It should have been snowing, but outside, without warning, a persistent drizzle had begun. Under the dim yellow streetlights, the rain fell like dense ox hair. Looking at the ripples stirred up by raindrops on the river’s surface, passersby lost interest and headed home. The sounds of laughter gradually faded as they quietly passed by his courtyard wall. After the farewell door-closing sounds from various households, the surroundings returned to tranquility.

It was so quiet that one could hear raindrops falling onto leaves. Ye Meng didn’t feel the wild joy she had anticipated. She only felt heartache—making him compromise with her this way. She gently freed her hand from Li Jinyu’s grip and looked at the person leaning against the fish tank, asking softly, “Do you want to try with me?”

Li Jinyu seemed surprised that she had pulled away. He was momentarily stunned, then slowly straightened up from the fish tank and walked inside. From several disorderly stacked boxes by the yard entrance, he effortlessly grabbed four cans of beer with one hand, casually placed them on the coffee table, and sprawled himself on the sofa.

“Forget it if you don’t want to,” Li Jinyu opened a can of beer for himself, took a sip, then pulled out his phone to glance at it before tossing it emotionlessly onto the coffee table. “Pretend I never said anything.”

Ye Meng sat down closer than her usual safe distance. Their heated skin almost touched. Li Jinyu didn’t move away as he usually would; he nonchalantly kept drinking his beer, one sip at a time.

The room suddenly felt as if someone had brought in a burning coal. The atmosphere seemed to ignite.

Ye Meng gently snatched his beer and hid it behind her back, coaxing in a low voice, “Stop drinking, baby.”

Li Jinyu said nothing, stubbornly leaning forward to grab a new one.

Ye Meng immediately pressed down on the bottle’s mouth, grabbing his slender, warm fingers in the process. The sensation was distinct. It felt as if warm water had been poured into her heart, washing away her unclear emotions. “I just want to know, do you like me? Or were you just provoked by Little Gao?”

He countered, “What about you? Do you like me?”

Ye Meng answered honestly, “I do like you very much. But truthfully, I’ve liked many people before and been hurt. Now at this age, and given that girls mature earlier than boys, I approach relationships more rationally. I won’t go crazy over love anymore.”

It was only a two-year age difference, yet she made it sound like twenty.

Li Jinyu leaned back, legs spread, beer casually resting between his legs, with Ye Meng’s hand pressing down on it. He kept his head lowered, his chest rising and falling, his voice muffled, “How many relationships have you had?”

“Three.”

“All with younger men?”

“No.”

Big pig’s trotter. Li Jinyu held the beer with both hands, shrugged once, irritably brushed her hand away, opened the can, and said, “I probably like you. I’m not entirely sure yet.”

“I don’t know if it’s because you’ve been too good to me and I don’t want to let you go to someone else, or if I’ve fallen for you,” he pinched the can with two fingers, lifted it, and took a somewhat indifferent sip, then gave a self-mocking smile. He didn’t hide anything, directly revealing his cards, “I can’t tell because I’ve never liked anyone before. This is the first time.”

“First love, huh? That tends to be more intense,” Ye Meng nodded thoughtfully, teasing him, “But isn’t a first love at twenty-seven a bit late? You’re lying, right? Not a single person that touched your heart all these years?”

Li Jinyu drank his beer while looking at her, his eyes full of mockery, with an expression that said, “You’re fucking asking something you already know.”

His eyes were already turning slightly red. Ye Meng realized he couldn’t hold his alcohol—two bottles of beer and his eyes would redden. He reclined drunkenly on the sofa, looking at her half-lazily, half-seriously, his voice even hoarser: “Will you never return to Beijing?”

“Do you want to go back?” Ye Meng carefully took the beer from his hand and placed it on the coffee table.

Li Jinyu lowered his now-empty hand. He seemed particularly tired since returning from Beijing this time. He leaned his head back against the sofa, covering his eyes with his elbow. After a long while, he finally said in a stifled voice, “No.”

He had turned on the air conditioner at some point, and the temperature was rising. Ye Meng couldn’t help but take off her coat, wearing only a white high-necked tight sweater that wrapped around her proportionate, shapely upper body. She gently stroked his naturally hanging fingers and asked softly, “Are you hurt? About the past.”

Inside and outside the room, all was quiet except for the pitter-patter of gentle rain hitting the window awning.

After a while, Li Jinyu, still covering his eyes, gave a low “Mm.”

Ye Meng had always felt he was quite resilient, able to endure anything. What could have happened to make a man so unable to hold his head up?

Ye Meng held his hand, pulling his arm away from his eyes, and said tenderly, “Alright, I’ll stay here with you until you’re better.”

Although Li Jinyu kept his eyes closed, the hand she held suddenly tightened. His long fingers slowly slipped between hers, interlocking them tightly.

Ye Meng half-knelt on the sofa, her head already close to his ear, breathing softly, and asked somewhat presumptuously, “Little brother, can I kiss you?”

Li Jinyu was leaning back, his head resting on the sofa. He finally opened his eyes, looked at her helplessly, and chuckled, “Sister, can you not be so eager? Has it even been a minute since we made it official?”

Ye Meng lay in the opposite direction, her head also resting on the sofa back, kneeling, curiously pursuing the question: “Did you ever kiss Jiang Luzhi?”

Li Jinyu released her hand, got up from the sofa, leaned over to grab his beer and took a sip, saying with some exasperation, “Would it stop you from kissing me if I had?”

Ye Meng made a dismissive sound, getting off the sofa, “Don’t act so pure. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I was molesting a child.”

“I’m a guy, what purity am I pretending to have,” Li Jinyu said with one leg crossed over the other, unable to suppress his laughter. “Can’t you give me a moment to react?” As he spoke, he stood up, casually picked up the jacket he had just taken off and thrown on the sofa, and mercilessly covered Ye Meng’s head with it. Out of sight, out of mind. Like he was defending against a wolf, he said, “I’m going to the hospital to see grandma later. I’ll take a shower first. Don’t peek.”

Pah!

Who was he calling a pervert? Ye Meng almost thought she had the wrong script. Indignantly, she spelled out his name word by word: “Li. Jin. Yu!”

“Don’t take it off, or I won’t let you kiss me for a month.” While searching for clean clothes in the bedroom, he spoke lazily.

The bathroom door was broken. It had been damaged when the old lady fell that day, and now it banged loudly whenever the wind blew. He had removed it but hadn’t reinstalled it yet. After all, he was the only one living in the house now. Occasionally Yang Tianwei would come over, and during those days, he would try not to shower.

Though he wasn’t that pure, he wasn’t at the point where he could let Ye Meng openly watch him shower.

He took his things and went in, undressing in a few quick moves, left with only his underwear. He looked back at Ye Meng, who was obediently covered by his jacket. As he turned back, from behind came: “Li Jinyu.”

“Hm?”

“Did you go to the hospital to donate blood?” Ye Meng suddenly asked out of nowhere, her head still covered.

The water rushed noisily. Li Jinyu turned it down slightly and slowly lathered the soap, saying, “Did you visit my grandma?”

“I could smell it. Your jacket has the scent of disinfectant,” Ye Meng said.

“It would be more believable if you said you were a vampire,” he laughed. “Even able to smell that I’m missing a few hundred cc of blood.”

“I think I can. I’d notice if you lost even a single hair. You’re all mine now. Without my permission, you’re not allowed to run back to Beijing to donate blood to your mother again.”

“Okay, it won’t happen again.” He lowered his head and smiled.

“Did something happen to you in Beijing?”

Since coming to Ning Sui, he had never returned to Beijing. He discovered he still harbored a subtle expectation for Beijing in his heart. Initially, he was escaping—escaping the city, escaping everyone. But now, he realized that once someone has been an ostrich, they can never raise their head again.

He didn’t want to go back then. Now, he couldn’t go back anymore.

There was no home for him in Beijing. Li Lingbai’s villa now housed others who were harmonious, happy, courteous, and proper. The maids and butlers had all been replaced, with deep loyalty between masters and servants. He was like a vagrant who had mistakenly wandered into someone else’s castle. After an awkward five-day stay in that warm, hospitable villa, he fully realized he truly couldn’t go back.

That child had filled the house with books he once read, including all his books about memory palaces.

The child’s aptitude was poor. Li Jinyu only needed to read two sentences to know his memory and logic weren’t very good. He needed focused training and high-intensity concentration exercises because he could never get past the third page of any book.

But he saw that Li Lingbai had written a sentence in the child’s notebook: “Son, believe that you are the best!”

Li Lingbai seemed like a different person now—gentle and graceful. This boy’s treatment was unprecedentedly good. Even Li Siyang had never enjoyed such treatment that this boy got all to himself.

On New Year’s Eve, they had a fierce argument, tensions rising high. Li Lingbai, fearing he might change his mind about donating blood to her son, had someone take his phone. That’s when Li Jinyu borrowed a phone at the hospital.

“Did you want me to come to Beijing to pick you up?”

Li Jinyu had finished his shower. His hair was wet and not dried. He had changed into a clean T-shirt and loose sweatpants, leaning against the sofa with his hands resting between his legs, complacently smiling and shaking his head: “No, I wanted to ask if you like tofu cake. I remember there used to be a place with really good tofu cake. My friends and I used to go there often, but I looked for it later and couldn’t find it. I was devastated.”

From all she’d pieced together, Ye Meng hugged his masculine-scented jacket and said, “Tsk, tsk, looks like you were a rich young master before. So the line of older sisters chasing you must have reached Xiangshan, right?”

He tilted his head and laughed, “Mm, many, but none as eager to stick to me as you.”

“You’re accusing me of throwing myself at you? Who initiated earlier? I’m changing my mind now. Sister won’t play with you anymore.” Ye Meng threw the jacket at him, making as if to leave.

Suddenly, her hand was firmly grasped. Ye Meng turned to look at him.

“I’ll throw myself at you, okay?” Li Jinyu said with his head lowered. His hair was dripping wet, with a few drops flowing down his cold Adam’s apple, slowly rolling down with his swallowing motion, disappearing into his collar—extremely sexy. He raised his head to meet her gaze and said with a depraved, bad-boy expression, “I thought you were with Nurse Little Gao. I was planning to steal you away.”

“Little brother, your thinking is problematic now,” Ye Meng immediately sat down, then looked angry and sulky at no one in particular. “I want to slap Jiang Luzhi now. Once a person is forced to lower their moral standards, there’s a first time and then countless times after. It’s like cheating—there’s only a difference between zero times and countless times. Are you addicted to being the other person? Baby?”

“Do you call all your boyfriends ‘baby’?”

“Do you need something special? I have many more: baobei-bei, baobei-bei, bei-baobao, honey, last love, muscle baby?”

Li Jinyu began drying his hair, and hearing “muscle baby” made him shudder slightly. He couldn’t be bothered to respond.

Ye Meng waited for him to dry his hair, leaning against the doorframe, racking her brain to think of how to change his WeChat name. Finally, she changed it to the very common “babybabybaby.”

Li Jinyu smirked, “You might as well change it to Justin Bieber.”

“Change it to honey honey honey for me.”

“No,” he said impassively, putting down the hairdryer and couldn’t help criticizing, “Too greasy.”

Ye Meng felt the only response she could give was an emoji that said “The other party doesn’t want to talk and has thrown a pile of elementary school assignments at you,” but unexpectedly, an add friend prompt popped up. Ye Meng suddenly realized: “Li Jinyu, did you delete me?”

“You just realized? Deleted you half a month ago,” Li Jinyu casually ruffled his hair, walked out, and picked up his phone from the sofa, coldly saying, “Been running wild these past two weeks, haven’t you? Not a single message to me?”

The WeChat interface showed hundreds of message notifications, mostly from groups. Li Jinyu barely looked at them, and he hadn’t checked personal messages either. No wonder he never replied to messages before—he simply didn’t look at them.

Ye Meng asked, “You don’t check WeChat at all?”

“What?” Li Jinyu was in the process of adding her back.

“Private messages.”

He went into the bedroom, saying without looking back: “Rarely.”

Ye Meng followed him, leaning against the bedroom doorframe, once again surveying the bedroom filled with his living atmosphere. In the corner stood an electronic keyboard. Two medium-sized bookcases were packed with various books. The bed and dresser made the narrow space feel crowded. Ye Meng had a particular aversion to men’s bedrooms, including her boyfriends’. She always felt they were unclean—dirty, messy, and unsafe. But perhaps because of who lived here, she surprisingly found it unexpectedly cozy, clean, and safe, with an impulse to pack her luggage and move in immediately.

“What if someone needs to find you urgently?”

“If someone needs me, wouldn’t they call?” Li Jinyu pulled out a thermal jacket from the wardrobe and put it on. “People who find me on WeChat either want to hook up or borrow money. Are you coming with me to the hospital, or going home?”

“Coming with you.”

Li Jinyu gave her a deep look from behind the wardrobe door. After a moment, he pulled out a long thermal jacket of the same style from the closet, tossed it to her, and said coldly: “Then wear this. It’s getting colder tonight. I’m physically weak and won’t take off my clothes for you.”

The old lady was recovering fairly well and was about to undergo her second round of chemotherapy. That evening, the doctor urgently called Li Jinyu for another discussion, indicating it was time to pay for the surgery.

But Li Jinyu wasn’t short of money now. He immediately transferred fifty thousand to the hospital’s inpatient account.

Li Lingbai had given him two hundred thousand, considering it payment for his blood donation. If not for this money, he wouldn’t have gone to Beijing. If that child had died, it wouldn’t have concerned him—it would have been Li Lingbai’s retribution. He thought heartlessly.

“Are you really with Badou now?” The old lady, with a piece of banana in her mouth not yet swallowed, seemed unable to believe her ears. She forcefully poked her ear, trying her utmost to hear every word Ye Meng said clearly.

Ye Meng nodded, “He proposed it.”

The old lady finally saw the light after a long wait. With tears of joy, she nodded repeatedly, so excited that her dentures almost flew out. “Good, good…”

Ye Meng always kept some reserve in her words and actions. Knowing the old lady’s intentions, she feared disappointing her, worried that mood swings might affect her recovery. So she couldn’t make promises too confidently and could only say, “We’ll see how it goes. If it doesn’t work out, Grandma, don’t worry. There will be someone more suitable for Li Jinyu.”

To her surprise, Li Jinyu walked in just in time to hear this. The old lady quickly swallowed the half-eaten banana, forcibly twisting the awkward atmosphere: “It will work out, it will! You’re both so beautiful and handsome. You two are perfect for each other, partners in crime.”

“…”

The two went downstairs to find somewhere for dinner. Ye Meng sat in the car, struggling with the navigation system for a while. Li Jinyu sat casually in the passenger seat, watching her work up a sweat, showing no intention of helping.

“Give me a hand, boyfriend.”

Li Jinyu looked back at her once, “I don’t understand this crappy car either.”

“…”

This was at least a two-hundred-thousand-yuan Buick Regal with matrix-style full-flashing LED headlights!

“I get it, you used to be a young master,” Ye Meng said. “So, may I ask, what would the young master like to eat? Salmon or steak? Or shall we go to the largest chain restaurant in town? I can get you a table in no time.”

“Impressive,” Li Jinyu replied with a perfunctory smile. “Let’s go to the chain restaurant then.”

Ye Meng stepped on the gas forcefully, sending the Buick racing onto the road. She drove like lightning through the rows of streetlights, narrow roads, and grand hotels, all left mercilessly behind as her determined gaze fixed straight ahead toward the most luxurious chain restaurant!

After seven or eight turns, five minutes later, the car finally stopped steadily at its destination. Li Jinyu looked out the window at the glowing red acrylic crystal signs at the entrance—”Fujian Shaxian Small Eats.”

“Is it too late to change to salmon?”

Just as they entered, they saw Qiao Maimei sitting in the corner. At her small table squeezed two men who appeared much older than her.

Qiao Maimei kept her head down the whole time. The two burly men were telling crude jokes. Seeing Ye Meng enter, their eyes fixated on her legs in her skirt with malicious lewdness.

The couple exchanged glances and, with perfect tacit understanding, found a table four or five tables away from them.

Sitting side by side, Ye Meng ordered two meals, and then secretly observed the situation behind them. She whispered in Li Jinyu’s ear, “Your sister seems to be under someone’s control.”

Li Jinyu lowered his head, pretending to look at the menu, smiled, and said casually: “It’s not some evil magic. No one can control her. They’re loan sharks.”

Ye Meng whispered, “Did you borrow fifty thousand from loan sharks for her?”

“No,” he sipped his tea and whispered in her ear, “She borrowed it herself. She’s crazy about becoming famous, borrowing money everywhere to pay marketing companies to shoot short videos.”

“Aren’t you going to do something?”

Li Jinyu tossed the menu aside, turned to glance at them, and observed coldly: “If I could, she wouldn’t be associating with these people today. I’ve told her hundreds of times, but she won’t listen. She insists on looking for trouble.”

Unexpectedly, they heard chairs moving behind them. They were preparing to leave with Qiao Maimei. Ye Meng then noticed that the two men were carrying various photography equipment, while Qiao Maimei followed them like a wandering soul, with a blank expression.

Ye Meng and Li Jinyu quickly exchanged glances, seeming to truly embody what the old lady said—heaven-made match, partners in crime.

Ye Meng suddenly flipped the table and stood up, screaming with an exaggerated expression, “Li Jinyu, you bastard!”

Li Jinyu lazily leaned back in his chair, legs spread, still pretending to play with his phone, with a player’s expression, cooperating with her: “What now? I didn’t touch that woman.”