Back then she was only a sophomore, and she hadn’t known Qi Jin for very long. By his side, she had shared her long-considered ”retirement plan.”
Every girl has these sorts of dreams to some degree, doesn’t she? Wanting to open a bookstore or a flower shop, wanting a little courtyard of her own, planted with her favorite flowers and plants.
At the time, Qi Jin had only pressed a soft kiss near her ear and said nothing.
Later, as Zheng Miaomiao came to know Qi Jin better, she looked back on that moment and felt that telling him such things must have made her seem terribly naive.
But she had long since grown used to it. She knew that although these men were infatuated with her, they always looked down on her in their hearts. She couldn’t figure out the source of their infatuation, but she knew full well the source of their contempt.
There was no helping it—who told her to be just such an ordinary person? Her looks, her abilities, her family background… being ordinary in those ways would have been fine, but even her temperament and horizons were ordinary. The flowers she liked were childish; her so-called dreams were as laughable as a consort in the Eastern Palace fancifully dreaming of baking flatbread.
And so Qi Jin could casually gift her a villa worth hundreds of millions, could bid tens of millions of dollars on a hair ornament for her.
The Zheng Miaomiao of the past had been thrilled. In her understanding, anything over a hundred thousand was a fortune, and these casual gifts from Qi Jin were astronomical figures, far beyond anything she could conceptualize. To her, it was simply a great, great deal of money.
The Zheng Miaomiao of the past had also been terrified. So when she chose to leave those people, she took nothing with her—only what belonged to herself.
It wasn’t that Zheng Miaomiao wasn’t greedy; it was that she was so very tired by then.
She had kept trying to force her way into a world that wasn’t hers, being exalted within it, sinking within it, endlessly denied within it… She no longer wanted to abandon her own dignity entirely for things she could never hold onto, things that were never hers to begin with.
She knew exactly how much she was worth. Since she had chosen to leave them, there was no way she could have protected wealth that far exceeded anything an ordinary person could imagine. Better not to take it at all.
The past played back in Zheng Miaomiao’s mind.
Only now did she understand why this sea of flowers and wooden cabin had appeared before her eyes.
For a moment, her eyes stung.
Yes—the Qi Jin of old, so lofty and high above, could grant her countless treasures, but he would never give her the thing she wanted most.
Because her hobbies were just like her: to her, they were beautiful, but to anyone else’s ears they sounded childish and shallow. She was special to them, yet they still felt she wasn’t presentable—in every way.
She had truly loved Qi Jin once—no one could refuse a man like that, least of all a young girl with so little experience of the world.
But she had also, just as truly, felt Qi Jin’s contempt for her.
It wasn’t even that he feared she was unpresentable. His power was enough to let him do whatever he pleased, unafraid of any outside sniping or mockery.
He simply, plainly, looked down on her. He couldn’t accept it himself—that the girl he was so infatuated with, so fond of, was such a shallow person. The laughable ambitions and fantasies in her eyes were transparent to anyone at a glance, and utterly exposed before him.
After all these years, she had finally found, within Qi Jin’s feelings for her, love and esteem.
To love someone is not merely fondness and infatuation—it is love and esteem. Love and respect; love and cherishing.
He had truly come to value her girlish, romantic dreams.
“After you left, I couldn’t find you.”
At some point, while she was lost in a daze, Qi Jin had carried her into the wooden cabin. He settled her onto a rattan lounge chair cushioned for comfort, and spoke softly against her ear.
The cabin had excellent lighting and ventilation, and they were only a short distance from the entrance. Through the open door, she could still see the boundless azure sea and the flower fields stretching endlessly like silk.
“When you first disappeared, my thoughts ran wild…” He let out a soft chuckle from his throat, low enough to make her ears tingle. “Never mind, let’s not talk about that now.”
“In any case, later on, I had no choice but to accept the fact that I couldn’t find you.” As he spoke, his gaze stayed fixed on Zheng Miaomiao without wavering, as if he were tracing and engraving her features into his memory bit by bit with his eyes.
“I always think back to what you told me.”
“You said you wanted to build a little courtyard in your hometown… so two years ago, I came here. Back then, you said you had no talent for growing flowers—you’d even killed several cacti. You said you were afraid that even if you had the money to buy a little courtyard, you wouldn’t be able to keep hydrangeas alive.”
“I studied with many florists. Every single hydrangea here, I planted and watered with my own hands. They’re thriving now.”
He looked at Zheng Miaomiao as if he could never look at her enough.
Zheng Miaomiao was deeply moved.
She had long since admitted that she was a shallow person. Even now, she couldn’t help but feel touched—and… something even more gratifying.
The man who had once looked down on her from on high finally had to humble himself like this, begging for just one glance back from her.
All those ineffable slights she had once endured at Qi Jin’s side, heavy as the unbearable lightness of being, now brought her a satisfaction akin to vengeance finally served.
She looked at Qi Jin’s face—that face as ethereal as a banished immortal, radiant and serene—now gazing at her with such longing.
His long lashes were half-lowered. The glow of dusk filtered through the window, scattering flecks of gold across his face, casting breathtaking shadows over the bridge of his nose and his eyelids. Amid the interplay of light and shadow, he was more dazzling than the Boundless Sea itself.
As if bewitched, Zheng Miaomiao’s hand rose uncontrollably to his face.
Qi Jin didn’t dodge in the slightest. Instead, he obediently pressed his cheek into her palm.
Zheng Miaomiao stroked his raven-feather lashes, his clean, smooth profile, and finally let her fingertips graze ever so lightly across his lips.
Qi Jin simply watched her with a smile, going along with her every movement. Then, at that moment, he suddenly reached out and caught the hand she had resting on his cheek.
Zheng Miaomiao’s heart jolted, as if she had only just realized what she was doing.
She hurriedly tried to pull her hand back, but Qi Jin’s strength was far greater than she had imagined. No matter how she struggled, his grip didn’t budge in the least. It was as if her hand had been clamped in place by a lifeless block of steel, utterly immovable.
“Does Miaomiao plan to take advantage of me and then refuse to take responsibility?” Qi Jin chuckled softly as he drew her hand to his lips, pressing delicate kisses upon it.
The touch was gentle as a feather, yet carried a distinct heat.
He peppered her hand with tender kisses, not even sparing her fingertips.
Zheng Miaomiao was utterly exasperated, but she couldn’t free her hand at all.
It wasn’t until Qi Jin slowly lowered her hand that Zheng Miaomiao thought she could finally pull it back. To her surprise, he simply laced his fingers through hers, and then kissed her directly on the neck!