A few days before the garden villa in Ning City was due to be sold, Junyi happened to go back for a visit. She carefully dusted every room, washed and waxed the solid wood floors, and spent the longest time of all sweeping the courtyard paved with polished blue bricks.
Spring was the season when flowers fell in Ning City. The bauhinia trees bloomed wave after wave, shedding their blossoms layer upon layer, and Junyi swept up several dustpans full of them. One day, an estate agent brought a couple to view the house. The key turned twice in the iron gate, and his voice drifted faintly across half the courtyard.
“The owner is a very famous star – a person with exceptionally good fortune. If you really do get as far as signing the contract, you’ll know I’m telling the truth. So you absolutely needn’t worry about the feng shui. Look, the place has been very well maintained, and the trees are flourishing too…”
They did not come any closer, merely standing on the stone path leading towards the entranceway and gazing from afar at the bauhinia tree and the mango tree.
“In autumn and winter, the golden rain tree will bloom. Just imagine having friends over and eating cured meats here…” The estate agent was very good at selling a lifestyle. In just a few sentences, he painted a picture of warm, harmonious middle-class domestic life.
Junyi sat beside a stone bench in the backyard, listening to his faint, intermittent voice, a slight smile lingering on her face. Then she heard the estate agent let out a surprised “Huh?” and ramble on, “Why is the entranceway open?” After climbing the stairs, he became even more puzzled. “The floors have just been cleaned too.” Finally, he laughed and came up with an explanation for himself. “They must have hired an hourly cleaner to give the place a thorough cleaning before putting it up for sale.”
The couple examined the traces of life left behind in the house, their satisfaction concealed beneath deliberately reserved words meant to help them bargain the price down.
“It’s true. It’s been maintained fairly well…”
Junyi rubbed her eyes, pressing the heels of her palms against her eye sockets for a long while. Then she took a deep breath and forced the corners of her lips upwards into a broad smile. She rose from beside the stone table and walked away lightly, without disturbing anyone.
Although Mr. Shang had always said this place was tiny, Junyi remembered that when she had first accompanied Ying Yin to see it, mistress and maid had both spent quite some time squealing and exclaiming in excitement. They had especially fallen in love with the little red-brick house and its courtyard.
Junyi often felt that she was someone who would never grow up. She was a little foolish; she had never learned how to accept the idea of parting. Naively, she would always hope that things would stay like this forever, wouldn’t they?
Work. Feelings. A way of life. A particular stretch of days.
She always felt that these things could somehow be preserved, frozen in place – just as an egg yolk, once fried through, no longer flows.
As the assistant of a superstar herself, Sheng Guo’er, Ke Yu’s assistant, was far more ambitious and capable than Junyi. When Ke Yu went abroad to perform in a stage play, Sheng Guo’er stayed by the side of his senior manager and studied diligently. By the time Ke Yu returned, she was already capable of standing on her own and had become his right-hand woman, helping him and looking out for him.
Sitting on the bus, Junyi lowered her head and looked at herself.
She had never thought about any of that. All she thought about was making sure there was a meal to eat and tea to drink; when the weather turned cold, she would add another layer of clothing for Ying Yin. Whenever they joined a production, she would rack her brains trying to figure out how to squeeze an extra set of bedding that Ying Yin liked into the suitcase.
The bus ride to the seaside estate took two hours, with the yacht club marina as its final stop. After getting off, Junyi walked slowly along the roadside until Lin Cunkang’s car came by and stopped.
“Little Junyi, you look like you’ve been crying,” Lin Cunkang said as she climbed into the passenger seat.
“I walked all this way and cried my eyes out,” Junyi said, complaining about how far it was.
Lin Cunkang smiled but didn’t expose her lie. “Why didn’t you take a taxi?”
“Too expensive,” Junyi said. “It costs 160, and I only earn 700 a day.”
“Didn’t Young Master give you a red envelope with 100,000 in it on the wedding day?”
“I’m saving it.”
Junyi was very good at saving money because she normally had almost nothing to spend it on. Ying Yin covered her food and accommodation, while accommodation and other expenses were naturally arranged or subsidized whenever they joined a production or attended a commercial event. Junyi herself neither wore makeup nor bought expensive clothes. Following Ying Yin’s philosophy of, “If you don’t manage your money, your money won’t leave you,” Junyi saved everything she earned.
However, she was not very good at lying. Whenever her mother asked how much money she had, Junyi only dared to understate the amount by a third. Naturally, her parents would then ask her for the remaining two-thirds.
Sometimes Ying Yin would get frustrated with her for not standing up for herself, sitting there fuming while being completely helpless about Junyi’s family affairs. Junyi, on the other hand, would reassure her:
“It’ll be fine once I’ve paid back everything it cost them to raise me.”
Now, Junyi felt that she had more or less paid that debt back. So from now on, the money she saved could finally – and truly – be for herself.
“Saving it for what?” Lin Cunkang asked.
Junyi didn’t know either. “To go back to school, maybe. Or for a dowry.”
Lin Cunkang burst out laughing as he held the steering wheel. “Have you got someone you like?”
“Not yet.” Junyi shook her head and said casually, “Then I’ll go back to school, I suppose.”
“You and Yinyin both have this dream of going back to school,” Lin Cunkang remarked.
Although Ying Yin was now the young mistress of the family, she had asked Lin Cunkang to call her Yinyin. Lin Cunkang had readily agreed, but in truth, he had spent quite a while getting used to it in his head.
Junyi’s expression turned serious. “People are like that. When you’re in school, you think studying is boring. But if you enter society too early, you’re always looking for a chance to go back and study. It’s not necessarily because you’d actually be able to settle down and learn anything – it’s more something you just say. Especially when you don’t know what else you’re supposed to do with your life.”
As Lin Cunkang turned the car through the first security checkpoint of the estate, he understood what she meant.
“You don’t know what you want to do anymore? You don’t want to keep being Yinyin’s assistant?” he asked.
“Of course that’s not it.” Junyi instinctively denied it. Then her voice and emotions gradually settled into something calm. “I just don’t know what I can do for her anymore. I’m going to resign.”
Lin Cunkang wasn’t particularly surprised. He lightly tapped the brakes and smoothly pulled the car over to the side of the road.
“You’ll break her heart.” He pulled up the handbrake.
“I don’t know how to do anything,” Junyi said. “It’s better to break her heart than to become a burden to her.”
Junyi felt that Lin Cunkang was someone she could confide in and trust with a secret, so she continued, “I’m not good with words. I’m not quick-witted, I don’t know how to handle social situations. When I accompany her to events, I’m like a wooden post – I have no social awareness, no ability to read the room, and I even end up offending important people for her all the time. I may be able to take care of her in daily life, but the people you hire are better at that than I am. I’m not qualified to be something like the young mistress’s personal assistant. Xiao Lai has a master’s degree from overseas and speaks two foreign languages. So do you.”
Lin Cunkang sat sideways in his seat, one hand resting on the steering wheel as he faced Junyi. “But you have a sincere heart when it comes to her.”
Junyi, however, took that rather lightly. “There’s nothing particularly remarkable about being sincere towards her. Everyone is. If I have no ability but insist on thinking my sincerity alone is enough, wouldn’t I just be making things difficult for her?”
Lin Cunkang was taken aback by her words. He looked at her deeply.
There was a certain inherited courtesy and reserve in Lin Cunkang’s manner – the kind one might associate with a traditional English butler. Even his compassion usually carried that same restraint. But at this moment, there was genuine tenderness in his expression.
Junyi noticed it and thought that, at this moment, Lin Cunkang looked older than usual.
Lin Cunkang did not try to persuade her any further. He merely shook his head and smiled faintly.
The car started moving again. He lowered the window slightly, letting the sea breeze brush across Junyi’s face.
Junyi’s eyes felt hot. After a while, she rolled the window all the way down, rested her arms on the edge, and tucked her chin into the crook of them. She gazed longingly for a while at the deep blue sea in the distance and the glimmering light on its surface.
Then she blinked, and a tear slid down her cheek.
Now, she regretted not having been more ambitious.
If only she had become someone useful.
Lin Cunkang dropped her off at the main entrance and drove on to the garage. After getting out of the car, Junyi bent down and reminded him. “Uncle Kang, you have to keep this a secret for me. I’ll tell her myself.”
But while saying something like that was easy enough, actually doing it was another matter entirely. Junyi kept putting it off. She found excuses for herself, thinking she would resign once she had found another job. But she procrastinated endlessly – even downloading a job-hunting app took her three to five days. Registering an account and updating her CV took another week or two.
She dragged things out until, one day, Ying Yin came to her of her own accord and asked what plans she had for the future.
Junyi immediately straightened up, every nerve in her body taut, like a bundle of wheat stalks tightly bound together.
“I…”
Seeing her eyes widen, Ying Yin laughed. “What are you so nervous about?”
Ying Yin pulled her over to sit beside her. The two of them sat at the bar, each drinking a glass of water.
“Uncle Kang came to see me last night. He said he wants to send you abroad to study.”
Junyi immediately choked on a mouthful of water.
Ying Yin handed her a tissue and relayed what Uncle Kang had in mind.
“Uncle Kang said you’re still young and should learn some more things. He can ask someone to write you a letter of recommendation and get you into one of the world’s top international butler academies. But I told him that our Junyi might want to study something else instead.”
Ying Yin smiled.
“What exactly is a butler academy?” Junyi asked.
“Um…” Ying Yin had looked into it a little the night before and had also asked Shang Shao about it. After giving it some thought, she summed it up simply:
“Just as the name suggests, it’s a specialized school for training professional butlers.”
“Would I be like Uncle Kang after graduating?”
“Uncle Kang says he isn’t professionally trained, but Shang Lu’s butler, Uncle Ming, is. Some of his classmates work for the royal family in Dubai, while others work at Buckingham Palace.”
“So once you graduate, you could become as professional as they are – thorough and capable, able to take care of everything and take a lot of worries off my shoulders.” There was a tiny flicker of excitement in Junyi’s heart, mixed with a little fear. They sounded incredibly high-level, far beyond what she understood as the role of a “personal assistant.” It seemed like something that would be very difficult to master.
Ying Yin smiled again. “I don’t need you to take my worries off my shoulders, so don’t include that in your considerations. Whatever you want to study, go and study it. Art, business, even archaeology if that’s what you want.”
“You don’t need me anymore.”
Junyi understood what she meant.
Although she had already come to the same conclusion herself, hearing Ying Yin say it so plainly still made her heart sink.
“I do need you. But I can’t use the fact that I need you to hold you back. You were thinking about resigning, weren’t you?” Ying Yin asked.
Junyi’s expression changed. She stumbled over her explanation. “That was… I was just looking around.”
Ying Yin placed a hand over hers. “It’s okay. Don’t put yourself under any pressure. This is your life. If you’ve grown tired of a job and want to change your environment, or try something new, that’s a good thing. I support you.”
Junyi’s face went blank.
Then, with a sudden, loud cry, she burst into tears.
It came completely out of nowhere, without the slightest warning – even Junyi herself didn’t understand it.
Ying Yin was clearly startled and didn’t know what to do for a moment. And Junyi’s crying was so loud, as though she had been suppressing it for a very long time. Once the dam broke, it was like a mountain torrent bursting through, leaving her sobbing so hard that she could barely catch her breath.
Ying Yin kept patting her shoulder and back, lowering her head to try to catch her eyes. But Junyi remained hunched over the bar, refusing to look up. Her tears fell in streams onto Ying Yin’s knees, soaking through her trousers.
“I’m not trying to make you leave. I can’t bear to lose you either, but…”
Ying Yin suddenly understood. She stopped herself, her own nose beginning to sting. After a moment, she pulled Junyi into her arms. “I’ll keep you. I’ll keep you…”
Junyi was crying so hard that she was hot all over, sweat breaking out across her body, her hair at the temples sticking to her face. Between sobs, she asked haltingly, “Does your… your company with Ti-Tiwen not… not want little assi-assistants anymore?”
“Of course we do. Of course we do.” Ying Yin was both amused and exasperated. “Wasn’t it you who wanted to resign?”
“Because I’m useless.”
“Oh.” Ying Yin lifted her eyes and pretended to suddenly understand. “Because you’re useless, and because you see me as one of your own, you decided to switch to a more lucrative career? Wow, how thoughtful of you.”
Junyi’s face flushed. She hiccupped through her tears, which were still pouring down her face. “You don’t understand.”
“I do. You don’t want to leave me, but you’re afraid that I actually find you a burden and am only keeping you on out of affection. So you thought you’d be considerate and leave first.” Ying Yin saw right through her. She sighed with a laugh. “Cheng Junyi, you can’t be like this when you fall in love in the future. Men can’t possibly guess what you’re thinking.”
Junyi pouted miserably.
“And you’re very useful, you know.” Ying Yin wiped away her tears. “You’re the only person who would think of going all the way to Kashmir to buy me two little lambs.”
Afterwards, Junyi gave Lin Cunkang the cold shoulder for two whole days. Lin Cunkang insisted he was completely innocent, explaining that he had already discussed the cost of sending her to school with his wife, and that she was welcome to take that step whenever she wanted.
In truth, if Junyi wanted to study, Ying Yin would make the arrangements too. But the sincerity behind Lin Cunkang’s gesture was precious, and Ying Yin shouldn’t take that choice away from Junyi by declining it on her behalf.
Junyi wrote about the possibility of attending butler school halfway through her “Five-Year Diary”: [When I finally start liking soft-boiled eggs instead of fully cooked ones, I’ll go to school.]
…
The garden villa on the hillside, with mahogany trees planted outside, ultimately never sold.
There were several interested buyers, but whenever someone was ready to put down a deposit to reserve the property, Ying Yin would hesitate again and again before saying, “Let’s wait and see.”
Eventually, the property consultant saw through her. “If you don’t want to sell it, then you don’t have to.”
The villa had never been particularly easy to sell in the first place. It was an old house, with high living and maintenance costs, and its location was rather remote. Its prospects on the second-hand property market were hardly promising. Selling it and buying something in a more sought-after location would have been the smarter choice.
The consultant had put in one hundred and twenty percent of his effort to serve this celebrity client, and now that the deal had fallen through, his enthusiasm had cooled considerably. Still, he said politely, “Keeping it isn’t bad either. Think of it as holding on to a piece of sentiment.”
And so Ying Yin really did decide not to sell it. To thank him for all the effort he had put in, she paid him a generous commission.
Shang Shao paid no attention to such small matters, and Ying Yin never made a point of telling him. Privately, she thought that if they ever had a fight, at least she would have somewhere else to sleep. Sleeping in her own villa gave her more confidence than checking into a hotel, after all.
Then, one day – perhaps while they were sorting through various documents relating to their assets – the truth finally came out.
Shang Shao had just finished work and was reading The Count of Monte Cristo in the car on his way home. When he found Ying Yin in one of the sitting rooms, he still had his silver-rimmed glasses perched on his nose.
When he asked what she was doing, Ying Yin said she was taking stock of her money. She had so many small assets that she had nearly forgotten about some of them herself.
“You can just leave this sort of thing to an adviser. You don’t need to trouble yourself with it.”
As he spoke, he took off his suit jacket and casually tossed it onto the sofa, then bent down to claim a kiss from her.
There was a good-morning kiss for good morning, a goodbye kiss before leaving the house, and sometimes, if they managed to meet briefly over afternoon tea, an afternoon-tea kiss. When he came home, there was a welcome home kiss. There was a good-night kiss, a kiss before getting into bed, and whenever they simply felt like kissing, no reason was required at all.
The household staff had been given instructions not to come up to the third floor unless summoned.
There had only been one exception. Once, the crisp clopping of hooves sounded on the staircase as Rich somehow hopped its way upstairs, step by step, before standing elegantly yet bewilderedly at the doorway of a room.
It must have thought that its beautiful owner considered it too small to ride and had therefore settled for the next best thing.
Rich walked away deeply wounded.
Even Junyi had no idea where it had gone. Later, she had to go out under the moonlight to lead it back to its stable. The little pony remained withdrawn for three days, though it continued eating grass with admirable dedication.
As she kissed Shang Shao, Ying Yin untied his tie and slid her hands up over his shoulders.
“Help me sort through these,” she pleaded.
Whenever she spoke after being kissed, there was always a soft, slightly nasal sweetness to her voice. Shang Shao therefore willingly resigned himself to becoming her laborer, carefully going through the contracts and documents scattered all over the floor one by one, while also offering her advice along the way.
When he came across the property deed for the little villa, he asked casually, “Weren’t you planning to sell it? How come you didn’t?”
Caught completely off guard, Ying Yin could only come up with a clumsy lie on the spot.
“The agent said the market there is good, so it’s worth holding onto long-term.”
“How could that be?” Shang Shao looked up. “The city’s development plans for the next thirty years won’t affect that area at all. Who recommended such an unprofessional consultant to you?”
Ying Yin had no choice but to say, “I’ve already sold the apartment in the city center. This is the only property I have left.”
Shang Shao smiled. “What do you mean, this is the only property you have left? Isn’t this one yours too?”
“That’s different.”
“How is it different?”
“If we ever have a fight, I’ll obviously go back to my own place.” Ying Yin pursed her lips.
With a soft snap, Shang Shao closed the property deed and looked directly at her, his expression half-amused. “Who’s going to fight with you?”
“What if we do?”
“There won’t be a ‘what if.’”
“It’s not as though we’ve never fought before.” Ying Yin counted them off on her fingers one by one. “You forcibly kissed me, wanted me to be your mistress, took my shawl off on the plane, refused to lend me money to get out of my contract, had other plans but wouldn’t tell me, and whenever we disagreed, you’d just ‘withdraw’ and leave me to figure things out on my own…”
Shang Shao was both amused and exasperated. He pressed the property deed down onto the floor, braced himself with one hand, and leaned over her.
“Those count too?”
“Why wouldn’t they…” Ying Yin’s voice weakened as he drew so close that they were almost nose to nose.
Shang Shao touched the tip of his nose to hers. “And afterwards? Once we officially started dating, when did we ever have a fight?”
“We did. You got jealous of Jiang Te, you got jealous of Ke Yu…” Ying Yin’s face reddened, and she gave an unnecessarily conspicuous little cough.
Shang Shao put on an expression of sudden realization, as though he had only remembered those incidents because she had reminded him.
Then he said, “Angry sex doesn’t count as fighting.”
Ying Yin: “…”
This man really could make any logic sound perfectly self-consistent.
“So,” Shang Shao concluded, “we really have never fought.”
Ying Yin simply couldn’t stand him. Then his teasing, barely-there kisses against her lips left her mind hazy, her voice and breath melting into one sweet, heated murmur. “That’s sophistry… How can you even say that with a straight face…”
Shang Shao couldn’t stop laughing. He pulled her into his arms, kissing her cheek as he said, “We’ve still got a long life ahead of us. I really can’t guarantee that I’ll never do anything to make you angry. But this place is spacious enough. If I really make you mad, you can punish me by sending me to the second floor or the study. Or I can stay at Ray’s place. How about that? The little villa is too far away – it would take me ages to come and coax you, and you’d only end up being angry for longer for no reason.”
“What if I’m so angry that I don’t want to see you at all?” Ying Yin persisted.
Shang Shao held her by the waist, his other hand supporting her hips. They were clearly discussing whether she would get angry with him, yet Ying Yin had already wrapped both arms around his neck and obediently shifted onto her knees in his lap. Once she was settled, she lowered her eyes and waited for his answer.
Shang Shao tipped his head back slightly, his Adam’s apple moving as he spoke.
With a faint smile, he said as though they were negotiating the matter, “I think I’m unlikely to commit a crime serious enough to warrant that.”
“Who knows?” Ying Yin thought for a moment. “What if you…”
“I won’t.”
“But what if…”
“That won’t happen either,” Shang Shao said, the three words unhurried and utterly certain.
“Or…”
“Still won’t.”
Ying Yin refused to accept that. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“Anything that could make you so angry that you wouldn’t want to see me – I won’t do it, and I won’t give it the chance to happen either.”
Ying Yin couldn’t understand how, even though they were already married, just a sentence or two from him could still make her heart pound wildly.
For two seconds, she was left speechless by the sudden rush of emotion. By the time she recovered, she had buried her face in Shang Shao’s neck, her skin burning hot.
Shang Shao laughed softly and held her tightly in his arms.
“But you don’t know what kinds of things would make me angry enough to that extent. How are you supposed to avoid them?” Ying Yin said, still burying her face against him, her voice muffled.
“Of course I know.” Shang Shao kissed her earlobe. “Or… you could make me a list.”
Ying Yin never made him such a list, but the little villa remained unsold.
Then, on one occasion, they had planned to go and see a dance performance together, but Shang Shao was held up by an unexpected work emergency.
Ying Yin was somewhat disappointed and annoyed. The dance production was by an overseas company, and this was its final performance on the mainland. Besides, she had a strange, inexplicable itch in her heart – she seemed to want to see what Shang Shao looked like when he was trying to coax her. So she drove herself to the little villa.
While waiting at a red light, an image suddenly flashed through her mind, as though prompted by some unseen force: Shang Shao, holding a bouquet of flowers, hurrying upstairs to the third floor with all his heart set on placating her, only to find the place empty.
He would surely be bewildered. His heart would sink, because the little villa represented the point at which she was so angry that she didn’t want to see him. Yet this missed date was only a small matter, and one caused by circumstances beyond his control.
The light turned green. Ying Yin stepped on the accelerator. She should have continued straight ahead, but at the next junction, she made a U-turn.
She didn’t know why, but the thought of Shang Shao’s possible confusion and stunned expression made her chest feel unbearably tight.
When she got home, she secretly told Junyi about it. Junyi had assumed it was going to be something serious. She frowned and listened intently for a long while before suddenly understanding.
“So this is what it means to be difficult on purpose.” She tapped her fist against her palm. “When you know you’re loved, you have nothing to fear.”
“What nonsense.” Ying Yin gave a light cough, looking slightly uncomfortable.
Junyi looked at her seriously. “But you can’t bring yourself to do it, because you’d feel bad for him.”
Ying Yin pressed her lips together and stubbornly insisted, “It’s not that I feel bad for him.” She did her best to make light of it. “I just think making a big deal out of something so minor is pointless.”
“Mhm, mhm.” Junyi nodded.
“Don’t act like you don’t believe me.” Ying Yin frowned.
“I believe you, I believe you.”
Shang Shao came home very late that night, close to one in the morning. Ying Yin was still awake, sitting on the sofa in their bedroom and reading.
When the door opened, the warm night breeze came rushing in with him, carrying a powerful burst of floral fragrance.
Sure enough, he had come back holding flowers.
Dew from the depths of a midsummer night still clung to the petals, and some of that dew had dampened the collar of his pale blue shirt.
It was a huge bouquet. Ying Yin didn’t know what kind of flowers they were; she only knew they were flamingo-pink – pure and vivid, almost fiercely bright.
With the bouquet hooked over one arm, Shang Shao leaned over the back of the sofa and bent down to kiss Ying Yin softly on the cheek.
“Sorry I got back so late.”
“I’m furious,” Ying Yin said deliberately.
Shang Shao lowered his head and gave a soft laugh. “Then you should have gone to the little villa. I’d have pushed open the door and found you giving me the cold shoulder.”
“You wanted me to go?”
“Even if you had, I could still have coaxed you. And stayed the night there.”
The corners of Ying Yin’s lips lifted. Although she quickly suppressed the smile, Shang Shao still caught it.
“What are you laughing at, hm?” he asked meaningfully, his warm breath falling against her ear. “What are you thinking about?”
“Who says I’m thinking anything? I was just thinking it’s a good thing I didn’t go. I narrowly escaped disaster.”
Shang Shao’s gaze rested on her lips for two seconds, his eyes deepening until they were as dark as the night outside. As he kissed her, he slipped the book from her hands.
After kissing her for a while, his voice had noticeably deepened. His Adam’s apple bobbed before he asked, “How was the dance performance? Was it good?”
“I didn’t go,” Ying Yin admitted honestly. “Once I knew you couldn’t come, I suddenly didn’t feel like going anymore. And I was afraid you might rush over halfway through and end up waiting for me outside.”
Shang Shao studied her eyes and expression, then asked seriously, “Why does it look to me like you’re not furious at all? It looks like you were never angry in the first place.”
What he didn’t know was that, in all the time he had been gone, Ying Yin had already managed to talk herself out of being angry.
“It wasn’t your fault.” Ying Yin drew her knees up and folded her arms across them. “What about you? Have you sorted everything out?”
“Mm.” He answered, his fingertips gently stroking her cheek.
When the trouble had broken out at the company, his first instinct had actually been to ask his secretary to buy flowers. It was late, and he was worried the florist might close, or that all the best flowers would be picked over. He couldn’t possibly give Ying Yin a bouquet that had been hastily thrown together from whatever was left.
The secretary simply couldn’t understand how, in the middle of such a sudden and chaotic mess, he still had the presence of mind to think about something as small as a bouquet of flowers. As he hurried towards the conference room, he had even made a point of instructing:
“Pink roses only. No other filler flowers. And don’t make it look tacky.”
Chairman Shao’s single instruction – don’t make it look tacky – had both the secretary and the florist racking their brains.
Ying Yin took the flowers from his arms and gently inhaled their fragrance. Then, with a light smile, she said, “I was very angry. But for the sake of these flowers, I forgive you.”
The corner of Shang Shao’s lips curved upwards. He wrapped both arms around her, holding her tightly against him, then buried his face in the hollow of her neck and quietly breathed in the fragrance of her hair and skin.
Ying Yin let him breathe her in as though she were a bouquet of flowers. Her slender, smooth arms lifted to cradle his head, and at the same time, she instinctively turned her face aside, inviting him to kiss her.
The pink roses were crushed beneath their fervent embrace, shedding several petals. In the end, Shang Shao casually tossed the bouquet onto the floor.
It was in the way.
…
If the troupe’s schedule had not been so packed, and if all the major theatres had not already been fully booked, Shang Shao would certainly have asked them to put on a private performance just for Ying Yin. But since circumstances did not allow it, he had no choice but to let the matter go.
Later, after Chairman Shao worked overtime for an entire week and finally got everything sorted out, he flew with Ying Yin to Toronto to see the performance there.
