Jiang Ding was woken up by her cravings.
The air was filled with the domineering scent of braised meat. Even with the bedroom door closed, the rich aroma forced its way through the gaps.
Before she even opened her eyes, she took a deep breath, a look of pure ecstasy washing over her face.
The second she opened her eyes, however, a very serious problem occurred to her. She scrambled out of bed and ran out in her slippers.
Cong Yixing, busy at the stove, heard the commotion and turned around. He saw Jiang Ding standing at the kitchen entrance, staring at him with a dead-serious expression.
He knew her too well. Seeing her staring without speaking, he knew she was waiting for him to initiate the conversation.
Jiang Ding had some peculiar quirks. For instance, if they hadn’t seen each other for a long time, he had to be the first one to speak when they met; she claimed this proved he missed her more.
As for her definition of “a long time,” she had her own standards. In her logic, waking up from a nap meant they hadn’t seen each other for seven or eight hours.
Cong Yixing was more than happy to play along with these whimsical games. He said, “Baby’s awake. Why so serious the moment you wake up?”
Jiang Ding’s tone was as grave as her expression: “We. Forgot. To. Buy. Beef!”
“Beef!”
“Braised beef!”
Cong Yixing slapped his forehead. “My fault. I forgot the braised beef—your fourth favorite food!”
Jiang Ding immediately puckered her fair, tender face. Her mouth puffed out in the middle while the corners drooped, making an expression as if she were about to burst into tears.
Knowing she wasn’t actually going to cry but was simply using her face to vent her feelings, Cong Yixing quickly coaxed her: “It’s okay. I won’t pour out the braising liquid. I’ll go to the supermarket tonight to buy beef and braise it for you overnight. You can eat it as soon as you wake up tomorrow, okay?”
Jiang Ding retracted her crying face and asked, “It’s so hot; will the braising liquid go bad if it sits out all day?”
“No, it won’t spoil that easily. At worst, I’ll leave the living room AC on today and place the pot near the unit.”
Jiang Ding nodded, satisfied.
She did a quick inspection of the kitchen, lifted the lid of the lard jar to take a peek, and asked, “Have you been in the kitchen since this morning? Don’t you have work to do?”
Cong Yixing was currently pouring blanched vegetables into the braising pot. He replied, “As long as the monitoring system is running normally, I don’t need to watch it every second. If a problem is detected, the program will sound an alarm.”
“Sounds pretty simple. So what were you so busy with the past few days?”
Cong Yixing’s voice sounded helpless: “Writing reports.”
Jiang Ding gave an “Oh” of sympathy. She took one last look at the pot—not yet finished but already fragrant—and reluctantly left the kitchen to wash up.
During lunch, Cong Yixing told her about Zhong Rui.
Instantly, the tender braised chicken feet in Jiang Ding’s hand didn’t seem so tasty anymore. She was a bit reluctant. “I have social anxiety.”
Cong Yixing coaxed her: “I know you don’t like socializing. He’s thick-skinned anyway; you can just ignore him. Just treat him like he doesn’t exist.”
“That would be so rude.”
“Why bother being polite to him? You’re the head of this household. He’s just a freeloader; he wouldn’t dare have an opinion about you.”
“But I don’t like having other people in the house. You know that.”
Cong Yixing paused.
Of course he knew. To her, home was a very private space.
The phrase “no visitors” provided her with a unique sense of security.
No visitors meant she could do anything in this space of less than a hundred square meters. She could shout and scream after sealing the windows; she could walk around completely naked after drawing the curtains; she could leave the door open while using the bathroom or showering; she could scroll through videos with the volume on full blast at any time or place…
She felt that everything in the outside world imposed a sense of restraint. Only in this space shared by just the two of them could she shed those shackles and achieve true freedom.
This is her lifestyle. As long as it doesn’t affect anyone else, even I have no right to change it. Thinking this, Cong Yixing felt he had made a mistake.
He should have rejected Zhong Rui directly from the start instead of bringing the problem to his baby and making things difficult for her.
He said softly to Jiang Ding, “I know. I’m sorry, baby. I’ll think of another way for him.”
Jiang Ding looked up, her gaze scanning his face. She saw that he wasn’t angry because she refused to house his best friend; instead, he seemed to be blaming himself.
Somehow, Jiang Ding felt a twinge of guilt: He’s being so nice that I look like the bad guy.
Though she had only met him a few times, Jiang Ding knew a fair bit about Zhong Rui—Cong Yixing never hid anything from her. Any question she asked, he answered patiently.
She thought Zhong Rui was actually quite pitiful.
Zhong Rui’s parents met while working in the south. His mother was a girl born in a big city who, out of love, unhesitatingly married Zhong Rui’s father and followed him to live in a small northern county.
After the wedding, they opened a clothing store in the county. Zhong Rui’s mother sourced goods from her relatives in the south and shipped them to the north, where fashion tastes were relatively behind at the time. The store was a massive hit.
A young couple’s first business venture is rarely smooth sailing. They endured many hardships before getting the hang of it, eventually expanding and opening branch stores in neighboring counties.
Later, when she became pregnant with Zhong Rui and the business had stabilized, his mother stopped managing the store to focus on her pregnancy.
Unfortunately, the saying “men turn bad once they have money” seemed to hold true. Just as she was about to give birth, Zhong Rui’s mother accidentally discovered her husband was cheating with a young clerk from one of the branch stores!
How does a pregnant mother with a very simple daily routine find out her husband is cheating? It was certainly because someone wanted her to find out.
As her due date approached, the mistress intentionally left feminine items in the husband’s car.
Supporting her heavy belly, Zhong Rui’s mother calmly interrogated the father all night until she finally cleared up the whole situation.
Afterward, she appeared very calm. Despite her husband’s repeated promises, she seemingly let him off for the time being. In secret, however, she contacted her own parents. On the second day after giving birth, she was quietly taken away by her parents who had rushed to her side.
She left resolutely, leaving behind the family business they had spent years building and the newborn baby.
Zhong Rui’s father thought he had been forgiven. After all, what man doesn’t stray?
His wife’s easy dismissal seemed like a silent endorsement of his behavior. So, while he made verbal promises, he stayed in contact with the mistress in secret.
Going from a migrant worker to a successful man who could have two or more women at once, he was incredibly proud of himself.
That was until his wife abandoned everything and fled overnight. Her departure felt like a brutal slap to his smug face.
Was he such a despicable person? So much so that the wife who had struggled alongside him would rather leave her newborn child than be near him?
He was furious—furious at that heartless woman, and furious at his loss of face. Unable to find an outlet for this rage, he eventually took it out on the child that woman had left behind.
He treated the defenseless child with cold indifference, unaware that in the eyes of outsiders, he had become a total scumbag.
Even his own parents were disappointed in him and took their grandson to live separately from him.
But instead of self-reflecting, he felt they were better off gone; it simply cleared space for him to frolic among his “flowers.”
Zhong Rui was raised by his grandparents until his teens. His grandparents passed away one after the other while he was in junior high. Having lost his protection, Zhong Rui was forced to live with his scumbag father.
That man had married another wife while Zhong Rui was in elementary school—a woman as malicious as he was.
Behind the man’s back, the woman mistreated the child left by the ex-wife in every way possible. Zhong Rui, who had been raised tall and strong by his grandparents, became skin and bones after living in that house for just one year.
It was during that time he met Cong Yixing.
After a class reshuffle, Zhong Rui met this desk-mate who would secretly put bread in his desk whenever he heard Zhong Rui’s stomach growling fiercely from hunger.
Later, they went to the same high school. Zhong Rui found a way to make the man agree to let him board at the school.
Once he lived at school, even with only the pittance of a living allowance the man gave him whenever he remembered, Zhong Rui’s life was much better than before.
This was because Cong Yixing would save his own allowance to top up Zhong Rui’s meal card and would bring him home on weekends to hitch a meal.
Cong Yixing’s mother used to be a banquet chef. Her cooking was delicious and hearty, and she soon put the weight back on Zhong Rui, turning him back into a tall, healthy teenager.
Cong Yixing became the person who treated him best in the whole world, and Zhong Rui was deeply dependent on him.
He followed Cong Yixing to a university in the same city. The two were inseparable—until Cong Yixing started dating.
Jiang Ding didn’t know if Zhong Rui found her annoying, but she had definitely found him annoying at the start.
Couples in the honeymoon phase want to be glued together every moment, especially on weekends when there’s plenty of time for dates.
But Zhong Rui seemed to have no sense of boundaries. Every weekend, he would travel halfway across the city to hang out with Cong Yixing.
Thus, Cong Yixing had to bring him along on his dates with Jiang Ding. A party of two became a party of three, and Zhong Rui would chatter incessantly with Cong Yixing. Jiang Ding would grit her teeth in anger, wishing she could pack Zhong Rui up and throw him to the horizon.
Later, when Cong Yixing moved into her rental, she told him flat-out at the beginning that she didn’t like visitors and told him not to bring Zhong Rui over!
She didn’t know how Cong Yixing explained it to him, but Zhong Rui really never came to their home.
However, although he didn’t come in person, his presence never vanished from their lives.
He knew Cong Yixing’s class schedule by heart. Whenever Cong Yixing wasn’t in class, he would get a call—either inviting him to play games or to work odd jobs together.
Even worse, sometimes he had nothing to do and just wanted to talk.
He talked even more than Jiang Ding. A single phone call could last over an hour. It was only when Jiang Ding reached her limit and started tugging on Cong Yixing’s hair that he would make an excuse to hang up.
Jiang Ding endured it repeatedly until one time she finally lost her temper and gave Cong Yixing a piece of her mind.
She didn’t know what Cong Yixing did after that, but Zhong Rui’s calls became less frequent. Instead, he started sending Cong Yixing countless messages every day.
Jiang Ding occasionally checked Cong Yixing’s phone, but she never clicked on his chat with Zhong Rui because it was simply too wordy and trivial. Zhong Rui would even consult Cong Yixing on whether or not to brush his teeth that night.
Fortunately, both found jobs quickly after graduation. Perhaps Zhong Rui had matured; he wasn’t as clingy as before, and Jiang Ding’s distaste for him gradually faded.
She even felt a bit of sympathy for him upon hearing he had quit his job and his AC was broken.
But sympathy was not the same as taking him in!
She could accept Cong Yixing helping Zhong Rui silently, but she couldn’t accept letting such a person live in her home and divide Cong Yixing’s attention!
Her “puppy” could only have eyes for her!