Xu Qiaoyin smiled. She added Yan Heqing on WeChat, transferred the money, and said with some emotion, "I have a son, and he's just as tall and handsome as you."
Yan Heqing finished the rest of his milk, his eyes crinkling into a smile. "My mother is just like you, gentle and beautiful."
Xu Qiaoyin hadn't been truly happy in a long time. After installing the surveillance cameras, she cut a very sweet cantaloupe and insisted that Yan Heqing eat a piece before letting him leave.
As Yan Heqing stepped out of the apartment, she slightly raised her eyes and looked at the brightly lit commercial building across the street. Lu Muchi's company was on the top floor.
Looking away, Yan Heqing lowered the umbrella and turned to go home.
Lu Muchi didn't go to the company; he was drinking with some friends at a bar.
He summoned several young masters and princesses, knowing he liked men. The most handsome young master among them kept sticking to him, and Lu Muchi accepted them all. He put his arm around the young master's soft waist, put his feet on the table, and held a cigarette between his fingers, which was clearly in a bad mood.
His friend, while flirting with the princess, kept glancing in his direction, "Is Young Master Lu thinking about the Lin Family's young master?"
Mentioning Lin Fengzhi, Lu Muchi's eyes turned cold. They hadn't been in contact since the night of the wedding banquet, and Lu Muchi hadn't intended to contact him either.
At this moment, the young master clung to him, one hand already reaching down to Lu Muchi's lower body. Lu Muchi abruptly withdrew his hand, pushed the young master away, and strode out.
Everyone in the private room was stunned, and the young master who bumped into the back of the sofa looked particularly aggrieved.
Lu Muchi was fine, but he suddenly found this kind of life very boring. It was all about drinking and going to bed, and he was also tired of the strong perfume on the young master.
As he left the bar, before he even reached the parking lot, swirling snowflakes landed on his face. A few melted at the tip of his nose, leaving a faint, pure scent, even carrying a hint of plum blossom fragrance.
Lu Muchi around and saw a plum tree with extremely lush blossoms beside him. The streetlights shone on the tree, giving the petals a faint halo and releasing a delicate plum fragrance.
For some reason, he thought of Yan Heqing.
Suddenly, I had a destination.
Chapter 35
Yan Heqing came out of the subway station. The snow was already falling heavily. There were still three weeks until the Chinese New Year. The trees along the street were already decorated with small red lanterns, which were lit up and swayed in the snowflakes, looking particularly cute.
Yan Heqing suddenly remembered his childhood.
Back then, there seemed to be a pomegranate tree in our house, so lush that its branches and leaves almost reached the ground. In late spring and early summer, the tree would be covered with these bright red lantern-shaped flowers.
When the weather gets hot, Mom would move two rocking chairs under the tree, cook a pot of mint and mung bean soup, and take him and Lin Fengzhi to cool off under the tree.
Then he hummed a song he didn't recognize.
It was so gentle, like a gently flowing stream. He fell asleep to that song, drinking refreshing mint and mung bean water to cool him down.
I was sleeping soundly. When I opened my eyes again, the sunset had spread its glow across the yard, and my father had come home.
Sometimes they would bring back a piece of meat, a few fresh vegetables, a bag of fresh fruit, and a packet of color-changing candy that kids loved back then.
Sometimes it's a very fragrant and sweet little cake, the kind that's just been fried out of the fryer on the street, which Dad rushes back so that Mom and the others can eat it hot. Dad always runs back and forth, covered in sweat.
Yan Heqing once vowed to remember it deeply.
But as time went by, those memories, which were as dazzling as rainbows, gradually faded into black and white in his mind.
He couldn't even remember what his parents looked like.
The only thing that was clear was the fire, burning fiercely.
The woman, who had been unconscious, suddenly woke up, hugged him and Lin Fengzhi were crying, and rushed out of the fire.
Not a single word.
The woman lay quietly on the ground, her once beautiful face now obscured like thick black smoke obscuring the sky; nothing was visible anymore.
Only he and Lin Fengzhi survived.
Everything in the house was burned to the ground; not even a single photograph remained.
A glint of light flickered in Yan Heqing's eyes. He looked away, opened his umbrella, and like every other pedestrian who had just exited the subway and was rushing home for dinner, he walked forward with the crowd. Near the university town, there were many college students selling flowers and trinkets at the subway entrance.
Most of them are roses.
Yan Heqing squatted down and searched for a while before finding a bucket of gladiolus, some white and some light purple.
Yan Heqing picked one of each. In his hazy memory, his mother often wore beautiful cheongsams, but he forgot the colors—perhaps white, light purple, or perhaps pink, dark green...
After choosing the flowers, Yan Heqing paid for them. The shopkeeper was about to wrap them in newspaper for him, but Yan Heqing had already left with the flowers.
Lu Muchi up to Yan Heqing's building; the windows on the third floor were dark.
He frowned deeply; why hadn't he returned yet, so late?
He took out his cigarette case, lit a cigarette, and reclined his seat. His field of vision was much lower now. Snowflakes kept falling and hitting the windshield. His free fingers curled slightly as he irritably tapped the armrest.
As the cigarette burned out, just as Lu Muchi's patience was wearing thin and he was about to take out his phone to make a call, he suddenly stopped.
Through the windshield, which was covered with No. 1 Primary School layer of snow, a quiet figure gradually approached.
The dim streetlights illuminated the slender young man, who held an umbrella in one hand and two flowers in the other. He walked past Lu Muqi's car through the swirling snow. Lu Muchi turned his head and watched Yan Heqing enter the apartment building.
Lu Muchi remained in a sideways position for a long time without moving until the lights on the third floor came on and he felt pain in his fingers. Only then Lu Muchi look down and realize that the cigarette had burned his buttocks and poked his fingers.
On the third floor, Yan Heqing turned on the light, changed his shoes, took the gladiolus into the kitchen, then took an empty bottle, filled it with water, and put the gladiolus into the bottle.
He recognized Lu Muchi's car; it was downstairs.
But he remained calm and composed.
In the original story, Lu Muchi discovered that Lin Fengzhi loved Lu Lin, and went on a rampage for months, abusing him every day until he was almost dead.
Now that a week has passed and he's only come to see him, Yan Heqing can't be sure if his manipulation of Lu Muchi has had an effect.