Less than an hour had passed since they entered the restaurant, yet Jiang Zao’s emotions had plummeted and soared like a rollercoaster, all thanks to him. Xie Lisheng’s barrage of words and actions—utterly beyond her grasp of social norms—had struck her like bolt after bolt of lightning, leaving her reeling.
Her eyes felt rigid, as if both her body and soul were pinned in place by that intense gaze of his.
Her lips parted and closed several times, but not a single word escaped.
What? No, what was he even saying?
Was he interrogating her? What right did he have to be angry?
Hold on—the real point was that Xie Lisheng had been holding onto the memory of that kiss this whole time!
“I…” What was she supposed to say? What could she say?
Jiang Zao jutted out her chin stubbornly and steered the conversation back at him. “Forget about me for a second. Was it right for you to barge in and ruin someone else’s dinner like that?”
She crossed her arms, striking a pose as if she were the reasonable one. “You… you’re so rude.”
Xie Lisheng tilted his head lazily, mimicking her tone. “You… you’re the one with no shame.”
“I’ve been rude my whole life. But you—you’re the fickle one, two-timing and flirtatious, always chasing the new and discarding the old. Is that just how you treat me, or is it your style with everyone?”
Jiang Zao: “…”
Where did he pull all those idioms from? Showing off, was he?
“Had enough of that smart mouth?” Xie Lisheng draped his left arm over the back of his chair, his fingertip tapping rhythmically as he fixed his gaze on her face. “Can we get back to the point now?”
He leaned in again, that subtle pressure bearing down on her. Jiang Zao clenched her fingers and forced out the line she’d rehearsed endlessly in her dreams. “It was just a fluke. A mistake.”
Xie Lisheng shot back, “Just a mistake?”
She nodded, her eyes flicking pointedly to the scant space between them. “What else? Who asked you to lean in so close?”
He drawled out an “Ah,” savoring the words. “I figured you’d been holding back for ages, overwhelmed by your feelings.”
Jiang Zao nearly yelped in shock. Blinking furiously with indignation, she fought back a laugh. “Why on earth would I be overwhelmed by feelings for you? Spouting whatever pops into your dreams?”
“Fine, I’ll grudgingly buy it.” Xie Lisheng turned away, toying with the fruit fork in his hand. “But I’m not letting you brush this off with that excuse.”
“Adults have to take responsibility, Miss Jiang.”
Jiang Zao faltered, bracing for whatever nonsense would spill from his mouth next. “So what do you want me to…”
He arched a brow at her. “One little slip-up from you, and my first kiss is gone. Who am I supposed to complain to?”
Jiang Zao: ???
First… kiss?
A chaotic jumble of information crashed over her, leaving her dazed. She blurted out her gut reaction. “You can’t seriously expect me to take responsibility just because of… a little brush of the lips.”
Wasn’t this straight-up extortion?
Xie Lisheng looked immensely pleased by her stunned expression. He speared the fork into the vibrant red watermelon flesh, his tone relaxed and content. “You might not realize this, but I’m in kind of a rush to get mar—”
His phone buzzed insistently from his pocket before he could finish.
Their conversation ground to a halt.
He glanced at Jiang Zao, sighed, and answered the call first.
Jiang Zao exhaled in relief, her mind racing for a way to dismantle his rogue logic and shameless maneuvering.
Take responsibility? He had to be joking.
Xie Lisheng wouldn’t seriously be interested in someone like her.
How had they gone from mutual disdain in the past to casual indifference now—and somehow leaped straight to this “responsibility” nonsense?
She watched as he took the call, his brows knitting tighter with every response.
She realized she’d been handed a chance to dodge and regroup.
Xie Lisheng hung up and rose to his feet. “Something came up. We’ll table this for now—I’ll find you once I’m done.”
Jiang Zao couldn’t even muster a smile. His words had terrified her into silence. Her dark eyes darted about as she watched him leave.
After a long moment, her strength drained away, and she slumped bonelessly into her chair.
What in the world was any of this?
~~~
She left the restaurant and strolled along the riverside for a while, piecing together her scattered emotions before heading home.
Jiang Zao scrolled through the shortlist of rental listings she’d curated, planning to check them out over the weekend.
She couldn’t keep crashing at Li Li’s place much longer.
Whole-unit rentals were pricier, but her last experience with roommates had been a total disaster. She wavered between shelling out extra cash or rolling the dice on a decent housemate.
On her way past the cake shop near the residential complex, she picked up a slice for Li Li.
She really liked this colleague. Outwardly boisterous, but the fact that she could hustle so effortlessly in a city far from home proved she was rock-solid at her core.
Jiang Zao climbed the stairs under the glow of the voice-activated lights, picturing Li Li’s squeals of delight when she dug into the cake. A smile tugged at her lips.
She unlocked the door and heard lively chatter from inside.
Had Li Li’s friend dropped by? Then she’d bought too little cake.
“Oh, Jiang Zao’s back!” Li Li’s voice carried over from across the room.
Jiang Zao slipped off her shoes, cake box in hand, and walked in with a smile. “Yeah, running a bit late today…”
The rest of her words and her smile evaporated the moment she spotted Pan Yu in the living room.
Pan Yu wore the same skirt from their last encounter, as if it were her only presentable outfit. Her red lips clashed jarringly with the wrinkles creeping across her face.
At the sight of Jiang Zao, Pan Yu broke into her usual gentle smile, as if she belonged there—as if she’d been waiting just as patiently as Li Li for her to come home.
Oblivious to the sudden shift in Jiang Zao’s expression, Li Li beamed. “Auntie’s here! So the pretty lady I met at the company entrance the other day is your mom, Jiang Zao. You two look just alike!”
“Why’d you get back so late? I wanted to call you, but Auntie said not to bother you.”
A torrent of teenage memories crashed over her. Blood roared in her ears. Jiang Zao stared at Pan Yu’s face, fury surging to the top of her head. Her hands trembled uncontrollably at her sides.
Li Li noticed her silence and frowned in confusion. “Huh? What’s up?”
Pan Yu knew that look all too well. She stood with a quick, placating chuckle and approached. “Tired from work? Eaten yet? This kid’s a gem—said if you didn’t show up soon, she’d take me out to dinner herself.”
“You’re so busy, but with a colleague like this watching your back, I can relax…”
“Come with me.” Jiang Zao clenched her jaw, giving the woman one last shred of respect in front of Li Li—for both their sakes. She fought to keep her crumbling composure and turned away. “…I’ll buy you dinner.”
Li Li picked up on the tension and eyed the pair uncertainly. “Uh, okay then…”
Pan Yu flashed Li Li a grateful smile and hurried after Jiang Zao. “Thanks, dear. No need to put you out—Jiang Zao’s got me covered.”
“You two enjoy yourselves. I’ll bring you some treats next time.”
Li Li nodded cheerfully. “Take care, Auntie. Come by anytime~”
~~~
In the dim stairwell of the old residential complex, the mother and daughter’s footsteps echoed one after the other, thick with barely contained agitation.
Pan Yu watched her trudge ahead in silence, offered an awkward laugh, and reached out—only to pull her hand back before it touched her shoulder. “Where to? Actually, I ate at noon. These days, I don’t have much appetite at night. Sometimes it just sits wrong…”
“How did you find this place?!” Jiang Zao whipped around, eyes red-rimmed as she shouted.
Pan Yu went quiet, then murmured, “I… waited downstairs at your company. That girl looked familiar, so I asked her about you.”
“She said you lived together, so I came to wait…”
“What for?”
“Didn’t I already give you money?!” Jiang Zao slapped her chest, her voice rising in a frenzy. “Why can’t you just leave me alone? Huh?”
“Run out already?”
Pan Yu’s face flushed with embarrassment, her lipstick a garish slash in the night. “The money… it wasn’t quite enough. But I was thinking of you…”
Jiang Zao cut her off and bore down. “Did you borrow from Li Li? How much? Did you take her money? Answer me!”
The shout left her gasping for air.
Suddenly, she was fifteen, seventeen again—right there in front of her.
Back then, Pan Yu hadn’t just wasted days at the card table. She’d chased shady deals with even shadier people: flipping used cars that bled cash, sports bets that tanked, bootleg liquor that swallowed everything like a black hole and turned her into a wild-eyed lunatic. No profits, just one scam after another.
At the age when pride burned hottest and every slight cut deepest, Pan Yu had played on her teachers’ sympathy—borrowing from her homeroom teacher, her gym coach.
She’d even hit up parents of her close classmates, roping them into the schemes.
Until one friend, past caring about old ties, ripped the lid off it all and reported everything to the school heads. Pan Yu vanished like smoke. Jiang Zao had stood in the principal’s office, redialing that number until her thumb cramped—nothing. Not a whisper.
The instant she realized she’d been abandoned—her own mother fleeing the scene—Jiang Zao’s heart stopped dead.
In that moment, surrounded by the judgmental stares of elders and peers alike, she felt utterly stripped bare, as if she were standing there naked from the waist down, despised by everyone.
She wanted to collapse right then and die.
She wanted to vanish into thin air, consequences be damned.
All because of her biological mother, she couldn’t hold her head high in front of her classmates. She felt ashamed even facing her teachers. Later on, whenever Pan Yu popped up out of nowhere, Jiang Zao didn’t dare make friends or get too close to anyone, terrified that her mother would latch onto them and drag others into her mess.
Pan Yu had no shame whatsoever. And she certainly didn’t love her daughter.
All those times Jiang Zao had softened as a child had only brought deeper wounds and endless trouble in return.
She couldn’t catch her breath for some reason. Clutching her chest, Jiang Zao struggled to ask, “Tell me… how much money did you squeeze out of them…?”
Pan Yu flinched under her daughter’s venomous glare, her patience evaporating completely. “How dare you talk to me like that? Oh, so that’s what I am in your eyes, huh?”
She let out a laugh, the implication crystal clear.
“Can’t I just come see you for once? It’s been seven or eight years since you started college—have we even spoken more than five times?!” Pan Yu jabbed a finger at her. “Look at that glare! Is that any way to look at your own mother?”
“That’s right, we hardly ever meet,” Jiang Zao shot back with a string of bitter laughs. “And every single time, I’m stuck cleaning up your messes. Harassed by you, by all those sleazy men and creditors of yours!”
Those four years of undergrad had been pure hell just to pay off debts, and half that misery was thanks to the woman standing right in front of her.
“You won’t work an honest job with your own two hands, and you can’t snag a man willing to keep you,” she said, jabbing a finger at her own chest, each word laced with venom. “So instead, you torment the one daughter you’re forever stuck with.”
Jiang Zao smiled thinly. “You should’ve slept around with more guys and had a bigger brood. That way, you could spread the misery around, and I’d get a break.”
Pan Yu’s face flushed crimson, then drained to an ashen hue as she’d struck a nerve. She swung her hand straight at Jiang Zao’s face—
Jiang Zao reacted fast, dodging backward, but she couldn’t evade the vicious upward slap entirely. It caught her on the neck instead. Pan Yu’s long, sharp nails raked across her skin, igniting a stinging burn.
The sharp crack of the slap echoed into a tomb-like silence.
Pan Yu had never hit her before. In the aftermath, her hand trembled in midair. Guilty but forcing a righteous tone, as if disciplining a wayward child, she spat, “I’ll always be your mother! I carried you, raised you for over a decade. You gonna abandon me now that I’m old? The law won’t stand for it!”
“If you won’t give me money, won’t care if I live or die, I’ll go down to your company building and scream my head off, kneel if I have to—you believe me?!”
Jiang Zao’s eyes bulged wide, her sockets swelling like a wooden shutter about to burst under pressure.
“You wouldn’t dare!”
“Why wouldn’t I? Living it up as a fancy white-collar in a big company, raking in cash but ignoring your own mom? You try ditching me, and I’ll make a scene that’ll bring the house down!” Pan Yu was past caring, throwing all caution to the wind.
Jiang Zao snorted in disdain, eyeing her like a fool.
“You think the company’s Security Department is for show? Those gangster tactics of yours don’t fly anymore, Lady Pan. Save your breath.”
She laid it out plain as day. “What I gave you last time was half a month’s grocery money. I’m tapped out. Throw all the tantrums you want—I got nothing left.”
“And let me tell you something: don’t even think about hitting up my colleagues. The second I head upstairs, I’m spilling every dirty detail of your past. You won’t scam another cent off my name.”
Pan Yu gaped as Jiang Zao dismantled her arguments point by point, trapping her with cold logic. Nodding furiously in rage, she snarled, “You say you’re broke, so you’re broke? Let me tell you, don’t think for a second that I can’t—”
“Get lost!” Jiang Zao snapped, desperation cracking her voice.
Pan Yu fell instantly silent, her eyes flying wide.
After a long moment, she shot Jiang Zao a venomous glare and stomped off in her battered high heels.
Her posture wasn’t as upright as it had been in her youth, but that retreating silhouette was identical to every time she’d abandoned her daughter all those years ago.
Jiang Zao remained rigid, her gaze locked on that shadow until it vanished around the corner, out of sight.
Moments later, she slowly bent at the waist. Her long hair cascaded down, veiling her entire face. Her hunched form slumped toward the ground, dark and twisted in silhouette.
The stillness held for a dozen seconds or more. Then, a faint, choked sob escaped from the inky shadow.
Her vision blurred. Jiang Zao raised a hand to rub her eyes. Only then did a pair of pristine, stylish designer sneakers materialize in her wavering field of view.
Realizing a third person had witnessed it all, she froze in place, not daring to look up.
“Crying?” came a familiar voice, deep and measured.
Jiang Zao squeezed her eyes shut in mortification.
It couldn’t get any worse.
Anyone else catching her like this would have been bad enough.
But him? Of all people.
She stiffened and straightened up, schooling her expression into one of feigned ignorance as she shot back, “No, why would I be crying?”
Once she had straightened, Xie Lisheng’s gaze didn’t land on her face right away. Instead, it drifted slowly downward, pausing for a close look. Then a huff escaped his nostrils—a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sigh.
“Why do I always catch you right after you’ve been hit by someone else?”
Jiang Zao lifted her unmarred cheek, as if presenting evidence in her own defense. “I didn’t get hit.”
Xie Lisheng said nothing, his eyes fixed on the three angry scratches marring her neck. He had no idea what to say to that.
“The first rule of picking a fight is knowing you won’t come off worse even if fists start flying.” He met her gaze steadily. “You don’t even get that, but you still go hurling insults like that?”
Her heart lurched, emotions churning wildly inside her. She blurted out, “How much did you hear?”
Xie Lisheng tilted his chin up and leaned back a fraction, eyeing her askance without a word.
A tidal wave of shame crashed over her. Jiang Zao lunged forward in a panic, her face burning hot. “Say something! What exactly did you hear?”
“You… you didn’t hear… everything, did you?”
No. Please, no. Anyone but him…
“I told you I’d come find you once I wrapped up my work,” he said, explaining his presence. “There are some things we need to clear up tonight.”
“Forget that—tell me what you heard first.” Jiang Zao glanced around frantically, on the verge of hysteria. “Where were you standing? How close were you? Why didn’t I…”
In the next instant, Xie Lisheng’s palm closed around the back of her neck.
Jiang Zao barely had time to register it before a sharp, prickling pain shot through her—
“Hiss… ah.”
Xie Lisheng traced the scratches on her neck with his thumb. Only when she yelped in pain did he pull his hand away.
His gaze was dark and intense. He let out a short scoff.
“I figured you didn’t even feel pain.”
~~~