He didn’t want to go back then. Now, he couldn’t go back anymore.
There was no home for him in Beijing. Li Lingbai’s villa now housed others who were harmonious, happy, courteous, and proper. The maids and butlers had all been replaced, with deep loyalty between masters and servants. He was like a vagrant who had mistakenly wandered into someone else’s castle. After an awkward five-day stay in that warm, hospitable villa, he fully realized he truly couldn’t go back.
That child had filled the house with books he once read, including all his books about memory palaces.
The child’s aptitude was poor. Li Jinyu only needed to read two sentences to know his memory and logic weren’t very good. He needed focused training and high-intensity concentration exercises because he could never get past the third page of any book.
But he saw that Li Lingbai had written a sentence in the child’s notebook: “Son, believe that you are the best!”
Li Lingbai seemed like a different person now—gentle and graceful. This boy’s treatment was unprecedentedly good. Even Li Siyang had never enjoyed such treatment that this boy got all to himself.
On New Year’s Eve, they had a fierce argument, tensions rising high. Li Lingbai, fearing he might change his mind about donating blood to her son, had someone take his phone. That’s when Li Jinyu borrowed a phone at the hospital.
“Did you want me to come to Beijing to pick you up?”
Li Jinyu had finished his shower. His hair was wet and not dried. He had changed into a clean T-shirt and loose sweatpants, leaning against the sofa with his hands resting between his legs, complacently smiling and shaking his head: “No, I wanted to ask if you like tofu cake. I remember there used to be a place with really good tofu cake. My friends and I used to go there often, but I looked for it later and couldn’t find it. I was devastated.”
From all she’d pieced together, Ye Meng hugged his masculine-scented jacket and said, “Tsk, tsk, looks like you were a rich young master before. So the line of older sisters chasing you must have reached Xiangshan, right?”
He tilted his head and laughed, “Mm, many, but none as eager to stick to me as you.”
“You’re accusing me of throwing myself at you? Who initiated earlier? I’m changing my mind now. Sister won’t play with you anymore.” Ye Meng threw the jacket at him, making as if to leave.
Suddenly, her hand was firmly grasped. Ye Meng turned to look at him.
“I’ll throw myself at you, okay?” Li Jinyu said with his head lowered. His hair was dripping wet, with a few drops flowing down his cold Adam’s apple, slowly rolling down with his swallowing motion, disappearing into his collar—extremely sexy. He raised his head to meet her gaze and said with a depraved, bad-boy expression, “I thought you were with Nurse Little Gao. I was planning to steal you away.”
“Little brother, your thinking is problematic now,” Ye Meng immediately sat down, then looked angry and sulky at no one in particular. “I want to slap Jiang Luzhi now. Once a person is forced to lower their moral standards, there’s a first time and then countless times after. It’s like cheating—there’s only a difference between zero times and countless times. Are you addicted to being the other person? Baby?”
“Do you call all your boyfriends ‘baby’?”
“Do you need something special? I have many more: baobei-bei, baobei-bei, bei-baobao, honey, last love, muscle baby?”
Li Jinyu began drying his hair, and hearing “muscle baby” made him shudder slightly. He couldn’t be bothered to respond.
Ye Meng waited for him to dry his hair, leaning against the doorframe, racking her brain to think of how to change his WeChat name. Finally, she changed it to the very common “babybabybaby.”
Li Jinyu smirked, “You might as well change it to Justin Bieber.”
“Change it to honey honey honey for me.”
“No,” he said impassively, putting down the hairdryer and couldn’t help criticizing, “Too greasy.”
Ye Meng felt the only response she could give was an emoji that said “The other party doesn’t want to talk and has thrown a pile of elementary school assignments at you,” but unexpectedly, an add friend prompt popped up. Ye Meng suddenly realized: “Li Jinyu, did you delete me?”
“You just realized? Deleted you half a month ago,” Li Jinyu casually ruffled his hair, walked out, and picked up his phone from the sofa, coldly saying, “Been running wild these past two weeks, haven’t you? Not a single message to me?”
The WeChat interface showed hundreds of message notifications, mostly from groups. Li Jinyu barely looked at them, and he hadn’t checked personal messages either. No wonder he never replied to messages before—he simply didn’t look at them.
Ye Meng asked, “You don’t check WeChat at all?”
“What?” Li Jinyu was in the process of adding her back.
“Private messages.”
He went into the bedroom, saying without looking back: “Rarely.”
Ye Meng followed him, leaning against the bedroom doorframe, once again surveying the bedroom filled with his living atmosphere. In the corner stood an electronic keyboard. Two medium-sized bookcases were packed with various books. The bed and dresser made the narrow space feel crowded. Ye Meng had a particular aversion to men’s bedrooms, including her boyfriends’. She always felt they were unclean—dirty, messy, and unsafe. But perhaps because of who lived here, she surprisingly found it unexpectedly cozy, clean, and safe, with an impulse to pack her luggage and move in immediately.
“What if someone needs to find you urgently?”
“If someone needs me, wouldn’t they call?” Li Jinyu pulled out a thermal jacket from the wardrobe and put it on. “People who find me on WeChat either want to hook up or borrow money. Are you coming with me to the hospital, or going home?”
“Coming with you.”
Li Jinyu gave her a deep look from behind the wardrobe door. After a moment, he pulled out a long thermal jacket of the same style from the closet, tossed it to her, and said coldly: “Then wear this. It’s getting colder tonight. I’m physically weak and won’t take off my clothes for you.”
The old lady was recovering fairly well and was about to undergo her second round of chemotherapy. That evening, the doctor urgently called Li Jinyu for another discussion, indicating it was time to pay for the surgery.
But Li Jinyu wasn’t short of money now. He immediately transferred fifty thousand to the hospital’s inpatient account.
Li Lingbai had given him two hundred thousand, considering it payment for his blood donation. If not for this money, he wouldn’t have gone to Beijing. If that child had died, it wouldn’t have concerned him—it would have been Li Lingbai’s retribution. He thought heartlessly.
“Are you really with Badou now?” The old lady, with a piece of banana in her mouth not yet swallowed, seemed unable to believe her ears. She forcefully poked her ear, trying her utmost to hear every word Ye Meng said clearly.
Ye Meng nodded, “He proposed it.”
The old lady finally saw the light after a long wait. With tears of joy, she nodded repeatedly, so excited that her dentures almost flew out. “Good, good…”
Ye Meng always kept some reserve in her words and actions. Knowing the old lady’s intentions, she feared disappointing her, worried that mood swings might affect her recovery. So she couldn’t make promises too confidently and could only say, “We’ll see how it goes. If it doesn’t work out, Grandma, don’t worry. There will be someone more suitable for Li Jinyu.”
To her surprise, Li Jinyu walked in just in time to hear this. The old lady quickly swallowed the half-eaten banana, forcibly twisting the awkward atmosphere: “It will work out, it will! You’re both so beautiful and handsome. You two are perfect for each other, partners in crime.”
“…”
The two went downstairs to find somewhere for dinner. Ye Meng sat in the car, struggling with the navigation system for a while. Li Jinyu sat casually in the passenger seat, watching her work up a sweat, showing no intention of helping.
“Give me a hand, boyfriend.”
Li Jinyu looked back at her once, “I don’t understand this crappy car either.”
“…”
This was at least a two-hundred-thousand-yuan Buick Regal with matrix-style full-flashing LED headlights!
“I get it, you used to be a young master,” Ye Meng said. “So, may I ask, what would the young master like to eat? Salmon or steak? Or shall we go to the largest chain restaurant in town? I can get you a table in no time.”
“Impressive,” Li Jinyu replied with a perfunctory smile. “Let’s go to the chain restaurant then.”
Ye Meng stepped on the gas forcefully, sending the Buick racing onto the road. She drove like lightning through the rows of streetlights, narrow roads, and grand hotels, all left mercilessly behind as her determined gaze fixed straight ahead toward the most luxurious chain restaurant!
After seven or eight turns, five minutes later, the car finally stopped steadily at its destination. Li Jinyu looked out the window at the glowing red acrylic crystal signs at the entrance—”Fujian Shaxian Small Eats.”
“Is it too late to change to salmon?”
Just as they entered, they saw Qiao Maimei sitting in the corner. At her small table squeezed two men who appeared much older than her.
Qiao Maimei kept her head down the whole time. The two burly men were telling crude jokes. Seeing Ye Meng enter, their eyes fixated on her legs in her skirt with malicious lewdness.
The couple exchanged glances and, with perfect tacit understanding, found a table four or five tables away from them.
Sitting side by side, Ye Meng ordered two meals, and then secretly observed the situation behind them. She whispered in Li Jinyu’s ear, “Your sister seems to be under someone’s control.”
Li Jinyu lowered his head, pretending to look at the menu, smiled, and said casually: “It’s not some evil magic. No one can control her. They’re loan sharks.”
Ye Meng whispered, “Did you borrow fifty thousand from loan sharks for her?”
“No,” he sipped his tea and whispered in her ear, “She borrowed it herself. She’s crazy about becoming famous, borrowing money everywhere to pay marketing companies to shoot short videos.”
“Aren’t you going to do something?”
Li Jinyu tossed the menu aside, turned to glance at them, and observed coldly: “If I could, she wouldn’t be associating with these people today. I’ve told her hundreds of times, but she won’t listen. She insists on looking for trouble.”
Unexpectedly, they heard chairs moving behind them. They were preparing to leave with Qiao Maimei. Ye Meng then noticed that the two men were carrying various photography equipment, while Qiao Maimei followed them like a wandering soul, with a blank expression.
Ye Meng and Li Jinyu quickly exchanged glances, seeming to truly embody what the old lady said—heaven-made match, partners in crime.
Ye Meng suddenly flipped the table and stood up, screaming with an exaggerated expression, “Li Jinyu, you bastard!”
Li Jinyu lazily leaned back in his chair, legs spread, still pretending to play with his phone, with a player’s expression, cooperating with her: “What now? I didn’t touch that woman.”