KARI boutique.
“Hello.” The sales assistant came forward when she saw someone enter. “Are you looking for women’s or men’s clothing? We just got a new batch of arrivals in store recently, would you like to take a look?”
Su Yin carried a black bag. “Thank you. I’m here to see Ms. Ye.” The shop was spacious. He walked to the nearest rack and touched the fabric, automatically checking the stitching.
“And you are?” the sales assistant asked.
“vito.” Su Yin gave his professional name. “Ms. Ye should be here, right?”
The sales assistant suddenly understood. “So you’re Mr. vito. Yes, she is. This way, please.” So this was the person the boss had been waiting for. She’d been wondering why the boss had stayed in the shop all three of these days.
“The boss is upstairs, second room on the left.”
“All right, thank you.”
Standing in front of his teacher’s office again, Su Yin felt a little nervous. In his memory, the last time had only been a month ago, when he, his teacher, and his senior sister had sat in this room discussing going abroad.
This time, even the staff had been replaced.
Knock knock.
“Ms. Ye. It’s Su Yin.”
“Come in.”
Su Yin pushed the door open and went in. Walking up behind the woman standing in front of a plastic mannequin, he lowered his head and called out, “Ms. Ye, I’ve come to apologize.”
Ye Lin turned around. Her white dress brought out her elegance beautifully. She opened her arms and spun once. “What do you think of this dress?”
Looking closely, it even carried the faintest hint of pink, simple and grand without losing its elegance. Su Yin circled his teacher once. “Is this your new piece, Ms. Ye?” It looked like the kind of style Aunt Jiang would like.
He wondered whether ‘he’ had offended Aunt Jiang too.
Ye Lin looked to be around forty. She took excellent care of herself, maintained a perfect figure, mature and refined. Satisfied, she said, “Mm. My new piece.” Then she turned toward the full length mirror. “Where’s your garment?”
“Right here.” Su Yin was confident in what he’d made. He took out the garment and handed it to her, then followed behind her with his head lowered as she pinched the edges of the clothing between two fingers and sat down at the tea table in the back. “What do you think, Ms. Ye?”
Ye Lin felt the fabric and stitching, then examined the cut. “How is this so different from what you were making before?”
“Before?”
“I’ve seen the clothes you made as a ghost designer for someone else.” Ye Lin disliked color palettes that were too exaggerated, the same way she did on a runway. “They were simply outrageous.” She gave Su Yin a look of distaste. “Has your muse come back to your side?”
In design, inspiration was important. A muse could be an object or a person, but there was always one. The works Su Yin had turned in to He Corporation over the past half year had indeed had a different style, and many had become bestsellers. Although they had carried someone else’s name, she had recognized Su Yin’s hand at a glance. After all, he was the last disciple she had personally trained for years.
The style really wasn’t to her taste. The spirit was gone, and all that remained was naked ambition. Works like that could become bestsellers, but they would never make it to an international runway.
So she could only assume his muse had disappeared.
Hearing that, Su Yin truly didn’t know how to explain. He was relieved that, aside from standing her up, ‘he’ hadn’t done anything extra to make his teacher angry. But the matter of his muse was hard to explain, so he could only say, “No. He divorced me.”
Ye Lin’s expression didn’t change. “Sit.” She set the garment on the armrest and picked up the teapot to make tea. “What does divorce have to do with design inspiration?”
Su Yin shook his head. He didn’t know. The moment he woke up, he was already facing divorce. It was giving him a headache.
But…
His eyes sharpened. Right, he’d suddenly ‘woken up’ just when Pei Weixue had firmly demanded a divorce, his mother refused to acknowledge him, and Jiang Zhi wanted to cut ties with him forever.
Could there be some connection?
It couldn’t be that heaven had seen ‘him’ commit enough sins and sent him here to bear the consequences, could it?
If he could recover all the memories from those six years, maybe he could find the answer.
“All right. Drink your tea. Tell me the design concept behind this piece.” Ever since taking Su Yin as a student, she had never accepted another. She had three disciples in total, the first two already internationally renowned designers. Since Su Yin seemed to want to find his way back from the wrong path, then for the sake of this garment, she would turn a blind eye and let the matter of being stood up slide.
She really was getting old, softhearted. Still, she was puzzled by how Su Yin had even dared to come looking for her. After he stood her up six years ago, she had already struck his name from under her tutelage.
She watched Su Yin, holding the garment and enthusiastically pouring out its design concept. What a thick skin. Calling her “Ms. Ye” every other sentence, as close and familiar as before.
Su Yin had always had a sweet tongue. Back when she took him around to meet master designers and important figures in the industry, he’d always handled himself with ease, never awkward in the slightest.
It would be a lie to say she wasn’t angry.
“The stitching around the shoulder line sits lower…”
After finishing, Su Yin proudly held the garment up against himself. “Ms. Ye, my figure’s gotten worse, but my muse is still wonderful.” He walked to her side. “You have no idea how good Weixue looks in this!”
“Enough, enough.” Ye Lin waved a hand. “You’re just like before, three sentences and one of them is Pei Weixue. I’ve already spoken to your senior sister about next month’s Haicheng Design Competition. She’ll go with you. As for the model…” Originally she had been about to say that Su Yin had a decent enough figure to model for himself.
Then suddenly, she realized something was off.
She looked Su Yin up and down. “No, wait, what happened to your figure?”
Su Yin slapped a hand against his stomach. “I promise, I’ll get back to how I used to be.”
“Mm. Leave the garment here and hurry back to work on your design drafts. If you want to draw here, that’s fine too. Move your things over.”
Su Yin bowed at a perfect ninety degrees, excited. “Thank you so much, Ms. Ye!”
After leaving his teacher’s place, Su Yin rushed straight to the gym. By the time he got home, drenched in sweat, he took a shower, made lunch, then carried a thermos container over to check in with his mom, but she ignored him.
He slumped his shoulders as he went downstairs. Good thing he’d managed to pry Pei Weixue’s studio address out of Jiang Zhi, otherwise he wouldn’t even know where to go.
It was perfect timing since he was trying to lose weight anyway, and riding a bicycle counted as cardio. He pedaled until he was soaked in sweat all over again before finally arriving.
“1207…” Su Yin stepped out of the elevator and searched for the studio. When he saw the room number, his eyes lit up. Finally, he’d found it.
[Weiyin Tech]
The studio name made the corners of Su Yin’s mouth lift uncontrollably. See, Weixue really was so honest.
Everywhere he looked, he could feel how much Weixue liked him. Jiang Zhi always called him a pathetic simp, but so what. It’s only simping if it’s one sided.
If both sides do it, that’s called kissing.
The moment kissing came to mind, Su Yin’s excitement vanished. He hadn’t kissed Weixue!
Just one tiny peck!
Had ‘he’ ever kissed Weixue?!
He walked in. The receptionist saw him and acted as if she hadn’t, continuing her work. He kept walking while looking around, but whenever he wanted to ask one of the staff where Pei Weixue’s office was, no one paid him any attention.
Fortunately, the studio wasn’t that big.
Knock knock~
“Come in.”
Weixue’s voice! Su Yin thought to himself that he really was smart, he’d figured out the right room in one try!
He pushed the door open and stuck his head in. “Weixue, I brought you lunch.”
Pei Weixue, who had been reading documents, looked toward the doorway in surprise at the sneaky figure there. Brought him lunch?
He frowned in silence, then went back to reading.
Su Yin set the thermos container on the desk and quickly opened it. “Today I made clam and pork rib soup, braised fish, and stir fried celtuce.” He took them out one by one, then produced a little Weixue roly poly toy like he was presenting a treasure. “I’ll leave this on your desk to cheer you up in my place.”
After saying that, he looked at Pei Weixue. Pei Weixue just stared at him without speaking, and Su Yin scratched his head. “These are all things you like to eat.”
But Pei Weixue’s gaze passed over the food to the things Su Yin was carrying on his back.
Su Yin saw what he was looking at. “Oh, this?” He took it off. “I’m going to work on design drafts here, so we can go to work together.”
After setting his things down, he walked over and neatly stacked all the documents to one side. Then he served out some rice and stuffed a spoon into Pei Weixue’s hand. Pei Weixue preferred eating rice with a spoon, because he said chopsticks were bad for picking up rice, and the last few bites had to be scraped up, which he hated.
“Let me tell you, Ms. Ye already accepted the garment I made.” Su Yin dragged over a chair as he spoke. “But since you didn’t give me your measurements, I had to make it based on the measurements I already had from before.” He pulled the chair up to the desk and sat down.
Seeing that Pei Weixue wasn’t eating much, he said, “Eat a little more.” He picked up his chopsticks, lifted a piece of fish, carefully removed the bones, and then gave it to Pei Weixue.
Pei Weixue watched him with his head lowered, seriously picking out the bones, then replied, “I’ll give you my measurements later.” For the sake of this table full of lunch.
“Sounds good.” Su Yin’s eyes curved with delight, overjoyed. “Oh right, I even got a commission yesterday, more than a thousand yuan. But the measurements he sent me seemed kind of similar to mine from before.” He took out his phone, pulled up the message, and turned it toward him. “Look, don’t you think?”
Pei Weixue glanced at it while eating. The hand holding the spoon paused slightly. Those were Su Yin’s measurements from when he was nineteen. He remembered them very clearly.
Back then, Su Yin had pestered him into taking his measurements, and he had done it for him. Those numbers were the ones he’d written down in a notebook. He had also wanted to learn how to make a piece of clothing for Su Yin, but what he’d made had been a complete mess, totally unwearable. In the end, he never gave it to him, and instead asked Su Qingyue for help weaving a scarf as a gift.
Still, it was normal enough for someone else to have this kind of figure too, wasn’t it.
“It’s a very standard model figure. I don’t think he actually looks like these proportions, though.” Su Yin saw that he’d finished the fish soup and poured him another bowl. “Whatever. As long as I make it according to the client’s requirements, there won’t be a problem.”
“More than a thousand yuan!” Su Yin was thrilled that he could finally start earning money. The tight spot he’d been in these past few days was finally easing a little. “From now on I’ll bring you lunch every day.”
Pei Weixue gave a quiet “Mm.”
Su Yin spent the entire afternoon sitting in the office working on design drafts. Sheets of discarded paper went back and forth into the wastebasket until it was full.
At times, employees came in to deliver documents or report on work, and when they saw Su Yin, they acted as if he wasn’t there.
Those voices didn’t affect Su Yin either. Pei Weixue didn’t deliberately lower his voice, but every time Su Yin worked on design drafts, he shut out the outside world completely.
When quitting time arrived, Su Yin sprang to his feet. “Weixue, it’s time to get off work. Let’s go home.”
“I still have overtime. You go back first.”
Su Yin saw that he was still reading documents and, after packing up his things, walked over to his side. “You can do it at home too. There’s a computer there as well.” He looked outside. The employees were all leaving one after another. There wasn’t really any difference between staying at the studio and working from home.
Pei Weixue stayed silent and kept reading.
Su Yin tugged at his clothes. “Come home. I’ll make you a late night snack.”
Pei Weixue said with a dark expression, “Su Yin, I’m working, can you stop making noise? You may not care about your career, but I still care about mine.” Clear impatience showed on his face. When he felt Su Yin let go of his clothes, he took a sip of ice water. “Sorry.” He lowered his head and took a medicine bottle out of the drawer, but before he could open it, it was snatched away.
He looked at the person who had grabbed the bottle. Su Yin had a smile on his face as he leaned down to look at him. “You don’t need to apologize. I was the one pestering you in the first place. But you’ve already scolded me, so don’t take it anymore. Scold me however you want.”
At those words, Pei Weixue stared silently at the medicine bottle that had been tossed aside.
A few minutes later, he shut down the computer.