Chapter 55: Can’t You Tell I’m Happy?

There were two streetlights standing in the parking lot. A few tiny moths kept crashing into the glass covers, the faint clinking sounds adding a chilling undertone to the thick night.

Jiang Se sat inside the car, quickly flipping through the albums on WeChat with her fingers.

She searched for a long time but couldn’t find a single photo of him from his youth.

All the pictures he had posted on social media were formal business portraits from the past two or three years.

In the photos, the man had handsome, elegant features and a warm, refined demeanor, like a piece of smooth, polished jade.

The oldest photo showed him wearing a beige suit, sitting in a grand armchair with a smile while being interviewed. At a glance, he looked just like a young gentleman from a prestigious scholarly family.

The Fu family all carried this kind of aura — cultured and elegant, as if they were scholars devoted to academic pursuits.

Old Master Fu had always been fond of literature and calligraphy, and his eldest son and grandson inherited that temperament.

Jiang Se remembered that when she first entered Bode Academy, there had even been a piece of Fu Jun’s calligraphy hanging in the calligraphy hall.

She had started school early and even skipped grades — she was already in middle school at eleven years old.

Fu Jun was four years older than her and was in his first year of high school at the time. That same year, Fu Yun — who had just been found and brought back by Old Master Fu — also started his first year.

Fu Yun was sixteen years old that year.

Bode’s middle school and high school divisions were in different buildings, so Jiang Se rarely ran into either Fu Jun or Fu Yun on campus.

Even if they did cross paths, it was usually at banquets hosted by various families.

Especially among the younger generation — boys often had their own circles, and girls theirs.

Cen Li didn’t like mingling with Fu Jun or Fu Yun either.

Whenever he took Jiang Se out to play, they would never bump into the Fu family’s people.

The only reason Jiang Se ever had any interactions with them was because of the engagement.

The photo under her fingertips was taken in the Fu family’s study.

Jiang Se stared at the familiar face on the screen, closed her eyes, and carefully tried to recall what Fu Yun had been like as a teenager.

Trying to dig through a decade-old memory of someone she had never paid much attention to was no easy task.

But Jiang Se wasn’t impatient.

She had already come so far, walked through so many years — no matter what situation she was in, she could stay calm.

During those three years of middle school, she must have had some encounters with Fu Yun.

Thinking about the places they both might have been…

Vague images began to surface in Jiang Se’s mind.

The summer breeze gently blew by, the sound of cicadas rising and falling in the thick camphor trees, the wind carrying it toward the small assembly hall.

That hall, always dimly lit — she remembered wearing a formal dress, laughing and chatting with Guo Qian as they passed through the aisle, making way for the seniors taking their graduation photos.

At that moment, a slender boy pushed the door open and walked down the aisle toward her.

The walkway was narrow.

As they brushed past each other, Jiang Se suddenly felt a sharp pain on her scalp — like being pricked by a needle.

She turned her head to look, and caught a glimpse of the boy holding a phone, only half of his handsome profile visible.

The boy didn’t stop walking, seemingly unaware. A few strands of her broken hair clung to the fabric of his chest where the buttons of his shirt fastened.

Many students had brought phones into the small hall for the graduation photos that day.

Jiang Se hadn’t thought much of it and had turned her gaze back — but out of the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of white light.

Even though she had only seen his profile, Jiang Se knew that boy was Fu Yun.

Besides that day of the graduation photos, were there other moments when they crossed paths?

She remembered that after their engagement, during their first dinner together, they had mentioned Bode High School.

At the time, Fu Yun had said something…

He said he had seen her dance.

Dance…

Under his thin, pale eyelids, his eyeballs were moving rapidly.

Jiang Se pushed the scenes from her memories forward, frame by frame, until she paused at a twilight in autumn.

It must have rained that day; the air was damp, carrying the earthy, metallic scent of fresh soil.

She had been wearing a ballet costume under a thin jacket as she exited the back door of the dance studio, and under the silk tree outside, a figure stood.

He was wearing Bode Academy’s athletic uniform, earphones in, seemingly listening to music.

He kept his head down, deeply focused, but when her phone rang, he turned to look at her.

The boy’s face was shrouded among thick branches and leaves, making it hard for Jiang Se to see his features clearly.

She only caught a fleeting glimpse of his eyes — dark and shadowed, almost blending into the gloomy tree canopy.

Was that person… Fu Yun?

—

The early spring night wind brushed past the car windows.

When she opened her eyes again, the phone screen had long since gone dark. Jiang Se tapped into an app on her phone and, relying purely on her memories, began subtly altering the photo of Fu Yun.

On the screen, the young man’s face gradually became slimmer; the warm, jade-like aura faded, replaced by a youthful and slightly brooding look.

Jiang Se stared at the photo for a long time before sending it to Zheng Huan:

[Have your people in Bai County ask around the employees of the beer factory or the nearby residents. See if they recognize the boy in this photo — was he there fifteen years ago?]

It was never a secret in North City that Fu Yun was Old Master Fu’s illegitimate child.

Thirteen years ago, when Old Master Fu brought Fu Yun back, he publicly claimed the boy was the result of a drunken mistake.

And this “mistake” was, frankly, an extremely clichéd story:

A handsome, charity-loving industrialist and an admiring university student, caught up in a reckless night at a university charity banquet.

The girl became pregnant, but passed away not long after giving birth.

The child was then raised by the girl’s relatives until he was sixteen, when the industrialist finally found and brought him home.

Coincidentally, the industrialist’s only legitimate son had died around the same time.

Whether the story was true was impossible to verify.

But if Fu Yun was really that boy, then Old Master Fu had spun a lie.

He claimed Fu Yun had grown up in Su City, and that the university from the story was also in Su City — a place where Old Master Fu had donated a teaching building and a library.

The girl was said to be a native of Su City — noble in character, born to a highly educated family.

Fu Yun, supposedly, had grown up in a cultured, scholarly environment.

Back then, this version of the story had sparked many jokes in North City: “If she was truly so noble, why would she offer herself to a drunk man?”

Whether the story was true or not, no one really cared. It was just something for idle gossip.

As time passed, Old Master Fu’s scandalous affair faded from conversation.

No one bothered to find out what Fu Yun’s original name had been, where he had studied, or what his maternal relatives did for a living.

The only ones who might have known were Old Master Fu himself — and Fu Jun, whom he regarded as his successor.

Setting her phone down on the center console, Jiang Se rubbed her forehead and started the car to pick up Zhang Yue.

By the time they climbed from the base of the mountain up to Hanshan Temple, the sky was still dark — that deepest, heaviest moment just before dawn.

Night mist spread across the land.

With little light, the whole world resembled a sheet of rice paper soaked in ink, the dark hues seeping and swirling across it.

The tree shadows, twisted wildly by the wind, were like the heaviest brushstrokes on the paper.

Zhang Yue, looking at the clawing shapes of the trees, said, “If you weren’t here with me, I definitely wouldn’t dare to come here to watch the sunrise.”

Hearing this, Jiang Se turned her head slightly and asked, “Are you afraid of the dark?”

Zhang Yue nodded, “Yeah. I’m afraid of being alone in the darkness.”

“I used to be scared too — scared of dark alleys without light,” Jiang Se said, patting the pocket of her coat with her gloved hand.

“But after carrying a folding knife and a flashlight, and forcing myself to walk through a bunch of alleys alone, I stopped being afraid. I still keep a knife on me all the time.”

Zhang Yue asked curiously, “Can I see the knife?”

Jiang Se handed the knife to Zhang Yue and said, “The lock is here on the handle. Be careful not to cut yourself on the blade.”

The folding knife was custom-made, only about half the length of a palm, but extremely sharp.

Zhang Yue ran her fingers back and forth over the blade. Then she heard Jiang Se ask, “Now that you’re holding this knife, do you still feel as afraid looking at the trees down the mountain?”

Holding the knife, Zhang Yue summoned her courage and looked down the mountain.

After a moment, she smiled lightly and said, “It seems… I’m not as scared anymore.”

Jiang Se laughed and said, “Once the sun rises, the shadows of the trees in the mountains will only make you feel full of life, not fear.”

As they spoke, the bright red sunrise had already torn through the night sky, a golden sliver of light breaking over the distant ridges.

They faced east, quietly watching the morning light slowly fill the world.

The thick fog lifted, and the mountain range, which had slept through the night, unveiled itself like a beauty lifting her veil — generously revealing a face brimming with vitality.

It was hard to say how much time had passed when Zhang Yue suddenly said, “Miss Jiang, in a few days, I’ll return the house to you.”

Jiang Se glanced at her, nodded, and replied, “Alright.”

“I also have some savings I’ve put aside over the years—”

“That’s your own money; you don’t need to give it to me,” Jiang Se shook her head.

“Keep living in the house for now. When I figure out what to do with it, you can move out.”

After settling the matter about the house, Jiang Se asked, “I’m investigating Zhao Zhicheng’s past — the part before he appeared in Rong City. Do you want to know about it?”

Zhang Yue hesitated and then said, “No, I don’t want to. To me, he’ll always be Ah Cheng.”

Afraid that this might cause Jiang Se to misunderstand, she paused and then added, “I know he’s not a good person. Like you said, no matter how beautiful love is, it can’t be used to excuse crimes. What he did to you is unforgivable.”

“You’re right. I don’t intend to forgive him.”

Jiang Se smiled faintly, steering the conversation away.

“When Zhao Zhicheng left Jiang City, he told you that no matter who came looking, you had to say you didn’t know him. Do you remember what his tone was like when he said that?”

“Tone?” Zhang Yue looked blank for a moment. After a few seconds of silence, she said uncertainly, “I wasn’t in a good state then. Before he even finished speaking, I was already panicking. But thinking back now, I think he was… a bit scared.”

“Scared?”

“Yeah. He kept teaching me over and over how to use cash to take a bus to Tong City, and he repeatedly warned me not to tell anyone I was going back there. He seemed really afraid someone would find me.”

As she spoke, Zhang Yue looked at Jiang Se.

“When you showed up at the qipao shop, I thought — maybe the person Ah Cheng was afraid of was you.”

“The one he was afraid of wasn’t me,” Jiang Se said, glancing at the folding knife in Zhang Yue’s hand.

“It was the person who helped him commit murder back then.”

“Would you dare to use this knife?” Jiang Se asked.

“If you would, I’ll leave it to you. I have more at home.”

Zhang Yue hadn’t expected her to offer her the knife. Instinctively, she looked down at it.

It was a very sharp knife.

She looked up at Jiang Se and said with a smile, “Of course I dare. Although the scissors I use for sewing qipaos are sharp too, they’re not as good as this knife.”

Jiang Se nodded slightly, “Give it back to me for a moment.”

She was wearing velvet gloves that Yu Shiying had bought her.

Using the soft fabric on the fingertips, Jiang Se wiped away her own fingerprints from the blade, then handed the knife back to Zhang Yue and said, “From now on, it’s your knife.”

—

After dropping Zhang Yue off, it was still not yet nine o’clock.

Lu Huaiyan’s flight to Hong Kong was at ten. Nowadays, no matter where he went, he would always report to her first.

Since he hadn’t messaged yet, she figured he hadn’t arrived at the airport.

Jiang Se glanced at her phone, turned the steering wheel, and drove toward the airport. By the time she arrived, it was already 9:30.

Lu Huaiyan had sent her a message ten minutes ago, saying he was waiting at the airport.

Jiang Se pulled out her phone and called him.

“Have you boarded yet? Are you still in the VIP lounge?”

On the other end of the line, the man pushing his suitcase slowed his steps.

The background noise on her side sounded exactly like his.

His eyes flickered slightly.

“You’re at the airport?”

“Mm.”

“Where are you?”

Lu Huaiyan’s lips curved into a smile.

“I’ll come find you.”

Handing his suitcase to the assistant beside him, he quickly walked out of the VIP lounge.

Scanning over the dense crowd, he spotted the girl standing in front of an LCD screen in just one glance.

“Turn around, I’m right behind you,” he said with a laugh, walking toward her.

“Our young lady came all the way to send me off?”

His low, laughter-tinged voice came simultaneously from her phone and from behind her.

Jiang Se turned around, hung up the phone, and said to him, “I forgot to take a photo of the sunrise for you.”

“So you came to send me off instead?”

Lu Huaiyan put his phone back into his pocket and stepped forward to take her hand.

“Do you know how I felt when I got your call?”

“How?”

He gently squeezed her fingers and gave her a sidelong glance.

“I almost thought the sun had risen from the west today.”

”…”

They walked a few steps when Lu Huaiyan asked again, “You didn’t touch the bread in the apartment. Did you skip breakfast?”

“Mm, I forgot.”

The bread had been prepared by the chef from Junyue yesterday and sent over, with several flavors for her to choose from — just so she wouldn’t go hiking on an empty stomach.

Yet this girl actually forgot about it and even said it so righteously.

Lu Huaiyan looked at her, both amused and exasperated. “You like watching sunrises that much? Enough to forget breakfast?”

He led her toward the dining area.

Jiang Se tugged at the hand he was holding so tightly and said, “Lu Huaiyan, if you don’t board soon, you’re going to miss your flight.

If I’m not worried, why are you?”

He tightened his grip on her hand and glanced at her sideways.

“Can’t you tell I’m very happy? Missing the flight is no big deal. I’ll just catch a later one. Right now, nothing in the world is more important than having breakfast with our young lady.”

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