14
The next morning.
Giang Tần Hoán was up very early.
Before I was even awake, he had already left the house.
As the head of a rising tech company, even getting a full night's sleep seemed like a luxury to him.
Tiểu Khâu rolled over beside me and gently reminded me:
“There’s breakfast Giang Tần Hoán left for you in the microwave.”
I sat down at the table and slowly ate all the congee and fried dough sticks he’d prepared.
Then I watched, dumbfounded, as Tiểu Khâu operated the devices on the table and neatly cleared away my dishes.
…I couldn’t help thinking that technology really did make life better.
In the days that followed, my life began to take a new direction.
Actually, during that time, he and I didn’t see much of each other.
Giang Tần Hoán was swamped with one long meeting after another.
I was just as busy. Once the theater company began rehearsals, I was the lead in the next production, and the idea of “clocking out” practically ceased to exist.
Though he was absent from my day-to-day life, Giang Tần Hoán was always there on my phone.
For the umpteenth time, I messaged him and got an immediate reply. I couldn’t resist teasing him:
“Director Giang, are you scrolling through your phone on the clock?”
He immediately sent a sticker of a pitiful little cat, looking all aggrieved.
I laughed, the corners of my lips curling up.
My laugh caught the attention of the woman sitting beside me.
She laughed too and teased me softly:
“Ms. Lâm, you really are different now that you’re in love.”
She was someone I already knew.
Tưởng Y Y.
The girl who had once nearly become Giang Tần Hoán’s fiancée.
I’d met her through the theater company. She performed with the B cast, while I was with the A cast; in this production, we took turns playing the lead.
Giang Tần Hoán and I had never hidden our relationship.
So she must have known he was my boyfriend.
“Ever since I was little, I’ve wondered what kind of person Mr. Giang’s wife would be.”
“To be honest, when I first came back to the country, I used to think of you as my imaginary rival.”
“Looking back now, I was so foolish.”
“He never looked at me even once. You were the only one in his eyes.”
When the break was over, she stood up and looked at me, her eyes holding a hint of regret—and a hint of letting go.
“I think you’re wonderful.”
“You make Giang Tần Hoán a better person.”
“……”
The pale sunset light fell across her eyes. She smiled, her gaze passing through me as if she were reflecting on something.
“The person he loves… really is wonderful.”
“So, so wonderful.”
At last, she left me with one more thing:
“I hope you two will be happy!”
Then she winked and waved goodbye.
I went back to the company and continued rehearsing.
I practiced until the sun had completely set and night fell, quiet settling all around us.
When I stepped out of the rehearsal room, moonlight had spread across the deserted street.
Summer had only just begun, and the night breeze was still gentle.
Pagoda-tree blossoms drifted away on the breeze, softening the gaze of anyone who looked at them.
I saw Giang Tần Hoán sitting on the steps outside my rehearsal room, holding a gorgeous bouquet of bright red roses.
I ran over and stopped in front of him.
He looked up at me.
The roses in his hands trembled faintly with each breath.
The night shimmered in his eyes, sparkling like magic.
“Are those for me?”
I asked him.
“Yeah.”
He answered softly, his voice low and warm, his gaze still lifted to mine.
I couldn’t understand what was so interesting about me that he had to keep looking at me like that.
I bent down to take the bouquet, and he rested his forehead against my waist.
I heard his voice, low and hoarse:
“Lâm Thu Thủy.”
“I didn’t know.”
“I didn’t know how much you had to suffer along the way.”
“……”
Only when I got closer did I notice the faint smell of alcohol on him.
“How much did you drink?”
I gently pinched his cheek.
His dark eyes followed me, little by little.
“Your teacher was at the banquet today.”
“She said you shouldn’t catch a cold, stay up late, or eat spicy food.”
“You have to study Italian, German, and French. You have so many, many things to learn.”
“When you first took the stage, your costume was so heavy. Once, you got dehydrated and nobody noticed.”
“……You almost didn’t make it to the hospital in time.”
“……”
“……Giang Tần Hoán, why are you so easy to make cry?”
Feeling a wet streak at my waist, I cupped his face.
I sighed.
My little young master.
Even crying, he was as beautiful as a shattered ruby.
A tear trembled on his lashes, tugging deftly at my heart.
I pulled him to his feet.
I didn’t look at him, but he obediently took hold of my wrist.
“Sigh.”
“It’s nothing. The road to excellence is always full of thorns. I just…”
Before I could finish, he suddenly pulled me tightly into his arms.
I lowered my head and looked at our long shadows on the ground.
His voice was hoarse and warm, yet it poured straight into my heart.
“Lâm Thu Thủy.”
“Can you lean on me a little?”
He said:
“From now on, can you lean on me a little?”
“You don’t have to be alone anymore. You have me.”
“I know you do just fine on your own, but…”
“I want to share some of the burden with you, even if it’s only a little.”
“……”
He held me so tightly, as if he wouldn’t let go unless I said yes.
Moonlight fell softly across our shoulders.
“Okay.”
I answered softly.
His arms tightened around me, holding me even closer.
So tightly, as if from that moment on, we would never be apart again.
15
Near midsummer.
Cicadas buzzed all around, and my major performances had come to an end.
At last, I had a little time to breathe.
I got off work early and wandered around the supermarket by myself.
Then I headed home just as the sun was setting.
“Master~ Welcome home! Can we resume Operation ‘Giang Tần Hoán Birthday Blitz’ now~?”
Tiểu Khâu rolled up in front of me, colorful fireworks blossoming across its digital screen.
This was a surprise Tiểu Khâu and I had been secretly planning: today was Giang Tần Hoán’s birthday.
I wanted to make him a birthday cake with my own hands.
I’d just gone to the supermarket to buy all the ingredients.
I set Tiểu Khâu on the kitchen island.
It could scan the ingredients and tell me the right proportions. I’d heard it had thousands of recipes from Michelin-starred chefs built into it.
All in all… it’s very reliable.
But the problem is… I don’t seem to be reliable at all.
After the eggs exploded all over the place for the third time, I began to wonder if I was just born to be hopeless at anything crafty.
Thinking back to college, my fingers had cracked in twenty places just from making Giang Tần Hoán a scrapbook as a gift.
And there were the hideous scarves and wool hats I’d knitted for him…
As soon as I thought of that, Tiểu Khâu rubbed salt in the wound:
“Oh, Master, the system detects that you still have all your limbs.”
“But… I still have to ask: would you like to turn on accessibility assistance mode?”
“……Where did that little smart mouth learn to talk like that? From Giang Tần Hoán?”
“……Turn it on.”
I grumbled irritably, but still accepted its “service” with a stony face.
The mode really was thoughtful. Though it was just a round little ball, it could keep the bag of flour from spilling,
and measure the sugar I added down to the gram.
With its help, my cake was finally coming along.
“Tiểu Khâu, having you here is really…”
Before I could finish saying “great,” I watched it accidentally slide off the kitchen island after rolling into a puddle.
I was still holding the flour and couldn’t catch it in time.
It hit the floor and bounced twice.
Its screen flickered with static.
I burst into tears:
“Tiểu Khâu! …Tiểu Khâu, oh, Tiểu Khâu!”
I knelt down and poked at it, but it still didn’t respond.
While my mind raced to come up with an explanation for when Giang Tần Hoán got home and discovered that his “robot son” seemed to have “died”…
The doorbell rang.
I trudged over to answer it.
A beautiful bouquet of hyacinths stood before me.
“I picked them up on my way home from work. Do you like them?”
The man standing there in a suit was somehow even more captivating than the flowers.
The next second, his face suddenly loomed large before my eyes.
“What’s wrong? Aren’t you happy?”
He kissed the corner of my mouth, and with every frantic beat of my heart, my sadness seemed to drift away.
I caught hold of his sleeve.
“Giang Tần Hoán.”
“There’s good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?”
“The good news?”
His eyes shone like stars as he watched my every move.
I cleared my throat and shamelessly announced:
“Well, I’m reluctantly giving you the chance to make a cake with me.”
“Mm-hmm.”
He answered softly, letting me reach up and take off his tie.
In that position, his collar fell slightly open, revealing his enticing Adam’s apple. It made me feel as though he’d be willing to let me do anything to him.
“The bad news is…”
“I think I broke Tiểu Khâu.”
I held Tiểu Khâu out to him from behind my back.
He reached up to stroke my hair, his voice full of gentle laughter:
“I thought something had happened to make my wife unhappy.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Tiểu Khâu breaks down all the time.”
“……”
Good grief, so this was a repeat offender?
“This is the earliest model. It’s been upgraded a few times, but I made all the changes myself using the original as a base.”
“Compared with the products on the market, it’s the one with the most bugs.”
Giang Tần Hoán took my hand and led me to the sofa.
He found the tool kit, took out a screwdriver, screws, and a circuit board, then pulled me into his arms.
Then he deftly “operated” on Tiểu Khâu.
I loved watching him fix things.
His hands were so long and beautiful.
They were also so deft, moving among the tiny components and filling me with admiration.
He removed the little circuit boards one by one and seemed to spot the problem with just a glance.
The summer light swayed slowly around us,
and the soft clicks as he adjusted the components filled me with such peace.
By the time Tiểu Khâu was almost repaired, I was still nestled in his arms.
Suddenly, he held up a small component and said:
“This is Tiểu Khâu’s heart.”
“It doesn’t need it anymore, but I still keep it inside Tiểu Khâu.”
“Actually, Tiểu Khâu’s original model was just an ordinary ESP32Pet robot.”
“Back then… after you left, I didn’t know what to do. I could only hide under the covers.”
“Then, because I missed you so much, I wrote a program and put all the voice messages you’d ever sent me into it.”
“Tiểu Khâu was just a mess of exposed circuit boards back then, ugly as could be, but it could speak in your voice.”
“It would respond to me and ask if I’d eaten, or if I’d had a good day.”
“I knew it wasn’t you, but sometimes I could almost believe you were still here.”
“I kept improving it, and eventually it became the Autumn we have now.”
He said it lightly, as if it were nothing.
But my heart… hurt so much.
He always talked about how exhausted Lâm Thu Thủy had been, but never once mentioned his own pain.
Building a company from scratch was never easy.
The hardships he endured along the way were no less than mine.
He’d been a pampered young master, and running the company in its early days must have been like being carved apart, piece by piece.
How could the troubles in his family have been as simple as he made them sound?
But he always smiled at me and cried for me, as if pretending it was all easy would put my mind at ease.
And during all the time I was gone, all he could do was hold tight to that robot that spoke in my voice.
He once said:
“Lâm Thu Thủy, I won’t hate you.”
“Don’t even think about it.”
“Hey.”
“I was wrong, I was wrong. I won’t say any more, okay?”
He hurried to wipe away my tears, but couldn’t keep up. Drops kept slipping between his fingers.
He gave a rueful smile and bent down to kiss my eyelids.
The gentle kiss… slowly deepened.
The sunset settled over the city, scattering little patches of shadow everywhere.
The soft sofa could be turned into a bed, conveniently giving him an opportunity.
I didn’t know why I was crying. I only felt overwhelmed by sadness.
The sadness was filled up.
My heart had once been empty, but now…
My heart was so full it frightened me.
I was afraid it was all just a dream of Nanke, afraid it was all flowers in a mirror, the moon reflected in water.
16
When Giang Tần Hoán and I stood in front of the cake ingredients again,
it was already the dead of night outside.
Something came up just now, and we lost a little time.
But with Giang Tần Hoán here, making a cake wasn’t a headache anymore.
He was even more useful than Tiểu Khâu!
Throughout the whole process, my only roles were moral support and… helping with the decorating.
At any rate, the cake finally came out of the oven perfectly.
On Giang Tần Hoán’s birthday cake, he’d used frosting to draw… me.
And he’d drawn me so beautifully it was infuriating.
I was honestly jealous of those hands of his.
So skilled that… ahem.
Thinking about what those hands had just done to me, I felt my face turn red.
Seeing me like that, the man who had just finished making his wish smiled at me, his eyes crinkling with amusement.
“What are you thinking about?”
I dodged his gaze and secretly pulled out from behind the sofa a gift box I’d asked Tiểu Khâu to keep hidden these past few days.
“Ahem, ahem. It’s your birthday, after all.”
“These are all the birthday gifts I’ve prepared for you. Since we couldn’t be together all these years, whenever I saw something that seemed right for you, I bought it.”
“This is a wooden puppet I brought back from Bavaria, this is a Delft porcelain keychain from the Netherlands, and I made this music box myself, so don’t you dare say it’s ugly. And this…”
…How could there be so many?
It was his fault my throat had gone dry just now.
I simply pushed the whole box of gifts toward him and let him discover everything for himself.
The young master bent over the large box and examined each gift one by one.
Then it was his turn to speak. He praised each gift in a gentle voice that made my heart flutter.
I watched his profile and occasionally offered a word or two in reply.
A small lamp quietly glowed in the room.
The starlight in his eyes stretched into endless depths.
Cicadas sang in the distance on that summer night.
My thoughts drifted far away.
I remembered why I had left without a word all those years ago.
There was something I had never told him.
I was afraid.
Afraid I wouldn’t succeed, afraid I wouldn’t shine, afraid I wouldn’t make it to his side in time.
A young master like him belonged on a bright, shining road.
What right did I have to drag him into the mud?
The lamplight flickered softly before me.
Until a gentle kiss brushed over my lashes, then my eyes.
I jolted back to my senses and found him smiling at me as I sat there, dazed.
“What… what did you just say?”
I was a little flustered.
He took my hand and placed it over his heart.
His heart beat strong and warm, just like the scorching look in his eyes.
“I said…”
“This heart beats for you.”
“It’s the most wonderful gift you’ve ever given me.”
(The End)