Chapter 23

Wen Ning could hardly describe what she felt at that moment, or perhaps she had so habitually paralyzed herself with simple repetitive mechanical labor that she had forgotten that she was an emotional animal.

She had guessed any kind of relationship between them, but intuitively seeing it with her own eyes within the range of vision, this kind of almost crude image with no place to hide still could not help but make her, a woman who originally did not have much hope, find it too cruel to bear.

Outside the ancient style corridor, is a fierce and miserable rain.

The rain was inhuman.

Wen Ning calculated the route to run, how to not let herself get too messed up, she thought, for someone like her who lived in the cracks, it wasn’t that difficult.

With all this pre-planning, she only ran for two minutes before hurrying back to her car.

However, when the door closed, the whole car smelled of lard from the wontons.

It was sticky and silky.

She didn’t know whether under her eyes, it was tear marks or just rainwater, she preferred the latter. Wenning gritted her teeth, pretending that nothing had happened to the movie base outside the highway to drive.

Unbeknownst to her, someone jumped into the car almost immediately and chased after her.

He also did not have an umbrella, and was drenched by the rain.

Ten minutes ago.

Ying Ying looked at the man in front of her who had never been in such a hurry to get to the set at almost his fastest car speed, and the first time he saw her was definitely not considered friendly.

Even the usual most basic greetings were not bothered.

His focus unsurprisingly landed on the woman, and he couldn’t help but be suspicious of her:

“Why did you get her over here?”

His tone was extremely unfriendly.

At first, Ying Ying thought she could barely cope, even though the corners of her mouth were no longer able to show as graciously as usual: “Just looking for an okay dim sum, you know, it should be normal for an actress of my caliber to treat herself to something.”

Conforming to the words she had prepared earlier, Ying Ying did not show excessive nervousness.

But immediately afterward, Zhou Yinchu unafraid to speculate with the utmost malice, “Have you paid for it yet?”

Obviously, there were countless Netflix-related dim sum stores around the neighborhood, and her approach really didn’t make people believe that she was really just stopping by to do Wenning’s business.

The little carving skills she was showing off had almost nothing to hide in front of Zhou Yinchu.

However, Ying Ying still couldn’t stand Zhou Yinchu’s questioning of money, she did make things difficult for others, but she wasn’t that shameless.

She forced a smile on her face and went back to the nanny van to retrieve her cell phone, which should have her clear payment record on it.

Instead, he just scanned it coldly.

The words of instruction were forceful: “Never again.”

And listening to the meaning of these words, like a warning to himself, if he still dared to make such a move, let Wen Ning come back and forth on this gravel road to toss and turn twice, then he would definitely not sit back and wait for death.

It seems like the man who only has his hands on the sky is going to give her some kind of “lesson” next time.

Ying Ying thought, perhaps the beginning is really her misunderstanding, really fascinated by the relationship, can not let go of the person may not be Wen Ning, but the opposite man.

What is she really messing around with.

And in the self-righteous layout of what.

In hindsight, Ying Ying recalled the woman’s words that night, “There won’t be a next time”, and considering that the other party had sincerely been pestered by her for the entire afternoon, she recalled her own past when she had been squeezed by a shadowy brokerage firm.

Maintaining her inside, she forwarded the umbrella her assistant had brought over to Zhou Yinchu.

The design did not work, but instead created an opportunity for certain people to take advantage of it.

“There she is.”

In the wind and rain, Ying Ying pointed to the direction of the promenade, but strangely found that the person under the eaves was no longer there, empty, and the man who was still in the same place in the last second and she stood still and said decisive and like a warning words all of a sudden in the midst of this downpour lost his mind that, lost in thought into the rain.

And he, did not take an umbrella.

The rain poured through him, but Zhou Yinchu was unmoved, as if nothing and no one could stop her.

“Why are your clothes wet like this?”

“Forgot my umbrella.”

“Ningning, you say how old you are, and your forgetfulness is still so big,” Wen Ning’s mother was scolding and distressed, “Didn’t mom tell you yesterday that it might rain today?”

In the residential building in the old town, the wind chimes across the hall emitted a crisp and bright ringing sound.

Wen Ning listened to her mother’s chatter while she wiped her wet hair with a hot towel.

“It’s okay, I’ll go in first and take a shower.”

“Che Che is still reading books in the community library,” her mother was too busy to stop for a moment, “He’ll be back almost at the right time, I’ll go pick him up first, and put the food in the microwave. You take a shower and see for yourself if it’s still hot, just put the bowl in the sink when you’re done eating.”

“Okay, I’ll take a shower first.”

Wen Ning was strained, not retorting for a moment, taking in her mother’s exertions.

She took a nearly half-hour shower, dressed in a cotton, soft, cloud-printed nightgown, and walked into the living room, drearily warming up the meal again.

Then her mother and Li Che came back, and while Li Che continued to talk endlessly about the contents of the comic book volume, her mother did not listen attentively.

Several times, it was like she was deliberately sidetracking Che Che.

Outside, it was still raining incessantly, and after entering the long rainy season, the weather in Jiangcheng was often like this.

Wen Ning saw that Che Che had already gone to wash up and go to bed, and cozily prepared hot milk for him before bed.

The wooden tray had just been set down at the head of her son’s bed when his mother couldn’t wait to speak.

“I saw someone in the neighborhood …….”

Wen Ning saw that his mother was incoherent for a few moments, and finally realized what was hidden about this matter, “Who?”

“I seem to have seen Zhou Yinchu ……Mother actually doesn’t remember very clearly, she only hurriedly saw him once at the meeting where you went to high school for the parent-teacher conference, perhaps mother recognized him wrongly.”

Wen Ning denied this answer extremely quickly, “That’s impossible.”

The only intersection they had today was probably that theater set, where she was waiting for a rain that couldn’t be seen to end and he, with another woman, was climbing into conversation.

She didn’t want to recall too much of the scenes involved.

She thought she had braved the rain and had jumped out of the middle of a storm that had nothing to do with her.

But immediately afterward, her feet still moved a step faster than her brain to the bedside. Aluminum alloy window frames after years of use, already not as good as before, in the face of heavy wind and rain, always upsettingly issued a “clanging” sound.

Wen Ning raised her eyes to look, Zhou Yinchu is indeed stopping at her downstairs.

The monotonous peach blossom branches continued the rain all afternoon, pouring down, completely soaking his high-class suit, she avoided the possibility of meeting his eyes, secretly checking her cell phone, which she had never paid attention to when she was in the shower.

It was still the same familiar string of numbers.

Not that she had memorized it fifteen years ago, but apparently it was fresh in her mind now.

156521***34: [I’m downstairs from you.]

156521***34: [Wen Ning, I know that you suffered an undeserved disaster today, and I won’t allow this to happen a second time.]]

Wen Ning didn’t know what could have caused the reserved man, who looked like he was not fit to stand in this kind of rain, to do something so out of the ordinary.

Was it the madness of middle age?

Or, rushed to completely dislike themselves before, explain one or two, with a few words to attempt to confuse the concept of male and female, so as to obtain her trust in this period of time?

She suddenly recalled a saying that a man is a teenager until he dies.

Therefore, when Zhou Yinchu wanted to do so, he could have no scruples, not caring about the comments and accusations of the bystanders towards him, the reason for this was not because he was richer than himself, he possessed the capital to be unscrupulous.

She directly deadlocked the window and closed the curtains.

She did not allow her life’s orbit to yaw too many times, she and Ying Ying are not the same, she does not have the capital to enjoy herself at any time, nor does she have the ability to resist the world.

Wen Ning: [You go away.

Turning to think about what he was going to say to explain, how to play the game of fooling around at a high level.

She was really tired.

After wrapping wontons for a day in a row, she felt like a machine with a power-hungry assembly line on, not stopping for a moment, and the soles of her feet were swollen from that gravel road.

Neither did she have the energy to reply to her own mother again, telling people not to worry, nor could she rush downstairs and walk into that rain; after all, she had gotten wet herself for two minutes.

That generous touch of self-sacrificial giving did nothing for a woman in her thirties.

As soon as she lay down, she slept for a full two hours.

Lifting her eyes again, it was ten o’clock at night.

The rain from a while ago had already gotten smaller, but I don’t know what the heavens were doing, the rain poured again and became heavier.

The man who received his message probably left early.

Wen Ning did not know what she was confirming, the original boring story follow-up produced a trace of hope should not exist.

She slowly pulled open the curtains.

That high-fashion suit had not just been drenched, but directly surfaced in front of her eyes in a nearly ruined state, the sculpted, three-dimensional face had not been altered, and even the biggest splash of water couldn’t affect the handsomeness of the contours of his face. And just then, the man’s lean chin lifted slightly, and impartially his line of sight happened to touch his own small windowsill.

He said nothing, yet appeared to be saying:

“I knew it, you and I are the same, you can’t stand it for long.”

She would always look at him through that rickety window, always with urgent and caring eyes, and he was certain of her softness and would be able to confirm his answer just this night.

She should never have gone downstairs, she thought, even for the sake of this self-respecting loss.

If a rich man’s life is a life, is not a poor man’s life a life?

Just on this evening when the rain was pouring down, she herself wore into that rain, and was herself dominated by the sweltering, humid, sticky sensation, so what was the big deal about letting him suffer for a little while longer.

Serves him right for getting soaked.

Wenning had never been so hard-hearted in her life as she was now.

She hid under her own quilt cover, preferring that this farce of a reunion after fifteen years had never happened.

But I don’t know how much time passed, but Wen Ning still got out of bed, and facing a bet that she had no chance of winning, she covered up a wide khaki jacket, the most common one in Uniqlo, and hurriedly took out a slightly larger umbrella from the bathroom in order to try to go downstairs.

And her napping mother happened to flip from the dining room table and rose to repeat the old argument, “Ning, how do you touch an egg with a gooseberry?”

Her mother was actually worried about her choice to go downstairs, and although she was aware of all the conveniences and benefits of her daughter hanging out with Zhou Yinchu, the pragmatic poor man was determined that they wouldn’t have a very good ending.

This was true fifteen years ago, and fifteen years later was no different.

“Then let him get wet for a night?”

After a long time, Wen Ning finally changed into waterproof shoes at the entrance hall, her tone inevitably filled with the flavor of compromise with fate: “I can’t do it.”

Yes, she finally admitted herself, admitted that she wasn’t ruthless enough, admitted that she couldn’t turn a blind eye.

Admitting that she was destined to be a loser in a relationship that couldn’t be talked about.

The rain didn’t blur someone’s vision, and by the time she got herself downstairs, Zhou Yinchu had long been eager to walk under the eaves of her downstairs, his large, drenched hand steadily and forcefully pulling her across her waist.

“I knew you’d come down.”

He took the large black umbrella in her hand that was affecting their play and hindering them, occupying a not-so-small amount of space, and his voice was a few shades of low: “Will come to hear my explanation.”