Chapter 52

Chapter Fifty-Two

“You have the code to my door, don’t you?” An Ye ran to the entrance to open the door.

“I was worried you might…” Chi Tuo stopped mid-sentence when he saw what An Ye was wearing and swallowed the rest of it—wearing a camisole.

Sure enough, she was still in a camisole and hotpants.

Chi Tuo took off his shoes and casually grabbed a T-shirt from the coat cabinet at An Ye’s entryway and tossed it to her, not looking at her at all: “You… put something on.”

“…,” An Ye glanced down at herself.

She wasn’t in the same financial situation as when she was younger. The cut of this camisole wouldn’t expose anything unless she was wrestling with him.

Still, she obediently pulled on the T-shirt.

It was a seafoam green long-sleeved pullover, something she usually wore when going downstairs to get a delivery or takeout. Pretty conservative—and good-looking.

An Ye paused, mentally rewinding to question why she had emphasized good-looking. Since becoming a celebrity, she was constantly surrounded by attractive people, and she’d grown desensitized to the word. She hadn’t expected to suddenly think of it again now.

Chi Tuo snapped his fingers in front of her and bent down to look at her.

An Ye tilted her head back slightly: “…What?”

“What are you spacing out for?” he asked, removing his jacket and pulling out Lao Bai from inside.

It really was Lao Bai. An Ye figured it had only been three or four days since she’d last seen him, but he’d already grown bigger.

“Ah!” She took Lao Bai, completely forgetting why she’d been thinking about the word good-looking, and exclaimed in a hushed, delighted tone, “You brought him too?”

“He wasn’t in a great mood today. I figure he’s homesick.” Chi Tuo patted Lao Bai’s head. “Let him sleep here tonight. I have tomorrow off, so it’s easy to come pick him up.”

An Ye buried her face in Lao Bai’s belly. Judging by the warmth and the scent of lemon laundry pods, he’d probably been tucked inside Chi Tuo’s coat the whole way.

“You’re off tomorrow?” Her voice was muffled in the cat’s belly.

“Tomorrow’s Sunday.” Chi Tuo stepped into the room, smiling. “The way you’re living… Did you even realize next Friday is New Year’s Eve?”

“…That soon?” An Ye followed him in, still holding Lao Bai.

“We’re meeting Monday night to talk about the termination stuff—don’t forget.” Chi Tuo poured himself a glass of water, and seeing An Ye unconsciously trailing after him with her head full of cat thoughts, he poured her a glass too.

“Oh.” An Ye blinked, dazed.

Her brain really had short-circuited—wondering why he’d suddenly shown up, thinking about how nice Lao Bai’s belly smelled, trying to remember why she’d wanted to message him in the first place…

It was past two in the morning.

“So, what did you want?” Chi Tuo finally asked, sitting in her living room with his glass in hand.

“Which complex nearby do you live in?” she asked first—the question she was most curious about.

Chi Tuo pulled a sticky note and pen from the coffee table drawer and wrote down an address for her.

It really was close—the kind of distance where she could see it from her terrace. If she had a powerful enough telescope and the angle was right, she might even spot his window.

“…Rented or bought?” She snapped a photo of the note, then tore it up and tossed it in the trash.

“Bought,” Chi Tuo replied.An Ye raised an eyebrow. “You’re pretty well-off now.”

“I’m paying off a massive mortgage every month,” Chi Tuo replied. He drank a couple of sips of hot water before he finally started to calm down. The way An Ye contacted him in the middle of the night, and in such a roundabout way, had made him think something had happened to her.

After coming in and confirming that both her mental and physical state were fine, his brain finally started to function properly again.

Which only made him more curious about why she’d reached out.

“You got me to come all the way here just to ask where I live?” he asked.

An Ye opened her mouth. “…I didn’t get you to come over, I just sent you an email to test the waters.”

“You tested me just to ask where I live?” Chi Tuo smoothly adjusted his question.

An Ye choked slightly.

“No.” She was a little annoyed and decided to go for shock value. “I just wanted to ask you what it means to live well.”

Chi Tuo: “?”

An Ye propped up her chin and looked at him, her face clearly saying I just want to see how you answer this, with that watching-a-show kind of expression.

Very vivid.

Very An Jiujiu.

She was clearly in a good mood today.

So maybe the question wasn’t as serious as he’d feared for a moment—it might be related to acting.

His heart settled a bit more, the tension in him finally and completely relaxing. He put down his cup and hid his slightly trembling fingertips.

“Want me to help you run lines?” Chi Tuo asked. “Like before?”

An Ye’s chin-propping pose froze for half a second. She straightened her back. “It’s not about the movie.”

“Hmm?” Chi Tuo asked.

An Ye also picked up her water glass and took a sip, then, realizing it was just warm water, pushed it further away with distaste. She briefly recounted what Yang Zhengyi had told her that afternoon.

Chi Tuo didn’t say anything the whole time.

“Hey.” After finishing, An Ye stretched out her foot and nudged his slipper.

She had bought him a pair of black slippers specifically—not those disposable hotel ones anymore.

So they actually felt pretty nice to kick.

She kicked the second one too.

Chi Tuo couldn’t help but laugh. “If you’re going to kick both every time, why do you always pause after the first?”

“After the first one, I reflect on whether I’m being too childish,” An Ye answered. “Then I figure, whatever, it’s all childish anyway.”

Chi Tuo chuckled and took another sip of water, swallowing down the urge to ruffle her hair.

He really needed to go to bed. If not, his rationality was going to run away from home sooner or later.

“I’ve actually been wanting to ask you something…” On the surface, he still looked calm like a meditating monk—his voice and tone betraying nothing unusual. “Did you ever hate me?”“Hmm?” An Ye tilted her head and looked at him.

Tonight was strange—An Ye was in an exceptionally clear-headed state, yet her expressions were exactly the same as they had been ten years ago. The confusion, the look she had when listening to him explain things—it was all exactly the same.

Except for that one moment of stiffness earlier, when he’d mentioned running lines together.

They had run lines since reuniting, but the situation was different—it was her who had initiated it that time.

Chi Tuo continued speaking. This conversation was something he had rehearsed countless times in his mind, always thinking he’d never have the courage to say it. But An Ye’s current state gave him a sliver of bravery: “Ten years ago, when I said you were empty inside so you were suited for acting… did you ever hate me for that?”

An Ye froze.

“That acting method…” he struggled to get the words out, “the one where you empty yourself out and let the character’s soul in—that’s the method you used the first time you played Lin Luo, right?”

The smile vanished from An Ye’s face.

Chi Tuo said no more.

Lao Bai, done with being affectionate, meowed once and jumped onto his familiar mat, curling up to sleep. The warm, soft sensation in An Ye’s hands disappeared, and she stared dazedly at her now-empty palms.

“Yes.” She heard herself answer. “When I couldn’t get out of character, I hated you.”

“But if I hadn’t used that method back then, I wouldn’t have gotten the role of Lin Luo,” An Ye said. “My mom would’ve continued handing out business cards at film lots. We might’ve ended up broke, or because I started with such a low platform, life might’ve turned out even worse than it is now.”

She specifically used the words even worse.

“I only had one path,” An Ye said. “Bad, or worse.”

That’s why she couldn’t play someone who lived well, because she had never truly lived well herself.

Chi Tuo looked at her and asked again, “If I say sorry to you now, would that make you even angrier?”

An Ye: “…Yes.”

She’d throw him right off the balcony.

Chi Tuo laughed and moved to sit beside her. He realized her sofa wasn’t meant for sitting—her usual spot was the soft cushion in front of it. The cushion wasn’t very big, so when he sat down, the two of them were right up against each other.

An Ye didn’t move away.

“We…” Chi Tuo sat properly and looked out at the night view through the floor-to-ceiling windows with her. “We really can go back now, right? To the way we were—completely open with each other.”

An Ye tilted her head and thought for a moment. “There’s still one more thing—when I suddenly disappeared five years ago.”

“You were filming a road movie, playing that wandering guitarist with divorced parents,” Chi Tuo said. “You couldn’t get out of character.”

“Then your first management company overloaded you with all sorts of promotional gigs, and Yan Wan told you he could take you out of that mess, and you believed him.”

“The first contract was full of traps. Huan Zhou paid off a massive penalty fee for you, and you took another role with divorced parents—this time, the character was a sex worker.” Chi Tuo looked at her. “But that movie’s still unreleased, right?”

An Ye stared at him.

“There was also a competitive variety show that year—it’s still pretty popular now. You filmed one episode in really bad condition, probably got injured. I couldn’t find out exactly what kind of injury, but one of the other guests had a scandal and got permanently blacklisted, so that episode was never aired either.”

“Where were you hurt?” Chi Tuo asked.

An Ye pointed to her knee and her head. “It was an outdoor shoot. Tandem bike race. That blacklisted guest flung me off the bike—my knee hit the ground, my head slammed into a railing. Ended up with a fractured kneecap and stitches in my scalp. After I healed, I had to get a skin graft on my knee.”

Under the light, there were no visible wounds on her knee. An Ye shifted her leg, showing Chi Tuo the back of her knee, where there was a small scar."You stayed in the hospital for four months?" Chi Tuo estimated.

"Half a year," An Ye said.

That year, she had actually been very busy—filming a movie and doing variety shows that consumed her immensely—yet none of it ever aired. Her already terrible state due to the massive penalty fees only got worse.

"That year, everything really just piled on. After I got discharged, I slept for another twenty days. Back then, the cause of my condition still hadn’t been confirmed. Dr. Zuo wasn’t my attending physician yet. The doctor at the time strongly suspected I had depression and prescribed medication."

"My mental state just wasn’t good," An Ye said. "So for those two years, I was really grateful to Yan Wan."

That year’s turmoil had nearly destroyed her acting career. It was Yan Wan who had begged and pleaded and managed to get her two movie roles—both became massive hits—and only then did she slowly recover.

Chi Tuo finally reached out and gently ruffled An Ye’s hair.

An Ye turned her head to look at him and smiled.

"I didn’t think you’d come back," An Ye said, hugging her knees, maintaining the angle from when she had turned to look at him. "I figured you were doing pretty well over there."

"Mhm." Chi Tuo nodded, dead serious. "So well that I’ve been seeing a therapist the whole time."

An Ye: "……"

"After I went to Singapore, I started having trouble sleeping," Chi Tuo leaned back on the sofa. "At first I was afraid my mom would do something while I was asleep. Later on, it was just anxiety."

"Hmm?" An Ye let out a quiet breath through her nose.

The atmosphere was too good—they both felt it. So relaxed. Like the kind of ease from ten years ago, when their biggest worry was just homework.

"Law… is really hard to study." The top student Chi Tuo gave a light sigh. "I originally thought I’d be back in six years at most, but it dragged out to ten."

An Ye also reached out and ruffled his hair.

"So…" Maybe because his head was tilted back, Chi Tuo’s voice came out hoarse, "After everything you’ve been through, how can you say you don’t understand what it means to live well?"

"You’ve worked so hard to live."

An Ye froze.

She didn’t expect the straight-A student’s train of thought to circle back like that.

She even less expected that, after he asked this, such a strong wave of grievance would suddenly well up in her chest.

"Dummy," he said, sitting up and smiling at her.

She just sat there, stunned—and slowly, started to cry.