Chapter 72 I like sunsets, but I like you even more. ...

Finally, the last day of the year has arrived.

In the past, Shang Shu, being such a ritualistic person, would have started planning how to spend the New Year months in advance. But this year, to Gu Sui's surprise, she didn't mention it at all. Instead, it seemed like she was avoiding it. She got up early in the morning and went to the study, saying that she wanted to look at the financial report.

Shang Shu's busyness can be divided into two types: one is genuine busyness, where she usually concentrates intently with her brows furrowed, appearing completely focused; the other is feigned busyness, where her eyes dart around, fiddling with the few things at hand. The latter usually occurs when she is nervous.

Gu Sui naturally noticed, but she didn't expose her. She just didn't know where this tension came from. After thinking about it, she could only assume that Shang Shu was a little lost about the arrival of the New Year.

At lunch, Shang Shu stirred the American ginseng in the stew pot with a spoon. She could tell that Gu Sui was serious about taking care of her health. The supplies he had given her after returning from the Gu family medical center last time were not enough. Now, with three meals a day, bird's nest one day and cordyceps the next, he was starting to combine Chinese and Western foods.

"Am I really overdoing it with this?" Shang Shu sniffed lightly.

“I asked a nutritionist, and it shouldn’t be,” Gu Sui glanced at her, slightly furrowing her brow. “What’s wrong? Are you feeling unwell?”

Seeing Gu Sui's serious expression, and even putting down her chopsticks, Shang Shu quickly covered up, "No, no, I was just asking casually." She held up her wrist and turned it around to look at it, "At this rate of supplementation, I'll probably gain weight in a couple of days."

Upon hearing this, Gu Sui's expression softened; she actually hoped the little girl would gain some weight.

Her eyes smiled: "Nourish yourself, you'll get sick less often, and your strength will be better too."

Are you in better physical condition?

Upon hearing this, Shang Shu put down the spoon that had been scooping up a spoonful of soup, and glanced at her sideways: "Are you not satisfied with my physical strength?"

Gu Sui was taken aback at first, her lips slightly parted, before she realized what Shang Shu meant. She gently swept the inside of her mouth with the tip of her tongue, her chest trembling slightly.

Seeing that Gu Sui didn't speak and just kept laughing, Shang Shu couldn't sit still any longer. She reached out and cupped Gu Sui's face, turning it towards her with a serious frown, and looked at her: "Stop laughing, say something."

Could it be? She was quite confident in her performance, unless Gu Sui was a movie queen.

"What did you say?" Gu Sui blinked, feigning ignorance to tease her.

“It’s just…it’s just…” Shang Shu was speechless.

How am I supposed to ask that? Should I ask her if she had good stamina or technique during sex?

Although she has never been someone who is afraid to talk about sex, this is not just a matter of sex; it also involves her self-esteem.

"Oh well, never mind." Shang Shu let go of the person's face and turned away to sulk.

"Alright," Gu Sui said, seeing that she was taking it seriously, he stopped smiling and reached out to turn Shang Shu's body. When she refused to move, he whispered in her ear, "Don't you know best whether I'm satisfied or not?"

Shang Shu's ears turned red again, and her neck was covered by Gu Sui's breath, causing small bumps to rise. If she hadn't been thinking about how Gu Sui's stomach might not be able to handle the food after they had just eaten, she would have liked to immediately press him down on the sofa and see if what he said was true or false.

After resting until the afternoon, thinking that the weather was fine and not wanting to stay at home, Gu Sui drove Shang Shu to Coloane.

After crossing the sea bridge, the further south you drive, the more different the scenery becomes. Gone are the glittering hotels, neon-lit bars, and densely packed high-rise buildings. Instead, there are low-rise Portuguese-style buildings, simple fishing village huts, and tranquil bays. The pace of life here is slow, as if they have stumbled into a completely different world.

After getting off the car, the two held hands, and Gu Sui naturally put their hands into his coat pockets. Walking on the neat seaside promenade, enjoying the sea breeze at the southernmost tip of Macau, they strolled slowly along the coastline.

Shang Shu childishly counted the red and white road markers she had just passed one by one with her eyes, making her a little dizzy, but it was the kind of dizziness that comes from happiness.

"Gu Sui".

"Um?"

"Do you think we might have actually met when we were little?" Shang Shu tilted her head and smiled at her.

The social circle in Macau is so small. Could it be that little Gu Sui and little Shang Shu have already met at some banquet, or even coveted the same piece of cake? Shang Shu found the thought amusing.

Gu Sui thought about it seriously, and after a moment of contemplation, she slowly said, "There shouldn't be any."

After waiting for so long, this was the conclusion. Shang Shu was unhappy and wanted to ask more questions.

Gu Sui continued, "I went abroad when I was in junior high school. You should have been under six years old then."

Hmm, that seems to make some sense.

"Oh." Shang Shu pouted. Why wasn't it quite like she had imagined?

She thought Gu Sui would say "maybe" and give her some room to imagine, such as fantasizing about a predestined love story, or that the meeting was a preordained guidance, and that she would eventually realize that she had met him when she was a child.

"Disappointed?" Gu Sui clenched his fist in his pocket.

"Just a little bit." Shang Shu stretched out her other hand and gently pinched Gu Sui's face with her thumb and forefinger.

Gu Sui found it cute and chuckled, "Why are you suddenly asking this?"

"I feel like we've known each other for ages," Shang Shu said, walking unsteadily around the road post. "Hmm... I'm also a little curious about what you looked like when you were little."

Gu Sui is so handsome, he must have been adorable as a child. Shang Shu secretly wished she could travel back in time and pinch little Gu Sui's cheeks.

"Be careful not to twist your ankle." Gu Sui smiled and took their hands out of his pockets, holding them firmly.

Shang Shu jumped twice and obediently came back to walk close to her: "You were so young when you went abroad, didn't you miss home?"

She asked the question tactfully, but the word "homesickness" sounded rather unfamiliar and strange coming from her mouth.

She had never asked Gu Sui about these things before, and Gu Sui wasn't the type to bring them up on her own initiative. Now that she had, she couldn't help but be curious. Gu Sui's relationship with her parents should be pretty good, at least unlike hers, where family matters caused a huge uproar. So she was surprised that such a family would be willing to let Gu Sui go abroad so early.

"I think so, but I don't quite remember," Gu Sui pursed her lips, knowing what Shang Shu wanted to ask. She sighed and took the initiative to say, "My parents were very busy in my early years and wanted to raise their children to be independent. My sister and I both grew up like that, so our family relationship wasn't actually that close."

After Gu Sui finished speaking, he turned his head to look at her.

Shang Shu was touched as she listened. She knew that Gu Sui's words were true, but she also knew that the last sentence was specifically meant for her. Gu Sui wanted to comfort her and use this method to get closer to her. She could feel Gu Sui's sincerity.

The sunlight seemed to come draped in a thin veil, exceptionally warm, and even the starlight scattered on the sea surface shimmered gently.

"You know, when I was a child, I ran away from home and liked to come here to stay, feel the breeze and look at the sea. I could sit here for a whole day because I felt that here, it was like I could temporarily stop being Shang Shu."

“Look, see that chair?” Shang Shu pointed to the brown-red bench not far away. “I sat there once in the summer. I was wearing a skirt and got bitten all over by mosquitoes. Those mosquitoes were really vicious. I was itchy for several days before they healed. So, whenever I came here after that, I always wore long sleeves and pants, no matter how hot it was.”

Shang Shu laughed as she spoke, but Gu Sui didn't. She pursed her lips, looked at Shang Shu's profile, and tightened her grip on her hand.

"You can be anyone."

"What?"

Whether it was the sudden change of topic or the whistling wind, Shang Shu was momentarily stunned.

Gu Sui stopped and adjusted the collar of her coat for her: "As long as you're happy, you can be whoever you want."

The sea breeze tousled their long hair, causing it to intertwine silently before gently separating, like waves surging in, shyly kissing the sand, and then quietly returning to the sea.

Shang Shu stared at her intently, her eyes slightly red: "I know."

I know you love me, I know you are willing to love me in every way, love my brightness and my sensitivity, love my independence and my dependence, love my strength and my vulnerability.

I know you love me only because of me, I know all that.

As the sun sank inch by inch, it edged the places it shone with a fuzzy gold, and then, taking advantage of the sea's inattention, ironed a stripe of orange-red onto it.

"Gu Sui, look, the sun is setting." Shang Shu excitedly pulled Gu Sui to a bench and sat down side by side.

She has seen sunsets in many corners of the world, from small glimpses through twilight windows to grander views atop snow-capped mountains.

"Opacarophile," meaning someone obsessed with sunsets, is a word that is half Latin and half Greek, and it couldn't be more fitting for her.

She was captivated by this passionate yet fleeting beauty, stubbornly waiting for it to break through the clouds and arrive before her, as if that would give her some courage to rebel. Afterwards, she would, as usual, lament its passing and then return everything to silence, repeating this cycle over and over.

"So beautiful." Shang Shu nestled against Gu Sui's shoulder and exclaimed.

"Hmm," Gu Sui tilted his head to look at her, noticing that her long eyelashes were tinged with gold, "very beautiful."

Feeling the scorching gaze from above, Shang Shu's eyes no longer yearned for the sunset.

"Gu Sui, I want to kiss you." She looked back at her lover and said very softly.

The cypress tree overhead swayed its branches in the wind, and the waves in the distance kissed the beach again and again. Her lover stroked her chin and silently closed his eyes.

Shang Shu first kissed Gu Sui's eyelashes, telling her that the color of this kiss was blue and orange-red. Then she kissed the tip of her nose, telling her that the taste of this kiss was woody and salty. Finally, she kissed her lips, telling her that the name of this kiss was "I love you".

Shang Shu often felt that she had too many memories of Macau, good and bad, so many that she wanted to escape; but now she felt that she had too few memories of Macau, and those related to the other person, those named "them", were so few that she couldn't wait to see all the flowers of Chang'an with her in a single day.

Reluctantly letting go, Shang Shu's gaze moved from those glistening lips to Gu Sui's captivating eyes: "You came here specifically to show me the sunset, didn't you?"

Actually, she already knew this when she used Gu Sui's phone to open the navigation before she came. The interface that she hadn't exited after unlocking was Gu Sui's search for sunset times and viewing locations.

"Mmm," Gu Sui responded softly, brushing her eyelashes twice slowly, "I really want to watch the last sunset of the year with you."

From now on, I want to be with you at every event, to tie a knot together on the rope of time, and to look forward to our years to come.

“Me too,” Shang Shu took Gu Sui’s ringed hand in her own and caressed it in her palm. “I love sunsets, but I love you even more.”

Watching the sun slowly melt into the sea, watching the orange-red fade, leaving a crimson haze in the sky, watching the deep blue curtain slowly descend, hanging back the stars that had just fallen onto the sea.

She leaned close to the moon's ear and said gently, "Now that you've finished looking at yours, would you like to go see mine?"