Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Their revelry lasted until ten o’clock that night.

It was pouring rain by the time everyone left.

Eventually, only the three of us remained in the house.

Shi Wan’s face was flushed from the alcohol. She rested her head against Chu Kuo’s shoulder, looking small and docile.

As her actual boyfriend, I might as well have been air.

“I’ll take you to a hotel,” I said.

“I’m not leaving.”

Chu Kuo’s voice was cold. “That room is mine.”

“You said it.”

“No matter what, there will always be a room for me in your home.”

I stood there like an unnecessary backdrop.

Ignored.

Shi Wan went quiet, then looked to me as if asking for help.

“Let him stay.”

“The rain’s going to get worse.”

“Just one night, okay?”

She looked at me, her gaze flickering, guilt written across her face.

“Ah Yu, I’m sorry.”

I pressed my lips together, walked past them, and went upstairs.

I slept restlessly that night.

The downpour lasted until morning. In the middle of the night, a thunderclap split the air, the tremendous boom jolting me awake.

Instinctively, I reached out to pull the person beside me into my arms.

But I caught nothing.

All my fingers touched was a patch of icy cold.

A thin strip of light seeped in from under the door.

I eased it open a crack and looked out.

The living room was brightly lit.

Chu Kuo, an apron tied around his waist, carried out a bowl of noodles and set it on the coffee table. Wisps of steam rose in curling threads.

Like the man of the house.

A doting smile tugged at his lips as he spoke gently. “You’re still the same.”

“Thunder wakes you up and you get scared. You only feel settled when someone’s with you.”

Shi Wan stood to the side, smiling.

Chu Kuo wrapped his arms around her from behind.

I saw Shi Wan go rigid for an instant.

But she didn’t push him away.

The warm light fell over them, leaking a sense of cozy intimacy for no reason at all.

Like lovers no outsider could ever squeeze between.

I met Shi Wan when I was twenty-two.

After graduating, I joined her company.

My desk was right outside her office. Whenever her door wasn’t fully shut, I’d steal glances through that narrow crack.

At that face-so similar, seventy percent the same as the one that had appeared in my dreams countless times.

They were really, really alike, especially the dimples that appeared at the corners of her mouth when she smiled.

Later, my coworker Song Zhi caught me.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when he slapped an iced coffee against my cheek.

When I turned, he met my eyes. “Brother Shen,” he called.

He chuckled, handed me the coffee, and spoke in a breezy, joking tone. “Don’t go falling for President Shi.”

“There’s someone in her heart already.”

I blinked.

He leaned in, eager to gossip. “President Shi has a first love she can’t forget.”

“No idea how many years they were together exactly, but I heard they knew each other back in their student days.”

“When the company was just getting off the ground, they were still together. He’d come by sometimes to bring President Shi meals.”

“Once, in the middle of a meeting, President Shi answered a call. They said he was sick, and she left right away.”

“A total workaholic like her, ditching work for her boyfriend.”

“Pretty romantic, huh?”

Cradling the coffee, I asked softly, “What happened after that?”

“They broke up.”

“I don’t know the details. Just… President Shi probably still can’t let him go.”

“She even keeps his photo on her desk.”

Song Zhi shrugged, smiling. “That first love of hers probably hasn’t moved on either.”

“Loving each other but not being able to be together-it’s like that ‘Bad Ending’ aesthetic you see in novels.”

I froze.

Just then, Shi Wan’s office door opened, and her secretary stepped out. “Shen Yu, President Shi wants to see you.”

When I went in, Shi Wan was reading through documents. She looked up when she saw me and smiled.

Two tiny dimples surfaced at the corners of her mouth.

My gaze landed on the framed photo propped on her desk. I stared at it, my mind full of Song Zhi’s earlier look of regret.

“…Shen Yu, will you be my boyfriend?” Shi Wan suddenly said.

My thoughts snapped, and I answered on reflex. “Okay.”

Only then did I come back to myself-straight into Shi Wan’s eyes.

She held the documents and looked at me, her gaze like a quiet, deep ocean.

Then her smile bloomed again, gentle and strangely tolerant.

My heart detonated.

All I could hear was the pounding in my ears.

It was the first time since that person died that I felt like I was still alive.