Jiang Feiwan has a psychological disorder.
This was something she confessed to Wuchi Yun herself after she sobered up from that drunken episode.
More than that, Jiang Feiwan didn’t say.
More than that, Wuchi Yun didn’t dare to ask.
Because she was worried about Jiang Feiwan’s emotional state, Wuchi Yun pretended she had nowhere to live and stayed over at her place for a period of time. However, some things are very hard to hide in daily life, so as time went on, Jiang Feiwan simply stopped trying to hide it.
Probably because, anyway, things were already like this.
Jiang Feiwan mentioned seeing Chen Zui, and Wuchi Yun was very concerned—more attentive about it than Jiang Feiwan herself. Therefore, she chose to come to Jiang Feiwan’s place today to “interrogate” Jiang Feiwan.
“Wan, to put it bluntly, a person you only met a few times in high school, two people who didn’t even have any intersection at all, can circle around and still see each other again more than a decade later,” Wuchi Yun held back, but couldn’t help herself. She picked up a slice of mutton that was already fully cooked, dipped it in sesame paste, and shoved it into her mouth without waiting even half a second, her cheeks bulging. “Anyway, I’ve never encountered this kind of fate, nor have I seen anyone around me encounter it. Is it possible that all of this is destined in the dark, and Chen Zui came to save—”
“Impossible.”
Jiang Feiwan abruptly cut off her words, the smile in her brows and eyes fading a bit. “Don’t overthink it. There won’t be that kind of intersection between her and me.”
Fine.
Wuchi Yun swallowed the mutton that was no longer flavorful in her mouth and sighed. “You person, looking all gentle and soft, why are you also so stubborn.”
“Also?” Jiang Feiwan unconcernedly shifted the topic away. “Who else is very stubborn?”
“Damn it!” Wuchi Yun viciously slammed her chopsticks down onto her bowl, her anger flaring right up. “Who else but that senior manager in the company’s planning department! Every time! Every time she beats back the proposals that our department worked overtime to rush out! I suspect she’s simply targeting our department! No, she must be targeting me!”
The topic wasn’t stuck on Jiang Feiwan anymore, and the hot pot atmosphere slowly pulled back in. She echoed: “Targeted right after transferring over?”
“Right? I don’t even know her at all, targeting a little girl like me, what kind of behavior is that!”
“A little girl who’s turning thirty-two.” Jiang Feiwan found it amusing.
Wuchi Yun muttered: “So what! Just because I’m thirty-two doesn’t mean I can’t be a little girl anymore!”
“Yes, Your Honor Wuchi is right.”
Wuchi Yun was happy. “I don’t want to ruin Your Honor’s hot pot feast today because of some brain-damaged superior. Eat up, eat up!”
………..
Downstairs, separated by just a wall, Li Li was sitting on the sofa sneezing. Rubbing her itchy nose, she felt that this sneeze had come out of nowhere, so she turned her head and asked: “Chen Zui, did you just secretly curse me?”
Chen Zui wore a speechless expression: “I’m cursing you now.”
Han Ling was dumbfounded: “What’s wrong.”
Li Li shook her head and opened a food delivery app. “What are we eating for noon? I’ll order.”
Chen Zui didn’t have much appetite. In the morning, Li Li had taken her to the hospital to get her stitches removed, and she kept feeling like the wound was aching faintly. She shook her head. “You two order, I don’t really feel like eating.”
Today was the first time Han Ling and Li Li were meeting in person; in the past, they had only ever seen each other through Chen Zui’s video calls, so it could be considered a half-successful online-to-offline meetup. Han Ling was the type to get familiar extremely fast, and within a few words, these two had already quietly formed an alliance.
“Sister Li Li, if you treat me to a big meal, I’ll tell you a secret about Chen Zui.” Han Ling came out of the room wearing only a slip dress, her graceful figure perfectly outlined, extremely alluring.
Li Li looked away and pushed up the rimless glasses on the bridge of her nose. “What do you want to eat?”
“I want to eat seafood—spicy, raw-marinated, steamed, and stir-fried.” Speaking of food, Han Ling’s eyes lit up. Twirling her eyeballs, she added: “Plus a bag of hand-crafted wheat beer from here!”
Chen Zui laughed. “Pretty awesome, gout-inducing diet.”
“Gout?” Han Ling didn’t understand gout, but she understood Chen Zui’s sarcastic remark of ‘pretty awesome’. Han Ling looked at Li Li. “Can’t I eat like this?”
“Not really. Between these two, you can only pick one,” Li Li said.
Han Ling hesitated, unable to think of what else could replace it.
“Is seafood with Happy Water okay? It’s not bad either,” Li Li suggested.
The agreement of exchanging a big meal for a secret was reached. Han Ling immediately whispered her speculation, teasing with one suspense after another, and finally summarized it as—Chen Zui has fallen for someone.
She didn’t say who that person was, nor did she say whether it was a man or a woman.
Anyway, it couldn’t be explained clearly, so Chen Zui couldn’t be bothered to struggle anymore. She pulled over the king crab leg Li Li had been peeling for a while and took a bite.
Li Li frowned. “Didn’t you say you weren’t eating?”
“The two of you are spreading rumors about me right in front of my face—can’t I even collect some compensation for losses?”
“Rumors?”
Half-skeptical, Li Li glanced at the person in front of her who was eating with great relish.
Han Ling immediately clarified: “I certainly didn’t, Sister Li Li. You can add my WeChat later, and I’ll tell you secretly.”
“Okay,” Li Li smiled.
“Neither of you is allowed to enter my home next time,” Chen Zui gave them a side-eye. “I won’t associate with people whose paths are different.”
As the words fell, a muffled thud suddenly rang out from above, followed immediately by the shattering explosion of glass hitting the floor.
Han Ling paused her movements, looked up, and couldn’t help sighing: “Wow, the soundproofing here really is just mediocre.”
“I’m heading out for a bit, you guys eat first.” Chen Zui didn’t react too much. Casually pulling out a tissue, she left the dining room.
Li Li was stunned; her sentence of “Where are you going?” didn’t even have time to be spoken before it was choked off in her throat by a huge door-slamming sound.
Han Ling suppressed her smile: “Never mind her, let’s eat quickly, we aren’t leaving any for her.”
Hearing her say that, Li Li gathered her thoughts, let her gaze linger on Han Ling’s face for a second, and smiled in reply: “Alright.”
The elevator was still on the 1st floor, so Chen Zui took the emergency stairwell up to the 21st floor, breathing slightly unevenly as she pressed the doorbell of Jiang Feiwan’s apartment.
The door was opened by Wuchi Yun. Seeing who it was, her expression paused in surprise, and she asked, “Who are you?”
Obviously, Chen Zui hadn’t expected that the person opening the door wouldn’t be Jiang Feiwan. Suddenly hit with this question, she was a bit at a loss for how to answer: “I……. I came to borrow a phone charger from Jiang Feiwan.”
The moment she said it, she regretted it.
Acting like a brain-dead person—who wouldn’t have a phone charger lying around in their own home!
Her peripheral vision glanced sideways into the room, failing to find the person she wanted to see. Her mood dropped, and the panting from running up the stairs earlier lessened a bit.
Wuchi Yun didn’t doubt her, thinking she was the neighbor from across the hall, so she turned her head and shouted inside: “Wanwan! Someone’s borrowing a charger from you, where did you put it?”
“Asking me?”
Jiang Feiwan’s voice came from afar, and Chen Zui instinctively raised her eyes.
“Chen Zui?” Jiang Feiwan walked out from the dining room, still pinching a shard of glass in her hand. Seeing who it had come, slight surprise flashed in the depths of her eyes.
She had forgotten that Wuchi Yun was also here; the two words “Chen Zui” went straight into her ears.
Wuchi Yun suddenly opened her eyes wide: “Chen Zui?!”
“Huh?” Chen Zui was dumbfounded.
“You’re Chen Zui?!” Wuchi Yun exclaimed, her gaze dropping down to see that large area of tattoos not covered by any ice-sleeve.
Clang clang clang clang clang clang clang!
So wild, so wild, so wild, so wild!
Chen Zui was rendered even more bewildered by her overly excited expression, and blankly answered: “Ah, yeah.”
She shifted her gaze away and saw Jiang Feiwan knitting her brows in annoyance.
Before she could ponder what Jiang Feiwan was annoyed about, in the next second, the person in front of her grabbed her wrist and pulled her inside.
Then, with a bang—, the door was closed.
Chen Zui shrank her neck slightly, feeling as if she had walked into some kind of wolf’s den, and asked tremulously: “What….. what’s wrong?”
“Wuchi, alright, she’s here to borrow a charger,” Jiang Feiwan reminded her, disliking Wuchi Yun’s approach.
Dragging people in without consent, Wuchi Yun didn’t dare to look at her, staring instead at Chen Zui: “Do you want to eat hot pot? We just picked up our chopsticks!”
“Don’t listen to her,” Jiang Feiwan snatched back the conversation. “What charger are you borrowing? Type-C?”
Chen Zui stammered: “Hot pot smells pretty good, actually.”
“Of course, sis! Absolutely smells amazing!” Wuchi Yun laughed triumphantly, leading her inside.
Passing by Jiang Feiwan, Chen Zui slowed her pace, took the glass shard from her hand, and lowered her voice to ask: “Did the cup break?”
“Yeah,” Jiang Feiwan let go, afraid she would get hurt. “I accidentally knocked it off, did you hear it?”
Chen Zui lifted the shard in her hand: “Saw it, and heard it too.”
“Sis! Come quick, come quick, sit here! Right next to Wanwan!” Wuchi Yun was dying of excitement, running back and forth to help get bowls, chopsticks, and dipping sauce, completely forgetting to clean up the water stain on the floor mixed with shattered glass fragments.
Seeing this deadpan behavior of hers, Jiang Feiwan grew even more annoyed at herself for blurting out Chen Zui’s name just then.
Helpless, she walked over, squatted down, and continued to pick up the shattered pieces of the cup.
“Stop picking them up, you’ll cut your hands in a second.” Chen Zui also squatted down, taking the largest glass shard away a step ahead of her. “I’ll do it, you go sit down first.”
Jiang Feiwan didn’t withdraw her hand: “Aren’t you afraid of getting your hands cut?”
Chen Zui pondered: “Probably not afraid.”
Such a confident “probably”.
Her gaze landed on Jiang Feiwan’s slender, delicate fingertips—a whiteness different from her own.
Her own whiteness was a whiteness carrying a tiny bit of white-person ancestry in her bloodline. Through her unremitting efforts, this whiteness had dimmed a lot, but it was still relatively obvious.
As for Jiang Feiwan’s whiteness, it looked like a whiteness wrapped in darkness for a long time—a cold white that didn’t bask in the sunlight, yet could glow white in the dark, or rather… a sickly white.
She couldn’t bear to leave any conspicuous scars on a pair of hands like this.
Perhaps, she was a little bit reluctant to let go.
Chen Zui hooked a trash can over from the side, tossed the two fragments into it, and asked Jiang Feiwan for a few sheets of tissue paper. The moisture on the floor was finally cleaned up, though it couldn’t prevent some splattered tiny shards from remaining: “Try not to go barefoot these couple of days; the dining room floor needs to be mopped properly.”
Down below, Chen Zui and Jiang Feiwan were squatting and cleaning up the glass; up above, Wuchi Yun ran out of the kitchen carrying newly washed bowls and chopsticks and two plates of freshly unwrapped sliced mutton. All of a sudden, not seeing anyone there, she assumed Jiang Feiwan had sent the person away and anxiously shouted: “Jiang Feiwan!”
Jiang Feiwan responded from under the table: “What?”
Almost simultaneously, Chen Zui poked her head out from beside the stool: “What?”
Wuchi Yun lowered her head, staring blankly at the two people responding to her at the same time, and blinked blankly. “Uh, nothing, nothing, you guys go ahead, you guys go ahead.”
Huh?? Wasn’t she calling Jiang Feiwan?
Why did Chen Zui answer too?