Chapter 1
When Lin Langyi woke up again, there was no one in the room.
The central air conditioning hummed softly, and the curtains were only slightly open, allowing a soft, dim light to filter through the room, creating a relaxed and comfortable atmosphere for the afternoon nap.
Perhaps because she had indulged herself to the fullest before falling into a deep sleep, her sleep was exceptionally long and peaceful; she didn't even know when the people beside her left.
The blanket was tucked in neatly. She's a restless sleeper, but now both of her arms were properly tucked under the blanket.
Lin Langyi reached out and touched the sheets; they were dry and soft. She could even smell the pleasant scent of sunshine when she tucked her chin under the covers…
So not only did he not sleep after he finished, he also changed all the sheets before leaving.
She lay there lazily for a while, and finally managed to recall that when she was half asleep and didn't want to lift a finger, she seemed to have been carried to the bathroom to shower.
He is as clean as ever, a true germaphobe.
My phone, which was on the bedside table, suddenly vibrated.
Lin Langyi rolled over, wrapped in the blanket, and moved around a few times like a giant sausage. She reached for her phone and glanced at it. A message had come from someone with the nickname "Y":
[30min]
Lin Langyi sent a question mark.
Soon after, a photo of her was sent from the other end. In the photo, she was blowing on a bowl of wontons, and her lips were glistening with moisture as she ate.
It turns out he went to buy her food.
Lin Langyi understood, chuckled, rolled over, and sent: [I want crab roe and shrimp wontons, and also Jiu Jia's corn pudding pastry, thank you~]
Y was clearly making a sexual innuendo, but replied to messages instantly: 【Dream on.】
Lin Langyi smiled and didn't reply. She glanced at the bedside table, where freshly harvested lychees were on a shallow glass plate. They were peeled, and each one was crystal clear, round, and juicy. Next to them was a Taiwanese mango, cut in half with the pit removed. Small forks were inserted into the golden flesh for easy eating.
How thoughtful.
Ten minutes later, another photo was sent from the other end. The dessert shop window was filled with a dazzling array of items. He asked, "I've bought the pudding pastry. Is there anything else you'd like to eat?"
[You can decide what to buy; see if there are any recommendations.]
After she replied, the other end quickly sent a compliant and obedient "Mmm".
Lin Langyi tapped her finger on the screen, casually and calmly selecting all the chat history between the two of them, erasing all traces without a second thought.
[Delete the selected message?]
【Sure. 】
Once only the lonely message "I have accepted your friend request, we can start chatting now" remains in the chat box, the "Y" dialog box sinks to the bottom of the list, standing out as inconspicuous among a list of names and company information that are clearly marked, as if it were just a stranger added casually on the street.
Lin Langyi tossed her phone aside with a calm expression, reached for her cup, and slowly sipped it to moisten her throat.
With an automatic insulated tea mat underneath the cup, the water temperature was just right; he always managed to arrange everything perfectly.
She scrolled through short videos while wrapped in her blanket, slowly eating fruit until the plate of fruit was almost empty before quietly correcting her earlier comment.
Okay, not a germaphobe, just a gentle and considerate person—
Suddenly, the sound of the combination lock successfully unlocking came from outside the door. Lin Langyi smiled at the wontons and pudding pastries, quickly swallowed the lychee pulp in her mouth, threw off the covers, and walked out of the bedroom.
"Back so early? Yuan—" she called out with a smile as she walked, only half a name tumbling off her tongue, when she turned her head and was met with an unexpected guest.
Her heart skipped a beat, and in the chaos, her teeth unexpectedly bit down hard on the tip of her tongue. A sharp pain erupted, and she quickly endured it, so much so that the second half of her sentence, which came out awkwardly, sounded unclear.
"Why are you back today?"
Despite her best efforts to restrain herself, Lin Langyi's smile still looked somewhat unnatural.
The suitcase next to Cheng Yanjin's legs was still swaying slightly as he casually placed it on the ground. He had one hand on the handle of the luggage rack and the other arm leaning against the shoe cabinet in the entryway. He neither bent down to rummage for his slippers as usual nor made any jokes at her. Instead, he stared at her without moving in the strange and long atmosphere, as if he wanted to burn a hole in her face with his gaze.
The muscles on his arms were so bulging and eye-catching that his chest and abdominal muscles rose and fell with each breath. His wheat-colored skin was slightly flushed and red. Lin Langyi was very familiar with this condition. After exercise, the oxygen demand of the body's muscle tissue increases, the central nervous system is excited, and the capillaries dilate, causing the skin to become flushed and red. This made his superior muscles look even more vigorous and sexy.
But now, she vaguely felt that the veiny arms gripping the suitcase handle and the stark contrast in their physiques looked somewhat frightening.
It looked like he was about to explode in anger any second.
"Weren't you going away for a week?" Lin Langyi steadied her voice, trying again to break the dead silence with a normal tone.
Cheng Yanjin remained motionless in the shadows. Lin Langyi could only catch his gaze fixed on her, as if he were suppressing some surging emotion, which was about to burst forth uncontrollably with the weight of a tiny grain of sand.
He remained silent.
Even the air seemed to gain weight, and she was forced to hold her breath under this silent pressure.
Just when she thought he would remain silent, Cheng Yanjin finally spoke.
His voice sounded dry and rough, with a tense tremor, each word seeming to be forced out from a knife's edge:
"Yes, it should take a week, but today is only the third day."
"It's only been three days, Lin Langyi, only three days since I left..." His Adam's apple bobbed several times with difficulty, and the rest of his words flowed out as if he had carefully considered them before letting them slip away, "And then you... I..."
Lin Langyi's temples throbbed, her scalp tingled, her throat felt dry, and tiny goosebumps slowly crept up the back of her neck, making it difficult for her to even perform a simple movement like twisting her neck. She felt as stiff as a piece of hardened, cracked earth.
She didn't have time to think about whether his words contained any deeper meaning. Her heart was beating so fast that she could only maintain an unchanging mask-like face to cope with any situation.
But Cheng Yanjin suddenly moved. With a cold face, he strode over and approached her directly without saying a word.
Before her reason could keep up, Lin Langyi had already taken two steps back as if burying her head in the sand, her back hitting the bedroom door with a loud thud.
She stood on tiptoe, her calves taut against the cold door, trying to lock it shut with her body and isolate herself from everything in the room.
She felt a little overreacted, her heart pounding with frustration. The room was completely empty, spotless, as blank as the chat history on her phone after it had been cleared.
Cheng Yanjin walked past her without stopping or saying a word.
She smelled the strong, pungent smell of smoke emanating from him and instinctively frowned and tilted her head back.
She remembered that he never smoked.
He went straight to the bathroom, and when he opened the door, the dryer was still running.
Lin Langyi's eyelids twitched along with the rumbling sound; her underwear had been meticulously washed and was being dried.
"I'm going to take a shower," Cheng Yanjin said in a low voice, seemingly without much thought.
Lin Langyi nodded stiffly, completely unaware of whether the forced, polite smile remained on her face.
He probably didn't see it, because he kept his head down and simply slammed the bathroom door shut with a flick of his wrist.
One second.
Two seconds.
Without hesitation, Lin Langyi quickly turned around and opened the bedroom door. She couldn't be sure what Cheng Yanjin meant, but it was obvious that he was acting unusually today. So she quickly opened the bedroom door and checked it again, just to be sure.
The bedding had all been changed, and she was wearing long-sleeved pajamas and pants, so nothing was showing. The room's ventilation was on the whole time, and the scented candles were burning with a calming lavender scent. There was no lingering ambiguous atmosphere in the air.
I'm not at ease.
Lin Langyi strode forward and pulled the curtains open, then pushed the window open as wide as it would. The wind rushed in, but her heart was still pounding like crazy.
There was still some uneaten fruit by the bedside, which was definitely not from her knife skills and meticulousness.
Without hesitation, she picked up the entire plate and dumped the remaining fruit into the kitchen trash can.
The trash can has been emptied; everything, both what should and shouldn't be there, has been packed up and thrown into the downstairs trash can. Now, only fresh cut fruit lies there all alone.
She still felt conspicuous.
Lin Langyi threw the plate into the sink, not even bothering to wash her hands. She turned around, went back to her room, grabbed a few scraps of paper, tore them up as she walked, and then laid them flat in the trash can to cover up the fruit that clearly wasn't her work.
Throughout her journey, her ears were constantly alert, and she was fully focused on the sounds coming from the bathroom. Cheng Yanjin always took quick showers, so while she was doing these things, the clock in her mind was running out of steam, making her feel as tense as if she were experiencing a life-or-death race.
Finally, she pulled out her phone, quickly sifted through her long contact list and found "Y," stating simply and directly: 【Don't come, and don't contact me.】
Without needing further explanation, she simply blocked him. If he sent her a message asking a question and received a bright red exclamation mark, he would understand what she meant.
After all, he's so smart.
Only four minutes had passed since Lin Langyi finished doing all this.
She sat on the living room sofa, anxiously waiting for Cheng Yanjin to come out.
Strangely, the man, who usually spends no more than ten minutes washing up, remained motionless for a long time. The sound of water kept coming from the bathroom, and the clock ticked away for a full half hour.
It took so long that her emotions had completely calmed down.
She emerged from the initial panic, a feeling akin to "catching your parents red-handed while they're out playing computer games during school," and gradually calmed down, reflecting:
Why is she so nervous and flustered?
Is there anything noteworthy about her relationship with Cheng Yanjin?
They weren't married, and they didn't even have an engagement party. The two had no feelings for each other. They were just tied together by their parents like a business contract, as if it were a formal document. Even in public, their relationship was just an impromptu performance of two people who were not truly in love. So why was she so nervous?
She calmed down from her initial shock and thought rationally and with composure:
At most, she and he were just temporary roommates under the same roof.
Moreover, there was that agreement between them.
Lin Langyi sat quietly on the sofa. After experiencing the emotional ups and downs just now, a feeling of utter exhaustion and despair suddenly welled up inside her. She thought that if he knew and minded, she might as well take this opportunity to talk things out and just break up with him.
The bathroom door finally opened.
Lin Langyi turned her head to look over, her expression becoming even more composed.
She said, "I have something to tell you."
"I also have something to say to you." Cheng Yanjin's hair was not dry, and it flowed down the strands that clung to his face. His eyes were slightly red, and Lin Langyi's gaze lingered on the corners of his eyes, not knowing for a moment whether they were water droplets or tears.
"Water from the shower splashed into my eyes." He turned his face away and explained in a hoarse voice, but after sitting down next to her, he changed the subject, "The cigarette was smoked by someone else. Do I still smell of smoke on me?"
He suddenly seemed to return to normal, interrupting Lin Langyi's well-prepared draft. He hesitated and shook his head.
"Let me speak first." He didn't turn to look at her, as if avoiding her gaze, and spoke quickly to himself, "I'm pressed for time. I have to leave again after I come back and tell you, so you can talk to me after my business trip this week."
Lin Langyi choked.
Was she overthinking it? What happened that caused him to suddenly return from his business trip so far away?
"you say."
Cheng Yanjin remained silent for a moment, stubbornly keeping his neck straight ahead and not turning his gaze to her for even a second.
In the deathly silence, Lin Langyi could clearly see the moisture welling up in his eyes.
Her heart sank to the bottom.
She had never seen him shed a tear.
Perhaps she thought the answer was obvious, but if she could, she didn't want to tear the truth apart in this way.
"You—" she said, hardening her heart, but the other person interrupted her abruptly and rudely.
He turned around abruptly, as if he had made up his mind, and looked into her eyes, saying firmly, word by word, "Lin Langyi, let's get married."
Lin Langyi's mind went blank for a moment, and she stared wide-eyed in disbelief: "What did you say?"
With red eyes and no hint of jest on his face, Cheng Yanjin repeated firmly as if afraid of changing his mind: "Let's get married."
Lin Langyi frowned deeply. Her mind was in turmoil because of this completely illogical and nonsensical statement. She only heard the person in front of her whisper:
"I heard yesterday that my high school deskmate is getting married. His wife is his childhood sweetheart whom he has liked for many years. After many twists and turns, they finally got married."
"He was never able to recognize his own feelings until the very end when he realized what she meant to him."
After several choked-up moments, Cheng Yanjin could barely finish his sentence smoothly.
"No... no, I... that's why I came back halfway to tell you about this."
But Lin Langyi's mind was still in a daze.
Was he staring at her intently from the moment he walked in, mentally preparing himself for the grave of marriage? Was the smell of cigarettes on him from a reunion with old friends? Were his red eyes because he was so moved by his classmate's beautiful love story that he turned around and ran back to propose to her?
What kind of situation is this?
But another little voice in my head is trying to convince me, like an ostrich burying its head in the sand, that it's not impossible.
Given Cheng Yanjin's spoiled and arrogant temperament, if he found out, it would be perfectly normal for him to smash everything in the house, let alone cause the end of the world. In short, it would never be the case that they can sit down and communicate calmly like they are now.
Lin Langyi's thoughts were completely diverted by Cheng Yanjin, and she said blankly, "But we're not childhood sweethearts."
“Yes,” he said, “but I like you very, very much too.”
Lin Langyi's mind was in complete chaos.
Isn't it said that there are no feelings involved?
After a long silence, she spoke again, her voice gentle and warm, her pace slow, but her words carried a naive and bewildered cruelty, as she hadn't yet had time to sort out the situation.
She asked with genuine doubt, "Then does what you repeatedly emphasized before, that we should leave each other alone, still hold true?"
The tears that Cheng Yanjin had been desperately trying to hold back finally flowed uncontrollably from his reddened eyes, mingling with the water droplets on his face, making him look pitiful and broken.
He was so startled by the question that he trembled slightly, his throat tightened, and he couldn't utter a single word.
Lin Langyi frowned slightly and asked hesitantly in an extremely gentle yet confused tone:
"Cheng Yanjin, I don't understand, but isn't an open relationship the rule you set?"
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