Lu Zhaoye swung his long leg over the bike, steadily gripping the handlebars. He tilted his head slightly, gesturing to the back seat.
“Get on.”
Su Wan lightly hopped on and naturally wrapped her arms around his lean waist.
Through the thin fabric of his shirt, she could clearly feel the firm lines of his abdominal muscles hard, warm, and full of a reassuring sense of safety.
Su Wan suddenly felt a little restless. She really wanted to squeeze them, but she was afraid Lu Zhaoye would think she was being inappropriate, so she barely held herself back.
After a while, seeing that Lu Zhaoye still hadn’t started pedaling, she thought he had noticed her little thoughts. Her heart skipped a beat. She quickly pulled her hands back and pretended to adjust her skirt, though the corners of her lips couldn’t help but curl slightly upward.
Unexpectedly, Lu Zhaoye kept one foot on the ground, turned his head, and his deep gaze landed on her face as he suddenly asked,
“Did that Fan Li just now… have a grudge against you?”
Su Wan hadn’t expected him to ask that out of the blue and froze for a moment before nodding.
“Sort of.”
She pouted, her tone carrying a hint of disdain.
“We didn’t get along in school. She’s the type with a strong vanity always competing with me. She relied on her family background and always tried to outdo me in everything. But my academic performance in my major was always first in the year. She never got the upper hand.”
As she said this, Su Wan’s eyes dimmed slightly, and her voice lowered a bit.
“In the end, during graduation placement, I don’t know what connections her family used, but they forced her into the provincial song and dance troupe, taking the spot that originally belonged to me. And I… was sent down to the county cultural troupe in Qinghe County.”
Su Wan let out a soft sigh and shrugged.
“But it doesn’t matter anymore. I don’t plan on reporting there anyway.”
Thinking back to her previous life, she had obediently gone to the Qinghe County cultural troupe, wasting a full ten years there until she divorced Lu Ming before finally quitting.
That place was terrible barely any real performances all year, only exhausting rural outreach shows, not to mention any opportunities for further development.
Staying there meant a life you could see the end of at a glance no future, no hope.
This time, she would never walk that old path again.
“You’re not going to report?”
Lu Zhaoye raised his sharp brows, a flash of surprise in his eyes.
“Then what do you plan to do?”
“Do business,” Su Wan replied decisively.
Lu Zhaoye clearly hadn’t expected that answer. He turned his head to look at her in surprise, sizing her up.
“Do business?”
Su Wan caught the disbelief in his gaze and assumed he was looking down on her delicate appearance. She rolled her eyes at him unhappily.
“What? You think I can’t do business? Don’t be fooled by how I look I’ve got a sharp mind!”
In her heart, she thought
I was a self-made businesswoman in my last life with assets worth hundreds of millions! Business is my real profession, okay?
As for singing once I have money, I can build my own stage. I’ll sing whenever I want, and for whoever I want!
Unexpectedly, Lu Zhaoye lowered his gaze. After a brief silence, he said in a low voice,
“That’s not what I meant.”
He paused, his expression growing deeper as he looked straight into Su Wan’s eyes.
“I just thought… wouldn’t it be a pity?”
“A pity?”
“Mm.” His voice was slightly hoarse. “After all, you have such a good voice. You’ve loved singing since you were young everyone in the neighborhood called you the ‘little nightingale.’ But now…”
Su Wan froze.
It felt as if something had lightly struck her heart, sending out a wave of indescribable bitterness.
This man… really…
He looked rough, like a stone, so why were his words hitting so precisely at her heart?
Wasn’t it obvious?
She had trained her singing since childhood through freezing winters and scorching summers. After finally graduating and reaching the stage of her dreams, it had been stolen by such underhanded means. How could she not feel regret? How could she not feel wronged?
In both her past life and this one, everyone told her to accept her fate that the county troupe was still a stable job, that stability mattered most for a woman.
No one had ever asked her whether she felt it was a pity, or whether she was sad.
He was the first.
Su Wan felt her eyes sting. She quickly lowered her head to hide her emotions and forced a smile.
“It’s fine. I just want to make money now. Money is more important than anything. Without money or power, even the best singer will be stepped on. And to climb up, you’d have to flatter and grovel, maybe even…”
Even sell your dignity.
She had seen too many of those filthy things in her last life. She truly couldn’t and wouldn’t do them.
Lu Zhaoye kept one foot on the ground, steadying the bicycle as he listened carefully.
The early spring sunlight fell on his sharply defined profile, outlining it in a faint golden glow.
“If…”
He suddenly spoke, his tone calm but serious.
“If I could help you get that job back?”
Su Wan abruptly looked up, stunned.
She stared into Lu Zhaoye’s dark, ink-like eyes. There was no hint of joking there only a steady certainty that was strangely reassuring.
Get her job back?
From the hands of a connected family member in the provincial song and dance troupe?
She had never even considered that possibility. At least in her previous life, she hadn’t.
She knew Lu Zhaoye would become very capable in the future, but right now, he was just a man who had been discharged from the army and didn’t even have a job…
After a moment of hesitation, she looked at his serious expression and slowly shook her head.
“No. I don’t want it anymore.”
Once, joining the provincial song and dance troupe had indeed been her dream.
But after living through it again, she saw things too clearly.
Even the provincial troupe was only glamorous on the surface.
Times had changed, and the troupe’s situation was getting worse by the day.
Before long, small performance groups doing commercial gigs would become the norm. Even those once-arrogant provincial performers would eventually have to lower their proud heads and take private jobs just to make a living…
Seeing Lu Zhaoye’s expression darken slightly as if he were thinking about something, Su Wan became worried he might do something reckless for her. With his personality, once he decided on something, no one could stop him.
She quickly tugged at his sleeve and leaned forward to explain,
“Don’t do anything rash! I really don’t want to go to the provincial troupe anymore. I really want to do business!”
To increase her credibility, she rolled her eyes playfully and looked at him with curved brows, lowering her voice.
“Hey, Brother Zhaoye, I heard… before you joined the army, you used to do business in the black market?”
Lu Zhaoye raised a brow but didn’t confirm or deny it.
“Anyway, you don’t have a job right now, and I want to make money too. How about… we work together?”
Su Wan looked at him expectantly, like a cunning little fox.
“You handle the work, I handle the ideas. Husband and wife working together nothing we can’t accomplish!”