Though the car wasn’t going fast, thanks to good road conditions and Chu Hang taking a shortcut, they still managed to arrive at Yujingyuan within the scheduled time.
Chu Hang drove the car directly to the base of the residential building: “Have them come down to collect it.”
“Just drop me off along the way, weren’t you supposed to go meet someone?”
“Oh, they just texted me, traffic’s bad, they’ll be half an hour late,” Chu Hang said casually. “No place to go anyway. I noticed this compound’s design has some distinctive features, might as well take a look around while I’m here.”
A top student really was a top student, always thinking about learning no matter where he was. But even as Tan Yin admired him for it, she glanced at Yujingyuan’s rather unremarkable-looking design and couldn’t figure out what had caught Chu Hang’s eye.
Seemed like she still had a lot of work to do — Chu Hang could find craftsmanship and detail worth studying in even the most mundane, run-of-the-mill design, while she clearly still had a ways to go, unable to spot a single redeeming quality in it herself.
Before long, the customer who’d ordered came downstairs, retrieved their food from Tan Yin, glanced several times at the Porsche behind her, and muttered something as they walked off.
Once Tan Yin finished delivering at Yujingyuan, she got ready to head to the next compound, Lanruo Pavilion. She walked back to Chu Hang’s Porsche and knocked on the window: “Chu Hang, just give me back my remaining deliveries, you can stay and study this compound’s design.”
“No need to study it anymore.” Chu Hang’s tone was flat. “Looking closer at this compound, there’s not much design sense to it — the architect just isn’t very skilled.” He glanced at Tan Yin. “Where’s your next compound? I’ll go take a look at that one too.” Having said that, he shot her a look. “What are you standing there for? Still want to hitch a ride or not?”
“Ride! Ride!”
Tan Yin didn’t dare hesitate for even a second and immediately climbed back into the car.
Soon enough, just like before, the Porsche pulled up at Lanruo Pavilion, and the customer came down to pick up their order.
Lanruo Pavilion was quite a high-end development, entirely made up of standalone villas, their exteriors clad in marble, giving off a solemn yet elegant charm. Every single detail, every single view within the compound had clearly been meticulously crafted by the designer, unique and vibrant.
Even someone as inexperienced as Tan Yin could pick up on a bit of the sophistication in it at a glance, let alone someone like Chu Hang. Tan Yin guessed Chu Hang would probably want to study this one in detail, meaning she wouldn’t be catching a ride anymore.
But when she got back to the Porsche, all she heard was Chu Hang calmly say, “Let’s go.”
“You’re not going to study the design here? I feel like there’s plenty worth studying in this one.”
Chu Hang pressed his lips together: “It’s too well-designed. The architect is too skilled — looking at it makes me feel a bit pressured, unpleasant, so I don’t want to look at it anymore.”???
So bad design isn’t good enough for him, but good design makes him jealous?
Ha. Men.
The subject of Tan Yin’s silent mockery glanced at his watch, his tone cold and indifferent: “Oh, there’s still some time before my meeting. Do you have any more deliveries left?” He glanced at Tan Yin, letting out a cold snort. “You’re in luck today. I feel like practicing driving anyway.”
“Renheng Bay!”
Well, if that’s the case, no need to be polite about it!
And so, Tan Yin thoroughly enjoyed the free ride the whole way, and only let out a breath of relief on the way to deliver her last order. Despite the earlier hiccup, it looked like she’d manage to finish all her deliveries without any of them going overtime after all.
Tan Yin scrolled through her phone, grinning from ear to ear: “Once I finish this last delivery, I’ll have made a clean four hundred yuan today!”
Chu Hang pressed his lips together and said nothing for a while, until Tan Yin finally heard his voice—
“I’m sorry.”
Chu Hang’s voice sounded a bit unnatural: “I didn’t realize your situation was like this.” He paused, seeming to carefully consider his words. “When you drew that comic back then — besides some misunderstanding about me, was it also, in part, because of this kind of reason?”
Tan Yin was baffled: “What? What kind of reason?”
Chu Hang seemed unsure how to phrase it, his voice a bit unnatural: “I mean, why exactly did you draw that comic about me in the first place?” He cleared his throat. “Just be honest about your reasons for drawing it, and I can forgive you.”
“Will you give me back the original drafts of my comic too, then?”
“Mm.”
Tan Yin hadn’t expected such a surprising turn of events, her eyes lighting up: “Okay, okay, I’ll come clean, I’ll tell you everything honestly!”
Given how eagerly Tan Yin agreed, Chu Hang actually felt a bit awkward instead. He thought it over: “I know this might be a bit humiliating for you to admit, but I’ve heard that with those kinds of comics, once they gain enough popularity, publishers or online platforms sometimes approach the creator with money to buy the rights outright — were you perhaps…”
Before Chu Hang could get out the words “because your family has financial difficulties,” Tan Yin excitedly cut him off—
“No! Why would I do it for money! I did it for love! Chu Hang, don’t you think it can be beautiful when a man and another man are together?! It’s a feeling that transcends gender and the desire to reproduce! Have you heard of The Homeric Epics? I’d recommend you go read it, to understand this kind of great love…”
Before Tan Yin could finish, Chu Hang cut her off, his voice practically gritted through his teeth: “So you’re saying it wasn’t because you were desperate for money, backed into a corner?”
Tan Yin waved her hands frantically: “No! Absolutely not! Associating my work with money would be an insult to art! My creative motivation was extremely pure — I simply wanted to draw, wanted to express myself, wanted to share it, that’s all.” To prove her sincerity, Tan Yin explained further, “Don’t let my current poverty fool you — when I drew that, I genuinely wasn’t short on money. It’s purely because drawing it distracted me from my studies, and my grades tanked, and I hid it from my dad, which is why he cut off my allowance and cut me off financially. So my being this broke now is really entirely a case of sacrificing myself for art — but! For the sake of art! I’m willing! I accept it wholeheartedly!”
The more Tan Yin talked about her beloved comics, the more worked up and passionate she got, not noticing that Chu Hang, who’d claimed he was going to forgive her, was looking darker and darker the more he listened…
“So your family isn’t actually poor? Not financially struggling at all?”
“Right, though compared to your family, I guess we could still be called dirt poor — which is why your charity donation last time actually made total sense, haha…”
After a long silence, Chu Hang’s voice returned, grating through gritted teeth once more—
“Tan Yin, get out of my car.”
“Huh? What’s wrong? Is your car broken?” Tan Yin looked at him, only now noticing his face had turned dark as the bottom of a pot. She probed carefully, “Chu Hang, are you still upset about the comic thing? But didn’t you just say if I came clean and told the truth, you’d forgive me and we’d put it behind us? I’ve been completely honest with you, holding nothing back — you can’t go back on your word now, especially since I’m injured on my foot and hand too…”
Chu Hang’s voice carried zero sincerity: “Mm, I’m not upset.” He smiled. “I just suddenly remembered — aren’t you supposed to be an iron-willed woman? For an iron-willed woman, a little pain like this — what’s that, compared to weathering storms? Get out of the car. Don’t you love How the Steel Was Tempered? Go practice tempering some steel of your own out there.”
Having said that, Chu Hang glanced back at Tan Yin, his expression seeming to say: let’s see what excuse you have left to keep sitting in my car.
It’s easy to slide from frugality into extravagance but hard to go back — once you’ve gotten used to riding in a car like this, who’d want to willingly get out?
Tan Yin gave a fawning smile: “Iron-willed, sure, I’m definitely iron-willed — but Chu Hang, there’s another saying you might not have heard: even an iron-willed man has his tender side. Someone like me, tough as I am, still has a soft, vulnerable side too…”
“…”
Naturally, Tan Yin never did get out of the car. Though Chu Hang’s face stayed dark with barely contained fury the whole way, in the end he didn’t kick her out. Not only did he not kick her out, he drove her all the way back to school. Chu Hang dropped her off a street away from the school gate, and Tan Yin had assumed he was just taking her along since he happened to be heading that way — but the moment she got out of the car, Chu Hang spun the car around and hit the gas, driving off without so much as a backward glance…
Clearly, men’s love for cars ran deep — Chu Hang seemed to have gotten hooked on practicing his driving.
Once out of the car, Tan Yin realized that although this intersection was still some distance from the school’s main gate, if she took a shortcut, it was only a ten-minute walk to the campus clinic not far from the school’s east gate.
Even though her wounds had already been treated in a basic way in Chu Hang’s car, since the hospital was so close, Tan Yin figured she might as well stop by anyway, and had the doctor clean the wounds more thoroughly and give her some scar-fading ointment, before finally limping back to her dorm.
A day later, Chu Hang notified her to come collect her “recyclable trash.”
Since the electric scooter belonged to Zhou Ming, having been borrowed from him, Tan Yin took a bus, transferred a couple times, and hurried excitedly over to Chu Hang’s villa gate.
Tan Yin spotted her long-suffering scooter almost immediately — all its previously scattered parts had been reassembled, the seat cushion looked brand new, and even the paint that had once looked worn seemed to have brightened back to vivid color again???
Overflowing with gratitude, Tan Yin couldn’t help but marvel: “Thank you… but are you sure this is my scooter? Why does it look practically brand new?”
Chu Hang stood at the gate, arms crossed, his expression as cold and detached as ever. He glanced at Tan Yin: “I got it fixed and looking new for you, and you’re still not satisfied?”
“It’s not that… it just feels like this isn’t my scooter, somehow…” Tan Yin looked at Chu Hang, puzzled. “Chu Hang, this isn’t some kind of gold-axe-silver-axe trick you’re playing on me, is it?”
Chu Hang frowned: “What gold axe, silver axe?”
“You know, the story about the kid who went into the mountains to chop firewood, and his iron axe accidentally fell into the river. Then a river god appeared and first fished out a gold axe, then a silver axe, and finally the iron one, asking the kid which one was his. The kid refused the gold and silver axes and insisted on getting back his beat-up iron one. The river god laughed and told the kid, ‘You little rascal, you really dodged a bullet there — if you’d dared to claim the gold or silver axe, I would have chopped you to pieces with my axe.'”
“…” Chu Hang wore an expression of pure exasperation. “That’s not how that story goes, is it? What’s this about chopping you to pieces? Who told you this version?”
“My dad did. He said this story teaches us that people should be honest and not covet small advantages, or else they’ll get chopped to pieces…”
“…”
Chu Hang’s face was practically an open book of speechlessness. He held it in for a long while before finally managing: “Your dad is quite… unique.”
Having said that, he glanced coolly at Tan Yin, then looked away, a bit awkwardly: “But don’t worry, I’m not bored enough to play some honesty-testing gold-axe-silver-axe game with you. This really is your scooter — the property management just cleaned it up a bit after fixing it, that’s why it looks so new.”
Tan Yin figured that made sense — Chu Hang wouldn’t be that petty. She nodded. “So how much did the repair cost? I’ll transfer you the money.”
“No charge.” Chu Hang’s expression stayed tight. “It happened to coincide with the property management’s free repair day event.” Having said that, he glanced at Tan Yin, seeming a bit impatient. “Just take your junky little scooter and get out of here.”
Tan Yin’s heart swelled with delight, and she gratefully thanked him over and over before wheeling her scooter away.
Leave it to a high-end residential compound — even the property management staff turned out to be multi-talented, able to fix electric scooters too! And sure enough, after the property management’s repair job, not only did the scooter look completely refreshed on the outside, riding it felt exactly like riding a brand-new one too!
Tan Yin practically floated back to school in high spirits. She’d decided she wasn’t going to make any more deliveries for a while — her living expenses were sufficient now, and she wanted to devote more time to her studies. She figured she’d return this freshly refurbished scooter back to Zhou Ming whenever she got the chance.
While Tan Yin was in great spirits, Chu Hang was anything but. He figured there was a high chance something really was wrong with his brain — otherwise why would he have gone and bought Tan Yin a brand-new electric scooter of the same model, for no reason at all? If that junker couldn’t be fixed, couldn’t he have just tossed it back to her as-is?
It must be those hallucinations messing with him! He’d really been tormented terribly by Tan Yin!
Chu Hang felt that overcoming and treating this hallucination condition was now urgent — if this kept up, he couldn’t guarantee he wouldn’t end up developing some kind of Stockholm syndrome toward her.
He went to see the psychiatrist a few more times, even visited the hospital’s neurology department, but nothing worked at all.
No treatment plan made any difference whatsoever.
The hallucinations came and went as they pleased; in his auditory and visual hallucinations, Tan Yin remained as lively and animated as ever.
But observing his own condition, Chu Hang did notice one pattern: all the hallucinations, both auditory and visual, only happened on stormy, thundery days. He only had these episodes when it was thundering and raining.
Chu Hang approached this bizarre condition of his with the same professional rigor he applied to architecture — he made charts, summarizing the location, time, and content of each hallucination episode, trying to distill some kind of common thread out of all these scattered details.
Was there some other trigger condition for these auditory and visual hallucinations, besides stormy weather?
Over the following week, it rained with thunder a couple more times intermittently, and during one of those, Chu Hang saw Tan Yin again.
It happened during architectural sketching class — a class Tan Yin never skipped and usually did well in — but on this stormy day, she was absent. Jiang Yilu had covered for her, claiming she’d eaten something bad and gone to the hospital.
And Tan Yin, invisible to everyone else, naturally appeared boldly in front of him again.
Chu Hang pressed his lips together tightly, knowing full well his condition was acting up again.
But this time, he decided to take a more proactive approach — he couldn’t keep pretending to ignore his abnormal condition; the hallucination wouldn’t stop existing just because he refused to acknowledge it. So this time, Chu Hang made an effort to carefully observe every move of the hallucinated Tan Yin.
Chu Hang, tormented by these hallucinations, couldn’t sleep well or eat properly — Tan Yin, meanwhile, seemed to be doing just fine. Even knowing this was only a hallucination and not reality, seeing her sitting beside Jiang Yilu in a white dress, red-lipped, fair-skinned, so delicate her skin looked almost translucent, still filled Chu Hang with irritation.
She was currently listening attentively to the lecture, but then, apparently unable to help herself, yawned twice in a row, and her eyes grew misty and glazed with a faint sheen of tears — the look somehow made her seem rather endearingly cute.
Chu Hang felt his condition must be getting rather severe — even in his hallucinations, he was starting to find Tan Yin more attractive than he should.
But soon enough, Tan Yin reverted to her true nature.
When everyone started coloring their sketches, she couldn’t sit still anymore, standing up and wandering around the classroom — glancing over at one classmate’s work, then another’s, occasionally offering comments, before eventually circling around to Chu Hang’s side.
“Just as I thought, Chu Hang’s drawing is the best one here.”
Tan Yin’s presence felt uncannily real, as if she were right there beside him. Even though Chu Hang had long known how convincing this hallucination could be, he still couldn’t help but fumble, accidentally knocking over a few of his watercolor-soaked brushes — the brushes rolled and one landed precisely against the edge of Tan Yin’s white skirt hem, leaving a stain of color.
The hallucinated Tan Yin remained completely oblivious, focused intently on studying Chu Hang’s sketch, and Chu Hang only felt she was leaning in a bit too close…
Fortunately, before long, Tan Yin got up and ran back over to Jiang Yilu’s side…
Outside, the thunderstorm gradually eased up, and as this hallucination had come with the storm, it also seemed to leave along with it — before the rain fully stopped, she walked out of the classroom, and then vanished.
The thunderstorm stopped completely, and just like that, everything returned to normal. Chu Hang finally let out a breath of relief. He packed up his textbook and art supplies and headed toward the cafeteria.
Tan Yin was thoroughly displeased about today’s thunderstorm — of all times, it had to rain during her favorite sketching class. Unable to draw, she could only wander around the classroom over and over, ending up having looked at every single classmate’s work.
She finally managed to hold out until class ended, and just as the storm was about to stop, she hurried out of the classroom, ducked into a bathroom stall to return to normal, and then walked back out.
Tan Yin had arranged to meet Jiang Yilu at the cafeteria, but just as she’d gotten three meat dishes at the food window, she ran straight into Chu Hang.
Seeing her, and noticing the three meat dishes on her tray, he predictably frowned: “Didn’t you say you had food poisoning?”
Tan Yin thought fast: “I did, but I just saw the doctor, and they said I’m low on nutrients, so eating more meat should help me recover.”
“…”
Fortunately Chu Hang, as usual, couldn’t be bothered with her — after that offhand question, he lost interest in engaging with her further, glancing at her coldly once more, and clearly about to walk away. But then, right after that glance, for some reason Chu Hang suddenly froze, staring at Tan Yin’s skirt with an expression like he’d seen a ghost.
That look sent chills down Tan Yin’s spine: “Wh-what’s wrong?”
Chu Hang looked deeply at Tan Yin for a moment, then composed himself, pressed his lips together, and said, his voice extremely unnatural: “That skirt of yours is really ugly.”???
What on earth???
Even if the skirt was ugly, what business was it of his???
But soon enough, Tan Yin stopped thinking about this odd little episode — she spotted Jiang Yilu waving at her, and carried her tray of three meat dishes over to sit down.
Amid Jiang Yilu’s usual stream of campus gossip, the meal went by pleasantly enough, but just as the two of them stood up to put their trays away at the cleaning station, Jiang Yilu suddenly exclaimed, looking at Tan Yin’s skirt: “Tan Yin, you’ve got paint on your skirt!”
Tan Yin looked down and saw a smudge of watercolor paint on the hem of her white skirt, and couldn’t help jumping up in exasperation: “I’ve barely even worn this skirt a handful of times!”
“You must have gotten it on there by accident while you were invisible during sketching class.”
Tan Yin sighed mournfully: “I have no idea when it even got on there, and I don’t know if it’ll even wash out.”
Fortunately, once Tan Yin rushed back to her dorm and soaked the skirt, hand-washing it two or three times, the stain gradually faded, and after a few more scrubs, she finally managed to get the paint completely out.
With her skirt clean again, she happily lay down on her bed and started reading her textbooks, with no idea at all what kind of psychological turmoil Chu Hang was going through on the other end.