“I can.” Yuan Su turned and rummaged through a pile of parts boxes. “But there aren’t any matching new parts left, only old ones.”
“Old ones are fine too!” Pu Yu quickly replied.
He fell silent, lowering his head to begin the work.
The tools obeyed his hands—dismantling, cutting wires, winding, insulating…
His movements were so practiced he didn’t seem like a high school student.
Pu Yu stood quietly to the side, her gaze sweeping over his lowered brows and eyes. His nose bridge was high, his lips pressed tightly together, carrying a gloominess that didn’t match his age.
A few minutes later.
Yuan Su reassembled the base, plugged it in, and flipped the switch.
Click.
Soft light instantly poured out, illuminating the narrow workbench and the eyes of both of them.
“Done.” He pushed the desk lamp toward her.
“Thank you!” Pu Yu happily picked up the lamp and pulled a few crumpled bills from her pocket. “How much is it?”
Yuan Su picked up the soldering iron again, not even lifting his eyelids.
“No need.”
“How can that be? I have to pay.” Pu Yu insisted on placing the money on the table.
Yuan Su frowned impatiently, his tone cold and sharp. “I said no need. It was just an old, worthless part anyway.”
Startled by his harshness, Pu Yu’s outstretched hand froze mid-air.
She looked at the boy’s tall yet hostile figure, feeling somewhat at a loss.
Yuan Su didn’t look up.
The soldering iron in his hand still emitted faint wisps of smoke.
Pu Yu clutched the crumpled ten-yuan bill, her wrist subtly pressing downward.
“Try dropping it.” The boy suddenly spoke.
His voice wasn’t loud, but it carried a chilling sharpness.
In Yuan Su’s dark eyes, the daytime laziness was gone, replaced only by a defiant, fierce glare of someone who felt provoked.
As if the moment the money touched the table,
he could immediately throw her and the lamp out together.
Pu Yu was frightened by his attitude, her fingers abruptly curling back.
The air froze for a few seconds.
Only the faint sizzle of electric current remained.
Looking at the thick layer of defensiveness in his eyes, Pu Yu suddenly understood his meaning.
He didn’t need this kind of small change that felt like “charity.”
Even if he was currently stuck in the mud.
“Then I won’t give it to you.”
Pu Yu obediently put the money back in her pocket and said softly, “Thank you, Yuan Su.”
She picked up the lamp, turned, and quickly left the repair shop.
Yuan Su watched the slender figure disappear through the doorway, the tension in his jawline easing slightly.
The night wind blew into the shop, rustling a few discarded blueprints.
He lowered his gaze, looking at the complex circuit board in his hand.
This was the motherboard brought in by the town’s internet café owner. The fault was well-hidden, and he had been troubleshooting it for two nights.
He should have been fully focused.
But when his fingertips touched the soldering iron handle, he inexplicably remembered those eyes from earlier.
Clear and clean, like the sky after rain.
No pity, no curiosity, none of those emotions he had long grown tired of.
This only made him more agitated.
Just then.
A very light sound of footsteps suddenly came from the doorway.
The head that had just left cautiously peeked out from beside the door again.
Like a cat that had returned, clinging to the doorframe, only revealing a pair of beautiful eyes.
Yuan Su paused, turning his head to look over, his brows not yet having time to furrow.
“I still want to explain,” the girl’s voice was soft, carrying a hint of urgency yet also a touch of stubbornness. “Giving you money wasn’t about charity, nor was it pitying you.”
Yuan Su didn’t speak, the lines of his profile appearing somewhat cold and hard under the light.
Seeing that he wasn’t chasing her away, Pu Yu grew slightly bolder, stepping out fully from behind the door to stand at the boundary between light and shadow.
Her breathing was still unsteady from running back, but she managed to say everything she had prepared in one breath, “You fixed my desk lamp—that’s your skill, so I should pay for it. It’s the same as buying food in the cafeteria or soda at the convenience store.”
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, and I don’t think it hurts anyone. Because effort and reward are proportional—this is what you deserve.”
She emphasized the words “what you deserve” heavily, afraid he might misunderstand.
Yuan Su looked at her.
The lamplight fell on the girl’s slightly flushed but exceptionally clean face.
Her clear eyes were open and honest, without any trace of impurity.
None of the disdain, pity, or avoidance she often saw in the expressions of other townspeople.
She was simply stating a fact.
The hostility in Yuan Su’s eyes gradually dissipated under such gentle, accepting gaze, replaced by a deeper scrutiny.
“Finished?” he asked.
“Not yet.”
Pu Yu took a step forward and tried a different approach, “If you insist on not taking money, then, as an exchange, I’ll bring you breakfast tomorrow, okay?”
Money isn’t easy for anyone to come by.
Not for Grandma, not for Xu Suiran, and not for Yuan Su either.
Pu Yu didn’t want to owe anyone anything.
“I don’t need it.”
He said these words firmly and decisively.
Pu Yu wasn’t discouraged by his coldness. Instead, she asked very seriously, “Then what do you usually eat in the morning?”
“Nothing.” Yuan Su answered curtly and casually.
Breakfast, in his chaotic and disordered life, was nothing but an utterly superfluous and pretentious existence.
Pu Yu hadn’t been in town for long, so she only knew what was good or not from what Xu Suiran had told her. After thinking for a moment, she said, “Sui Sui says the buns from the breakfast shop at the alley entrance are really good. I’ll buy you some buns, okay?”
“Suit yourself.” His voice was muffled, betraying no emotion. “But don’t expect me to eat them.”
“Then I won’t worry about it.”
The girl’s voice was gentle, yet it carried a strange tenacity: “I’ll leave them on your table tomorrow morning. Whether you eat them or not is your business, but whether I give them to you is mine.”
She didn’t say “thank you,” nor did she say anything else.
She simply hugged the desk lamp that had lit up again and turned to walk out of the repair shop.
Yuan Su didn’t look up.
But he listened to the sound of her retreating footsteps until he could hear them no more.
“Nosy.”
He irritably threw down his tools and placed the circuit board back on the table.
Just as he was about to stand up, his gaze fell on a small object at the corner of the table that he hadn’t had time to throw away.
It was the discarded electrolytic capacitor he had replaced while fixing the lamp.
It wasn’t a loose connection at all.
The capacitor inside had failed due to excessive pressure.
What he had replaced it with was a nearly brand-new imported part he had just removed from something else, several times better than what the lamp originally had.
“Lost out.”
The young man muttered under his breath.
Only after walking a good distance did Pu Yu slow her pace.
She glanced back—the small shop was still lit.
A strange, indescribable feeling stirred in her heart.
When she returned home, Grandma was still working.
“Fixed it?” Li Suhua asked without looking up.
“Fixed it, Grandma.” Pu Yu placed the desk lamp back on the table. “He just wouldn’t take any money. I insisted, and he even got… a bit fierce about it.”
“Normal,” Li Suhua said, stopping the pedal of her sewing machine, clearly accustomed to it. “That boy is like a stubborn donkey—cold on the outside but warm on the inside. Before the incident, he was such a sunny kid, smiling at everyone he met.”
“After the incident, he wrapped himself up like a hedgehog, stubbornly holding that broken family together.”
Pu Yu remembered what Xu Suiran had said—that Yuan Su used to be the top student in his grade.
He was the promising student teachers praised, the one many girls secretly liked.
She also remembered how he had explained the problem to her that afternoon.
Though impatient, he still went through it three times.
And…
Even though he said it was just aging wiring,
he quietly replaced the electrolytic capacitor without a word.
“Yeah,” she said softly. “He’s actually… pretty good.”