Chapter 59
At two in the morning, the skyscraper was still ablaze with light. Xia Fengsheng stood on the open-air balcony, looking down at the nightscape of the tech city below.
His eyes, clear as winter mountain water, gazed into the distance. Between two pale, jade-like fingers, the ember of a cigarette flared and dimmed.
He was wearing a white dress shirt. He had just come back from a business dinner, and there was a faint air of fatigue about him tonight.
That weariness did nothing to blemish his refined features. If anything, the more worn-out he looked, the more flavor he seemed to have.
It was too far to go back to school after the dinner, so he had come to crash at the studio for the night.
Since partnering with the Qi family, their studio’s worth had risen with the tide. They had scored a huge win in a hedging project and made a steady fortune alongside the Qi family. Qi Mingyue had kept her word and not shorted them a single cent of what they were owed.
With that enormous sum of money in hand, they rented a 500-square-meter flat floor in the most imposing tower in the city center.
A whole floor was still beyond them, but one large unit was more than enough.
Success bred attention. Dawn Studio had gained both reputation and money at a very early stage, but none of them lost themselves in it. They knew full well the fame-and-profit world was full of wolves and tigers, so they didn’t deliberately show themselves off. They only attended the right business gatherings.
The top buttons of Xia Fengsheng’s shirt collar were undone. The tie he usually wore perfectly straight was nowhere to be seen.
The wind flipped his collar and brushed over his collarbone and shoulders. He tipped back his neck, exposing the elegant line of his pale throat like a swan’s, and exhaled a thin ribbon of smoke.
As part of his usual routine, he opened his Moments and liked everyone’s posts. Just before exiting, he refreshed once more to see if there were any new ones. While swiping the screen, he accidentally tapped his own profile picture.
His own Moments page popped up.
In the night, Xia Fengsheng’s gaze flickered.
He and Shi Ye had been broken up for two months, but he had forgotten to change his Moments cover. It was still a photo of Shi Ye holding an umbrella in the rain.
He tapped to enlarge the image. Looking at the photo, Xia Fengsheng drifted for a moment, so distracted he didn’t even notice the cigarette had nearly burned his fingers.
“Sheng’er! Come eat the midnight snack!”
Qin Buming called from the lounge.
Putting away his phone, Xia Fengsheng snuffed out the cigarette and flicked the ash from his shoulder. Once the smell of smoke had mostly cleared, he pulled open the floor-to-ceiling window. “Coming.”
Qin Buming had gone to the dinner with him, and the two of them were both staying at the studio tonight.
As Qin Buming unpacked the takeout, he spotted the cigarette pack in Xia Fengsheng’s trouser pocket. It was an expensive brand, a light-tasting cigarette.
“Sheng’er, when did you start smoking?”
Xia Fengsheng looked gentle and refined. He really didn’t look like someone who smoked. In the past he definitely hadn’t. Qin Buming had known him this long and was seeing it for the first time.
Xia Fengsheng lifted a hand and tossed the cigarette pack into the trash. “Once in a while.”
Maybe he’d just been under too much pressure lately, Qin Buming thought.
When people were under pressure, they always needed some kind of outlet.
“Come eat.” Qin Buming opened the bags. It was fried rice and snacks from shops near Jing University.
Xia Fengsheng sat down and opened a box of fried rice.
“Sheng’er, you look thinner lately.”
Xia Fengsheng paused with his chopsticks. “Me?”
Qin Buming looked at his pointed chin. It wasn’t obvious, but since they saw each other every day, he could tell Xia Fengsheng had slimmed down a bit compared to last month. And now he’d started smoking too.
Qin Buming studied him, then nodded hard. “Yeah. Quite a bit thinner.”
The slight loss of weight added even more to the cold, aloof air about him. Colder, and somehow more mysterious.
Recently, every time they went to a banquet, it didn’t take long before Xia Fengsheng would get surrounded by a bunch of young girls. Even if they didn’t know him, each one somehow had eight hundred years’ worth of things to say to him.
Xia Fengsheng was very popular.
Qin Buming said, “Work’s just been too exhausting lately. Once this stretch is over, let’s take a proper vacation.”
Xia Fengsheng nodded. “Mm.”
As he ate, Qin Buming remembered something. “By the way, Sheng’er, you’re looking for a new place and planning to move, right?”
The school was too far from the studio. Xia Fengsheng was spending too much time commuting every day, so he had been looking for a decent place within a few kilometers.
He had already picked one out and had recently started moving his things over bit by bit.
With food still in his mouth, Qin Buming said indistinctly, “Can you manage the move on your own? Want me to help? Moving alone is pretty exhausting.”
Xia Fengsheng shook his head and declined the offer. “No need. I hired movers.”
“Alright. But if you get overwhelmed, tell me.” Qin Buming added, “Oh, right, I’ve got tons of numbers for housing services here. Locksmiths, plumbers, all that. If you need any, tell me and I’ll send them to you.”
Although Qin Buming’s mental state had gotten increasingly unhinged since starting the business, as the oldest of the four he still couldn’t help worrying about the other three and looking after their daily lives.
When they first got together, none of them had money. They had stuck with each other and slowly climbed out of that. Some people could share hardship but not fortune. Luckily, they had stayed through both.
Xia Fengsheng said, “Okay.”
—
In spring, tender green buds began to push out from the tree branches. Standing in the living room of his apartment, Xia Fengsheng gazed through the floor-to-ceiling windows at the world outside.
As work kept him constantly on the move, the cold winter had slipped away in the rush of days. There was no longer any trace of winter wind in the air.
It had taken Xia Fengsheng a whole day to sort everything out. He had thought he didn’t own much, but once he started organizing, his belongings ended up filling the apartment.
The apartment wasn’t cheap. Part of the rent was the view and location outside the window. Though the price hurt, Xia Fengsheng still gritted his teeth and paid it.
Maybe… maybe he should start living a different kind of life.
A life completely opposite to that of a rat in the gutter.
That night, there was another banquet to attend. Xia Fengsheng finished getting dressed, knotted his tie in front of the mirror, fastened his cuffs, and slipped a sleek watch onto his wrist.
He had recently changed the lock on his door to a keypad one, so he no longer needed a key. The moment he stepped outside, he saw that the doormat at his doorway had been stuffed with all sorts of little advertisement cards. Whoever put them there had deliberately left a corner sticking out from under the mat so the resident wouldn’t miss them.
It wasn’t just his door either. The other residents had them too. Some were even wedged into the Spring Festival couplets on the doors.
Xia Fengsheng took a car to the banquet venue.
Qin Buming and the others were already waiting at the entrance to the hall. Zhan Shengyao hooked her arm through Xia Fengsheng’s as they entered together.
As for the two mutant lifeforms behind them who had linked arms with each other, the pair sped up and shook them off.
By the time Qin Buming and Zheng Xing were still playing rock-paper-scissors over who got to hook whose arm, Xia Fengsheng and Zhan Shengyao had already entered the ballroom.
“Hey, wait for us!” The two of them hurried after them. In the chaos, Qin Buming gave Zheng Xing an elbow.
Zheng Xing, who had been about to yelp but realized this was a banquet: … grits teeth and swallows it.jpg
For newcomers like them, banquets were an excellent place to form connections in the world of reputation and profit.
Zhan Shengyao very quickly ran into one of her former clients—the same one she had helped win back their housekeeper. The moment they saw each other, she got hauled off so the client could introduce her to other rising elites.
Before long, Xia Fengsheng’s arm was linked with someone else too—Li Taoli, the youngest daughter of the Li family.
Their team had recently been working with the Li family. Li Taoli was twenty this year. She had attended some banquets before, but they had all been for fun—birthday parties, coming-of-age parties, that sort of thing. This kind of real high-society networking banquet was her first.
Her father, Mr. Li, had initially taken her around the room himself, but when work called him away, he handed Li Taoli over to Xia Fengsheng.
“Mr. Xia, I’m so nervous.” Li Taoli held onto Xia Fengsheng’s arm, her heart pounding. Beside her, Xia Fengsheng was as composed and steady as a butler.
In Li Taoli’s eyes, Xia Fengsheng was gentle and cultivated. She had never seen him blush or lose his temper with anyone. His emotions never seemed to swing much one way or the other, and when he spoke his voice was always soft. Being next to him made her feel secure.
“Mr. Xia, can you come over there with me in a bit?” Li Taoli pointed in one direction. “My friends are all over there.”
They had all been curious about Xia Fengsheng. Before the banquet even started, they had begged her that if she ran into Mr. Xia, she had to bring him over. They all wanted to meet him but didn’t know how to approach him, so they had asked her to help.
As Li Taoli slowly led Xia Fengsheng in that direction, her lively almond eyes suddenly caught sight of something, and she brightened with surprise.
“Brother Shi Ye!”
Xia Fengsheng had still been in the middle of saying something to Qin Buming when the little girl abruptly pulled him along.
He was forced to quicken his pace to keep up with her. His finely made leather shoes clicked as he followed. Li Taoli called happily, “Brother Shi Ye!”
At the name, Xia Fengsheng blanked for a split second, but his expression immediately returned to normal. Shi Ye’s name fell into him like a drop of water into a lake—one ripple, and then nothing remained.
He looked over.
This was the first time Xia Fengsheng had seen Shi Ye in two months.
Under the giant crystal chandelier at the center of the banquet hall, Shi Ye stood out immediately. Unlike everyone else, he wasn’t in formalwear. He was dressed casually, as if he had only been dragged here at the last minute.
His hair was much shorter than before. It used to be long enough for all sorts of styling, but now it was only a little longer than a buzz cut. Fortunately, his face was naturally handsome enough to carry any hairstyle. The shorter hair only made his strong-boned features look even sharper, his brows and eyes deeper, more forceful, more aggressive.
Compared with two months ago, Shi Ye’s skin was much darker. The old fair complexion had turned into a healthy honey tone. A thin, long scar now ran across one side of his face, from the middle of his left cheek all the way to the angle of his jaw.
The scar was striking. There was a wildness to him now that his looks alone could no longer conceal. His body was also much bulkier than before. The scar added a rough edge to his face, making him seem far more dangerous than he had before they broke up.
Every movement of his was stern and unsmiling. Even standing at the center of the crowd, he clearly had no interest in socializing. There was a trace of impatience on his face.
And yet, the moment Li Taoli led Xia Fengsheng into the crowd, the dark depths of Shi Ye’s eyes stirred. His gaze locked onto Xia Fengsheng like radar.
The instant Shi Ye realized Xia Fengsheng had seen him, his first instinct was to dodge.
Almost reflexively, he turned the scarred side of his face away, hiding it from Xia Fengsheng’s line of sight.
The scar had come from an explosion during an assignment, when a shard of flying metal had sliced across his face. The cut had been deep—just a little deeper and it would have needed stitches.
The moment he heard stitches would mean a scar, Shi Ye had felt the sky collapse. The wound was supposed to be stitched, but once it was, the scar would stay. He absolutely refused, insisting he could let it heal on its own.
He had it cleaned and the bleeding stopped, then gritted his teeth and endured while it healed.
The night Xia Fengsheng had agreed without hesitation to break up, Shi Ye had been devastated. He had immediately wanted to run after him.
But the second he stepped out of the dorm, the captain arrived with others. They pinned him to the ground by the head, several men holding him down so he couldn’t move, and forcibly shaved his hair. He could only leave once the training was over. He had clawed at his own heart and lungs the entire time, trapped in the unit for more than two months.
By the time he came out, his hair was short, his skin dark, and his face ruined. He had been applying scar cream to the wound the whole time.
Now Shi Ye carried an untamed energy around him, his hormones stronger than ever.
He had wanted to grow his hair out and let the scar fade before seeing Xia Fengsheng again. He had never expected them to meet like this, with no warning at all.
He didn’t dare look at Xia Fengsheng, and he definitely didn’t want Xia Fengsheng seeing him like this. He thought he looked ugly. He wanted to hide, but there was nowhere to hide a man of his size.
Training at the base had required huge amounts of physical exertion, and therefore huge amounts of calories too. His muscles were still sharply defined now, but there was a slight bulk over them.
Xia Fengsheng didn’t like the rough, savage type. Shi Ye hadn’t recovered to his former self yet.
“Brother Shi Ye, long time no see!” Li Taoli greeted him.
It was a rare thing to run into Shi Ye at a banquet. He hardly ever attended them.
“Long time no see,” Shi Ye replied.
Seeing Shi Ye keep darting glances at Xia Fengsheng, Li Taoli asked curiously, “Brother Shi Ye, did you two know each other before?”
Her eyes moved back and forth between them in confusion.
“We don’t know each other.”
Before Shi Ye could even open his mouth, a cool voice denied any connection first.
With a gentle smile, Xia Fengsheng said to Li Taoli, “Mr. Shi and I are not close.”
Shi Ye’s straight mouth corners drooped in sadness.
Shi Ye: “:(”
“I see.” Li Taoli tilted up her childish face toward Xia Fengsheng. Whatever the fox said, the girl believed immediately. “Then let’s get acquainted today.”
Xia Fengsheng only gave the most basic self-introduction. From beginning to end, his gaze never once landed on Shi Ye.
Shi Ye’s eyes followed Xia Fengsheng all over the room. He watched him laugh and chat with others. He watched Li Taoli bring him over to her group of friends, where he was soon surrounded by young men and women.
Around midnight, the banquet came to an end. Xia Fengsheng walked outside to see Li Taoli into the Li family car.
Leaning out the window, face flushed pink with excitement, Li Taoli said, “Mr. Xia, I had such a great time today. See you next time.”
Xia Fengsheng waved her off.
The car drove away and disappeared. Tired after the entire evening, Xia Fengsheng took out his phone, planning to call a car home too.
A shadow suddenly swallowed his own on the ground.
Xia Fengsheng turned his eyes sharply.
Shi Ye had somehow appeared beside him.
He didn’t know when Shi Ye had come over. He didn’t look surprised—he simply chose to ignore him completely.
Standing beside him, Shi Ye’s frame dwarfed his. Looking at Xia Fengsheng’s cold profile, Shi Ye lowered his head and asked carefully, “Can we talk?”
Xia Fengsheng called his ride on his phone, then looked up at him. “Talk about what?”
The moment Xia Fengsheng looked over, Shi Ye shifted the scarred side of his face away again so he wouldn’t see it.
Nervously, he said, “About the breakup.”
He didn’t want to break up with Xia Fengsheng. He had regretted it the moment the words left his mouth.
But Xia Fengsheng had never given him the chance to take them back.
Xia Fengsheng’s answer was absolute. “We already broke up. There’s nothing to talk about.”
Shi Ye felt a sharp ache in his chest. When he had sent the breakup message, Xia Fengsheng had agreed without the slightest hesitation. There had been no attempt to hold him back at all. Anxious, he blurted out, “Do you really not like me at all?”
Xia Fengsheng crossed his arms, mockery written all over his face. “Weren’t you the one who toyed with me first, Shi Ye?”
“What? Couldn’t keep up the dog act anymore, so now you’re trying to twist it back on me?”
Back then, Xia Fengsheng had publicly claimed amnesia. When Shi Ye suddenly reappeared, Xia Fengsheng had suspected his motives all along.
Two months ago, Shi Ye asking for a breakup had perfectly explained why he had come running back to reconcile in the first place.
He had wanted to take advantage of Xia Fengsheng’s amnesia to get revenge by playing with his feelings.
Luckily, it hadn’t been revenge in the form of money. Xia Fengsheng didn’t care much about that. He just didn’t want any more contact with Shi Ye.
His gaze slipped almost imperceptibly to the scar on Shi Ye’s face, and a trace of pain flashed through his eyes before disappearing. They had always belonged to two completely different worlds.
In a hoarse voice, Shi Ye said, “I…”
Xia Fengsheng lifted his eyes. “You what?”
It had been too long since he’d seen Xia Fengsheng. Just one look from him was enough to undo Shi Ye.
Feeling ugly and inadequate, Shi Ye lowered his head and avoided Xia Fengsheng’s eyes. “I wasn’t acting.”
Everything good he had done for Xia Fengsheng in the past had been real. None of it had been fake. He had simply never understood himself, always finding excuses even as he acted on those feelings, washing his own brain so thoroughly he convinced himself Xia Fengsheng wasn’t important.
But the moment Xia Fengsheng had agreed to break up, Shi Ye had once again tasted the pain of being abandoned by the person he loved.
Worse than last time. Far worse. The pain had been so overwhelming it felt like ten thousand blades were stabbing into his chest.
He didn’t want to break up with Xia Fengsheng. They were still supposed to go to Hawaii together. They were supposed to go to many more places together…
At that moment, the car Xia Fengsheng had called pulled up. He opened the door and got in.
Shi Ye moved to the window like a dog looking at its owner. “Are you really never going to contact me again? What if one day you end up begging to see me?”
Xia Fengsheng didn’t know what had happened to him during the two months he’d vanished. He only felt as though Shi Ye’s brain had broken.
Beg him to see him? Maybe he should listen to himself first.
The driver stepped on the gas, and the car shot off, leaving Shi Ye with nothing but exhaust.
For the next half month, Xia Fengsheng buried himself in work. Since that night, Shi Ye also disappeared completely from his life.
Everything returned to its proper track, as though the only thing that had ever truly changed Xia Fengsheng’s life was the amnesia. Shi Ye might as well never have appeared.
Beg to see him? Xia Fengsheng laughed softly to himself. Shi Ye had been the one to suggest breaking up. Xia Fengsheng had been so delighted he’d nearly wanted to burn incense in celebration.
The fact that Shi Ye had broken up with him on his own had spared him the effort of plotting and scheming for a breakup himself. There was no way he would ever end up begging to see Shi Ye.
Because of project deadlines, Xia Fengsheng was leaving early and coming back late every day. The only thing keeping the people at Dawn Studio alive was the promise of half a month of vacation once the project was done.
One midnight, around twelve, after working late, Zheng Xing dropped face-first onto the keyboard.
Heavens. When was this ever going to end?
He felt like he wasn’t even human anymore. Every time he looked in the mirror, he increasingly felt like a donkey.
Xia Fengsheng grabbed his coat, exhausted eyes ready to leave work. “Goodnight, Shengyao.”
Qin Buming, standing right in front of him: …
Would it kill you to open your eyes and look at who I actually am?!
They were all so exhausted they couldn’t even distinguish man from beast anymore.
By the time Xia Fengsheng got home, it was already one in the morning. He hadn’t eaten dinner, but he’d missed the point of hunger and had no appetite anymore. He just wanted to strip and take a hot shower.
Being alone let him indulge his true nature. The gentleman everyone else saw began undressing at the front hall and kept peeling things off all the way to the bathroom.
He turned on the shower, ready for a hot rinse. But after standing under it for a while, the water running down his arms never warmed up.
Xia Fengsheng checked the heater and found nothing wrong. He went to inspect the sink, only to discover there was no hot water there either. The moment he turned on the tap, the pipe connected to it suddenly burst and poured out a sheet of water. In an instant, the bathroom floor was flooded.
It took only a few seconds for the entire bathroom floor to be covered. Xia Fengsheng reacted quickly and shut off the valve before too much leaked out and the whole apartment got flooded.
Thankfully, he had closed it in time. Only the bathroom had standing water now.
Facing the ruptured pipe, Xia Fengsheng felt a headache coming on. It was hard to say whether this was good luck or bad—bad because after a whole day of work, he still couldn’t even take a shower when he got home; good because he’d found the problem before the apartment got submerged.
He remembered there had been a lot of advertisement cards tucked under the doormat outside. Among them had been several for emergency plumbing and pipe repair services.
He walked outside and gathered the cards from under the doormat. He’d already thrown plenty away, but as soon as he did, more would be stuffed there again.
Xia Fengsheng picked out a few of the cards advertising twenty-four-hour plumbing repair and called the numbers on them.
There were three cards in total. No one picked up the first two. The third one finally connected.
After a whole exhausting day, Xia Fengsheng had no energy for a drawn-out conversation. He briefly explained where the leak was and asked the person to come quickly.
He still had work tomorrow. The sooner it was fixed, the sooner he could shower and go to bed.
Fortunately, the repairman came quickly. In less than ten minutes, the doorbell rang.
Wearing only his bathrobe, Xia Fengsheng, barefoot in slippers, went to open the door.
The door swung open.
Outside stood the repairman in orange coveralls, sleeves rolled up to reveal honey-colored forearms. A leather belt cinched his firm waist. He wore a black cap pulled low over his face. He was very tall, broad-shouldered and straight-backed, with black work boots on his feet and white gloves covering both hands. In his strong right hand was a toolbox.
The moment Xia Fengsheng spotted the luxury-brand belt, he realized something was wrong.
Then the man looked up from beneath the brim of his cap and met his eyes.
Shi Ye said, “Didn’t expect you to miss me this much. So soon you’re already begging to see me.”
Xia Fengsheng: …
