Shoutout to Alinaza for the commission!
In the parking lot, the moment Jiang Tang saw the new car Jiang Se picked, she frowned.
“Dad picked this car for you?”
“No, I chose it myself.”
Jiang Tang looked utterly incredulous: “How is your taste as bad as Dad’s? Speechless.”
Seemingly amused by Jiang Tang’s expression, Jiang Se curved her lips in a small smile: “Isn’t it pretty cute?”
“……”
The two got into the car. As Jiang Tang fastened her seatbelt, she asked, “Aren’t you going to ask anything?”
Jiang Se slowly turned the steering wheel, “Ask what?”
“About me and Cao Xun.”
“Nothing worth asking. Just a useless scumbag, not worth wasting our time.” Jiang Se turned her head to look at her. “I only want to know, him and his fiancée, will they come trouble you?”
“They won’t.” Jiang Tang smiled, “Back then, it was Jian Ruyi who let me see Cao Xun’s true face clearly. Whatever her intention was, I’m grateful to her. The agency I belong to now is under the Jian family. I signed a five-year sell-your-body contract.”
She handed her future to Jian Ruyi simply to show: that man Cao Xun, Jiang Tang disdains him.
Jiang Se nodded, not continuing that topic, only asking in curiosity: “How did you know about Cao Liang’s situation? Little Ye even told me not to tell you.”
Jiang Tang couldn’t help letting out a laugh: “His slip-up was so obvious, how could he hide it from me?”
The car drove into Financial Street, neon and tree shadows sliding inch by inch past the windows.
At a traffic light, Jiang Se stopped the car.
“Just because Little Ye didn’t video call you, you guessed he had trouble?”
Jiang Tang hummed: “You know what Little Ye is like, he’s afraid I’ll get bullied after entering a film crew, so every Friday he wants me to video call him. But starting last week, he switched two weeks of video calls into voice calls.”
With bruises on his face, of course Jiang Ye didn’t dare to video call Jiang Tang.
“I asked Huang Xu this morning and found out about him and Cao Liang.” Jiang Tang said, “I had someone check Cao Xun’s schedule. After getting off the plane I came straight to find him. Don’t worry, Cao Xun has already promised he won’t let Cao Liang bother Little Ye again. He’s a scumbag, yes, but the things he agrees to, he rarely goes back on.”
The light turned green. Jiang Se started the car, glancing at Jiang Tang through the rearview mirror without being obvious.
Her expression was very calm; speaking of Cao Xun, she felt no sadness or joy, almost no emotional fluctuation, looked like she really let it go.
Cao Xun, just because of one phone call from Jiang Tang, could put down everything and go see her, there were remnants of feelings in his heart.
The fear was that Jiang Tang would take that little remnant of feeling as affection.
Jiang Se had seen many girls throw themselves into the fire for rich young masters, hearts burned into ashes, yet still waiting for them to flare up again someday.
Luckily, Jiang Tang was clear-headed.
Just as she was thinking this, Jiang Tang suddenly called, “Sese.”
“Mm?”
“In the future, no matter what happens, don’t go looking for your friends in Beicheng.” Jiang Tang looked out the window, her almond eyes, similar to Jiang Se’s, lit by the fragments of neon passing by. “Little Ye said you don’t like them at all, so don’t wrong yourself. Those people are all very messy.”
The director of her crew was one of the Beicheng aristocratic families; he knew somewhat about the Cen family.
Jiang Tang knew Jiang Se’s situation.
The Cen family ignored her completely, and the Fu family had dissolved the engagement.
Those rich second-generation heirs who once couldn’t climb high enough for the Cen family and once had their eyes on Jiang Se, even made a bet, betting on who could get Jiang Se into bed first.
Someone once worshipped like stars and moon, once fallen, became a plaything in their mouths.
Jiang Tang knew very well how painful it was to be treated like a plaything.
“Before you came back, Dad and Mom even held a family meeting, telling me and Little Ye that you’re the treasure our Jiang family lost and found. None of us are allowed to let you be wronged.” Jiang Tang said, “If even we can’t be allowed, then outsiders definitely can’t.”
Jiang Se’s hands on the steering wheel paused slightly.
She stared at the blurry night ahead of the windshield, silent for a moment, then smiled and nodded: “Got it. I won’t let myself be wronged.”
Jiang Tang withdrew her gaze from the window, turned her head, and suddenly changed the subject: “Are you still having insomnia? The sleeping pills you took that night, I’ve taken them before. Only severe insomniacs use those.”
Jiang Se pressed her lips together, considered for two seconds, then said: “I only take that medicine occasionally.”
Jiang Tang: “That’s good then. Very severe insomnia is, many times, because of psychological issues. If it really doesn’t work, then go see a psychologist.”
Jiang Se replied very obediently: “Okay.”
—
After sending Jiang Tang back to Liyuan Street, it was already almost eleven by the time she returned to the apartment.
Coming out after her shower, her phone screen was flooded with dense WeChat notifications.
All of them were messages from a few hours ago.
Little Aunt: 【Dr. Gina says you haven’t contacted her for two months now, and you’re not answering her office’s calls. What’s wrong with you? Changed your surname and don’t plan to treat your illness anymore?】
Little Aunt: 【Don’t play dead. I’m returning home at the end of the year. If you don’t want me to skin you alive, hurry and reply to Dr. Gina.】
Little Aunt: 【……】
Little Aunt: 【You brat, just you wait!】
Jiang Se finished reading them one by one, and even through the screen she could feel Cen Mingshu’s anger.
Cen Mingshu had a shu in her name, but her personality had nothing to do with being gentle and virtuous.
This little aunt of hers, as Cen Li said, was the Cen family’s once-in-a-century freak, and someone the Cen family wished to never mention again up to this day.
Cen Mingshu lived however she pleased, spending her whole life in a state of rebellion.
When she was young, Jiang Se worshipped this aunt of hers.
Of course, she still worshipped her now.
Just that, without the blood ties anymore, she didn’t know whether Cen Mingshu still recognized her as her niece.
Staring at the messages on her phone that seemed to carry emotion, Jiang Se laughed softly.
It was obvious, Cen Mingshu did recognize her.
She replied succinctly: 【Expensive, no money.】
It was about noon in America now, and since Cen Mingshu always flipped day and night, she was probably asleep.
After sending the message, Jiang Se locked her screen and went to sleep.
She didn’t take medicine. The moment she lay on the bed, she fell asleep in less than half an hour.
In her dreams, it was still endless darkness, a narrow passageway, and muggy wind pouring in from all directions. Fireworks blossomed in the night sky, yet their light couldn’t reach in.
A choking scent of smoke spread in the darkness, followed by the smell of blood, and finally a faint, clear sandalwood-like fragrance.
All the scents mixed together, weighed down by the damp air.
So heavy it almost suffocated her.
Jiang Se woke from that sticky, oppressive suffocation.
Inside and outside the room were pitch black. She groped for her phone and saw it was only five in the morning.
On her phone, Cen Mingshu had replied, and in her usual peculiar style told her: 【Put it on the tab.】
Little Aunt: 【I’ll vouch for you. Gina will definitely agree.】
The two characters “put it on the tab” were very much like Cen Mingshu.
Jiang Se exited the chat and decided not to take Cen Mingshu’s suggestion.
She still had money in her account, she hadn’t reached the point of needing to put doctor’s visits on credit.
She had sold herself to Hongsheng for five years. The wages and bonuses from those years hadn’t been taken back by the Cen family; all together it was several million.
She had put all that money into her stock account.
In the month she’d been in Tongcheng, the stocks and options she’d bought earlier had already earned her some pocket money.
The reason she said she had no money to see a doctor was just an excuse.
She knew very clearly, Dr. Gina couldn’t cure her illness.
She had never gone to Dr. Gina to get cured, anyway.
—
Jiang Tang’s filming still had two months before wrapping. After resting two days in Tongcheng, she had flown back to the crew to work herself to death again.
Thursday afternoon, after seeing her off, Jiang Se received a call from He Miao on the way back from the airport.
“Miss Jiang, the qipao you ordered last time is finished. Are you coming by today?” He Miao’s voice was very sweet. “Master is here today too. Didn’t you really want an embroidery pattern designed just for you? Perfect time to come talk to Master!”
Jiang Se stared at the endless flow of cars ahead, her heart involuntarily thudding heavily once, then lightly and slowly letting out a breath. After her heartbeat returned to normal, she smiled and agreed: “Okay, I’ll come over now.”
Ending the call, Jiang Se turned the steering wheel and headed toward Jinxiu Alley.
The old street was the same as last time, deserted and lacking any liveliness.
The shop “Zhang Xiu” likewise had no customers.
When Jiang Se arrived, He Miao was arranging the fabric rack. Seeing her, she quickly greeted: “Good afternoon, Miss Jiang.”
Then she cheerfully lifted a curtain to the side and called inside, “Master, she’s here.”
As her words fell, a woman with a delicate face and graceful figure, probably around thirty, walked out from behind the curtain.
The woman wore long, smooth, jet-black hair, the ends brushing her waist and swaying gently with her steps.
This woman was He Miao’s master, and also the owner of this tailor shop—
Zhang Yue.
When Zhang Yue came out, she was carrying a heavy wooden hanger, with the qipao Jiang Se custom-ordered hanging on it.
The qipao used off-white cotton fabric as its base, embroidered with an ink-wash painting of a magpie alighting on a branch, its artistic conception very far-reaching.
Jiang Se quietly looked at that magpie, her dark, inky eyes slowly dyed by the ink colors above.
Making them seem even deeper.
“Try it first, see if it fits.” Zhang Yue’s voice, like the impression she gave others, carried an empty sort of aloofness.
Her gaze swept past Zhang Yue’s delicate, slightly bitter-looking face, and Jiang Se stepped forward to take the hanger.
“Thank you.”
There was a fitting room inside the shop. Jiang Se went to change, and when she came out, He Miao, who had been looking down at her phone, looked up and showed a flash of amazement in her eyes.
“Wow, Miss Jiang, you look so good in a qipao!”
The first time she saw Jiang Se, she had already been stunned by her face.
This time, it was Jiang Se’s figure that stunned her.
Curved in all the right places, balanced in bone and flesh, graceful and slender.
The most beautiful, and the most suited-for-a-qipao figure He Miao had ever seen.
After Jiang Se offered a polite thank you, she walked out from the inner room.
Zhang Yue looked over, her gaze slowly traveling across the qipao on Jiang Se.
“Any place that needs adjusting?” she asked.
“No, the qipao fits very well. I also want to custom-order another one. But for the embroidery pattern on the qipao,” Jiang Se smiled at Zhang Yue, “I want a design that’s one of a kind.”
Zhang Yue nodded, went around to the counter, took out a sketchbook and a pencil from the drawer, and asked Jiang Se: “Little Miao mentioned it to me, what kind of embroidery pattern do you want?”
“Birds.” Jiang Se walked to stand opposite Zhang Yue, propped her elbow on the counter, and said with a smile, “Little Miao said Boss Zhang is best at flowers and birds, so I want a embroidery pattern with a bird.”
Zhang Yue’s slightly lowered eyes showed a moment of distraction.
“What kind of bird?”
Staring at the shadow cast under her lashes as they fell, Jiang Se thought for a moment, then slowly said: “The bird should have a long tail, with one tail feather pointing up, and one tail feather pointing down.”
Zhang Yue’s lashes fluttered, and the pencil tip “shasha” slid over the delicate white paper. Very soon, she had drawn several long-tailed birds in various poses.
“This is a blue magpie, this is a lovebird, this is a long-tailed weaver sparrow, this is a painted finch vine.” Holding her pencil as she sketched, she introduced the birds calmly. “These are the only long-tailed birds I can embroider. See if any of them suit your taste.”
Each bird on the page perched on a bare branch, tilting its body and lifting its head upward, the two long magpie feathers on their tails arranged so that one pointed up and the other pointed down.
Her eyes swept inch by inch across the sketch. After a long moment, Jiang Se lifted her hand to check her watch, then smiled: “I really can’t decide all of a sudden. Boss Zhang, would you mind if I take these embroidery patterns back with me? I’ll come again in a couple of days.”
Zhang Yue made a soft “mm,” tore off the sheet of paper and pushed it over, then lifted her eyes to look at Jiang Se: “I may not be in the shop. Once you’ve chosen, just tell Little Miao.”
—
The car drove out of Jinxiu Alley, and when it stopped at a traffic light, a road sign for Hanshan Temple stood boldly by the roadside.
The moment Jiang Se caught sight of the sign, she thought of a line from a Buddhist scripture—
【In Jambudvipa, every thought and movement of sentient beings is karma. Is sin.】
Thought, karma, sin.
She flicked on her right turn signal and headed toward Hanshan Temple.
Last time she’d come, Yu Shiying had been regretting the whole time that she hadn’t managed to take Jiang Se into the temple to ask for a safety talisman.
She had mentioned several times that they should come again, but they’d never found the right chance.
No day like today, might as well go now.
There was a designated parking lot at the foot of the mountain, with stone steps on both sides leading up to Hanshan Temple.
After parking, Jiang Se took the nearer set of stone steps and slowly walked up.
Hanshan Temple stood midway up Qihan Mountain, and from far away Jiang Se could see the gray-white eaves stretching out from amid the trees.
The sky was overcast, the whole mountain forest silent as snow, almost no people in sight.
Halfway up, her phone rang.
It was Cen Mingshu, just awake.
Jiang Se answered: “Little Aunt.”
Cen Mingshu was clearly very satisfied that Jiang Se hadn’t switched to some messy nickname for her, and she let out a pleased snort: “You do have a conscience. I heard from your older brother that the day you changed your surname, you changed how you addressed Cen Minghong and Ji Yunyi too.”
Jiang Se’s face stayed calm: “I followed your lead.”
“Follow my *ss.” Cen Mingshu cursed with a laugh. “You don’t know your own temper?”
“Isn’t it because you like this bad temper of mine?” Jiang Se was breathing slightly, “You used to say the two of us, aunt and niece, are rotten in the same way.”
“That’s right, rotten in the same way.” Cen Mingshu sneered. “Since you were little, you relied on the fact that I liked you most and came to me for every bad thing you did. This time you turned against the Cen family, why didn’t you come find me?”
“Because there was no need.” Jiang Se paused on a step, waited for her slight breathlessness to settle, then continued climbing. “Have you met my junior?”
Cen Mingshu gave a short “mm,” and deliberately said: “Little Yu and I have video-called who knows how many times. That girl is much more interesting than you!”
“Of course.” Jiang Se said leisurely, “Junior has a good personality and a good temper. Treat her better.”
Cen Mingshu let out a snort, too lazy to bicker with Jiang Se anymore. She got straight to the point: “You can’t skip going to Dr. Gina. The money for the treatment, Little Aunt will lend it to you, how about that?”
Cen Mingshu had been arrogant and unrestrained her whole life, and this was the first time she’d ever lowered herself to ask someone if they needed money. If she didn’t know this girl only bowed to gentleness and not force, she really would’ve wanted to tie her up and drag her to Gina’s office.
Seeing she was almost at the halfway point of the mountain, Jiang Se didn’t bother circling around either. She said sincerely: “Little Aunt, you know this, aside from myself, no one can treat this illness. Not even Dr. Gina.”
Cen Mingshu didn’t speak.
After a long silence, just when Jiang Se thought she was about to hang up, she suddenly came out with something inexplicable: “Sese, find a man and date a bit to relieve stress. The kind you can sleep with every day.”
“……”
Jiang Se happened to step onto the final stair. Hearing this, she couldn’t help laughing: “Are you trying to force me to hang up on you?”
Cen Mingshu: “Hang up what? I’m giving you a temporary fix if not a cure. This is Little Aunt’s firsthand experience. The effect, well, at least it works better than all those bottles and jars of yours.”
There was no denying it, this method was very much like Cen Mingshu.
When she turned thirty, she’d even written her own epitaph: This old lady has f*cked over this f*cked-up world.
Men, to her, were indeed just for stress relief, truly a model of passing through a forest of ten thousand trees without a single leaf sticking to her body.
As Jiang Se listened, she walked through a small stretch of shifting shadows beneath the trees.
Pushing aside a cluster of lush branches, the road in front suddenly opened wide.
An ancient temple stood solemnly beneath the gloomy sky.
Under the gray eaves, the prayer flags fluttered in the wind like rippling folds on a lake.
A man’s figure was hidden behind those prayer flags.
One hand in his pocket, the other holding a black coat, he leaned lazily against a closed lattice window of the rear hall. His head was slightly turned, as though looking at something.
Jiang Se’s footsteps didn’t stop.
But the man outside the hall sensed the movement on her side and turned his head to look her way.
Even across a not-so-short distance, she could feel the weight of his gaze.
On the phone, Cen Mingshu was still saying: “Remember to pick a man who’s both good-looking and useful. Those embroidered cushions with only skin and no substance are useless.”
The distance gradually shrank.
Meeting Lu Huaiyan’s gaze which hadn’t shifted since he’d turned his head, Jiang Se said to Cen Mingshu: “I’m hanging up now, Little Aunt. I will seriously consider your suggestion.”
The tone sounded pretty obedient, and pretty sincere.
But Lu Huaiyan knew this girl was perfunctorily brushing off the person on the phone without any real heart.
Just like she had brushed him off before.
—
Xia Xia counted on their fingers: yoho, that man who looks good and is useful is way off in the distance~
