The two of them had their first quarrel since the rebirth. Actually, rather than calling it a quarrel, it would be more accurate to say that Ruan Yan was venting one-sidedly, because Jiang Tingnan simply would not talk back.
He only reached out to support his wife’s waist, afraid that Ruan Yan would fall off him if he got too agitated.
Once Ruan Yan had thrown enough of a fit, he finally let go of Jiang Tingnan’s hair. Opening his palm, he found that he really had pulled out a few strands, and suddenly felt a little guilty, wanting to stick the hair back onto his husband’s head.
“Aiya, husband.”
Ruan Yan was exactly like this, hard one moment and soft the next. “How about this. You come and look at the work I’d be doing, and if you think it’s tiring, I won’t take the job. All right?”
Jiang Tingnan didn’t want to look in the slightest.
Whatever the work was, even if it were sitting at a computer playing Minesweeper, he was afraid it would tire Ruan Yan’s mind.
He was poor, not dead. Things had not come to the point of sending his wife out to support the household.
But with Ruan Yan curled up in his arms, slapping him twice and then coaxing him twice, around and around, Jiang Tingnan couldn’t quite hold the line.
He could only nod his agreement with a grim face.
Ruan Yan gave a small inward cheer, then found himself marveling. Good grief, the twenty-year-old Jiang Tingnan was far harder to coax than the thirty-year-old one.
His temper was foul and unyielding both.
Right, speaking of unyielding……
Ruan Yan blinked and looked downward. He’d been squirming in his husband’s lap this long, so how was there still no…… He hadn’t looked before, and one look gave him a shock.
Ruan Yan’s eyes went round. He looked down, then looked up at Jiang Tingnan.
In a state like that, how was Jiang Tingnan not making a sound.
Seeing that Ruan Yan had noticed, Jiang Tingnan simply took him by the waist, lifted him off himself, and turned to go and deal with it in the bathroom.
Ruan Yan hurriedly called him back.
His eyes went round, the very picture of someone who’d been underestimated. “Jiang Tingnan, what is wrong with you, your wife is right here! You’re not some wild man with no wife!”
Jiang Tingnan’s steps halted. He had no idea where Ruan Yan came up with all these strange things to say, and no idea how to answer, so he produced two words. “No need.”
Ruan Yan had always been thoroughly spoiled. On the only two occasions the whim had struck him to “service” his husband, the first had nearly rubbed him until sparks flew, and the second had nearly bitten him clean through.
Jiang Tingnan was a deeply traditional man at the core. However formidable a man might be out in the world, in his view, at home he still had to wait on his wife. Letting his wife wait on him would be turning the natural order upside down.
But Jiang Tingnan’s refusal only made Ruan Yan unhappy, convinced that Jiang Tingnan looked down on him.
“You just think my technique is bad!”
Jiang Tingnan couldn’t out-argue him. He stood there thinking for a few seconds, then clumsily set about placating his wife. “How about you sing for me instead. When I listen to you sing, I lose the feeling.”
Ruan Yan’s singing was famously awful. No, awful no longer covered the territory. It was like an erhu with a snapped string being sawed at anyway, a squalling, grating racket no ear could endure.
Ruan Yan froze for two seconds, then his whole face flushed crimson and he all but shouted, “Jiang Tingnan!! I can see you don’t want to keep living this life anymore!!”
The banging and clattering started up in the room again.
When the door finally opened and they came out, everything below Jiang Tingnan’s waist was in order, and there were merely a few extra slap marks on his face.
President Jiang was always unstoppable at the negotiating table, but at home, faced with his wife, his every faculty seemed to grind to a halt, and each time he would very carefully plant his foot on his wife’s largest landmine.
Luckily the wife only slapped him.
……
Lin Dong waited a few minutes in the office area at the back. When he saw Ruan Yan coming around the corner he waved. Ruan Yan looked delighted and seemed about to run over, but the person behind him caught his arm and said something.
Ruan Yan pouted, but in the end came over at a proper walk.
Only as they got closer did Lin Dong see the man behind Ruan Yan clearly: a head taller than him, in a plain work tank, a very good build, and a face that was…… pretty handsome, except there was nothing on it at all, which made him look rather fierce.
He simply stood behind Ruan Yan, matching him step for step.
“Lin Dong!” Ruan Yan waved in greeting, and seeing Lin Dong staring fixedly at Jiang Tingnan, hurried to introduce them. “This is Jiang Tingnan, my……”
Before the word husband could get out, Lin Dong cut in. “I know. He’s the creditor you were looking for?”
Ruan Yan, “……”
He stole a look at Jiang Tingnan’s face, which seemed to have cooled a few degrees, and quickly coughed. “Not, not exactly.”
Fortunately Lin Dong didn’t dwell on it, and waved a hand. “Fine, come in with me and have a look first.”
The office wasn’t large, with two computers in it. Lin Dong said, “There isn’t actually much work to speak of. The two of us just handle the odds and ends, bits and pieces. So long as you can use a computer and make reports, that’s enough.”
Ruan Yan nodded over and over. “Great, great.”
“Though you’d have to eat and sleep on the construction site. Is that all right for you?”
Ruan Yan was happier still. “Of course, no problem at all.”
His husband was here, so naturally he was going to live here.
While the two of them talked, Jiang Tingnan had already been over the entire room. Air conditioning there certainly was not, but there were two fans and a window opposite. He tried the chair at the desk: the angle was poor, it would tire the back. The computer was the oldest sort, which might be hard on the eyes.
Lin Dong was in the middle of a sentence when he stopped, staring blankly as Jiang Tingnan carried out his inspection like an official sent down from the provincial government.
“……”
Ruan Yan’s face went hot and he gave an awkward smile. “Sorry about that.” Ducking his head in embarrassment, he seized Jiang Tingnan’s hand and towed him outside.
“What are you doing!”
Jiang Tingnan frowned. “Baby, can’t you just not work? It’s too hard on you.”
“Hard how? It’s only sitting down. You’re the one working hard. How much longer are you going to be hauling these bricks anyway.”
Jiang Tingnan had signed a one-month contract and had to see it out to the end of the month regardless.
Hauling bricks himself meant nothing to him, yet the thought of Ruan Yan doing the least bit of work made his chest ache.
Ruan Yan glared at him. “You’re being picky about a job this good. Dong only went to his uncle and got it for me because he’s looking out for me.”
That made Jiang Tingnan unhappier still. “How is it I never heard you mention this friend before.”
Ruan Yan thought about it. “He went abroad in his second year of university and settled overseas. How was I supposed to mention him.”
At the word abroad, Jiang Tingnan’s expression eased a little.
“Jiang Tingnan, don’t start being petty again, he’s helping me.”
Ruan Yan went on without a trace of shame. “You need to remember this. Once the two of us have money you have to repay him. Those dollars and whatnot, put more of them into his account. Stop piling them up in my drawer, you can’t spend them here anyway.”
Jiang Tingnan seized the chance to take his wife’s hand. “All right.”
What he didn’t explain was that he’d once seen a photo Ruan Yan posted with a heap of foreign currency in the background, and assuming his wife liked it, had gone and exchanged a bunch of it to toss into the drawer Ruan Yan usually kept close at hand.
He read every single post his wife made. Any in which his wife appeared, he saved. Group photos of his wife with friends he screenshotted first and then saved.
In the beginning Jiang Tingnan used to leave comments, in fact.
But what limited time he had went entirely into work. He had no time to be online, and didn’t understand the internet slang his wife used.
Once Ruan Yan posted an absurd caption about feeling dizzy and thinking he must be short on vitamin RMB.
Jiang Tingnan had been in a meeting at the time. The post alarmed him so badly that he snatched up his phone and walked straight out, telling his assistant to get hold of a doctor while he called Ruan Yan.
Ruan Yan came out of the bathroom to a dozen and more missed calls, which frightened him witless in turn.
On the phone, Jiang Tingnan’s voice carried a rare urgency and agitation. “Why are you dizzy? When did it start? Why didn’t you tell me you weren’t feeling well?”
Ruan Yan was thoroughly bewildered. “Dizzy? Huh? Me?”
From that day on, Jiang Tingnan was forbidden to spy on Ruan Yan’s posts, so he took the work underground and read them in secret instead.
The memories softened Jiang Tingnan’s gaze. He said quietly, “Don’t worry, baby. I remember everyone who’s been good to you.”
The two of them walked slowly back, Ruan Yan’s chattering drifting out. “Then get yourself a notebook and write it all down, and give each of them a house later on. I’ll just say you usually buy far too many houses, and we can’t possibly live in them all.”
Jiang Tingnan wasn’t willing. “The houses were all bought for you. We can give them something else, cash, antiques, paintings and calligraphy……”
Had anyone overheard this conversation, there’s no telling how hard they’d have laughed. Two people whose pockets were cleaner than their faces, dreaming in broad daylight.
Having talked at length and clearly arranged the household’s assets for the next ten years, Ruan Yan had gone dry in the mouth. “So I’ll start work tomorrow, then.”
Seeing him this set on it, Jiang Tingnan didn’t refuse again, only instructing him, “Then go and try it for a couple of days, treat it as playing around. Whatever you do, don’t tire yourself out. Push off any work that can be pushed off, and wait for me to come at noon and cook for you.”
Ruan Yan found that funny. “President Jiang, how can you have two different faces? Back at the group, the first time I saw you at the year-end assembly, listening to you lecture us was nothing like this. You were fierce enough to frighten a person to death.”
Jiang Tingnan raised an eyebrow. “Am I fierce?”
What he didn’t say was that he had been a little nervous that day himself. The person he was secretly in love with was sitting down there, in a vast hall packed with a dark mass of people, every one of them with their head slightly bowed, not daring to meet his eyes. Only Ruan Yan, eyes bright and shining, looked back at him across the crowd.
In that moment Jiang Tingnan could even hear his own heartbeat.
But there was no need to tell Ruan Yan any of that.
Just as, even now, Ruan Yan still didn’t remember that their first meeting had not been in the company elevator, but at a high school in S City.