An Su waited for Fu Shu to pat her head gently the way he always had. She knew he would never do that with his late wife or with Ji Meng. It was something he only did with Xiao Jie, with An Su, and with An Zi Yan when he was young. Every time Fu Shu patted her head, it hurt because she knew the gesture meant he did not see her as a woman, and yet whenever his hand rested on her hair, she still could not help clinging to it.
Her waiting came to nothing. Fu Shu stayed two meters away, showing no intention of coming closer. “Su’er, I’m serious about Ji Meng. I…” An Su covered her ears. “I don’t want to hear it! I don’t want to hear it! Talk about something else. Do you remember when we were little? One New Year I fell in the garden, and you picked me up so easily. There were fireworks outside and music inside. You carried me across the garden and I felt like I was your bride.” Fu Shu had been An Su’s addiction for years. Just a little of him, only a little, had always been enough to ease the ache. But now Fu Shu had joined An Zi Yan in trying to take that dependence away from her.
“What you want, I can’t give you.”
“Why can’t you? You can. We can try. If it truly doesn’t work, I’ll give up. How can you know without trying?”
“I know.” Fu Shu cut her off. His voice was not as cold as An Zi Yan’s, but its calmness hurt even more. “I don’t love you. I can’t love you. If my presence or anything I do by accident keeps giving you expectations or the wrong idea, I’ll keep my distance from you from now on. Su’er, don’t waste your feelings on me. It isn’t worth it.”
He doesn’t love you.
I don’t love you.
Stop saying it. All of you, stop saying what she already knows. An Su no longer even had the strength to be angry. “I want to be alone. Let me be quiet for a while.”
“I…” Mai Ding wanted to stay with her, but he was still a man, and tonight there were far too many things he wanted to say that could not be said.
“Let’s go.” An Zi Yan said only those two words before walking out. Fu Shu looked at An Su for a few seconds, then turned away. Mai Ding held the door. “An Su, I…”
“Don’t say anything, Mai Ding. I don’t want to hear a single word right now. I just want to be alone. Don’t worry. I won’t do anything foolish. I’m not that stupid.” It was almost as though the moment Fu Shu left, pieces of An Su’s old self slowly began returning.
Downstairs from the apartment building, Mai Ding watched tiny insects circle endlessly around the bright streetlamp. He turned toward Fu Shu. “Is there really no possibility?” Fu Shu gave a rare, helpless, bitter smile. “I’ve asked myself that question many times, but there has only ever been one answer. My answer now is the same one I gave Yan back then.” Mai Ding turned toward An Zi Yan. His face showed nothing, but he was not indifferent to An Su. He had once hoped, just as Mai Ding had, that Fu Shu might someday give a different answer.
“Yan, are you really not going to order me to do it? You know I would listen.”
“You know you’re terrible at joking, right?” An Zi Yan caught Mai Ding by the wrist and pulled him toward the car. Once inside, Mai Ding looked through the window at Fu Shu, who was still standing beneath the apartment building without any hurry to leave. Mai Ding saw loneliness there. Important people had left that man one after another, and among the few family members he had left, he now had to choose to hurt one of them. Staying with someone out of pity was not noble. It was dishonest.
A person’s thoughts could change in an instant. Only moments earlier, Mai Ding had wanted to beg Fu Shu to be with An Su. Now he hoped someone would come along and ease Fu Shu’s loneliness. Mai Ding thought that person might already have appeared, and it was not An Su. It was Ji Meng.
“An Zi Yan,” Mai Ding called softly.
“What?”
“I’m thinking that I’m really lucky you love me. I’m lucky we ended up together. Is that selfish?” Mai Ding’s voice blended with the sound of the moving car. The thought felt almost like gloating over somebody else’s pain, yet he could not stop himself.
After what happened between An Su and Fu Shu, Mai Ding finally understood that love was something you could encounter but never demand. To be with the person you loved was so, so… happy? Joyful? Fulfilled? What word was he supposed to use? Every word seemed right, and none of them seemed enough. There was another word. Truly, being with the person you loved was simply so very beautiful.
An Zi Yan reached his right hand toward Mai Ding, and Mai Ding took it. His fingers carried the warmth Mai Ding adored. “Why are you using the word ‘lucky’?”
“Because I’ve always had terrible luck. I’ve never won a big prize in the lottery. No matter how hard I studied, I never made the top ten. There are lots of things like that. Why would you love me? Why would you agree to be with me? It has to be a miracle. It has to be some kind of fairy tale. Otherwise…”
An Zi Yan tightened his fingers and did not let Mai Ding continue. “Mai Ding, being with you wasn’t an accident. I wanted to be with you. I’ve never bothered thinking about troublesome things like reasons. I wanted to be with you. Remember that.” Mai Ding had already started nodding before An Zi Yan finished. Looking at him, Mai Ding could not help thinking that An Su would also find someone who could finish writing her love story with her. She would. For now, she only needed to hurt for a little while.
The word give up was far easier to write than to live. An Su did not believe she could do it. She had secretly followed Fu Shu for five days already. She hated behaving like a stalker, but she could not make herself stop. Fu Shu had not met Ji Meng during the past two days, which made An Su feel a little better. She wondered whether Fu Shu felt guilty toward her. At her lowest point, a reckless thought even crossed her mind: if she hurt herself, would his guilt deepen enough to make him stay?
When Ji Meng finally appeared in An Su’s sight, An Su gripped the steering wheel angrily and desperately wanted to know what the two of them were saying.
Ji Meng looked around the café where she had first met Fu Shu. Not much time had passed, and the place itself had hardly changed. The only difference was that this time Fu Shu was the one waiting for her. Ji Meng tossed her bag onto the chair and ordered coffee, still wearing her usual faintly mocking expression. “I was starting to think you might actually be serious about me.”
“Are you this slow at work too?”
Ji Meng laughed, genuinely laughed. What kind of magic did this man possess that he could keep making her smile? “How am I supposed to know you’re not using me for your young master?” Her bluntness often made people around her awkward. Fu Shu merely took a sip of coffee. “If I handled work that way, I’d have to sacrifice my virtue far too many times every year.”
“I remember telling you I’m not interested in handsome men.”
“You seem to enjoy calling me handsome.”
Ji Meng studied Fu Shu’s perfectly composed expression. He was very confident, and there was something in his gaze that suggested he regarded the two of them as almost inevitable. Deep down, she knew it too. Even if it was not now, she would probably end up with the man in front of her eventually. She did not resist the thought, nor did she react with the girlish shyness or excitement that would have felt out of place for her age. She simply accepted it calmly.