The wet market was unusually lively on the third day of the Lunar New Year.

The neighborhood hadn’t bought fresh vegetables in three or four days, so the moment the vendors opened their stalls today, people swarmed in, every stall crowded with customers.

Zhou Ya had known this would happen, so on New Year’s Day, while wishing the familiar vendors a happy new year, he’d already asked them to set aside some good ingredients for him—otherwise, tonight’s food stall would have nothing left to serve.

While he was checking the seafood at Old Six’s stall, the owner walked over and handed him a cigarette.

Zhou Ya thanked him and tucked the cigarette behind his ear.

Old Six glanced around, then crouched down beside Zhou Ya and asked quietly: “A’Ya, before New Year’s, did someone mess with your place?”

Zhou Ya turned to look at him: “You know about that?”

Old Six answered frankly: “What secrets are there in a small town like this!”

The wet market had even less privacy—it might as well be the town’s “intelligence exchange hub.”

Zhou Ya nodded: “Yeah, some people came and caused trouble.”

Old Six asked: “Any idea whose doing it was?”

Zhou Ya turned the question back: “Oh? Do you know?”

“Hey, how would I know—I just heard the boss lady from the grocery stall up front mention it. Saw you today, figured I’d ask.” Old Six waved it off vaguely, but still offered a well-meaning reminder, “Can’t be helped, though. Your place does such good business, A’Ya—you’re blocking someone else’s path to profit.”

Zhou Ya laughed dryly: “Funny thing is, instead of spending time and money hiring people to wreck my business, they’d do better spending that effort improving their own cooking. If your food’s garbage, don’t blame me for it.”

Old Six laughed around his cigarette, picked a pomfret from his stall, and tossed it into the styrofoam box in front of Zhou Ya: “I just like people who are straightforward like you. This one’s on the house.”

—On the night of New Year’s Day, when Zhou Ya went to Ren Jianbai’s house to wish him a happy new year, they’d also discussed the incident from that night.

The license plate of the troublemakers’ car wasn’t local—they’d traced the vehicle, but the group had already left Anzhen the same night after causing the disturbance.

Ren Jianbai asked whether Zhou Ya wanted to keep pursuing it, offering to have a word with the local police station if so. Zhou Ya shook his head and said there was no need—those thugs were just hired muscle paid to do a job; the person who actually held a grudge against him was someone else entirely.

Even if they were caught, what then? He’d just be blamed for having tough skin and thick flesh, getting hit with a beer bottle and coming out fine—there’d be no real grounds to pursue it, at most getting them to pay for the broken dishes that night or settle the unpaid bill.

Zhou Ya had been out in the world long enough to know that running a business didn’t mean everything would go smoothly; some hardships just had to be swallowed down, chased with cigarettes and liquor.

If it was aimed at him alone, fine—he could endure it and let it pass. But his bottom line was his family and his employees.

Cross that line, and he wouldn’t easily let it go.

Zhou Ya made two or three trips, carrying styrofoam boxes and plastic bags into the trunk of his car.

As always, the smell inside the car grew more complicated with each trip.

Zhou Ya shut the car door, thinking to himself that once this busy week was over, he really needed to go pick out a proper vehicle.

He didn’t drive off right away—there were still things he needed to buy separately.

Zhou Ya circled around the edge of the market and went into a clothing store he knew well.

Stacks of men’s boxer shorts were displayed at the entrance, along with briefs and socks, all clearly priced—ten yuan for two, ten yuan for four pairs, that sort of thing.

The shop owner greeted him: “Haven’t seen you in a while!”

Zhou Ya nodded and handed over a cigarette: “Here to buy some underwear.”

The owner took it, saying generously: “Pick whatever you like, we’ve got the bright red ones too.”

Zhou Ya looked around and asked: “Got anything a bit pricier? Better quality?”

“We do, we do.”

The owner pulled several long boxes from the glass cabinet: “These are export goods, made for foreign trade, but you have to buy them by the box, no splitting.”

Each box held three pairs, with a string of English letters printed along the waistband, in different color combinations—some black-white-gray, some white-red-blue.

Zhou Ya didn’t even ask the price, just gave his size directly and took two boxes.

The owner praised his taste: “This brand, C—C—ugh, I don’t even know how to pronounce it, but I know it sells for hundreds of dollars a box in Hong Kong. Here it’s cheap—you’ve struck gold.”

Zhou Ya smiled and paid.

When he got home past ten, Fang Long was already up, sitting at the dining table eating breakfast—rice porridge with a salted duck egg.

Their eyes met, and Fang Long’s gaze darted around before she wiggled her eyebrows toward the balcony.

Ma Huimin was out on the balcony tending to her plants, seeming to be in good spirits, humming a little tune audible even from the entryway.

Zhou Ya changed his shoes and walked over to the table, raising a hand to brush the back of it against Fang Long’s cheek.

Fang Long turned her head too, nuzzling affectionately against the back of his hand.

Then, seized with sudden mischief, she opened her mouth and bit down on the tender flesh between his thumb and finger.

Not hard, but it left a trail of saliva behind.

Zhou Ya shot her a glare, pulled his hand back, licked the wet spot on his hand clean, then went to greet his aunt on the balcony.

Lunch was egg fried rice, plus a meat dish, a vegetable dish, and soup.

The three of them sat down in their usual arrangement—Zhou Ya and Fang Long facing each other, Ma Huimin off to the side.

Ma Huimin couldn’t help but bring up her unresolved conversation with Zhou Ya from that morning: “Longlong, did you know, your brother told me this morning not to introduce him to anyone anymore—said he already has someone he likes.”

Fang Long nearly choked on a grain of rice.

She cleared her throat and looked at Zhou Ya teasingly: “Wow, didn’t expect an old tree could still bloom flowers.”

Ma Huimin was amused by her: “Your brother’s not even that old—how can you call him ‘old’?”

Zhou Ya glanced up at Fang Long, then lowered his eyes to the foot pestering his calf under the table.

She wasn’t tall, and her feet were small too, like a greedy little mouse creeping up his pant leg inch by inch.

“So, Brother, which lady do you like? Do we know her?”

Fang Long giggled, her foot climbing higher and higher, quickly reaching Zhou Ya’s knee.

“I never said it was a ‘lady.'”

Zhou Ya’s expression didn’t change, but under the table, his hand suddenly caught her foot.

Three fingers curled and scratched quickly against the sole of her foot.

Unable to bear the ticklishness, Fang Long yelped: “Ah!”

Ma Huimin was startled: “What’s wrong? What happened?”

Fang Long sulkily withdrew her foot, rubbing the sole against the back of her other foot to scratch the itch: “N-nothing, ate too fast, bit the inside of my mouth…”

“Oh dear, eat slower. Must be all the heaty food you’ve had lately, too much internal heat—remind your brother to brew you some cooling herbal tea later.”

Ma Huimin, always meticulous about her son’s love life, turned to ask Zhou Ya, “Hey, son, what did you say earlier? Not a ‘lady’—so is it a younger girl? Someone younger than you?”

Zhou Ya’s eyelids drooped halfway, concealing the depth in his gaze: “Yes, a younger girl.”

After the meal, Zhou Ya washed dishes in the kitchen while Fang Long slipped in, taking advantage of her aunt being in the bathroom.

She had to stand on her toes to reach his ear: “Are you crazy, saying something that obvious in front of Big Auntie? What if she figures it out?”

“Was it that obvious?” Zhou Ya’s hands were covered in suds; he didn’t pull her close, just leaned down to kiss the top of her head, saying quietly, “You don’t want me having other little sisters?”

Fang Long’s eyes went wide, baring her teeth: “Zhou Ya, don’t you dare?!”

Zhou Ya liked Fang Long like this.

Getting harmlessly jealous, showing this childish possessiveness—it let him feel that he truly held a place in her heart.

As a man to her, not just as her “brother.”

Fang Long wanted to pinch him, but the moment she heard the toilet flush, she fled the kitchen at top speed.

Zhou Ya paused for a few seconds, then lowered his head and finished washing the remaining dishes.

Once Ma Huimin had gone to her room for her afternoon nap, Zhou Ya slipped into Fang Long’s room.

Fang Long was lying on her bed listening to music and reading a novel on her phone, the sheer curtains filtering the sunlight into something soft and fine, falling across her chestnut-colored hair and her pale bare feet swinging in midair.

Seeing him come in, she didn’t sit up or move, just shot him a glare.

Zhou Ya felt secretly pleased—she really had become a little white-eyed wolf.

He walked to the bed and sat down, plucking one earbud out and putting it in his own ear.

“Give it back, go find your other little sister for that.” Fang Long tried to grab it back, but Zhou Ya caught her hand.

He pulled her hand to his mouth and bit it.

“Zhou Ya, are you part dog?”

“Learned it from you—biting people all day.” Zhou Ya removed the earbud, then took out Fang Long’s other one too. “Sit up. I want to talk to you about something.”

The man’s manner was oddly solemn; Fang Long turned off her phone and sat up: “What is it?”

“Last night, we were both a little too caught up in the moment. There’s something I should’ve said properly, and I didn’t.”

Zhou Ya wasn’t the outspoken type, and he wasn’t one to bare his feelings easily—he always believed actions mattered more than words.

But when it came to Fang Long, he wanted her to know everything he was thinking.

—The last time he’d felt such an urgent need to speak was right after he’d been adopted by his father and mother.

He had wanted, so badly, to thank them.

Even a mute wants to speak, even if his voice comes out riddled with flaws.

Now, Zhou Ya raised his eyes, light filling them, and pronounced each word with careful seriousness.

“Fang Long, I like you.”

Fang Long froze.

She’d heard this sentence many times before, from other people’s mouths.

She’d even heard “I love you” many times.

In their mouths, “like” and “love” were like love songs at a karaoke bar—things you could just casually pull out and sing.

They’d gradually become cheap, become trite, become fragmented.

They’d become weightless, tumbling out of mouths and landing on the ground, gathering dust and grime, becoming gray stones scattered underfoot.

Everywhere you looked, but nobody bothered picking them up.

But in this moment, for the first time, Fang Long felt that this sentence actually glowed.

It was nothing but formless sound, and yet she could see it with her eyes, catch it with her ears, kiss it with her heart.

Was this what real liking felt like?

The man in front of her wasn’t even handsome by conventional standards—dark skin, an unfashionable hairstyle, stubble, dressed in “wet market clothes,” a bad temper, foul-mouthed, showering with nothing but a single bar of soap…

He had so many, so many flaws, not perfect in the slightest, and yet in this moment, in her eyes, he outshone the stars themselves.

Her heart was pounding so fast it felt like it might go mad, and she—normally so quick-tongued—found her mind completely blank.

She tackled him onto the bed, burying her face in the crook of his neck, and, like a foolish child, fiercely threatened him: “Zhou Ya, you’re not allowed to have any other little sisters! Not even a big sister!”