“xxxx year x month x day

This year I finally heard ‘Happy Birthday.’ What the little bird back then didn’t learn, this one has learned.”

Wu Man began appearing on television with increasing frequency.

Sometimes when Yu Jiaze took his lunch break in the office and turned on the TV, he could occasionally catch her advertisement flashing by. Recently she’d also appeared on a variety show, a travel program experiencing slow life in a water town. He happened to flip to it today.

He leaned back in his chair and glanced at it for the half hour before his next meeting started.

Besides Wu Man, the program participants included two hosts and three actors. The group entered a restaurant by a small bridge over water to eat. Wu Man had her hair in a ponytail, wearing a simple striped shirt and jeans. Her face was very plain, her eyes and brows clearer than the water ripples under the corridor.

The dishes were brought out one by one—abalone soaked in Huadiao wine, huge snails, egg fried whitebait without a trace of fishiness, and four taels of drunken crab. The camera gave close-ups of its full roe, the aroma almost pushing through the screen right into Yu Jiaze’s face.

However, the several people on screen didn’t care at all about these delicacies, eating absentmindedly while focusing on chatting, their mouths praising the food to the skies.

Yu Jiaze watched with a frown because the person he most wanted to see had no camera time from when the dishes were served until now.

What a terrible variety show. They don’t even know how to use the camera properly.

He suppressed his desire to turn it off, waiting until those people finally finished chatting before the camera finally gave Wu Man a glance.

She sat at the very edge, both hands wearing wrinkled plastic gloves, one hand holding a crab shell and the other a crab leg, crab oil still on the corners of her mouth.

Everyone else on the show was thinking about how to get more camera time, but she was diligently shelling crab there, two ears hearing nothing outside the window.

Watching this brief one-second shot, Yu Jiaze couldn’t help but laugh quietly.

After this group came out of the restaurant, they continued walking along the street and entered an embroidery workshop.

As usual, the production team assigned everyone a task—to learn how to make a simple embroidery piece.

Yu Jiaze could see that his little bird had absolutely no gentle and refined qualities. Within a minute of getting the needle and thread, her fingertips were bleeding. The embroidery thread she produced was also crooked and twisted. She frowned, as if refusing to admit defeat and insisting on wrestling with the needle and thread, resulting in pricking herself even more thoroughly all over.

The program was still continuing, but unfortunately his lunch break had ended.

Yu Jiaze turned off the TV and yawned. He’d originally planned to just glance at it and then sleep, but somehow inexplicably watched it all the way through.

This meeting continued until ten at night. After reviewing the upcoming major projects, Yu Jiaze sat in his seat feeling slightly weary and spacing out.

The assistant carefully knocked on the already empty conference room door, reminding Yu Jiaze: “The club appointment is at 11 o’clock. There’s just half an hour to drive over. Time is a bit tight. You need to leave now.”

Yu Jiaze lazily responded: “What’s the rush? Let those people wait.”

Leaving them hanging aside, he still had to go.

Yu Jiaze arrived at the private room half an hour late and was caught for a round of heavy drinking. He smiled without mirth: “I have a bit of a cold today and took cephalosporin. Another time.”

“Ah… Young Master Yu, that’s such a buzzkill.”

Another person quickly fanned the flames: “We can’t let it go like this. Before long it’ll be Young Master Yu’s birthday. We’ll have to make up for it all then!”

“Where will you hold the party this year, Young Master Yu?”

“You must invite me!”

“Last year’s alcohol was so strong!”

Everyone discussed in bits and pieces, while the center of discussion felt no joy about being the birthday person.

He seemed to only just remember his birthday was coming up and turned to ask his assistant beside him: “What are the arrangements?”

The assistant, well-prepared, said: “I was just about to discuss this with you. You happen to be on a business trip to Hong Kong that day. Do you think booking a cruise ship at Victoria Harbour would work?”

For him, birthdays were just a necessary means of socializing. Therefore, there was no need to prepare anything original, nor any expectations. Every year was roughly the same setup and process, the same boring people coming and going, repeating the same motions. It wasn’t even as interesting as meetings.

So he answered without thinking: “Whatever.”

On his birthday, his originally austere office with no human warmth was piled with flowers and luxury goods sent by various people. He was in another city and didn’t even unwrap them, directly having the administration distribute them to office colleagues.

The gift recipients all congratulated the boss on his birthday in the group chat, then turned around and said in their private small group: “I’m using this wallet as a scolding-immunity gold medal. I declare I won’t curse USB today!”

“+1”

“Same”

At this time at Victoria Harbour, Yu Jiaze, boarding the cruise ship, inexplicably sneezed.

Because this birthday party was in Hong Kong, not many people had specially come to attend.

Those who had the leisure to rush over were mostly trying to curry favor with him, vastly different in both status and wealth. And those few with whom he’d already formed grudges, like Young Master Qi, absolutely wouldn’t specially come over.

But that didn’t mean he could enjoy some peace. Flies might be inconspicuous, but when they stick to you buzzing, they can’t be underestimated. Yu Jiaze had been buzzed at all evening and had reached the critical point of irritability.

The piano in the hall was playing the Happy Birthday song. The crowd surrounding him in concentric circles opened a small gap, and through this gap, the assistant pushed in a flashy, impractical cake, stopping in front of him.

“This is a cake specially ordered for you by Old Master Yu.”

The chaotic lights were extinguished in this instant, leaving only the weak glow of candles stuck in the cake, wavering and reflected in his inorganic black pupils, jumping cluster by cluster.

“Young Master Yu, hurry up and make a wish and eat the candles!”

Make a wish?

Yu Jiaze closed his eyes. His brain fell into pitch darkness along with his closed eyes.

After pausing for a few seconds, he quickly opened his eyes but didn’t blow out the candles.

Everyone wondered: “Why aren’t you blowing them out?”

Yu Jiaze didn’t answer, just glanced at the speaker with a smile that wasn’t quite a smile. He really didn’t want to answer this idiot—because he didn’t make a wish, so what was the point of blowing?

He reached out and grabbed the knife on the cart, the corner of his mouth holding a mocking smile, cutting the candles and cake in half together.

He took out one piece of cake with candle wax melted into the cream and handed it to the person who had just asked.

“The first piece is for you. Eat it all.”

“Eat it all means…”

Yu Jiaze patted his shoulder. “All of it, including the candle.” He looked at everyone. “Should I continue cutting?”

The onlookers’ sphincters tightened, and they shook their heads repeatedly: “No need, Young Master Yu. We’ll divide it ourselves. You rest!”

Yu Jiaze regretfully threw the knife onto the cake and walked out of the cabin in the dark.

He’d only been on the top deck a short while when he heard footsteps coming from the stairs.

The gloom on Yu Jiaze’s face finally showed undisguised. It had only been a few minutes, and someone was rushing over again?

“Get lost.”

He threw out one word toward behind him without turning his head.

The footsteps that had already reached the deck paused, and a familiar voice came without much confidence.

“I’m sorry. You didn’t invite me, but I still asked Xiao Zhou for the address and came over on my own.”

It was Little Bird’s voice.

Yu Jiaze’s body, which had been facing away from her, paused slightly. Imperceptibly, he turned sideways, glancing toward the stairs.

Wu Man carried a bag in her hand, wearing that same unsuitable airport outfit, matched against the brilliant night view of Victoria Harbour behind her—it truly made one want to laugh.

He leaned on the railing, glancing at her from head to toe: “You came over dressed like this? Didn’t you see how the people downstairs are dressed?”

Wu Man showed no embarrassed expression at all, saying openly and generously: “If I dressed up more, I wouldn’t have made it in time. If I couldn’t make it in time to give you my blessing, there’d be no meaning in dressing beautifully.”

Yu Jiaze gave a cold snort.

He’d deliberately not required Wu Man to make any gesture, just to see what she would do on her own initiative. Not bad—she still knew to rush over for his birthday. Barely passing, he supposed.

“You certainly have your own ideas.” His voice involuntarily softened. “And you prepared a gift for me?”

This time she was somewhat bashful: “…Compared to others, this is rather crude. After all, I don’t have much money. Using your money to buy something would be even more meaningless. So I prepared this.”

“You’re not being stingy with money, are you? Little miser.”

He deliberately picked at her words, but his eyes were already firmly glued to the bag in her hand, his whole expression screaming “why aren’t you giving it to me yet?”

Wu Man, as if deliberately whetting his appetite, slowly handed over the bag.

He snatched it and took the gift out of the bag.

It was an embroidery.

The pattern embroidered on it vaguely showed two eyes, a nose, and an upturned mouth.

He tried hard to discern: “This embroidery… is it a person…?”

Wu Man was silent for a moment.

“What else would it be?”

“Don’t tell me this is supposed to be me.”

Wu Man was silent again for a moment, reaching out to snatch it back.

Yu Jiaze lifted the embroidery over his head with one hand, and with the other smoothly caught Wu Man as she lunged over, pressing her into his embrace.

“Why such a big reaction? Isn’t it custom embroidery?”

The moment he saw the embroidery, he’d already guessed whose handiwork it was.

Who told him to happen to watch that episode? Although he hadn’t watched it all the way through, she’d happened to enter an embroidery shop, and here he received an embroidery. Plus this crude level of skill—no matter how he looked at it, it was the little provincial bird’s handiwork.

Wu Man was startled, her eyes rolling as she explained: “It is custom! I even gave them your best-looking photo, but that embroidery master had probably never embroidered a portrait before, so it came out not quite right. Time was tight and I didn’t have time to get a new one…”

Yu Jiaze deliberately went along with her story: “Then I should award this embroidery master a national first-class hand disability certificate.”

Wu Man laughed dryly twice: “Actually, if you look carefully, it has a very unique style. Art has things like abstract schools, right? Embroidery can too!”

He raised his eyes, gazing at that barely formed embroidery, his tone inscrutable: “Who says it isn’t? Then please convey to this embroidery master that she precisely found the style I like.”

He didn’t want uniformity, didn’t want something commonly seen everywhere, and didn’t need grand pretense.

What he wanted was uniqueness, even if it was the clumsiest.

“Little Bird, let me tell you a secret.”

“What?”

Yu Jiaze raised his eyes to look at his watch. There was still one minute until midnight.

“My birthday isn’t actually today.”

“Ah…?!”

“I don’t want my birthday to be too noisy, so I moved it forward a day publicly.”

Over time, even Father Yu thought he’d remembered wrong and celebrated his birthday on this day.

Since his mother’s death, he hadn’t heard “Happy Birthday” on his actual birth date for a very long time.

Because he didn’t need it.

But sometimes when the world was quiet for too long, he also wanted to hear the little bird’s chirping.

Wu Man quickly digested the meaning in this sentence, nervously taking out her phone. Only 10 seconds remained until midnight. 9, 8, 7… 3, 2, 1.

“Happy Birthday to you!”

She raised her head in his embrace, the little bird fluttering onto his heart.

The next day, he brought Wu Man back to Beijing with him.

On the return flight, Wu Man fell asleep quickly, tired, pillowing her small pillow. He opened his tablet and continued watching the variety show episode he hadn’t finished last time.

This section showed everyone learning embroidery. Wu Man went to ask the shop owner: “Can I learn to embroider a portrait?”

The shop owner glanced at her earlier practice, his face full of black lines as he said: “If you mean a stick figure, that’s not impossible…”

She answered resoundingly: “I want to embroider a real person!”

The shop owner smiled slightly, rummaged in a cabinet to pull out a pack of band-aids, and handed them to Wu Man to send her away.

“First put these on the three wounds from needle pricks on your hand, then come back.”

Wu Man took the band-aids and returned to her seat listlessly, but the next moment perked up again.

Seeing this scene, Yu Jiaze came back to his senses and looked at Wu Man breathing steadily beside him.

He grabbed her hand tucked under the blanket. She immediately opened her eyes, her gaze still a bit hazy.

“What’s wrong?”

He examined her fingers, carefully searching for the scars she’d left from embroidering for him.

Such beautiful wounds.

“Nothing. Sleep.”

Wu Man was baffled. She pulled down her eye mask and went back to sleep. However, for the second half of the flight, her fingers were constantly held in Yu Jiaze’s palm, being played with.

After the plane landed, Yu Jiaze exited the airport and took her directly to a car, while the assistant didn’t get in.

He went straight to the driver’s seat, indicating Wu Man should sit in the passenger seat.

She thought the assistant had something come up temporarily, requiring him to drive personally. So she didn’t ask more. Seeing the car drive for a long time, all the way to Babaoshan.

On his birthday… coming to a cemetery?

Yu Jiaze sensed Wu Man’s astonished gaze but had absolutely no intention of explaining, simply saying “wait in the car for me,” then got out and headed into the grounds alone.

He stopped before a bare grave. In this area where the other graves were surrounded on all sides by flowers, this grave’s bareness was glaringly cold and clear.

Yu Jiaze looked down expressionlessly, talking to himself: “I’m twenty-seven this year, but unfortunately you can’t see it. Maybe you don’t want to see it either.” He sneered. “You were really such an easy mother to be.”

When she left that year, he was only three years old.

People say children’s memories are the most heartless, but why couldn’t he forget the scene of her leaving at all? Honestly, he really didn’t want to recall it, but it would still jump out with bared fangs and claws in his midnight dreams.

The memory of that scene was flat and silent. He secretly pried open the door crack. The image was compressed into a long strip. The veins bulging on the woman’s neck as she was choked extended through the long strip into his young eyes.

Her lips moved. She could no longer speak.

In an almost lifted posture, she was forced back to the edge of the stairs before being released. She turned and fled down the stairs.

And the scene after that, he couldn’t see.

The flat, elongated door crack was blocked by his father’s towering back. His hands hung at his sides, motionless as he looked down the stairs.

The police later determined that she fell from the stairs and hit a sculpture placed on the mid-level stair landing, causing her death—it was an accident.

An accident.

Looking back on it now, Yu Jiaze just wanted to laugh.

But back then, he’d only felt fear.

The day of the burial was also like today—sunny and breezy, making it seem like crying in such weather would be extremely inappropriate.

He didn’t shed a single tear. Neither did his father.

When the two of them went forward together to present flowers, his father said lightly in his ear: “Don’t be sad for this kind of woman. She’s not worth our father and son’s grief.”

He forgot what he said at the time. Probably something like “why.”

He only remembered his father’s answer—

“Of course it’s because she did something wrong, so even heaven wanted to punish her.” He touched Yu Jiaze’s head. “People absolutely cannot take the wrong path. She could have been very happy.”

Whether she would have been happy, he didn’t know, but at least he probably would have had it better than now.

“Since we’ll all die sooner or later anyway, why not die three years earlier?”

He smiled and murmured, turning to leave the cemetery.

Outside the cemetery, Wu Man was still waiting for him in the car.

When he got in the car, she was looking down sending messages, her face full of suppressed excitement. She glanced at him, felt the current scene probably wasn’t suitable for expressing excitement, and forcibly suppressed it, stuffing her phone back in her pocket, though her cheeks were still flushed.

He asked indifferently: “What’s making my little bird so happy?”

She almost bounced up to answer: “I was selected! I was selected for the Youth Film Festival’s Best Newcomer!”

“Oh?” He started the engine, inwardly scoffing. A completely insignificant phony film festival—was it worth being this happy?

She asked expectantly: “The awards ceremony is in a few days. Will you have time then?”

“Why?”

“I want to invite you…”

“To witness you winning?” Yu Jiaze tapped the steering wheel, glancing at her sideways. “But what if you don’t win? Then I’ll have gone for nothing.”

Wu Man imperceptibly clenched her fist: “I have confidence in myself!”

Yu Jiaze looked straight ahead, one hand on the steering wheel, freeing the other to pat her head. “I have confidence in you too. You’ll definitely win.”

Wu Man said weakly: “When you say that, I feel pressure…” Yet the corners of her mouth couldn’t be pressed down after hearing this sentence, like messy bangs that can’t help but curl upward.

He glanced at her sidelong face, privately rejoicing, and couldn’t help finding her naive.

In this world, there are no absolute ideals, just like if I wish for rain on Earth in the next moment, it will still be sunny. But if a rain bomb is launched, it’s different.

Man proposes, heaven disposes—only interests can guarantee promises.

Since his little bird had given him a gift, he’d return one to her. Consider it the first lesson he’d teach her.