The air conditioning inside the restaurant was blasting, making the threshold feel like a boundary between two different seasons.
Jiang Ting walked with a waddle, feeling stuffed to the gills. She leaned on Cong Yixing’s hand as they slowly descended the steps outside the barbecue restaurant.
Seeing the cautious, attentive way Cong Yixing treated her, she felt like a favored imperial concubine—arrogant and pregnant with a “dragon prince”—being served by a loyal chief eunuch.
Once they reached level ground, Cong Yixing freed his hand and popped a compressed lemon candy, taken from the customer bowl at the register, into her mouth.
With the candy in her cheek, Jiang Ting mumbled, “I said it was my treat. Why did you cheat and use a group-buying voucher?”
Cong Yixing carried the leftovers in one hand and reached into his pocket for his car keys with the other. “Ordering à la carte is too expensive and not worth it. The group deal saved us over a hundred yuan.”
When it came to Cong Yixing’s frugality, Jiang Ting had long been thoroughly convinced of his logic.
She dropped the subject and looked around as they walked. After a while, she sighed. “Yu City is changing too fast. We haven’t been to this area in only six months, but the shops along the street are completely different from last time.”
“Yeah,” Cong Yixing said. “Brick-and-mortar stores have had it rough these past few years. Many close down only for new ones to open; I’ve lost track of how many times the owners have changed.”
“It’s a good thing you didn’t think about starting a business after graduation, or the two of us might have ended up penniless.”
“Do you really have that little faith in me?”
“Pretty much. I feel like you’re a bit slow. If you hadn’t found a smart girlfriend like me, I’m not sure what your life would look like right now!”
“In that case, I really ought to thank you.”
The car was parked quite far away, so the two of them joked and played around as they walked toward the roadside paid parking spaces.
The air outside was still muggy. Once you stepped out of an air-conditioned room, it only took a few minutes to break into a sweat.
Jiang Ting looked up. Under the night sky, the city’s neon lights flickered.
They were currently in the heart of the city, surrounded by immense prosperity. The various lights were like stars in the night sky, each radiating its own brilliance—so much so that when she looked up, she could only see the sky partitioned into tiny fragments. The clear Milky Way and the blanket of stars she remembered from her childhood were nowhere to be found.
Every beam of light seemed to represent the technology and glory of modern civilization.
The saying “technology changes the world” seemed to materialize in that very moment.
Jiang Ting wondered: does this seemingly endless prosperity and progress mean that humans have long since conquered nature and become the absolute masters of this planet?
She shook her head to toss aside the random, mysterious thoughts that had suddenly popped into her brain. She couldn’t help but wonder if she was “meat-drunk.” Otherwise, why would she be having such poetic, literary reflections?
The way back was a bit congested. At eight or nine in the evening, the traffic was still flowing like a dense weave. Being full made Jiang Ting a bit drowsy, and since the car was moving slowly, she leaned back in the passenger seat, half-asleep.
While the car was stopped at a red light, Cong Yixing reached over with his right hand and hooked her finger. He asked, “Babe, Mid-Autumn Festival is coming up. We’ve been together for over three years now. Do you want to come home with me to meet my parents?”
Jiang Ting snapped awake instantly. She turned to look at Cong Yixing’s expression. He had one hand on the steering wheel, his face looking perfectly normal, giving nothing away.
Her empty head was suddenly thrown into a chaotic mess by that single sentence. She replied subconsciously, “Isn’t it still quite a while until Mid-Autumn?”
Without waiting for him to speak, she asked again, “Did your parents say something?”
Cong Yixing gave her pinky a reassuring rub. “Don’t be nervous.”
Then he explained, “I’ve been graduated for two years and my job is stabilizing. It’s only natural they’d start caring about my marriage prospects. Isn’t that normal?”
It was quite normal.
But Jiang Ting was still nervous.
She was someone who thrived on the status quo; she didn’t like surprises or upheavals in her life.
She was very satisfied with her current life and didn’t really want her lifestyle to change.
If… if she were to marry Cong Yixing, they would first have to meet the parents, then get engaged, get married, prepare for pregnancy, and have a baby.
Cong Yixing worked in Yu City, but housing prices here were so high. His family background was ordinary, and with three sons in the family, they certainly couldn’t afford to buy him a house in Yu City.
So what then? After marriage, would Cong Yixing work in Yu City while she lived in his hometown?
No, no way. The mere thought of it was unbearable.
Then again… since his family had three sons, maybe she could kidnap Cong Yixing and take him to Pinghu? With her grandmother’s small building, they’d basically have a house and a car. They could find stable jobs and live a quiet, simple life… but that wouldn’t work either. Cong Yixing worked in wireless communications. His company wasn’t top-tier, but it was well-known in Yu City. To ask him to give up a promising career to live a retirement lifestyle in a small county town with her—he definitely wouldn’t be willing…
Ah!! This is driving me crazy!!
Jiang Ting was trapped in her own hypothetical spiral and couldn’t pull herself out. The two of them returned home in silence.
The door lock was still difficult to open.
The house was too old. While the appliances inside had been replaced, the front door and the lock probably hadn’t been changed in years. Every time Jiang Ting opened the door, she thought about negotiating with the landlord to change it, but she felt lazy every time. After Cong Yixing moved in, he actually wanted to change it, but Jiang Ting, thinking they might move to a different rental soon, hadn’t agreed.
Once inside, seeing that Jiang Ting was still dazed and standing motionless in the entryway, Cong Yixing laughed and tapped her forehead. “Earth to Jiang Ting. Come back to us.”
Jiang Ting wrinkled her nose. She sat on her dedicated shoe-changing stool and stretched out her feet, waiting for Cong Yixing to take off her shoes.
As Cong Yixing crouched down to help her, Jiang Ting finally reached her breaking point. She suddenly grabbed his lowered head, rubbing her chin frantically against the top of his skull while wailing, “Ah! I really don’t want to go! I’m scared! What if your family bullies me? Your family has so many people. What if your mom is an evil mother-in-law who makes me cook for the whole family and wash everyone’s clothes… Wuuu, I’m so miserable!!”
Cong Yixing: “…” A perfectly fine person just went insane out of nowhere.
Jiang Ting held onto his head and acted crazy for a long while, pinching and biting his face until she left several tooth marks before she finally calmed down.
Cong Yixing pulled her to the bathroom to wash her hands. Looking in the mirror at his normally decent-looking face, now a complete mess, he let out a sudden laugh. “Jiang Ting, were you born in the year of the dog?”
Jiang Ting’s eyes widened, looking ready to blow up again. Scared, he quickly pleaded for mercy, “Me, me, me! I was born in the year of the dog!”
“Can we please stop messing around, my ancestor? I can’t exactly go to work wearing a mask tomorrow, can I?”
Jiang Ting’s eyes were slightly red from her fit. She puffed out her lips. “You haven’t promised me yet!”
“Promised you what?”
“I don’t want to go to your house!”
“Fine, fine, fine. We won’t go. Is such a small thing really worth going crazy over, hmm?”
“Swear it!”
“I swear, I won’t force you to go home with me.”
“And you can’t be mad at me because I won’t go, and you can’t break up with me because of it either!”
“Wow, listen to those fighting words. How would I dare be mad at you? And breaking up? Have you forgotten the fourth rule of the Jiang Family Code? Didn’t you personally write that the male party cannot proactively suggest a breakup?”
“You remember it quite clearly. Fine, I’ll forgive you for now.”
“Thank you for your tolerance. I hereby declare you the most generous babe in the world.”
That night, Jiang Ting couldn’t sleep. She played games in the study until past midnight.
Even though she had been temporarily coaxed out of it, she still felt uneasy. She knew she was prone to “gains and losses”—that specific anxiety of being terrified of losing what she had.
But Cong Yixing was truly important to her.
Since she was a child, Jiang Ting’s personality had fluctuated between extroverted and introverted.
If she wanted to, she could get along very well with others and make close friends.
But then again, she didn’t really like crowds or noise, and she didn’t want people intruding on her life.
Because of this, her friendships always came in waves. They would be great for a certain period, but once the environment changed, her relationship with the other person would quickly turn cold.
After her grandmother passed away, there was a period when she completely shut herself off.
She moved out of the dorms, reduced her interactions with college classmates, and even stopped contacting friends from her hometown.
Those were very confusing days for her because she was “parentless.” In this world, her grandmother had been her only relative. It wasn’t as obvious when her grandmother was alive, but after she was gone, Jiang Ting suddenly realized with a shock that she didn’t even have a single person she could call a “relative” left in the world.
Everyone else in this world had a vast web of connections, while she was all alone.
So, shortly after her junior year started, when her biological father showed up at her school, Jiang Ting went to see him out of some hidden sense of anticipation.
She had seen him more than once when she was a child. Back then, he was a scrawny “yellow-hair” punk. He was decent-looking but walked with a thuggish swagger.
Jiang Ting had avoided him every time she saw him. The two of them had never faced each other directly. After she grew up, they didn’t even have any accidental encounters.
And now, that man was standing at the school gate. His hair was no longer dyed yellow, and his figure had filled out quite a bit. He wore ordinary clothes and stood there with a posture like many middle-aged men—completely unremarkable.
The man pulled an envelope from his pocket. It was somewhat thick.
He handed the envelope toward Jiang Ting and said, “A reward for you getting into college.”
Jiang Ting thought to herself: I’ve been in college for three years already. Is this a delayed reward?
Then she thought: He hasn’t cared about me for all these years. If I take this money, will I have to support him in his old age later?
Jiang Ting shook her head, indicating she didn’t want it.
The man’s outstretched hand froze awkwardly in the air for a full ten seconds. Then, he pulled his hand back as if it didn’t matter and muttered, “It took me forever to save this secret stash of cash.”
Jiang Ting had long heard that because the man was so irresponsible and insisted on being a jobless street loafer, his wife kept him on a very tight leash after they married.
Jiang Ting believed this without hesitation. She thought: It must be pretty tight if it took him three years to save this much.
She said, “I’m going back to class.”
The man waved his hand. “Go on, study hard.”
Jiang Ting turned and left.
Because her mind was occupied, she walked in a daze for an unknown amount of time until someone blocked her path.
It was a thin guy with a haircut that looked like an inmate who had just been released and re-enrolled in school. His skin was a bit dark, and while his face wasn’t bad, he looked rather fierce.
Jiang Ting was a bit scared, wondering if she had offended him somehow. She felt that with that look and that haircut, he seemed like a tough guy who would throw a silent elbow strike at you without a word.
Then, the “tough guy” revealed a faint, shy smile that was completely at odds with his appearance. He said to her, “Classmate, can I treat you to a meal?”
Huh?
Jiang Ting looked around and saw a few guys their age standing nearby, peeking over stealthily.
She understood instantly. She racked her brain for a way to phrase a rejection so he wouldn’t lose face in front of his friends—and then get angry and give her that elbow strike.
Back then, Jiang Ting wasn’t as quick-witted as she was now. She wasn’t good at rejecting people or making excuses. After a long time, she finally squeezed out, “I have a class in a bit.”
The tough guy was stunned for a moment and said instinctively, “It’s fine, it’s fine. Next time, then.”
“Sure, I’ll head out first.” Jiang Ting walked away quickly, thinking: Next time my foot! As long as I escape today without giving you my contact info, how would you even find me next time?
She heard the whispers of several boys behind her, trying hard to be quiet but not succeeding.
She walked faster and faster, wanting to run, and then she actually heard the sound of someone running. She looked at her feet: I’m not running?
A figure “whooshed” past her. The tough guy cut Jiang Ting off again and said, “Classmate, my friend said I should ask for your WeChat.”
Jiang Ting: “…” Big “thanks” to your friend.
Later, the tough guy persistently asked Jiang Ting out several times.
Jiang Ting was very timid back then and didn’t dare to be too harsh. Eventually, out of helplessness, she agreed to a date.
The tough guy was Cong Yixing.
He looked fierce on the outside, but once you interacted with him, you realized he was an extremely polite and tolerant person.
In just the span of one meal, Jiang Ting’s first impression of Cong Yixing was overturned.
Jiang Ting had read online that people who know how to be tolerant are very gentle and very strong at heart.
Both of these traits were things Jiang Ting lacked, and she was inevitably drawn to them.
Later, Jiang Ting had wondered why that man had come to find her that day. He couldn’t have had amnesia for 20 years and suddenly recovered his memory to find he had a 20-year-old daughter, right?
That question was answered by a childhood friend. One day, the friend messaged her, saying, “Jiang Ting, I’m getting married. You haven’t been back in a long time, right?”
Jiang Ting didn’t want to explain her avoidance of her hometown. She offered a few words of congratulations and sent a digital red packet.
Jiang Ting was quite generous. The friend was presumably satisfied with the amount, as they thanked her and then started gossiping: “I don’t know what that dad of yours is thinking. He ignores an excellent college student daughter like you, and instead raises a useless son who couldn’t even get into high school. Haha.”
So that was it.
Because his son didn’t get into high school, he remembered he had a daughter in college.
Makes sense.
Jiang Ting didn’t actually care that much, but she was a bit emotional due to her period and didn’t feel physically well. When she met Cong Yixing that day, she wasn’t in high spirits.
That day, Cong Yixing treated her to Yu City’s famous steamed “Kou Wan” dishes. This was already their fourth time eating together. Jiang Ting had forcibly paid the bill on the second date.
After she paid that day, Cong Yixing had said dejectedly while walking her back, “People online say that if a girl insists on paying when two people go out, it means she doesn’t want to see the guy again.”
Jiang Ting didn’t actually mean it that way.
But she couldn’t explain herself, because that would make it look like she really wanted to keep seeing him.
Jiang Ting was very thin-skinned back then. She would rather miss out on a guy she liked than appear proactive.
At the time, she thought: Forget it. Even though I’ve been lonely lately, if I can’t give a man a future, I shouldn’t give him hope. (This was a witty line she had learned online).
Jiang Ting thought they were over.
But even if she was done, Cong Yixing wasn’t.
Cong Yixing went quiet for two days, then cautiously sent her a message: “You haven’t deleted me, have you?”
Jiang Ting: “Huh?”
The two of them got back in touch.
Later, when Jiang Ting mentioned this while chatting with a former roommate from the same major, the roommate cupped her face, her eyes crinkling with laughter. She sighed, “Wow, he must really like you to be so anxious about ‘gains and losses.’ That’s love!”
Jiang Ting—Jiang Ting just gave a silly smile.
So, for the third meal, Jiang Ting sat firmly, showing no intention of paying.
Cong Yixing seemed to have received a signal from that. Just two days later, he asked her out again.
This time, Jiang Ting didn’t have much of an appetite. She spaced out during the meal, wondering how many meals like this they’d have to eat before he confessed. Or was he just a scumbag who only enjoyed the ambiguity and didn’t want to give her a title?
She got angry at the imaginary “scumbag” Cong Yixing. Combined with her stomach ache, her expression looked very sour throughout the entire meal.
Cong Yixing was a very observant person. After only a few meetings, he could judge most of her moods.
Then again, her face was so sour that you didn’t need to be observant to tell she was unhappy.
After the meal, Cong Yixing walked her back as usual, but he wasn’t in a hurry to call a cab.
He led her along the side of the road, wandering aimlessly. Just as she was about to lose her patience, he finally spoke. “I don’t know if I did something to make you unhappy.”
Jiang Ting shook her head, but his eyes were fixed on the ground, so he didn’t seem to see it. He continued, “Jiang Ting, I really want to make you happy. But I need time to get to know you before I can know what actions will make you glad.”
“Until then… before I know you well enough, if I do something you don’t like or say something that upsets you,” he stopped walking and turned to look into Jiang Ting’s eyes, saying, “can you just tell me directly?”
He said, “I’m afraid I’m a bit slow. If I accidentally guess wrong, you might stop talking to me again.”
In that fierce-looking face, Jiang Ting saw sincerity. She saw… how much he cherished her.
From that moment on, she felt like she was connected to the world again.