On a calm afternoon after my class, Yu Yin called, expressing her desire to talk and asking me to meet her at the campus Starbucks. She added, “Don’t tell him. He doesn’t allow me to see you.”
“I understand.”
Compared to the Starbucks in the business district, the campus one was quiet, with fewer customers. Many students were quietly reading, browsing the internet, or writing reports.
Yu Yin and I ordered two lattes and chose a seat by the window. Her face bore a faint smile, her gaze on the watch strap on my wrist, neither happy nor sad.
Scenes of a girlfriend meeting her lover are common in romance novels, so I was no longer surprised. However, experiencing it myself left me feeling panicked and ashamed. I glanced down at my coffee, avoiding her eyes.
“I really admire him sometimes…” she said with genuine admiration. “He can control any type of woman in the palm of his hand.”
Her statement was absolute. If she weren’t saying it to me, I would have applauded.
It was ruthless, like an arrow piercing straight through the heart, leaving it wounded. I wanted to retort: I’m not sure how many women Ye Zhengchen could control because, when he was with me, he had no mind to control anyone else.
Given my status as a third party, I knew to keep a low profile. I lowered my eyes and said submissively, “I’m sorry, I’m foolish and didn’t know he had a fiancée.”
“Fiancée?” Yu Yin suddenly laughed. “Did he tell you that?”
I looked up, surprised. “Isn’t that right?”
Her mocking smile told me: Of course not.
I was confused. Could Ye Zhengchen have lied to me? No, he wouldn’t. Not this time.
Many memories are buried in dust. I suddenly felt nostalgic for that low-rise apartment in Osaka, my sincere friends, and the cherry blossom tree blooming outside the balcony, its petals covering the floor.
That year, that season… The petals swayed in the wind and rain, bringing back a love that felt brief yet brilliant. In those three years, he looked forward to time passing quickly, anticipating his freedom, wanting to hold her hand and embrace her, revealing how much he missed her and what he couldn’t say.
However, time would not stop, nor would emotions. Even if he could hold her hand, the words “I miss you” would have long lost their meaning. The doorbell rang, and Ye Zhengchen pulled the curtains, blocking the light outside.
The door opened, and standing at the entrance was Yu Yin, wearing a deep purple cinched short dress, looking elegant and noble.
“Xiao Wu only got two bottles,” he stated flatly, bending down to hand the wine to Yu Yin. His figure stood at the doorway, showing no intention of moving aside.
Yu Yin glanced at the production date and smiled. “Thank you!”
Ye Zhengchen didn’t want to explain to her how much Xiao Wu had struggled to get them. “You’re welcome.”
“Where were you last night?” Yu Yin asked.
“Hotel,” he answered naturally.
“Drinking with friends?”
“Sleeping with a woman.”
The corridor fell silent, even breathing gradually subsiding. After a moment of silence, she laughed softly. “You don’t need to deliberately provoke me.”
“I have no reason to provoke you. I’m telling the truth.”
“With her?” She smiled, a hint of melancholy in her laughter. “Bao Bing?”
“Yes,” he confirmed, not bothering to deny it.
For Ye Zhengchen, fabricating lies was a waste of effort. It was too exhausting. In this lifetime, perhaps Bao Bing was the only woman worth deceiving. Unfortunately, she hated being deceived most.
She could never understand – the more meticulously a man crafts a lie, the more he cares, to the point of fear.
Yu Yin took a deep breath, her tone calm. “I heard the secretary of the deputy mayor of Nanzhou City was arrested for suspected corruption. If I’m not mistaken, wasn’t he her fiancé?”
Ye Zhengchen lowered his head, unbuttoning the cuffs of his shirt, rolling up his sleeves.
His silence was clear, yet Yu Yin persistently asked, “Don’t you think these methods are despicable?”
He looked up and laughed carelessly. “Don’t you get tired of seeing through everything?”
Tired, very tired.
The elevator numbers decreased as Yu Yin leaned wearily against the wall, her body and mind sinking with it.
Why? The man she loved was Ye Zhengchen – a man who would never submit.
She had exhausted her schemes, poured out her true feelings, and spent three years living closely with him, yet he remained unmoved.
Sometimes, she truly wondered if he was even a man!
The elevator doors opened, and Yu Yin walked into the night.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to give up on him, but every time she considered it, a scene would flash before her eyes.
That morning after the rain, arms raised in the wind, golden-gloved hands opening in the air, the crimson flag rising, and sunlight piercing through the clouds, falling on him – determination, responsibility, persistence, courage, confidence, self-discipline, pride, and obedience all flashed in Ye Zhengchen’s handsome profile. In her impression, he was a typical playboy, dissolute and unrestrained, golden on the outside but rotten inside.
In that moment, she realized she didn’t truly know Ye Zhengchen. He was a man impossible to see through.
She had fallen for him, completely unraveled by that deep green.
She hesitated, “If I tell you about our relationship, he would…” but didn’t finish. “I already knew what kind of person he was and anticipated this day would come… I love him and don’t want to force him.”
Yu Yin’s response surprised me, and her desolate sorrow dissolved all my composure.
I wished she had scolded me, standing tall as a proper girlfriend to tell me to leave Ye Zhengchen. I didn’t want to see her proud self reveal her vulnerability. How deep must her love be to face her fiancé’s infidelity and still smile before her romantic rival?
Behind her smile, how many tears had she shed? She loved him far deeper than I ever could.
An intense sense of guilt overwhelmed me.
“What do you want me to do? Tell me.”
I expected her to say, “Leave him” or “Give him back to me.” But Yu Yin surprised me. Calmly, she said, “I once read that from a medical perspective, there is no such thing as love. The so-called ‘eternal love’ is a chemical substance secreted by the human body, which only lasts for about a year.”
One year, three hundred and sixty-five days… This timeframe rippled in my coffee cup.
Yu Yin paused, took a sip of her coffee, and remarked, “One year is not long. I can wait…”
But I couldn’t wait.
I looked at her. “Bao Bing, I can give you one year’s time. I won’t disturb you, and I hope you won’t disturb me…”
She implied she would be his fiancée, and I would be his mistress, coexisting peacefully. This notion was foreign to me.
“Why don’t you leave him? You could definitely find a better man,” I urged.
Yu Yin looked at me flatly. “One day you’ll understand that sometimes women need to turn a blind eye.”
I had heard a phrase before, similar to a line from the TV drama “Pink Girls”: “To maintain love, keep your eyes wide open; to maintain marriage, turn a blind eye…”
When I came to my senses, Yu Yin had already left, leaving a document bag on her chair. My instinct told me it was important, so after hesitating, I walked over and opened it.
I wished I hadn’t opened that document bag.
A marriage certificate unfolded in my trembling hands, accompanied by visa documents, bank agreements, and mobile phone contracts, all related to “marital relationships.”
I collapsed onto the chair, overwhelmed, everything in my mind crumbling. In moments of extreme sorrow, one becomes numb—no tears, no anger.
A pair of purple high heels appeared before me, and slender legs bent down to pick up the papers and place them back in the bag.
