By the time Lao Yan and Jiang Nanfeng climbed into the car, the atmosphere inside had returned to normal. Shan Chong was leaning back in his seat, playing with his phone, while Wei Zhi sat in the front passenger seat, also engrossed in her device. They were even facing away from each other, appearing completely unfamiliar.
Only Bei Ci sat in the back seat with a serious expression. As Lao Yan huffed and puffed his way up, Bei Ci remarked, “If you keep climbing up, I might just get out.”
Lao Yan looked at him, puzzled.
From the driver’s seat, the man caught Bei Ci’s sarcastic tone and lazily replied, “Go ahead and get out then.” As he spoke, his hands continued typing a WeChat message. His keyboard wasn’t muted, and the rapid “tap-tap” sound caught Wei Zhi’s attention. She had been relaxedly scrolling through Weibo but now looked up at him.
“Who are you talking to?” she asked.
The man glanced at her. “Do I need to report to you every time I fart?”
Wei Zhi took a deep breath, inwardly vowing to wash her hands a hundred times with bleach to rid herself of this insufferable man’s stench. Suddenly, under everyone’s gaze, he tossed his phone to her. “Navigate the way back to the hotel,” he said.
Wei Zhi fumbled to catch his phone, about to remind him that he had used navigation on the way here and claimed to know the area well—
She looked down and saw his phone was open to a WeChat conversation.
The man had already started the car.
Wei Zhi stared at him wide-eyed, clutching the phone, but he didn’t even glance her way.
The phone still held the warmth of his palm and even seemed to carry a different scent. The young woman’s cheeks flushed slightly as she shifted in her seat. With the man’s tacit permission, she began to inspect his messages—
On the green WeChat interface, the contact had no saved name. Their WeChat ID was “Do Good, Accumulate Virtue,” a username that seemed more fitting for someone over forty. Oddly enough, the profile picture was of Himawari Noharai in a sailor suit swimsuit.
It matched Shan Chong’s avatar perfectly in both color and style.
Wei Zhi held her breath for two seconds, then took a deep breath, about to curse loudly, “Damn it, couple avatars?! Shan Chong, you’re unbelievable…”
Suddenly, her mind cleared. Himawari Noharai was Shin-chan’s little sister, wasn’t she?
Wei Zhi: “…”
She exited WeChat and checked the contact list, finding Misae Nohara and Hiroshi Nohara as well. All four were in a group chat named “Forced to Live Together Because We’re Poor.”
Wei Zhi: “…”
Looking at the chat history between Shan Chong and his sister, whose WeChat name was @Do Good, Accumulate Virtue, the conversation went like this:
[Do Good, Accumulate Virtue: Wang Xin said you went to watch the Big Air World Cup?]
[Do Good, Accumulate Virtue: In this freezing weather, aren’t you afraid of catching a cold?]
[Do Good, Accumulate Virtue: Was the competition good?]
[Do Good, Accumulate Virtue: Never mind, is there anything you don’t find interesting?]
[Do Good, Accumulate Virtue: I heard there were a lot of Japanese and Koreans at this World Cup. Have they come up with any new tricks? Can they even compete? The halfpipe is dominated by the Japanese, and so is the Big Air. I heard their halfpipe riders can even temporarily retire, switch to skateboarding for the Summer Olympics, and then come back to compete in next year’s Winter Olympics. It’s ridiculous how one person can count as two. These board sports might be under their control until 2026… It’s annoying to see their flag. Does that mean we have no chance again next year?]
[Chong: Dai Duo got third place. If he doesn’t do anything stupid, he’s sure to make it to the Beijing Winter Olympics next year.]
[Chong: If that’s what you wanted to know.]
[Do Good, Accumulate Virtue: …I wasn’t asking about that. What’s wrong with you? Why would I ask about him?]
[Do Good, Accumulate Virtue: Third place is pretty good. Wang Xin said he fell again but still managed to get third.]
[Chong: He didn’t stick the landing on a Switch 2160, slid for a bit before falling. He’s fine, not hurt.]
[Do Good, Accumulate Virtue: ?]
[Chong: ?]
[Chong: So you weren’t asking about this either?]
[Do Good, Accumulate Virtue: No.]
[Chong: Oh.]
[Do Good, Accumulate Virtue: Mom wants to know if you’re coming back for New Year’s Eve?]
[Chong: Not coming. Wang Xin will bring Dai Duo. I don’t want to watch you two argue.]
[Chong: I’ll come back on the first day of the New Year.]
[Do Good, Accumulate Virtue: Who’s my brother here?]
[Chong: Who do you want to be your brother?]
The conversation ended there. It seemed that Shan Shan didn’t want to continue talking to her brother.
Wei Zhi quietly put down the phone.
From the back seat, Lao Yan noticed and asked, confused, “Why did you put the phone down? What about the navigation? Don’t take the wrong road.”
Bei Ci was silent for a few seconds, then couldn’t hold back anymore and asked exasperatedly, “I just want to know, did we use navigation when we came here?”
Lao Yan was completely clueless about what was going on between Shan Chong and Wei Zhi. He looked bewildered. Only Jiang Nanfeng glanced at Wei Zhi in the front passenger seat, then spoke up, calmly reassuring her little brother, “She probably couldn’t find the navigation app. She’s always like this, can’t find things even when they’re right under her nose.”
Wei Zhi turned to look at Jiang Nanfeng.
Jiang Nanfeng gave her a lazy smile.
Wei Zhi thought to herself that Jiang Nanfeng’s ability to understand everything with just one look was quite impressive. It saved her the trouble of having to explain—
Looking at Lao Yan, who still seemed completely confused.
No wonder he couldn’t outsmart Sister Nanfeng.
…
In the afternoon, they arrived at the hotel. Wei Zhi felt restless.
“If you have nothing to do, update your story,” Jiang Nanfeng said. “That dog of a guard has been buried so long grass is growing on his grave, yet the author is still figuring out how to dig him up and bring him back to life in a way that makes sense.”
“…You shouldn’t say it like that,” Wei Zhi replied absent-mindedly, her eyes glued to her phone as she typed—
“How can someone dead come back to life?”
[Little Girl Chirp: .]
[Chong: ?]
[Little Girl Chirp: ?]
[Chong: Want to ski?]
Wei Zhi put down her phone and announced, “The weather forecast says it’s going to snow soon. The weather is so nice, I’m going out for a couple of runs.”
Jiang Nanfeng, already in bed, watched the young woman frantically search for her ski gear that had been neglected for two days. She said with exasperation, “What, are the snowflakes heart-shaped or something?”
The person rummaging through clothes for her gear paused, turned her head, and gave Jiang Nanfeng a long look… After a moment of silence, Jiang Nanfeng said, “Go ahead, I didn’t say you couldn’t go.”
Fifteen minutes later, Wei Zhi dragged her snowboard to the ski equipment hall. She immediately spotted the man standing in the most conspicuous place in the center of the hall, wearing his familiar all-black ski suit. His face mask was on, with his helmet and goggles hanging from his elbow.
Passersby recognized him, greeting him as “Brother Chong” or “Master Chong.” Some stopped for a brief chat, taking the opportunity to book a lesson.
Seeing her approach from afar, the man lifted his eyelids and glanced at her. “You’re slow,” he said flatly.
Just like that.
The boyfriend was gone.
The instructor remained the same instructor.
Cold, heartless, harsh, and strict skiing machine.
Damn.
She must have water in her brain to rush over here with her snowboard.
The ski resort was less crowded in the afternoon, with no queue for the cable car cabins. Shan Chong took Wei Zhi to an advanced slope. Her snow-plowing technique was now quite proficient, and she had started learning to carve. At this point, tackling an advanced slope was no problem for her.
With just the two of them in line, under the watchful eyes of the staff, they sat down on opposite sides of the cable car, snowboards in their arms, looking very serious. As the cabin door closed and they had barely ascended ten meters…
The man who had been sitting opposite Wei Zhi stood up, turned around, and sat down next to her.
She was startled at first, reflexively turning to look at him. With his face mask and goggles on, she couldn’t see his expression. Her heart began to race…
She felt a bit nervous.
She blinked.
“What are you doing?” the man suddenly spoke.
Wei Zhi was startled again, shifting her bottom backward slightly.
He lifted his goggles and pulled down his face mask, giving her an ambiguous smile. “What’s the matter? Don’t recognize me in ski gear? Are you afraid of me?”
Wei Zhi: “…”
He had guessed correctly. Damn.
Her past behavior of desperately trying to prevent the man from removing his face mask and goggles when they first met was now coming back to haunt her. Who could have known that one day, she would be begging him to take off his face mask and goggles—
Mainly because the strong impression from the past was deeply ingrained, and with these two things on, he inexplicably seemed to transform into a devil who could turn on her at any moment.
Now that she could finally see the man’s eyes, her tingling scalp relaxed ever so slightly…
Whimper.
Her handsome boyfriend.
Wei Zhi: “That’s not true. Don’t make things up.”
As she spoke, she rather insincerely raised her hand to tug at his sleeve—quietly moving his hand holding the goggles further away—catching sight of the man’s upturned lips from the corner of her eye, she felt like dying.
Under the face mask, her face was flushed pink. Pressing down on his wrist that held the goggles, she awkwardly changed the subject: “On my way back to the hotel just now, I wanted to ask you something. I saw you telling your sister that you’re not going home for New Year’s this year?”
He didn’t move his hand.
Just let her press it.
He made a sound of agreement, then added after some thought: “It’s a tradition. New Year’s Eve is left for Wang Xin and Dai Duo to make a fuss. I’ll go back on the first day of the New Year.”
“Then I’ll go back to Nancheng on the first day too,” she said without hesitation.
Shan Chong fell silent, just glancing at her once. He thought to himself that her family would probably freak out knowing she had found herself a wild man out here, and now she even wanted to delay going home for New Year’s because of this wild man…
Wouldn’t her mother immediately buy a plane ticket to fly over and break up this romance?
Seeing the man’s noncommittal response, there was a brief silence in the cable car.
However, Wei Zhi wasn’t angry at his lack of enthusiasm.
After spending so many months together day and night, she had truly begun to understand Shan Chong’s temperament. At this moment, she could easily guess his concerns just from the slight trembling of his eyelashes—
Wei Zhi was well aware that his concerns weren’t unfounded. In her twenty-some years, no matter how much she roamed outside, she had never missed spending New Year’s at home…
Every New Year’s Eve, she would dutifully sit in front of the TV with her grandparents to watch the Spring Festival Gala.
But she didn’t want to leave him alone for the holiday.
She pondered what to do, her fingers unconsciously tracing along his sleeve, slipping inside to brush against the edge of his glove and quick-dry shirt, gently caressing his warm, dry skin and the protruding veins on his wrist.
In a place she couldn’t see.
Only Shan Chong knew that goosebumps were quietly rising everywhere her fingertips touched.
He managed to keep a straight face.
“How about you come home with me?” she looked up and asked him. “It’s perfect. I won’t have to mass-text an official announcement. I’ve already told everyone, but if I don’t bring a real person home for them to see, they’ll probably think I’m playing some weird game of hard-to-get with Han Yiming.”
Shan Chong chuckled.
She looked at him, puzzled.
Shan Chong asked, “What’s so great about this Dr. Han that your family likes him so much?”
Wei Zhi replied, “He’s a young, successful rich second generation, I guess.”
Shan Chong made a sound of acknowledgment. “Oh. Well, if I put myself in your mother’s shoes… Her daughter rejecting a young, successful generation golden son-in-law, insisting on bringing home some poor guy she picked up outside, whose family needs to spend a fortune on care…”
Wei Zhi: “…”
Shan Chong: “I’d break your legs.”
As the man’s words lightly fell, he felt the hand that had been playfully scratching his artery stop… The young woman who had been shoulder-to-shoulder with him suddenly sat up straight, glaring at him.
Wei Zhi wasn’t very happy with his comparison—
For her, the basics of life weren’t the primary consideration.
Her thinking was simple. Although her family was indeed quite well-off, she hadn’t asked them for a penny since moving out.
She could support herself.
And she didn’t care whether the car her loved one drove was a BAIC or a G-Class Mercedes.
She didn’t seek great wealth, only to have clothes to keep warm, food to eat her fill, a good person to return to, three meals a day for four seasons, peace and prosperity.
And Han Yiming was not that good person—no matter how talented and outstanding he was, the thought of one of the lights in the myriad of homes being his made her want to cut the power to the entire building.
So she was very unhappy that Shan Chong was comparing and even praising him on material grounds…
For a moment, she even felt heartache at his voluntary comparison.
Under her glare, the man seemed very calm. He lowered his eyes and smiled, reaching out to tuck behind her ear a strand of hair that had been mussed when she sat up. He said softly, “I’ll come find you when I’ve saved enough money.”
His tone was natural.
There wasn’t a hint of inferiority or sourness.
Wei Zhi finally caught her breath a little, blinking. “What do you mean by ‘saved enough money’?”
“At least not being in debt, making you go hungry with me. How could I do that?” he said. “Shan Shan’s prosthetic limb costs about 1.2 million. Let’s save that much, shall we?”
…How many men these days could save over a million before they turn thirty?
Even Han Yiming couldn’t do it without his family’s support.
Wei Zhi blinked, thinking of how he saved even a hundred yuan for gas. She wanted to ask if he knew how many zeros were in 1.2 million. Was he perhaps politely refusing, telling her to get lost?
“How much have you saved?” Wei Zhi asked. “Then I’ll go home and find a fortune teller to calculate how many decades I have left to live. Maybe I can rush to the civil affairs bureau to get a marriage certificate with you a day or two before I’m buried—”
Shan Chong said “I don’t know,” then took out his phone, opened a banking app, and messaged Shan Shan for the account and password.
[Do Good, Accumulate Virtue: What are you up to?]
[Chong: Your sister-in-law is checking the account.]
[Do Good, Accumulate Virtue: Can’t you come up with a less ridiculous excuse?]
[Do Good, Accumulate Virtue: I didn’t buy that coat, look how worried and stingy you are. Don’t tell me you’ve been losing sleep over this for days?]
Despite the chatter, she quickly sent over the account and password.
Shan Chong was quite curious too. He had been depositing money into the card every month, saving for Shan Shan’s prosthetic limb, but it was also her pocket money and living expenses…
He never questioned how much she spent.
Naturally, he had never asked how much had been saved.
Before he could see himself, the young woman who had been sitting up straight beside him was already leaning over, peering at his hand—her fluffy head brushing against his chin. He was startled for a moment, the sweet scent of her shampoo entering his nostrils. He chuckled softly, the corners of his eyes gradually relaxing, softening.
Cooperating with the paw pressing on his wrist, he lowered his hand to let her see the balance in Shan Shan’s card clearly—
784,000 yuan and change.
Wei Zhi carefully counted three times, blinked, and was too shocked to speak—
Seven hundred and eighty-four thousand!!!
“You saved all this?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“…How many years?”
“Don’t know, it’s been a while,” the man thought for a moment and said, “Should be about three years, I guess?”
Three years to save 784,000!!!
Her heart, which had been in suspense, settled down. Her eyes were filled with such jubilation that she wanted to change her QQ signature to “Being stingy can produce a millionaire!”
“I think if I don’t die young, we should be able to get together even sooner,” the young woman said sweetly, her eyes curved into crescents. “Most people I know who are your age are still using their 6,000 yuan monthly salary to pay 36 installments for an Audi A4—”
“…As long as the car runs, it’s fine. You can’t drive fast in the city anyway.”
Damn, listen to that.
Have you ever seen a man who’s better at living frugally?
Impressive!
At this moment, Shan Chong was radiant in Wei Zhi’s heart.
She wanted to call her mother right now and shout frantically: Look! That rich second-generation golden son-in-law you arranged for me is nothing! I picked up a gold nugget from the roadside that’s not much different! Hmph! Take that!!
Watching the man lock his phone with a “click,” she finally realized that he wasn’t worrying about not measuring up to Han Yiming. He had already thought of everything—
Perhaps from the moment he took her hand.
He had already thought of all this.
Considering more, and further ahead, than she had.
The young woman sniffled, staring at the man’s profile. Now her heart had turned into a complete mess of mush. She couldn’t help it; she was just so easily won over.
“I have another 300,000… why don’t—”
Before she could finish, the man who had been relaxed beside her suddenly looked stern: “Is this what your family’s education from childhood has amounted to? Handing over 300,000 to a man you’ve only known for a few months?”
“…”
“Thank you, now I feel an even greater responsibility… You don’t have any brothers, do you?”
“Why?”
“I’m afraid he might come at me with a knife.”
The man spoke casually, but the young woman beside him had already collapsed onto him with a whimper… Feeling his ski suit, she remembered his instructor’s authority and didn’t dare to be too presumptuous. She just went a tiny bit further than before when tugging at his sleeve, pulling the hand he had naturally placed on his leg.
Her soft, warm paw pried open his glove, forcefully squeezing into the glove opening, pressing her hand against his large one, squeezing.
“You should teach more classes, go teach now! Ask Little Bear if she wants lessons. It’d be best if she could introduce more people, she has lots of internet celebrity friends.”
“…”
“Try to complete the target next year.”
“You’re in quite a hurry.”
“Mm,” she said obediently, “The only thing about you that could drive people away is being poor and stingy. If they find out it’s completely the opposite, that would be trouble.”
She looked at him sincerely and said, “I’d be so worried I couldn’t sleep.”
She said it so naturally.
Translated—
Once upon a time, there was a princess who escaped from her pampered castle, becoming a runaway princess.
One day, the runaway princess casually picked up a broken pot from a roadside trash can and gave it a rub…
And then discovered that this was Aladdin’s magic lamp.
…
That night.
The Altay snow circle group chat exploded, with everyone spreading the news—
Shan Chong is offering beginner group lessons in the park!
Small class teaching, ten people or less, one hour, 1,500 yuan per person!
Guaranteed to unlock regular-footed box 5050 + switch box + fs180 off the box, three tricks in total. Full refund if even one trick is missed!
Brothers, let’s go!
…
Hurry and send money!