The car was as silent as a chicken.

The one who had just been righteously throwing a tantrum was now sitting in the back seat, face bright red, wearing an expression that said I’m doomed.

There was still hope after all. Fang Yongnian let out a snort in his heart, at least she still knew how to blush.

What is all this.

Why did little girls nowadays, at the mention of falling in love, immediately think about stripping someone’s clothes off…

He really had been angered just now. It wasn’t until after getting into the car that he remembered his trip to Huating was for something important. Given the current situation and his health condition, running back and forth like this was really not an option.

He dialed Yu Hanfeng’s number. Since he was driving, he had to use speakerphone. The moment Yu Hanfeng’s voice sounded, Fang Yongnian saw the person in the backseat quickly glance his way with a glare.

Damn it…

He swore again inwardly. What is all this.

“Send me the documents for that case first, use the encrypted email,” Fang Yongnian cleared his throat. “Something came up today, I won’t be able to make it to Huating for now.”

Yu Hanfeng paused for a moment, then still responded, “Alright.”

“Sorry,” Fang Yongnian apologized.

“It’s fine,” Yu Hanfeng’s tone was as concise as always. “I’ll find you after the meeting.”

“Okay.” Fang Yongnian hung up.

Sitting in the back seat, Lu Yixin blinked.

How… strange.

The conversation between him and his girlfriend, why did it have no warmth at all?

His girlfriend’s voice was so sexy and pleasant to the ear, yet on the phone there wasn’t a single unnecessary word, especially… businesslike.

He was clearly in poor health, even speaking to her with a hint of weakness, yet when it came to his own girlfriend, why did he try to hide it and act as though he was perfectly fine?

“Uncle Fang…” The two words now felt unbearably awkward. She hesitated for a moment but still didn’t dare to call Fang Yongnian by his full name. “Once we get off the highway, I can go back by myself.”

She had her card and ID with her. If she went to the long-distance bus station, she could buy a ticket and be back in Hecheng within an hour.

She had only wanted to secretly follow him in the first place. She never expected to run into Fang Yongnian’s phantom limb pain attack, nor did she expect herself to act so recklessly.

Fang Yongnian ignored her, not even sparing her a glance.

Being ignored made Lu Yixin wrinkle her nose.

Try again! Fail, then fight again! She’d already embarrassed herself to the extreme anyway…

“Do you hurt more when it’s raining?” She changed the topic.

She didn’t dare ask again if his leg was feeling better, his “I don’t have a leg” from before had left her breathless for a long time.

Fang Yongnian’s answer was to turn on the car radio. The female DJ’s particularly cheerful voice filled the air:

“Today’s topic is about secret crushes—everyone, what do you think? Is a crush really something that only belongs to one person?”

Fang Yongnian: “……”

Lu Yixin: “……”

“Heh heh.” Lu Yixin actually still had the face to smile, stuck out her tongue, sighed, “Really fitting.”

“You fucking sleep!” Fang Yongnian finally lost his patience and swore, “Where’s your face? Ate it when you were hungry?!”

Lu Yixin, who was rarely shouted at like that by Fang Yongnian, pulled her tongue back and shut her mouth.

After thinking a bit, unwilling.

“I didn’t say anything wrong……” she mumbled.

“And anyway it’s already embarrassing.” she mumbled again.

“You can’t ignore me forever, can you.”

“Even if you ignore me forever later, it’s so awkward to stay in the car so long without saying anything now.” She actually started reasoning with him.

The car had just exited the highway, Fang Yongnian decisively turned on his hazard lights and pulled over to the side, looked back: “Continue, finish what you were saying and then we’ll go.”

Stopped, it would be easier and safer to strangle her.

Lu Yixin scratched her head.

She wanted to ask about Fang Yongnian’s girlfriend, but the atmosphere didn’t allow it.

She wanted to ask whether Fang Yongnian’s phantom limb pain had gotten any better, but the atmosphere didn’t allow it.

So under Fang Yongnian’s stare, she could only take out two blankets from the trunk, hand one to Fang Yongnian, and cover herself with the other.

“I’m going to sleep.” She fastened her seatbelt, closed her eyes, aggrieved, unwilling.

Fang Yongnian pinched the blanket.

All the anger in his belly was poked with a hole by the soft blanket, slowly deflated, slowly calmed.

Being liked by Lu Yixin was actually not an unpleasant thing; as she said, the act of liking itself was not wrong.

Lu Yixin was likable, cheerful and lively, simple and bright; just looking at her would put one in a better mood.

But adults are used to attaching many conditions and rules before liking, so Lu Yixin’s liking made him feel ashamed.

He didn’t feel inferior because he was disabled; he had made many efforts to be treated equally, but Lu Yixin’s liking made his efforts meaningless.

A thirty-something man with a lame leg, being chased by an eighteen-year-old bright girl shouting that she liked him, was not a pleasing sight.

Although he was despairing of existing social rules, as long as he was alive he remained a social animal.

“Lu Yixin.” He called her name.

Pretending to sleep, Lu Yixin closed her eyes tighter and pulled the blanket over her face.

“Adults can’t play tricks.” He pulled Lu Yixin’s blanket down, “This world has its rules; not following its rules when acting will be very tiring.”

“I’m already very tired.” After saying this, he no longer paid attention to her, put the blanket she had given him beside her, turned around, and quietly started the car.

On the way back to Hecheng, Fang Yongnian never turned the radio back on, and Lu Yixin in the back seat never spoke again.

She clutched the blanket on her body and slowly hid her head.

Fang Yongnian had said similar things to her before, back when he had just put on the prosthetic and his walking was still unsteady, limping; Lu Yixin often sent him positive news and videos about disabled people to encourage him to do rehabilitation.

Back then, Fang Yongnian had told the fourteen-year-old her that besides refusing to admit defeat, a person also needed to learn to face reality.

“I really have lost a leg. I really am disabled.” He looked at her. “So I have to learn to face reality.”

Those words, so adult and profound. On her path of growing up, only Fang Yongnian would say things like that to her, whether she truly understood them or not.

At fourteen, she half understood, half didn’t.

But this time, she realized she understood a little.

She liked him—and to him, that was a bad thing.

Because she was still too young. Because he was disabled. Because there was a generation gap between them.

Under the blanket, her hand slowly clenched into a fist.

Liking him wasn’t enough. Confessing was too pale. Right now, the only things she could do were to skip class and climb into the trunk of Fang Yongnian’s car, or when he was in pain, drenched in cold sweat and dazed, ask whether he wanted hot water. Beyond that, all she could do was act willful.

She had admired him for six years, with single-minded devotion, even though he was crippled, even though her father had fallen out with him.

Fang Yongnian had left a bold, heavy stroke in her coming-of-age story. Making her only like men who looked a bit like girls, making her only like top students, and making her tongue increasingly picky.

He had influenced her aesthetics, intruded upon her youth, and what she wanted was definitely not merely liking.

“Uncle Fang.” When getting off the car, she ran to the front and knocked on Fang Yongnian’s window.

Fang Yongnian lowered it, looking at her from the driver’s seat.

“The girlfriend you mentioned. That’s fake, right?” She looked straight into his eyes.

Before he could frown, she quickly added, “It’s okay if it’s real.”

“I… won’t make you tired.” She said it like a promise. Her messy hair, tangled from hiding in the trunk, clung to her cheeks. A washed-out pink backpack hung on her back, and she was openly wearing her school uniform.

“I promise.” It truly was a promise.

Like a little scout—standing at attention, solemn and childish.

She didn’t wait for Fang Yongnian’s answer. After finishing her promise on her own, she ran a few steps toward her house, then gasping for breath, ran back again.

“This!” She pulled a thermos from her backpack. “Red-date, honey, and goji-berry tea.”

She had planned to drink it if she got hungry while hiding in the trunk.

“It’s still warm.” She shoved it into his driver’s seat, then dashed off like the wind.

The blue-and-white school uniform was eye-catching. She always ran with all her strength, head lowered, like a hundred-meter sprint.

Fang Yongnian lowered his head, looking at the pink thermos—an eighteen-year-old girl’s health-care accessory.

The cup she’d drunk from, the food she’d half eaten—over the years, he would occasionally forget to keep his distance and would just finish them.

Now…

He couldn’t anymore.

Lu Yixin was still too young. She didn’t realize that once her liking was spoken aloud, it could no longer remain one-sided.

Just like now—he looked at her cup and, inexplicably, felt a sting and a creeping fear.

Between a man and a woman, and between an uncle and a niece, are two irreversible lines.

She still didn’t realize. She thought that if she took back her words, if she stopped talking, then nothing would happen.

So in the next two months that followed, only he would be the one suffering.

She was just like that thermos, dropping it and running off.

Leaving him behind, holding that pink cup that had no place in his life. Unable to throw it away, yet unable to keep it either.

“Not tired, my ass,” he muttered, rubbed his brow, started the car, and drove straight to Hecheng Hospital, skillfully parking in the spot closest to the emergency entrance.

He had a fever. Halfway through the drive back to Hecheng, he had already realized it. That troublemaking girl was lying in the back seat then, head tilted back, mouth slightly open, fast asleep.

The triage nurse at the emergency entrance already knew him. Upon seeing him, she directly took his temperature and blood pressure.

“Thirty-nine degrees. Hypoglycemia,” the nurse said, her voice muffled through her mask, as she handed him a green tag—

The tag for the disabled-access lane.

“Thank you.” He lowered his voice to thank her, then pushed a wheelchair out from behind the nurse’s station, sat down, and maneuvered with practiced ease through the left and right turns.

He should have let her come with him.

If she saw more of the real world, she could dream a little less.

What on earth about him was worth her admiring for all these years, so much that now it had turned into something else entirely?

As he received the IV, he checked his emails and let his thoughts wander.

Back when he was studying, he had been too busy skipping grades. Later, in the research institute, there were no single women. So this—was actually the first confession he’d ever received in his not-so-short life.

Ridiculous and devastating at the same time, he’d been unsettled for a long while.

His face inexplicably felt hot. Thinking back to those moments with Lu Yixin—clearly, at the time, he’d felt nothing of the sort, yet now, every memory seemed to carry a hint of ulterior meaning.

“Damn it.” He cursed again.

Not tired, my ass.

He had to leave Hecheng as soon as possible. His reputation was already bad enough, if he added raising a minor girl to the list, his life might be ruined for a second time.

Luckily, it would be soon.

—

Author’s Note:

Honestly, I don’t even know how to describe Fang Yongnian’s feelings toward Lu Yixin right now. It definitely hasn’t reached the level of man-and-woman (he’s perverted, yes, but not an actual beast…)

It’s more like that awkwardness after being confessed to by a junior… maybe with a tiny bit of secret delight? (Fang Yongnian: Get lost!)