A server brought a pot of Bi Luo Chun tea to the private room, serving it to an older man and a younger man.
“Give it a try,” Xue Jiang Pan said as he poured a cup for Bai Yun Sheng. “The owner of this teahouse is an old friend of mine. He keeps only the best tea.”
Bai Yun Sheng had a sensitive stomach, and he usually drank Pu’er or oolong tea when he visited teahouses. Bi Luo Chun was cooling, and every time he drank it, it caused terrible stomach pain.
But he couldn’t offend his host.
He sipped a little, noticing Xue Jiang Pan watching him, so he took two more sips.
“Good tea.”
It seemed that as people got older, they wanted the younger generation to praise the things they liked. Xue Jiang Pan savored his own tea for a moment before slowly asking, “Do you remember what I asked you to do last time?”
“You wanted me to bring Xiao Yi’s clients over to Bai Ji.”
“And did you?”
“Well… I’ve only managed to bring over two so far,” Bai Yun Sheng said, a bit uneasy.
“That’s too slow,” Xue Jiang Pan said with some dissatisfaction. “Bai Ji has been in decline for too long. You have a ready pool of clients in your hands—why aren’t you taking advantage of it?”
“It doesn’t seem right,” Bai Yun Sheng said, lowering his head, feeling his stomach start to ache. He wasn’t sure if it was the tea or Xue Jiang Pan’s words. “Those clients were hard-won by Yi-ge. It already feels wrong to break off and start my own thing, but poaching his clients behind his back…”
“Nonsense! Bai Ji is the product of several generations’ hard work. Xiao Yi is just a small-time businessman who’s only been at it for less than ten years. He doesn’t have the resources to compete with you. Xiao Bai, business isn’t charity—don’t let sentimentalism get in your way.”
Bai Yun Sheng nodded.
“Once you’ve built up enough clients, you can quit. Focus on the Jiang-Zhe region. You’re young, so you don’t realize what a big deal Bai Ji is for people of my generation…”
“I know,” Bai Yun Sheng suddenly interrupted. “I know.”
After leaving, Bai Yun Sheng hailed a cab back to the office. By the time he reached the elevator, his face had gone pale from the pain, and someone even asked if he was okay.
He shook his head, and as the elevator doors opened, he ran into Xiao Yi.
“Late again?” Xiao Yi glared at him. “Come, I need to talk to you about something.”
Pressing his hand to his stomach, Bai Yun Sheng followed Xiao Yi out of the elevator.
Xiao Yi first asked about the progress on a few recent projects and then chatted about unrelated matters. Bai Yun Sheng was struggling to stand because of his stomach pain, but suddenly he heard Xiao Yi say, "Tomorrow, come out for dinner with me."
Bai Yun Sheng found it odd—wasn't he always going out for meals with Xiao Yi?
"I have a girlfriend. It's our first date," Xiao Yi said as if it was a big deal. "I’m worried it’ll be awkward, so I’m inviting you along. Bring your girlfriend too, to make things more natural."
Bai Yun Sheng’s mind was foggy from the pain, but despite feeling something was off, he still agreed.
"What's wrong with you?" Xiao Yi finally noticed that something was wrong.
"Yi-ge, I… I'm not feeling well."
"Go sit down," Xiao Yi said, surprisingly lenient. "Take your time, and get back to work when you're ready."
The next day, Gu Yun Jin was reluctant when she got into the car.
"It's just a meal. I'm there with you, what are you worried about?"
"I told you he creeps me out, and now you're taking me to have dinner with him."
"He's just trying to win over a girl. First date jitters—he wanted me there to keep things smooth."
"You two are quite the pair," Gu Yun Jin shot him a glare. "How many other times has he helped you set up dates when I wasn’t around?"
“Listen to yourself,” Bai Yun Sheng started the car, driving toward the restaurant. “You’re making it sound terrible. It’s nothing like that.”
Xiao Yi had picked a restaurant near Xidan, one known for its high prices and reputation as a dating hotspot. As soon as Bai Yun Sheng and Gu Yun Jin entered, they spotted Xiao Yi slumped in the corner.
"Why’s he alone?" Gu Yun Jin whispered.
"And why does he look drunk?" Bai Yun Sheng was just as puzzled.
When Xiao Yi saw them, he immediately waved them over. Bai Yun Sheng greeted him and pulled Gu Yun Jin to sit across from him.
"Yi-ge, your girlfriend hasn’t arrived yet?"
"Pfft!" Xiao Yi suddenly bolted upright, spewing alcohol fumes in Gu Yun Jin’s face. "What girlfriend? She took my money and ran! Ran off!"
Gu Yun Jin instinctively leaned closer to Bai Yun Sheng, startled.
"You think I’m good with women, don’t you?" Xiao Yi turned to Bai Yun Sheng, still in a drunken stupor. "It’s all fake. No one cares about me—they’re all after my money. Once they get what they want, they don’t even want to have dinner with me!"
He mimicked the motion of counting money, barely acknowledging Gu Yun Jin. Bai Yun Sheng quickly called a waiter over, paid the bill for the drinks, and turned back to Xiao Yi. "Yi-ge, should I take you home?"
"I don’t have my house keys. I thought I’d be staying at her place tonight."
Bai Yun Sheng hesitated. "So where are your keys?"
"They’re at the office, on my desk."
"I’ll go get them for you."
He stood up, ready to leave, but Gu Yun Jin tugged at his sleeve.
"What about me?"
"You stay here and keep an eye on Yi-ge. He’s too drunk—who knows what could happen."
“I don’t want to!” Gu Yun Jin followed him out of the booth. “I’m going with you.”
As soon as she spoke, a loud “thud” echoed behind them. They turned around to see Xiao Yi had fallen out of his chair, attracting the attention of everyone nearby.
“You better stay,” Bai Yun Sheng sighed.
Gu Yun Jin bit her lip, thinking that they were in a public place, and Xiao Yi probably wouldn’t try anything. Reluctantly, she sat back down.
Xiao Yi had already climbed back into his chair.
As Bai Yun Sheng’s car pulled away outside, Xiao Yi shook his head and poured himself another glass of wine.
“Stop drinking,” Gu Yun Jin said, glaring at him in disgust. “You’ve had more than enough.”
“Is Miss Gu… concerned for me?” Xiao Yi asked, his tone mocking.
Gu Yun Jin frowned. Her instincts had been right.
Seeing her remain silent, Xiao Yi poured her a glass of wine and pushed it toward her. "A toast to Miss Gu."
“I don’t drink.”
“Interesting.” Xiao Yi leaned in closer, his demeanor suddenly a bit sharper. “I see women drinking and smoking all the time. But Miss Gu is different.”
“If you keep spouting nonsense, I’m leaving,” Gu Yun Jin shot back coldly. “If it weren’t for Bai Yun Sheng calling you ‘Yi-ge,’ I would’ve thrown this drink in your face.”
“‘Yun Sheng,’ huh? You say it so affectionately.”
He smirked. “A beautiful woman like you, sticking with someone like him—there’s no future in that.”
Gu Yun Jin’s brow furrowed in anger.
“I really admire you, Miss Gu.” Xiao Yi suddenly slid around the table, seating himself next to her on her right side. The table was in a corner, with the wall blocking her on the left, leaving her no escape. “How about we get to know each other better?”
“You’re already trying to flirt right after your date ditched you,” Gu Yun Jin said coldly. “No wonder no one truly cares about you.”
"There was no other woman," Xiao Yi leaned closer, his shoulder pressed tightly against Gu Yun Jin. "You’re the woman I want to date."
“Mr. Xiao,” Gu Yun Jin’s voice grew louder, catching the attention of people at two nearby tables, “I’m still treating you as Bai Yun Sheng’s boss right now. If you back off, I won’t tell him anything. But if you keep acting like this, I’m going to scream, and when the police show up, it won’t look good for anyone.”
Xiao Yi pressed his lips together and pulled out his wallet.
“You probably don’t know how much I’m willing to pay you. But it’s no problem, Miss Gu. Look at you and Bai Yun Sheng—you don’t even have expensive shoes. The women I date all carry bags worth tens of thousands. I know what women like. We don’t need to tell Bai Yun Sheng. You just need to come spend time with me when I want you…”
Slap!
Xiao Yi’s vision went black, and his eye throbbed with pain—it felt like he’d gone blind. The hit came from the very bag he had just mocked. Before he could react, pain shot through his foot as Gu Yun Jin stomped on it with her not-so-expensive high heels, causing him to yelp in agony.
“You old men are truly disgusting. Where do you even get this kind of confidence from?” Gu Yun Jin spat, stepping over his foot as she squeezed out of the narrow space between the table and chairs. Her thigh brushed against his knee, sending shivers through her entire body.
She quickly left and hailed a taxi. It wasn’t until she’d sat in silence for a while that she realized she was crying.
That disgusting feeling crawled along her skin from where Xiao Yi had touched her hand, spreading across her entire body. Trembling, she fumbled to pull out her phone, but it took her several tries to unlock it.
“Miss, are you alright?” the taxi driver asked, watching her through the rearview mirror.
Gu Yun Jin shook her head, pressing hard on her acupoint between her thumb and index finger. After a few cycles, she finally calmed down.
When Bai Yun Sheng’s voice came through the phone, all the strength seemed to drain from her body.
“Bai Yun Sheng… Yun Sheng…”
Bai Yun Sheng immediately panicked.
“What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”
Hearing no response, Bai Yun Sheng quickly tried to explain, “I couldn’t find the keys. They weren’t on the desk. Wait for me, I’ll be back soon…”
“There are no keys! There never were any keys!” she sobbed, struggling to breathe. “Your boss is a pervert! A freak!”
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line, and even an idiot could guess what had happened.
“Where are you?”
“In a taxi,” Gu Yun Jin choked out between sobs. “I’m going home. You come home too. I need to see you.”
“I’m coming right now.”
Gu Yun Jin had no idea how fast Bai Yun Sheng was driving on the Fourth Ring Road during rush hour. She only knew that when her taxi pulled up in front of their building, he was already standing there, surrounded by a pile of cigarette butts.
She buried her face in his shoulder. The scent of smoke filled her nose, and Gu Yun Jin felt like all the strength had drained from her body.
“I want to go back to Suzhou.”
Bai Yun Sheng didn’t reply.
They went upstairs in silence. Bai Yun Sheng poured her a glass of water, and for a long while, neither of them said anything. Finally, Gu Yun Jin broke the silence with a series of questions.
“So,” after asking everything, Gu Yun Jin took a deep breath, “you’re saying you’re still going to keep working for him?”
Bai Yun Sheng didn’t answer, but his silence was confirmation.
“Bai Yun Sheng,” Gu Yun Jin let out a bitter laugh, a chill rising from deep within her, “I never realized how much of a coward you are.”
With that, she turned and went into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her. It remained closed for the rest of the night.
Bai Yun Sheng didn’t just have to keep working—he also had to transfer all of his clients to the fledgling Bai Ji Jewelry that wasn’t even fully established yet.
The next day when he arrived at the office, his hair was disheveled, and dark circles hung under his eyes from lack of sleep. Xiao Yi looked him over for a long time before finally letting out a derisive snort and tossing the day’s tasks onto his desk.
Xiao Yi knew that Bai Yun Sheng loved money, that he couldn’t let go of this job.
But what he didn’t expect was that the wolf inside this dog had finally been awakened.
During that period, Bai Yun Sheng slept on the couch. When he left in the morning, Gu Yun Jin hadn’t gotten up yet, and when he returned at night, she was already asleep. He didn’t know how to explain things to her, so he didn’t. Trying to quickly transfer his clients was an enormous task, and during that time, he rarely got home before midnight, often returning after heavy drinking with clients.
Gu Yun Jin, however, never said a word about it.
One night, after vomiting violently, he heard the bedroom door slam open. Gu Yun Jin stood in the doorway, arms crossed, staring at him coldly. He stumbled to his feet, shivering at the icy look in her eyes.
“Bai Yun Sheng,” she asked softly, “do you remember when we were seventeen, and you made that ring for the old lady?”
A ring?
His mind was foggy, but after a moment, some memories came back.
It was back when he was in his second year of high school. An elderly woman from a wealthy family had become confused and insisted that she was missing a ring her late husband had given her. Her family told her that the ring had been lost during the war decades ago, but she couldn’t remember and caused constant chaos in the household. Her eldest son, out of filial duty, had tried multiple jewelers, but none could recreate the ring. Desperate, someone suggested young Bai Yun Sheng from the Bai family.
Back then, he wasn’t in any rush. He took on the job and spent his mornings visiting the old woman, listening to her describe the ring in detail—a ruby ring her husband had given her when he went abroad for school. The ruby was slightly purple, with small diamonds set in gold leaf petals…
It was an incredibly intricate ring. Bai Yun Sheng listened to her in the mornings and sketched designs in the afternoons. After about half a month of this back and forth, he finally approached the family with a list of materials. He was young and inexperienced, and if the family hadn’t been desperate, they wouldn’t have trusted him. But when he finally handed the ring to the old woman, everyone saw the tears in her eyes.
“Young man, you’re going to be something great,” the son had told Bai Yun Sheng at the time.
Back then, Bai Yun Sheng thought he loved jewelry design.
At that time, Bai Yun Sheng held onto Gu Yun Jin, who was working on a qipao, and, like a child, said, "Yun Jin, let's do the things we love from now on, okay?"
Old memories and forgotten grievances—he didn’t understand why Gu Yun Jin had brought it up. The alcohol was clouding his mind, and he mumbled, "Gu Yun Jin, why don’t you understand anything?"
Why don’t you understand my humiliation, my helplessness, the immense pressure and yearning I carry?
Gu Yun Jin's eyes welled up with tears as she said softly, "You're right. I don’t understand."
That day, he secured his final client.
The next morning, he woke up late. Gu Yun Jin’s bedroom door was still tightly shut. After washing his face, he went to meet Xue Jiang Pan. The old businessman reviewed the documents Bai Yun Sheng had prepared and smiled, satisfied.
“The funds can be transferred,” Xue Jiang Pan said. “There’s still a lot ahead, and I’ll need you to handle it.”
Then Bai Yun Sheng drove to the office.
Xiao Yi, seeing him arrive late again, was fuming and opened his mouth to scold him, but before he could say anything, Bai Yun Sheng kicked his chair, knocking it over.
“Bai Yun Sheng?” Xiao Yi was so shocked he forgot to be angry. “Do you think I won’t call the police?”
“Go ahead.” Bai Yun Sheng stared at Xiao Yi with a menacing look, one he’d never seen from him before. It was the first time Xiao Yi realized that this “dog” had the eyes of a wolf. “By the time they arrive, I’ll have already broken your arm.”
When Zheng Su Nian dragged Bai Yun Sheng out of his apartment, he hadn’t slept for three days and nights.
The floor was littered with cigarette butts, and if the landlord had seen it, they would have fined him double. His eyes were bloodshot from the lack of sleep, and a half-burnt cigarette butt dangled from his lips.
The curtains were drawn tight. They used to be thin, but Gu Yun Jin had replaced them with blackout curtains, making the room almost pitch-dark.
Faint rays of light slipped through the cracks in the curtains, illuminating the man sitting cross-legged on the floor.
He was working on a large jigsaw puzzle.
A very large one. Bai Yun Sheng’s mind was foggy, and after three days, he had only managed to piece together less than half. When Zheng Su Nian pulled him to his feet, he resisted.
“Don’t touch me. Once I finish this puzzle, Yun Jin will come back.”
“If you keep going, she’ll be back to find you dead.”
“Let go of me.”
“Come eat something with me.”
“I said, let go of me.”
Zheng Su Nian pressed on, “You’re acting so tough with me. Why didn’t you just tell her how you felt?”
Three days ago, Bai Yun Sheng had fought with Xiao Yi.
It wasn’t serious enough to land him in jail. The police held them for a day, and by the time they were released, it was already dusk. Bai Yun Sheng took one step toward Xiao Yi, and Xiao Yi flinched.
Then Bai Yun Sheng went home and found that Gu Yun Jin was gone.
Her bags were packed, her phone number deactivated. A note sat on the coffee table, written in her neat handwriting.
It said: "Bai Yun Sheng, I don’t love you anymore."
Bai Yun Sheng lifted his head, his eyes bloodshot, and stared at Zheng Su Nian. “What right do you have to judge me?”
“I’ve been telling you for ages that you’ve lost yourself, but you didn’t believe me!” Zheng Su Nian snapped, anger boiling over. “All you ever think about is money, and now Gu Yun Jin’s gone. You’ve become obsessed with it, and now you’re sitting here pretending to feel guilty…”
Zheng Su Nian suddenly felt a cold blow on his cheek, stumbling back and hitting the wall. Bai Yun Sheng grabbed him by the collar, his voice hoarse as he shouted, “What right do you have to judge me? At least I’ve fought for something! At least I tried! What about you? When Shao Xue wanted to leave, you let her go without even trying to stop her. Are you even a man?”
Zheng Su Nian pushed him away.
“What kind of effort are you talking about? Is groveling in front of Xiao Yi what you call trying? You’re a man, Bai Yun Sheng, and yet you bowed and scraped in front of your woman to appease Xiao Yi. Everyone has their struggles. But you—you do it all for money. For your so-called ‘Bai Ji Jewelry.’ You can’t even swallow your pride!”
Bai Yun Sheng stumbled back, accidentally kicking over the jigsaw puzzle he had been working on. He fell backward, his head hitting the floor with a loud “thud.”
He had held it in for three days. No, he had held it in for a year—his whole life.
Suddenly, tears streamed down Bai Yun Sheng’s face.
“I’m going to buy a train ticket,” he said weakly. “Tomorrow’s train. I don’t want anything anymore. Without Yun Jin, I have nothing left.”
Zheng Su Nian crouched down, fumbling for a half-smoked cigarette on the floor.
“Lighter,” he muttered.
Bai Yun Sheng pointed to the lighter’s location and lay back down on the scattered puzzle pieces.
Zheng Su Nian lit the cigarette and took a deep drag.
“Well,” he said, exhaling smoke, “at least you can still go to Suzhou and try to win Gu Yun Jin back.”
“And Shao Xue?”
“I don’t even know where Shao Xue is.”
Outside, it started raining.
Winter rain is a terrible thing.
It doesn’t nourish life or drive away the heat.
It’s just cold. Pure, relentless cold.
Suddenly, Zheng Su Nian remembered something from when he was in school. He had stood on a balcony, and someone upstairs had been reciting poetry. He didn’t know who the poet was, but he remembered it after hearing it just once.
That person had recited—
“Rain is the mistake of a lifetime; rain is the joy and sorrow of partings and reunions.”
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