Chapter 53

Chapter Fifty-Three

An Ye didn’t cry often.

In fact, if you tallied up all the times she and Chi Tuo had cried from childhood to now, Chi Tuo had definitely cried more than she did.

Zhang Rou had a better temperament than Wang Shanshan. When Chi Tuo cried as a child, he would be comforted, so his tear ducts had developed a little too well. But she had never really dared to cry growing up—tears would trigger Wang Shanshan’s irritability, and it was that irritability that suffocated her the most.

At most, she would cry secretly for Chi Tuo to see. Chi Tuo was great at comforting her, always stuffing her with little snacks, and in the end even crying with her.

After Chi Tuo left, she hadn’t cried at all—except when acting. Now that he was back, it was like her body wanted to let out every drop of the tears it had saved up.

She hadn’t expected she could cry this much.

That kind of grief that stings the throat with sourness just wouldn’t go down. She didn’t even know why she felt so wronged, or how to force the tears back in.

Her face was going to swell!

And she still had filming tomorrow!!

She was even sobbing out loud!

Even when she acted in scenes where she was kidnapped and abused, she’d never cried like this!!

Ten minutes…

She’d sat there hugging her knees, wailing for ten full minutes. Chi Tuo had gone from patting her back, to finding tissues, to going into the bathroom for a towel, and now he was getting up again to pour her a glass of water.

He was running himself ragged.

In the middle of it all, Lao Bai had even calmly squeezed in through the crook of her knees to take a look at her.

…

Even such an absurd and funny scene wasn’t enough to stop her tears. She could only reach out and grab onto Chi Tuo’s clothes as he spun around like a top.

“I…” she hiccuped between sobs, “give me ice…”

“Huh?” Chi Tuo had one hand holding a towel and the other a glass of water. He hadn’t expected that her request would be for a third thing. His expression went blank.

So pitiful…

She pouted and let out a loud wail.

Chi Tuo: “……”

He sat down beside her and picked up her tiny, skinny frame like he was shifting cargo, moving her directly into his lap.

An Ye was probably stunned. While crying, she even took a second to look up and check their current position.

“You’re gonna have a headache tomorrow,” Chi Tuo said helplessly, his fingers gently massaging her scalp with just the right pressure.

“This is all your fault!” An Ye growled through clenched teeth from his arms. “I still have to shoot tomorrow.”

“You really stockpiled those tears,” he sighed.

“Ice,” she demanded again, muffled.

When Chi Tuo stood up to get her ice, she tugged at his clothes again.Chi Tuo looked at her, then at the fridge in the dining room. He rolled up his sleeves and bent down, ready to pick her up.

An Ye stared at him with teary, dazed eyes. “What are you doing?”

“You want ice.” Chi Tuo was very patient. He pointed at the fridge, then at the part of his shirt she was still clutching. “So I can only carry you over.”

“…I’m not eight years old.” Twenty-eight-year-old An Ye wiped her eyes with a tissue and stood up to walk to the dining room herself.

Her tears had finally stopped. She took out some chilled eye masks from the fridge. After thinking for a second, she took an extra one.

Back on her throne, she stuck one to herself and handed the other to Chi Tuo.

His eyes were red too.

This guy had overactive tear ducts. A full-sized black-clad crybaby!

An Ye and Chi Tuo sat side by side on the floor, leaning back against the sofa with cool eye masks on. An Ye closed her eyes, thinking about the image of them wearing eye masks together. The more she thought about it, the more she laughed.

“Was I out of control just now?” Her own laughter startled her.

She tore off the eye mask, exposing one eye, and took a selfie with her phone.

“…It’s good to let it out,” Chi Tuo said beside her, holding an eye mask and looking utterly confused by her behavior. “Why are you taking a picture of that?”

Was she endorsing the product?

Didn’t seem like it—he didn’t remember her having this endorsement.

“To document the emotion,” An Ye said, sticking the removed eye mask back on and resting her head on the edge of the sofa. “In case I need it for acting, I can look at the photo to remember.”

Chi Tuo looked at her.

She had cried so hard earlier that her face and neck were still flushed. Reclining like that, her slender neck traced a beautiful, fluid line.

Beautiful.

A kind of broken beauty, still struggling to survive.

She really still loved acting.

“Aren’t you putting yours on?” An Ye peeled off the other half of her eye mask and looked at him with a red, already swelling eye.

“I am.” Chi Tuo reached out, pressed her eye mask back on for her, and leaned back against the sofa, sticking on his own.

This thing probably worked like a fever patch. Gel material, with a strong minty scent. As it touched his eyelids, the sting left Chi Tuo silent for a while.

“Cold, huh?” An Ye’s voice was hoarse from crying, textured and oddly smug.

“Mm.” Chi Tuo’s Adam’s apple moved up and down.

With his eyes closed, his vision was blocked. But the feeling of An Ye right beside him, leaning against him, became impossible to ignore. The heating was on high. An Ye was wearing a thin robe. Their shoulders and arms were pressed together, and the temperature where they touched was slowly rising.

The silence became unbearable.

Chi Tuo lightly cleared his throat, trying to find a random topic to talk about—something broad, to distract him from the skin-on-skin contact.

Like, world peace or something.

But An Ye spoke first. She asked him, “If you’re not working tomorrow, why don’t you just sleep here tonight?”Chi Tuo: “……”

He should’ve answered immediately. Last time on set, when she pulled him into the car, he was caught off guard and his body froze up. She must have noticed then.

If she noticed again this time, it wouldn't be good.

After all, he’d been hiding it with great effort.

But he couldn’t come up with a reply. If An Ye tore off her eye mask right now, she’d see his suddenly flushed face and the knees he'd drawn up.

He needed mental prep for any physical contact with An Ye—otherwise, he’d lose control and lean into it. Just like that first time after they reunited, when she touched his bed—he’d reacted almost instantly.

Thankfully, she hadn’t been fully awake. If she had, like during that typhoon day, she would’ve noticed again.

If she ever found out that the guy who always gave logical, textbook-like analyses of her heightened libido during episodes was actually getting instant erections at the slightest touch—then next time she was asleep, life would be hell for him.

And he wasn’t sure he could hold out that many times.

“Hey.” An Ye elbowed his waist. “Did you fall asleep?”

“…No.” Chi Tuo cleared his throat again. “I didn’t bring my meds…”

An Ye sat up straight.

Chi Tuo removed his eye mask, knees still drawn up.

“Sleeping pills?” An Ye looked at him.

Chi Tuo sat up too and nodded.

“I’ve got some.” An Ye stood and walked toward the bedroom. “Your pajamas are here too. The toiletries you bought and left at my place—I haven’t thrown them out.”

“It’s too late,” she said, pointing to the clock in the living room, then corrected herself, “Too early.”

It was already past four.

“Oh.” Chi Tuo stood up too, very subtly tugging at his pants, and said in an even tone, “I don’t want the onesie.”

“This one.” An Ye came out of her bedroom walk-in closet with a set of pastel blue pajamas.

Not a onesie—just a regular button-up shirt style pajama set. But the color was powder blue, and it was covered with white geese.

Chi Tuo stared at the pajamas, then couldn’t help peeking into An Ye’s closet.

Usually, colors like this meant couple sets—pink and blue and whatnot. He had a bad feeling.

“Or do you want the pink one?” Sure enough, An Ye opened another wardrobe door. Inside were pajamas in red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and purple—every shade soft and pastel, covered in little geese, chicks, or ducks. All poultry. She said proudly, “I bought them. All your size.”

Chi Tuo: “...Birthday gift?”

“Making up for missed ones,” An Ye said. “The ones I bought before are probably too small now.”

After all, he was like sugarcane—taller, stronger.

Ten sets.

“What are you planning to give me next year?” Chi Tuo picked out a cream-white one. It was probably actually pastel yellow, but he could pretend it was a normal off-white. It had parrots on it.

“If I tell you now, what surprise is left?” An Ye said.Chi Tuo: “...Oh.”

He closed the wardrobe door. An Ye was still in the walk-in closet, not leaving.

Chi Tuo: “...What else did you buy?”

Sometimes he wished they didn’t have this kind of tacit understanding—especially when her eyes were all sparkly like that.

“Clothes.” An Ye’s eyes were already beyond saving—so swollen it was very obvious—but they still sparkled as she opened another wardrobe door.

A rainbow of athletic wear.

Chi Tuo: “...”

She had a good sense of boundaries—didn’t buy him any formal work clothes. Just a pile of casual wear.

He hadn’t even realized there were that many different colors of tracksuits in the world.

An Ye picked out a neon yellow one for him.

He took a step back.

This neon yellow thing had a print of a cat wearing a helmet. The helmet was neon red.

“...Is this supposed to be fashion?” He couldn’t hold it in anymore and started to question her taste in clothes.

“This is surprise,” An Ye said. “Your first thought when you see this will definitely be, ‘How could a piece of clothing come in this color?’ Then when you unfold it and see the cat, you’ll go, ‘Wow, it actually got worse.’”

Chi Tuo: “...”

An Ye glanced at him.

“What?” Chi Tuo had a relaxed expression. Seeing An Ye like that, he assumed she was going to keep going with this childish, pointless but somehow oddly weighty conversation, so he let his guard down.

An Ye reached out and lightly tugged the waistband of his sweatpants with her index finger.

Chi Tuo: “...”

An Ye grinned and backed out of the closet, pointing to the room across the hall: “Go to sleep, little old man.”

She saw it again.

...

Chi Tuo tried to explain, but unlike every other time when he could quickly come up with a composed, logical explanation, this time he opened his mouth—and nothing came out.

He didn’t know how to explain it.

Sleep deprivation causing lower body dysfunction...

The fact that he could even come up with that excuse meant his brain was already malfunctioning too.

In the end, Chi Tuo chose to shut up and naturally carried the pajamas back to the room.

An Ye didn’t ask again either. She just said goodnight and went into the bathroom.

Neither of them closed their doors.

As Chi Tuo lay on the bed, he realized—he never asked her for the sleeping pills.That seemed to be his last coherent thought. Maybe it was because he’d been sleep-deprived for too long, or maybe that whole series of events earlier had completely fried his brain—either way, the moment he closed his eyes, the only thing that popped into his head was I forgot to ask for the sleeping pills, and then he plunged into darkness.

He fell deeply asleep—the kind where there weren’t even any dreams.

He woke again because he heard someone talking.

An Ye’s voice—quiet, hushed, like she was scolding Lao Bai: “Stop playing with that ball! It's so loud!”

Chi Tuo opened his eyes. He had slept in this room for five days before, but back then he’d had too much weighing on his mind. Every night had felt like a battle. He barely remembered the layout of the room. Last night, after An Ye tugged his waistband, he hadn’t exactly been in the mood to take in the decor. But now, after sleeping well and waking up, he noticed An Ye seemed to have changed the curtains in this room.

Her entire home was decorated in light tones. The guest room and study had previously had matching curtains—beige and very thin, letting in all the sunlight.

Now, they’d been replaced with thick, dark blue ones. No light could get through. If he hadn’t checked his phone, he wouldn’t have realized it was already past eleven in the morning.

Chi Tuo stood there a little dazed, unsure whether it was the new curtains or just the unusually long sleep.

He had actually slept for almost seven hours.

The quality of that sleep was so unreal that the first thing he did upon getting out of bed was lift the mattress cover to check the brand of the mattress.

From outside came the soft jingle of a bell and An Ye’s muffled scolding again.

He opened the door, which An Ye had apparently left ajar at some point. He saw her in the living room with half a boiled egg in her mouth, her hair in a messy bun. She was still wearing the tank top and hot shorts, with blue under-eye patches on, wrestling a ball away from Lao Bai with one hand while typing something on her phone with the other. In the middle of all this chaos, she still looked up at him.

“Morning,” she mumbled through the egg.

“Morning.” Chi Tuo returned the greeting and went back to the room. He paused two or three times while brushing his teeth, bracing himself on the guest bathroom sink.

Some thoughts—thoughts that shouldn’t have risen—started creeping up from deep inside.

Because of the birthday gifts An Ye had bought for him, that whole wardrobe of ridiculous colors.

Because of the blackout curtains she had changed.

Because of the tone she used to gently scold Lao Bai while she thought he was still asleep.

He stared at his reflection in the mirror.

What if…

What if it wasn’t just one-sided after all?