At six in the morning, the large house was empty and silent. Even the slightest sound was magnified infinitely. Sunlight quietly slipped into one corner.
It was already summer, and the sun rose especially early.
Lin Xuehe got up on time. As usual, he planned to exercise on the treadmill for half an hour. His bedroom was farther inside, while the guest room was closer to the outside. As he passed by, he noticed that the guest room door was already open. The bedsheet, quilt cover, and pillowcase had all been removed and were waiting to be put into the washing machine.
Lin Xuehe forcibly turned his head away, making himself ignore the bundled-up bedding set.
Annoying.
When he reached the living room, a figure curled up on the sofa came into view. The moment his footsteps landed, the person with their back to him immediately turned around, then slipped on her slippers and dashed toward the kitchen.
“Good morning, Mr. Lin. I will go make breakfast.”
Because she ran too fast, the last two words were already drifting away.
Lin Xuehe fell silent. Was she starving?
Wen Ya really was starving. After two o’clock she had not slept at all, because she was hungry.
What she had eaten at the hotel hardly counted for anything. Altogether it probably weighed no more than a couple of liang. It was digested within an hour, so how could it last through the long night? After hunger woke her up, she had originally planned to search the refrigerator for some snacks. If nothing else, she could sneak a few leftovers. But to her surprise, Lin Xuehe’s refrigerator contained nothing but milk, mineral water, and three or four ingredients. She did not dare cook in the middle of the night and wake him, so she could only open a carton of milk and drink it. Even then she did not dare drink too much, afraid that frequent trips to the bathroom would make too much noise.
But what should she make for breakfast?
Wen Ya stared at the refrigerator, troubled. Her cooking skills were limited to simply boiling food until it was cooked. To satisfy Lin Xuehe’s taste was completely impossible.
Pressing one hand over her shriveled, hollow stomach, she regretted for the first time that she had never bothered to learn cooking from her mother before, living instead with clothes handed to her and meals served to her.
After running on the treadmill for two minutes without hearing any movement, Lin Xuehe reached out and turned off the power. He walked into the kitchen to take a look. The troubled person was almost stuffing her head into the refrigerator, shifting around again and again yet unable to take anything out.
Hopeless.
Lin Xuehe sighed and grabbed her by the clothes, pulling her out of the refrigerator. “I will do it.”
Wen Ya looked at him miserably. “I am sorry, Mr. Lin. I am useless.”
“Since you know that, move aside.”
Wen Ya lowered her head in a respectful bow and stepped back with cupped hands.
Forget it, it did not matter anyway. Mr. Lin was an angel.
Lin Xuehe washed his hands and took out some eggs. “Do you want egg pancakes? Anything else will take too long. This is faster.”
Wen Ya was both happy and surprised. “Mr. Lin, did you really come back from overseas? Should not people who studied abroad have breakfasts like fried eggs, ham, and sandwiches? Egg pancakes seem a bit too down-to-earth.”
“Do you have amnesia?”
Lin Xuehe did not use any egg beater. Just a pair of chopsticks, yet the way he used them made Wen Ya question her own gender.
She could not help looking at him with sparkling eyes. “Mr. Lin, how can you know how to do everything?”
“It is because you know nothing.”
Wen Ya refused to admit it. “I just have not had many chances to cook for myself. When I move out and live on my own in the future, I will definitely learn.”
Lin Xuehe nodded. “That is true.” He himself had honed these skills while living alone.
He shredded a carrot, then diced it. The way he held the knife was elegant, each movement smooth and flowing. Wen Ya stared at the fingers gripping the handle and quietly swallowed.
How could someone be this good-looking and this capable…
“Mr. Lin, can I marry you?”
The knife edge shifted slightly, making the evenly cut carrot cubes crooked.
Lin Xuehe glanced sideways, quietly looking at the astonishing remark from Wen Ya. She immediately laughed awkwardly. “Hehehe, just joking, just joking.”
Suddenly overwhelmed by greedy thoughts, Wen Ya awkwardly rubbed the back of her neck. There was a saying for this, give someone an inch and they will take a mile.
Lin Xuehe turned back. The kitchen knife resumed its steady work. “If you have nothing to do, go wash the bedsheets and quilt covers.”
“Okay!”
With her head steaming from embarrassment, Wen Ya ran off in a fluster.
Good heavens, she was really a bit shameless.
She threw the bedsheets and quilt covers, along with the bathrobe she had changed out of, into the washing machine. Squatting beside it, she listened to the soft humming as the fabrics inside were flung upward and then fell back down.
Mr. Lin was so outstanding, it felt like no one was worthy of him. Even the prettiest girls seemed unsuitable.
Wen Ya mentally went through all the women she had ever met and considered the best among them, imagining them one by one. In the end she shook her head heavily.
No, no. How could Mr. Lin become someone’s husband and spend his days chatting about household trivialities with a woman? That would lower his value too much.
Sigh.
After letting out a long sigh, Wen Ya thought that although it might not be very nice to think this way, Mr. Lin should probably just grow old alone.
Heaven bless him.
The egg pancakes were really delicious.
Even when Wen Ya was being shown out the door, she was still savoring the taste. Mr. Lin’s cooking was so good, it had the flavor of a mother’s cooking.
Saturday morning felt lazier than a weekday. At seven o’clock there were still hardly any people on the road, only the sunlight diligently doing its job.
Holding the umbrella Lin Xuehe had given her, Wen Ya took small bouncing steps forward. Since she was still in a good mood, she decided to go buy some clothes by herself, la la la la~
There were not many shops open so early, but that did not mean there were none that were diligent. Wen Ya wandered around for a while and successfully entered a small shop. While chatting casually with the owner, she tried on clothes. In the end, she bought an off-shoulder floral blouse.
She was going to become more beautiful and elevate her own standards so that the messy blind dates her mother arranged would back off at the sight of her.
After leaving the shop, she checked the thirty yuan left in her wallet, then touched her bank card. She decided to buy a new phone first. While looking around for a phone store, a hurried figure across the street caught her attention. Wen Ya stopped where she was and waved toward the other side.
“Keke!”
Qin Keke across the street froze for a moment. Her eyes immediately turned red. Then she rushed over through gritted teeth and grabbed Wen Ya by the neck.
“Damn it, Wen Ya, where did you go last night? Why didn’t you answer your phone?”
“Do you know we were all going crazy with worry? Your aunt already went to the police station to file a report!”
Wen Ya was being choked and could not speak.
Qin Keke let go and then slapped her on the shoulder. “No matter what conflict you have with your parents, not answering calls and not going home is still going too far!”
Wen Ya coughed repeatedly before finally catching her breath. “I’m twenty-five, not five…”
“Do you know your mom has been crying the whole time!”
Qin Keke interrupted her, furious. “Do you know how much it hurts her when you do this?”
“I know.”
Wen Ya smiled. Of course she knew.
“Then why are you still smiling?” Qin Keke looked at her in disbelief. “How can you still laugh?”
Wen Ya shook her head. “Something like what happened yesterday only happened because before that I cared too much about not hurting her.” It was also yesterday that she finally understood why the girl singing in the bar refused to go home even when her parents begged her repeatedly.
Everything has a cause and effect. When someone is pushed to the edge of a breakdown, who still has the mood to consider anything else?
Qin Keke could not understand, nor did she have the time to. She directly called Wen Ya’s mother.
“You tell your mom yourself.”
Wen Ya did not refuse. She took the phone and gently called out amid the panicked questioning from the other side.
“Mom.”
The voice on the other end immediately stopped. The next second there was no sound at all.
The call was hung up.
Wen Ya smiled and handed the phone back to Qin Keke. “See? The one unwilling to communicate has never been me, it has always been her.”
Qin Keke was momentarily speechless, but quickly found an excuse. “If it were me, I would also be angry and hang up after knowing you were safe. And she is your mother. No matter how wrong she is, she still gave birth to you and raised you. You should not be angry with her.”
“I used to think that too.” Wen Ya’s lips drooped, and she stopped smiling. “But now I feel that I cannot keep giving in endlessly. If she is clearly wrong, why can’t we communicate?”
“…It is only blind dates. You do not have to reject them so strongly.” Qin Keke hesitated. “You can meet good people through blind dates too. Your mom is doing it for your own good.”
“In any case, I still think what you did last night was too much.”
A black car that had been approaching stopped nearby. Wen Ya’s gaze passed over Qin Keke and landed on the handsome man stepping out of the car. Then she looked away.
A trace of guilt flashed through Duan Ming’an’s eyes, though he smiled on the surface. “We finally found you. Wen Ya, have you had breakfast?”
“I have. Thank you.”
Wen Ya’s attitude was very cold, though she did not show any other obvious emotion. She looked at Qin Keke. “You have all been looking for me for so long, you must be tired. Go back and rest. When you have rested well, I will treat you to a meal.”
She skipped over Duan Ming’an very naturally, which was also a way of avoiding suspicion.
As for why she was the one who had to avoid this suspicion, Wen Ya did not want to think too deeply about it, afraid she would not be able to get past the hurdle in her own heart.
After all, their long-standing understanding remained. Qin Keke knew that calling Duan Ming’an over to help had been inappropriate, so she told him to leave first.
“You should go back first. I will walk around with Wen Ya.”
Duan Ming’an frowned slightly. “You are still not going home?”
“Not yet. Hurry up and go.”
Duan Ming’an glanced at Wen Ya. In the end, he left.
Wen Ya slowly let out a breath. If he stayed any longer, she would have exploded.
Fortunately, she still had some composure left.
Qin Keke stepped forward and hooked her arm around Wen Ya’s, softening her tone. “Alright, I know you are in a bad mood and have suffered a lot of grievances. Let us not talk about who is right or wrong for now. Let us keep shopping.”
“That works.”
Wen Ya adjusted her mood and curved her eyes in a smile. “My phone broke, so let’s buy a new one first. Then I will go to the service center to replace my SIM card.”
Qin Keke stared at her in shock. “What the hell, you smashed your phone? Aren’t you the kind of ordinary person who treasures every single cent?”
“Exactly, so you should understand how angry I was at the time.”
“Ah, sorry. I listened to your mom and formed a preconceived idea first. Now I understand. You have such a good temper, if even you smashed something then you must have reached your limit.”
“I am still angry. If you ever jump to conclusions again, I will drag you down with me.”
Qin Keke begged for mercy. “Hehehe, I was wrong. I promise there will not be a next time.”
Wen Ya rolled her eyes at her and let the brief argument pass.
That was all they could do.
Because even between the closest friends, there is never one hundred percent understanding.