Laughter burst out across the room.
Loud, raucous laughter, directed at him.
Yuan Mian turned his eyes and looked up, seeing that Fu Tianle’s face also wore a smile, his eyes curved pleasantly.
At twenty-five, Fu Tianle was more mature and handsome than when he had first met Yuan Mian. He possessed a natural charisma, perfectly at ease amid neon lights and indulgent excess, someone who drew attention as effortlessly as breathing.
Even at this moment, he still looked strikingly handsome.
Suddenly, Yuan Mian laughed too. He smiled back at Fu Tianle.
His fingers closed around the phone resting on the table. He stood up, opened the door and left without looking back.
He didn’t care that the atmosphere in the room abruptly froze. He didn’t care about Fu Tianle’s instinctive flash of panic. He stepped into the corridor, turned off his phone and left alone, just as he had come.
He was one year younger than Fu Tianle but with the weight of his past experiences behind him, Yuan Mian had long since forgotten what impulsiveness meant. Every decision, big or small, had always come down to a single instant.
There was no need to write a farewell message or leave a breakup note. It would have been pointless.
Why?
Even Yuan Mian himself felt it, being with Fu Tianle was transactional. He was essentially a commodity, a presence put on display.
He walked down the stairs, heading to the parking lot. The lot was empty, no cameras, no paparazzi. Yuan Mian noticed a wide-angle mirror set by the roadside. In its reflection, he saw his own slender figure.
Originally, he had been the type of person who could gain weight just by drinking water. In the early days of his career, desperate to look good on camera, he had endured untold hardships. Every day, he starved himself so thoroughly that he would lie in bed, cursing and crying quietly. At some point along the way, though, his body seemed to change naturally. Even without deliberately controlling his diet, he no longer gained weight.
Perhaps people just changed as they grew, becoming unrecognizable versions of themselves. Everything seemed to follow that rule.
Yuan Mian blinked. There was a calm in him that was partly surprising, partly expected.
But at the same time, for reasons he could not name, memories from long ago began to surface, hazy yet sharp.
Seeing himself now treated like an object, few would have guessed that ten years ago, Yuan Mian had been a pampered, golden-child sort of young master.
He was born into the Yuan family. While the Yuan family’s renown couldn’t compare to the Fu family, a lineage that carried influence and wealth for generations, the family was far from poor. In terms of wealth alone, they had been considered among the elite.
Yuan Mian was the youngest child, with an elder brother. Both brothers were born of the same parents and the family of four had a harmonious relationship.
From early childhood, Yuan Mian attended the best schools in the industry and enjoyed the finest resources. His meals, clothing and daily necessities were all top-notch. Spiritually and materially, he had won the genetic lottery: adored by his family, indulged by friends and classmates who could hardly resist his charm.
This kind of upbringing nurtured a bold and confident personality. The boy Yuan Mian had been bore little resemblance to the man he was now. That younger version of himself had been a never-dying little fireball, full of energy, burning brightly from morning till night.
Nearly everyone who saw him would smile, either saying, “You’re way too hyper,” or, “Look at his sharp tongue, he never lets anything slide!”
He had been a lively, mischievous child, full of unearned confidence, convinced he could do anything and that life would always go smoothly.
Until one night, everything in his life collapsed.
Looking back, it had been a completely ordinary day, not a holiday, not a special occasion, the weather just plain, with no warning signs at all.
Then he received a call informing him of a traffic accident. The voice on the line was sorrowful as it explained that his parents had been in a car accident. Both had been in the same vehicle, one had died instantly, the other rushed to the hospital for emergency treatment.
Dazed, Yuan Mian rushed to the hospital and met his older brother outside the ICU. They stared at each other, legs weak, unable to stand.
They had both thought themselves mature inside but at that moment, they were just children again. They clung to each other, crying in agony, neither daring to identify the bodies alone nor confront the doctor’s verdicts about life and death.
It was an unbearable, bitter memory.
But for Yuan Mian, that was not yet the worst.
At least back then, his brother had still been his brother. The sudden change, the cruel transformation, came later.
Everything uglified in the weeks after his mother’s funeral, while Yuan Mian was still at the ICU with his father.
He was still young, completely ignorant of business affairs. His older brother, already an adult, had acquired a certain degree of management authority and shares in the family company.
The two had always shared a good relationship. After their parents’ accident, anyone who came should have been taken care of by the older brother. It made sense for him to manage everything.
Yet the brother he had known, the one he had trusted, suddenly became a stranger.
The company was liquidated, the family fortune seized. If not for legal restrictions, Yuan Mian would have been cast out entirely.
At his father’s bedside, the older brother, once thought to be his closest kin, regarded him with a look that was simultaneously malicious and satisfied.
He smiled and said, “You have no idea how much I despise you. Since you came into my life, it’s been like living in hell.”
“Every time I see you, I hate you so much I wish I could die. If Mom hadn’t died, it would have been better if you and Dad had died together.”
“You little bastard.”
Their perfect family crumbled into a nightmarish illusion. For a while, Yuan Mian even wondered if he had been adopted but DNA tests proved otherwise.
Soon after, former classmates, neighbors and friends distorted in character as well. The faces were the same but the people were not.
Yuan Mian was left alone with his father, now a vegetative patient, struggling with financial shortfalls, tasting bitter defeat in life again and again, as if the universe had forced him to consume it all at once.
Misfortune seemed unending and then fate played an even crueler joke.
Around the fourth year after he and his brother had gone their separate ways, his older brother became entangled in a Ponzi scheme. The family’s wealth was destroyed in an instant.
When Yuan Mian learned the news, he felt disoriented for days, unsure whether to feel anger or sorrow. Just as he debated whether to see his brother’s downfall in person, he got another call, from the scene of the accident, telling him to identify a corpse.
His brother had jumped from a building.
At the time, Yuan Mian had only recently begun his relationship with Fu Tianle.
He hadn’t originally liked Fu Tianle, someone with the slight air of a spoiled playboy, a butterfly drifting from one bloom to another but relationships sometimes need the perfect timing, location and circumstance. At that precise moment, at that approximate location, he happened to meet Fu Tianle.
Fu Tianle was enthusiastic, warm and playful, always trying to make him laugh. Yuan Mian’s closeness with him developed naturally.
When the news arrived, Yuan Mian felt dizzy and furious, his blood racing. Fu Tianle accompanied him to collect his brother’s ashes, burying them alongside Yuan Mian’s mother.
In front of his mother’s grave, Yuan Mian wanted to curse his brother but no words came.
He stood silently for a long time. Fu Tianle reached out, embraced him and whispered, “No matter what, you still have me.”
At that moment, Fu Tianle’s devotion felt genuine. Yuan Mian truly believed him.
Looking back, friends who had helped them meet had warned him that Fu Tianle might not be faithful yet the five years that followed… well, Yuan Mian knew he had only himself to blame.
He accepted Fu Tianle’s assistance in transferring his father to a better hospital, finding doctors and later in connecting him with the entertainment industry, providing resources and networks.
So when tabloids reported Fu Tianle’s infidelity, Yuan Mian’s eyes reddened with anger. He shook with rage, tears blotting the ink on the paper yet he did not throw the papers at Fu Tianle’s guilty face.
Perhaps he should have but he had no right, no retreat.
Since that first incident, no matter how Fu Tianle strayed, Yuan Mian never had another chance to react.
He could not afford to approach love in the usual way. The only way he could endure without feeling like a sham, without being the proverbial fallen woman pretending to be virtuous, was to destroy the very notion of romance between them.
Indeed, he had never really been dating Fu Tianle.
He was just there to be sold.
Thinking like this, he gradually stopped caring about Fu Tianle’s flirtations with others.
Fu Tianle came to him and they ate together if he was hungry, slept together if he was tired. If Fu Tianle clashed with someone, Yuan Mian no longer lost his temper.
He devoted himself increasingly to work, spoke less, became like a silent ball of cotton, sometimes barely recognizing himself and yet Fu Tianle would not let him rest comfortably in his subservience.
Out in the world, introducing him to friends, Fu Tianle always referred to Yuan Mian as his boyfriend. Many believed that despite Fu Tianle’s infidelity, Yuan Mian was different, special. He was the only one acknowledged, the primary one. Yuan Mian’s devotion to Fu Tianle was absolute.
That sense of being “special” was ironic, almost laughable when paired with the words: “Go accompany him.”
Yuan Mian laughed quietly again, a sound that gradually faded into silence.
In principle, his daily routine only needed to continue until his father, the vegetative patient, passed away but his father… his father had died last year.
Looking up, all the long memories condensed into a fleeting present.
He stepped forward. The sound of hurried brakes reached his ears. Yuan Mian turned slightly and the world flashed bright.
Bang!
A sudden force hit him, sending him flying forward.
Yuan Mian is pitiful…..
✦ ✧ ✦
Fleurveil
[Translator]
☕ A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE TRANSLATOR
✦ A tiny offering to the translator may please the spirits of the Realm. ☕
☕ BUY THEM A COFFEE →
✧ (づ｡•ㅅ•｡)づ ☕ ✧
✦ thank you for reading ✦
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ChaptersChapter 1 · Why don’t you go and keep him company?Chapter 2 · He opened the door and left without looking backChapter 3 · Why Hu Guangtong of all people?Chapter 4 · Have you broken up with Fu Tianle?Chapter 5 · Hello, I am Yuan Mian’s fiancé.Chapter 6 · You liked Hu Guangtong from the beginningChapter 7 · I want to spend the rest of my life with you.Chapter 8 · Have you seen Yuan Mian recently?Chapter 9 · Yuan Mian has already started talking to someone elseChapter 10 · He wasn’t Yuan Mian’s first love?Chapter 11 · Are you comparable to Hu Guangtong?Chapter 12 · Yuan Mian would certainly love Hu GuangtongChapter 13 · They’re going home together for dinnerChapter 14 · Extra 1Chapter 15 · Extra 2Chapter 16 · Extra 3