Chapter 10#
The scalding, sticky sensation clung to his back as if it had physical form.
Sheng Lin touched the skin that had been burned by the soup, his heart crackling like it had been dropped into a sizzling wok, tossing and turning through the night without finding sleep.
The banquet had been filled with luminaries from the worlds of business and politics, every one of them a person of standing and reputation. He had made a fool of himself in front of all those people. Sheng Lin didn’t dare think too carefully about what their expressions must have been like.
Contempt, mockery, spectating—perhaps all of the above.
Why did he always have to be the one to humiliate himself?
Why could nothing ever go his way?
Wasn’t it already enough that he was Lu Yinbing’s dog?
He only wished he didn’t lack the Lu family’s background, didn’t lack the Su family for maternal grandparents—otherwise how could Lu Yinbing ever have dared to humiliate him like that?
And who would have dared to laugh at him publicly?
And how could he ever have ended up marrying someone like Man Yu?
Sheng Lin tossed and turned a while longer, then finally opened the LuChuan app and found that blogger called 【 Practice Mandarin well 】, casually tapping open one of his audio clips.
“Today I’ll be reading prose again—Qili Tea House. If there’s anything any of you would like to hear, you can send me a private message. I read all of them…”
It had truly become a habit of Sheng Lin’s recently. This blogger’s voice was very pleasant to listen to—unhurried and unhasty, warm and gentle in a way that put one at ease, like a pool of clear spring water. Listen to a segment and the fire in your heart would settle down, making it easier to drift to sleep.
Seeing in the comments section that many people were saying this blogger had returned after years away, and though he no longer updated with new works, he was an extremely kind person who replied to every private message—Sheng Lin casually tipped a thousand yuan and opened the private messaging interface.
【Can you read Ugetsu Monogatari?】
The other party didn’t seem to be asleep either. After a moment, a reply came: 【Thank you for your tip. For personal reasons, I’m no longer able to read anymore. I’m truly sorry. I’ll return the tip to you later. If there’s something troubling you keeping you from sleeping, you can tell me about it. Talking about it will make you feel much better.】
Right after that came an emoji sticker of a little puppy holding a heart.
Indeed, just as the comments section said—a rather nice person.
Sheng Lin told him there was no need to return it.
Perhaps across the internet, people could be exceptionally straightforward with one another.
Thinking of his chaotic life, Sheng Lin felt that none of the people around him could make him relax the way even a reading blogger could.
Man Yu wasn’t asleep either, replying to his fans’ private messages one by one.
Messages from every corner of the land, each containing a small or large worry. He had become a mailbox for so many people. Only at times like these did he feel he was useful.
He sat on the bay window, pushed it open, and lit a cigarette, holding it between his fingers. The wide sleeves of his shirt billowed in the wind, clinging tight to his slender arms.
His hair, now cut a bit shorter, could only just cover his eyes, revealing a straight, elegant nose bridge. His lips were pressed together.
Man Yu didn’t know how to smoke. The mere smell of it made him nauseous, made him unable to breathe. He took a fierce drag and coughed uncontrollably, covering his mouth and dry heaving.
At first he had only wanted to understand why Sheng Lin liked this kind of thing. Now, instead, he needed this suffocating nausea, dragging him downward.
When the body was uncomfortable, the heart could find comfort.
This house was unbearably oppressive. How was he supposed to keep going forward to win his husband’s heart?
Man Yu couldn’t help but despise himself. He really was spineless—daring to do nothing but sulk here on his own.
If only he were a little braver, he could have simply stripped bare and stood at Sheng Lin’s door. Last time, clearly his husband had felt something too.
He thought about it for a long time, hesitating and worrying, but in the end he still didn’t dare. Man Yu couldn’t help it—he had been like this since childhood.
Man Yu almost never left the house. His daily routine consisted of staying home to clean, cook, and near noon, hand the prepared food over to his husband’s assistant, then start preparing dinner and wait for his husband to come home. When he heard the elevator chime, he would hurry to greet his husband, taking the briefcase and coat from his hands.
The daily ingredients he needed were also purchased and delivered collectively by the Sheng family’s kitchen staff.
During the rest of his time, he would sit on the bay window in his own room and write things on his phone.
This also meant that even when Lu Yinbing suspected he hadn’t earned enough favor points and Man Yu hadn’t contacted him, he couldn’t find a single chance to engineer an accidental encounter with Man Yu except by breaking down the door.
Was he really supposed to take advantage of Sheng Lin being away, register with the property management office, knock on their front door—oh, and best carry a bag of gifts too—to cuckold Sheng Lin and steal his wife, asking Man Yu: “Excuse me, do you have any plans for divorce recently?”
Being this eager—it would make people laugh their teeth off if word got out.
Lu Yinbing never sold himself short.
There was nothing in Man Yu’s life that could be investigated or dug into, so despite Lu Xingyun’s frantic efforts for a week, the materials he handed over to Lu Yinbing were merely this much: for everything before age fifteen, just a single line—“Grew up in Fu’an Town. Attended Fu’an Town Central Primary School and Fu’an Town Middle School.”
After fifteen, living in the capital city, there was considerably more to investigate. But in truth, it was nothing more than his daily life—dormitory and university, a straight line back and forth.
Lu Yinbing had assumed Lu Xingyun was lacking in ability, only managing to dig up things already on a household registration. Now he realized Lu Xingyun had truly done his best.
Man Yu didn’t even have a single friend. His life was so monotonous and bland it was offensive.
No wonder after getting married, he only circled around that bitch Sheng Lin every day. But thinking carefully, this was actually a good thing—it meant that after Man Yu got a divorce, he would only circle around him. He would be Man Yu’s entire world.
Every week, Man Yu faithfully took Line Three to the sanatorium to visit Man Hong, bringing home-cooked meals and snacks, sometimes even preparing an extra portion for the caretaker in charge of Man Hong, to thank her for taking care of his aunt.
Man Hong’s mood today was relatively stable—she simply ignored people, sitting dazed in her wheelchair staring out the window. Man Yu helped her wash her hair, wiped her face and hands, washed her feet, and trimmed her fingernails and toenails.
The caretaker in charge of Man Hong wasn’t there today, so another caretaker was helping out. At noon, Man Yu handed over his food container, and the woman repeatedly said what a pity: “I’ve already eaten lunch too. Also brought by family.”
Man Yu felt a bit awkward, his face flushing, and asked her to keep the cookies anyway.
Only after Man Hong had fallen asleep for her afternoon nap did Man Yu tidy up his things and prepare to leave.
As he went downstairs and passed through the garden, a familiar figure caught his eye.
Lu Yinbing?
What was he doing here?
“How come you’re here?”
Man Yu regretted not escaping quickly enough. Lu Yinbing had caught him, and he didn’t know how those eyes of Lu Yinbing’s were so sharp.
“My, my aunt, is, is here…”
Lu Yinbing smiled warmly. He was dressed very crisply today—all in white, hair casually tousled, though the collar was still undone just as low, accented with a silver chain that made him look even younger. Man Yu gripped the cloth bag holding the food container tightly, not daring to look at him.
“What a coincidence. I came here to sketch. I heard the scenery around Nansan Mountain is especially beautiful, and a sanatorium lets you witness all the spectacles of human life. I came to broaden my horizons.” Lu Yinbing then invited Man Yu, “Could you help me see how my drawing is?”
Man Yu was too embarrassed to refuse.
A few swift strokes—vividly expressive. Man Yu felt somewhat envious of such a skill and praised him with genuine sincerity: “Very, very good!”
“Really?” Lu Yinbing deliberately made it difficult for him. “Only two words of praise. Is my drawing that ugly that you can’t think of anything else? It’s okay, don’t force yourself. I’ll tear it up and redraw it.”
Man Yu hastily stopped him, feeling extremely guilty over his own clumsy tongue, sweat practically sizzling on his forehead. He kept urging himself in his mind: think, think, think! But not a single nice word would come.
“Really, really good. I, I don’t know how to, how to praise, praise people. Please don’t, don’t mind…”
He was so flustered his face scrunched up, and even his usually slow speech quickened, making one can’t help but want to scratch his chin.
Lu Yinbing pressed on relentlessly: “Stop lying to me. It must look terribly ugly.”
Man Yu was truly on the verge of tears from urgency, insisting that Lu Yinbing was the best painter he had ever seen.
Hearing the desperate, tearful edge in his voice, that dark amusement buried deep within Lu Yinbing’s heart found a measure of satisfaction.
“That’s good. Look—this one I painted at Mount Field in Tasmania; this is me on a fishing boat in the Arctic Ocean; this flock of sheep is from a ranch I tended in Australia, and here’s a lamb I delivered with my own hands; my truck—it’s still in California, used to haul wheat during harvest season, and this part I modified myself…”
Man Yu’s frantic urge to flee was pulled back, thread by thread, through Lu Yinbing’s sketches and word by word of his narration. His fingers involuntarily brushed against the sketchbook, and before his eyes an entirely new world seemed to unfurl. Lu Yinbing had so many talents, had been to so many places.
What a free person—completely unlike himself.
Would he get lonely in foreign lands? Would there be language barriers? What should one do upon first arriving? Questions popped up one after another in Man Yu’s heart, and each one seemed like something he could never solve.
“Speaking of wheat—I’m getting a bit hungry. You smell deliciously of cookies.”
Lu Yinbing leaned over and sniffed at him. Man Yu snapped back to his senses and shrank back against the chair, raising his hands in front of his chest.
“Th-there’s none left. If you don’t, don’t mind, I still, still have one more portion here… food…” Man Yu hurriedly lifted the cloth bundle in both hands and held it out toward Lu Yinbing.
The moment he said it, he regretted it so much he wanted to slap his own mouth.
How could someone be so foolish? Why would Lu Yinbing eat his boxed lunch? And it was one he hadn’t even managed to deliver—how terribly rude.
“Then I won’t hold back.” Before Man Yu could retract his hands, Lu Yinbing had already taken the bag, his fingers brushing against Man Yu’s wrist, intentionally or not. Man Yu’s body trembled once more.
Inside the bundle were two food containers, and Man Yu pointed out the full one.
Lu Yinbing praised him endlessly: “Your cooking is really wonderful. I could never make something this delicious. The food at home isn’t what I like to eat either. If I could eat your cooking every day, I’d be truly happy.”
Man Yu shyly clutched at his clothes, murmuring “Thank you” over and over.
Lu Yinbing suspected he hadn’t caught the subtext in his words and repeated them.
Man Yu hesitated for a moment, his grip on his clothes tightening, head lowered, muttering: “Thank you. My, my husband, also, also says the same…”
In truth, he was lying.