Miss Y bought a ton of cheongsams, but because she never had the time to wear them, they just sat in the wardrobe. When I asked her why she didn’t wear them, she said:
“There’s just never a right time. I have to go to work on weekdays, and wearing these to the office is too inconvenient.
By the time I get off work, it’s already night, and no one is around to appreciate a cheongsam at night anyway. Besides, during my days off, my own comfort comes first, and wearing a cheongsam is anything but comfortable.
If I’m going on a date with you, I have much prettier dresses. So they’ve just been sitting there. Sigh, if I’d known I wouldn’t really wear them, I wouldn’t have bought them. Buying cheongsams is just so impractical.”
Hearing Miss Y say this, I nodded along on the surface, but internally, I was plotting a little mischief.
The next morning, when Miss Y woke up for work, she discovered that I had washed every single piece of her regular clothing and hung them all out on the balcony.
One look was all it took for Miss Y to know exactly what I was up to.
“I am not wearing a cheongsam! Getting all dressed up like that in front of so many colleagues, what are you thinking?!”
“Well, you don’t have any other clothes to wear now. I’ve washed all of yours, and mine won’t really fit you right. Don’t you worry, I’ve got everything ready for you. Take a look and see which one you want to wear while I go scoop some breakfast for you, okay?”
Staring at a closet full of cheongsams, Miss Y spent ages picking before finally selecting a dark green one patterned with gold-stamped lotuses.
Miss Y hadn’t done her hair yet, so after setting her food down in front of her, I went into the bathroom to rummage around for an ebony hairpin I had bought a while back.
That ebony hairpin featured an auspicious cloud pattern at the top without any dangling tassels, giving off a very simple and elegant vibe.
I helped Miss Y twist her hair up, tidied up her outfit, and looking at the stunning beauty standing before me, I couldn’t resist leaning in to steal a kiss. Though Miss Y quickly pushed me away, I still caught a taste of her rouge—sweet, as sweet as honey.
When she came home that evening, Miss Y was absolutely ecstatic, gushing about how so many people at the office had praised her beauty today. She even got complimented by the barista when buying coffee, and her colleagues said she looked gorgeous and that it was a total departure from her usual style. “Getting praised by everyone today has made me float on cloud nine, hehe, I’m so happy!”
“It would be weirder if someone as beautiful as you didn’t get complimented.”
“I’m not even that pretty…” Miss Y covered her face in sheer embarrassment, leaving only her bright red ears exposed. Miss Y acting all shy was unexpectedly, incredibly adorable.
For a very long time after I fell ill, Miss Y took over the cooking. She didn’t know how to cook at all, and while learning, she ended up getting quite a few blisters from burns.
Clearly, when I had learned to cook a long time ago, it was meant to be so I could take care of her; yet in the end, she was the one who learned how to cook just to take care of me.
But even when she tried her hardest to make the dishes look like they came from a restaurant, I had zero appetite and couldn’t force anything down.
Worrying about me, Miss Y would prepare meals multiple times a day.
Whenever there was a dish I managed to take a few extra bites of, she wouldn’t touch it again, leaving all of it for me to eat.
During that period, even if I suddenly blurted out at 3:00 AM that I wanted hand-pulled noodles, she would only look at me with eyes brimming with tears, saying she was just glad I finally had something I actually wanted to eat.
Throughout that time, Miss Y completely synchronized her biological clock with mine; if I slept for three hours a day, she would follow suit and only sleep for three hours too
. The moment I woke up, even if I didn’t utter a word or move a muscle, she could instantly sense it. She would gently hold me, patting my back and talking to me. Even though I couldn’t always hear clearly what she was saying, it felt so incredibly warm. Sniffing the lingering scent of laundry detergent on her clothes, I would slowly drift back to sleep.
I began sleeping in fragmented bursts, and Miss Y did the same right alongside me. However, she still had to earn money to support the household, so she could only head to the living room to work after successfully coaxing me to sleep. After she had worked for a bit, I would wake up again, and she would gently coax me once more, trying to get me to say a word or get out of bed to move around.
But I felt so utterly exhausted; I just wanted to lie there. Seeing me looking so completely lifeless, a sense of profound helplessness would inevitably wash over her, yet she would quickly force herself to cheer up, talking to me with a beaming smile once again. She’d pat my head, teasingly calling me a little snail who could only stay dorkily cooped up inside its own shell right now, laughing until she suddenly broke down in tears, asking me when I would finally step outside my shell and look at the world out here.
I never would have expected that Miss Y would be tortured into developing culinary skills because of me. Back in high school, she would rather eat cold meals than turn on the stove to cook. On one hand, she was just too lazy to start a fire; on the other hand, she simply didn’t know how to cook or how long it took to heat things up.
Feeling it was way too much trouble, she had never deeply looked into cooking. But then she met me midway through life, and because I got sick, she felt that takeout was unhealthy, which forced her to start learning how to cook from scratch.
As I mentioned before, her cooking was absolutely terrible at first; she had no idea how much salt she was putting into a stir-fried cabbage, and one taste of her own food would leave her entire face wrinkled up in a tight ball.
Yet for my sake, she began researching recipes, cleaning the house, working remotely online, and taking care of a patient like me who had practically zero ability to care for myself.
I felt so incredibly sorry to Miss Y.
I felt that my love at that point was nothing but a burden to her, that I was the one who had ruined things for her, causing her to compromise time and again and give up a bright future just to care for someone like me. I don’t even dare to imagine how I would have survived that period without Miss Y’s companionship.
My love for Miss Y is no longer just romance; it is a profound debt of gratitude. No matter what happens down the line, I must treat her well and love her for the rest of my life.
Let’s move away from those painful memories and talk about some happier things. Miss Y’s dedication and responsibility toward mastering culinary skills only lasted during the period she was taking care of me.
Once I recovered, Miss Y started experimenting with things like “Stir-fried Skeletons with Banlangen (Isatis Root)”—where the “skeletons” were actually lotus root slices cut into the shape of skulls—along with pig heart rice soup, potato and tomato dumplings, broccoli stewed with pig large intestines, honey fish, and rose-and-salt steamed buns.
She literally made me throw up once with her dark cuisine.
After I fully recovered, I barred her from entering the kitchen ever again. Unless there’s a special circumstance, and even then we’ll just order takeout, I won’t let her step foot in the kitchen.
Sure, it can fill your stomach, but the taste is honestly atrocious, and there’s no need to keep assaulting one’s taste buds.
I wouldn’t want to pass away before even reaching the age of 30 and arrive in the Western Pure Land only to be asked the cause of death, responding that the food was too awful and I literally died from how bad it tasted—that would be pretty embarrassing.
On days when I wake up earlier than Miss Y, I’ll look at my phone for a bit and then head off to make breakfast. While waiting for the food to finish cooking, I’ll go wake Miss Y up, leaning right by her ear to mimic a parrot, repeating “I love you, Miss Y” over and over again.
Annoyed by my noisy antics, Miss Y will wake up and smack me first thing before heading off to change and wash up. By the time she finishes washing up, I’ve got breakfast ready.
Sitting at the dining table, the two of us will chat about what to have for dinner, what our work schedules look like for the day, whether the house needs any groceries, if anyone in the family has an upcoming birthday, or if we need to send a red envelope back home. Once we wrap up these chats, it’s time for Miss Y to head to work.
I escort her to the elevator door and watch her press the button. In the brief gap while waiting for the elevator, I give her a kiss, and she throws a blown kiss back to me once she steps inside.
This is the morning routine of a happy young couple. Although this process has been repeated for countless days, occasional special circumstances pop up to add some fun to our peaceful and cozy daily life.
Besides, being with Miss Y makes anything interesting.
Miss Y keeps a photo album specifically to document the meals I cook. There are photos of red bean buns, shrimp pasta, red bean rice cake soup, seasoned vegetable rice, sweet and sour pork ribs, sweet and sour over-easy eggs, steamed sea bass, stir-fried garlic yanchoy, braised pork trotter, large pig feet, and canned yellow peaches embellished with a few cherries. Miss Y has taken so, so many photos that I can’t even name them all at once.
Looking at these photos makes me feel a bit dazed—have I really cooked this many meals for her? Have we really been together for nearly 20 years already? Was our time as best friends back in junior high school really that long ago? Wow, so we’ve actually been this happy for this long? Seeing the photos of the food also reminds me of how slender Miss Y was back in junior high.
Even back then, she was bright and radiant like sunshine, carrying herself like a gentle older sister, though deep down she was actually quite a wild and playful girl. But when hanging out with friends, she would naturally step into the role of the eldest sister to look after everyone.
After getting together with Miss Y, I started taking the initiative to care for her, letting her learn what it feels like to be taken care of and to rely on someone else. Slowly but surely, I discovered that her inner self really is just a playful, free-spirited little girl.
I realized that Miss Y truly is an exceptionally, exceptionally, exceptionally wonderful girl, and I love her so, so, so very much.
When I take Miss Y out traveling and watch her bouncing and skipping along ahead of me, it throws me right back to the summer after the college entrance examination. Back then, the two of us took all the pocket money we had scrimped and saved to travel to a southern city.
During that trip, she had that exact same sense of anticipation and was just as lively. Times change, but we remain unchanged.
May time never age, and may we never grow old. Seeing that Miss Y had almost walked far ahead, I quickened my pace, grabbed the suitcase, and ran in her direction.
Miss Y turned her head back to look at me but didn’t stop her forward stride, while I kept rushing forward to catch up to her.
She doesn’t need to pause for me; I will work hard to run to wherever she is.
Miss Y has been working a lot of overtime lately, and she still has to work even after coming home. On Saturday, her alarm rang even earlier than it does on weekdays, and Miss Y got out of bed to work with a face full of pure rage.
I brewed her a homemade version of black coffee and simultaneously ordered a cup of her favorite black coffee on an app. With two cups of black coffee entering her stomach, the corporate DNA etched into Miss Y’s body kicked into gear.
The sound of her tapping on the computer keyboard in the study was a furious clack-clack-clack. In that flash of lightning and flint, I honestly felt like Miss Y’s hair was floating upward, completely driven mad by work. Unable to help her with her actual tasks, the only thing I could do was cook the dishes she loved to eat. At noon, I went in to call her for lunch.
Seeing how visibly exhausted and drained she looked, I didn’t dare say a word and could only keep piling food into her bowl. After eating, she went right back to being busy.
Standing outside the study watching her work, I would occasionally hear her flare up in anger, which instantly caused me to jump up and start mopping the floors and tidying the house.
Miss Y kept busily working until well past midnight without even eating dinner, dropping straight into sleep the moment her head hit the pillow—though right before passing out, she made sure to loudly curse that her boss was an absolute brain-dead idiot.
One day, Miss Y fell asleep face-down at her workstation, leaving a pattern pressed onto her forehead that looked exactly like an eye.
She snapped a photo and sent it to me, to which I replied by laughing up a storm, “When on earth did you get a third eye tattooed on your forehead?! Hahaha!” Hearing me mock her, Miss Y started a video call just to roll her eyes at me and call me low-EQ.
I paused for a brief moment, then respectfully said, “Welcome, Lord Erlang (the Three-Eyed God)!” Miss Y promptly told me to get lost, called me a dummy, and hung up the phone. See this Miss Y? No matter what you say, she’s never satisfied. Tsk, women.
While watching a movie, we hit a deeply touching scene, and Miss Y started bawling her eyes out. However, that specific scene didn’t really hit my emotional trigger, so I didn’t cry. I just sat there watching Miss Y weep along with the movie characters.
While crying, Miss Y probably felt that it was suspiciously quiet around her. She turned her head, saw me just staring at her cry, and immediately demanded to know why I wasn’t crying.
I told her it just wasn’t my crying point, and then Miss Y chewed me out for being heartless, insisting that I had to cry a river even if I didn’t have real tears.
Left with no choice, I pulled a few tissues out of the box to use as a handkerchief and started wailing, “Oh goodness me—ahhhhh, my main character…!” I was crying incredibly loudly but without a single tear, making it blatantly obvious to anyone that I was just fake-crying to hype up the dramatic atmosphere. Seeing me make such a ridiculous scene, Miss Y was completely derailed and couldn’t keep crying anymore, bursting into laughter instead.
I turned around and accused her of lacking professionalism, stopping her tears midway like that. Left completely speechless by my shameless counter-accusation, Miss Y capitalized on the moment to land a playful smack right on my chest.
It didn’t hurt at all, but I still took the opportunity to collapse onto her, whimpering that it hurt. Staring at my completely shameless, rogue-like behavior, Miss Y was utterly out of options. She was probably wondering why on earth she had tried to force me to cry in the first place.
Some people say that I come off a bit like a “simp” (tian gou / licking dog) in this relationship. To that, I just want to say: absolutely not.
My wife pampers me endlessly, and besides, there is no such thing as a “simp” when it comes to true love. Even if I am a simp, I am perfectly willing to be a simp in front of my wife.
I just love my wife so, so, so very much. Getting together with me was practically marrying down for my wife, so what’s wrong with me being a little bit of a simp? And is this even simping? This is what we call romantic couple dynamics, something we can’t possibly explain clearly to a bunch of single folks like you who don’t have a wife.
If you guys call me a simp and my wife sees it, she’ll only feel incredibly bad for me; she’ll just hold me tight at night and go along with all my playful nonsense. And even if no one calls you guys simps, isn’t it ultimately just because you don’t even have a wife?