PSE - 55

Ha Yue soaked in the bathtub for twenty minutes. By the time she finished her skincare routine, dried her hair, and stepped out of the bathroom, the kitchen light was still on. Xue Jing was washing the dishes and utensils he had just used—for the second time. 

Hearing Ha Yue push open the kitchen door, Xue Jing immediately sped up the deliberately slow movements he had been making. 

In a matter of seconds, he placed the clean dishes in the draining basket, turned around, and bowed politely to Ha Yue. “Sorry for eating so slowly. I’ve washed the dishes, so I’ll leave now. You must be exhausted taking care of Auntie—get some rest early.” 

Though Xue Jing spoke these words, his feet didn’t move toward the door. Fortunately, Ha Yue didn’t really dislike him, so she didn’t leave his attempt hanging unresolved.

She looked at him for a moment, then walked over to the cupboard herself. Standing on her tiptoes, she opened the cabinet door and pulled out a packet of ginger jujube tea. “You’re going to sleep right after eating? I’m going to make some tea. Aren’t you staying a little longer?”

And so, Xue Jing obediently followed Ha Yue back through the courtyard into the living room.

His coat was draped over the back of the sofa, and Xue Jing sat stiffly on the couch like an elementary school student listening attentively to a lecture.

The hot water from the thermos poured slowly into the teacup, creating wisps of steam. The TV was turned back on, but this time it was muted. The movie channel was replaying a classic: Titanic from 1997.

Ha Yue cradled her teacup, gently blowing on the surface to cool it down. Xue Jing did the same. For a while, neither of them looked at each other, only staring at the silent movie on the screen as they sipped their tea. Suddenly, Ha Yue softly asked, “Why didn’t you come over for dinner this afternoon? Jinzi asked me if you and I were having a disagreement.”

Xue Jing didn’t dare tell the truth. He immediately turned his face toward her and explained in a gentle voice, “We’re not having a disagreement. It’s just that the PR stuff at the studio was quite troublesome, and I got busy.”

Ha Yue also turned her head, her gaze following his Adam’s apple downward, sweeping over his attire. Thoughtfully, she said, “Oh, too busy to eat.”

He could skip meals, but he had changed his clothes. That morning when picking her up at the airport, Xue Jing had clearly been wearing a coordinated “old money” style outfit. But now, sitting on her couch pretending to be well-behaved, he was wrapped in the kind of loose hoodie that only “puppy boys” liked.

Did he think she didn’t know he was waiting for her to let bygones be bygones?

Pretending to be humble while secretly scheming—how clever of him. She decided to see how long he could keep up this polite act.

The distance between them was too close. As Xue Jing’s gaze inadvertently swept over Ha Yue’s open collar, he realized she truly didn’t treat him as an outsider. After her bath, she had simply thrown on a set of pajamas. Though both the top and pants were long-sleeved, the blended fabric clung closely to her skin, revealing every curve. The ginger jujube tea was already taking effect—he felt a burning sensation in his stomach, sweat breaking out on his forehead. Quickly, he set down his teacup and subtly shifted away, saying, “Mm. I’m really sorry for troubling you to save food for me. Thank you—it must have been exhausting.”

Ha Yue pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth and leaned slightly in his direction. Wrapping one arm around the back of the sofa, she casually draped it around his neck and pretended to focus on the TV, saying, “You’re welcome. Auntie saved the food for you, not me. You know, there wasn’t enough space in the fridge, and I didn’t want the food to go to waste. If you hadn’t eaten today, it would’ve spoiled by tomorrow.”

Xue Jing’s breath caught.

So all this time, Ha Yue wasn’t concerned about whether he was hungry. He had hurriedly changed clothes and rushed over, thinking she wanted to reconcile, but he had completely misjudged the situation. He was here to clean up leftovers—and earlier, he had even enjoyed eating those scraps.

Ha Yue’s fingertips brushed repeatedly against the short hairs behind Xue Jing’s ear. His sclera flushed pink—not just from the itchiness in his ear, but also from frustration. His left elbow, pressed close to Ha Yue, tingled with an indescribable sensation. Clenching his fingers tightly on his knee, leaving creases in his trousers, he shifted his legs uncomfortably before finally muttering, “Fine, we’re drinking tea. Could you stop pressing certain parts of your body against me? My hand is going numb.”

Ha Yue nearly burst out laughing at his discomfort. She continued leaning into him, feigning innocence. “Why do you insist on keeping your arms on your lap? You could hug me instead. Weren’t you all over me in the car this afternoon?”

Thinking back to his embarrassing display earlier, Xue Jing clenched his teeth. The muscles beneath his eyelids twitched violently, and his entire face was on the verge of losing control. Still, he kept his voice low so as not to wake Zhao Chunni, who was sleeping nearby. “Mm, I’m sorry. I’m reflecting on my actions. It was wrong of me to touch you without permission. I was disrespectful and impolite to a woman. You should drag me outside and kill me.”

As soon as he finished speaking, Ha Yue sprang up from his embrace. The pressure on his arm disappeared, but Xue Jing felt even more frustrated. Before he could react, Ha Yue abruptly turned off the TV, stood up, and issued her dismissal. “Alright, since that’s the case, you can leave now. The tea’s almost done anyway—you’re no longer needed here.”

The sarcastic tension escalated into desperation. Xue Jing grabbed Ha Yue’s arm and pulled her forcefully into his embrace, his voice urgent. “If I leave, will you still love me tomorrow? And the day after tomorrow?”

But who could guarantee anything about the future? Matters of the heart couldn’t be forced.

This was the first time Ha Yue realized that after their breakup four years ago, Xue Jing’s attitude toward relationships had become so insecure. She had thought her decision back then was a mutual release, but she never imagined that the sense of failure had haunted him for so long.

Ha Yue hugged him back. When she looked up again, she stopped teasing him. Touching his face, she stared seriously into his eyes and said, “Xue Jing, you once said that apologizing is about making amends to others, not about achieving redemption for yourself. Now, I’ll return those words to you. Over the years, I’ve read quite a few of your books. If I were still holding onto resentment over what you said back then, we wouldn’t be where we are today. Honestly, when I heard those things, I didn’t feel much. On the contrary, I was happy for you. I thought, thank goodness we broke up, or else you wouldn’t have written such bestsellers. In a way, I felt like I’d done something good.”

“Just like now—we’re back together, and things are going well. I think that’s a good thing too. Maybe everything happens for the best. So don’t be so hard on yourself when it comes to love. There’s no such thing as perfect romance, meticulously planned and calculated, trying to rewrite the past. No one is perfect. Neither you nor I are the same people we used to be, right?”

“We’re happy together now. Isn’t that already a wonderful form of love?”

“I don’t have time to think about breaking up with you. You know how busy I am.”

Ha Yue was right. She didn’t need to forgive him because she didn’t need his apology. In her eyes, the events of the past weren’t some urgent accident scene that needed to be reconstructed.

It was he who had overthought everything, magnifying it thousands of times in his mind, until he became as nervous as a bird startled by the sound of an arrow.

She sincerely hoped that Xue Jing could relax emotionally, because their foundation was much more solid than most couples. There was no need for him to worry so much.

However, with a turn of phrase, before sending him home, Ha Yue tiptoed and leaned close to Xue Jing’s ear, saying, “But if you really want to show me your sincerity, it’s not impossible. I also brought you some souvenirs from abroad. Why don’t you take them home and try them on now?”

“A whole bag of them! All carefully chosen for you. While shopping, I kept thinking, ‘Ah, this would definitely suit Xue Jing,’ or ‘That matches Xue Jing perfectly.’ So I ended up buying several sets.”

Ten minutes later, after locking the door and lying back on her wire bed, Ha Yue’s phone vibrated. It was Xue Jing from next door, sending her three consecutive question marks.

In the photo, Xue Jing was holding those colorful male uniforms, the veins on the back of his hand bulging. He asked her, “Ha Yue, are these really the souvenirs you specially picked out for me? What kind of stores were you browsing while on your business trip? Were you even working? And here I was almost moved to tears by you just now.”

Ha Yue laughed like a pig squealing in bed and quickly typed: “Don’t want to wear them? Fine then. You keep saying you love me, but you’re not sincere at all. Remember the first time we went to the hotel near the school gate? It was snowing that day, and I was so generous—I even prepared 16-centimeter high heels for you. But you, you’re such a cheapskate.”

After typing for a while, Xue Jing finally sent her a few mirror selfies without showing his face. In the photos, the black-and-white “maid” outfit looked a bit too broad-shouldered. The chest muscles were about to burst through the little frills of the apron.

And what was up with that left hand? Why was he kneeling and lifting the skirt hem provocatively?

“Want to wear them? Of course I do! Don’t they look good? It’s just a dress. Real men wear little dresses. I love wearing them. I can’t show off right now, but when the caregiver comes back to work, come over in the evening, and I’ll wear them for you.”

“Monday, I’ll wear black. Tuesday, pink. Wednesday, purple…”

“On Sunday, I’ll wear all these outfits together. Just hope they don’t make Sister blush so hard she gets a nosebleed.”

In the master bedroom, her mother’s snoring thundered like a train. In the small bedroom, Ha Yue hid under her blanket like an underage girl reading forbidden books, secretly zooming in and out of the pictures Xue Jing had sent, her pupils dilating like scales, not missing a single detail.

The lack of oxygen under the covers made her breathing heavy. As she stared, her toes curled unconsciously. In the end, Ha Yue herself became parched and flushed, staring at the photos. She hurriedly told Xue Jing that she was really going to sleep and not to send any more harassing messages, then locked her phone and placed it under her pillow.

Sticking her head out of the covers, Ha Yue took deep breaths of the cool air, closed her eyes, and calmed herself for a long time, almost reciting the Great Compassion Mantra. When her heart rate returned to normal, her mind cleared, and she put aside thoughts of male beauty, she sat up again, turned on the bedside lamp, and began to open the mail piled on her nightstand one by one.

Due to limited funds in the early stages of entrepreneurship, labor costs were already a significant expense. Rent for commercial office buildings was prohibitively expensive and not within Ha Yue’s consideration.

Recently, Su Jing was applying for the company to move into a newly planned e-commerce startup park in Suicheng. In addition to a year of rent-free period, they were also optimistic about the public technical services and entrepreneurial financing platforms provided by the government in collaboration with large e-commerce platforms.

Before successfully moving into the startup park, Ha Yue didn’t have a proper office location and could only temporarily list Zhao Chunni’s old house as the mailing address for all business correspondence, with Wu Fangtian signing for the packages on her behalf.

After a week-long business trip, quite a few packages from domestic factories had accumulated.

Most of these packages contained documents or product catalogs, so when Ha Yue picked up the SF Express envelope sent by Jiang Zifan, she didn’t feel anything unusual.

Tearing open the metallic strip on the back of the envelope, at first glance, she didn’t see any paper. The product catalog inside seemed small. Ha Yue reached into the open envelope and unexpectedly pulled out an old vermilion passbook. Flipping to the first page of the passbook, the account name was Ha Yue, and the opening date was fifteen years ago.

Dozens of pages filled with dense records of current deposits, accumulating to 560,000 yuan before abruptly stopping.

On the last page of the passbook, there was a photo tucked inside. In the photo, the man lying in the hospital bed looked emaciated, nothing like the father in her memory. Ha Yue’s fingertips trembled slightly as she flipped the photo over. On the back, in addition to the password for the passbook, there was an address in Yu City.

Jiang Zifan’s handwriting wasn’t very neat—it looked like dog scratches—but Ha Yue understood it.

He had written: “This money was saved for your education. If you’re willing to visit him, my mother is always available.”