During the summer vacation of sophomore year when Long Qi stayed long-term at Jin Yiken’s house for those several days, his younger brother Jin Shaogao fell in love with a money-burning celebrity-chasing activity. It wasn’t that he truly became a fan of some idol, but rather the girl this kid was pursuing at the time happened to be a celebrity.
As expected of children raised in wealthy families, even at such a young age the girl he had his eye on was different—he even went for an older woman romance. He said she was a child star who was also a sophomore in high school. Although she was half a generation older than Jin Shaogao age-wise, he’d grown up watching her TV dramas and was simply an incredible fanboy. It just so happened that she’d bought a house in Langzhu Mansion and had moved in a few days ago. As soon as Jin Shaogao found out, he became extremely busy at home, racking his brains trying to figure out ways to strike up a conversation with her.
That was also the hottest dog days of summer. The awning in Jin Yiken’s yard was broken, making the outdoor pool practically a pot of boiling water. She spent all day holed up in the villa with his brother. Jin Yiken wanted to take her to meet friends for dinner—she wasn’t interested. He wanted to take her to walk the dog—she wasn’t interested. He wanted to take her to cooler provinces and cities to have fun for a few days—she wasn’t interested either. Basically, she wasn’t interested in stepping outside this air-conditioned mansion (because before coming to his house, she’d nearly gotten heatstroke from Long Xinyi’s broken air conditioner, and only survived after Jin Yiken rescued her). Then she became obsessed with that racing game, playing it every day. Jin Yiken, who at least played GTA, looked down on her for two days, but later when he was bored, he casually asked about Jin Shaogao’s progress pursuing the girl.
Jin Shaogao, this clever kid, immediately laid out the situation for his brother, saying she never left her house, and aside from walking her dog for exactly two hours at five o’clock every evening, she was never seen. Jin Yiken asked what kind of dog it was. Jin Shaogao said it was a Yorkshire Terrier.
Jin Yiken didn’t say much, found a photo of dog food online, sent it to Jin Shaogao, and Jin Shaogao immediately understood. The next day, all the dog food of that brand stocked in nearby pet stores was delivered to the Jin household. He even got his brother to get a small dog, taking it out for walks every day at five o’clock. After that, Jin Yiken stopped managing things and started focusing on teaching Long Qi how to drive.
Thanks to Jin Shaogao obediently walking the dog every day, from five to seven o’clock became the time when Jin Yiken could properly handle some “serious business” with her. In her spare time, Long Qi asked him what scheme he was plotting. He said it was just to get his brother out of the house. She said: “No, I mean hoarding dog food—what’s your intention?”
“That household just moved here, didn’t bring enough dog food. The dog only eats one specific brand, can’t buy it online. Where do you think she can buy it?”
“The pet store,” she asked again, “but how do you know they didn’t bring enough dog food?”
“What are ears for?”
“You’re that amazing? Can hear for a thousand miles?”
“When the pet store called to order stock and explained the situation, this guy—” that foolish Alaskan Malamute was darting around the foot of the bed with Long Qi’s bra in its mouth. Jin Yiken clicked his tongue at it. “—was being groomed by me at the time.”
“Damn it!” Long Qi grabbed a pillow and threw it at the dog. The Alaskan dodged extremely fast, darting out the door with the bra in its mouth.
And Jin Shaogao indeed lived up to expectations. Three days later, the girl came to their door. Jin Shaogao had hidden the dog food thoroughly beforehand, only leaving half a bag in the living room, then with an air of generous sharing, gave it to her. Then he said there was another bag in the storage room and respectfully made her wait in the living room while he went to find it.
Long Qi was upstairs taking a shower at that time. Jin Yiken had gone downstairs to the kitchen. When she finished her shower and came downstairs, the girl was standing in the center of the living room, holding a Yorkshire Terrier in her arms, gently stroking it, while her gaze was directed toward Jin Yiken in the open kitchen.
Jin Yiken was holding half a slice of bread in his mouth at that moment.
One hand opening the fridge, the other hand grabbing soda water, the can making a clicking sound in his palm as he pulled the tab, bubbles rising. While closing the fridge door, he turned his head sideways and noticed the person standing in the living room, but didn’t look a second time. He only cast his gaze toward the storage room where sounds were coming from, then focused on what he was doing, asking: “Waiting for my brother?”
Before the girl could answer, he said again: “Have you eaten dinner?”
“…Dinner?”
“My brother hasn’t eaten yet.”
Long Qi came downstairs wearing a white T-shirt, hair half-wet and half-dry, sending a voice message urging Long Xinyi to fix the air conditioner, interrupting the two people’s conversation without warning. Jin Yiken’s attention shifted to her, using his chin to point at the pan where eggs were sizzling.
The girl then withdrew her gaze, her fingers teasing around the Yorkshire Terrier’s mouth.
But Long Qi didn’t have time to look at the living room before her attention was diverted by a thunderous sound of someone coming downstairs at the stairwell entrance. The Alaskan Malamute came running down with her bra in its mouth to “claim its reward.” She instantly exploded, turned around and chased the dog. This foolish dog got more and more excited the more it ran, panting heavily. She chased it all the way upstairs, from the balcony to the attic, then from the attic to the bedroom, finally erupting: “Jin Yiken, you deal with it!”
At that time, Long Qi didn’t know that when Jin Yiken went upstairs laughing because of this “farce,” the girl in the center of the living room still gazed at him for a long time.
The air conditioner silently emitted cold air, cicadas chirped loudly in the yard, the air filled with the burnt smell of frying eggs. She watched Jin Yiken pass before her, watched his eyes, his brows, the corner of his curved lips, his hand holding a plate. She watched this person with whom she’d only had one conversation, no eye contact, no spiritual connection whatsoever, yet there was a burning heat flowing between them. Jin Shaogao excitedly brought the dog food to her, but she paid no attention, letting the Yorkshire Terrier in her arms bite her fingers. That subtle tickling spread from her fingertips to her heart, mixing into something even she couldn’t explain clearly—a love at first sight like thunder stirring earthfire.
Impossible to suppress.
This was how Wu Jiakui became fixated on Jin Yiken.
Poor Jin Shaogao—he’d gone through so much trouble to create an opportunity to strike up a conversation, unknowingly paving another warm bed for his brother.
By the time she completely recalled this past event, Long Qi was already in the underground parking garage at Yiming Bay. One o’clock in the morning, the parking garage utterly silent. The cold wind she’d endured coming out of the nightclub’s main entrance an hour ago had long since dissipated all the alcohol in her bloodstream. At this moment her head was exceptionally clear. She sat in the Lamborghini’s driver’s seat, all windows open, left hand extended outside the window, cigarette between her fingers, tapping off ash.
The car interior was filled with choking cigarette smoke.
About ten minutes later, the heavy low rumble of a sports car came from the entrance. Her fingers tapped on the steering wheel, slowly, rhythmically, until the engine sound drew closer and closer, turning into the lane where she was. The moment she saw the distinctive car front, she turned on her headlights.
“Snap.”
Bright and blinding, causing Jin Yiken’s car to pause. Wu Jiakui in the passenger seat raised her hand to shade her forehead. Two sports cars, one bright one dark, one black one blue, faced off unexpectedly at opposite ends of the parking garage. When the stimulation from the lights gradually lessened, Wu Jiakui lowered her hand and could clearly see Long Qi in the distant car.
Her subsequent reaction was to turn her head to look at Jin Yiken in the driver’s seat.
Jin Yiken had no reaction.
He’d originally been controlling the steering wheel with one hand, the other hand holding his phone, replying to some message. He looked up because of the blinding light ahead. Then, he didn’t even squint his eyes, just looked unmoved at Long Qi “blocking the road” dozens of meters away, slowly putting down his phone. He didn’t honk, didn’t advance or retreat.
Long Qi looked at the two of them.
She could even imagine what they could do after going upstairs, and seemed to hear Wu Jiakui’s currently thundering heartbeat.
Resentment.
The cigarette burned to its end, the butt falling to the ground, sparking tiny embers.
She floored the gas.
Tires grinding against the ground, dashboard readings spiking, a roar in the parking garage. The car charged straight toward Jin Yiken’s direction. She kept her eyes open, watching to see if Jin Yiken would give her any reaction. When the distance between the two cars was only thirty meters, she still didn’t slow down, pressing the accelerator harder. Wu Jiakui’s chest in the passenger seat heaved. She had no bodily movements expressing emotion, but didn’t blink once. Jin Yiken’s hand rested on the steering wheel, quietly watching a nearly maddened her.
Until the two cars were ten meters apart, one second before near collision.
Jin Yiken’s hands finally moved.
The car subsequently backed up, a clean major reversal, precisely turning into an empty parking spot. Wu Jiakui leaned forward due to inertia, hands bracing against the car’s console. The Koenigsegg’s front nearly “grazed” past the Lamborghini’s body. He had made way for Long Qi’s “mutual destruction,” yielding a path. Long Qi pressed the accelerator harder. In that second, she no longer had any rationality, didn’t want to linger in this place at all. She passed him, roaring up the slope out of the parking garage without any deceleration.
The engine sound transmitted from underground to the empty surface. On the road at 1:11 AM after New Year’s Eve, there wasn’t a second car. The cold wind was bitter. She bit her lower lip, saw snow drifting under the streetlights, saw thousands of lights at Yiming Bay, but couldn’t see in the rearview mirror that car that should have followed. Her teeth loosened, tasting a hint of blood. Her fingers still gripped the steering wheel tightly, entangled by a breath she simply couldn’t release, fingernails nearly breaking.
Jin Yiken had never, ever followed.
When she returned to the film crew’s hotel, she was nearly a walking corpse.
Still wearing Zang Xipu’s coat, walking step by step by step. She’d directed ten thousand scenarios in her mind of when Jin Yiken would return, but never imagined this one. Never imagined that one day another woman would appear in the scenes she’d directed, that Jin Yiken would kiss her, drive her, take her back to Yiming Bay, back to that house where even Long Qi’s clothes hadn’t been completely moved out. Because she could foresee every scene that could happen in that house, her entire body trembled minutely.
What was going on? Why hadn’t she considered Jin Yiken’s feelings through role reversal when she was with Dong Xi before?
So, this was what it felt like.
She walked unconsciously like this, unable to feel the sub-zero temperature. Before reaching her own room, a door she was passing happened to open. Warm light illuminated a section of carpet. She found it glaring and turned her forehead to the other side. Zang Xipu’s Assistant Wang came out of that door carrying some takeout boxes, saw her, and blurted out: “Oh?”
Then returned inside. Not even a few seconds later, Zang Xipu’s voice transmitted from inside the room. When Long Qi adapted to the light and looked at him, he was holding the door wide open. Warm light covered half his face. He wore a single high-necked sweater and a pair of glasses he didn’t usually wear, holding a script marked with different colored pens, as if he’d just been reading it halfway through. He asked: “Back?”
Then his gaze swept across the wool coat on her body. He moved the hand from the doorknob into his pants pocket and asked gently again: “Haven’t been home?”
…
“No.”
Her head was dizzy, she replied in a low voice, but her consciousness still had a bit. She raised her hand to the collar to unbutton it: “Teacher Zang, let me return the coat to you…”
The coat slipped to her shoulders, stopped by Zang Xipu’s hand. Assistant Wang was beside the door watching. Long Qi’s ice-cold hand touched his hand for one second. He said: “Return it tomorrow.”
Then he instructed to the side: “Xiao Wang, accompany her back to her room, take care of her.”
Lao Ping and the assistant beside her had gone home. The heating in the hotel room had just been turned on and was still cold. She went to sit on the sofa by the window again, unwilling to move or bother adding clothes. Assistant Wang covered her with a blanket, then looked at the two bottles of red wine on the round coffee table (previously sent up by PUB’s waiters), ultimately didn’t meddle, turned the heating to maximum, and left.
Just how much alcohol can one person’s stomach digest?
When drinking how much can one disperse all the imagined scenes in one’s head?
She didn’t know. She only gazed almost entranced at the bottom of the hotel building. The snow on this New Year’s Eve was so heavy, seemingly endless, accumulating in thick layers on both sides of the road. She saw at exactly two in the morning Zhou Yicong and his agent arguing at the hotel entrance. They argued so intensely, as if years of accumulated emotions all erupted at once. The collapsed agent was left at the hotel entrance, watching Zhou Yicong slam the car door and leave.
Ice cubes collided at the bottom of the glass, crystal clear.
She saw at 2:15 AM Wu Jiakui’s aunt pacing at the hotel entrance on the phone. She gestured in the air, talking rapidly without stopping. Her face, which seemed tough, was covered with premature nasolabial folds. Her assistant shivered beside her waiting, holding fast to her meager-income position.
…
At 2:30 AM, a taxi stopped at the hotel entrance.
Long Qi watched from the heated room, watched Wu Jiakui get out of the car. No one at her side, her short hair hanging down her neck blown messy. She walked alone toward the anxiously approaching assistant, didn’t speak, had no extra expression. Only when her aunt tried to grab her arm did she imperceptibly pull away. The group silently entered the hotel.
Dozens of meters upstairs, Long Qi drank repeatedly in cycles. Her sluggish head calculated the distance from Yiming Bay to here. At sports car speed, about half an hour. At taxi speed, about an hour. So from 1:10 to 2:30, plus the time to call a taxi… Wu Jiakui had stayed there less than ten minutes.
Jin Yiken hadn’t brought her back.
The empty wine glass returned to the table surface, the bottom and glass surface making a crisp collision sound. At that time her limbs were slightly numb, all her blood vessels once again filled with alcohol. She looked at that taxi downstairs. Probably because there were no passenger orders on New Year’s Eve snowy night, the driver still parked the car at the entrance, turned off the engine, motionless.
…
Taking a coat from the closet, leaving the room, taking the elevator, crossing the lobby, supporting herself through the hotel’s revolving door, down the steps, to that taxi at the intersection, pulling open the back door. The driver in the driver’s seat listening to his phone radio was startled, looking back at her.
Click—the door closed.
“Return on the original route,” she said.
When she returned to Yiming Bay again, it was nearly four in the morning. Those annoying fireworks had finally ceased. Supported by that thought of absolutely having to talk with Jin Yiken, she kept pressing the doorbell. Jin Yiken opened the door on the fifth ring.
He must have been about to sleep. The light inside the room was adjusted to the weakest. He wore a black hoodie, one hand on the doorknob, one hand in his pants pocket.
It was really strange—they’d only not seen each other for just over a month, how had this person become increasingly handsome?
Her head was still dizzy then. The hand holding the door frame dropped to her side, but she couldn’t stand too steadily, so she braced the door panel again with her other hand. Her other hand pointed inside the room: “Alright, you’re back, we can finally clear out our things.”
Jin Yiken smelled the alcohol on her body.
But he didn’t say anything, opened the door wide, turned and entered the living room, an attitude of letting her settle accounts however she wanted. When Long Qi entered, he was in the kitchen using a cup to get hot water, steam rising upward. She laughed coldly: “I have too many things here, so you were too embarrassed to let other people into the house, just waiting for me to come clean up?”
“I called housekeeping. If you didn’t come, these things would be taken away tomorrow anyway. It’s convenient that you came.”
He said, eyes not even glancing her way.
“Then I’ll just throw away your things too.”
“Fine.”
“Put up a ‘Long Qi Keep Out’ notice at your door.”
“That works too.”
She grabbed a vase on the table and threw it toward the kitchen counter. The vase shattered. She shouted: “What are you doing! What kind of attitude are you showing me! Didn’t I admit I was wrong? What’s the meaning of you being like this?!”
Even with her this agitated, Jin Yiken’s face still showed no emotion. He didn’t look at the vase shattered by his feet either. He placed the cup of water he’d filled on the counter, pulled a cigarette from the pack: “What I mean was made crystal clear a long time ago. Don’t pretend you don’t understand.”
“I willingly came to admit I was wrong and that’s not acceptable? Not even a bit of room for reconciliation, you’re just completely treating me as an ex?”
The lighter in his hand struck a flame: “Long Qi, you’re not wrong.”
“You just always like things that don’t belong to you. Your emotions now are just because you think I owe you, that I should comfort you, should continue giving in to you. Pretty normal—I used to be like that too. But don’t misunderstand.”
He tapped off ash: “That’s not love.”
“Then let’s talk it out, okay?”
She nodded as she spoke, tossing her hair. There was a catch in her voice. She sniffled once, forcefully suppressing it: “You just think I don’t love you, right?”
…
“Let me tell you! From the last time you returned to the country, I told Lao Ping I wanted to go public with you. After you left, the only time I called Dong Xi was to ask about your situation. I was going to wait for you. I rented a place upstairs from you. I bought a car for you. I thought of ten thousand ways to make things up to you. I’ve drunk over a dozen cases of alcohol and smoked over a dozen cartons of cigarettes for you these past days. I can’t define whether this counts as love or not, but I just can’t sleep all night. I’m practically dying, you know that?!”
Jin Yiken said: “Didn’t I?”
Four words, quiet living room, rising steam, faint cigarette smell.
The heating was clearly on, yet it was so cold her skin turned bluish. Having said everything, having played her final card, his eyes still showed no sign of yielding. Long Qi’s spine went cold, her body continuing to tremble minutely: “Then what exactly do you mean now?”
“I mean to end it. You and I—call it youthful recklessness.”
A wail in the air, heavily striking her spine. He spoke decisively, without any hesitation. She didn’t have an overly intense emotional reaction in that moment, just looked at him, the two of them looking at each other.
Five seconds later, sniffling once, nodding: “You’ve thought it through?”
Eyes reddening, saying word by word: “The words Long Qi spoke here today, the attitude I showed you, won’t happen a second time. My humbling myself today only extends to this one second. After this second, my backbone can be harder than yours! Have you thought it through?”
Jin Yiken threw the nearly burned-out cigarette into the hot water cup—a hissing sound.
Fine, that was his answer. Like youth that had lingered on for three years, dying in a single moment. Should have been earth-shattering, yet silent and soundless.
“Fine,” she finally understood too, nearly drained as a person, pointing at the closet and saying, “Then! The things here that are mine, I’ll take away. What I can’t take, you can’t let other people use either. Burn them or throw them away, up to you. Tomorrow have housekeeping clean this place inside and out! I sat in your car’s passenger seat, I touched that safety charm hanging on your car’s front. Replace all of these. I can’t stand another woman sitting in there. I have fucking spiritual cleanliness obsession. You’d better replace everything, don’t keep a single used item!”
“Mm.”
“Stay dead in my blacklist forever and don’t come out. Don’t knock on my door for the rest of this life.”
He placed both hands in his pants pockets, didn’t nod, but the gesture was like nodding.
She turned to leave. After walking two steps, still grief-stricken and indignant, those sobs had reached her throat. Her fingertips gripping until her palms were nearly numb. She turned back again: “Jin Yiken, you’ll never have love again in this lifetime.”
The dimly lit room, the two people separated by the kitchen counter and ten meters of distance. She used this curse-like sentence to bid him farewell. Jin Yiken looked at her, slowly responding: “Whatever.”
…
…
“If it’s not you, then whatever.”