“Another day of being woken up by the heat.”
Jiang Ting posted this to her WeChat Moments the moment she got out of bed.
While she complained about the weather, her mood was actually soaring. She hummed a catchy, brain-worm tune popular on short video apps as she stepped onto the scale for her routine weigh-in.
105.55. As expected, she had gained weight.
“It’s okay!” Jiang Ting comforted herself, before immediately turning to her messaging app to send a long string of screams to Cong Yixing.
Xiao Jiang Eats Ginger: Ahhhhhhh! I’m fat again!
It was exactly Cong Yixing’s lunch break, and he replied within seconds: You ate too much barbecue. It’s fine, I’ll make something lighter and more vegetarian for dinner.
The carnivore Jiang Ting: “…”
If dinner was going to be “light,” then it wouldn’t be too much to eat something good for lunch, right?
Still sitting on the toilet, she opened a delivery app and picked out a place that served large, delicious portions of Dry Pot Fish. Aside from being a bit pricey, it was perfect.
While she was washing up, the water from the tap felt almost hot to the touch. Once she finished her skincare routine, she checked the weather on her phone.
Sunny, 38°C.
She scrolled down stubbornly, only to see the temperature climbing steadily over the next few days—higher each day with no rain in sight.
Thinking about how Cong Yixing had to brave this heat every day, driving a car that had been baking on the roadside, she felt a pang of sympathy.
After their long talk last night, they had finally decided to renew their lease for another three months. If they could get engaged before the end of the year, they would then look for a new place with better surroundings and a better location.
Since the decision was made, Jiang Ting stopped overthinking and went ahead and transferred the rent to the landlady.
After confirming the payment, the landlady chatted with her for a bit, reminding her, “Xiao Jiang, the weather has been dry lately. Be careful with the appliances, and please water the potted plants on the balcony for me frequently.”
Jiang Ting knew absolutely nothing about gardening. She had heard the landlady say those plants had been growing for years, and her only request when Jiang Ting moved in was to help water them occasionally.
She hadn’t dared to be careless; when she first arrived, she spent a long time researching online, strictly following the suggested times and amounts for watering.
But now, she wasn’t needed for that.
Ever since Cong Yixing moved in, she didn’t have to worry about a single thing in the house. He arranged everything perfectly.
Jiang Ting wandered slowly to the balcony and found that the clothes hanging there yesterday were already gone. She wasn’t sure if Cong Yixing had taken them down last night or this morning before work.
The various plants and flowers—most of which she couldn’t name—were doing fine. Though they looked a bit wilted, they were at least alive.
Like a queen inspecting her territory, she gave the clean balcony a silent review: Not bad at all.
The delivery arrived quickly.
Inside the 2000mL circular container, the fish was packed to the brim with only a few garnishes. The color was enticing—savory, spicy, with just a hint of numbing Sichuan peppercorn.
Jiang Ting didn’t have a huge appetite; she usually only ate half a bowl of rice with her delivery. She ate quite a bit of the fish, but she still only finished about a quarter of it.
Because it was so hot out, the food cooled down slowly. She actually wanted to put the leftovers into her Space so that the temperature would be just right the next time she took it out, and it would stay perfectly fresh.
But this was the one downside of living together: she couldn’t use her Space openly. Not only did she have to hide it from Cong Yixing, but she also had to leave no trace.
She had used Cong Yixing’s delivery account to order the food, so there was a record on his phone. Furthermore, Cong Yixing had eaten from this restaurant before and knew their portion sizes; he would know she couldn’t possibly have finished it all.
Since moving in, Cong Yixing handled all the trash. If she suddenly started taking out the trash proactively, it would seem suspicious.
So, with a sigh of regret, she repacked the leftover rice and fish and squeezed them into the nearly full refrigerator.
Yes, she even had to keep the half-bowl of rice. Because Cong Yixing had grown up in the countryside and worked the fields with his parents, he knew how hard it was to produce every grain of rice. He never wasted food.
Over the years, he had lectured her on this so often that it was deeply etched into her brain.
He had once told her: “Don’t feel bad about making me eat leftovers. In the countryside, if we can’t finish our food, we feed it to the dogs. If I don’t eat it, who will?”
Thinking of that sentence made Jiang Ting think of last night, when he had whispered in her ear: “Cong Yixing is Jiang Ting’s most loyal puppy.”
Her fair little face slowly turned red. She pressed the backs of her hands to her cheeks to cool down, her round eyes crinkling into slits.
Cong Yixing is so cute. I want to see him right now, Jiang Ting thought distractedly while editing videos that afternoon.
She fell so deep into her thoughts that she couldn’t even continue her work.
She set a video to auto-publish and decided she couldn’t go on like this. They had been together for years; how could she still be in such a “honeymoon phase” where she couldn’t stand being apart from her boyfriend for even a little while?
I should go for a walk.
She’d go to the nearby supermarket to buy some snacks, then hit the food court on the third floor for two of her favorite wraps. She’d eat one immediately and put the other in her Space so she wouldn’t have to come back out the next time she craved one.
With these happy thoughts, she changed her clothes and headed out.
The stairwell, shielded from the sun, felt okay. But the moment she stepped out of the building’s main doors, a rolling heatwave slammed into her, giving her the illusion she might be knocked over by the air itself.
The blinding sunlight glared off the pavement. Without sunglasses, a person walking on the road would soon find their vision swimming. Looking into the distance, the air itself seemed distorted by the high temperature. She had to blink rapidly just to keep her vision from blurring.
The greenery in the residential complex looked dusty and gray. The leaves were covered in a thick layer of grit, waiting in vain for a rainstorm to wash them clean. Everything looked listless, caught in a state of being neither truly alive nor dead.
Jiang Ting regretted leaving the house at this hour.
She wanted to turn back, but then she hesitated: I already changed my clothes… and I want those wraps…
Ultimately, driven by the logic of “I’m already here” and the massive temptation of the wraps, she pulled her sun hat low and trudged through the sweltering heat for 300 meters to reach the supermarket.
This was a very famous supermarket chain in Yu City. It had a complete selection of goods, fair prices, and great service. It was so popular that its fresh produce section had actually crowded out the nearby traditional wet markets.
After all, the supermarket had clearly marked prices. In a wet market, if you wanted to buy good food at a low price, you had to rely entirely on experience.
The inside and outside of the supermarket felt like two different worlds. Outside were the scorching air and the blazing sun; inside were bright lights and powerful air conditioning.
The lounge area on the first floor was packed. Most of the people there were seniors who looked after their grandchildren while their children were at work; they were reluctant to turn on the AC at home.
The elderly gathered here with the children. Close-knit groups sat together, and those particularly sensitive to the heat fanned themselves with palm-leaf fans while enjoying the free AC. Some had even brought their own small tables and stools to play cards.
The whole space was a mix of adults chatting and children chasing each other around. The noise made the first floor feel like a wet market at dawn.
That was just a metaphor, of course, since Jiang Ting almost never visited wet markets.
She knew how to cook, but her skills were… limited. It was the kind of skill level where she wouldn’t starve without delivery, but she would definitely lose ten pounds a year.
Her knowledge of fresh produce was superficial at best. She recognized what she usually ate but didn’t know how to pick the good ones. Consequently, she often bought stale fruit, eventually leading to Cong Yixing revoking her “grocery shopping rights.”
Jiang Ting didn’t mind him revoking her rights. Her chances of buying bad fruit were so high it practically counted as being “fruit-scammed.”
When she went to the supermarket alone, she only visited the snack aisle. The probability of buying a snack past its prime on a supermarket shelf was much lower than the probability of buying rotten strawberries from a roadside stall.
Thinking about how those roadside vendors had cheated her time and again made her teeth itch with annoyance.
She wasn’t the type to confront strangers. Simply put, she was a coward—or rather, she was only “brave” at home. If she bought something bad, or got short-changed, she would realize it later but never dare to go back and argue.
Cong Yixing was much better at this.
He wasn’t naturally aggressive, and he didn’t like to argue either.
But he looked fierce!
Even though he was just tall and not particularly burly, a fierce-looking young man carried much more weight than a soft-looking girl like her.
That time Cong Yixing took her back to confront the strawberry vendor—the old lady who put the good strawberries on top and the tiny, green, rotten ones at the bottom—she had refunded Jiang Ting’s money incredibly fast.
Jiang Ting: “…” She never bought fruit alone on the side of the road again.
Realizing she was thinking about Cong Yixing again, Jiang Ting sighed as she pushed her cart. She forced herself to focus on the shelves, and within a short while, her large shopping cart was overflowing.
After checking out, she left her cart with the staff at the baggage counter and took the escalator to the third-floor food court.
The food court wasn’t quiet, even on a weekday afternoon.
In the partitioned dining areas sat many young people who didn’t have work or school. Some were alone, staring at their phones with a drink in front of them. Others were groups of friends with snacks on the table, chatting and playing games.
Although there were plenty of people, it felt much quieter than the first floor.
Some shops were on a midday break, so the lights in the area were dimmed. Jiang Ting passed a bakery and, caught by the sweet aroma, couldn’t resist buying two exquisite-looking small buns.
She was fine herself—her desire for meat outweighed her craving for sweets—but Cong Yixing loved sweets. So, whenever Jiang Ting went shopping alone, she’d bring back snacks and desserts he liked.
The clerk at the wrap shop was dozing off behind the counter. Feeling a bit guilty, Jiang Ting tapped lightly on the desk.
She bought two different wraps. One was filled with braised kelp, potato shreds, and bean curd skin. The other was filled with stir-fried pork with green peppers, chive omelet, and fried ham.
The vegetarian wrap was six yuan, and the meat one was nine. In Yu City, these prices were incredibly honest.
The wraps were made from thin, chewy, freshly-made dough, stuffed to the brim with meat and vegetables. Each wrap was about as long as Jiang Ting’s forearm and impressively wide—the kind you couldn’t even wrap one hand around.
Through the paper bag, she could feel the wrap was slightly warm. Amidst the savory braised aroma, she couldn’t help but take a huge bite, chewing with total satisfaction.
She sat in the dining area, slowly scrolling through her phone as she finished the vegetarian wrap. Her stomach was slightly bloated from the meal. She wiped her mouth contentedly and headed downstairs with the remaining wrap and the buns she just bought.
The snacks she bought filled two large bags. She carried one in each hand. Luckily, it was all snacks and not too heavy; otherwise, she doubted her unexercised arms could have made it back.
Even so, she was gasping for air by the time she got home.
Jiang Ting panted, thinking that next time she really should wait for Cong Yixing. She was just a delicate flower that couldn’t handle the elements; if she stayed out in the sun for too long, she’d wilt completely.
While her “flower-guardian” wasn’t home, the wilted flower dumped the two bags of snacks out and re-sorted them. One bag of snacks she wanted to eat soon was left out, while the other bag—filled with things she might want later—was put into her Space, bag and all.
When Cong Yixing came home, he saw that she had gone to the supermarket and brought back a bag of snacks and two fancy buns, half of which were his favorites.
The receipt had long since been tossed into a trash can outside the supermarket. Her snack-hiding operation had left no trace.
He knew nothing and even praised her: “You’ve gone outside three days in a row. Good job, babe.”
Jiang Ting: “…”
Feeling a bit guilty, she thought: The puppy is open and honest with me; he’s good. I’m secretive and hiding things; I’m bad.