In the height of summer, the blazing sun burned like fire.
Jiang Baiyu parked his delivery scooter in front of a company building and carefully took out a large bouquet of beautifully wrapped red roses from the trunk.
He wiped the sweat from his face and looked up at the towering building. The glaring white sun made him feel a little dizzy.
He walked into the building, handed the bouquet to the receptionist, and said, “Hello, this is the flower your boss, Lu Qingci, ordered. Please sign for it.”
The girl at the front desk had been drowsy. When she looked up and saw a handsome delivery boy, her eyes lit up, and her brows and eyes curved into a smile. “Mr. Lu just told us that if his flowers arrived, the delivery person should personally bring them into his office.”
Jiang Baiyu’s face paled a little. After hesitating for several seconds, he said, “All right.”
As he spoke, he turned and walked toward the elevators.
The girl looked at the boy’s slender, long back and could not help saying, “Wow, he’s so handsome.”
The security guard beside her heard this and snorted. “You’re new, so you don’t know. This delivery boy used to be the young master of a wealthy family, and he was also our Mr. Lu’s ex-boyfriend.”
“Mr. Lu’s ex-boyfriend?”
The girl hurriedly said, “And he’s delivering flowers to Mr. Lu’s current boyfriend now?!”
“Mr. Lu is doing it on purpose.”
Seeing that no one was around, the guard lowered his voice and said, “I heard this young master used to rely on his family’s wealth and power to force our Mr. Lu to date him. Later, his family went bankrupt and he ended up delivering food to earn money. Could Mr. Lu possibly pass up a chance to take revenge?”
The girl’s eyes widened in shock.
The boy was fair and thin, and he looked well-behaved. Even the way he spoke was gentle and polite. He did not look at all like someone who would use power and influence to force others.
Jiang Baiyu understood it all.
Today, everything was his own fault.
Back then, he had unilaterally fallen in love with Lu Qingci. When Lu Qingci was most short of money, he had used money to propose a condition for dating him.
He thought that as long as Lu Qingci gave him a chance to get close, he would eventually be able to move that cold heart.
But he had forgotten that Lu Qingci was such a proud person. To him, a dating condition was simply humiliation.
Five years passed, and after Lu Qingci became the youngest wealthy man in City A, the first thing he did was kick him to the curb.
After that, the Jiang family went bankrupt, his parents fell ill, and he urgently needed money to support the household.
Lu Qingci was now using the same method to take revenge on him, deliberately paying several times the normal price and repeatedly specifying that he deliver orders, including premium restaurant takeout, movie tickets, cakes, and flowers.
He also had the “good fortune” to see Lu Qingci, after their breakup, eating with other men, watching movies, going on dates, intimate and happy, like a pair of true lovers.
Lu Qingci simply wanted to use this method to tell him, what you once wanted, I can easily give to other men, just not to you.
He had originally thought that Lu Qingci merely did not like him, but he had not known that Lu Qingci hated him so much that even after breaking up, he still used such methods to humiliate him.
Jiang Baiyu bit his lip and straightened his back, then walked out of the elevator to the door of the president’s office he had come to many times before and raised his hand to knock.
One knock, two knocks… no one responded.
Jiang Baiyu let out a breath and gently pushed open the heavy door.
But the door only opened halfway. The scene that came into view inside made Jiang Baiyu freeze instantly in place.
In the spacious and tidy office, Lu Qingci was on the sofa, forcefully kissing a boy.
When the boy being kissed saw someone come in, he hurriedly tried to push Lu Qingci away, but Lu Qingci pressed him down even more forcefully and kissed him with even greater passion.
In an instant, blood rushed to Jiang Baiyu’s head, and the hand holding the bouquet of roses trembled slightly.
“Sorry to disturb you.”
Jiang Baiyu forced out a voice that was almost trembling. He put the flowers on the cabinet by the door and said, “Mr. Lu, these are the flowers you ordered.”
After saying that, he turned and wanted to flee.
“Come back! Who told you to leave?”
Lu Qingci’s low voice sounded from behind him.
Jiang Baiyu’s heart trembled, and his stiff body slowly turned back with difficulty.
Lu Qingci was holding the flushed-faced boy in his arms, but his dark, sharp gaze swept toward him as he said in his usual commanding tone, “If you don’t want to lose the payment for this order, then bring the flowers over yourself.”
This order was two hundred yuan, enough for him and his parents to live on for several days.
Jiang Baiyu swayed. The humiliation and anger surging in his heart made him terribly dizzy.
He bit hard on the tip of his tongue and, pretending to be calm, walked step by step toward the sofa under Lu Qingci’s dim gaze.
He held out the bouquet to the boy who was still panting and said, “Hello, these are flowers from Lu Qingci. Please accept them.”
The boy carefully glanced at Lu Qingci before reaching out to take the flowers and saying softly, “Thank you, I appreciate your trouble.”
Jiang Baiyu forced a relaxed smile and said to the boy, “You’re welcome. These flowers suit you very well.”
After saying that, he deliberately ignored Lu Qingci’s gaze, straightened his thin back again, and supported himself with the only bit of dignity he had as he walked out of this suffocating space step by step.
Lu Qingci’s dark, brooding gaze had been following the boy’s figure the entire time. Even after that thin, straight figure disappeared at the doorway for a long time, he still could not look away.
The boy had received the roses, but he did not look pleasantly surprised. Trembling with fear, he looked at Lu Qingci’s increasingly cold face. “Mr. Lu, can I leave now?”
Lu Qingci wiped the corner of his lips in disgust. “Get lost!”
After Jiang Baiyu walked out of the building and reached his delivery scooter, the dignity he had struggled to uphold in front of Lu Qingci collapsed instantly at this moment.
How could he not be angry? Even if he no longer liked him, it was impossible to be completely unfazed by such provocation and humiliation.
His head was spinning, his chest felt heavy, and he felt nauseous and suffocated.
There was only one thought in his mind. If time could turn back to five years ago, he would never like Lu Qingci again.
Under the hot sun, the thin boy standing in front of a delivery scooter swayed unsteadily a few times, then suddenly collapsed heavily to the ground.
“Oh my God, someone fainted!”
“Quick, quick, call an ambulance!”
…….
A black luxury car cut through the curtain of rain and moved steadily along A City Avenue.
Inside the quiet car, a boy wearing a school uniform was sitting back in the spacious seat, asleep.
Suddenly, the boy’s delicate brows furrowed. As if uncomfortable, his body swayed, and with a thud, his head bumped into the car window.
Hearing the movement in the back seat, Jiang Chengyi could not help looking back. “Xiaoyu? What’s wrong?”
Jiang Baiyu opened his eyes in confusion, and at once saw the school uniform on him and the backpack beside him.
He was full of shock. After being dazed for a while, he suddenly looked at the person driving.
Dad?
Jiang Baiyu stared blankly at his father.
It was the father from his memory, the one people called President Jiang, wearing a well-tailored and neat suit and shirt, with an expensive watch on the wrist resting on the steering wheel, and his features carrying the steady temperament of someone in a position of power.
Not the father who had lived in a basement rental, had turned gray overnight, and was haggard and sickly.
Was he dreaming?
Jiang Baiyu pinched himself hard. It hurt!
“What is it, are you sleep-addled?”
Jiang Chengyi chuckled and reminded him, “We’re almost at school. Pack up your bag and make sure you don’t leave anything behind.”
School?
Jiang Baiyu looked down at the school uniform on him, then at the familiar scenery outside the window, and gradually understood something.
The boy’s clear eyes gradually filled with a layer of mist. He reached out and hugged his father’s arm, choking out, “…Dad!”
After leaving Lu Qingci’s company, he had silently sworn: if time could turn back, he would never like Lu Qingci again.
He had never expected that he had actually been reborn.
Judging from the school uniform he was wearing, he was still in high school now, and this was exactly when he had been pursuing Lu Qingci.
Jiang Chengyi frowned and clicked his tongue. “You brat, don’t fidget. I’m driving.”
“Dad, I just had a nightmare.”
Jiang Baiyu sat back up and looked out the window.
He also hoped it was just a dream.
But he knew clearly that after leaving Lu Qingci’s company, he had suffered heatstroke and died.
After his death, he had suddenly seen his fate. It turned out that he lived inside the world of a novel.
The male lead of that novel was Lu Qingci. A man who had come from a poor family but, through hard work and intelligence, had gradually gained enormous wealth, power, and status.
And he, Jiang Baiyu, was Lu Qingci’s youthful, bittersweet memory, as well as the white moonlight Lu Qingci would never forget for the rest of his life.
The Lu Qingci who had just grown from a boy into a man did not understand love. He could not see the true feelings hidden in his own heart for Jiang Baiyu.
He only took the relationship condition Jiang Baiyu had proposed to be the helpless submission of youth.
So after becoming successful, he trampled Jiang Baiyu’s dignity and sincerity underfoot with the air of someone far above him. He thought only this could make up for the dignity of his impoverished younger self.
After the Jiang family fell, Lu Qingci deliberately brought up a breakup, but his real intention was to make Jiang Baiyu beg him in a low voice, to beg him to save the Jiang family.
He never expected Jiang Baiyu to agree to the breakup, to rather run off and deliver food for money than beg him again.
Lu Qingci did not believe that Jiang Baiyu, who had liked him so much, would actually agree to break up. Could it be that Jiang Baiyu really no longer liked him?
To test Jiang Baiyu, he deliberately grew close to other men, went on dates, kissed them, wanting to see Jiang Baiyu angry and jealous, or crying as he begged him to come back.
But in the end, Jiang Baiyu died.
He died of heatstroke while delivering flowers to him on that scorching day, and it was he who had killed Jiang Baiyu, killed the person he truly loved.
Lu Qingci held Jiang Baiyu’s body in a frenzy and shed tears of remorse that would last a lifetime.
The rest of the story was very cliché. The male lead, having lost the person he loved most, cut off all feelings and devoted himself to his career.
Because he missed his white moonlight too much, he even found a man who looked very much like Jiang Baiyu to serve as a substitute.
The phrase he said most often to the substitute was the domineering CEO line, “Don’t smile. When you smile, you don’t look like Yuyu anymore.”
Just thinking about that made Jiang Baiyu feel a chill all over.
So Lu Qingci liked him?
That was why he hurt him again and again?
Heh, white moonlight, he was done with it.