To Covet (GL) - Chapter 83

The original contract must have been more than just these few pages; many detailed paragraphs in the middle had been removed. What remained was mostly illegible, leaving only the headers and footers with the seals and signatures.

I wasn’t sure if something like this could still be considered valid.

The last page was the most thoroughly damaged, looking as if it had been chewed up and spat out. The section at the bottom where the two principal parties had signed was still there, but the names were almost impossible to make out.

“Yu… Yu Hanyang and who…?” I struggled to decipher the unfamiliar name, but my grandmother urged me to come out and help my aunt carry some things. I had to tuck it away again, temporarily setting aside the questions in my mind.

At the dinner table, I mentioned that I was heading back to Linzhou tomorrow. My aunt put a shrimp in my bowl and asked curiously, “Nannan, you’re going to stay there even during the summer break?”

“Yeah, we have classes at school during the summer.”

“When do they start?”

“Around July 5th.”

“So early? Then you hardly get a break at all? I was thinking you’d move back here with us for these two months so I could cook you something good every day,” she said, adding another portion of food to my bowl. “Your biological father is with another woman now; he’s no different from a stepfather. It’d be cleaner if he were dead. Look how thin our Nannan is; it’s obvious you haven’t been eating well.”

“It’s good for girls to be thin. Being chubby makes you look clumsy…” My uncle muttered to himself. Just as he reached out with a spoon to take some meat, my aunt slapped his hand away. In an instant, that spoonful of meat and broth appeared in my bowl.

“Go on, get out of here. You’ve already had several pieces, one after another. I didn’t say anything then, so leave some for Nannan and Mom,” my aunt shooed him away. “You’ve got no education, what do you know? Right now she needs to study hard, and when she’s hungry, she needs to eat well. Eat up, and don’t think about dieting! A girl needs to keep her body strong to have the energy for class. You can worry about dressing up once you’re in university, right, Nannan?”

She firmly believed that living with family was much more comfortable than seeking a life under a stranger’s roof. I looked at the small mountain of food in my bowl and nodded to her earnestly.

“If it really doesn’t work out, your uncle and I will come visit you on a Saturday or Sunday. We’ll bring you lots of good home-cooked food. You can take it out and eat it whenever you’re hungry, okay?”

“How can we? It’s too far, several hours’ drive…” my uncle grumbled reluctantly. “A whole crowd of us charging into someone else’s house, stuffing their fridge with random things. Besides, Nannan is usually at school; she’d hardly get a bite… isn’t that just letting other people take advantage of us?”

“I’m just afraid she’ll be lonely and get bullied. You’re her kinsman, why are you being so stingy about supporting the child? It makes it look like we don’t care about her. If it weren’t for the fact that the girl is ambitious and wants to find good teachers there, I would have said it’s just as well for her to come back here to study…”

Before I left, my grandmother stuffed me with bags of food. When she realized I couldn’t even lift them and was stuck in place, she reluctantly took things out one by one.

I carried my bags, transferring between buses and trains, and finally reached Linzhou in the evening.

Stepping into my own little sanctuary, everything around me suddenly fell silent. The chatter and bickering from the dinner table and the clatter of chopsticks still lingered in my ears; a quick shake of the head, and the auditory hallucinations made the surrounding silence feel less lonely.

Driven by intense curiosity, I was desperate to know Lu Xiaoting’s next move. I hurriedly called to schedule our next meeting, but she didn’t pick up for a long time. I turned the volume on my phone to the maximum. While waiting, I fried an egg and heated up some takeout to fill my stomach.

Lu Xiaoting sent a message saying she was busy and would come find me directly later, asking me to send her the address.

Out of instinctive caution, I replied: “Don’t bother, it’s too late today. Forget it.”

There was no further reply from the other side. I stared at the screen for a long time, nearly ignoring the low battery warning popup.

The sleepiness dissipated after my shower. After blow-drying my hair, I sat cross-legged on the bed. The old phone and the damaged papers in the box felt exceptionally heavy. I kept taking them out and putting them back, examining them with extreme caution each time, yet I still couldn’t make sense of them.

Knock, knock.

Because of Lu Xiaoting’s strange message, I became 100% alert the moment I heard the knocking. I slowly stood up from the floor, moved to the door, and looked through the peephole.

The lens of the peephole was a bit old, making everything outside look like a blur. I tentatively opened the door a crack.

The first thing I saw was an exquisite cake box, exceptionally bright in the dim yellow light of the stairwell. Then, I saw Yu Zhouwan’s expression shift from shadow to light.

“I thought you weren’t home.”

“I was blow-drying my hair just now; I didn’t hear you.”

I stepped aside to let her in. Yu Zhouwan suddenly looked at me and smiled, then began tidying the messy strands of hair on top of my head one by one.

She placed the small cake on the table, glanced around the room, then walked to the glass balcony door and pulled the curtains shut.

“Where else would I go when exams just finished and I have a couple of days off?”

“Out with someone else, like a good friend or something.”

“No.” I actually did have an appointment tonight, but it was for a specific purpose.

Thinking of this, I guiltily glanced toward the bed in the bedroom. The contents of that box were still lying blatantly on the floor. While her attention was on the living room, I immediately rushed into the room and stuffed them into a drawer.

“When you’re home alone, remember to keep these curtains closed.”

Yu Zhouwan didn’t notice my little maneuver. She walked to the window and pulled those curtains shut as well.

“Why did you suddenly buy a cake?”

Yu Zhouwan took out the candles. After looking around the room and failing to find a lighter, she used the gas stove to catch a small flicker of flame.

She turned off all the lights. The fuzzy halo of the candle flame cradled her face; her eyes were bright, like jewels set on velvet.

“Happy Birthday, Yu Keyi,” she said to me.

Seeing me still standing there dazed, Yu Zhouwan stepped forward and pushed me toward the cake on the table. “Happy seventeenth birthday.”

It was my own birthday; I had completely forgotten.

This time last year, I was busy handling Yang Chun’s death certificate, followed by the funeral and packing. The ill-timed matter of a birthday was pushed to the back of everyone’s mind, never to be mentioned again. Even a year later, no one remembered—including myself.

“Blow out the candles,” she said, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Mhm…? Wait, you should make a wish first.”

“I…”

“Wait,” Yu Zhouwan suddenly placed a finger on my lips. Then, smiling, she placed a folded birthday hat on my head. “Don’t wishes stop coming true if you say them out loud?”

So they weren’t supposed to be said. No wonder my childhood wish—to eat chocolate cake with Mom every year—never came true.

I crossed my hands, closed my eyes, and made a devout wish toward the candle.

“I didn’t know what flavor of cake you liked, so I bought this one. I thought it was the prettiest,” Yu Zhouwan cut a slice and handed it to me. “I didn’t add mango this time; it has nata de coco and some other things. I don’t know if you’ll like it.”

The pure white cream was mixed with black tea specks as dense as stars. It looked grainy in texture, but it felt soft and light in the mouth.

Yu Zhouwan hurriedly asked if it was good; I could even hear a hint of tentativeness in her voice, like a student waiting for a teacher to grade their homework.

“It seems a bit… bitter… the taste is weird,” I frowned with exaggerated intensity. “You try it?”

Yu Zhouwan looked incredulous. She leaned over to cut a small piece and suddenly looked at me.

Then, her smiling eyes enlarged in my vision, followed by the touch of her lips—pressing deeper and firmer. I lost my balance and took a half-step back.

“It’s clearly quite sweet…”

“Then you should eat more.” I forked a small piece of the fluffy cake filling and held it to her lips. “Are you not being Mom’s ‘good girl’ today? It’s so late and you’re still out—won’t she say something?”

Yu Zhouwan glared at me with dissatisfaction. She didn’t answer the mood-killing question directly but took the opportunity for revenge. While eating the cake, she used her finger to scoop a bit of cream and reached toward me.

Luckily I dodged quickly. The cream that was meant for my face ended up smeared on my bare shoulder.

“Yu Zhouwan!” I glared fiercely at the person amusing herself. “I just took a shower!”

Yu Zhouwan pretended not to hear my complaints, her face still wearing a smiling expression.

“You have to clean it off for me.”

In my own tone, I belatedly sensed an unconscious hint of flirting and enticement.

“Okay.”

Before the word fully left her lips, she grabbed my wrist and suddenly leaned in.

The warmth of her tongue and the cream melted together along my skin.