Chapter 6 — When You Shine, I Am Still Here

My mouth rambled endlessly, pouring out a torrent of words like a rapid-fire rap, giving him zero chance to squeeze in even a single syllable. By the time I finally stopped, my throat felt bone-dry, but his expression had softened just a fraction.

"When are you all heading back to the city?" It was getting late. And these three individuals were all notoriously difficult to please; if they actually insisted on staying here overnight, I was going to lose my mind.

"Are you chasing me away already?" His gaze turned frosty once more. See? Utterly impossible to coax.

"How could I ever do that? I was planning on holding my husband tight and going to sleep tonight... hehe..." I flashed a flattering, ingratiating smile, deliberately batting my eyelashes.

The tips of his ears turned bright red, and he gave my dimple a light poke. "Wei Xixi, we are in public right now."

"Oh, so you don't want to? Fine then, sleep by yourself. Who told you to clearly have another woman hidden away in your heart?"

"..."

Chu Yanzhi finally reached his absolute limit. He cupped my face in his hands and leaned down to bite my cheek hard. He completely forgot that he had just been the one lecturing me about being in public. Honestly, I used to find affectionate couples displaying PDA on the street utterly cringeworthy—and now, I had somehow become the main character.

I led them to my uncle's guesthouse to spend the night.

"Xixi, is this the young lady you were telling me about? Oh my goodness, a most sincere welcome! Meeting such a refined young lady is truly a blessing for our Xixi. Our girl has been quiet and reserved since she was little, so please bear with her if she seems awkward."

My uncle eagerly reached out to shake the young lady's hand, then suddenly remembered it might be improper etiquette and pivoted to grabbing Xiao Zhang's hand instead, showering her with endless praise.

"Quiet and reserved?"

The young lady and Chu Yanzhi turned their heads to stare at me simultaneously, their expressions dripping with suspicion. I meticulously adopted the pose of keeping my eyes fixed on the bridge of my nose and my nose fixed on my heart, looking utterly meek and obedient.

"This is my uncle's house, the person who paid for my schooling. The savings I accumulated from my investments were also used to renovate this homestay. What do you think, is it pretty? I saved the room with the absolute best view just for you, let me take you up to see it."

I grabbed the young lady's hand and pulled her upstairs. The homestay was nestled against the mountainside, facing a tranquil lake with lush green peaks backing it up. Following the wooden staircase all the way to the top floor brought us to a cozy attic enclosed on three sides by floor-to-ceiling glass windows. Soft, gentle light flooded the space, and the panoramic view outside was breathtakingly vast. Hanging right outside the door was a small wooden sign with handwritten calligraphy reading: 【Miss's Private Quarters】

"You took all the investment money I gave you... and spent every last cent of it on this?"

The young lady's gaze carried a complex mixture of emotions, mostly because this attic room had been designed down to the very last detail to match her exact preferences.

"Mm-hm, mm-hm." I nodded my head frantically like a pecking chicken.

She stared at me in silence for a long moment. "Wei Xixi, from now on, don't keep any secrets from me ever again."

My eyes lit up and I nodded vigorously. Absolutely no more secrets!

The young lady looked at me and let out a soft huff, though the corners of her lips refused to stay down and curled upward instead. She would always be the proudest, most demanding person in the world, but also the one who shielded me unconditionally.

"My brother is such a stiff, cold-faced block of ice. Aren't you bored out of your mind with him?" she furrowed her brows and asked with a skeptical tilt of her head.

My dear young lady... Your brother is the textbook definition of 'cold on the outside, wild on the inside,' but that was really not a comment I felt comfortable elaborating on...

When I descended the stairs, Chu Yanzhi naturally and seamlessly took my hand. Xiao Zhang, meanwhile, cast a look of profound heartbreak in my direction.

???

My uncle poured himself a cup of wine and eagerly resumed telling stories about my childhood. Back then, my life had been absolute misery; as the youngest child in the family, I had almost been drowned by my grandmother. Later, my grandfather had led me up into the mountains and lost me. Growing up, I was rail-thin, forced to do all the grueling household chores while enduring a constant barrage of screaming and scolding.

My uncle and auntie had taken pity on me and secretly carved out a portion of their meals for me a few times, only for my parents to catch them. My parents ruthlessly cut off my food supply entirely, and even kicked me out of the house, dumping me right on my uncle's doorstep before beating me until I cried. It wasn't until my auntie had a massive, screaming match with my mother that I was finally allowed to stay at my uncle's place.

Having lived under someone else's roof since childhood, I became an expert at reading expressions and walking on eggshells. When obedience was required, I kept my mouth shut entirely. When my uncle tried to officially transfer my household registration to his name, my mother flatly refused—I knew she wanted to retain absolute control over me. When I reached middle school, she tried to force me to drop out and go work in a factory. It was my uncle who engaged in a fierce, screaming battle with her, gritting his teeth to hand over the money while terrified she would march up to the school to cause a scene.

After that, my uncle sent me to stay with my auntie's maternal family in the city to attend a boarding school. Ever since middle school, I had lived away from home. No one else knew, but that was actually the happiest period of my entire life. I studied like a madwoman, driven solely by the desperate need to escape that place.

And then, I met Chu Yanzhi. In the flush of youth, experiencing first love, I finally understood what it meant to fall hopelessly at first sight. Shortly after, I managed to befriend the young lady, shamelessly latching onto her. It was thanks to that connection that someone from the very bottom of society like me was granted the opportunity to glimpse an entirely different world.

When my mother saw that my life was steadily improving, she started making trouble with my uncle again, demanding that I return home to live. When I refused, she went everywhere weeping and playing the victim, slandering me as an unfilial daughter. Not wanting my uncle to be caught in the middle, I stopped going back home altogether after that.

I chuckled and smoothly interrupted my uncle, pulling Chu Yanzhi—who had just spent a solid hour listening to my entire 'tragic biographical history'—outside with me.

"Don't look at me with that kind of expression... Are you pitying me?"

"Wei Xixi, let's get married."

Was the gap between our worlds really that insurmountable? Families of immense wealth... shouldn't they marry someone of equal social standing? Someone with my humble background—how could I possibly marry him?

I immediately resorted to playing the fool, making jokes and changing the subject to brush the proposal aside. I still possessed a painfully clear understanding of my own social standing; I didn't even dare to harbor such grand thoughts, nor did I want to, terrified of facing a devastating disappointment in the end.

Chu Yanzhi merely looked at me in quiet silence, offering no further argument.

Afterward, I took them around to sample the local specialties before we all traveled back to the city together.

Before long, an email landed in my inbox. It was the official admission letter from the Monterey Institute of International Studies in the United States.

I stared intently at the subject line, my fingers trembling slightly, hesitating for a long while before I finally summoned the courage to click open the message.

Taking a deep breath, I pressed read.

"Congratulations on your acceptance into the Translation and Interpretation program at our institution..."

In that exact instant, my eyes stung and flushed red. Countless sleepless nights spent buried in study suddenly rushed back like a surging tide. I woke up at dawn every single day to memorize vocabulary, spending my nights with heavy headphones clamped over my ears to practice listening comprehension. To craft a flawless Personal Statement, I revised and polished it through countless iterations, hunting down dozens of professors and senior mentors for guidance—writing, deleting, rewriting, and deleting all over again.

The young lady had secured her acceptance from a prestigious elite university long ago, and she was heading abroad for her studies. And me—I had finally made it happen too.

All those years of desperately hustling for money, tutoring students, and following the young lady into the world of investments—every single coin painstakingly accumulated in my bank account had finally grown large enough to fund the dream I had never once dared to voice aloud.

"Xixi, you are seriously, truly incredible!" The young lady cried out in absolute excitement after reading the acceptance letter.

I threw my arms around her shoulders, burying my face against her collarbone as a sharp sting bloomed at the bridge of my nose. Without her, I might never have known that there was an entirely different way to live this life.

I went abroad for my studies.

Before my departure, Chu Yanzhi pulled me into a fierce, suffocating embrace, refusing to let go for the longest time.

Our long-distance relationship began from that moment onward. He would occasionally fly across the ocean to visit me. But I was simply too busy. Aside from the stolen moments when I could squeeze out time to be with him and share a bed, practically every remaining second of my life was swallowed entirely by the library and demanding translation projects.

When the Ministry of Foreign Affairs held direct recruitment drives at Monterey, I submitted my application as well. Passing rigorous screening round after grueling round, I was genuinely accepted!

On the very day my official placement notice arrived, I happened to be flying back to the country. As soon as I stepped out of the arrival gate at the airport, I spotted him standing right there waiting, a vibrant bouquet of flowers in one hand—and a sparkling ring in the other.

He was proposing to me all over again. It was a proposal so utterly cheesy it practically exploded, lacking an ounce of genuine subtlety or romance.

Yet this time—I didn't hesitate for a single second.

I finally understood that what stood between us had never been our differing backgrounds or social classes. It was simply that back then, I wasn't strong enough yet, which made me feel inherently unworthy of him.

But now—I was no longer that timid girl who had to love in the shadows, terrified of making our relationship public.

I possessed enough courage at last to stand proudly by his side, walking with him into the light.

Because of the nature of my work, I frequently found myself interacting with true elite heavyweights in the professional world. And consequently... the person who began worrying excessively and losing his grip on his peace of mind—the reigning 'vinegar king'—turned out to be none other than him.

On one occasion, when I casually dropped the name Chen Nuobai into conversation, the young lady simply let out an absent-minded "mm," taking a full few seconds of serious concentration just to remember who he was.

「……」

Pity for the man who used to reign as the unassailable campus god lording over everyone else. Chen Nuobai had ultimately chosen to follow his own path—entering the interpretation industry and firmly refusing to return home to inherit his family's massive empire.

He had laughed and told me: "I'm fundamentally unsuited for the corporate cutthroat world, I'd much rather live a slightly more comfortable life instead."

He would still occasionally invite me out for coffee.

On that particular afternoon, he propped his chin in his hand and looked at me, a half-smile playing across his lips: "Wei Xi, you're fluent in seven languages, with knowledge spanning across every conceivable field... Do you know, nowadays just standing quietly in a crowd is enough to make people turn their heads and stare."

I was so heavily flattered by his praise that my face flushed bright red, and just as I was about to wave a hand in modest denial, I glanced sideways—and instantly clamped my mouth shut.

My resident vinegar king had arrived.

Chu Yanzhi was standing not far away. Trailing behind him was Xiao Zhang, who obediently chimed in with a polite greeting: 「Hello, Senior Xi.」

I immediately waved farewell to Chen Nuobai, flashing a tight, polite smile as I excused myself: "I have to get going now, let's catch up another time."

Chen Nuobai flicked a glance at me, then shifted his gaze over to Chu Yanzhi. Abruptly, the corners of his mouth curved upward as he dropped a half-joking, half-serious parting shot: "If you two ever break up, remember to look me up."

「……」

I nearly choked on my own saliva. This absolute scoundrel was definitely doing it on purpose.

I turned my head to look at my man—unsurprisingly, the handsome, sharply-defined angles of his face were pulled taut and rigid, his razor-sharp gaze practically trying to nail me to the spot.

Splendid.

Just a single casual remark was all it took to plunge my vinegar king right back into his chronic state of anxious insecurity.

[The End.]