The storage room door clicked gently as it closed, cutting off the last sliver of light spilling in from the living room and leaving the space in pitch darkness.
The scent of dust made Gu Yi cough a few times.
He fumbled around, trying to reach for the door, but Yun Qingwu shifted her weight and leaned back against it.
The distance between them was dangerously close. The refreshing, clean scent of the girl immediately washed over him, completely enveloping his body and leaving him nowhere to hide.
“Cough, cough…”
He coughed a couple more times. Yun Qingwu leaned a fraction closer to him. “Brother, keep it down. Do you want your parents to find out?”
“Qingwu, what on earth are you trying to do?” Because of his cold, the man’s voice was hoarse beyond recognition, carrying a trace of imperceptible helplessness and panic.
In the darkness, the corners of Yun Qingwu’s lips curled up silently, tinged with a reckless, desperate edge. “You’ve been dodging me for two months, ignoring my messages and not answering my calls. And then the moment you come back today, you suddenly announce that you’re bringing a girlfriend home for dinner in a couple of days?”
“What are you running from?”
Gu Yi stepped backward. “Qingwu, I’m your brother.”
“There’s that line again. Can’t you say anything else besides that?”
“I live in your house, but we aren’t blood-related, and we’re not even in the same household registry. What kind of brother are you supposed to be?” Yun Qingwu let out a scoff. “Now you remember you’re my brother? When guys were chasing me and you declared you were my boyfriend, why didn’t you think about being my brother then?”
“When your friend said he wanted to pursue me and you practically killed him with a look, why didn’t you think about being my brother then?”
“Gu Yi, it’s not me being narcissistic. It’s just that you’ve never been innocent.”
She pressed forward step by step, forcing Gu Yi back until he had nowhere left to run, his back coming up against the storage shelf.
“Huh? Didn’t we agree to watch fireworks? Where did these two kids go?”
“Who knows? Did they go upstairs?” Voices drifted in from outside—it was Gu Yi’s mother, Lin Lin, and his third aunt.
Footsteps echoed back and forth, mixed with the chatter of children.
Today was Lin Lin’s birthday, and a lot of relatives had come over.
“Auntie~ Auntie~ Hide-and-seek~”
Their voices were getting closer and closer to the door. Gu Yi’s body tensed up instantly, and beads of sweat broke out on his forehead.
He remembered the last time he had carried a drunk Yun Qingwu home and ran into his third aunt. Who knew what exaggerated stories the aunt had gone back to tell his grandfather? Afterward, his grandfather had summoned him to the ancestral home to kneel in the ancestral hall.
If his third aunt discovered the two of them hiding in here, heaven only knew what kind of nonsense she would spread.
The footsteps outside grew closer still. The door was rapped twice, and Gu Yi instantly held his breath.
Fortunately, after a moment, the people outside walked away.
Yun Qingwu naturally sensed his tension. She wasn’t the type to blindly cling onto someone without dignity.
It was just that right up until his birthday, their relationship had still been so good, and his eyes had been filled with nothing but her. But then came her drunken confession.
And after that, everything changed.
She didn’t need him as an absolute necessity, but she did want an answer.
Yes or no—she just needed some closure.
“Do you like me?” she asked again.
Gu Yi’s body stiffened, and he replied in a flat tone, “No.”
“I only think of you as a sister.”
“I already have a girlfriend. Her name is Zhuang Wan, and I really like her.”
The hand Yun Qingwu had been using to grip his arm loosened, and she stepped back a few paces, her back slamming against the door panel.
The musty air made her throat feel parched.
“Fine, got it.”
Seeing her reddened eye rims, Gu Yi murmured her name softly, “Qingwu…”
Yun Qingwu cut him off in a second. “Don’t try to feed me any sentimental melodrama. Toads with three legs might be hard to find, but aren’t men with two legs walking all over the street?”
“I don’t need you to survive. Instead of pursuing pure love, I prefer pure gold.”
“If you really feel guilty, when I get married, you can just prepare a bigger dowry for me~”
“…”
“I really like that large flat in Nanhu you own!”
“…”
“And I’ve got my eye on your Koenigsegg Jesko too!”
“It’s a deal, then! Remember to arrange those for me when I get married!” With that, Yun Qingwu grabbed Gu Yi’s hand on her own accord and high-fived him. “Thanks, bro!”
Her train of thought had always been eccentric. Before Gu Yi could even react, she had already pulled the door open and walked out.
Seeing her, Lin Lin immediately grabbed some fireworks and walked over. “Sweetie, where did you run off to? Qiaoqiao has been waiting ages for you to set off fireworks!”
“I just went to the restroom.” Yun Qingwu bent down to pick up the waddling little toddler and walked toward the exit. “Let’s go, Qiaoqiao. Auntie will take you to set off fireworks~”
“Set off fireworks, set off fireworks~”
Once they were far away, Gu Yi slowly walked out.
He looked at the girl in the distance playing with the child amid the fireworks, his gaze calm and devoid of any visible emotion.
It was snowing. Flakes drifted down leisurely from the sky.
Yun Qingwu reached out to catch the snow. The day she first arrived at the Gu family home, it was also snowing.
Her mother, Yun Ying, and Lin Lin had been childhood best friends.
Yun Ying used to be a nationwide-famous celebrity, while she was the child her mother never publicly acknowledged.
From birth until her death, the number of times her mother came back to see her could be counted on one hand, and she had always lived with a nanny.
The nanny cooked very well and was very kind to her, but she was mute.
She had grown up in a silent world, with loneliness filling her entire childhood. Because of a severe lack of security, she had even developed a terrible case of skin hunger syndrome, often scratching her own skin until it festered when flare-ups occurred.
The last time she saw Yun Ying was in the hospital’s ICU.
Yun Ying entrusted her to Lin Lin and left behind a hefty sum for her maintenance.
Lin Lin refused to accept it, but Yun Ying was adamant, and ultimately Lin Lin took the money.
After Yun Ying passed away, Lin Lin helped arrange her funeral and brought her home.
The Gu family genuinely liked and doted on her.
The solitude of her early years was healed under Lin Lin and the others’ care. Even her skin hunger syndrome improved greatly, rarely acting up anymore.
Gu Yi was eight years old and exceptionally smart, having skipped two grades. By the time she was in her first year of middle school, he had already graduated from university and entered the workforce.
She had perfectly inherited Yun Ying’s genetic beauty, attracting a pile of love letters from little boys even at a young age.
Gu Yi was worried, terrified that his family’s precious cabbage would be ruined by some pig, so he insisted on picking her up and dropping her off at school every single day.
He also frequently took her out to hang out with his friends, for no other reason than to show off: “Look, my sister. Pretty, right?”
His friends all said he was shameless, and he would say proudly, “Anyone who hasn’t seen my sister will say I’m the good-looking one~”
Back then, she was also quite attached to him, often accompanying him to work during winter and summer breaks.
He would set up a lazy sofa, a snack rack, a game console, a tablet, and plenty of cheesy romance novels in a corner of his office.
They would stay in the same office, each minding their own business. When she got sleepy, she would curl up in the lazy sofa and sleep soundly.
This routine continued until she graduated from high school.
After entering university, the comic she serialized online became a hit, and she spent all her free time holed up at home drawing. But their relationship had always remained close.
She even felt that as long as she confessed her feelings, they would naturally become a couple.
Never did she expect… that she would confess, and he would end up with someone else.
Her phone buzzed with a notification message.
Xuanxuan: “Babe, I found some juicy gossip about your brother in a group chat!”
Before opening it, Yun Qingwu never imagined it would be a video of Gu Yi and a girl kissing. She stared at it for a few seconds, backed out of the chat, and replied: “They look pretty well-matched.”
“Qingwu.”
Gu Yi appeared by her side at some point.
Yun Qingwu glanced sideways at him and reached up to tear the necklace from her neck.
Hanging from it was a ring.
This was the ring Gu Yi had given her on her eighteenth birthday.
Even couples who have been in a long-term relationship for years can sever their bond when they break up.
Let alone the fact that they hadn’t even officially dated yet.
Cutting losses early was a good thing.
Yun Qingwu looked at him, took a deep breath, gathered her five fingers to clutch the necklace tightly, and threw the necklace with all her might toward the fish pond in front of them.
The necklace didn’t have much weight to it. When it plunged into the fish pond, it didn’t even kick up much of a splash before sinking silently into the depths, dragging her affection for Gu Yi down into the ice-cold water.
At that moment, she felt an incomparable sense of relief.
“Goodbye then, you little coward~”
With that, she didn’t look back at the man beside her for even a second, striding into the wind and snow without turning her head.