It was an intimate and tender night. Jin Fubai did not eagerly meet his needs, his gentleness towards Xiang Yu almost seemed like she was a treasure in the palm of his hand. He had complete patience.
After a one-sided pleasure, Xiang Yu took a shower, leaned against the bathroom door and asked hesitantly, “…What about you? Would you like me to help?” Her skin was covered in hot water giving her a healthy pink colour and the steaming mist from the bathroom slipped out of the door lingering around her.
Jin Fubai wore a robe loosely draping over his shoulder and he was drinking a bottle of iced mineral water. “Do what for me?”
“…I checked it with my phone just now, it doesn’t seem to be difficult. “
Jin Fubai laughed; he rarely had such a relaxed expression. Compared with his usual smile, it seemed that there was a layer of happiness between his eyebrows and eyes. He kissed her earlobe with his cold lips and pushed her waist. “Go to sleep, I’m going to take a shower.”
Xiang Yu following his push walked half a step forward and she turned her head uneasily. “Really, don’t need me to help you?”
“No need.”
When Jin Fubai finished his bath, Xiang Yu was already a little bit sleepy, her eyelids could not open and she was pulled into the embrace of a fragrance with her eyes closed. She rubbed his arms and asked in a daze, “Did you smoke?”
“Can’t do it? Won’t be allowed to smoke afterwards?”
He seemed to laugh and tease like that, but Xiang Yu was too sleepy, so sleepy that she would sink into a dream in the next second. She thought that she would be able to sleep peacefully on such a tender night pressed against his warm chest, but when she was about to drift off, she dreamt of the words Tang Yuchi said while sitting in the nightclub- “I heard he used to… ..”
What was it? Xiang Yu twisted uncomfortably and felt someone pat her back, she opened her eyes in the faint morning light and saw Jin Fubai’s face.
He knocked on the centre of her eyebrows with his index finger and said, “What dream did you have? Your eyebrows were frowning.”
Xiang Yu shook her head and lied that she didn’t remember. Jin Fubai asked her if she wanted to go to work today and she also nodded absent-mindedly.
“Then get up, I’ll call for breakfast and then take you to work.”
Xiang Yu put on her nightgown and sat on the bed in a daze. Obviously, when Tang Yuchi uttered that sentence, she had already easily changed the subject and made up her mind not to ask Jin Fubai about the past.
Now, the more she thought about it, the more she felt uneasy.
Perhaps it was because she was exceptionally silent that morning, when she got out of the car in the white mist of the morning, Jin Fubai helped her open the car door and wrapped his cashmere scarf around her neck. His tone was comforting and joking, “Don’t want to work overtime? Why don’t I buy your company and I’ll be the boss.”
Xiang Yu was stuck contemplating inside and didn’t look up but Jin Fubai was in a good mood to joke, “Or do you want to be the boss?”
Under the gaze of his warm eyes, Xiang Yu finally returned to her senses, smiled and shook her head. “I’ve just been a bit busy these few days, don’t spend so much.” He misunderstood her silence and she didn’t explain it.
“It’s only a small amount.”
“A small amount is still money!” Xiang Yu glared at him, walked away with his scarf, went downstairs and looking back, she saw Jin Fubai smoking a cigarette while leaning on the car. In the foggy winter morning, he smiled and looked at her.
Xiang Yu waved once more before turning around again and walked into the company building. The diamond earrings were stained with the cold air, it was icy, it was as if he had drunk ice last night and kissed her earlobe with cold lips.
In this sudden upheaval, it was not Jin Fubai who Xiang Yu was upset with but herself. Jin Fubai hasn’t changed from start to finish, he is even more fascinating than she had thought, he is gentler and more considerate. Her worries stemmed from the fact that she wanted more.
This uneasiness did not last long. After all, it was the end of the year and Xiang Yu was still oppressed by the small and run-down company having to work overtime every day. Even meeting with Jin Fubai was a rare occasion. The company she worked for was a magazine company, in 2012 the paper media was actually going downhill. Even the professors in the School of Journalism had said that the paper media would go down but it was strange that this small broken company was really busy by the end of the year, perhaps it was because it was understaffed.
It’s not too tiring and it was not a task that required brain power. One day when she was squatting in the printing room to change the ink cartridges for the company’s printer the company’s boss suddenly appeared behind her.
The boss is a young man, probably two or three years older than Xiang Yu, he was a person with very few words. He handed the ink cartridge to Xiang Yu. “It’s been hard on you during this time. What are your expectations for the year-end bonus other than your performance bonus?”
Xiang Yu did not say her expectations for the bonus, “Yes, I want to be a full-time salted fish.”
- I forgot to mention when this was used before. But for those that don’t know what a salted fish is, it basically means that she doesn’t want to do anything. It has also been used in other ways in the novel such as she has no big dreams or she wants a simple life.
The boss laughed, “I’m afraid that will be difficult to achieve.”
Xiang Yu sighed, “Then add more money, I can’t work like this and make no money.”
In fact, sometimes she thinks that it’s better to be busy like this. Calculating and counting on her hands, the last time she saw Jin Fubai was a week ago. Maybe if she doesn’t get in touch with the other, she won’t become so greedy, just maintain the initial fascination and baseline likes, waiting for them to get tired of each other and then they will naturally break up.
But this kind of thinking was really naive, Jin Fubai didn’t give her such a chance. It’s hard to say whether he did it intentionally or not but he was always so tempting.
With Xiang Yu’s salted fish character, the first thing that she gets tired of is actually work. She looked at the piles of materials that needed to be copied and printed in one afternoon and she suddenly became annoyed. It was also on this day that she returned to the front desk with a ward of photocopied documents that a courier boy wearing a heavy down jacket waited at the front desk.
“There is a delivery for Xiang Yu.” The courier brother put down the package and hurriedly left.
She didn’t seem to have brought something online recently. The box was only the size of a palm and Xiang Yu opened it suspiciously. What laid in the black velvet box was a finely crafted mini telescope that had an old looking dark copper colour.
When Xiang Yu got the telescope her phone rang and Jin Fubai said on the phone, “Xiang Yu, look across from you.”
Xiang Yu’s company only occupied one-third of the first floor of this office building. Probably because of the renting crisis the company’s location was not good. Except for the boss’s office and the meeting room, the other rooms have no windows. On this boring day filled with work, she longed for a little surprise. She held the phone and ran to the boss’s office, she knocked on the door and probed him, “Can I borrow the window?”
The boss nodded and agreed, leaving the office to her, the other two employees were determined to be salted fish employees and retired.
Xiang Yu was like a high school student; she ran in with her eyes bright and raised the telescope to look across. She lowered her voice and asked the person on the phone, “What did you want me to see?”
“The glass office building opposite your company on the same floor as yours.” Xiang Yu looked over and saw through the clear wall windows on the 7th floor opposite her was Jin Fubai.
Jin Fubai was wearing a white sweater of a certain famous brand’s new winter product standing by the window with one hand in his pocket and in the other hand, he held a telescope smiling at Xiang Yu. There was only a desk and a chair beside him, nothing else.
At first, Xiang Yu thought he had friends at a certain company opposite to her but the more she looked at it, the more it seemed to be wrong. How could a company be like that? The table is facing towards the window?
Jin Fubai was on the phone and in a casual tone, “I want to see you but you always work overtime so I had to buy the floor opposite and come to see you from time to time.”
In fact, at that moment, when she recalled it many years later she still felt that it was a rare and precious moment in her life. They were in different office buildings separated by thick glass windows across a busy street and they smiled at each other.
There was a small snowfall that day and it melted when it hit the ground. On the street, it was a little damp. Xiang Yu put her palm on the cold glass, ten thousand years in a glance. At that moment, she suddenly wanted to kiss him.
This was the first time someone has bought an office building just because they wanted to see her.
Jin Fubai is like a cloud, he floats indefinitely, but also, he would not only stay in the sky above you. But all his freely changing transformations would fascinate you and it’s hard to free oneself from this situation, it was very troublesome.
I just wanted to put a comment here, I’ve directly translated ten thousand years in a glance from the original text because this part itself is a bit vague. There are many ways to interpret this. Whether that is ten thousand years has passed, she wishes that they would stay like this for ten thousand years, it felt they/she have been in love for several lifetimes.
To his surprise, Xiang Yu stayed with Jin Fubai for the week. After working overtime she would follow him to eat dinner or sometimes they would take a seat at Li Chi’s gatherings at night and on the weekends, they would drive through the suburbs. But she would not stay overnight with Jin Fubai in the hotel.
Overtime became less boring. Occasionally, Xiang Yu would pick up the telescope and take a look out the window and she would see a bright red rose or other flowers in the vase on the opposite window’s desk.
In fact, she knew that he didn’t necessarily plant the flowers himself. But it was still pleasant.
On December 21, the end of the world as predicted by the Maya people was this day. In retrospect, it was like a party at night. On the Internet, at 11:11 at night, it was widely circulated that the end was coming. The street was so lively that it seemed like Christmas came in advance and many people under the guise of the words “If you don’t do it now, there will be no more chances to” went to do things that they would not have done under normal circumstances.
Xiang Yu worked overtime as usual that day. After work, she wore her scarf and walked outside of the building. She even thought: Would someone cheat on this day? After thinking about that, she raised her eyes and saw Jin Fubai standing next to the car.
He had probably stood there for a while and had smoked more than one cigarette, his fingers were a little reddened by the night wind. Jin Fubai opened his arms as Xiang Yu ran towards him and hugged him. “Why are you here?”
“Didn’t you say it’s the end of the world? Came to accompany you.”
Xiang Yu couldn’t say why but her nose suddenly became sore. He is really the most considerate lover in the world.
“Why are your eyes red? Really afraid?”
He thought that she was afraid of the end of the world, but in fact, Xiang Yu was even more afraid of his meticulous tenderness towards her. She was afraid that she would have a day like that and she would hate to leave.
Dinner was at Li Chi’s hotel. After the meal, Xiang Yu naturally stayed with Jin Fubai. The heating in the hotel was a little too much, the room was hot like summer and the sky outside the window was gray with a haze to it, it really felt a little like doomsday.
Xiang Yu looked at the window for a long time, the cold air outside of the window blew in along the open window brushing her nightgown. Jin Fubai dragged the person into his arms and closed the window.
“It hasn’t been that long; didn’t the doctor tell you to keep warm?”
“It’s almost 11 o’clock, what shall we do?”
He smiled a little differently and deliberately put emphasis on the first word, “Do—what? “
Xiang Yu lightly hit him. It was strange that day, they didn’t really want to roll in the sheets and like a pure couple, they just sat together picking movies.
It was a Korean movie that was chosen by Xiang Yu. Jin Fubai would look at his phone and occasionally look at it. Just halfway through the movie, the male lead died unexpectedly and the female lead wept bitterly. Xiang Yu was a little emotional and with red eyes, she leaned against Jin Fubai’s arms and sniffed her nose. “If my boyfriend dies, I will cry like that too.”
Jin Fubai kissed her amusedly. “What did you say? Didn’t expect you to be this good to me?”
“You are not my boyfriend.” She was still staring at the TV screen as she said this very casually.
After saying this the two of them were silent. It was already past 11:11 and the end of the world had not come. Jin Fubai brushed off the wet marks on the corners of her eyes with the back of his finger and said nothing.
Author: 殊娓
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