Dinner ended amid idle chatter. Mai Ding did not even want to say goodbye to that couple, because they had already started shamelessly making out in front of the restaurant again. Indecent. Mai Ding followed An Zi Yan into the car and fastened his seat belt. As they drove home, Mai Ding gave Zhou Ge and Ellen one last contemptuous glance through the rearview mirror. Then something in the reflection made him stare. To make sure, he quickly lowered the window and leaned his head out to look back. Cars roared past beside them, and An Zi Yan grabbed the back of Mai Ding’s collar and hauled him inside.
“You don’t want your head anymore?”
“I just thought I saw one of my coworkers and wanted to make sure.” Mai Ding frowned slightly as he thought. Had that been Gao Guo? The woman beside him had looked vaguely familiar. Maybe Mai Ding had seen wrong. An Zi Yan lightly pushed his head. “You’re not allowed to think about other people.” He did not like Mai Ding being with him while his mind was occupied by someone else.
“He’s just a coworker,” Mai Ding explained.
“Even less allowed.”
“Didn’t we agree to trust each other? You should have some confidence in me about this.”
“What does that have to do with anything? You spend most of your time at work now, so all your time after work belongs to me. Understand?” An Zi Yan’s tone was forceful and allowed no refusal.
“So basically, you’re just too possessive.”
“Understand?” He simply repeated the question. Mai Ding was reluctant only with his mouth. “I understand!” His heart, on the other hand, was perfectly willing.
The weekend came next. Mai Ding had been looking forward to a good rest, only to receive a last-minute notice from Sister Hua that they had to work overtime. His mood took quite a hit. Of course, nobody felt cheerful about working on Sunday. It was like a student having a long-awaited holiday suddenly canceled. When he reached the office, everyone else looked even gloomier than he did. Mai Ding had originally wanted to ask Gao Guo whether the man he had seen that night really was him, but then worried Gao Guo probably did not want other people knowing about his private life with his girlfriend. Gao Guo, as usual, merely assigned Mai Ding work with an expression that said he wanted nothing to do with him, so Mai Ding could not bring himself to ask.
Probably because everyone wanted to finish as quickly as possible and go home early, the work ended sooner than expected. Just as Mai Ding was about to leave, Sister Hua pulled him aside with a mysterious expression. She seemed to have heard some new piece of gossip from another coworker and could not wait to spread it further. Looking left and right to make sure the manager was not around, she whispered to Mai Ding, “I heard the manager’s wife has another man on the side.”
Mai Ding had little interest in gossip, but for some inexplicable reason, the image of Gao Guo with his girlfriend that night flashed through his mind. The woman had been partly blocked by Gao Guo at the time, so Mai Ding had not seen her clearly.
“It’s probably just people making things up.”
“You never know.” Once Sister Hua got started, she could not stop and kept chattering away. Mai Ding secretly glanced at Gao Guo nearby. Gao Guo looked completely unconcerned as he packed his things and left. Mai Ding blamed himself for overthinking it.
After finally escaping Sister Hua, Mai Ding returned home. The apartment was quiet. There was no television and no piano. Was An Zi Yan still asleep? Or had he gone out? Mai Ding softened his footsteps and went farther inside, only to see something unbelievable. An Zi Yan was sitting on the piano bench with its front legs tilted off the floor, one foot braced against the ground as he gently rocked it. He held a book in his left hand and a pen in his right. Sunlight poured unhindered through the clear window, leaving An Zi Yan and the piano together in a picture half bright and half shadow. The pen spun between his fingers. The expression on his face, somewhere between serious and languid, was one Mai Ding had always been drawn to. Sometimes An Zi Yan wore that expression while playing the piano. Sometimes he wore it while looking at Mai Ding.
Set the racing heart aside for a moment. An Zi Yan was studying. What a rare sight. In Mai Ding’s eyes, he was someone who did not like studying, was frequently late, did everything casually, and stood a very, very long way from being a model student. Besides, his grades were good even when he behaved terribly, so he had no need to study. Come to think of it, Mai Ding had recently seen An Zi Yan borrowing books from the library quite often. He had never thought much of it and assumed they were books unrelated to school, the sort An Zi Yan usually read.
“Y-you-you-you… what happened to you?” Mai Ding finally could not resist asking. An Zi Yan barely reacted. “Reading.” Mai Ding walked over and tilted his head to look at the cover. “This doesn’t look like something you’d read.”
An Zi Yan shrugged and said absentmindedly, “The company I’m applying to only recruits graduating students. The interview is strict, so I need to prepare before graduation.”
“What? You’re not planning to rely on your parents? You’re not going to become one of those people who live off Mom and Dad?” Mai Ding exclaimed, stunned by this information he had only just learned. The things he said without thinking were often harsher than the things he said deliberately, probably the result of years of exposure to An Zi Yan. Only then did Mai Ding realize that An Zi Yan must have made plans well in advance, which was why he had never considered an off-campus internship. If Mai Ding had not come home early today, he would never have discovered it. Unhappy, he asked, “Why did you hide something this important from me?”
“Because I wanted to surprise you.” His tone sounded nowhere near as considerate as the words themselves. Was Mai Ding supposed to be moved? He had hidden it just so he could surprise Mai Ding when he joined the company after graduation. Only an idiot would be moved!
“You were just afraid I’d nag you, ask a million questions, and annoy you, so you couldn’t be bothered telling me!” That was the truth. Absolutely!
“That was a small part of the reason too.”
“I bet it was the only reason!”
Caught out, An Zi Yan lifted his head. “So what if it was?” The Mai Ding who had been so aggressive a moment earlier was immediately left speechless. There really was nothing he could do about it.
“It’s a big company, right? You’ll definitely get in. Then what am I supposed to do with the sense of superiority I just built up? Damn you.” Mai Ding knew that if An Zi Yan wanted to get into a company, he would. Mai Ding had been hoping An Zi Yan would go work for his parents so he could seize the chance to mock him. He thought that, yet he still could not hide how pleased he was, and he could not stop himself from worrying either. With An Zi Yan’s personality, what would happen once he started working at a company? If his boss scolded him, would he kill his boss? If a coworker offended him, would he kill the coworker? Would An Zi Yan end up killing the entire company?
An Zi Yan closed his book and stood, placing the pen behind Mai Ding’s ear. His words interrupted Mai Ding’s horrifying fantasy. “What do you need a sense of superiority for? Having me for the rest of your life should be enough.”
“You think my ambitions can be satisfied by being your kept man?”
“Kept man? At most, you’re a temp worker.”
“I don’t even qualify as a long-term worker?!”