Shoutout to Alinaza for the commission!
Two streetlamps stood in the parking lot. Several small moths kept crashing into the glass covers, their faint “clang-clang” sounds adding a trace of eeriness to the thick night.
Jiang Se sat in the car, her fingers quickly scrolling through WeChat’s photo albums.
After searching for a long time, she couldn’t find a single photo of the man from his teen years; all the pictures he posted on social media were business photos from the past two or three years.
In the photos, the man’s brows and eyes were handsome, his temperament gentle, like a polished and elegant piece of jade.
The oldest photo was one where he wore a beige suit, sitting in a grandmaster chair and accepting an interview with a faint smile; at a glance, he looked exactly like a refined young master from an academic family.
The people of the Fu family all carried this kind of temperament, so cultured it was as if they were scholars immersed in the arts.
Old Master Fu loved literature and ink; his eldest son and grandson followed the same vein. Jiang Se remembered that when she first entered Bode to study, Fu Jun’s calligraphy had once hung in the calligraphy hall.
Jiang Se started school early and had skipped a grade; she entered junior high at eleven.
Fu Jun was four years older than her, in his first year of high school at Bode. Studying the same year as him was Fu Yun, whom Old Master Fu had just brought back.
That year, Fu Yun was sixteen.
The junior high and high school departments at Bode were in different buildings. Whether it was Fu Yun or Fu Jun, Jiang Se rarely ran into them on campus. If they did meet, it was always at banquets hosted by various families.
Not to mention, among youths, boys had their circles and girls had theirs.
Cen Li didn’t like interacting with Fu Jun and Fu Yun, and when he took Jiang Se out to play, they never bumped into the Fu family.
Jiang Se only had connections with them because of the marriage engagement.
The photo at her fingertips was one taken in the Fu family’s study. Jiang Se stared at the familiar face on the screen, closed her eyes, and carefully tried to recall what Fu Yun had looked like as a youth.
Memories from more than ten years ago, especially of someone she had never paid attention to, were hard to sift through like grains of sand to find traces of Fu Yun.
But Jiang Se wasn’t in a hurry. She had already walked through so much time; no matter what situation she fell into, she could stay calm.
During those three years of junior high, she and Fu Yun must have crossed paths.
Think of the places they would both go…
Some hazy images gradually formed in Jiang Se’s mind.
The midsummer wind blew gently. Cicadas chirped endlessly among the lush camphor trees, carried by the breeze toward the small auditorium.
In that always-dim auditorium, she was wearing a dress, chatting and laughing with Guo Qian as they walked down the aisle, making room for the seniors having their graduation photos taken.
A slender, lean-figured youth pushed the door open at that moment and walked down the aisle toward her.
The aisle was long and narrow. When they brushed past each other, Jiang Se’s scalp suddenly hurt, like it had been pricked by a needle. She looked back, only to see that person holding up a phone, revealing only half of a handsome profile.
The boy’s steps did not stop; he seemed completely unaware. A few strands of broken hair hooked onto his chest button were stuck against the fabric of his chest.
On the day of the graduation photos, many students brought their phones into the small auditorium, so Jiang Se hadn’t paid attention. Just as she withdrew her gaze, a flash of white light caught the corner of her eye.
Although it was only a side profile, Jiang Se knew that the boy was Fu Yun.
Other than this day for the graduation photos, what other interactions did they have?
After she and Fu Yun got engaged, the first time they went out to eat, they had even mentioned Bode High School.
What did Fu Yun say then? He said he had seen her dance.
Dance…
Under her thin, pale eyelids, her eyeballs moved quickly.
Jiang Se pushed the scenes in her memory forward one frame at a time, stopping on an autumn dusk.
It must have rained that day. The air was humid, carrying the earthy smell of fresh soil. She wore a ballet outfit with a thin jacket as she walked out the back door of the dance studio. Beneath the silk tree, there stood a figure.
He was wearing Bode’s sports uniform, headphones on, seemingly listening to music.
His head was lowered, listening with full attention. Yet when her phone rang, he turned his eyes toward her.
The boy’s face was hidden within the thick layers of leaves. Jiang Se couldn’t see his features clearly, only catching a quick glimpse of those eyes that seemed to blend with the gloomy shadows of the tree.
That person… was that Fu Yun?
—
The early-spring night wind brushed past the car windows.
When she opened her eyes again, her phone screen had already gone dark. Jiang Se opened an app and began slowly adjusting Fu Yun’s photo according to the feeling in her memory.
On the screen, the young man’s face gradually grew thinner, and that warm, jade-like temperament gradually faded, gaining a touch of youthfulness and gloom.
Jiang Se stared at the photo for a long moment before sending it to Zheng Huan: 【Have the people you know in Bo County ask the brewery workers or nearby residents if they recognize this boy in the photo. Fifteen years ago, was he in Bo County?】
In Beicheng, it was never a secret that Fu Yun was Old Master Fu’s illegitimate son.
Thirteen years ago, when Old Master Fu brought Fu Yun back, he had publicly claimed that the child was the result of a drunken mistake.
This “drunken mistake” story was an extremely cliché tale.
A handsome industrialist devoted to charity, and a university student who admired him, had a wild night together during a charity gala at some university. The female student became pregnant and died not long after giving birth. The child was raised by the girl’s relatives until he was sixteen, and only then brought back by the industrialist.
At that time, the industrialist’s only son had coincidentally just died.
The authenticity of the story could not be verified, but if Fu Yun really was that person, then Old Master Fu had lied to the public.
He said Fu Yun grew up in Sucheng, that the university in the story was a university in Sucheng, and that he had donated a teaching building and a library to that university.
The girl was from Sucheng, pure in character, her parents both highly educated, and Fu Yun had supposedly grown up in a scholarly household.
This explanation caused quite a bit of ridicule in Beicheng back then. People said, if she was pure in character, why would she offer herself to him just because the old master was drunk?
Whether the story was true or false, no one really cared. It was just gossip for idle moments. As time passed, the old master’s scandal gradually faded from view.
No one would inquire about what Fu Yun’s original name was, where he studied, or what his maternal relatives did.
The only ones who would know were Old Master Fu, and Fu Jun, whom he regarded as his successor.
Placing her phone on the console, Jiang Se rubbed her brow, started the car, and went to pick up Zhang Yue.
By the time the two of them climbed from the foot of the mountain to Hanshan Temple, the sky had not yet brightened. It was the darkest moment before dawn.
Night fog filled the air, and without light, the whole world looked like a sheet of xuan paper splashed with ink, deep and shallow ink trails flowing across it, while the clusters of bleak tree shadows were the darkest strokes.
Zhang Yue looked at the tree shadows thrashing in the wind and said, “If someone didn’t come with me, I definitely wouldn’t dare come here to watch the sunrise.”
Hearing this, Jiang Se tilted her eyes toward her and asked, “You’re afraid of the dark?”
Zhang Yue nodded. “Yes. I’m also afraid of being alone in the dark.”
“I was afraid of those unlit alleys too. Later, after I walked through those little alleys alone many times carrying a folding knife and a flashlight, I stopped being afraid.” Jiang Se patted the pocket of her coat with her gloved hand and said, “I always keep a knife on me.”
Zhang Yue asked curiously, “Can I see the knife?”
Jiang Se handed the knife to her. “The lock is on the handle. Be careful not to get cut by the blade.”
The folding knife was custom-made, only half a palm long, but extremely sharp.
Zhang Yue rubbed the blade back and forth, and heard Jiang Se ask her, “Hold this knife and look at the tree shadows down the mountain again. Do you still feel as scared as before?”
Holding the knife, Zhang Yue gathered her courage and looked down the mountain. After a moment, she softly laughed and said, “It seems… not as scary.”
Jiang Se smiled. “Once the sun rises, the mountain shadows will only make you feel full of life, not fear.”
As they talked, the bright red sunrise had already torn open the night, revealing a line of golden light at the foot of the distant mountains.
They looked toward the east, quietly watching as the morning light filled the world strand by strand. The dense fog faded, and the mountain range that had slept through the night lifted its veil like a beautiful woman, generously revealing her vibrant face.
No one knew how long had passed when Zhang Yue suddenly said, “Miss Jiang, in a few days I’ll return the house to you.”
Jiang Se glanced at her, nodded, and said, “Okay.”
“I also have some savings I’ve put aside over the years—”
“That’s money you earned yourself. You don’t need to give it to me.” Jiang Se shook her head. “Keep living in the house for now. Move out only after I’ve decided what to do with it.”
After finishing talking about the house, Jiang Se asked her again: “I’m looking into Zhao Zhicheng’s past. I mean his past before he appeared in Rongcheng. Do you want to know?”
Zhang Yue was silent for a moment, then said: “I don’t want to. To me, he will always be Ah Cheng.”
As if afraid these words would cause Jiang Se to misunderstand, she paused for a moment and then added: “I know he’s not a good person. Just like you said, no matter how beautiful a love is, it can’t be used to beautify a crime. What he did to you doesn’t deserve forgiveness.”
“You’re right, I’m not preparing to forgive him.” Jiang Se gave a faint smile and shifted the topic. “When Zhao Zhicheng left Jiangcheng, he told you that no matter who came looking for you, you must say you didn’t know him. Do you still remember what his tone was like when he said that?”
“Tone?” Zhang Yue froze. After a few seconds of silence, she said uncertainly, “I wasn’t in a good state at the time. He hadn’t even finished speaking before I was already panicking. Looking back on it now, he should’ve been a little scared then.”
“Scared?”
“Mm. He taught me again and again how to use cash to take the bus to Tongcheng, and he repeatedly warned me not to tell anyone that I was going back to Tongcheng. He seemed very afraid someone would find me.” As she spoke, Zhang Yue looked toward Jiang Se. “When you appeared in the qipao shop, I started wondering whether the person Ah Cheng was afraid of was you.”
“The person he’s afraid of isn’t me. It’s the person who helped him kill someone back then.” Jiang Se’s gaze shifted to the folding knife in Zhang Yue’s hand. “Do you dare to use this knife? If you do, I’ll leave it to you. I’ve got more at home.”
Zhang Yue hadn’t expected her to give her a knife. Instinctively, she looked down at the knife in her hand.
A very sharp knife.
She looked up at Jiang Se and said with a smile: “Of course I dare. Although the scissors I use for making qipaos are pretty sharp too, they’re not as good as this knife.”
Jiang Se nodded slightly: “Give me the knife.”
The gloves she wore were the velvet gloves Yu Shiying bought her. Using the soft fabric on her fingertips, she wiped away the traces she’d left on the knife. Jiang Se handed the knife back to Zhang Yue and said: “From now on, it’s your knife.”
—
After sending Zhang Yue back, it was still not yet nine o’clock.
Lu Huaiyan’s flight to Harbor City was at ten. No matter where he went now, he reported to her first. Since he hadn’t sent her a message yet, he probably hadn’t reached the airport.
Jiang Se glanced at her phone, turned the steering wheel, and drove toward the airport.
By the time she arrived, it was already nine-thirty. Ten minutes earlier, Lu Huaiyan had just sent her a message saying he was waiting at the airport.
Jiang Se took out her phone and called him: “Did you board? Are you still in the VIP lounge?”
On the other end of the line, the man pushing his suitcase slowed his steps.
The background noise on her side was the same as his.
His gaze shifted: “You’re at the airport?”
“Mm.”
“Where?” A faint smile tugged at the corner of Lu Huaiyan’s lips. “I’ll come out and find you.”
Handing his suitcase to the assistant next to him, he walked quickly out of the VIP lounge. His gaze swept over the dense crowd, and at a glance, he saw the girl standing in front of the LCD screen.
“Turn around, I’m behind you.” He laughed, speaking as he walked toward her. “Did the miss come all the way here just to see me off?”
The man’s low, smiling voice came from both the phone and from behind her at the same time.
Jiang Se turned around and hung up the call, saying to him: “I forgot to take a picture of the sunrise for you.”
“So you came to send me off instead?” Lu Huaiyan put his phone back in his pocket and stepped forward to take her hand. “Do you know what I felt when I got your call?”
“What feeling?”
He pinched her fingers and gave her a sideways glance: “I almost thought today’s sun rose from the west.”
“…”
After walking only a few steps, Lu Huaiyan asked again: “You didn’t touch the bread in the apartment. Does that mean you haven’t had breakfast?”
“Mm. Forgot.”
That bread was made by Junyue’s head chef yesterday and delivered over, several flavors for her to choose from, just so she wouldn’t climb the mountain on an empty stomach.
But this girl had actually forgotten about it, and even said it so confidently.
Lu Huaiyan looked at her, angry and amused: “You like watching the sunrise that much? Enough to forget breakfast?”
He led her toward the restaurant area. Jiang Se tugged at the tightly-held hand and said: “Lu Huaiyan, if you don’t board now, you’re going to miss your flight.”
“I’m not in a hurry, what are you in a hurry for?” He held her hand tightly, looking sideways at her. “Can’t you tell I’m very happy? Missing the flight is missing the flight. I’ll just push it back. Right now, nothing in the world is more important than having breakfast with our miss.”
