Chapter 67

Nothing Brings a Person to Life More Than Hatred

Li Ai immediately left the WeChat group. In all the time Hu Xiu had known Li Ai, she had rarely seen him act out in any extreme way. Even when he was upset, it was just written on his face, and he wouldn’t deliberately make things difficult for others—proving that only love could provoke such intense emotional swings in a man.

In this sense, Zhao Xiaorou could be considered successful in her dealings with Li Ai.

Hu Xiu turned to look at Ma Liang. Holding his phone, he didn’t look ecstatic, his smile more like a gesture meant to reassure Hu Xiu. That GAP sweatshirt, which Hu Xiu had finally remembered, had been featured in a program Zhao Xiaorou once recommended. Most likely, it had been a PR gift from that time.

So, these two had already been secretly involved for a while; today was just the day Zhao Xiaorou acted impulsively in a fit of anger.

Zhao Xiaorou also left the group. Hu Xiu, now sitting in a lonely group chat with two years of chat history, felt like she had become a collateral victim.

The escape room experience became unbearably awkward. Fang Qingxian, for all his good looks, only put in minimal effort to scare her. Even the tasks were subtly hinted at, making the game feel utterly unsatisfying—she had already grown used to heightened excitement and intensity.

Pleasant compliance proved to be boring after all; mutual teasing was where the real thrill lay. Rather than a true actor, Fang Qingxian felt more like an NPC in the escape room.

Apart from advancing the plot and providing buffs, there was no performance element to leave a lasting impression. The reliance on props and puzzles to drive the game’s story diminished the actors’ presence.

This was, indeed, the result of discussions between Zhao Xiaorou and Diao Zhiyu. She had concluded that immersive experiences were too costly—employing a dozen actors meant tens of thousands in expenses, which wasn’t worth it. Plus, escape rooms weren’t something people tended to revisit. After harvesting one batch of players, they could sell the script to distributors in other cities and start fresh somewhere else.

Zhao Xiaorou was extremely sharp. The entire escape room story created by Diao Zhiyu, with its three storylines, had been bought out for fifty thousand yuan. Selling distribution rights to various cities would also allow Diao Zhiyu to take a cut. When it came to making money, Zhao Xiaorou had it all figured out.

For someone who maximized profit in everything, once she saw the light, she wouldn’t waste time gnawing on the tough bone of love.

As Ma Liang finished his shift, he noticed Hu Xiu and greeted her politely, “Sister Hu Xiu, should I call a car for you?”

Instead of pulling out his phone, he went outside, hailed a taxi, opened the back door for her, and bid her goodbye.

Sitting in the car, Hu Xiu found herself thinking. It wouldn’t be fair to assume malice in such a pure and kind-hearted young man. These days, it was rare to find someone so warm and considerate. Besides, Zhao Xiaorou, whom she’d known for over a decade, was far from being a love-struck fool. If she had chosen Ma Liang as her boyfriend, there must be some dazzling quality in him that Hu Xiu wasn’t yet aware of—a quality bright enough to make her leave Li Ai behind.

Just as she stepped through her front door, a message from Ma Liang arrived: 

“Sister Hu Xiu, have you made it home? I was happy to see you today. Let me know when you’re safe.” 

Could an ordinary face mask an extraordinary personality? 

Almost immediately, a text from Zhao Xiaorou followed: 

“Li Ai deleted me from his contacts. He sent me a formal work email, saying that if I find a new partner to collaborate with, I can let him know at any time. He wants to focus on his coffee shop and design work.” 

After sending the message, Zhao Xiaorou earnestly replied to Li Ai’s email. She meticulously laid out a quarterly profit-sharing breakdown, listing each collaboration in detail: social media partnerships initiated by the agency, brands brought in through her connections, fees for product placements, and additional ROI bonuses. Every penny was accounted for. 

After transferring the money, she added a closing remark in her email: 

“I won’t charge you for the PR expenses back during the Gong Huaicong incident. Let’s just call it a favor I owe you. If you ever need help, you can come to me. 

Though if I sent you the money, you’d probably just find another reason to send it back—after all, in your mind, everything has to be neatly settled and kept separate.” 

After hitting send, she snapped her laptop shut. That’s when Ma Liang knocked on her door. He came in holding two hot bottles of pomelo tea from the convenience store, grinning cheerfully, instantly brightening the atmosphere. 

Li Ai used to be like this too—always smiling when he was around her. He’d brew her the freshest coffee beans, let her decide the menu freely, and treated her as if she were the most important person in his life. Yet Hu Xiu wouldn’t help with his menu designs or view his latest concept photos. At the time, she was still married to Wang Guangming, and Li Ai kept a respectful distance. 

They were never just ordinary friends. Looking back, that was probably the closest they had ever been. 

“Xiaorou, I washed the dishes in the sink. I’m going to take a shower. How about tonight…?” Ma Liang’s expression was suggestive. 

“I… It’s my period,” Zhao Xiaorou replied with an apologetic smile, though she was perfectly fine. 

Considering they were in the honeymoon phase, passion should have been burning hot, with intimacy multiple times a night. But tonight, she simply wasn’t in the mood. 

Later, Ma Liang crawled into bed and lingered beside her for a while, until his hands landed on her sanitary pad—she had fully committed to the act. 

Once he fell asleep, his snoring began to irritate her. She kicked him lightly and muttered, “Keep it down, or go sleep on the couch.” 

Instead of getting upset, he groggily grabbed the blanket at the foot of the bed and made his way to the sofa. 

That, at least, made her heart soften.

Her relationship with Ma Liang grew closer during the Lunar New Year. Apart from clients and account managers pushing for video content, no one actively reached out to her—not even Hu Xiu. But Ma Liang diligently kept in touch, always sending updates and replying instantly.

His social media posts showed he was in Mexico. Despite the time difference, he would send her photos, mentioning how the sun was so harsh he could only go jogging at four in the afternoon, and how he had to stay in the hotel with the air conditioning on after seven or eight.

While she was bored out of her mind in Xi’an, she joked that he should send her some videos of the coastal scenery. For the first time, the man who always replied instantly suddenly went silent.

Having grown used to his consistent morning and evening greetings and his immediate replies, his sudden absence unsettled her. 

She went out for a meal, got a spa treatment, and kept her phone on silent nearby. Every time it buzzed, she instinctively checked it. 

It wasn’t until nighttime that she finally received a video. As she watched it, she felt as if the Caribbean breeze were blowing directly onto her face through the screen. 

To think such a man could make her feel insecure—it wasn’t without a sense of frustration. 

When Ma Liang returned to Shanghai, he helped out at a scarf designer friend’s studio. Zhao Xiaorou’s messages were, once again, replied to instantly. 

Every video she uploaded, he would like. Whenever she needed errands run, he would even skip work to help, often arriving drenched in sweat and leaving immediately after delivering what she needed. 

After several such encounters where she only managed to see him for a few minutes, she finally said, “Stay over tonight. You can sleep on my couch—don’t leave.” 

He chuckled sheepishly, “How could I? That’s a very expensive couch. If you don’t mind, Sister Xiaorou, I’d rather sleep on the couch at your escape room studio.” 

“I don’t have much money, but I can help clean and do odd jobs for you.” 

Zhao Xiaorou couldn’t resist asking about the condition of his house in Fengxian—just how run-down or far away was it that he didn’t want to go back? 

He only smiled and said, “My parents aren’t very educated. They keep nagging me to get married when I’m home—it gives me a headache. I didn’t want to just be another vocational school graduate after I finished secondary school, so I studied at night school. Now I’m a graduate of Jiaotong University.” 

She felt a twinge of admiration. Evening classes or not, Jiaotong University was still Jiaotong University. It wasn’t right to dismiss someone’s ambition based on their background. 

He sent her a photo of the gate to a vocational college on Kaixuan Road, his smile brimming with an adorable charm. He added, “I may not have money or the ability to buy you things, but you already have everything. I’ll work hard and do anything for you.” 

Her playful side was suddenly piqued. “Then buy me a cake and bring it here. I want Cai Jia’s signature Napoleon cake, no other flavors. The address is No. 679 Jiujiang Road, inside Inspace Creative Park. We’re filming there.” 

Three hours later, Ma Liang actually showed up at the door. Zhao Xiaorou was too busy to eat; she had only wanted to test his willingness to act. 

The Cai Jia cake was shared with the staff on-site. He carefully cut it and served everyone with respect, showing not a hint of complaint. 

Considering Cai Jia’s cakes were notoriously difficult to book, she couldn’t help but wonder how he managed to get one in three hours. The effort touched her, just a little. 

That night, back at home, she didn’t let him sleep on the couch. 

Ma Liang had a strong sense of service, almost like a masseuse offering premium care. Compared to Ning Zechen, who was also twenty-four, Ma Liang lacked many qualities. The one thing that stood out—and not in a good way—was the clueless comment he made while climbing on top of her: 

“You’re the tightest woman I’ve ever been with.” 

Her body instantly recoiled at his words. 

As these thoughts ran through her mind, she put on her makeup, sat in the filming studio drinking, and recorded clips of herself reading comments and answering relationship questions. Her cheeks were flushed, and she downed two liver-protection pills. 

After all, wasn’t she used to doing everything on her own?

“This question from Jingjing, who wants to go to bed early, is mainly about whether she should still marry her boyfriend. They’ve been in a long-distance relationship for seven years and are finally about to get married. Her boyfriend earns 15,000 yuan a month, and she earns about 8,000. They’ve agreed to get married in Zhuhai. But now she’s discovered her boyfriend has other ambiguous relationships on his phone. What should she do?”

“What I’m about to say might sound harsh, but the desire to reproduce in low-income men and the desire for middle- and lower-income men to play the field are essentially the same.”

“The only thing that can keep a man grounded is his upbringing and character. But it seems, unfortunately, that Jingjing’s boyfriend might lack these qualities.”

“If you’re marrying purely for love, your boyfriend’s love doesn’t seem very valuable. If it’s to form a mutual interest partnership, then with a combined income of 23,000 yuan, you could still manage to buy a car and house on loan and get by.”

“This next question from Chenpi525 is also quite interesting. Currently, two men are pursuing her. One is a forty-year-old CEO with a son. He has social status, connections, and life experience. The other is a young man in his early twenties who has nothing, is relatively simple, but not very ambitious. Who should she choose?”

“My suggestion is to take a step back and look at the situation objectively. Will the young man in his early twenties become a CEO by the time he’s forty? Not necessarily. Will the forty-year-old man still have the simplicity of a twenty-year-old? I took a look at Chenpi’s profile—born in 1997. My advice as Sister Xiaorou is: don’t choose either. If you’re hesitating, it means you don’t like either of them enough. If you truly want to date someone, then go for what fulfills your biggest need.”

At four in the morning, while reviewing material, Zhao Xiaorou subconsciously reached for a cigarette—it was an IQOS.

Years ago, while Li Ai was wandering around Nihonbashi shopping for anime merchandise, Zhao Xiaorou bombarded him with calls, asking him to buy her an e-cigarette. He hobbled on crutches through three blocks, unable to find one in convenience stores, and finally picked it up at the airport duty-free shop.

Back then, she had just discovered Wang Guangming’s infidelity and was in a foul mood. Li Ai went to a drugstore and bought an entire car trunk’s worth of cosmetics to cheer her up— 

The gifts from this straightforward man often left her at a loss whether to laugh or cry. But it was during that time that her ambitions grew: love was such a wonderful thing, she wanted to seek a new one. 

She’d always cared too much about love, and after her divorce, when love wasn’t attainable, she approached relationships pragmatically: gaining physical satisfaction, attention, and money. The only exception was Li Ai—nothing went smoothly with him. 

What’s the point of savoring the bitterness of love? With Li Ai, she couldn’t gain love, couldn’t gain attention, and even the money she gave him came back unspent. 

After drinking, she still felt lonely. If she had learned to be pragmatic in love when she got married, maybe she wouldn’t have divorced Wang Guangming. Stripping love away, her marriage would have had everything else, but she insisted on being serious about love. 

Now, ironically, she had everything except love. She had come to understand that love was something that had nothing to do with her. 

Ma Liang was drooling in his sleep on the couch. She sat beside him, watching his sleeping face, and felt an even stronger urge to have another drink. 

She wouldn’t spend any money on Ma Liang—at most, she would give him some trinkets sent by brands, or let him wear men’s shirts she didn’t care about. He couldn’t appreciate Hermès, so the items remained stored away, exuding an air of luxury he couldn’t articulate. The watches stayed locked in the safe. 

This man, who came so easily without any effort on her part, wasn’t worth cherishing. He was, in essence, a project of casual charity—offered with a bit of love and unused things she didn’t care about. 

She raised a glass to herself, a cynical woman who had seen through it all. She wanted to see just how hard this Ma Liang, starting from nothing, would work for love. 

After reviewing her material, she stared at her cold expression in the mirror, feeling too smug. She deleted the recording and started over. 

“I feel like I’ve been giving everyone useless advice—saying harsh truths, practical truths, calculating everything to the penny. 

“Chasing after profit is encouraged; morality has no bottom line. After all, to live happily, everyone must step on one another. 

“But love doesn’t wait for the right moment. What’s always missing is the simple, ‘I like you. I love you.’ Love isn’t something you can calculate. 

“If you don’t believe me, think back to your most unforgettable love—it’s never tied to external things. It’s always about the people involved. 

“So when you can say, ‘I love you,’ don’t hold back. Because once you miss the chance, you’ll realize there won’t be a second one.” 

After staying up all night, she looked at her reflection—what drained a person most was heartbreak. After tonight, she decided she would no longer contact Li Ai for personal matters. 

When Hu Xiu went to REGARD and saw Li Ai again, he seemed thinner. Word had it he’d been staying up late working on design drafts and spending his spare time playing intense games of basketball. Since he couldn’t dribble and drive to the basket, he stood in place shooting three-pointers. He spoke little at the coffee shop and exuded an air of mystery. 

Regular customers noticed, too: the woman who had practically been half the boss during Christmas hadn’t been around lately. Reflected in the glass display case was Li Ai, bent over his design drafts. He rarely even ground coffee beans anymore. 

Li Ai seemed to have changed since the first time she met him. He used to be warm and gentle, impossible to ruffle. 

Now, there was something sharper about him. Gone were the hoodies and sweaters that gave him a gentle appearance. Crisp-collared shirts and sharply tailored cropped trousers made him look polished and distant. 

Hu Xiu sat in a corner drinking coffee while nearby customers whispered about how intimidating the boss seemed, no longer as approachable as before. 

Still, Hu Xiu saw in him a spark of determination. If he had once been a stagnant pool of water, now there was something alive in his eyes. 

Nothing shapes a vivid life like hatred—it can deaden the heart, but it also purifies and electrifies existence. 

When Li Ai stepped outside to smoke, Hu Xiu followed him. The wind was strong, and he struggled to light his cigarette. Hu Xiu opened her coat to shield him from the wind, her hair blowing loose in the breeze. 

Li Ai squinted, smoke leaking from the corner of his mouth as he murmured a muted “thank you.” 

The two stood in the wind without speaking, but it felt like a silent conversation of solace. 

Later, when discussing this with Diao Zhiyu at the theater, they had five minutes left before The Last Garden Murder Case started. 

The twenty-three-year-old spoke with remarkable clarity: “Mutual resentment isn’t necessarily a bad thing. How lonely must it be to live without love, hate, or heartbreak?” 

“I used to think that maybe not having you would leave a wound in my heart that would never fully heal for the rest of my life.” 

“Good thing I’m dating you now, otherwise just thinking about your name would give me heart palpitations.”

He had only been back for three days, yet he was already scouting for a new immersive theater to perform in.

Watching the play was to make up for missing Rhinoceros in Love earlier. Of course, picky Zhi Yu Biao couldn’t resist throwing in a dig: “Experimental plays are all about the hype, and Liao Yimei’s lines are catchy enough to fool young girls. But if you really want to elevate your taste in theater, you should watch the classics.”

“If it’s not entertaining, beginners will get bored.”

“That’s why you’ve watched Snowpiercer so many times. It’s just a shallow interactive theater piece designed to make you come back for more. Only superficial people fall for it.”

“And those lines you deliver in those little rooms—who wouldn’t want to come back for more? Do you know how rare it is for ordinary people like us to have someone recite lines to us one-on-one, making us feel like the protagonist?”

“That day’s lines were improvised because you seemed so into it; they weren’t part of the original script.”

Zhi Yu Biao rubbed his nose. “I’m not really the type for sweet talk. Qin Xiao Yi’s character is supposed to be very aloof. But seeing how serious you were, I came up with something on the spot. Afterward, I even went back and memorized it.”

“But, I’m a bit sorry to say this... I only remembered the lines, not you.”

“Stop talking...” Hu Xiu looked at the dimming lights. “No need to remind me of my average face again. That’s just cruel.”

“What I meant was—there’s always someone who will be the muse for inspiration.”

The lights went out entirely. Before the first scene began, he turned his head and gave her the first act—a kiss.