The following morning, Qin Yan slept until she was fully rested before waking.
When she opened her eyes, she caught the faint scent of flowers. Turning her head, she saw the roses.
After drinking their fill of water, the petals had opened even more beautifully than the night before.
Cheng Tianxun came out of the bathroom and changed his clothes right in front of Qin Yan.
Qin Yan turned her face away.
“Get up. Have breakfast with me. There are a few things I want to talk to you about.” Cheng Tianxun casually buttoned his shirt.
Qin Yan agreed.
During breakfast, Qin Yan didn’t like talking, and Cheng Tianxun respected that habit of hers. The two sat across from each other and ate in silence, with only the occasional soft clink of their bowls and chopsticks.
After rinsing his mouth, Cheng Tianxun asked Qin Yan to join him in the small sitting room on the first floor to talk.
“You’ve been rather perfunctory about this marriage, Qin Yan,” he said first.
Qin Yan was about to argue.
Cheng Tianxun continued, “On our wedding night, you told me you didn’t want to get pregnant and that you would take medicine. And whenever there was some rumor about me and I brought home a newspaper to explain it to you, you didn’t listen to a single word. Instead, you went straight to looking at the names of the writers, thinking about poaching them.”
Qin Yan was momentarily speechless.
When she had left Hong Kong, the Third Aunt of the Luo family had given her five pills.
She had said they were made by a family of imperial physicians from the previous dynasty and had originally been prepared exclusively for princesses and imperial consorts. Taking one would prevent pregnancy for an entire year.
Of course, there was still a possibility of an accident. She could become pregnant despite taking it; it depended on a woman’s constitution and luck.
Qin Yan had never told Cheng Tianxun much about the medicine.
She had only asked him whether he could accept her not becoming pregnant during the first three years of their marriage.
Cheng Tianxun had asked why.
She had replied, “I can come up with plenty of reasons. Every one of them could sound convincing and reasonable. Do you want to hear them? The real reason is simply, ‘I don’t want to.’”
Cheng Tianxun had said that was fine. He accepted “I don’t want to” as a reason.
He had then asked how she intended to avoid pregnancy for three years. Was she expecting him to become a monk?
Qin Yan told him she had a secret contraceptive medicine and didn’t need him to abstain.
He agreed.
He never pressed her for details about the medicine.
As for the rumors surrounding him…
The things he brought home were all newspapers, which happened to be directly related to Qin Yan’s work. Some of the chief writers had particularly interesting styles, and it was difficult for Qin Yan not to pay attention to them.
With Cheng Tianxun accusing her of being perfunctory, Qin Yan found it difficult to defend herself.
“…Do you want me to apologize and try to do better?” She raised her eyes and looked at him calmly.
Her skin was as pale as snow, her features as immaculate as a statue carved from ice. There was a natural coolness in both her expression and her eyes.
Sitting there, she seemed untouched by the mundane warmth of the human world.
She always made Cheng Tianxun think of the phrase pure as ice and clean as jade.
So that was what it meant. The phrase could describe not only a person’s character, but their appearance as well.
“There’s no need for you to apologize, and I don’t need you to change anything. I’m very satisfied with you as my wife,” Cheng Tianxun said. “I just don’t want something like what happened before to happen again.”
“You mean when I refused to share a bed with you?”
“You got angry over one small oversight of mine. I don’t think that was necessary.” Cheng Tianxun slowly took out a cigarette.
“I’ve reflected on it,” Qin Yan said. “I thought you would at least remember my name. I admit I let my temper get the better of me at the time.”
Cheng Tianxun struck a match.
He lowered his head toward the orange-yellow flame, and the faint fragrance of tobacco soon filled the room.
Qin Yan sat quietly for a moment before asking, “That isn’t really what you wanted to talk about today, is it?”
This matter was merely the opening.
He wanted to use it as a pretext to lead into the subject he actually wanted to discuss.
Cheng Tianxun smiled.
“I knew you were smart.”
Qin Yan was not some wealthy society wife who spent her days sitting at home playing mahjong. She ran a newspaper herself.
According to his adjutant’s reports, Qin Yan’s newspaper was doing exceptionally well. Even before their marriage, the Vernacular Times had already established a strong readership. She had cut into the profits of her competitors, and because she had no powerful backing at the time, someone had nearly had her killed.
She hadn’t built her career simply by taking advantage of the Military Government’s influence after marrying him.
She had started from nothing, working entirely on her own, and built an excellent newspaper from the ground up.
She was sharp and perceptive.
Her coldness and purity were merely the surface.
Deep down, she was a leopard lying in wait in a snow-covered wilderness, disguising herself against the landscape until she was almost impossible to detect—then striking with unstoppable force.
“Qin Yan, what I want to ask is this: Do we continue maintaining our marriage the way we have been? You remain perfunctory toward me, and I remain perfunctory toward you? Or do we take things one step further?” Cheng Tianxun slowly exhaled a cloud of smoke.
The haze drifted between them. His eyes were dark and unreadable, giving away none of his emotions as he looked at Qin Yan.
“What do you mean by taking things one step further?” Qin Yan asked.
Cheng Tianxun said, “I’m asking what you think. If I want to sleep with you, I have to ask my adjutant how to please my wife, then spend half the afternoon going out to buy roses.”
“If we don’t change anything, then there’s no need to make a fuss about it. From now on, our relationship can remain exactly as it is. Once we leave the bedroom, we’re simply a marriage of political convenience. Neither of us interferes with the other.
“And inside the bedroom, there are no personal feelings involved. We simply enjoy ourselves physically.”
His forgetting her name and her refusing to share his bed was not, in his opinion, a reasonable cause for offense.
Even if she had simply said she wasn’t in the mood that night or didn’t want to, that would have been enough.
Cheng Tianxun wanted things to remain as they were.
This wasn’t the first time Qin Yan had refused him.
There had been several occasions when she had simply said, “I don’t want to,” or “I’m tired,” and Cheng Tianxun had accepted it.
He wanted both of them to feel that spark when they were together in bed, for their desire to meet halfway rather than for him to be the only one putting in the effort.
He wasn’t a bull, after all.
If she didn’t want to, he wouldn’t get angry. It wasn’t as though he thought about sex every day.
But the reason she had given the night before had started to sound a little too much like a matter of personal feelings.
He wanted to know whether Qin Yan had begun to develop some kind of attachment to him.
She had better not have.
And if she did, now was the time to put an end to it. They could both stay exactly where they were and not take another step.
“…Are you satisfied with the way things are now?” Qin Yan finally looked at him.
Cheng Tianxun nodded.
“I am.”
“Then I’ll change my reason from the other night,” Qin Yan said. “I was followed, and it frightened me. I was in a terrible mood at the time.”
Cheng Tianxun: “…”
“That’s also the truth. I took some of my frustration out on you.”
Qin Yan paused before continuing, “And I had been talking with Miss Ling about various things from the past, which reminded me of how helpless I was as a child. It put me in a very bad mood.”
Cheng Tianxun slowly exhaled another plume of smoke.
“Of all the possible reasons, I chose one that made the fault yours because I wanted to shift the responsibility away from myself. I didn’t want to feel guilty whenever I refused you,” Qin Yan explained.
“Very skillful.”
“Thank you for the flowers. I’ll give you a gift in return later,” Qin Yan said.
Cheng Tianxun stubbed out his cigarette.
“So, this matter is settled?”
“Yes.”
Cheng Tianxun let out a breath of relief.
He stood up, and Qin Yan rose as well.
Cheng Tianxun stepped forward and gently embraced her for a moment. With a smile, he patted her back.
“I didn’t marry the wrong woman, Mrs. Cheng.”
He had a very easy marriage, and he was quite satisfied with it.
Talking to Qin Yan was easy, too.
She was like frost clinging to the branches of trees in the dead of winter, hanging high above the ground—stunning from a distance.
But once she entered a warm, comfortable room, he could immediately put her out of his mind without having to worry about her too much.
Cheng Tianxun was simply too busy.
He was only twenty-five that year, and the foundation of his career was still far from secure. There were too many matters outside that demanded his attention.
There were countless things to deal with, and he genuinely had no time to spare for domestic affairs.
He knew Qin Yan didn’t love him.
Therefore, he didn’t need to give her anything in return.
“Is there any gift you want?” Qin Yan asked him.
Cheng Tianxun replied, “Anything is fine.”
“How about a lighter?” Qin Yan suggested. “Or a new-model Browning?”
“You can get your hands on a new-model Browning?”
“I’ll find a way.”
“The channels you use all consume my connections,” he said. “A lighter will do. I don’t need another gun.”
Qin Yan looked slightly disappointed.
Cheng Tianxun understood immediately.
She was the one who wanted the new-model Browning.
She wanted to use the excuse of buying him a gift to get herself a new gun as well.
Cheng Tianxun felt a mischievous urge to tease her.
The next time something comes up, I’ll give her a good gun and see what she can rack her brains to give me in return.