Zhu Shiyu discovering Lu Ge’s infidelity happened at a highly coincidental moment.
Halloween was approaching, and he happened to be on a business trip in her city. The two hadn’t seen each other for several months, so naturally, they arranged to meet up.
This was their fourth year together, and also their fourth year doing long-distance.
It had suddenly rained the night before, causing the temperature to plummet. Although the holiday hadn’t officially arrived yet, the streets were already brimming with a festive atmosphere; jack-o’-lanterns and witches in pointed hats could be seen everywhere.
By the time she got off work, it was already 6 PM. Zhu Shiyu hurried out of her company and jumped into a cab, rushing toward the restaurant.
It happened to be a Friday, and the traffic was heavily congested. The driver honked forcefully twice as the car behind them aggressively squeezed in. Zhu Shiyu kept her head down, dealing with urgent work messages.
By the time she arrived at the reserved restaurant, she was already half an hour late. Pushing the door open, Zhu Shiyu easily spotted the person sitting by the window.
Lu Ge had handsome, proper features. Tall with long legs, his presence effortlessly stood out in the crowd.
The man sat there with his eyes lowered, a faint smile playing on his lips as he looked at his phone screen.
“Sorry I’m late,” Zhu Shiyu explained hurriedly, pulling out the chair opposite him and sitting down. “The traffic was a bit jammed on the way.”
“It’s fine.” Lu Ge put away his phone and looked up, his expression completely normal. That trace of a smile from just a moment ago seemed like her own illusion.
“Take a look at the menu, see what you want to eat.” He pushed the menu on the table over to her.
“Okay.”
“I checked the reviews online beforehand. The shrimp and steamed fish here are pretty good,” Lu Ge said.
Zhu Shiyu was a bit of a picky eater. She didn’t like meat, preferring lightly cooked seafood, but this was a fact known only to those very close to her. She disliked troubling others; in group settings, she mostly just ate whatever everyone else was having.
And Lu Ge had known her for ten years. Aside from her family and bestie, he was basically the person who understood her best.
“Then let’s order these.” Zhu Shiyu closed the menu, and Lu Ge naturally took it from her, casually checking off a few dishes they both liked.
—”No minced garlic.”
At the end, he routinely added a note about her dietary restriction.
His pen-holding posture was very standard. At the end of a stroke, the tip of his pen would unconsciously flick upwards—just like the scene Zhu Shiyu would catch out of the corner of her eye during every class break back in high school.
They had shared a desk for an entire year during their second year of high school. Zhu Shiyu still vividly remembered the way he looked while doing practice problems.
The restaurants Lu Ge picked rarely disappointed. He had a habit of doing his homework before doing anything. Even back in college when Zhu Shiyu’s computer broke down, he would look up highly-rated repair shops nearby and send her the addresses directly.
The food was delicious, especially the steamed sea bass. Hearing it was the restaurant’s signature dish, Zhu Shiyu’s chopsticks unconsciously reached out time and time again, and before she knew it, the plate had bottomed out.
“Shiyu, eat slowly. I’ll go pay the bill first.” Lu Ge pushed his chair back and stood up, taking his phone with him to the cashier.
“Ah, okay.” Zhu Shiyu hurriedly raised her head. She had barely answered before Lu Ge had already left her with nothing but a rushed back.
The queue to pay must have been quite long. Zhu Shiyu slowly finished the rest of the food in front of her before Lu Ge finally returned. His breathing was a bit unsteady. He sat down and casually placed his phone on the table.
“Done eating?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s get ready to leave…”
Before Lu Ge could even finish his sentence, the screen of the phone he had set on the table lit up. Zhu Shiyu’s gaze instinctively dropped to it, and a message preview popped up.
Two brief lines of text.
“Brother.”
“I miss you.”
Lu Ge was an only child. Even his cousins wouldn’t address him so intimately.
In that moment, even if Zhu Shiyu wanted to deceive herself, she couldn’t possibly believe that the sender was actually his sister.
A hand swiftly pressed the lock screen of the phone. The screen abruptly turned black, and all the surging undercurrents were covered beneath a calm surface.
Zhu Shiyu and Lu Ge’s eyes met. A flash of panic crossed his eyes, followed quickly by his lips pressing tightly together in a jarring, sudden silence.
About two seconds later, she asked calmly.
“Lu Ge, have you fallen for someone else?”
Zhu Shiyu and Lu Ge had gotten together during their senior year of college.
They were high school classmates. Zhu Shiyu still remembered the first time she saw him; it was during the major classroom cleanup on the reporting day of the new semester.
She was holding a broom, her head buried as she swept the trash, when she suddenly heard someone calling her name at the classroom door. She looked up and saw a young boy with smiling eyes.
“Zhu Shiyu, the teacher is looking for you.”
For three years of high school, they were classmates and friends. Their hobbies and interests were almost identical, their temperaments meshed well, and in class, they were a pair of top students with excellent character and grades.
For college, they were accepted into universities in two different places. Though one was in the south and the other in the north, they always kept in touch.
During their freshman year, Lu Ge made a special trip to visit her once, and later, Zhu Shiyu also dropped by his school for a tour on her way somewhere.
Every Spring Festival, everyone would arrange to meet up for class reunions.
Lu Ge confessed his feelings to her near graduation.
It happened right at a time when all the classmates and friends around Zhu Shiyu were getting into relationships. She hadn’t had a boyfriend for all four years of college. On one hand, there simply wasn’t anyone she liked; on the other hand, she was busy. The heavy academic pressure coupled with off-campus part-time jobs meant her schedule was packed to the brim. She hadn’t really thought about this aspect of life until it felt like she had reached the age where she ought to be dating.
That night, Zhu Shiyu went back and thought about it all night, and agreed the next day.
She felt it was time for her to start dating, and having known Lu Ge for so many years, he seemed like a pretty good guy.
Their relationship was lukewarm. There was barely any honeymoon phase; they skipped straight to a familiar, comfortable mode of interaction.
When graduation season arrived, Lu Ge chose to stay at his university for his postgraduate studies, while Zhu Shiyu went off to an internship for work.
Everyone stepped into their new lives step-by-step. Neither of them altered their goals or life plans for the other.
Throughout these long-distance years, things had been ordinary yet harmonious. Lu Ge would occasionally prepare little surprises for her, and Zhu Shiyu would frequently visit him during holidays. They were like any ordinary young couple—they had their tender moments and intimately knew each other’s hidden habits and preferences.
Zhu Shiyu originally thought she and Lu Ge would just keep going like this, letting nature take its course until they got married and had kids. That is, until she saw this text message on his phone today.
It had started raining outside at some point. It was very cold. The weather forecast said there would be light snow recently, but it was nowhere to be seen.
Lu Ge confessed that the other party was his junior from grad school. They had been interacting more recently because of a shared project.
Reaching this point, he unconsciously paused, his Adam’s apple rolling as he picked up his glass to take a sip of water.
Zhu Shiyu was too familiar with Lu Ge. Whenever he was nervous or felt guilty, his little tics would naturally surface: swallowing hard and habitually darting his gaze to the right.
She broke up with Lu Ge right to his face.
The usually calm and composed man unconsciously took a deep breath, abruptly slipping up and knocking over a glass cup beside him.
—”Shiyu, there is truly nothing between her and me. I’ve already blocked all her contact info. Don’t be mad, please just pick up the phone.”
Zhu Shiyu walked down the street, amidst the bustling crowds coming and going. The wind poured into her collar, making her shiver uncontrollably. With trembling fingers, she emailed her direct supervisor.
“Hans, I’m very sorry. I’ve decided to cancel the out-of-town relocation we discussed last time. I’ll be staying at the headquarters for now, with no changes in the near term.”
Zhu Shiyu blocked all of Lu Ge’s contact information.
Perhaps because of the temperature drop, she caught a chill walking home that day and suffered from a bad cold for a whole week.
After recovering from her illness, the feelings from that moment were also greatly diluted. Looking back, some memories had become blurred, as if she had just woken up from an unreal nightmare.
Work remained overwhelmingly busy. Since her relocation was canceled, her boss had re-assigned all her shelved projects back to her.
Life went on as always, pushed hurriedly forward by the torrent of time. All emotions were submerged in the day-to-day grind of work.
When she was little, she thought that when she grew up, she would be a heroine holding a video camera, chasing her dreams to the ends of the earth. But in reality, she was just an ordinary corporate drone, trapped and bustling away in an office building every day.
It was yet another late night of overtime. When she came out, the streetlights had already illuminated the darkness.
The night was cold and utterly silent.
Zhu Shiyu’s phone was very quiet. Ever since she blocked Lu Ge, there was no one constantly missing her and sending her messages. It seemed he hadn’t told his friends about their breakup yet, so things had been peaceful and quiet during this time.
If he wasn’t going to say anything, Zhu Shiyu didn’t intentionally bring it up with others either. She had been busy non-stop since their last meeting and simply hadn’t had the time to deal with these matters.
The calendar displayed the 6th, a day circled with a marker. Zhu Shiyu stared at it blankly for a moment, then pulled up a number from her contacts and dialed it.
It rang twice before it was cut off. Not long after, a text message popped up on her phone.
“Diandian, a lot of relatives came over today. Your mom’s mood is a bit sour. I’ll call you back a little later, okay?”
Zhu Shiyu lowered her eyes and calmly typed a reply.
“Okay. You guys take care of your health too, and tell Mom not to get angry so often.”
Such situations were already commonplace. In the years she had been working, Zhu Shiyu and her family were in an almost constant state of stalemate.
The barely-there truce they had reached during college had completely shattered again because of her stubborn insistence on “chasing her dream.”
At the time, Zhu Shiyu had acted first and reported later, only telling her family after she had officially onboarded at her job. That incident caused them to go a full three months without any contact.
Zhou Zhen refused to answer her calls, and Zhu Anyuan didn’t dare to call her openly. Only occasionally would he sneakily text her to ask how she was doing.
She didn’t know when it started, but her relationship with her family had slowly become cold and estranged. Looking back, those harmonious, close-knit days of the past felt like something from a previous lifetime.
Tomorrow was the Start of Winter. The light snow that had been forecasted for ages finally arrived as promised. Fine, soft white snowflakes began to drift from the sky, floating under the amber glow of the streetlights.
It was very cold outside.
Zhu Shiyu shoved both hands into her coat pockets, tilted her face up, and closed her eyes. A tiny, faint coolness melted against her skin.
It was another winter.
Time really flew. In the blink of an eye, she had been working for four years. Yet regrettably, it seemed she hadn’t grown into the kind of adult she had hoped to become.
Workdays were as busy as usual. When she received her elder aunt’s call, Zhu Shiyu had just finished an afternoon meeting and stepped out of the office.
The anxious, panicked voice pierced through the receiver. The news of her mother suffering a sudden myocardial infarction and being hospitalized crashed down on her without any warning.
Right up until she took a leave of absence, handled the handover, and was sitting on the flight back, she still felt a sense of unreality.
The temperature in Taicheng had also long since dropped, the sky overcast with heavy clouds. When she entered the hospital room, the first thing she saw was the pale face of the person lying on the bed.
She had aged.
This was the first thought that surged into Zhu Shiyu’s mind.
Zhou Zhen had been a strong, fiercely independent woman all her life. Yet at this moment, she was nothing more than a frail, powerless old lady. Zhu Shiyu hadn’t been home for two years and shockingly hadn’t realized she had aged so drastically.
She had suffered a major illness in her early years, and afterwards, it took a long time for her to get pregnant. Having Zhu Shiyu was considered having a child at an older age.
The hospital room was crowded with people. The Zhu family had many relatives and friends, and their relationships were quite close. They were all currently gathered around the bed to visit. The moment Zhu Shiyu walked in, she became the center of attention.
A hand forcefully pulled her over. Zhu Shiyu stumbled a bit before steadying herself. She saw her elder aunt’s reproachful face, and what left her mouth was a tone of hurried complaint.
“Little Yu, why are you only arriving now?! Let me tell you, if the neighbor hadn’t happened to be home and discovered her in time, your mother would be gone by now!”
That day, surrounded by a room full of relatives and friends, she learned of the many big and small things that had happened during her years away from home. Every single incident was a testament to her dereliction of duty as a daughter.
Almost everyone was urging her to come home and stay by her parents’ side.
Her parents were getting older and needed someone to look after them. She currently didn’t have the financial ability to bring them to live with her. Besides, having lived here for so many years with a familiar circle of friends, they were even more reluctant to leave their hometown for an unfamiliar city at their age.
In her memory, that afternoon was exceptionally long, until the doctor finally announced that Zhou Zhen had passed the critical stage and her condition was improving.
Only two choices were left in front of her.
Regardless of what happened, it was impossible for her to return to Beijing. Either get married straight away, or resign, change careers, follow her family’s arrangements, and find a stable, leisurely job.
And later on, she met Meng Siyi.
Zhu Shiyu chose the former.
Translator’s Anecdote: Dropping a cheating boyfriend of 4 years instantly, blocking him everywhere, and choosing a green-flag doctor instead? We absolutely love a decisive queen who knows her worth! 👑💅