In the blink of an eye, it was June. In Beijing, it was already warm enough to wear a skirt. On Xiang Yu’s way to work both sides of the road were green with plants and roses bloomed abundantly.
Jin Fubai has been abroad for 4 months. To her, he only said his grandmother was not in good health but she was aware that he had other reasons for not being able to leave. It was just that he didn’t say and she wouldn’t ask.
After the new year, Xiang Yu was also busy with her small company and there were a few weekends when she had to work overtime. The boss of the company is called Zhou Lie, he is a 25, 26-year-old man, he looks upright and the employees call him “Zhou Bapi” in private. It wasn’t about his appearance, but rather due to the conflict between the employees and the boss.
Lie in his name means violent, upright is Zhou Zheng with the same Zhou.
Zhou Bapi, the same Zhou is a character from a Chinese animation (半夜鸡叫), he is an evil landlord who abuses his workers.
Xiang Yu and Zhou Lie were somewhat close and she didn’t call him “Zhou Bapi” despite having to work overtime. Although she aspired to be a salted fish, even when she works overtime a lot or has a lot of work pressure, she can be regarded as hardworking and there are not many negative emotions.
The advantage of this is that there is always a mini telescope hanging next to the badge on her chest. When she would go to Zhou Lie’s office, she would hold it out in front of her boss and look at the other side.
There was a beautiful vase of poppies on the opposite table for a few days in mid-June. Xiang Yu held the bronze telescope and glanced at the flowers, mindlessly a smile hung on her face when she heard Zhou Lie say, “Assistant Xiang, shall I put a table in this office for you?”
She put down the telescope, not falling to his scheme, “NO, although I have two jobs, my goal has always been to be a full-time front desk employee. You should hire a suitable assistant soon.”
Zhou Lie wasn’t one to talk much so he just nodded and said got it. When he finished looking at a part of a document carefully and raised his eyes, Xiang Yu still hadn’t left. She was standing by the window seeming like she was contemplating something, in a daze.
Zhou Lie knocked on the tabletop and asked, “Is there anything else?”
Xiang Yu looked back with her telescope and tentatively said, “Boss, you say, I have been so diligent and hardworking since before the new year till now, would I be able to apply for an annual leave in advance?” She hasn’t been employed for a full year yet and according to the company’s policy, she cannot take annual leave.
But Zhou Lie has seen Jin Fubai’s car more than once, and at one time he found a telescope to look at the opposite office building. The entire 7th floor on the opposite side was empty with only a flower on a desk.
This also explains why the company had big projects coming in after the new year and why it was smooth sailing. So, he knew it was because Xiang Yu was employed in his company and that a certain “upper level” made it much easier for him.
Zhou Lie thought about it briefly and nodded in response, “Okay, when you want to take a break, write a request and send it to me directly.”
Actually, Xiang Yu wanted to take a vacation because of Jin Fubai. Jin Fubai called at noon and was silent for nearly a minute, not saying a word.
The weather in Beijing was fine and the sun was shining brightly. When Jin Fubai called on the phone Xiang Yu was having lunch. The pasta in the convenience store was heated in a microwave and with a slice of cheese melted into the tomato beef sauce, the taste was not too bad.
Facing the high-rise noon sun with earphones in her ears, she heard Jin Fubai’s silence and silently put down the plastic fork in her hand. For a moment, she thought she was in a far far foreign country on the same silent night as Jin Fubai.
Xiang Yu was also silent for a long time before she lowered her voice and called him anxiously, “Jin Fubai?”
The person on the phone seemed to have just returned to his senses. After a pause, he said, ” What are you doing?”
“I’m having pasta from the convenience store for Lunch, it tastes good. When you come back, shall I invite you to eat it?”
Jin Fubai’s mood had returned to normal at this time. He smiled and teased her, saying once he had travelled all the way back to China, was she going to invite him to eat pasta from a convenience store? He also asked her if she was late this month and missed the attendance bonus.
Xiang Yu told him not to jinx her, saying she had perfect attendance for two months. After a while, she said softly, “I have saved up my salary over the past few months. You can eat whatever you want when you come back.”
Jin Fubai asked with a chuckle, “Miss me?”
“Yeah.”
Hanging up the phone Xiang Yu felt a little uneasy and didn’t even eat a few bites of pasta. In that minute silence, she felt a kind of powerless desolate feeling in Jin Fubai. So, she came up with an idea, she was going to find him.
The annual leave was approved on June 20th. Xiang Yu took nothing and went to the airport alone. When she received a call from Tang Yuchi on the way, the young master asked in surprise, “Are you really going to find Jin Fubai?”
“Yes, I want to play for a few days and Zhou Lie gave me a ten-day holiday.”
Tang Yuchi couldn’t say much on the phone, he just told her to pay attention to her own safety, remember to report to him when she was abroad, remember to charge her phone and don’t turn it off at any time, if he couldn’t contact her it would worry him. He was overly sensitive; it was like she was going into retreat on a deserted island. Xiang Yu said okay and then hung up.
In fact, she hesitated on going to Jin Fubai. Foreign countries are another “circle” of Jin Fubai. She is not sure whether she should disrupt the current peace.
She was not sure if the Jin Fubai she would meet is the same person as the Jin Fubai in Beijing.
But people living a peaceful life craved for a romance even more. Even when Du Mu wrote “Red Cliffs”, he wrote the sentence “The two Qiao’s locked deeply in Bronze Bird Terrace”. She is but an ordinary person, missing a bit of rationality in love, wasn’t this normal? She’ll accompany him if he needs her.
Another ancient poem based on a war. Bronze Bird Terrace is known as a place of pleasure and the Qiao sisters were renowned for their beauty.
Jin Fubai worked in the family business from February to April. He met with shareholders every day and listened to them argue their stance. The conservatives and radicals fought against each other, as did members of the conservatives between themselves. People with bad personal relationships confronted each other and those with close personal relationships also argued. The quarrelling and noise made him have a headache.
It was late at night and because of the different opinions, a major shareholder threw his teacup and walked away.
His grandmother was in poor health these days. She coughed at night and the coughing made her eyes go red. She finally fell asleep earlier today and Jin Fubai did not dare to disturb her. He smoked silently in the air and then called Xiang Yu.
In fact, Jin Fubai couldn’t mention these things to Xiang Yu. It was very late at night and he missed her so much.
When his phone rang, he smoked in silence and didn’t speak to Xiang Yu. After being silent for a long time, Xiang Yu’s careful breathing came through the phone and she finally tentatively called him, Jin Fubai? The voice was so soft as if one was looking at the pond for the moon but at the same time afraid of breaking the moonlight.
Jin Fubai’s irritability gradually calmed down under this voice. After chatting casually, he hung up the phone and turned around, his grandmother stood silently behind him.
Her face was old and wrinkled, she was in poor health today, her face pale. So what if she had a net worth of over 100 million dollars? The same person couldn’t resist aging.
Jin Fubai’s grandmother is the only person Jin Fubai is close to in his entire family. Both of his grandfather’s family are family friends and they were also the best business partners, these were the achievements of his grandmother.
She was a powerful woman when she was young. His grandfather died young and Jin Fubai’s mother’s entire family was expanded into what it is now by his grandmother.
While she was a person who could produce clouds with the turn of her hand and rain with another, she was also a kind elderly. She was the only elderly who urged him to marry a girl based on how compatible she was with him and not because of family interests. That’s right, the only one.
The wind was heavy at night and his grandmother felt weak when she coughed. She took Jin Fubai’s hand and told him in Cantonese, Fubai, don’t be too angry, after all, we are all ants on the same boat.
The reason why she was respected was not only because of her exceptional means but also because of how she always made one feel comfortable. She was the leader of an entire corporation, and yet said she was an ant.
Jin Fubai calmed the hostility in his body and nodded, saying yes.
Because of the persuasion of his grandmother, Jin Fubai did not show any hostility in the next two days. He even spent a large sum of money to entertain several shareholders to discuss ways to win the support of some radical shareholders.
It’s just that the lunch banquet that day was not pleasant. A respected old man mentioned at the dinner table, “The young lady from the Chu family admires Fubai, perhaps marriage is the best way to get the support of all the families.”
Jin Fubai was humbly nodding his head while listening to the elders’ speeches and suddenly heard such a proposal. He slowly raised his eyes and snorted coldly, “Am I a male prostitute? The Jin family has hundreds of billions of assets and I need to sell my body to maintain it?”
He said this vulgar sentence and the people at the table were embarrassed. Someone jumped out to make peace and, in the end, even the old man changed to another topic. However, Jin Fubai had always had a grand and heroic character that was difficult to dispel and did not respond at all. At this time, Jin Fubai’s phone rang.
It was a message sent by Xiang Yu:
[Jin Fubai, I’m at the LA Airport.]
Jin Fubai stared at the message for nearly half a minute and then looked up again, his face slightly darkening. He took his phone and got up, “Sorry everyone, I need to take a call.”
Jin Fubai stood in the quiet corridor and talked with Xiang Yu. She raised her voice in a noisy environment full of foreign languages and said joyfully, “I want to stay in LA for a few days. If it is convenient, can you give me a hotel address close to you?” She said I can wait for you at the hotel if you have time to see me.
He was busy currently and she didn’t come at a good time. But her words were so considerate that made him want to make time.
At that time WeChat was far less developed than it is now and its functions were not so good. It was only recently one could add a location when posting photos in Moments and it wasn’t possible to message one’s location in chat. So Jin Fubai glanced at the closed door behind him and said, “I’ll get someone to pick you up.”
Xiang Yu refused his request saying that her annual leave was precious and waiting for him to pick her up meant wasting time at the airport. She might as well call a taxi herself.
Jin Fubai also couldn’t really walk away and he gave her the name of a hotel, saying softly, “Wait for me at the hotel.”
His fickle and agitated attitude disappeared when he returned to the dinner table. He took the initiative to poor wine for the elders at the table, apologising, that he was too young and to please bear with him. The old man who proposed the marriage smiled, accepted his apology, and in the end, they had a pleasing chat.
Exiting the hotel, Jin Fubai escorted several elderly people into their car and watched them leave. When he was about to take the car key handed over by the waiter at the door, he suddenly heard someone discussing a major accident in a foreign language.
Seven vehicles collided on the road to the airport killing 5 people on the spot. Among them is a woman who is Chinese.
Jin Fubai suddenly glanced back, the car key in his hand dropping on the marble step.
In LA that day there was a continuous light rain and the weather was gloomy. Wrapped in Jin Fubai’s black shirt and a white skirt, Xiang Yu sat in the car and waited for the road to clear.
The cars under the downpour were blocked and she couldn’t see the end to the traffic. The cars behind them kept honking their horns for unknown reasons. In front of Xiang Yu was a line of policemen, ambulances came and went. The traffic police were still at the scene with foreign policemen in dark blue uniforms among them. She didn’t know what they were talking about.
A driver pulled out and said a series of sentences in a foreign language, Xiang Yu’s language proficiency was limited. She could vaguely guess that the driver was saying, what bad luck, don’t know when the traffic jam will clear.
She had played Snake on her phone on the plane and only stopped playing until her phone ran out of batteries. She could only wait for the police to resolve the issue before going. The sky got darker, the rain still pouring, there was no Snake and Xiang Yu closed her eyes in boredom.
About an hour later, she vaguely heard someone calling her name. The man spoke in Chinese.
Was it Jin Fubai?
Xiang Yu pushed the car door open in the rain, holding onto the car door, she stood on her tippy toes and saw Jin Fubai in the crowd.
How should she describe the scene? Everyone had turned into a silent background and only he travelled back and forth in the rain. Behind him were two police officers who were at a loss and wanted to stop him but they did not dare to step forward. He took the loudspeaker from the policeman behind him, his eyes which were always full of affection, were panicked and his brows were frowned as he frequently called her name, “Xiang Yu! Xiang Yu!”
If it was possible to use sound to indicate that you love someone. It must have been Jin Fubai’s anxious call at this moment.
Author: 殊娓
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