Fang Yongnian directly dialed Lu Yixin’s number.
At that time, Lu Yixin was lying on her bed, legs crossed, furiously sending WeChat messages, her phone tapping pa pa pa.
When the incoming call popped up, she got such a fright that her hand slipped—her phone dropped right onto the bridge of her nose. With a cry of pain, stars flashed before her eyes as she hastily pressed the answer button.
“What is it?” Fang Yongnian got straight to the point.
First, there had been Lu Boyuan’s endless string of calls, and then Lu Yixin’s flood of WeChat messages. He felt he should still call to ask about it—though he had decided to avoid suspicion from now on, for some reason, Fang Yongnian inexplicably did a bit of psychological preparation for himself before calling.
Lu Yixin rolled around on the bed clutching her phone, tears and snot from the pain a moment ago now replaced by tears and snot of excitement.
Fang Yongnian’s voice!
She hadn’t heard his voice for six whole days!!
Aaaah, so sexy! Aaaah, his Mandarin is so standard!
“Lu Yixin?” Fang Yongnian frowned.
“I’m here, I’m here,” Lu Yixin replied quickly, silently screaming into the air.
He called her name…
Even after all the nonsense she had caused, his tone when calling her name was still the same. The final “Xin” carried a slight upward lilt, a touch of impatience.
“What is it?” Fang Yongnian asked again.
“My dad sent you an email,” Lu Yixin rattled off, “He’s looking for you, it’s something very important.”
Her tone was proud, as if she had accomplished something great.
Fang Yongnian paused.
“You told him I was investigating him?” He suddenly had a flash of intuition, a kind of mutual understanding with Lu Yixin.
Lu Yixin gaped, “Ah?”
Fang Yongnian: “…”
“Ah…” Lu Yixin said dumbly, “I didn’t tell him everything, I just told him about the things you were suspicious of.”
How did he guess that…
It made all the lines she had prepared fall apart instantly.
“Mm.” Fang Yongnian gave a noncommittal response.
Ever since Lu Yixin had eavesdropped that day, he hadn’t expected her to keep it secret for long.
It didn’t matter if it got found out anyway. Their relationship was already that bad—at worst, they would simply never speak again. In any case, the one who had done wrong wasn’t him.
“That…” Lu Yixin rolled once on the bed, “I know how much savings our family has.”
Fang Yongnian: “?”
“Our family is a lot poorer than I imagined,” Lu Yixin said, fiddling with the tassel on the bedsheet.
“When my grandma was sick, the caretaker we hired through connections was a specialist, and her salary was even higher than my dad’s at the time. My mom wasn’t in a leadership position yet at the Meteorological Bureau back then—she only earned a few thousand yuan a month, and most of that went toward paying the mortgage for our house in Huating City.”
“So for a long time, our family was dirt poor.”
“My dad often borrowed money from people—relatives, and Grandpa Wu too. Every month before he got his salary, I didn’t even dare ask for pocket money.”
Fang Yongnian didn’t interrupt.
This part of history, he hadn’t known.
Lu Boyuan was a man who cared about saving face. When doing projects, he often used his meal card to treat others to food; during chats, he would offer cigarettes to their group. Back then, Fang Yongnian wasn’t very exposed to society and had never noticed that Lu Boyuan was financially strapped.
“Later, when my mom was transferred back to Hecheng, our family had a meeting. We sold the house in Huating City, used that money to buy our current house in Hecheng, paid back what we owed from taking care of Grandma, and after settling everything, there was still a hundred thousand yuan left in the account.”
“We’ve lived in Hecheng for less than four years, and now there’s a hundred and fifty thousand in the account,” Lu Yixin confessed like spilling beans, clear and thorough.
“My dad’s salary is all handed over to my mom. She leaves him one thousand yuan for pocket money. The rest—more than half of it—she used to buy me some kind of study fund.”
Here, she paused.
“After I entered university, I get thirty thousand yuan refunded every year. When I graduate, I’ll receive a lump sum of five hundred thousand.”
“My mom said that’s for my security. In case I can’t get into a good university and want to start a small business, that money can serve as the initial investment.”
“I’m not poor either…” she mumbled softly.
Fang Yongnian, who had just been a bit moved by what she said earlier, was suddenly speechless again.
He understood it, again.
That line was aimed at Yu Hanfeng.
Damn it, why could he always understand the hidden meaning behind this girl’s words?
Lu Yixin cleared her throat, for once pulling the topic back on her own.
“My dad really didn’t do anything bad for money, really.”
Perhaps sensing her words sounded weak, she fell silent for a second, then added firmly, “And my dad doesn’t have a mistress outside either.”
Fang Yongnian: “?”
“It’s true!” Lu Yixin hurried to assure him. “When my parents were living apart, I worried about him, so I often video-called him in the middle of the night when I got up to go to the bathroom.”
“He was either in the lab or in the dormitory. You know the dorms at the research institute, they’re all men. I’m the only female who’s ever slept there.” She fired off her words like a rapid-fire gun.
A female, she says!
Fang Yongnian rubbed his temples.
The topic had gone completely off track again.
“So?” he prompted, pulling her back on course.
If she kept going, he couldn’t even imagine where her train of thought would wander next. He had zero interest in their family’s private matters.
Lu Boyuan not being rich, he had known that for years.
It was precisely because Lu Boyuan lived in such humble circumstances that he had kept investigating, and why his mood had stayed sour all along.
“So my dad really didn’t do those things. He didn’t even know that the car accident wasn’t actually an accident!”
Silence.
Lu Yixin felt a wave of regret.
That conclusion was supposed to come at the end, at least after Fang Yongnian’s tone had softened a little.
But because of his one word, “So?”, her thoughts that had drifted all the way into outer space reflexively blurted out the final conclusion.
A conclusion that made people uncomfortable. Ever since that car accident, she had never dared to mention the words “car accident” in front of him again.
She stammered, “I’m sorry…”
“…I understand,” Fang Yongnian said quietly after a few seconds of silence.
Being able to lay things out openly with Lu Boyuan might be a good thing, though he still didn’t believe that man truly knew nothing about the accident.
The fact that the driver responsible was an acquaintance of Lu Boyuan’s, that was something he could never get past.
He wanted to hang up, to think about what kind of attitude he should have when facing Lu Boyuan.
“Wait a second!” Lu Yixin suddenly shouted from the other end of the line.
The roar made his eardrums ache. He frowned, but in the end, didn’t actually hang up.
“When… are you coming back?” Lu Yixin asked cautiously, as if the person who had just screamed at him like a wild beast wasn’t her.
“We’ll see.” He couldn’t be bothered to answer.
Avoid suspicion.
Ten minutes after the call had connected, he suddenly remembered this. He couldn’t keep telling Lu Yixin his personal schedule like before. He had to avoid suspicion.
Lu Yixin tugged at the tassel again.
“I know now that the rumor between you and Yu Hanfeng was fake,” she said angrily, sounding quite upset. “Even though I don’t know what you two were actually doing, it’s not good.”
“It’s really bad for the girl!” she added weakly, trying to sound righteously indignant.
Fang Yongnian: “…”
He shouldn’t have stayed on the line.
“What I said that day was true,” she went on, rambling.
“I won’t make things difficult for you. Before I grow up, I won’t ever say those kinds of things in public again.” She started making promises again.
Fang Yongnian’s teeth practically ached from listening to her.
“But if—when I grow up—you’re still single then, could you… consider me?” Her voice grew smaller and smaller.
Lying alone in bed, she twisted the blanket into wrinkled folds, her face as red as a tomato.
Oh my god, she really said it.
That was a real confession, her first true confession!
“Lu Yixin.” Fang Yongnian finally spoke.
“Here!” Lu Yixin replied crisply.
“I’m thirty-two this year.” When Fang Yongnian spoke without any expression, his tone was always slow and measured, making it hard to guess what he would say next.
“Mm…” Lu Yixin sensed that he was about to unleash something serious, so she responded very cautiously.
“When you grow up, I’ll already be forty.” Fang Yongnian continued in that same slow tone, strangely giving her no room to interrupt. “Forty years old, and still single?”
He countered, then gave a light hum. “Little girl, truly vicious.”
Lu Yixin: “…”
It was rare to render this girl speechless. Fang Yongnian’s fingers felt noticeably lighter as he hung up the phone.
“Girlfriend?” The nurse who came to change his IV smiled behind her mask.
Fang Yongnian: “?”
“You’ve been getting IV drips here for several days now, always frowning,” said the nurse—likely not much older than Lu Yixin herself—speaking quickly and brightly.
“But today, while you were on the phone, you smiled several times.” She blinked playfully at him.
She clearly had a good impression of this man sitting in the wheelchair. In the emergency infusion room, everyone was either worried or in a rush, but only he was calm and refined. He would even quietly wheel himself to the farthest corner when the room got crowded, sitting there silently.
Today was the first time she had seen him smile since she started her shift. Even though it had been a wry smile, in her mind it somehow looked doting.
“A kid.” Fang Yongnian, who rarely talked with strangers, made an exception and offered an explanation. After saying it, he felt it wasn’t enough and added, “A neighbor’s kid.”
“Ah… no wonder.” The nurse smiled again. “She must be really cute.”
To make him wear such an expression—equal parts exasperation and amusement—they must be close.
Fang Yongnian made a vague sound of agreement, then took out his phone.
The nurse efficiently finished changing his IV, reset the drip speed he had secretly turned up back to normal, gave him a bright-eyed smile, and turned to leave.
Left behind was Fang Yongnian, who for some reason felt as if he could finally breathe. He opened Lu Boyuan’s email at last, he had actually remembered his personal address.
The email was simple, just one line:
“Yongnian, why do you think that car accident back then wasn’t an accident?”
Fang Yongnian’s fingers hovered over the screen for a very long time.
Lu Boyuan had called him “Yongnian.”
“I’ll return to Hecheng tomorrow,” he finally replied with just that one sentence.
It felt as if he were utterly exhausted; he closed his eyes and leaned back against the chair.
Yongnian—how many years had it been since Lu Boyuan had called him that? How many years since anyone, in that world that had abandoned him, had called him by that name?
Fang Yongnian directly dialed Lu Yixin’s number.
At that time, Lu Yixin was lying on her bed, legs crossed, furiously sending WeChat messages, her phone tapping pa pa pa.
When the incoming call popped up, she got such a fright that her hand slipped—her phone dropped right onto the bridge of her nose. With a cry of pain, stars flashed before her eyes as she hastily pressed the answer button.
“What is it?” Fang Yongnian got straight to the point.
First, there had been Lu Boyuan’s endless string of calls, and then Lu Yixin’s flood of WeChat messages. He felt he should still call to ask about it—though he had decided to avoid suspicion from now on, for some reason, Fang Yongnian inexplicably did a bit of psychological preparation for himself before calling.
Lu Yixin rolled around on the bed clutching her phone, tears and snot from the pain a moment ago now replaced by tears and snot of excitement.
Fang Yongnian’s voice!
She hadn’t heard his voice for six whole days!!
Aaaah, so sexy! Aaaah, his Mandarin is so standard!
“Lu Yixin?” Fang Yongnian frowned.
“I’m here, I’m here,” Lu Yixin replied quickly, silently screaming into the air.
He called her name…
Even after all the nonsense she had caused, his tone when calling her name was still the same. The final “Xin” carried a slight upward lilt, a touch of impatience.
“What is it?” Fang Yongnian asked again.
“My dad sent you an email,” Lu Yixin rattled off, “He’s looking for you, it’s something very important.”
Her tone was proud, as if she had accomplished something great.
Fang Yongnian paused.
“You told him I was investigating him?” He suddenly had a flash of intuition, a kind of mutual understanding with Lu Yixin.
Lu Yixin gaped, “Ah?”
Fang Yongnian: “…”
“Ah…” Lu Yixin said dumbly, “I didn’t tell him everything, I just told him about the things you were suspicious of.”
How did he guess that…
It made all the lines she had prepared fall apart instantly.
“Mm.” Fang Yongnian gave a noncommittal response.
Ever since Lu Yixin had eavesdropped that day, he hadn’t expected her to keep it secret for long.
It didn’t matter if it got found out anyway. Their relationship was already that bad—at worst, they would simply never speak again. In any case, the one who had done wrong wasn’t him.
“That…” Lu Yixin rolled once on the bed, “I know how much savings our family has.”
Fang Yongnian: “?”
“Our family is a lot poorer than I imagined,” Lu Yixin said, fiddling with the tassel on the bedsheet.
“When my grandma was sick, the caretaker we hired through connections was a specialist, and her salary was even higher than my dad’s at the time. My mom wasn’t in a leadership position yet at the Meteorological Bureau back then—she only earned a few thousand yuan a month, and most of that went toward paying the mortgage for our house in Huating City.”
“So for a long time, our family was dirt poor.”
“My dad often borrowed money from people—relatives, and Grandpa Wu too. Every month before he got his salary, I didn’t even dare ask for pocket money.”
Fang Yongnian didn’t interrupt.
This part of history, he hadn’t known.
Lu Boyuan was a man who cared about saving face. When doing projects, he often used his meal card to treat others to food; during chats, he would offer cigarettes to their group. Back then, Fang Yongnian wasn’t very exposed to society and had never noticed that Lu Boyuan was financially strapped.
“Later, when my mom was transferred back to Hecheng, our family had a meeting. We sold the house in Huating City, used that money to buy our current house in Hecheng, paid back what we owed from taking care of Grandma, and after settling everything, there was still a hundred thousand yuan left in the account.”
“We’ve lived in Hecheng for less than four years, and now there’s a hundred and fifty thousand in the account,” Lu Yixin confessed like spilling beans, clear and thorough.
“My dad’s salary is all handed over to my mom. She leaves him one thousand yuan for pocket money. The rest—more than half of it—she used to buy me some kind of study fund.”
Here, she paused.
“After I entered university, I get thirty thousand yuan refunded every year. When I graduate, I’ll receive a lump sum of five hundred thousand.”
“My mom said that’s for my security. In case I can’t get into a good university and want to start a small business, that money can serve as the initial investment.”
“I’m not poor either…” she mumbled softly.
Fang Yongnian, who had just been a bit moved by what she said earlier, was suddenly speechless again.
He understood it, again.
That line was aimed at Yu Hanfeng.
Damn it, why could he always understand the hidden meaning behind this girl’s words?
Lu Yixin cleared her throat, for once pulling the topic back on her own.
“My dad really didn’t do anything bad for money, really.”
Perhaps sensing her words sounded weak, she fell silent for a second, then added firmly, “And my dad doesn’t have a mistress outside either.”
Fang Yongnian: “?”
“It’s true!” Lu Yixin hurried to assure him. “When my parents were living apart, I worried about him, so I often video-called him in the middle of the night when I got up to go to the bathroom.”
“He was either in the lab or in the dormitory. You know the dorms at the research institute, they’re all men. I’m the only female who’s ever slept there.” She fired off her words like a rapid-fire gun.
A female, she says!
Fang Yongnian rubbed his temples.
The topic had gone completely off track again.
“So?” he prompted, pulling her back on course.
If she kept going, he couldn’t even imagine where her train of thought would wander next. He had zero interest in their family’s private matters.
Lu Boyuan not being rich, he had known that for years.
It was precisely because Lu Boyuan lived in such humble circumstances that he had kept investigating, and why his mood had stayed sour all along.
“So my dad really didn’t do those things. He didn’t even know that the car accident wasn’t actually an accident!”
Silence.
Lu Yixin felt a wave of regret.
That conclusion was supposed to come at the end, at least after Fang Yongnian’s tone had softened a little.
But because of his one word, “So?”, her thoughts that had drifted all the way into outer space reflexively blurted out the final conclusion.
A conclusion that made people uncomfortable. Ever since that car accident, she had never dared to mention the words “car accident” in front of him again.
She stammered, “I’m sorry…”
“…I understand,” Fang Yongnian said quietly after a few seconds of silence.
Being able to lay things out openly with Lu Boyuan might be a good thing, though he still didn’t believe that man truly knew nothing about the accident.
The fact that the driver responsible was an acquaintance of Lu Boyuan’s, that was something he could never get past.
He wanted to hang up, to think about what kind of attitude he should have when facing Lu Boyuan.
“Wait a second!” Lu Yixin suddenly shouted from the other end of the line.
The roar made his eardrums ache. He frowned, but in the end, didn’t actually hang up.
“When… are you coming back?” Lu Yixin asked cautiously, as if the person who had just screamed at him like a wild beast wasn’t her.
“We’ll see.” He couldn’t be bothered to answer.
Avoid suspicion.
Ten minutes after the call had connected, he suddenly remembered this. He couldn’t keep telling Lu Yixin his personal schedule like before. He had to avoid suspicion.
Lu Yixin tugged at the tassel again.
“I know now that the rumor between you and Yu Hanfeng was fake,” she said angrily, sounding quite upset. “Even though I don’t know what you two were actually doing, it’s not good.”
“It’s really bad for the girl!” she added weakly, trying to sound righteously indignant.
Fang Yongnian: “…”
He shouldn’t have stayed on the line.
“What I said that day was true,” she went on, rambling.
“I won’t make things difficult for you. Before I grow up, I won’t ever say those kinds of things in public again.” She started making promises again.
Fang Yongnian’s teeth practically ached from listening to her.
“But if—when I grow up—you’re still single then, could you… consider me?” Her voice grew smaller and smaller.
Lying alone in bed, she twisted the blanket into wrinkled folds, her face as red as a tomato.
Oh my god, she really said it.
That was a real confession, her first true confession!
“Lu Yixin.” Fang Yongnian finally spoke.
“Here!” Lu Yixin replied crisply.
“I’m thirty-two this year.” When Fang Yongnian spoke without any expression, his tone was always slow and measured, making it hard to guess what he would say next.
“Mm…” Lu Yixin sensed that he was about to unleash something serious, so she responded very cautiously.
“When you grow up, I’ll already be forty.” Fang Yongnian continued in that same slow tone, strangely giving her no room to interrupt. “Forty years old, and still single?”
He countered, then gave a light hum. “Little girl, truly vicious.”
Lu Yixin: “…”
It was rare to render this girl speechless. Fang Yongnian’s fingers felt noticeably lighter as he hung up the phone.
“Girlfriend?” The nurse who came to change his IV smiled behind her mask.
Fang Yongnian: “?”
“You’ve been getting IV drips here for several days now, always frowning,” said the nurse—likely not much older than Lu Yixin herself—speaking quickly and brightly.
“But today, while you were on the phone, you smiled several times.” She blinked playfully at him.
She clearly had a good impression of this man sitting in the wheelchair. In the emergency infusion room, everyone was either worried or in a rush, but only he was calm and refined. He would even quietly wheel himself to the farthest corner when the room got crowded, sitting there silently.
Today was the first time she had seen him smile since she started her shift. Even though it had been a wry smile, in her mind it somehow looked doting.
“A kid.” Fang Yongnian, who rarely talked with strangers, made an exception and offered an explanation. After saying it, he felt it wasn’t enough and added, “A neighbor’s kid.”
“Ah… no wonder.” The nurse smiled again. “She must be really cute.”
To make him wear such an expression—equal parts exasperation and amusement—they must be close.
Fang Yongnian made a vague sound of agreement, then took out his phone.
The nurse efficiently finished changing his IV, reset the drip speed he had secretly turned up back to normal, gave him a bright-eyed smile, and turned to leave.
Left behind was Fang Yongnian, who for some reason felt as if he could finally breathe. He opened Lu Boyuan’s email at last, he had actually remembered his personal address.
The email was simple, just one line:
“Yongnian, why do you think that car accident back then wasn’t an accident?”
Fang Yongnian’s fingers hovered over the screen for a very long time.
Lu Boyuan had called him “Yongnian.”
“I’ll return to Hecheng tomorrow,” he finally replied with just that one sentence.
It felt as if he were utterly exhausted; he closed his eyes and leaned back against the chair.
Yongnian—how many years had it been since Lu Boyuan had called him that? How many years since anyone, in that world that had abandoned him, had called him by that name?
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