite-minded eldest aunt to stand on her side.
The eldest aunt had always protected herself by staying out of troubled waters and casually asked: “So how many years younger do you want to find?”
“There’s no standard. One or two years isn’t too few, seven or eight years isn’t too young,” Ye Meng said with a smile. “I’m being quite reasonable.”
The old lady nearly fainted again. Just as she was about to scold her, Ye Meng received a WeChat message, her expression changed, and without further ado, she stood up and hurriedly said: “I won’t keep entertaining you all. I need to go out.”
The old lady was hardly willing to let her go so easily. “No, where are you going this late at night?”
“Grandma, it’s truly urgent. Fang Ya’en broke her leg while looking after her child at home.”
The old lady, with a face like ancient green moss, expressionlessly said: “You’ve already used that excuse.”
Ye Meng could have slapped herself—truly, the bad excuses always work better than the good ones.
“Alright,” Ye Meng had a flash of inspiration and immediately made up another excuse. “I’m going out to meet my boyfriend. I’ve been seeing someone recently, but I didn’t want to make a fuss about it. Once our relationship is settled, I’ll bring him back for you to see, okay?”
The clock pointed to eleven, the corridor dim. The hospital room was brightly lit, silent, with an IV drip slowly dripping.
“What are you doing, want to smoke?”
Hearing this, Fang Ya’en turned her gaze to the neighboring bed. In the next bed was an old lady who had reportedly slipped on soap while bathing, fracturing her hip, which required three pins. The family member attending to her was her grandson, who was quite handsome—the rare kind who was handsome in both features and build.
“I told you, no smoking.” The old lady had just reached out her hand when the handsome young man mercilessly slapped it back. The old lady yelped in pain and immediately reported Fang Ya’en, who was smirking:
“She was just smoking; look, the curtain is still emitting smoke.”
The handsome man’s brow slightly furrowed. Fang Ya’en froze, immediately waving frantically at the air to disperse the remaining smoke. “No, I haven’t had surgery yet, just smoking a cigarette to relieve the pain. Sorry about that.”
“It’s fine, my grandmother has a heavy smoking habit,” the handsome man was quite reasonable, and reminded her with no particular expression, “You’d better not smoke in front of her.”
“You don’t smoke?” Fang Ya’en stared at his hand, asking curiously.
This man’s hands were very attractive—long, slender, straight, with clear knuckles, and white. Looking closely, one would notice that the tips of his index and middle fingers had a wheat-like color. For someone so young, without several years of heavy smoking history, it wouldn’t be like this.
“No, I don’t,” he said.
The hospital room had just quieted down for two seconds when the old lady became restless again. Pointing at the expensive red wine held by the imposing male protagonist on the TV, she said to her grandson: “Li Badou, I want to drink this wine.”
Fang Ya’en was shocked by this old lady’s wastefulness. Such a handsome young man with such a casually chosen name.
The man looked up from his phone in confusion, glanced at the TV, then lowered his head: “Can’t afford it.”
The old lady’s eyes rolled around, staring at him persistently: “Let Little Jiang buy it. Little Jiang can afford it.”
“Why should she buy it?”
“Aren’t you two boyfriend and girlfriend?” The old lady quietly leaned over and whispered in his ear: “Isn’t your birthday coming up? Ask her to buy it as a birthday gift.”
The man lowered his head to send a WeChat message, smiling sarcastically: “I’ve only met her twice. You think it’s appropriate to ask someone for a birthday gift just like that?”
“Do you not like Little Jiang?” The old lady said indignantly. “If you don’t like her, just say so. I’ll have someone introduce you to someone else. How about Old Liu’s granddaughter? She says you don’t need to buy a house or car, and there’s no bride price. She even comes with a dowry of 300,000 yuan.”
Because that girl was mute, Fang Ya’en added mentally.
“How about this: why don’t you just sell me? As for how much, it’s entirely up to you. You can take the money to eat, drink, have fun, and travel the world, while I go be someone’s live-in son-in-law, serving their entire family. How’s that? Are you satisfied?” The man leaned against the wall and said.
This grandmother-grandson pair was truly fierce, each sentence stabbing at the other’s heart.
The old lady threw a pillow at him. “Get out!”
The man laughed casually and said to the chubby boy playing games in the corner, “Keep an eye on Grandma, don’t let her borrow cigarettes from the sister next door.”
Only then did Fang Ya’en notice that there was also a chubby boy in the corner.
By the time Ye Meng arrived at the hospital room, it was eleven fifteen, and the chubby boy hadn’t finished his game.
Ye Meng was nearly on her knees apologizing. She sincerely apologized to Fang Ya’en, swearing never to use her life and safety as an excuse again. Fang Ya’en pretended to be stern and demanded ten crab dinners. Ye Meng haggled it down to five. As the two were childishly arguing, a hand suddenly reached across—”Your delivery,” a deep, clear voice came from above.
Both immediately stopped and looked up along the slender arm. Ye Meng’s vision went black as if struck on the head—wasn’t this the handsome guy from a few hours ago at the lake, the one she had asked for WeChat?
The handsome guy’s zipper was perpetually sealed tight, his collar upright, and the black earphone wire still running outside his collar.
She wasn’t entirely certain about his appearance. Her first impression was just that the man was handsome, followed by a sense of familiarity as if she’d seen him somewhere before. It wasn’t until she saw the shiny earring by his ear that the scene by the lake suddenly crashed into her mind.
Their gazes unexpectedly met lightly in the air, adding a sense of serendipity in the dim hospital room.
He wasn’t as surprised as she was, barely pausing on her before saying to Fang Ya’en: “Deliveries aren’t brought to hospital rooms after ten o’clock. They’re all left at the first-floor courier station. Family members have to go down to pick them up. I happened to encounter it, so I brought it up for you. Mind the time next time.”
Fang Ya’en hurriedly expressed her thanks, then blinked at the already dazed Ye Meng and introduced: “This is the grandson of the grandmother in the next bed.”
The man didn’t look at Ye Meng, thoughtfully handing Fang Ya’en a card: “This is the volunteer phone number. If you need help when no one is here to take care of you, you can call them.”
Fang Ya’en was moved to tears and reciprocated with her business card. “I make suits. If you need any, you can find me. Shall we add each other on WeChat? We might bother you for the next half month.”
After they added each other on WeChat, Fang Ya’en promptly sent Ye Meng a message.
Fang: Ten crab dinners, handsome guy’s WeChat.
Lemon Leaf: This guy’s WeChat is practically hanging on his face for people to scan. I won’t add him.
Fang: Where did you get that impression? He already has a girlfriend.
Lemon Leaf: He has a girlfriend? Even worse. And you still want to push him on me?
Fang: Who said I was pushing him on you? Just tricking you into ten crab dinners.
Ye Meng couldn’t be bothered to respond, her stomach growling with hunger. The two quickly finished three buckets of Bobo chicken. With nothing else to do, Fang Ya’en chatted with the chubby boy nearby. “Is his name Li Badou?”
“That’s just his nickname. When my brother was just born, his mother abandoned him once. It was my grand-aunt who carried him back through heavy snow. Though my brother looks so fair now, my grand-aunt said he was skinny and dark when he was little, like a small lima bean, so he’s been called that for years. His real name is Li Jin Yu. The ‘Jin’ from the weight ‘jin’, and the ‘Yu’ from ‘island’. We’re cousins.”
Fang Ya’en silently repeated the name. Ye Meng had no interest in listening, sitting to the side-scrolling through her Moments feed, and replying to comments, with friends asking when she would return to Beijing.
“Your brother isn’t a local, is he? He doesn’t look like one.”
“My brother came here four years ago. My uncle died, my aunt remarried, so he’s been living with my grand-aunt.”
“What does your brother do for a living?”
The chubby boy was exactly the type of gentle boy Ye Meng liked—he answered honestly and straightforwardly: “He does whatever makes money, like watching stores for people, or editing some videos, occasionally singing at bars. Except for not being able to drive, he seems to know a bit of everything else.”
“He doesn’t have a driver’s license, or what?”
“He has a license, just doesn’t drive.”
“And his girlfriend?”
“She’s a lawyer in Beijing, really beautiful. I heard her annual income has seven digits.”
“Is she local?”
Fang Ya’en and Ye Meng instinctively exchanged glances.
If she was truly a local now in Beijing working as a lawyer, beautiful, and surnamed Jiang, there could only be one person.
Ye Meng felt a dull ache in her head.
“Yes, from Ning Sui.”
The two almost simultaneously asked tentatively: “It wouldn’t happen to be Jiang Lu Zhi, would it?”
The chubby boy was surprised and immediately put down his phone: “You know her?”
More than just knowing her—she was practically the nightmare of Ye Meng’s ten years of academic life. It was undeniable that Jiang Lu Zhi had indeed thrived in Beijing like a fish in water, doing exceedingly well. The two were in the same hometown chat group, rarely meeting in person, but Ye Meng often heard about this sister’s glorious achievements. The annual income of one million was true, and she was genuinely beautiful.
The relationship between Ye Meng and Jiang Lu Zhi, in Fang Ya’en’s words, was: in terms of looks, Ye Meng might be a street ahead, but in terms of strategy, Jiang Lu Zhi might be eighteen streets ahead. As always, Ye Meng couldn’t be bothered to compete. During school, the two might have been in a state of fierce rivalry, like two turtles unable to coexist in the same pond. Ye Meng had spent five years in high school just to get into a better university than Jiang Lu Zhi, but despite her daily cleverness, her grades never improved, and she only ended up at an ordinary university. After her mother’s death, Ye Meng had become somewhat indifferent to life.
But there was one thing Ye Meng had to mention—the day before she returned, Jiang Lu Zhi had already obtained her marriage certificate with her Beijing boyfriend of ten years.
“No one in town knows that Jiang Lu Zhi got married. I suspect even her mother doesn’t know. If Auntie Jiang knew, she’d fly to Beijing and break her legs. After all, Auntie Jiang always wanted her to find someone local.”
“Maybe Li Jin Yu already knows? What if he’s willingly being the third wheel since Jiang Lu Zhi is wealthy?”
“How is that possible? If he knew, would the chubby boy be announcing their relationship to the whole world?”
“If Li Jin Yu found out he had become the other man, would he go crazy?”
Li Jin Yu didn’t go crazy. The two of them were at the elevator entrance; he was about to go downstairs to prepay the hospitalization fees, and Ye Meng was just heading home, so she informed him of the situation. But she didn’t receive the expected reaction—not even a single glance.
The elevator light was glaring. Li Jin Yu, probably tired of waiting, slightly pulled down his hat to shield himself from the light. His attractive, sharp Adam’s apple was particularly noticeable under the light as he revealed a cold gaze with extremely low moral sense. “Oh, I see. Anything else?”
Ye Meng sometimes felt that this man’s eyes were like they harbored a gentle deer, and within the deer’s eyes were hidden stars. He should have been very gentle. But that deer had hidden the stars, his eyes expressing: I have no morals, don’t try to restrain me.
“You just met me today, so you might not know, but I’m quite a garbage person,” he said indifferently.