Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Fu Chengbi was her fiancé; they had been engaged for three years.

It was a business marriage.

Three years ago, Fu Chengbi’s father died suddenly in a car accident, leaving the heavy burden of a massive conglomerate on Fu Chengbi’s shoulders without a single word of instruction.

He returned to the country to convene a board meeting and take over the family business.

At that time, Ah Yao would occasionally attend board meetings on behalf of her father.

Before she attended that particular board meeting, her father had told her, “The Fu Family is a choice cut of meat that we are definitely going to devour. I’ve had my eye on Chengxi Group’s foreign trade logistics line for a long time. If it weren’t for Fu Xi’s death in that accident, I wouldn’t have been able to get a taste of this prize in my lifetime. I heard his son is taking over the group. He’s only twenty-three, barely a man. What kind of waves can a green boy like him possibly make?”

“Ah Yao, go and scout things out for me. See what kind of temperament and character this new heir has.”

So Zhan Yao went, and that was when she met Fu Chengbi.

“Ah Zhu, you must find it strange-why I would fall in love with Fu Chengbi.”

“The first time I met Fu Chengbi was actually when I was sixteen. After you disappeared, I was tormented for a while before being sent back. Back then, I was timid and weak. I didn’t know how to fight back even when I was being bullied. I could only call your name in my heart every day, gritting my teeth and enduring it in silence. I comforted myself by saying that if I just endured, it would pass.”

Until the day she was locked in a pitch-black equipment room.

Because of her experience being kidnapped as a child, she was terrified of the dark.

She cried, screamed, and called for help in that dark room, her hands swollen from pounding on the door, but no one heard her. No one came to save her.

Even I wasn’t there anymore.

Until Fu Chengbi followed the sound and smashed open the door to that equipment room.

He came toward her, backlit, looking like a god descending from the heavens to rescue her. He smiled at her reassuringly in the darkness and said, “Student, crying isn’t going to solve the problem.”

This memory seemed to be one of the few sources of warmth in her mind. A thin smile appeared at the corners of her mouth. Dazed and full of longing, she said to me:

“Ah Zhu, do you know? That cramped, suffocating trunk has always been the abyss of my nightmares.”

“But the moment Fu Chengbi pushed open that door, reached out his hand to me, and told me not to be afraid, I felt as if he had traveled through eight years of time to rescue my eight-year-old self from that tiny trunk.”

After that, she started looking for him. By the time she finally managed to find out his name, he had already gone abroad to study.

It wasn’t until years later, at that board meeting, that they met again.

She had stood outside the conference room, staring blankly at the back of the tall man who had paused by the floor-to-ceiling window to gaze at the scenery outside.

When he heard her and turned around, his familiar features overlapped with those from that night nine years ago. With bold brows and eyes like stars, he smiled and reached out a hand toward her. He said, “You must be Zhan Yao. I’m Fu Chengbi. Welcome.”

He didn’t remember her at all, nor did he remember that casual rescue from nine years prior.

Outside the wide windows of the conference room, skyscrapers rose from the ground like bamboo shoots after a rain. The staggered glass-curtain buildings reflected the dazzling, brilliant sunlight.

Zhan Yao stared at him intently, lost in thought, and then slowly began to smile. It was a gentle, nostalgic smile as she said, “Hello, Fu Chengbi. I am Zhan Yao.”

*I’ve looked for you for so, so long, and I’ve waited for you for so, so long.*

This was a sentence she never said aloud, and one that Fu Chengbi would never have the chance to hear.