At that moment, Wei Zhi’s mind went blank—

It was like riding a roller coaster, nervously climbing to the highest point, then realizing the coaster was about to drop, already feeling terrified…

But then discovering the worst was yet to come—

Because in the next second, the roller coaster derailed completely.

She had been sentenced to death.

Her expression must have been incredibly stupid at that moment.

She thought.

But she had no control over her facial expressions, not even the slightest bit. She just stared blankly at Little Bear—yes, she wasn’t even looking at Chong Dan—she just stared at Little Bear, who was slightly stunned at having his toast refused, thinking, you offered a toast and were rejected, but I’m the one who suffers.

She didn’t know what to do, and at that moment, she truly wanted to cry.

In the darkness, waves of despair washed over her. She secretly bit the inside of her cheek, trying hard to control herself from screaming and running away from the scene…

Her eyes just stung with unshed tears.

He had someone he liked.

…He had someone he liked.

When he mentioned this person, his tone was resigned yet unapologetic, like saying “I know I missed my chance, but I still want to tell you I like her” with frankness.

The worst part was that she knew what a proud person he was.

He always acted as if he never bowed to anyone or anything—

Except for skiing, and now this unknown person he had just compared to skiing.

Wei Zhi turned back to look at Jiang Nanfeng, feeling a bit lost. At that moment, Jiang Nanfeng was also looking at her. With a lift of her eyelids, she saw the young girl sitting there, her face full of confusion and helplessness, like a little deer completely lost in the forest during a heavy rain.

She moved her lips, mouthing: My stomach hurts.

Jiang Nanfeng was stunned for a few seconds, immediately held hostage by her pitiful look. While everyone else was frozen, digesting Chong Dan’s shocking words, she stepped forward, pushed aside the crowd of irrelevant people, and came to Wei Zhi’s side.

Bending down, she asked expressionlessly, “Are you feeling unwell?”

Wei Zhi was about to lose control of the lump in her throat.

She didn’t dare to look back at Chong Dan even once.

She just looked at Jiang Nanfeng as if she were a lifeline, nodded, and made a sound from deep in her nose that wouldn’t betray her emotions, “Mm.”

Before Jiang Nanfeng could speak, the man behind Wei Zhi heard and moved first. He stood up, supporting himself on the table, swayed a bit, and after several seconds of silence, calmly said, “Let’s go back.”

…

Backstab went to pay the bill, and the remaining few people dispersed on the spot.

Jiang Nanfeng put her arm around Wei Zhi, who now seemed like a walking corpse, and headed outside. She looked back at Chong Dan, who was now standing emotionlessly not far away… She paused, then withdrew her gaze: “Actually, Chong Dan gives you a lot of special treatment.”

Wei Zhi didn’t make a sound.

“He acts like both a father and a mother to you—protective gear, ski boots, snowboards, free lessons, babysitting, and even that video on the short video site with its distinct style,” Jiang Nanfeng said hesitantly, unsure of herself. “Can’t you optimistically imagine that the person he was talking about is you?”

After she asked, Wei Zhi turned her head, paused for a moment, and then slowly said, “If he had even glanced at me from the corner of his eye just now, I could have optimistically imagined it until the mountains crumble and the earth shatters.”

“…”

“But he didn’t.”

Wei Zhi took a deep breath, and raised her hand to press her sore eyes, feeling as if all her internal organs were squeezed into a ball. She could barely breathe freely. She choked a bit.

“So, don’t say anymore.”

It was as if she was sentencing herself.

She said in a low voice, barely audible, “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Crying now would be too embarrassing.”

Secretly liking someone is hard.

Rejoicing over a single glance from him, then plummeting into an abyss because of a few words.

It seemed a bit ridiculous for someone her age to say such things. Wei Zhi suddenly remembered the owner of that note she had torn up in middle school. Perhaps for just a second, when he saw the note fall into the trash can, he might have felt as miserable as she did now…

And then there was Lu Xin. After rejecting him, she never replied to his WeChat messages again. Today, he probably only found out that she had long since left the Silk Road Ski Resort and come to Altay after seeing Chong Dan’s video.

She hadn’t treated those who genuinely liked her with gentleness, so now, she was paying the price for it.

This was probably karma.

…

Wei Zhi was dazedly pushed into someone’s car, she had just climbed in when someone ran over to call Jiang Nanfeng, saying that Lao Yan’s alcohol had kicked in, he had thrown up once and was now looking for her all over the place.

Jiang Nanfeng was silent for a moment, leaning on the door without moving. Wei Zhi glanced at her and let out a small sigh, “Go ahead, I’m fine.”

Jiang Nanfeng looked at her eyes, red like a rabbit’s, thinking, you don’t look fine at all.

She held back these words, and when Wei Zhi said again, “I want to be alone for a while,” she finally left, looking back every few steps…

The car door wasn’t closed, as if waiting for her to change her mind and call Jiang Nanfeng back at any moment.

But Wei Zhi didn’t do that.

She reached out to close the car door and looked around, realizing this was Chong Dan’s car. The car was filled with his scent—

She wasn’t very familiar with his unique scent of ice, snow, and soap. She had only caught whiffs of it a few times when she was still learning to push and change edges, playfully falling onto him…

But she remembered it.

She pulled over the throw pillow from the back seat, sniffed it, and then sat there lost in thought.

Her mind was in chaos.

Thinking about what she should do next.

One moment she was reflecting on karma, the next she was maliciously thinking that perhaps if he still couldn’t get the person he liked after three to five years, he might give up…

And then, she could take advantage of the situation.

Three to five years, she felt she could wait that long.

Just as she was lost in these thoughts, the car door opened, and someone climbed in. She kept her head down, not reacting, just finding it a bit strange how the scent she had been reminiscing about suddenly became stronger, now mixed with the smell of alcohol…

She blinked, raised her head in confusion, and looked at the person sitting next to her.

Her bright eyes still glistening with unshed tears, stared at the tense line of his jaw next to her. She held her breath for three seconds, looked away on the fourth, and on the fifth, her hand reached for the door handle.

“Keep your master company for a while.”

The man’s low voice sounded in her ear, but to her, it was like a thunderclap in clear weather.

Her hand hesitated on the door handle for a good while, unsure whether to obey. In the end, when she saw his reddened eyes, her heart softened and she withdrew her hand—

She cursed herself a hundred times in her heart for being so weak, but just thinking that he had reddened eyes for another woman made her feel as swollen as a balloon filled to bursting, ready to explode at any moment.

Damn it.

She had never even heard him mention her, where did this parachuter come from?

“Are you about to cry?” Wei Zhi asked him, “Or are you feeling sick from drinking too much?”

Should I open the window?

Do you feel like throwing up?

The people outside were all vomiting and stumbling around, really, it had just gotten dark.

She swallowed back a belly full of words, realizing she still couldn’t talk to him at the moment. She barely managed to throw out a topic, waiting for him to elaborate freely.

She lowered her head, picking at the dinosaur eyes on the dinosaur plush pillow in her arms.

Meanwhile.

Chong Dan was half-leaning against the car door, sobering up, wondering if getting in the car and leaving her behind was the right thing to do when he heard the little girl beside him bluntly ask, “Are you about to cry?”…

The question he was pondering changed. For example, he wondered if it was heartless of him to be thinking about her now.

He lowered his head and glanced at her, seeing that the back of her head was turned to him, seriously mistreating the plush pillow in her hands, not even bothering to look up at him… He pursed his lips and said somewhat coldly, “What would I cry about?”

“What you said earlier was earth-shattering,” Wei Zhi wasn’t too lazy to look up, she simply didn’t dare to. Speaking like this was already her limit, “If you cried, I wouldn’t be very surprised, I just wouldn’t know how to comfort you.”

These words carried three parts sincerity.

The remaining seven parts were probably sarcasm.

Chong Dan was irritated at the moment, his mind foggy, but hearing her speak like this, he couldn’t help but summon a lot of patience out of nowhere…

Temporarily setting aside his dissatisfaction with her heartless behavior, he laughed briefly. Putting aside his troubles, he said to her, “You can’t take out your frustrations on your master just because you were scolded by your family. Tonight hasn’t been easy for your master either.”

Wei Zhi: “…”

Unbelievably, this man was turning the tables on her.

He said he wasn’t having an easy time.

But what was so difficult about his situation?

Wang Xin had been chasing and scolding him for ages, and him falling for someone he couldn’t have wasn’t something that suddenly happened half an hour ago—

Tonight, he had simply been in the right mood to summarize the details of his life’s low point.

She was the one who had been caught off guard, the poor soul he had casually dragged down into the valley with him.

Thinking of this, Wei Zhi felt immensely wronged. After a few seconds of breathlessness, that choking feeling in her throat returned. Her chest was in turmoil as if she was the one who had drunk ten jin of baijiu. She couldn’t help but say, “Why don’t you just stop liking that person you can’t have?”

Chong Dan was stunned.

And she immediately cowered.

Raising her hand to rub her eyes forcefully, she said, “I’m talking nonsense.”

“It’s not something I can control,” Chong Dan answered seriously.

“You can,” Wei Zhi said. “No matter who that person is, imagine her as petty and mean-spirited. If you were with her, she probably wouldn’t tolerate our fellow disciples, would bully Backstab, bully Lao Yan, bully many people, want to monopolize you, and glare coldly when she hears you’re giving lessons to other young girls—”

As Chong Dan listened, he felt her summary of him was quite accurate.

He smiled, “She seems to be like that originally.”

Wei Zhi was stunned, thinking this man must be sick, how could he like someone like that?

“Then if you end up with her, what about me?” She finally looked up at him, her eyes suddenly turning red, irritated by his resigned yet doting tone. “Is it okay if she bullies me too?”

What happened to his beloved disciple?

Her tone was exactly like a cat that had been carefully brought home by its owner, pampered for months, accustomed to a life of luxury, and then suddenly kicked out, replaced by a newcomer.

Chong Dan looked down at her, shocked at her “impending loss of favor,” and was somewhat impressed—

She was being unrestrained, eating from her bowl while trying to take the whole pot.

What about her fiancé?

Can’t he comfort you?

The man narrowed his eyes slightly: “That day will never come.”

Wei Zhi: “Which day?”

Chong Dan: “The day I end up with her.”

Wei Zhi: “Really?”

Chong Dan switched to a somewhat perfunctory tone, sentencing himself: “Probably.”

Wei Zhi stared at him, the discomfort she had just managed to suppress rising again—really, did he have to gasp for air even saying such things? Was it fun to give people hope and then make them despair?

“Don’t like her anymore,” she stammered, emphasizing, “Liking someone who makes you unhappy is wrong. Liking someone should be a happy thing, you should want to smile just thinking about them—”

She couldn’t even convince herself.

As she spoke, large tears uncontrollably rolled from her eyes, falling with a “plop” onto the back of her hand that was clenched into a fist on her knee.

She clenched her fist tightly, gritting her teeth: “Isn’t life tedious enough? Why do you have to go and like someone you shouldn’t? Are you going to drink heavily like today often in the future? Are you crazy? Are you crazy?”

She muttered, more like talking to herself.

Whatever he said didn’t matter anymore—

Because she despairingly realized she couldn’t even convince herself.

She wanted to smile unconsciously when she thought of him, which didn’t prevent her from feeling heartbroken thinking about him at that moment…

This is what liking someone is like.

This is what a secret crush is like.

This is what unrequited love is like.

It’s not contradictory at all.

If she couldn’t keep up the act, she might as well stop pretending. Right under the man’s nose, she cried shamelessly, with the determination to cry her eyes out—

She heard him fall silent for a few seconds, then snort. His alcohol-scented form drew closer, his voice low and hoarse: “You’re crying already? You won’t let me like someone else?”

She nodded decisively, then felt deeply ashamed and grabbed the plush toy she had been holding, covering her face with it.

Amid her confusion, she felt his breath pause, and then he seemed to smile. He spoke slowly in an unprecedentedly gentle tone: “Little one, your master didn’t know before, how you want to monopolize everything. Are you this selfish?”

This sentence meant one thing to the speaker.

But the listener understood it differently.

Her brain was exploding with fireworks from crying so much, she just wanted to jump up and fight him—

If possible, fight him until he doesn’t dare to like anyone else.

Or simply fight him until he forgot he had ever liked someone else.

Damn it.

She only felt for a moment that the plush toy pressed against her face was being gently pulled away by a slightly cool hand.

Her chin was gripped by cold fingertips, lifting her face with a slight force. His calloused fingertips brushed against her face, wiping away her tears.

But tears aren’t something that can be wiped away so easily.

She cried even more pitifully, letting out a breath through her nose, tears falling in a torrent as she choked out: “Don’t comfort me, the more you comfort me, the more I want to cry… Why don’t you get out of the car and leave?”

She was even trying to chase him away.

Her eyes were so blurry with tears that she had become effectively blind, unable to see anything.

She only felt the motion of wiping her tears pause, and after a moment, the man sighed softly.

The whiskey’s aftereffect mixed with the man’s hot breath drew closer. He looked down at her, watching her nostrils flare as she breathed erratically, looking truly wronged and completely unreasonable.

There was probably a moment of moral struggle…

Finally, he leaned in close to her.

And so her lips touched the sharp corner of his mouth.

The cool sensation, just a brief contact of a few seconds, was like a feline tenderly licking and comforting its young. It was a touch devoid of any lust or other complex emotions.

“It’s not possible,” Wei Zhi heard him say in a regretful tone—

“I can’t guarantee the future… At least for the near term, I might continue to like her. Can you bear with it, hmm?”