“Even though this cake really does taste good, you were still very irritating just now.”
Inside the restaurant filled with the melodious sound of a piano, Shi Zhi accused the man who was apologizing while tasting the “apology cake.”
Fu Yuchu let out a short laugh. He poured a glass of juice and handed it to Shi Zhi, nodding in agreement. “Yes, the delicious cake is the restaurant’s credit. It has nothing to do with the Fu Yuchu who said the wrong thing. You have every right to be angry.”
With Fu Yuchu taking this stance, Shi Zhi found it hard to say anything more.
He said somewhat awkwardly, “Thank you.”
“No need, this is what the person who said the wrong thing should do.” Fu Yuchu handed him a plate of sliced steak. “Don’t eat too many sweets on an empty stomach. Eat some other food to pad your stomach first.”
Shi Zhi glanced at him cautiously, then looked again.
“I wasn’t talking about that,” Shi Zhi poked at the steak in his dish rhythmically, his voice muffled. “That night… thank you.”
Shi Zhi knew right from wrong. Although a one-night stand between adults was no big deal, who you slept with and how you slept with them made a massive difference. Passive is different from active; handsome is different from ugly; and sleeping with one person is vastly different from sleeping with two.
If Fu Yuchu hadn’t saved him, he definitely would have suffered that night, and “pleasure” would have been out of the question.
Although Fu Yuchu had been snapping at him since they met this afternoon, speaking with sarcasm and even saying hurtful things in the car, Shi Zhi knew he was the one at fault first. Leaving 800 yuan and walking away was indeed easy to misunderstand. Since Fu Yuchu apologized for his words, Shi Zhi felt he should offer a proper thank you.
Fu Yuchu froze for a moment upon hearing this. From his angle, Shi Zhi was looking down, a few strands of hair falling messily over his forehead and brushing against his eyes. His eyelashes were long and curled, casting shadows on his cheeks under the restaurant’s dim yellow lights.
He had a bit of baby fat on his face, though it wasn’t obvious because he was so thin.
Fu Yuchu looked at the boy’s reddened ear tips, his Adam’s apple moving slightly. He was suddenly in a great mood; the irritation he had felt from “being the third party” vanished into thin air.
He shifted his seating position imperceptibly and said nonchalantly, “No need for that either. After all, I enjoyed it too.”
“Cough, cough, cough—!”
Shi Zhi began to cough violently, his entire face turning a choked red. He looked up in disbelief at the person who had just made such a shocking statement with a completely straight face.
Fu Yuchu was too… too-too-too—
TOO DIRECT!!!
Even though that was also what Shi Zhi was thinking, he only thought it in his head; he wouldn’t say it out loud in front of someone else. Was Fu Yuchu not embarrassed at all? Were all lawyers as thick-skinned as him?
Shi Zhi felt gloomy.
Fu Yuchu looked at the steak that had been poked into a mess and decided to stop teasing the person whose face was red enough to bleed. He cleared his throat and said with a smile, “This place makes a good chocolate mousse. You like it, don’t you? I’ll get you an order to take back as a midnight snack when we leave.”
Shi Zhi snapped his head up, shocked. “How do you know… How do you know I like chocolate mousse?”
There were still tear stains from his coughing fit in the corners of Shi Zhi’s eyes, shimmering under the light. Looking at the fine glints in Shi Zhi’s eyes, Fu Yuchu uncontrollably thought of the Shi Zhi beneath him that night—looking at him with the same eyes, begging him to go slower.
Shi Zhi probably didn’t know that when he used those eyes to beg, it was impossible for one to slow down. One even wanted to make him cry harder, with even more tears.
It was because Fu Yuchu truly couldn’t hold himself back that he had used a tie to blindfold Shi Zhi’s eyes.
“Just a guess,” Fu Yuchu’s voice was a bit raspy.
Shi Zhi pouted at him, seemingly dissatisfied with the perfunctory answer and demanding a clear one.
“I tasted it,” Fu Yuchu’s heart felt a bit numb. He averted his eyes from Shi Zhi’s pressing gaze and recalled, “I tasted it at the corner of your mouth that night. You must have eaten chocolate mousse at the bar; I tasted it.”
Shi Zhi didn’t speak. Fu Yuchu thought he was being shy again, but instead saw a face full of dejection.
“What’s… what’s wrong?”
What’s wrong?
Shi Zhi was just suddenly thinking about how Fu Yuchu, who he had only met twice over a few days, could remember what he liked, while Xu Yining, who had been with him for over three years, always failed to remember his tastes.
Shi Zhi disliked all dishes made from chicken, duck, or goose, yet Xu Yining always said, “This place has great roast goose,” or “That place’s roast duck is good, I’ll take you to try it sometime.”
Shi Zhi didn’t know if Xu Yining truly couldn’t remember or was simply too self-centered, always forcing his own likes onto him. Just as Shi Zhi didn’t know about those intimate past experiences Yu Chongyao mentioned having with Xu Yining—why had Xu Yining given to someone else what he clearly shared with Shi Zhi?
Yu Chongyao said the one who isn’t loved is the “third party.”
But what is love?
If having sex and sleeping together is love, then why did Xu Yining say sex and love could be separated when he was defending himself? Why did he claim he was only driven by primal desires with others, and only felt his heart skip a beat for Shi Zhi?
Shi Zhi knew of that beautiful man named Yu Chongyao.
During the second semester of his sophomore year, shortly after he started dating Xu Yining, he had seen photos of the two in bed. At the time, Xu Yining had knelt before him, regretfully explaining that it was just a physical impulse he acted on when he first discovered his sexuality—that there were no feelings between them and they had cut ties completely.
“Shi Zhi, I regret it too sometimes. I wish I could turn back time so we could meet earlier and only have each other. But fate is tricky; what’s happened can’t be changed. I can only guarantee the future. Shi Zhi, you must believe me.”
The expression on Xu Yining’s face when he said those words was exceptionally sincere.
Searching for the root of a matter was a hassle, and Shi Zhi was very afraid of hassle. Moreover, everyone has a past; he couldn’t hold the past Xu Yining to the standards of the present and future. That wouldn’t be fair to him.
But the Xu Yining who claimed to love him and said he had cut ties with the past had caused him the humiliation of a “third party” showing up at his door on the eve of their wedding.
What is love?
He met Xu Yining in his freshman year, they got together at the end of their sophomore year, they notified friends and family of their engagement after graduation, and the wedding was set for National Day this year. Like all couples, they had experienced the throb of initial meeting and the sweetness of the honeymoon phase. They had faced the opposition of family and the support of friends.
They had gone through everything and were finally going to form a home that belonged only to the two of them.
But just as he prepared to spend a lifetime together, reality gave him a head-on blow.
Yu Chongyao said their values were identical, their hobbies similar, their tastes the same, and their sex life harmonious; he said Xu Yining told him personally that he only felt responsibility for Shi Zhi, not love; he said they had been together for years and had never broken up; he said the one who isn’t loved is the third party—that Shi Zhi was the third party.
Was it truly not love?
If it wasn’t love, then what was the breakfast that was never absent during university? What was the scar left on his abdomen for him? What were the arguments with Auntie Xu for his sake? What was the promise made during the proposal to form a home with him?
But if it was love, why did he always fail to remember his tastes? Why did he make him take commercial commissions he didn’t like? Why did he refuse to have sex with Shi Zhi while sleeping with others?
Shi Zhi, who was not sensitive to the ways of the world, could not figure out the logic behind it.
“Shi Zhi, you really are an oddball,” Yu Chongyao had said when he left that day. “You’re so strange, Xu Yining must have gotten tired of you too. No wonder he cheated.”
But when Xu Yining was chasing him, he clearly said: “Shi Zhi, even if you are a strange person, in my heart you are the most special and the best. Let me stay with you forever, okay?”
So, even with such a promise, he would eventually find him “unbearable”?
Thinking too much made one seem petty, but Shi Zhi was suddenly very lost. His parents had indeed told him “kind lies” as well.
Sadness is always late.
His heart was occupied by dense, sour, and suffocating emotions; Shi Zhi realized belatedly that he wasn’t “unbothered” at all. It was just that the Shi Zhi who was used to making do didn’t want to trouble anyone, nor did he want anyone to trouble him.
The sweetness of the tiramisu in his mouth turned into a sour bitterness; for the first time, Shi Zhi tasted “sadness” within his favorite sweet flavor.
The atmosphere in the car was very heavy on the way back.
Fu Yuchu looked at the person in the passenger seat several times while waiting for red lights. The city’s neon lights were reflected on Shi Zhi’s face through the window; his beautiful features showed a stubborn loneliness in the flickering light.
He was sad—because of the fiancé he was about to break off the engagement with.
His hands tightened on the steering wheel, and a stifled frustration hid within Fu Yuchu’s heart. The car stopped at the entrance of the Yuelan Residence complex. Late at night on a rainy day, there were few pedestrians; only the solitary black sedan and the two of them inside remained under the dim yellow streetlights.
The engine was turned off. Fu Yuchu sat motionless, and Shi Zhi didn’t seem to have any intention of getting out. The windshield wipers stopped, and the car was instantly covered in raindrops. A dog barked from the residential building, and the spring rain pitter-pattered outside.
“Are you… sad?” Fu Yuchu asked softly, looking at Shi Zhi’s profile.
Shi Zhi pursed his lips and didn’t speak.
Fu Yuchu’s hands on his lap clenched and relaxed several times before he finally asked a transgressive question: “Are you and him… still breaking up?”
Shi Zhi didn’t agree with the phrasing and corrected him: “We’ve already broken up.”
“Then are you still breaking off the engagement?” Fu Yuchu corrected himself immediately.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Shi Zhi was confused. “Since we’ve broken up, we’re definitely breaking off the engagement.”
“But you’re sad.”
“The sadness isn’t because of him,” Shi Zhi bit his lip. Perhaps feeling that his rebuttal wasn’t convincing, he added softly: “Not entirely because of him.”
Fu Yuchu felt he was being a bit despicable because he heard himself say: “Will you go soft-hearted? Will you get back together? Cheating is like domestic violence; there’s only zero times or countless times.”
“I know that! You don’t need to remind me over and over that I’ve been cuckolded,” Shi Zhi glared at him.
“Alright, my fault. I won’t mention it again.” Fu Yuchu gave a slight smile and added: “The things you gave him—you can try to negotiate first to have him return them. If he doesn’t agree, then consider a lawsuit. You can start gathering evidence slowly.”
Shi Zhi hadn’t signed the legal representation agreement this afternoon; as he said at the start, he was only consulting in advance. Maybe it wouldn’t even reach the point of a lawsuit. The Xu family wasn’t short on money, and Xu Yining didn’t seem like the type to hold onto his things and refuse to return them.
Since Fu Yuchu said this, Shi Zhi knew it was out of kindness, so he nodded and said, “Okay, I understand. Thank you, Attorney Fu.”
Fu Yuchu: “…No problem. If there’s anything you’re unsure of, you can consult me anytime.”
The two fell silent again, and the car returned to quiet.
“Don’t be sad,” Fu Yuchu offered a dry comfort after a while. “The next one will be better.”
Shi Zhi didn’t answer immediately. He stared at the streetlights outside for a long time. The raindrops were drawn into silk threads near the lamp covers, entangling densely with the night.
After a long time, Shi Zhi turned his head. In Fu Yuchu’s obscure and unreadable gaze, he spoke softly.
“Attorney Fu, tell me… what is love?”