As Qian Fei stumbled backward, she twisted her ankle. Li Yifei, thinking the subway would be inconvenient, hailed a taxi.
Qian Fei hesitated, “The route to our home is too congested. Let’s take the subway instead.”
Li Yifei gently pushed her into the car, “I know it’s congested. Why do you think I don’t take a taxi to work and squeeze onto the subway every day? But with your foot like this, we’ll just have to deal with the traffic.”
In the taxi, Qian Fei suddenly asked in a daze, “By the way, how did you get here?”
Li Yifei noticed her odd behavior earlier. He kept his eyes on her as he replied, “I was worried. I followed right after you left.”
The traffic was heavy, and it took nearly two hours to reach home.
Qian Fei remained silent until they arrived.
At the entrance of their building, she limped towards the corridor after getting out of the car. Li Yifei quickly paid the fare and rushed to support her.
“Listen, Qian Fei, I haven’t even helped our family’s cranky old man like this! You should appreciate it!” he said while guiding her into the elevator.
Qian Fei still didn’t respond.
Once inside their home, he helped Qian Fei sit down on the living room sofa.
Qian Fei had been in a daze the entire time. After sitting down, she suddenly looked up and said, “I want to drink right now!”
Without a word, Li Yifei turned and went downstairs to buy alcohol.
Qian Fei sat on the floor, silently drinking can after can. Li Yifei ran his fingers through his hair, feeling a bit annoyed.
“Qian Fei, can you say something?”
Qian Fei raised her head at his words, staring at him so intently it almost made him uneasy.
“Am I a complete idiot?” Qian Fei suddenly asked.
Li Yifei looked at her, unsure how to respond.
“Am I just destined to be cheated on?” As she asked this, two large tears rolled down her cheeks, alarming Li Yifei.
He had never seen a girl cry with such a calm expression before.
He watched as tears kept falling silently down her face.
Feeling oppressed by her crying, he couldn’t help but ask, “Why are you crying without making a sound? Let it out, don’t hold it in!”
Qian Fei, her face streaked with tears, looked at him and smiled bitterly, “Even if I cried out loud, who would hear me?”
Li Yifei looked at her, suddenly feeling a pang in his heart.
At that moment, he felt as if he could personally experience how painful and bitter Qian Fei’s heart was.
It was also from that moment that he realized the power of tears isn’t in delicate cries of pain, but in crying with a bitter smile in silence.
After crying for a while, Qian Fei gradually calmed down.
Drinking her beer, she said to Li Yifei, “Thinking about it now, I am an idiot. You hinted at me several times before, asking me to pay attention, but unfortunately, I didn’t grasp the meaning behind your words. Li Yifei, how did you know Hu Zining was cheating? And since you knew, why didn’t you tell me directly? I’m stupid and stubborn. If you don’t spell things out for me, I really can’t understand what you mean!”
Li Yifei looked at her, “I never interfere in other people’s relationships. The fact that I hinted at you several times was already an unprecedented, extraordinary act!” He paused, then asked, “Given your current emotional state, can you handle the truth?”
Qian Fei nodded, self-mockingly saying, “This isn’t the first time. How much worse can I feel? I’ve already cried, so go ahead and tell me!”
Li Yifei pondered for a moment, then revealed the truth of the matter.
“Do you remember the day when the fuse in our house blew? That night I came back very late because I was called to a bar to discuss business. At the bar, I saw a man at the next table being very intimate with a woman dripping in gold and jewels. It was a rich lady and her boy toy relationship. It left quite an impression on me. Later, when we went to the hotel for due diligence, I recognized that man. I asked if that man was your boyfriend, and you said yes. At the time, I thought we weren’t very close, so I didn’t tell you about it.
“Later, there was another time when I went to a bar with my buddy, the one who gave us a bag of tea with a phone bill top-up. We saw Hu Zining again, but this time he was with a different woman. She had a big Cartier bracelet on her wrist, a huge Tiffany diamond ring on her finger, and a jade necklace around her neck. I was quite impressed with Hu Zining at the time. If I had to face a woman who carelessly mixed accessories to show off her nouveau riche status, I couldn’t bring myself to do it even if she were a celestial beauty! But he could sweet-talk her into happily paying the bill and buying him drinks. That’s a real skill!”
Hearing these stories, Qian Fei suddenly felt immensely grateful that she had firmly extinguished Hu Zining’s attempts to get intimate with her that time he brought her to his home.
She fell silent, hugging her beer can, and began to seriously examine herself. Why, with so many obvious signs, had she never discovered what kind of person Hu Zining was?
Was it because she had never truly cared about him? Was it because, subconsciously, he was just someone to alleviate her loneliness, a suitable candidate for marriage?
Perhaps she had never truly cared for him, and therefore never truly paid attention to him. So no matter what he said or did, she never bothered to discern truth from falsehood. Rather than saying others had deceived her, it might be more accurate to say she was content to live in her world of impressions, deceiving herself.
She suddenly felt at peace with Hu Zining. He was just a shield she used to escape and forget Wang Ruohai, only she hadn’t realized it until now.
However, thinking that the man had used the same mouth to sweet-talk and even kiss other rich women before kissing her, she suddenly felt a surge of nausea rising in her chest.
She didn’t even bother to put on her slippers, limping and stumbling to the bathroom to vomit.
She retched violently as if she was about to throw up her entire stomach.
Li Yifei followed her into the bathroom, covering his nose in disgust while anxiously asking, “Qian Fei, don’t tell me he took advantage of you and got you pregnant?”
Qian Fei, after expelling the last bit with all her might, crouched weakly by the toilet. She tilted her head towards Li Yifei and said, “Pregnant my foot! It’s precisely because I didn’t let him take advantage of me physically or financially that he resorted to bullying me out of desperation!”
Li Yifei looked at her, clicking his tongue, “He’s something, isn’t he? Not picky at all, willing to go after anyone!”
It wasn’t until after she had rinsed her mouth that Qian Fei realized what Li Yifei meant. In her drunken state, without thinking, she bent down, took off one of her slippers, and flung it at Li Yifei’s face.
Li Yifei was stunned by the impact, jumping up and down in anger, “Qian Fei, have you gone mad? Don’t use your breakup as an excuse to act drunk and violent! Don’t think I’ll always let you off easy! Try throwing that slipper at my face again!”
No sooner had he finished speaking than, as if granting his wish, the other slipper hit him squarely in the face.
Li Yifei was truly angry now. He rushed over, grabbed Qian Fei’s arm, and roared, “Do you believe I’ll slap you?”
Qian Fei looked up at him, her eyes, washed by tears, frighteningly clear, “Go ahead, slap me to death if you want! After all this mess tonight, and thinking about having to squeeze onto the subway again tomorrow morning, I feel like it doesn’t matter if I only live until now!”
Li Yifei looked into her eyes, and suddenly his anger dissipated.
Qian Fei tried hard to compose herself. Three days after the incident, when she felt she could handle her emotions well, she called Yao Jingjing to tell her what had happened.
Yao Jingjing exploded on the other end of the line, insisting on buying a plane ticket immediately to come back and throw sulfuric acid on Hu Zining at the hotel. It took Qian Fei countless pleas and persuasions to calm her down.
Before hanging up, Yao Jingjing told her, “Feifei, hang in there a bit longer. I’ll finish up my work here as quickly as possible and come back to be with you! To hell with that so-called tycoon, I don’t care anymore. Let him play by himself!”
After hanging up, Qian Fei felt a mix of emotions. On one hand, she was touched, but on the other, she suspected that Yao Jingjing might have encountered some relationship troubles in Dalian as well.
The usually fiery and spirited Yao Jingjing had always been full of fighting spirit. When had she ever said things like “let him play by himself” that sounded like giving up?
Qian Fei didn’t want Yao Jingjing to come back at all, because she knew that if Yao Jingjing returned, it would mean she was hurt.
Two days later, while having dinner at home, she unexpectedly received a call from Hu Zining.
Hu Zining cursed at her over the phone, “Qian Fei, you must have slept with our chairman, right? If you’ve got the guts, don’t play dirty tricks on me!”
Before she could figure out what was happening, Li Yifei had already snatched her phone and said to the person on the other end, “You little punk, didn’t I tell you there’d be a day when you’d kneel and call me grandpa? Let me tell you, don’t harass Qian Fei anymore. Be careful, or Grandpa here will make sure you can’t survive in Beijing!”
With that, he hung up the phone.
Qian Fei stared at him in bewilderment.
He shook his hair and asked, “Stunned by my coolness, aren’t you?”
Qian Fei couldn’t help but burst out laughing, “What’s going on? And why did you hang up? He only cursed at me once, and I didn’t even get a chance to retort!”
Li Yifei clicked his tongue twice, “That petty vindictiveness is about the only thing womanly about you!” Then he casually explained to Qian Fei, “It’s nothing much, just that the hotel fired Hu Zining.”
Qian Fei was taken aback, “Really? What did you do?”
Li Yifei put on airs and said, “Didn’t do much, just made a few phone calls!”
Qian Fei pursed her lips at him, “Yeah, right. Keep bragging!”
Li Yifei was a bit displeased, “Why don’t you believe me? How else do you think I did it?”
Qian Fei said, “You probably asked your project manager to talk to the securities representative, right?”
Li Yifei wagged his finger at her, “No! I keep work and personal matters separate, so I would never involve project people in this! I have an uncle who, through a few connections, can reach a certain municipal government leader who oversees the hotel directly. So getting Hu Zining kicked out was just a matter of making a few calls to have that municipal official pass a word to Chairman Lin of the hotel! This trivial matter didn’t warrant bothering the chairman directly, but I wanted to teach Hu Zining a lesson. I wanted him to know who he was messing with! Did he think he could get away with it?”
Qian Fei was still half-skeptical, “A few connections to a municipal leader? I could claim to be connected to Qian Xuesen if I stretched it that far!”
Li Yifei looked exasperated, “Qian Fei, am I really that unreliable in your eyes?”
Qian Fei nodded without much hesitation.
Li Yifei felt deeply wounded.
Qian Fei suddenly said, “Don’t say I’m being a saint, but even though Hu Zining was unkind and unjust, to be honest, I was also using him to move past my previous relationship. Causing him to lose his job directly because of me, isn’t that going a bit too far?”
Li Yifei slammed his chopsticks on the table, “I’ve lost my appetite! Qian Fei, the world doesn’t need saints to keep spinning, okay? Can’t you have a bit of temper, a bit of character, and not be a saint for once?”
Qian Fei quickly picked up the chopsticks and handed them back to him, “Alright, alright! No problem! I’ll develop a temper right away!”
Seeing her placating and fawning behavior, Li Yifei didn’t know whether to laugh or get angry, “Let me tell you, Hu Zining has done plenty of shady things at their hotel. He deserves to be fired! For instance, remember when you told me someone advised you to change rooms? That was his doing, right? He didn’t manage to scam you, but he did scam a girl from their hotel reception!”
Qian Fei listened in astonishment.
“How do you know all this?”
Li Yifei calmly replied, “The phone bill top-up guy told me.”
Qian Fei watched him finish his last bite of rice, “I didn’t know you were so interested in men too. You seem to pay a lot of attention to Hu Zining!”
Li Yifei put down his bowl and chopsticks, gave her a look, and said, “Who do you think I’m doing this for?” He then stood up with a proud expression and turned to go back to his room.
“I’m telling you, wild horses couldn’t drag me to do the dishes tonight!”
Qian Fei watched his retreating figure, and for the first time in days, a genuine smile spread across her face.