Water dripped from the hem of the person opposite her. It didn't look like he had been caught in the rain; it looked more like he had been walking along and performed a random act of kindness, blocking that splash of dirty water for her.
Her face grew hot. "I'm so sorry, sir. Please don't go yet; let me find something for you to wipe it off with."
As she pulled a tissue from her bag and reached out, the person clearly flinched away.
She paused, feeling the awkwardness of having her attentiveness rejected.
It was cold, and Wen Wanning's slender fingertips were frozen red. The small plastic package with a Melody holding a heart hung in the air for a few seconds before it was finally taken by him.
"No need, I'll do it myself."
The low syllables carried a slight, raspy hoarseness.
Wen Wanning gave a sheepish smile, her peripheral vision catching a glimpse of his hands.
There were calluses on his fingertips and the base of his palms, with veins showing a low-key desire, and distinct knuckles—a sense of pure, powerful masculinity.
He was the type of man she hadn't seen much of.
A large truck passed on the opposite side of the street, its high beams bright, illuminating the dim, rainy night in an instant. She looked up and, caught off guard, met those eyes.
Cold and indifferent, with single eyelids that tilted up at the corners, his long, straight eyelashes hung down, half-veiling his deep, dark eyes.
There was an allure even more intense than when he was a young man, like a whirlpool.
Wen Wanning froze in place.
Her heartbeat was like dense, fine raindrops. Her gaze moved downward, following a drop of water as it slid past his sharp, defined jawline and his thin lips, which were pressed tightly together.
She hesitated, then finally called out that name.
"...Ling Ye?"
"What a coincidence."
His Adam's apple moved slightly, his gaze resting quietly on the corner of her lips.
The first time Wen Wanning met Ling Ye was in the winter when she was twenty-one.
With two Best Actress awards still hot in her hands, Wen Wanning avoided the banquet red carpet whenever she could, following Mai Liwen to a small town in Northeast China to film a new movie.
The outdoor scene location was exceptionally remote—she didn't know how Mai Liwen had found it. It was filled with heavy snow, and apart from the frozen blue lake, there was nothing else. The generator roared all night, and supplies relied entirely on the drivers in the group bringing them back from outside.
Wen Wanning and Zhou Fu were both from the South and had never experienced such freezing temperatures of over ten degrees below zero. They couldn't sleep from the cold, so they took advantage of a day off to go to town to buy thick quilts and cotton shoes, wrapping themselves up in three layers inside and out.
By the time they returned, the sun had already set.
As they drove from the main road onto the narrow mountain path, the nanny van skidded several times before finally breaking down halfway up the mountain.
There wasn't a figure in sight in the wilderness, and even the lighting was perfunctory; the bulbs of the old-fashioned streetlights were dim, with one broken every few stretches.
The repair station had been called three times. Zhou Fu, irritated, lit a cigarette and poked at the pitch-black dashboard, arguing fiercely with the driver.
Unable to stand the atmosphere in the van, Wen Wanning put on her hat and scarf and went outside to wait.
Within a few minutes, she looked up and saw a paint-chipped Santana drifting through the wind around a bend, screeching to a halt in front of her.
A sharp figure stepped out of the car.
He was very tall, with lean shoulder silhouettes, swaying in a washed-out cotton jacket. The collar of his sweatshirt was pulled to the top, looking like a young white poplar tree.
At that time, Ling Ye was seventeen. He threw his schoolbag into a snowdrift, and when the zipper opened, there were more screwdrivers and wrenches than textbooks.
With thin single eyelids and frost hanging on his long eyelashes, he looked over quietly under the dim streetlights, his black eyes as indifferent as a blade.
Having seen too many cookie-cutter pretty faces in the circle, this was the first time Zhou Fu had encountered such a "White Moonlight" face from a small county. Her professional instincts kicked in, and she couldn't move her feet.
Ling Ye crawled under the car to work, and Zhou Fu squatted nearby, waiting and asking questions from time to time, trying to fish for information.
As it turned out, until he stood up, he didn't respond to her once.
Zhou Fu stomped her feet, which were numb from the cold, and whispered to Wen Wanning, indignant and unwilling, "Did you see that? He's so arrogant."
Wen Wanning chuckled twice, just in time for Ling Ye to turn his head to grab his bag.
There was a smear of machine oil on the young man's fair profile, and his thin lips and the tip of his nose were flushed red. "The driver already paid. I'm leaving."
Long accustomed to being stared at by all kinds of people, Wen Wanning was sensitive to the attention of others, so she naturally didn't miss that look of his.
It only lingered for a second.
But it was direct, undisguised, and it was looking at her lips.
Tsk.
His face was good-looking, alright.
But he was inconsistent; his core was bad.
Wen Wanning's first reaction was to frown, but those eyes were cold and indifferent, having nothing to do with desire; it was more like he was solving some kind of problem, and she felt that she had been biased.
"Wait a moment."
Perhaps she just wanted to talk to him a little more.
Not knowing where the impulse came from, she repeated the question Zhou Fu had just asked.
"You weren't the one who answered the phone earlier, were you?"
"No," after a moment of silence, the young man spoke again, with a hint of defensiveness. "It's my uncle's shop. I come to help after school."
"...I'm not a child laborer."
After Ling Ye left, the driver started the engine again.
Zhou Fu sat in the passenger seat, turned her head, and sighed with regret, "I just hate that I can't sign this kid right now. Otherwise, with my years of experience, he would definitely be a huge star in the future."
"You can, but I can't," Wen Wanning thought of his last sentence and wanted to laugh. "He's too pure."
Zhou Fu curled her lips. "Why else would I say I'm a professional?"
"Just you wait. In a few years, when he grows into his looks, he will definitely have a face that looks like a total scumbag."
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