Spring rain washed away an entire dreary winter. Flowers that had rotted to the ground’s depths finally revealed their fresh, vibrant red or bright yellow petals as the rain cleared away the mud. The pale sky, like a faded floral cloth, became clean and clear.
Ye Meng nearly arrived late on her first day of work. She hadn’t yet rented an apartment and had originally planned to get up early and drive directly to the city since it only took forty minutes to drive there from Ning Sui. Quite a few people in town worked in the city but lived in Ning Sui, though it did consume extra fuel money.
The day before, she had stayed at Li Jin Yi’s home until eleven o’clock. Her phone had died, and when she got home, she was so tired she fell asleep immediately, forgetting to charge it. The alarm didn’t go off in the morning. If it weren’t for her father making so much noise while getting up to wash, she would probably still be in her sweet, sweaty dreams.
Ye Meng had been idle for several months, sleeping carefree until late morning every day, occasionally going out to hook up with a younger guy. Her father didn’t control her much—after all, the family didn’t depend on her for support. The old lady’s only year-end target for her was to quickly find someone to marry. Today, seeing her up so early and carefully applying makeup, making herself presentable—
Her father, solemnly tying his tie in front of the mirror, curiously asked, “Has the young lady changed her ways? Getting up so early?”
Ye Meng, drawing her eyebrows in front of the mirror, suddenly realized she hadn’t told her family yet. “Ah, I’m going to work.”
Her father was shocked for a moment as he put on his suit jacket. “You found a job?”
Ye Meng applied lipstick and satisfyingly pursed her lips in the bathroom mirror. She suddenly wanted to kiss Li Jin Yi. Being in love made one’s heart flutter. Thinking about not being able to see him for a while, she inevitably felt a bit lost. She said to her father outside the door, “Yes, in the city. I might move there to live after a while. Do you have any good housing resources? If not, I’ll ask around myself.”
Her father had long grown accustomed to his daughter’s impulsive nature. Sometimes she was just too lazy to do things, but once she decided to do something, she typically acted swiftly, giving no one a chance to react. This temperament likely came from the old lady. Though he thought this way, he couldn’t help feeling empty inside. He put on his leather shoes and said, “Can’t you live at home?”
How could she date Li Jin Yi while living at home? The young couple couldn’t always hole up in his retirement community. Li Jin Yi might not mind, but she really couldn’t bear those sad, pitiful looks. Besides, once his grandmother was discharged from the hospital, they really would have nowhere to go.
“What, you can’t bear to part with me?” Ye Meng had finished her makeup but hadn’t changed clothes yet. She leaned against the bathroom door, smiling at her father. “I’m in a relationship now. I need some personal space, right?”
Her father couldn’t believe it. “Really?”
Ye Meng turned to go back to her room. “Well, it’s about like that. Please tell Grandma to stop introducing random younger guys to me. That small Gao, the nurse from last time—I even treated him to a meal at Dai Ji, which cost me nearly a thousand. I’m going to work now. Remember to ask about housing resources for me, Deputy Bank Manager Ye.”
Ye’s father was a deputy manager at a small bank branch in town. It sounded impressive, but he had little real authority. Apart from ordering around subordinates at work, few people outside respected him. Ye’s father had a gentle and scholarly disposition, opposite to Ye Meng’s—a typical moderate who offended no one. Therefore, he had never gained the attention of his superiors. After diligently working at this small branch for thirty-some years, he had merely risen to deputy manager.
He couldn’t be relied upon for major matters and wasn’t needed for minor ones. In the Ye family, he was less useful than Ye Meng’s second aunt, who was at least an emergency department doctor at the county hospital. If someone had a headache or fever, she could at least help arrange an appointment in advance.
So Ye Meng was accustomed to not consulting him about anything. However, the dejected look on Old Ye’s face as he left made Ye Meng’s heart skip a beat. After parking in the company’s underground garage, she took out her phone and sent him a message.
[Old Ye, don’t be sad, I still love you. I’m only moving out for a few days. If I find this job uncomfortable, or if the boss is heartless and affects my relationship, I might immediately roll back to find you guys. After all, Mom said before she left that I should take good care of you. You’re a guiding light in my heart. Anyway, the decisions you’ve made for me, the roads you’ve let me walk—as long as I avoid them, I definitely won’t stumble. My current success is inseparable from your tireless teachings. Heart.jpg]
Strangely enough, she could boldly express her love to Li Jin Yi. But with Old Ye, she couldn’t bring herself to say those sickeningly sweet words. Somehow, every time she tried, she couldn’t help but mock him a bit at the end.
Sure enough, Old Ye responded with a fierce “Get lost.”
Ye Meng leaned back in the driver’s seat, laughing heartily, her mood greatly improved. She then sent a WeChat message to Li Jin Yi.
[Meng: Baby, successfully arrived. I bought you a phone and will mail it in a couple of days. Watch for the delivery.]
At that moment, Li Jin Yi was already leaning against the door frame of the hospital room, supervising his grandmother’s morning exercises. He was still wearing yesterday’s sweatshirt with a thin sports jacket over it, the zipper pulled up to his chin, covering most of his face. Despite this, he also wore a mask on his face, revealing only his lean, smooth jawline.
The old lady reluctantly stretched her arms and legs, her eyes sneakily looking for a chance to lie down when he wasn’t paying attention. Li Jin Yi watched her calmly and said through his mask, “Three more.”
The old lady asked, “Why are you wearing a mask?”
Li Jin Yi, feeling his phone vibrate in his pocket, took it out while saying, “Ye Meng said there are many viruses in the hospital, easy to cross-infect.”
The old lady, though eager for him to get married, somehow felt a bit jealous now that he was in a relationship. She snorted, peeled herself a banana, and said, “When I told you to wear one before, you wouldn’t. But when your girlfriend says to wear it, you do. Tsk, tsk.”
Li Jin Yi stood with one hand in his pocket, leaning his shoulder against the doorframe, looking down at his phone to reply to Ye Meng. Hearing this, he looked up and glanced at her, smiling slightly, “Weren’t you the one who wanted me to date? Now that I am, you’re jealous of her?”
[LJY: Don’t need to buy me a phone. I have money, just too lazy to change it.]
Li Jin Yi could afford to buy a phone, but changing phones meant updating all his photos, music sheets, and his grandmother’s medication reminders—all the information needed updating, which he found too troublesome.
“I’m just saying,” the old lady was merely voicing her thoughts, smiling as she asked, “So, how’s it going? When will you have children?”
“…”
Li Jin Yi put his phone back in his pocket after replying, his gaze indifferent. “Ask Yang Tian Wei if he can immediately get you a child. From my side, don’t count on it.”
“Why? Ye Meng is so good, are you just playing with her?” The old lady, no matter how thick-skinned, sensed something unusual. She then earnestly advised, “Bādòu, you can’t be like those bad boys out there.”
Ye Meng quickly replied.
[Meng: I don’t have many hobbies. My hobby is spending money on my boyfriend. Are you depriving me of even this small pleasure? Hmm? So cruel, baby?]
[Meng: If you don’t like it, step aside. I’ll find a boyfriend who’s willing to let me spend money on him and spoil him.]
However, Ye Meng quickly recalled this message after sending it. Li Jin Yi couldn’t help but curl the corners of his mouth slightly, then said to the old lady, “I’m not playing with her, but I haven’t considered marriage and children. That’s too distant for me. I don’t know how to interact with children, nor how to raise them, so don’t have high hopes for me. If Yang Tian Wei is willing to have a child, I’ll invest and contribute some child support.”
The company Ye Meng had joined was quite leisurely. In the morning, someone was assigned to show her around the company’s general structure. For the rest of the time, she sat at her workstation, daydreaming. The company handled advertising planning, and undertaking events like press conferences, exhibitions, annual meetings, and so on. Each person had their projects. As Ye Meng had just joined, HR assigned her to a team, but when people heard she had returned from Beijing, they feared she might take their work and were not particularly willing to train her. They coldly handed her two forms and asked her to compile and summarize the company’s client list from the past few years.
She quickly organized the clients, categorizing them according to recent cooperation details and amounts, with key analysis for several important starred clients. With high work efficiency, she had a lot of free time afterward, which became quite boring.
Another girl joined the company at the same time, a fresh university graduate who turned out to be much more popular. The department colleagues were guarded against Ye Meng but showed no such reservations toward this young girl. They actively invited her to meals and tea parties and were willing to give her small project-planning tasks, such as creating PPTs and modifying content proposals.
Compared to Ye Meng, who spent the entire morning staring blankly at an Excel spreadsheet, she had it much better. Even the young men in the office had already added the young girl’s WeChat. When Ye Meng first started working in Beijing, she was similarly the center of attention. Men throughout the company, regardless of age, always cared for and looked after girls in their early twenties. Ye Meng, resting her head on her desk, sighed deeply, suddenly realizing that this world was quite unfriendly to women approaching thirty.
Ye Meng rested her chin on the desk and couldn’t help posting a melancholy moment on her social media. At that time, Li Jin Yi replied with a message that made her teeth feel numb.
[LJY: Why are you being cowardly? Don’t recall the message.]
Followed by another message, probably after seeing her social media post, [LJY: How is the world being unfriendly to you?]
Ye Meng organized her morning experiences into the most concise language and sent it to Li Jin Yi. He must have been busy with something, as he didn’t reply for a long time. Ye Meng felt bad again, thinking even her boyfriend was being cold to her.
Half-jokingly, she sent another message, [Meng: Baby, are you bullying me too?]
After a long time, still no reply. She got a bit anxious, [Meng: Li Jin Yi, have your wings grown strong?]
At that moment, Li Jin Yi was standing in the hospital bathroom with an exasperated expression. His phone had unexpectedly slipped from his pocket into the toilet bowl and was now lying face-up at the bottom, the screen still glowing miserably. He could see Ye Meng’s increasingly anxious WeChat messages popping up one after another.
Half an hour later, Ye Meng finally received Li Jin Yi’s belated reply.
[LJY: How dare I? I’m not bullying you. My phone fell into the toilet.]
[Meng: What? What now?]
[LJY: I picked it up.]
[Meng: With your bare hands? Aren’t you a germaphobe?]
[LJY: Gao Ming gave me a pair of chopsticks.]
[Meng: Thanks to Nurse Gao for extending a helping hand to my boyfriend.]
[LJY: Oh. Treat him to a meal, at Dai Ji.]
[Meng: Baby, you’re so cute. Want to kiss you.]
[LJY: …Cut it out.]
At that moment, Ye Meng’s social media was buzzing with Qingdao’s cherry blossom street. She casually forwarded it to Li Jin Yi, [Meng: Let’s go see cherry blossoms in Qingdao in April. I’ll find someone to take care of Grandma. Just three days, okay? I want to kiss you under the cherry blossoms.]
[LJY: Mm.]
[Meng: Miss me?]
[LJY: …Don’t you need to work?]
[Meng: Nobody’s willing to let me take over anyway, so I’m playing with my phone with a clear conscience. Ah, someone on my feed posted about the pink dolphins at Khanom. I want to take the baby to Khanom, want the baby to see the pink dolphins. They say when you see pink dolphins, good luck will come.]
Khanom was a small fishing village in southern Thailand, facing Samui Island across the sea. One year during the New Year, Li Ling Bai rented a holiday hotel in Thailand, and they went to Khanom to see pink dolphins. It was quite ordinary. Perhaps because he was a man, he didn’t feel much about these things, but maybe Ye Meng would like it.
[LJY: Do you have a passport?]
[Meng: No, I’ve never been abroad. I’ll go apply for one in a few days. You have one, right?]
[LJY: Yes.] Almost filled two volumes, though now they were just gathering dust.
[Meng: Do you miss me? Li Jin Yi, I won’t be coming back for a whole week, you know.]
[LJY: Where will you stay?]
[Meng: The company has temporary dormitories. I’ll look for a place on the weekend. To be precise, you might not see me until next weekend.]
The person who said she wouldn’t return for an entire week appeared at Li Jin Yi’s doorstep that evening. The urgent knocking made Li Jin Yi think there was a fire. He had just finished showering, his hair still wet—he hadn’t even had time to dry it and could only wipe it with a towel as he went to open the door.
Ye Meng wore a fitted suit. The tattoo on her collarbone was covered by her shirt, revealing slender, clean calves. She was slim, stunning, mature yet full of earthly charm, like a delicate flower in spring rain, covered in wind and rain, standing travel-worn at his door. She was like a cluster of flowers sent down by the gods, accidentally landing outside his door, as if she had come specifically for him, to share joy.
She smiled and threw herself into his arms, their young, passionate bodies pressed tightly together.
The door wasn’t even closed, left wide open for all to see. Li Jin Yi leaned his back against the doorframe, looking down at the spoiled, radiant woman in his arms. “Didn’t you say next week?”
Hugging him made Ye Meng feel much more secure. She looked up, resting her sharp, thin chin on his strong chest, as if infused with spring rain, gazing at him with wet eyes, harboring her innate pride, yet speaking the world’s softest and most sincere words of love: “I missed you. What can I do? Just one day at work, and I already want to quit. Is it because I haven’t dated for too long? Why are you so attractive to me?”
Li Jin Yi smiled noncommittally, towel hanging around his neck, lazily leaning against the wall, hands in his pockets as he looked down at her for a long while, listening to her passionate longing. Then his left hand came out of his pocket and pinched her chin, shaking it teasingly from side to side: “What about work tomorrow? Hmm?”
Ye Meng’s lips were pursed by his pinching. She let him pinch as she mumbled softly, “I just need to get up an hour earlier, at six, and I can clock in by eight. Can I sleep here? I promise I won’t do anything else.”