Qian Dailan fiercely bit Ye Xijing’s lips and then forcefully pushed him away.
Ye Xijing smelled like a freshly crushed rose, mixed with green leaves blended into juice—that was his scent.
The rawness of fresh grass, the first bloom of a rose, a crisp and slightly bitter aroma.
After exercising, he smelled like a big dog that had just taken a bath and basked in the sun.
“When we first started dating, I was so happy. I still remember that night last March when you climbed over the wall to find me,” Qian Dailan said.
“It was so cold, and you were only wearing a coat. The broken glass on the wall cut you, your hands were frozen red like carrots, but you still grinned and told me it wasn’t cold at all, that it was actually quite warm.”
She felt she was so easily moved.
Ye Xijing secretly traveled from Beijing to Shenyang just to see her.
The pampered young master, frozen to the point that his hands were swollen like pig’s trotters, didn’t care at all.
He only smiled when he saw her.
That was when Ye Xijing loved her the most.
And Qian Dailan loved the Ye Xijing who loved her the most.
Ye Xijing said, “If—”
“There is no ‘if,’” Qian Dailan interrupted.
“When we first started dating, I was too happy. You were too good to me, so good that I thought I could endure anything. But that was just ‘what I thought.’
Ye Xijing, I don’t want to use the happiness from our early days to coax myself into holding on every time I feel sad. I’m a person too, not a machine. No matter how happy a memory is, if I use it as comfort once, it turns into pain once.
Over time, even the happy memories become unhappy. I don’t want the good parts of you to be worn away until there’s nothing left.”
Ye Xijing struggled to speak, “But right now, I can’t…”
Admitting helplessness to a lover was painful.
He only dared to confess in the darkness, “Ying Shuo only needs one year—just one year, and then I’ll come back to China. After I come back, I’ll start working.
I won’t have to live at my parents’ house, and I won’t have to stay with my brother. We’ll have our own place. By then, you won’t have to work so hard anymore. You can stay at home—”
“Going abroad isn’t a magic cure-all. It doesn’t solve everything,” Qian Dailan cut him off.
“You’re too naive. Why do you think that as long as you graduate, your parents won’t control you anymore?”
“Because my dad will realize he can’t have any more children—he’ll never be able to have another healthy child,” Ye Xijing said hastily in a low voice.
“Dailan, I… I realize now that I really don’t want to break up with you.”
Qian Dailan was silent for a long time.
“Honestly, I’m really, really, really tired today,” she said.
“I can’t go on like this anymore. I have a shift in the afternoon tomorrow, so I need to sleep now, or it’ll affect my work.”
“Dailan,” Ye Xijing pleaded, “can you at least answer my calls now? Take me off your blocklist.”
“Mm,” Qian Dailan pressed her forehead.
Rationally, she said, “I can’t keep talking to you. I have a headache. It’ll affect my work tomorrow.”
Ye Xijing didn’t push her further.
This outcome was already good enough.
He bent down and hugged Qian Dailan tightly, whispering in her ear, “This time, I absolutely won’t lie to you. Please believe me one more time.”
He wanted to kiss Qian Dailan again, but she dodged.
Instead, she lightly touched his face with her palm.
Ye Xijing closed his eyes, rubbing his cheek against her hand.
Then, he left.
Qian Dailan knew she should go back to her room to rest.
She was too exhausted—so exhausted that she even thought about lying down and sleeping right there in the hallway.
The apartment she rented faced a shady side, with almost no sunlight.
September was rainy, and the old complex was damp.
Her small notebook, which she used to memorize vocabulary, had fallen to the ground.
When she picked it up the next day, the ink on the last page had already smudged.
She really just wanted to lie down.
To just sleep right there.
But she couldn’t.
Slowly, she stood up, intending to unblock Ye Xijing’s contact, but after searching her pockets, she realized her phone was missing.
Ah.
Ah.
Qian Dailan covered her eyes.
She didn’t cry.
Maybe the argument earlier had already drained all the bad emotions out of her.
Now, she was just an empty shell, stripped of all feelings.
She took a deep breath and forced herself to recall where she might have lost her phone and how to find it again.
If she couldn’t find it, what would she do?
In the long silence and darkness, she suddenly heard a voice—deep, steady, the kind unique to mature men.
“Dailan,” he said, “you left your phone in the car.”
There was no moonlight.
Qian Dailan was grateful for the lack of moonlight.
That way, he couldn’t see how disheveled and embarrassed she looked.
If she cried now, it wouldn’t look good—her eyes would be swollen, her expression dejected.
She wouldn’t look like a little mushroom anymore, but more like a rotting piece of wood.
“Thank you, Gege (older brother),” Qian Dailan said, taking a deep breath and reaching for her phone.
Her small, old Nokia lay in Ye Xiyan’s palm.
During the exchange, her fingertips inevitably brushed against his warm, broad palm.
She shivered involuntarily, like a startled little bird that had accidentally pecked someone’s hand.
The person being touched didn’t react at all.
He remained still, steadily holding her phone, waiting patiently for her to take it.
She knew Ye Xiyan had definitely noticed that something was wrong with her.
But he didn’t ask anything, preserving her dignity with grace.
Luckily, he didn’t ask.
Qian Dailan didn’t want to be pitied.
Being pitied meant being seen as weak and easy to take advantage of, and she absolutely did not want to be associated with weakness.
So, she reached out again, feeling for her phone in Ye Xiyan’s hand.
In the darkness, her fingertips brushed against his palm again, her knuckles pressed against his fingers.
The lack of visibility made the inevitable physical contact even more intense.
A layer of sweat rose on Qian Dailan’s skin, as if she were still trapped in the lingering haze of a dream from the car ride earlier.
So hot.
So hot.
Qian Dailan firmly gripped her phone, eager to escape, but that ever-steady large hand instead grasped hers in reverse, enclosing her entire fist completely.
Like a rabbit caught in a trap, just about to run after snatching a carrot—only for the cage door to drop, trapping it helplessly, refusing to let it flee.
She heard Ye Xiyan’s voice.
“The words I said earlier,” his tone was serious, “they still count.”
Qian Dailan really didn’t want to think anymore.
Her head hurt.
Fortunately, Ye Xiyan hadn’t said many words to her before, so it was easy for her to recall.
She hesitated. “Which words? When I scratched your neck hard enough to leave a mark… Are you going to punish me for that?”
Ye Xiyan was silent.
Qian Dailan felt his grip stiffen slightly—then he let go.
“But at that time, I thought you were Xijing. Besides, didn’t you already punish me?”
Qian Dailan asked worriedly.
“You smacked me on the butt right then and there—”
“Forget about that,” Ye Xiyan interrupted, his voice heavy.
“I don’t remember it anymore, Dailan.”
Feeling awkward, Qian Dailan apologized, “Sorry, can we restart this conversation? Can you say it again?”
“Sure,” Ye Xiyan repeated, “What I said before still counts.”
“Which part, Gege (older brother)?”
Qian Dailan asked.
“Sorry, my education level is low, and my brain is slow. I can’t recall it all at once.”
“The part about funding your education,” Ye Xiyan said.
“If you want—”
“I don’t want to. Not at all,” Qian Dailan immediately replied.
“Sorry, I’m terrible at studying. I can’t keep up in school. I’m sorry for disappointing you… Gege.”
She felt that Ye Xiyan must be really, really disappointed.
He should be funding those girls who truly needed an education, those who needed schooling more than she did—someone who had already been out of school for over three years.
“You don’t need to use you,” Ye Xiyan corrected.
“If you ever change your mind, you can contact me anytime. After all, I’m Xijing’s brother.”
“Thank you, Gege,” Qian Dailan said.
He wouldn’t force anyone.
Qian Dailan realized this.
In reality, Ye Xiyan didn’t have to take on such a heavy sense of responsibility.
That accidental night when they almost slept together wasn’t even his fault.
To make up for it, he still had Yang Quan deliver her expensive magazines she needed but couldn’t afford.
Now, even though Ye Xijing had conflicts with her—even though Ye Xijing had lied to him—it had nothing to do with him as an older brother.
And yet, he still offered to fund her return to school.
He was such a good, good elder.
Qian Dailan thought, such a good, good older brother.
If only Ye Xijing could grow up to be as responsible as Ye Xiyan in the future.
But unfortunately, she probably wouldn’t be around to witness it.
Qian Dailan didn’t suppress her sadness, but she refused to let herself drown in it.
That night, she secretly cried in the hallway for a while.
Once she was done venting, she opened the door to her rented room and swore never to be sad over the past again.
She even wrote a note to encourage herself:
“I can be knocked down, but I cannot be defeated.”
She stuck it on the wall above her bed, right next to another note:
“Tomorrow is another day.”
At 5:30 AM the next morning, Qian Dailan’s body clock naturally woke her up.
Since she didn’t have an early shift today, she allowed herself an extra thirty minutes of sleep.
Then she turned on her desk lamp and continued memorizing English vocabulary.
She had set a small goal for herself: to memorize 30 to 50 words a day and closely read an English news article.
Previously, she had bought many back issues of English learning magazines at discounted prices—Crazy Reading, New Oriental English, and others.
Originally priced at 5 to 10 yuan per issue, they were only 1 yuan each after becoming outdated.
They were a little dirty, but she didn’t care.
She didn’t need anything new or trendy.
She was used to eating discounted bread, cookies, and milk.
Used to reading old magazines.
Used to buying near-expiry face cream, soap, and toothpaste.
She didn’t mind being a little late.
She only feared not taking the first step.
The pages of the magazines, softened from constant flipping, were marked with dense notes in blue, black, and red ink.
Draft papers filled with vocabulary were stacked on her small desk.
The only thing on her desk that wasn’t outdated was the stack of brand-new magazines Ye Xiyan had given her.
Those beautifully packaged magazines looked completely out of place on her simple, worn desk.
While brushing her teeth and washing her face, Qian Dailan continued to mutter vocabulary words under her breath.
Since she had no teacher to systematically guide her in English, she used the most old-fashioned method—rote memorization.
The more words she memorized, the more she could read.
The more she read, the more she would understand grammar and sentence structure.
At 7:30 AM, she went for a run, grabbed breakfast, and bought some band-aids.
After returning, she cleaned up her room, showered, changed clothes, and continued reading magazines.
Her shift started at 11 AM.
At 9:50, she chewed on a discounted piece of bread as she left home.
Her scratched-up MP3 player, filled with BBC news recordings downloaded from an internet café, played in her ears as she took the bus to work.
By then, the entire store had already heard about the big sale Qian Dailan had made the night before.
During the shift handover, the store manager, Mai Yi, specifically praised her, repeating the usual clichés—urging everyone to learn from Qian Dailan’s patience and excellent customer service…
Emma burst into laughter.