He looked speechless on the surface but in his heart, there was an undeniable sense of having been seen through.
Yuan Mian had long passed the age of youthful shyness, back when he truly was a teenager, he had actually been thick-skinned and unembarrassed.
He had also experienced relationships full of twists, turns and turbulence.
Yet he couldn’t quite understand why he felt so ill at ease now, as if time and life had been scrambled and restarted, forcing him to experience first love all over again.
Lowering his head to drink some water, Yuan Mian thought: who wouldn’t like Hu Guangtong?
His thoughts drifted far away.
How he and Hu Guangtong ended up together was, indeed, a long story.
At its root, tracing it all the way back… it was Hu Guangtong who pursued him.
That day, when Hu Guangtong asked whether he had broken up with Fu Tianle, Yuan Mian stared at him for a long time without answering.
He watched Hu Guangtong in silence for a while. By the time his thoughts regained clarity and began functioning again, he had already arrived at the filming set for work.
Hu Guangtong had driven him there, citing the slight sprain in Yuan Mian’s ankle, it was, after all, Hu Guangtong’s responsibility.
Once they reached the set, with Yuan Mian burdened by his own matters, the two of them separated cleanly without much entanglement.
As for how Yuan Mian single-handedly tore through everyone at the set he’d long held grudges against, charging in and out like a one-man army, that need not be mentioned.
What he hadn’t expected at all was that, after causing such a huge scene and coming back out, Hu Guangtong was still there, waiting for him.
Yuan Mian hadn’t gotten into any physical fights but he was still sweating, his hair slightly frizzed.
Hu Guangtong seemed not to notice any of it and simply smiled at him. “You look like you’re in a much better mood.”
Then he asked, “Is everything resolved? Are you free tonight? May I invite you to dinner?”
At that moment, the adrenaline in Yuan Mian’s body hadn’t fully faded. His heart was still pounding erratically. He didn’t know what he was thinking, only that he nodded.
That evening, before meeting up, he hesitated and struggled with himself for a long time. In the end, he still went to a studio to tidy up his hair and changed into a fairly neat, presentable outfit.
It was just a meal, nothing more. Don’t be so deliberate, he told himself.
But Hu Guangtong’s reaction was different from his.
When they met, Hu Guangtong looked at him for several seconds and said, “Thank you.”
“I’m honored.”
They truly weren’t familiar with each other. Sitting in the car, the two of them spent a long time discussing what to eat.
Hu Guangtong listed several restaurants. Yuan Mian agreed to all of them yet, for reasons unknown, after studying Yuan Mian’s expression each time, Hu Guangtong rejected them one by one. After a moment of silent hesitation, he asked, “Would it be okay to go to my place?”
And so, the two of them went to Hu Guangtong’s home.
Hu Guangtong had a three-bedroom apartment in B City. It was clear that he lived there regularly; the place carried many traces of everyday life.
The refrigerator was well-stocked with ingredients. After leading Yuan Mian inside, Hu Guangtong washed some fruit for him. While chatting casually, he went into the kitchen, tied on an apron and began to cook.
Yuan Mian’s heart felt suspended, with nowhere to land. Since he couldn’t sit still anyway, he stood at the entrance of the kitchen and watched. The more he watched, the stranger it all felt.
“Are you… cooking for me?” Yuan Mian asked.
Hu Guangtong replied, “I’m fairly decent at cooking. Cooking is one of my hobbies. It’s very healing.”
“…”
That wasn’t the point Yuan Mian was concerned about but Hu Guangtong was clearly thinking along a different line. After speaking, he himself showed a hint of hesitation. He turned his head toward Yuan Mian and said, “I don’t really know how to judge the right balance. I’m not sure what the best way to do this is.”
Then he added, “If there’s anything you don’t like, could you tell me?”
He seemed genuinely troubled, carefully weighing his words.
Because of that visible concern, Yuan Mian felt even more at a loss as to where to begin.
The two of them ate the meal together quietly and peacefully, harmonious and calm, like a pair of friends who had chosen to retreat from the world and live in tranquil seclusion.
Yuan Mian later evaluated the whole experience as resembling the kind of happy ending in television dramas where the male and female leads abandon everything and return to the countryside.
But after the dishes were cleaned up, Yuan Mian ultimately took the initiative to pierce through that cloud-like, dream-coated sweetness.
“Hu Guangtong.”
He chose to call Hu Guangtong by his full name and told him, “I don’t understand.”
This time, Hu Guangtong understood him quickly and responded, “What don’t you understand?”
Yuan Mian said, “The way you’re acting makes me feel like you like me.”
Hu Guangtong looked at him steadily for two seconds, then stood up and left.
When he returned, he brought back a laptop and a sports wristband.
He put one wristband on himself and one on Yuan Mian, then displayed both of their heart rates on the computer screen. After that, instead of continuing to circle the original topic, he suddenly asked, “Are you interested in knitting?”
“What?”
Hu Guangtong chatted casually, “Aside from cooking, the thing I do most often is knitting. My aunt keeps a Shiba Inu at home, it drools a lot. When I have free time, I knit many bibs for it.”
As he spoke, he took out his phone and showed Yuan Mian photos. In the pictures, a round, chubby black Shiba Inu had a drool bib tied around its neck, fluffy and adorable in tender yellow and spring-green colors.
Yuan Mian was still dazed when he heard Hu Guangtong ask, “Do you want to try? I can teach you.”
“…”
Knitting and Hu Guangtong, it was hard to imagine those two things having anything to do with each other.
But Hu Guangtong didn’t explain himself further and Yuan Mian also didn’t have the mood to just get up and leave.
At this point, Hu Guangtong found him a crochet hook and a ball of yarn. Once they said they’d start, they really did start.
Hu Guangtong was indeed skilled and very patient. He carefully taught Yuan Mian how to cast on stitches, how to make knots, how to form the simplest patterns that were easiest for beginners.
Yuan Mian followed along in a fog, as if he were dreaming while awake.
“I learned knitting to teach my mother,” Hu Guangtong said. “Later, I ended up liking it myself. Every time I knit something, I feel very calm.”
“Oh.”
“Once you get used to the healing feeling and the sense of accomplishment, it becomes addictive.”
“Oh.”
Yuan Mian had good coordination. Dancing, fighting, none of it was a problem yet now, his hands were astonishingly clumsy. Every stitch lagged half a beat behind.
And yet, he was stubborn. The harder something was, the more unwilling he was to give in. Without realizing it, his attention was truly captured.
He didn’t know how long had passed when he suddenly came back to himself and noticed Hu Guangtong watching him. When their eyes met, Hu Guangtong curved his eyes and smiled.
Yuan Mian froze.
On the screen, both heart rates were abnormally high. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of those numbers and his heart began to feel even more uncomfortable, almost aching.
Feelings could go unspoken. Emotions could be hidden but changes in heart rate, those couldn’t be concealed.
Hu Guangtong clearly had no intention of hiding anything. It had been his own decision to show this to Yuan Mian in the first place. At this moment, he was also looking at Yuan Mian’s heart rate. After seeing it, he stopped smiling and turned his head to gaze directly into Yuan Mian’s eyes.
He seemed to go through a stretch of thought that nearly put him in a difficult position. “I don’t want your heart to be hurt again,” he said. “But I also don’t know how to express my sincerity clearly enough, so that you won’t feel even a trace of disappointment.”
Yuan Mian met his gaze but dodged the point. “We haven’t even known each other for a full day. What could you possibly like about me?”
Hu Guangtong answered, “If I say I like your inner self, that would sound hypocritical, because your beauty is as obvious as an elephant standing in a room.”
“I can see your beauty and I want to praise it but I also truly like your inner self. In my eyes, your soul shines like a diamond.”
It was praise Yuan Mian had never heard before. It sounded so exaggerated it almost made him nauseous.
He had accumulated enough emotional wounds to fill an ocean trench, enough to seal his heart off from love for years to come and yet, he felt shaken.
After a long pause, he asked, “So what do you want? You want to date me?”
Hu Guangtong thought for a moment, then shook his head. “I came too late. No matter what I say, it sounds frivolous and hard to trust.”
“Mr. Yuan, from the bottom of my heart, I believe you are someone who deserves to be loved by all. That’s why I want to seize the time I have and cherish it.”
“Yes, I want to date you but it’s not just dating that I want.”
Hu Guangtong said, “I want to cook with you, eat with you, do all kinds of things together, interesting, boring, thrilling ordinary. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
“I like you very much. I want to cherish you.”
That night, Yuan Mian didn’t stay long at Hu Guangtong’s place.
When he was about to leave, Hu Guangtong measured the narrow strip of yarn, only a finger’s width, that he had knitted against Yuan Mian’s body.
Smiling, he said, “If I knit a little every day, in three months I’ll be able to knit you a sweater.”
Yuan Mian showed no mercy. “With such thin yarn, even if you finish in three months, it’ll already be out of season.”
Hu Guangtong laughed along with him. Their hands brushed against each other, then clasped together.
Like a fairy tale meant for adults, Yuan Mian, who had long since given up and believed he didn’t care about anything anymore, felt his nose sting with sourness. When they met again the next day, the two of them officially established their relationship.
What kind of fairy tale was this? Maybe he had actually been crushed to death by Hu Guangtong and all of this was just an illusion Hu Guangtong owed him as compensation.
Yuan Mian had thought that before.
And yet, day after day passed. They were almost done processing their marriage certificate and the illusion still hadn’t shattered.
His thoughts returned to the present. Yuan Mian put down his cup of water and gestured toward Zhang Su’an. “Eat your food.”
Zhang Su’an’s questions weren’t finished so quickly. The most important one hadn’t even been asked yet. “Hu Guangtong…”
Yuan Mian interrupted him. “He’s very good.”
Then he emphasized it again. “He’s very good.” Everything, everything was good.
Zhang Su’an couldn’t really do anything about Yuan Mian’s relationship anyway. Hearing this sentence directly from Yuan Mian’s mouth seemed to finally put his heart at ease.
Thinking about it again, all that remained was genuine happiness for Yuan Mian.
“Pfft.” Zhang Su’an suddenly burst out laughing as his thoughts wandered. “Fu family Second Uncle’s face, damn, the more I think about it, the better it feels!”
Yuan Mian laughed along with him. “That’s true.”
I’m happy that Yuan Mian met Hu Guangtong!
✦ ✧ ✦
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