TPIL - 14

The method for making handcrafted glass lamps was not difficult, but it wasn’t exactly simple either. First, they distributed the blueprints, and after everyone fully understood the structure, they began working on the acrylic boards.

The middle school girls probably had practical courses or club activities at school, and drawing was a required subject, so they were fairly adept.

Qi Xiaochuan, needless to say, quickly stood up the acrylic board and asked expressionlessly: “Is this correct?”

Only Zhong Shiwei.

Only Zhong Shiwei, whose mood was akin to someone who had endured countless hardships to fly economy class from Hainan to Beijing to participate in CCTV’s Children’s Channel Wisdom Tree program recording, only to be kicked out of the child actor list by the hosts Hong Guoguo and Lv Paopao because his hands were too clumsy during crafting, leaving him to cry his way back home on a green-skin train.

He wasted three acrylic boards during cutting, ruined the painstakingly straightened hot glue while peeling off the protective film, and after immense effort applied the epoxy resin, finally reached the coloring stage, yet still found it unsatisfactory no matter how he looked at it.

“Applying too much force will damage the epoxy,” even an employee from another group couldn’t help but remind him.

Qi Xiaochuan finished early, even adding extra patterns, and was now sitting and waiting for the staff to place his work to dry. Watching Zhong Shiwei struggle with the intensity of someone retaking the college entrance exam for the fourth time, Qi Xiaochuan couldn’t help but extend his hand, take over, and help him fix it.

Luo Andi mainly stayed with the middle school girls, helping them with details and answering their questions, then came over to check.

By this time, Qi Xiaochuan had already placed the finished piece back in front of Zhong Shiwei. When Luo Andi saw it, her eyes lit up, and she smiled: “Wow! Shiwei, you’re so amazing!”

Qi Xiaochuan didn’t expose the truth, letting them enjoy themselves like children playing house.

Unintentionally, Luo Andi came to stand behind him.

“I saw Xiaoxiao’s embroidery earlier,” Luo Andi lowered her head, her temples swirling down, sticking to her cheeks like a porcelain doll. Her smile reminded one of a field full of tulips, with the first rays of morning sunlight falling—a serene and beautiful scene. “Your hands are so skilled; it made me remember the past.”

He was immersed in the brief tranquility of watching her, so he didn’t immediately process the content of her words. She had always remembered.

When she was little, Luo Andi wore a new white sundress to attend the ribbon-cutting ceremony at her father’s winery. Qi Xiaochuan also went, though undoubtedly unwillingly, dragged out of bed by the alarm clock and his father’s orders. The winery mainly cultivated roses, and as she walked through the narrow path in the middle, her skirt got caught, and a thorn on a branch tore it.

Luo Andi wasn’t the kind of rich girl who would scream or throw tantrums over a small mishap, but having her dress torn was indeed less than perfect. In the warm afternoon, she simply hid in a small wooden house in the garden, opened a book on her lap, and read leisurely.

It wasn’t that no one noticed her absence; it was just that Luo Chui (her brother) was still around, and there wasn’t any crucial moment that required her presence. So her mother merely instructed the maid to keep an eye out and immediately focused on more important socializing.

As she read, the dry sound of twigs being crushed echoed outside the door. Not wanting to cause trouble, Luo Andi quickly crouched down and hid behind the fireplace, peeking out through the crack with two bright eyes. She saw the boy walk in. Qi Xiaochuan wore a hoodie and jeans that were out of place at the party, hands in his pockets, looking around as he entered—this was the posture Luo Andi’s father often warned them against, simple and straightforwardly described as somewhat uncouth, making him appear unrefined.

Qi Xiaochuan tentatively said: “Luo Andi?”

“Not here,” he seemed to mutter to himself and turned to leave.

Summoning courage from somewhere, Luo Andi suddenly stood up and chased out through the heavy wooden door: “Xiaoxiao!”

He immediately turned around, and seeing her, his face showed no smile, only saying: “Why are you hiding here? I said you ran off somewhere.”

She didn’t hide it and directly showed him the torn hem of her dress. Qi Xiaochuan frowned, silently contemplating for a moment, then told her to wait a bit. Occasionally, he was tasked by the gardener, so he was familiar with the place. He opened several drawers in succession and finally found a needle and thread in the bottom of the closet. He beckoned her succinctly: “Come here.”

The damaged area was low, so Luo Andi hesitated about lifting her dress—it was a bit indecent—but since they were alone, she was about to do so when he casually squatted down.

Qi Xiaochuan had a pair of very beautiful hands.

Watching Waterloo Bridge with friends, when Robert Taylor held Vivien Leigh and embraced her waist with one hand, Luo Andi thought of Qi Xiaochuan’s hands. There was no pure-hearted self-insertion, just the feeling that the scene must have been very pleasing to look at.

He mended the torn part for her and continued to squat and examine it. At that moment, she said: “Thank you. I really like you, Xiaoxiao.”

At that time, he wasn’t used to such expressions and naturally assumed he had misheard something like “I like strawberries” or “I like MGM.” “What do you like?” he asked.

“I like people who notice when I disappear and those who come looking for me,” Luo Andi lowered her head, smiling shyly as she looked at him, slightly pursing her lips. Her toothy grin carried no hint of foolishness, only pure innocence and utter romance, like fireworks in broad daylight, dazzling beyond measure.

Qi Xiaochuan finally stood up, replying quietly: “Is that so?”

“You don’t believe me?”

“You don’t usually act like that.”

“Do I?”

He finally got to the point, awkwardly turning his face away: “An adult told me to come find you, so I did.”

However, that dress, she only wore it that day. For the wealthy, wearing a gown again would only devalue it.

The glass lamp wasn’t something that could be finished on the same day. When he left, the secretary came to the entrance to pick him up—it was only the distance of an underground passage. He had just come out for dinner and conveniently stopped by the Paradise Handcraft Store. Qi Xiaochuan came out holding his coat, subtly nodding toward the inside where the leader of the middle school girls had finished and was now flipping through a fashion magazine out of boredom.

“Do you know her?” Qi Xiaochuan casually remarked.

The secretary narrowed her eyes slightly and scrutinized her, asking: “Who is she?”

“Didn’t we negotiate with Chi Corporation before? Gao Feng’s daughter.” When necessary, Qi Xiaochuan’s memory was impeccable—words, graphics, people’s appearances, even years later, he could recall the layout of the venue vividly, leading one to suspect he might have been a Level Ten Scholar of the Three Investigators series during his启蒙 period. “I heard them call her Gao Jie. And the badge on her uniform matches.”

“What? Are you going to kidnap her because negotiations with Gao Feng fell apart? I’m ready, standing by.”

“If you’re prepared to sit in jail for twenty years on my behalf, then you can say you’re ready. Otherwise, you might as well pull an all-nighter and watch Episode 31 of Major Crime Unit 4 a few more times.” He handed the phone, which had relayed the message, directly into the secretary’s arms. “If we can’t talk business, let’s chat casually. Some people fall for this too. We can’t make zero progress every time we bid.”

Whether property management or urban administration, this generation was usually strictly managed. However, for some reason, there was a beggar in the underground passage that day. Not old, thin and small, dirty and battered all over.

The secretary glanced a few more times, only shaking her head and sighing: “With hands and feet, why do anything else but this?”

“Exactly.”

At first, he didn’t react, given that Qi Xiaochuan wasn’t one for idle chatter. Occasionally, he would interrupt employees’ small talk and abruptly start discussing serious matters, earning him the reputation of a mood killer.

Back at the company, after only a brief adjustment, it was time to meet the visitor. The young woman who had reluctantly exchanged WeChat with Qi Xiaochuan before, received an embroidery gift from him, and still complained about it, wasn’t the heir—her brother was.

Su Yining was in the prime of his life, handsome and dignified. Although in Qi Xiaochuan’s eyes, he was just another ordinary person, some employees couldn’t help but fawn over him excessively. Unlike Qi Xiaochuan, who built his success from scratch, Su Yining was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. His education was overseas, and his etiquette exuded prideful arrogance. By the end of the meeting, he hadn’t touched his coffee—probably dissatisfied with its quality. Qi Xiaochuan neither knew nor cared. He had served enough young masters and misses. If temporary mutual understanding could bring benefits, then turning a blind eye was perfectly fine.

That day was the day to visit his parents. Qi Xiaochuan left work on time, and just before entering the elevator, he distinctly heard a subordinate in the office area exclaim as if it were the New Year.

In normal circumstances, he might have inwardly sighed “tsk” in response. But that day, he thought it was nice that everyone could relax and enjoy life.

In truth, he often felt tired.

The feeling of exhaustion was like scalding water seeping through cracks into the soul. This morbid warmth gave him a mirage-like sense of security.

Luo Andi never thought that way. She enjoyed leisurely moments, doing things slowly, and when she messed up, she would only sigh with a wry smile. Qi Xiaochuan didn’t like her, and even found her troublesome, but he didn’t dislike being with her.

He got out of the car one kilometer away from home, wrapped in a blanket, and told the driver, “You go back too. You’ve worked hard recently; rest well today.” The driver was flattered, though there was half a second of suspicion that his boss might be possessed, but what of it? Only a madman would refuse a day off, so he thanked him and drove off.

His mother underwent a kidney transplant after he graduated from university. Both parents were blood type AB, but he was blood type O. Because of this, the nurses in the hospital eyed them curiously several times. It felt like returning to childhood when his parents took him to the hospital for a check-up, and seeing the scars on his body nearly led them to believe they had encountered child abuse in real life.

However, reality was always more exaggerated than expected.

To find a suitable □□, Zhou Hanyao had run around many times. Sitting in the hospital corridor, when he asked, Qi Xiaochuan tilted his head, staring at the white cracks on the ceiling, and said: “I’m not my parents’ biological child.”

“I figured as much,” Zhou Hanyao only bitterly smiled in response to his evasiveness.

“When I was a child, I was abducted, moved through many cities, forgot where home was, and couldn’t remember who my biological parents were. I just wandered around begging.”

“...”

“To elicit sympathy, I inflicted wounds on myself. Once the wounds healed, I made new ones. Again and again. It was fortunate my limbs weren’t cut off. On rainy days, if I didn’t try harder, I wouldn’t get money. With too many competitors, I sometimes got beaten when I couldn’t get money.” He leaned back in the chair, his profile expressionless. “It was irritating.”

Zhou Hanyao gazed at the boy twenty-one years younger than him, momentarily falling silent.

Qi Xiaochuan, on the other hand, chuckled softly, turned his head, and said: “But humans are incredibly resilient. Now, I hardly have any scars left; they’ve all healed. How could this be? Perhaps humans never truly get hurt. Discomfort, hunger, fatigue, pain—maybe they’re all just illusions.”

Later, he realized that he had only ever told this secret to one person, and that person had taken it to the grave.