The air at dawn always carried an indescribable crispness. I stood beneath the streetlight, agitatedly smoking three cigarettes in succession.
On the fourth cigarette, I saw Cheng Xia’s car.
In countless stories, he had always appeared in my field of vision like this, bringing intense joy, desire, and destruction.
Now he still did the same, wearing only an ash-gray coat, cool and upright, walking toward me and asking, “What happened?”
I said, “At tomorrow’s meeting, only you and your team have architectural backgrounds, right?”
“What’s wrong?”
I took a deep breath and said, “The local compression calculation under high axial load columns is wrong. It doesn’t meet standards. The entire model needs to be redone, but we don’t have enough time…”
He froze slightly. “How could you make such a basic mistake?”
“Actually, the client mainly looks at the concept. This problem can definitely be solved later. For now, please don’t bring it up…”
“But if the design can’t be implemented on the ground, even the best ideas are just waste paper. You do engineering work; you can’t possibly not understand this.”
I said in a low voice, “I’m begging you this once.”
He didn’t speak. Cold wind whirled and lifted dead leaves with a rustling sound.
“In what capacity are you begging me? As an ex-girlfriend, or as an ordinary friend?”
His voice could be described as gentle. Then slowly, he moved closer to me, gazing into my eyes and asking, “Dongxue, what can you give me?”
The distance was too close.
I only felt something deep within my body roaring thunderously. All my senses became exceptionally clear. I could even see deep into his pupils, where there was a helpless version of me.
“What do you want?”
“Do you really not know what I want?” His voice became even lower and softer. Between breaths was the scent of citrus. “Why did I come back, why did I have Yu Shixuan participate in this project—”
I looked at him in shock, feeling my entire body begin to tremble. “What do you mean?”
After our reunion, we hadn’t had much contact.
He seemed completely healed, his whole person gentle and bright, with added composure and rigor that came from years of precipitation.
I thought we could continue to get along like this, like old friends, treating everything from the past as a big dream.
But what exactly did he mean?
“We ended long ago, Cheng Xia,” I said. “Things that are broken can’t be reconnected. You have your life, and I have mine.”
He didn’t say anything more, just smiled and said, “Let’s go, let’s get breakfast.”
He turned to open the car door. I didn’t move.
He smiled and said, “Then should I be the first to ask about the local compression issue?”
“That’s a separate matter!”
I jumped into the car in two or three steps.
Cheng Xia neither said he would help me nor said he wouldn’t. During breakfast, he deftly deflected my every attempt to press him, asking if I wanted to eat something else, and if not, we’d leave.
I ate steamed buns, ate tofu pudding, ate fried dough sticks, ate fried pastries, ate plain noodles…
In the end, I discovered that he had become too cunning now. Nothing could be extracted from this old fox’s mouth. I could only clutch my stomach and run off in exasperation.
All the way back, I struggled with how to phrase things, how to tell Yu Shixuan more gently so she wouldn’t panic completely and could calmly get through today’s meeting.
Unexpectedly, when I got home, she was already awake, eating breakfast drowsily while telling me, “Principal Wu said they have something going on over there. The meeting has been postponed to Wednesday.”
I was stunned for a moment, then threw down my bag and pounced on her bewildered face. “Do you know what a basic mistake you made?! I’m going to beat you to death!”
“Don’t touch me, your hands are cold! Cold enough to kill someone!”
In any case, we got several more days. Yu Shixuan was able to properly revise the draft.
While calmly recalculating the data, she lectured me, “Why are you panicking? They don’t understand construction, and Cheng Xia won’t make things difficult for us.”
“How do you know he won’t?”
“Doesn’t he still like you?”
I jumped up like a cat whose tail had been stepped on and said, “Don’t talk nonsense!”
“What’s wrong with that? Old lovers are meant to be used,” she said.
“What kind of twisted values are those!”
“You don’t think using men is particularly weak and shameless, do you?” She laughed, still staring at the computer screen. “When men use any means necessary, they’re called heroes. When women use beauty and emotions, they’re called cheap? Bullshit. Those are all lies men tell. If you ask me, use whatever you have.”
I felt irritated and didn’t want to hear her nonsense. “Anyway, Cheng Xia and I have nothing to do with each other anymore. You focus on your work properly. If you make this kind of basic mistake again, I really will beat you.”
Yu Shixuan rolled her eyes and continued working.
During this period, because I frequently requested leave and my relationship with the assistant had become very strained, Mr. Wang was already very dissatisfied with me, often hinting and jabbing at me with his words.
“Manager Ren is quite a character, huh? Treating the company like a hotel—come when you want, leave when you want.”
“This is my small broken business, but it just can’t accommodate people with divided loyalties. If you can work, work. If you can’t, get lost.”
Honestly, the resentment in my heart was as heavy as a ghost dead for ten years.