After Shen Yi’s “reminder,” Zong Yutang replayed the way Rong Qian had looked at him in his mind — and sure enough, there had been a clear thread of mockery and amusement woven into that gaze.

Realizing he had completely misread the situation, Zong Yutang felt a flicker of embarrassment. He cleared his throat and said to Shen Yi: “Ahem. Just now — I was overthinking things. Don’t take it to heart. I have no prejudice against her.”

“No prejudice — really?” Shen Yi said nothing on the surface, but in reality he understood everything perfectly.

Seeing that Shen Yi had already seen through him, Zong Yutang decided to speak plainly. “Shen Yi, what exactly does Rong Qian mean to you? Surely you can tell me now?”

“For the first ten-plus years of my life, my reason for living was waiting for her.”

Thinking back on all those years of waiting, Shen Yi couldn’t help but let out a quiet, rueful laugh. He gazed out the window and murmured softly: “If it is my fate to spend a lifetime in waiting, then I am willing — through the long passage of years — to wait for her, without end.”

Zong Yutang stared at him, stunned.

This was the first time Zong Yutang had ever seen Shen Yi show such a tender, vulnerable side. He thought to himself: so it really is true — when a man falls in love, he turns into a poet. Just listen to him — over a decade of waiting, spoken in a single breath.

But how many decades does a person’s life hold?

Zong Yutang asked him: “And now? What are you living for now?”

Shen Yi looked at him. His eyes were dark as ink, deep as an abyss, utterly fathomless. Zong Yutang could not read what lay within them.

After a long moment, Shen Yi spoke — two words.

“Save her.”

Back at the dining table, Rong Qian had already begun eating.

With the food in front of her, she ate with great contentment. Yao Zhengxing, on the other hand, sat across from her with a stiff expression. Watching her eat without a care in the world, he couldn’t hold back any longer. “How can you still have an appetite?” he demanded.

“What’s wrong? Is there something wrong with the food? Why can’t I eat?” Rong Qian’s cheeks were puffed out, her expression perfectly innocent.

Yao Zhengxing looked at her like that and found there was nowhere to direct his frustration. He waved a hand irritably. “Never mind! Don’t mind me!”

“Dad…” Yao Na shot him a look of silent warning. Yao Zhengxing was still unhappy — he didn’t want to give Rong Qian a pleasant face.

Rong Qian couldn’t help but smile at that. She set down her chopsticks, dabbed at her mouth, and said: “Uncle, if you have something to say, just say it.”

“Where did you disappear to for those six years? What were you doing?” Yao Zhengxing assumed the authority of a family patriarch and questioned her directly.

Rong Qian didn’t answer that head-on. Instead, she smiled and turned it back on him: “Since when have you cared so much about whether I was alive or dead?”

“I don’t care about you — I care about Shen Yi.” Yao Zhengxing said it grudgingly. “That boy is so deeply devoted to you that he’s willing to forgive everything and still treat you well. Let me tell you — you had better not fail him again!”

“I will still be leaving.”

As soon as she said it, Rong Qian poured herself a glass of wine.

Xu Mo and Yao Na, sitting at the table, both froze at those words. In what seemed like a tacit understanding, they both set their chopsticks down at the same moment.

Yao Zhengxing’s fury blazed. His eyes went wide. “You — you’re still leaving?! Woman, what is going on inside that head of yours?!”

“Miss Rong, are you really going to leave again?” Yao Na frowned, her expression pained. “Does Shen Yi know?”

Rong Qian nodded. “Yes. He knows.”

“Miss Rong!”

Xu Mo couldn’t contain himself any longer. Standing up for Shen Yi, he cried out: “Why do you still want to leave? You know full well that our boss likes you, and on top of that he’s been waiting for you for years — so why are you still leaving? If you were going to leave anyway, then why did you even come back?”

Rong Qian lowered her gaze and said nothing.

Seeing this, Yao Na quickly tugged at Xu Mo’s sleeve, gesturing for him to sit back down.

Xu Mo himself was slow to realize what he’d done — in a panic, he didn’t know where to put his hands or feet. He had been too impulsive. He had said things he shouldn’t have.

Yao Zhengxing buried his face in his drink, clearly having decided he was done trying to intervene.

“I — I’m sorry…” Xu Mo apologized with genuine guilt.

Rong Qian, however, didn’t seem to mind. Her gaze swept across the group, and she took a sip of wine before saying: “It’s precisely because Shen Yi isn’t here that I dare to tell you all this.”

“What are you going to tell us, Miss Rong?” Yao Na had been keeping a close watch on Rong Qian’s mood throughout, and she was the one doing the most to keep the atmosphere from curdling.

Rong Qian rested her chin on one hand, the corners of her mouth curving into a smile. Perhaps it was the slight warmth of the wine — her eyes were bright and sparkling, almost luminous. She gathered herself for a moment, then smiled and said: “I’ll tell you all a secret. I — I like Shen Yi. Very, very much.”

“But this — absolutely cannot reach his ears!” Rong Qian’s expression turned serious, and she looked at them with great gravity as she made this request.

Xu Mo felt puzzled. “Why not?”

“Because it won’t lead anywhere. If you already know that one day you’ll have to part, then what’s the point of being together?” Rong Qian laid out her reasoning with calm clarity.

Xu Mo pushed back: “That’s not how it works at all!”

“Miss Rong, I don’t know what difficulties you’re carrying, but if I were you and I met someone I liked, I would boldly express how I felt! You two clearly feel the same way about each other — why make our boss suffer through what looks like unrequited love? He’s working really hard at this!”

Xu Mo finally said everything he had been holding inside. He had expected his words to move her. Instead, he found her completely unmoved — she had gone back to eating.

Xu Mo could only sigh and let the topic drop entirely.

As for what was going on inside Rong Qian’s heart, beneath that outwardly unaffected surface — no one could say.

Later, when Shen Yi and Zong Yutang returned, everyone present tacitly behaved as though nothing had been said.

The rest of that meal was eaten with a weight of unspoken thoughts pressing down on every person at the table.

Even on the car ride home, Rong Qian and Shen Yi said nothing to each other. It wasn’t that they had argued, nor that either was displeased with the other — there was simply nothing that needed to be said. The atmosphere was noticeably subdued.

Rong Qian rolled down the car window, letting the breeze wash over her, taking in the bustling, luminous night market outside.

Then, suddenly — she spotted a restaurant by the roadside that looked familiar. Rong Qian immediately told Xu Mo to stop the car.

“What is it?”

Shen Yi was seated right beside her. The moment he saw her react so sharply, he pushed his own thoughts aside. “Come somewhere with me!”

Rong Qian’s eyes lit up as she smiled, and she grabbed Shen Yi’s hand and stepped out of the car.

Xu Mo scrambled frantically, rushing to hand them both hats and face masks to wear. Only after they had put them on did he settle back in the car to wait.

Watching Rong Qian lead Shen Yi by the hand into a restaurant that had a certain artsy, literary atmosphere, Xu Mo suddenly thought of something, and a smile crept onto his face.

So Miss Rong had taken his words to heart after all…

The restaurant Rong Qian had brought Shen Yi to was the same one that, decades from now, Lu Huaiyi would take them to — the very restaurant where Rong Qian had seen a photograph of Shen Yi and realized he had once been there.

But it was only after leading Shen Yi inside that Rong Qian fully understood — she was the one who had brought him here in the first place.

The restaurant owner she had met decades from now was, at this point in time, still just a waiter — and a very young one at that, barely in his teens. It was he who led them up to a private booth on the upper floor.

Looking at this booth that felt both familiar and strange, Rong Qian said to Shen Yi: “Decades from now, this wall will have a large photograph of you hanging on it.”

She described it in careful detail, and as she spoke, she had Shen Yi stand in front of that very wall — so that he could almost picture it for himself, as if he were seeing it with his own eyes.

As she spoke, she caught sight of Shen Yi gazing steadily at the wall, his focused profile turned to her — and her words trailed off for just a moment.

Then Rong Qian looked at him, and said: “Shen Yi — there’s something I want to tell you.”