After rinsing the wound and dabbing on some iodine, Xin Ruan returned to his room alone.
He drew the stuffy, heavy curtains, and the room instantly plunged into boundless darkness, as if a black hole had swallowed every cheerful color in the world, leaving only sorrow and gloom.
Xin Ruan flopped face-down onto the bed, eyes staring blankly ahead, zoning out.
All the decor and furniture in the room were cool-toned, cold as water Li Ran’s consistent style.
But Xin Ruan didn’t like it.
Because cool colors always reminded him of his childhood, when the whole family was crammed into a dark, damp, run-down house.
Warm sunshine couldn’t filter through the narrow window lattice; the dim yellow bulb couldn’t light up his parents’ figures as they rose early. In those few tiny square meters lived generation after generation of damp, dreary childhoods.
So Xin Ruan didn’t like cool colors.
He liked warm colors. He liked rooms that were bright and cheerful.
He liked anything that could bring warmth and comfort to a home.
Warmth, a lived-in feeling that was what he had imagined his own home would look like, countless times.
But reality was the exact opposite of his imagination.
The villa’s decor was entirely to Li Ran’s taste, uniformly cool-toned wallpaper, floor tiles, furniture, all cold and icy, nothing like the feeling of a home.
Yet Xin Ruan still lived here with unrelenting persistence.
It wasn’t that he didn’t know Li Ran had Butler Jiang prepare a separate room for him.
He simply played dumb, coaxing Mother Li into arranging for his clothes and belongings to be placed in Li Ran’s room.
Then, pretending not to understand Li Ran’s hints, he had gleefully squeezed himself into this space that belonged solely to Li Ran.
As the saying goes, dripping water pierces stone, and constant grinding wears down an iron rod into a needle.
Xin Ruan believed that over time, Li Ran would eventually change how he saw him. from loathing to fondness.
He treated it as his own form of cultivation.
Xin Ruan hugged the blanket, breathing in the scent on it that belonged solely to Li Ran, lying quietly.
……
Sleeping during the day was never as restful as sleeping at night.
Xin Ruan was woken by a tremendous commotion outside.
When he opened his eyes, his head felt heavy and dizzy, and he felt awful.
Out of habit, Xin Ruan reached for a cigarette, but the empty nightstand made him remember, this was the bedroom he shared with Li Ran.
Not knowing exactly how he felt, Xin Ruan sat dazed at the edge of the bed for a while.
He got up and pulled open the curtains, only to discover that night had fallen and the city lights had come on. In his daze, he had somehow slept through an entire day.
Outside the window, beyond the colorful light strips on the skyscrapers, were the dazzling fireworks that had woken him.
Fireworks shot into the sky one after another, instantly bursting into countless blue grains, brilliant and dazzling.
The villa’s location was excellent, offering an easy view of the 360-meter-tall Twin Towers screen in the CBD beside the fireworks.
The screen displayed gold characters on a red background, scrolling with enormous text.
Xin Ruan stood patiently at the window until he finally read the full scrolling message.
Welcome home, Ye Qing’an.
When the text finished scrolling, blue fireworks bloomed again behind the Twin Towers, rising into the sky with ostentatious elegance, bursting into brilliant scattered stars.
Before he could even marvel at the beauty of the blue fireworks he was seeing for the first time, Xin Ruan realized that Ye Qing’an had truly returned to the country.
He was back already?
That was fast.
Xin Ruan’s mouth twitched, and a trace of relief rose in his heart.
He was relieved that his brain had still been groggy when he woke, that he hadn’t remembered today was his own birthday, that he hadn’t been an idiot making a wish on those fireworks.
He truly had no heart to appreciate a homecoming gift prepared for his love rival.