Ruan Yu was momentarily speechless.
Indeed, face-to-face interactions were more prone to mishaps.
She quickly added, "I did my research! There's an article about you online."
It was a decent save, but the problem was, she had just dug herself into another hole.
Xu Huaisong smirked faintly. "Why research me?"
The plate of greasy rice cakes in Ruan Yu's palm suddenly felt scalding.
She blinked awkwardly a couple of times. "Just... basic background checks on the attorney handling my case. I also know Lawyer Liu is a local of Hangzhou." She then handed him the pristine white plate and a pair of silver chopsticks. "Eat while it's hot?"
The subject change was painfully forced. Xu Huaisong lowered his gaze, took the plate, and returned to the sofa.
Ruan Yu guiltily rubbed her nose and sat down across from him.
He ate with refined manners, picking up a piece of rice cake and chewing it slowly, his expression unreadable—impossible to tell whether he found it delicious or not.
Ruan Yu secretly pondered this, but the next moment, he swallowed the rice cake and looked up. "Do you want some?"
Had her gaze been too eager, too intense? She hastily waved her hands and averted her eyes, only to watch helplessly as he polished off over a dozen pieces.
Though his table manners were refined, his appetite certainly wasn’t.
Ruan Yu swallowed hard, took the empty plate back to the kitchen, and returned to find him flipping through the documents.
When he noticed her, he looked up and said, "I haven’t reviewed them yet."
"You..." She hesitated. "Have you been busy these past few days?"
"Mm. Didn’t check WeChat."
So he hadn’t ignored her messages on purpose. She had thought so—Xu Huaisong wouldn’t be that petty.
Ruan Yu relaxed a little. "Actually, the case isn’t urgent. The public outcry has mostly died down, and the trial is still a long way off. Even if we finish the anti-plagiarism comparison now, there’s no immediate use for it. You can go back and rest first."
Xu Huaisong didn’t respond, lowering his head to continue reading.
Having extended the courtesy, she didn’t press further. But half an hour later, she saw him close the file.
Xu Huaisong was truly struggling to keep his eyes open.
He understood the principle of sustainable development. There would be time ahead—no need to exhaust all resources now.
He closed his eyes. "Contact Liu Mao to pick me up. I need to sleep for a bit."
Ruan Yu said, "Sure," and sent Liu Mao a message. She was about to ask if he wanted to lie down on the adjacent couch, but when she looked up, he was already asleep again.
She crouched beside him and called softly, "Lawyer Xu?"
No response.
Being a lawyer was truly an energy-draining profession.
Well, might as well let him sleep like this. She fetched a freshly washed thin blanket from the bedroom and draped it over him, then returned to the opposite sofa to rest her own eyes. When she opened them again, Xu Huaisong was gone.
Damn, she had fallen asleep too.
Being an author was clearly another high-energy-drain profession.
She was about to check her phone for any messages from Xu Huaisong when her eyes landed on a note on the coffee table.
Two hastily scrawled words: "I’m gone."
Ruan Yu looked down at the thin blanket covering her and felt a faint sense of disorientation.
Xu Huaisong slept straight through until 11 p.m. at the hotel. Out of habit, he opened Ruan Yu’s Weibo.
Her account had restored comments and private messages two days prior, but she hadn’t posted any updates since. Unexpectedly, he now saw a new post from an hour ago.
Wenxiang: Just dropping by to apologize—"I Really Want to Whisper in Your Ear" will likely not be updated anymore. The JJ coins will be refunded upon expiration. This decision has nothing to do with the recent cyberbullying. Goodnight, everyone. [Moon]Xu Huaisong blinked faintly and scrolled down to the comments section.
It was a dense sea of exclamation marks, with desperate cries of "Nooo, author!" and questions asking "Why?"
Ruan Yu hadn't replied to anyone, but the top comment showed "Liked by the author," seemingly having gained her approval.
After reading that comment, Xu Huaisong set down his phone, opened the window to let in some air, then finally made a call: "Want to grab a drink?"
At 1 a.m., at a small table in a quiet bar near the hotel, Liu Mao struggled to keep his eyes open as he glanced at the now-empty surroundings and snatched the glass from Xu Huaisong's hand. "You call this going out for drinks without any conversation? Drinking in silence like this—have you considered that someone without jet lag might be exhausted?"
With his glass gone, Xu Huaisong simply reached for another. His eyes already held a hint of drunkenness, but his mind was still somewhat clear.
Swirling the liquor, he glanced at Liu Mao and said, "What do you want to talk about? Your blind date?"
That shut Liu Mao up.
The last time Xu Huaisong had been in Hangzhou, Liu Mao had explained how he and Ruan Yu had met. The result? Endless teasing from Xu Huaisong ever since.
Yet Xu Huaisong himself hadn’t said a single word about his own relationship with Ruan Yu.
Liu Mao sighed. "Fine, don’t talk then."
"If I tell you, don’t let your jaw drop."
Liu Mao scoffed. "What earth-shattering story could possibly make a nearly thirty-year-old man drop his jaw?"
Three minutes later, a loud "thud" echoed from the quiet table.
Liu Mao clutched his chin. "Even Romance in the Rain wasn’t as dramatic as you two."
Xu Huaisong turned his head away with a laugh, saying nothing.
Liu Mao sat stunned for a long moment before asking, "Even if you didn’t know how she felt back then, what was stopping you from confessing? Why didn’t you say anything? Were you really that determined to be the model student?"
Xu Huaisong fell silent, then laughed again. "You don’t know what my family situation was like back then, do you?"
Liu Mao hesitated before finally asking, "So what are you thinking now?"
"I don’t know."
Xu Huaisong was telling the truth.
Too many years had passed. Reality wasn’t like a TV drama, where a simple "Eight Years Later" caption could gloss over everything.
In truth, from the moment he first learned the truth until now, he had never truly sorted it out.
Coming back to China, playing mind games—each step felt like he was being pushed forward by some unseen force.
And he had simply given in without resistance.
After a long pause, he downed a glass of vodka and said something he would never admit while sober: "Liu Mao, this feeling is unbearable."
He wasn’t afraid that she had never liked him—he was afraid that she had.
What was there to fear about unrequited love? He had long since come to terms with it. The terrifying thing was looking back years later and being told—you could have been together.
But now, she had given the male lead in her novel the name "He Shiqian"—celebrating the passage of time, showing she could write about it all without a hint of pain.
Liu Mao thought for a moment, then asked, "Do you know what 'pseudo-love' is?"
Xu Huaisong glanced at him.
"A friend of mine once met a girl in college, and they hit it off right away—but neither of them ever confessed. Right before graduation, he heard from someone else that the girl had liked him back then. Sounds a lot like your situation. But guess what happened next?"Not receiving a response, he continued on his own, "Later, he pursued her relentlessly and somehow managed to get together with her. But in the end," he gestured with his fingers, "they broke up in less than two months. Because in reality, when they first took a liking to each other, they didn’t really know one another. Only after spending time together did they realize it wasn’t what they thought—turns out they’d both been living in their own imaginations the whole time."
Xu Huaisong lowered his eyes and drank even more fiercely.
"After that, my friend told me that when he was chasing that girl, he was completely driven by obsession, only thinking it would be a shame to let her slip away. It wasn’t until after the breakup that he realized it was just ‘false affection’ masked by ‘regret.’ But it was too late. What could have been a beautiful memory of unrequited love, with both sides preserving the best impressions of each other, ended up being ruined just like that..."
"What are you trying to say?" Xu Huaisong slammed his glass down with a "thud." "Trying to talk me out of it?"
Liu Mao choked. "That’s not what I meant, I was just saying—"
Before he could finish explaining, Xu Huaisong grabbed his suit jacket and strode out.
By the time Liu Mao paid the bill and chased after him, there was no sign of him outside.
Xu Huaisong hadn’t gotten a domestic phone number yet, so Liu Mao could only call him via WeChat. It took a while before the call connected.
"Where are you?" Liu Mao asked.
"In a taxi..."
"Going back to the hotel?"
Xu Huaisong’s voice sounded a bit muddled. After a long silence, he finally said, "Her place."
At two in the morning, Ruan Yu got up for a bathroom break. Maybe because she had slept during the day, she suddenly felt wide awake after returning to bed.
Unable to fall back asleep, she unlocked her phone and started scrolling through her friends’ updates.
She didn’t expect much activity at this hour, but upon refreshing, she saw a recently posted update.
Zhi Kun Liu Mao: Late-night bar, accompanying someone drowning their sorrows. No special feelings, just one word: vertical stroke, horizontal bend, horizontal, vertical, left-falling, right-falling, horizontal.
The post was accompanied by a photo—a row of vodka glasses, with a corner of a dimly lit table visible.
Nothing else.
Ruan Yu traced the strokes on her bedsheet, piecing together the character "sleepy." She thought to herself that Liu Mao seemed more interesting than he had appeared during their first meeting.
She quickly scrolled past the post, finding nothing else worth looking at, and switched to browsing Weibo.
After hesitating for days, she had made a decision a few hours earlier—she would no longer serialize Whisper in Your Ear . After all, the chapter about the spring dream had already given her a pile of embarrassing history. She couldn’t let it pile up even more.
So she had posted an apology announcement.
Ruan Yu clicked on the post, intending to see what readers had to say and reply to a few, when her eyes immediately landed on the top comment.
It seemed like a random comment from one of those bloggers who spam everywhere to gain followers. The user, whose ID was "Love’s Sweet Nothings," had written: People always have to look forward. Nothing is insurmountable—it’s just that some things can never be the same again.
Good heavens, how could she have liked such a cringeworthy comment? When had her finger slipped?
A shiver ran down her spine, goosebumps rising on her arms. She hurriedly unliked it.
Author’s Note:
Drunk Huaisong: You were the one who liked it, liked it just fine. Now you’ve unliked it—what am I supposed to do?
Friends, let’s keep accounts clear between brothers. These two chapters are today’s share. The next update will be tomorrow at 8 a.m. For those complaining it’s too little, take a look at this chapter’s title: There Will Be Time Ahead —we can’t drain the pond to catch all the fish.
Don’t forget to leave comments and claim your red packets!
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