Chapter 74

Chapter 74

"Why... do you like An Jiujui?" An Ye still spoke in the third person.

Chi Tuo was silent for a moment.

An Ye was already very relaxed in his arms, now lying on top of him, her chin resting on his chest, looking up at him.

Her fingers still tightly gripped his suit, but they no longer trembled.

"An Jiujui is very selfish," An Ye said. "She refused to study properly, didn’t want you to go to Singapore, even disappeared, and when you came back, she wasn’t very nice to you, only looking for you when she fell asleep. She shamelessly emotionally blackmailed you, forcing you to keep promises because of your commitment obsession, even though she knew you had sleep problems, she never wanted to ask why."

She thought for a moment, then added, "At first, she even wanted to introduce Qi Wei to you."

Chi Tuo finally reacted, letting out a low hum: "That really is annoying. What were you thinking?"

"Weren’t you single back then..." An Ye said, "I thought if you could date Qi Wei, that would be good too."

"What’s good about that?" Chi Tuo asked.

An Ye paused, her voice softened: "Then you wouldn’t leave."

Chi Tuo: "..."

"Why do you like that kind of An Jiujui?" An Ye persistently brought the topic back.

"I just can’t leave An Jiujui," Chi Tuo sighed. "Usually liking someone has reasons. When those reasons disappear, the liking disappears too."

"But I don’t."

"More than liking, it’s simply that I can’t live without you."

An Ye was stunned.

"In this life, I can’t think of having this kind of feeling for anyone else. Except for you, I can’t relax around anyone else."

"My social problems have always been worse than yours, ever since I was little. I can’t form relationships without interests with others. Others’ concern makes me feel unsafe. That ‘others’ includes even my mom. Only you are not ‘others.’"

"I don’t know why it is like this."

"Maybe..."

"I’ve lived like this since childhood. You satisfy all my emotional needs, so I don’t need to seek outside."

"With you here, I think about the future, look forward to the world when I open my eyes the next day."

"Without you, I probably..." Chi Tuo thought for a moment, then said, "I’d be a bad person with no bottom line."

The conclusion came out oddly. An Ye was a bit confused: "Huh?"

"Yeah." Chi Tuo didn’t want to explain further and patted her head. "Want to get up? My leg is going numb again."

An Ye turned over and sat side by side with him, leaning against the entryway wall.

Chi Tuo: "...There’s a sofa at home."

"I don’t want to move." An Ye leaned against the wall.

Feeling a little exhausted, her unease lessened because Chi Tuo had retreated back to being a friend who could talk about everything, so she glanced at the clock on the wall and asked him, "By your standards, isn’t today you’re late and leaving early?"Chi Tuo only went to the law firm after two in the afternoon, but he was back before four. That law firm really was quite lenient with him.

“Today I just went to a meeting. If you don’t have anything to do later, I can go back after dinner,” Chi Tuo said, standing up and going inside. “Come here, see what we should eat tonight.”

An Ye stayed seated, not moving.

Chi Tuo looked back at her, and she raised her eyebrows at him.

Chi Tuo: “...”

He resignedly sat back down next to her and, after sitting, pointed toward the living room, emphasizing again, “There really is a sofa at home.”

An Ye rested her head on his shoulder.

So Chi Tuo stayed still and asked her, “What about you?”

“What about me?” An Ye didn’t quite understand where this was going.

“Why did you want to give us a try?” Chi Tuo asked.

“I...” An Ye squinted, “I don’t know.”

Probably because of the atmosphere last night, she couldn’t really keep pretending to be clueless. Also probably because she was afraid that if she didn’t make things clear, Chi Tuo would still leave in the end.

Like ten years ago.

“Regret it?” Chi Tuo asked in a very calm and gentle tone.

An Ye was stunned for a moment and didn’t answer. Her fingers quietly squeezed Chi Tuo’s suit jacket.

So Chi Tuo nodded and helped continue, “You do regret it.”

“Actually, I don’t mind,” Chi Tuo said. “My only wish is to be with you all the time. I never had any unrealistic hopes about going further, so you don’t have to feel too burdened. If you regret it, it’s fine to retreat.”

“Just chatting like this now is good enough,” he said.

Then he started rambling again, “Just don’t do this next time. Don’t suddenly get crazy because of the mood or other reasons. Going back and forth like this all the time, I’m afraid one day I won’t be able to control myself and won’t let you retreat anymore.”

“Jiujiu, I’m not a good person,” Chi Tuo emphasized. “Some things I can tolerate only because I haven’t crossed the line yet. Once I cross it and then have to retreat, it takes too much effort, and I don’t trust my own self-control.”

So, last night he didn’t do anything inappropriate to her. He gave her freedom to come and go.

An Ye tilted her head and looked at Chi Tuo’s face.

When he said these things, his expression and tone were very calm. If you could ignore his stubbornness last night when he almost made her sign a contract and his current rambling, he still looked like the omnipotent old dog Chi Tuo.

An Ye always knew Chi Tuo treated her well.

They say girls who lack love in childhood tend to become love-struck easily when they grow up, falling deeply for even a little kindness from others.

An Ye had never been like that. Her parents indeed didn’t give her much love, but she never felt lacking.

During the most vulnerable puberty years, Chi Tuo was never absent.

She hadn’t thought about repaying this when she was young. When someone is always by your side, their kindness becomes part of your life.

She was actually very selfish and never really thought deeply about her feelings for Chi Tuo.

Dependence was definitely there.Just like Chi Tuo said, she couldn’t leave him—that was certain.

But what about everything else?

Those palpitations that stirred up so easily after their reunion, and now the breathlessness she felt seeing Chi Tuo calmly giving her the freedom to come and go as she pleased—what was that?

Was it because Chi Tuo was too good, and she felt unworthy? Or was it because the feelings she developed were too uncontrollable, and she didn’t want them?

She seemed never to have grown up, frozen as that fourteen-year-old girl who never got the green ice cream, unable to reconcile herself—she even found it hard to say the words, “I want it.”

On the path of becoming an actress, she had long since gained strength, yet she waited until Huan Zhou started forcing her to transform before she truly planned to leave Yan Wan. Her mother repeatedly attacked her with words like, “You don’t know anything, can’t you be smarter?” But deep down, she simply didn’t know if she really wanted that green ice cream.

That green ice cream that represented happiness, but was a joy she felt unworthy to have.

Just like now, sitting close to her, Chi Tuo’s infinite tolerance.

Earlier, in the car when she called him, he laughed happily, but the emotions hidden in his words kept slipping out all over the car.

Now sitting beside her, he had returned to his usual steady old-dog demeanor, his expression gentle. The deep emotions she saw in his eyes last night—so strong she wanted to take a photo—had been skillfully hidden away.

An Ye pressed her lips together.

So many tangled emotions clogged her throat. She felt she should say them out loud, not like before, whenever she just endured and let things pass.

“Chi Tuo,” An Ye spoke slowly, “I don’t regret it. I just... feel that even if it’s just to try, it should be tried in a mentally healthy state, not like now. You just called me An Jiujiu once, and I hung up.”

“Why?” Chi Tuo suddenly asked.

“Hm?” An Ye’s thoughts were interrupted, surprised.

Chi Tuo rarely interrupted her suddenly.

“I already...” Chi Tuo paused for half a second, seemingly struggling to suppress his emotions, but his tone was no longer as gentle as before, “told you it doesn’t matter. Why do you keep bringing this up?”

He had already retreated fully—why did she keep circling back?

An Ye wasn’t especially quick-witted. Her thoughts were interrupted, and Chi Tuo’s obvious emotional fluctuations made her even more confused, so she could only gape at him.

“It’s actually not that complicated,” Chi Tuo looked at her. “It’s simple, just like when you asked me why I like An Jiujiu, I want to ask you—do you like me? Not as a friend, have you ever liked me that way?”

An Ye’s lips parted slightly, her almond-shaped eyes flickering a little.

“Have you?” Chi Tuo asked.

“I...” An Ye felt inexplicably dry-mouthed, “When my narcolepsy acts up, you’re the object of my sexual fantasies.”

The atmosphere between them wasn’t great right now. An Ye’s mood was low, and Chi Tuo’s was mediocre. When he asked that, there was a bit of a “damn it” recklessness in his tone.

He rarely left no room for An Ye like this.

But An Ye didn’t take the easy way down like before, which gave him a bit more courage.

He pressed her, telling himself if she shook her head, he would pretend this never happened.

But An Ye gave him that answer.

Chi Tuo was stunned.

“It’s not because you’re my childhood friend. It’s because if I really were to do that, you’re the only person of the opposite sex I could picture it with.”“The first time I realized narcolepsy came with these kinds of needs was seven years ago,” An Ye said. “At first, it was a longing for hugs and touches, then wanting more intimate skin contact, and later it developed into typical symptoms.”

“The first person I thought of was you,” An Ye said. “I don’t know if this is a kind of liking, but after waking from narcolepsy that time, I regretted one thing.”

“You told me back then, if we were both alone all our lives, maybe we could team up and be companions. I refused.”

“I really regret that.”

“I don’t know if it’s liking you, but I definitely didn’t see you as a friend, because I wouldn’t think about sleeping with a friend.”

An Ye spoke very straightforwardly.

So the air was solidly silent for several minutes, neither of them said anything more.

“Hungry?” Chi Tuo cleared his throat before speaking again, sounding a little like he wanted to escape. “I’ll cook.”

An Ye still didn’t move; the topic had kind of stalled. Clearly, nothing was solved, but the panic and despair she felt when she came in had disappeared.

It felt very safe.

The Chi Tuo she knew was that An Jiujiu who didn’t even dare to ask for an ice cream, so whatever she said was very safe.

“What do you want to eat?” Chi Tuo had already gone into the kitchen, half his body sticking out as he asked her, “Don’t sit over there anymore, the floor heating isn’t warm enough there.”

An Ye finally stood up: “What’s there to eat?”

As if nothing had happened.

“Sweet and sour silver cod?” Chi Tuo rummaged through the fridge. “Black pepper beef ribs, and stir-fried vegetables with mushrooms, I want to eat all of those.”

He also acted like nothing had happened.

An Ye: “...I haven’t finished filming yet, I have to maintain this weight until the end of filming.”

“Silver cod and beef ribs are both high protein,” Chi Tuo took out the ingredients. “It’s a holiday today, so rice with mixed grains will do.”

“Aren’t you going back to the law firm?” An Ye asked.

“I’ll go after dinner. It’s the Lantern Festival today, nothing much to do, just to clock in,” Chi Tuo took off his suit, washed his hands, and tied an apron, ready to handle the ingredients. “Qi Wei said the current trending topic doesn’t need the law firm to respond yet.”

“Mm, Qi Wei will use my account to issue a statement,” An Ye removed the cat paw marks from the silver cod where Lao Bai was about to claw. “We’ll meet again tomorrow to see if anything else needs to be done. This variety show was really thrown together at the last minute. Getting some traffic is already good enough. Let the heat naturally die down.”

Chi Tuo hummed in agreement.

Lao Bai was a bit unhappy not to have gotten the silver cod, struggling and reaching his head out to try to steal a piece of the beef ribs.

An Ye carried Lao Bai out of the kitchen and closed the kitchen door.

She didn’t speak anymore, just crossed her arms and leaned against the cupboard watching Chi Tuo skillfully prepare the ingredients.

His cooking skills were much more practiced than before, the broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted silhouette looked very comfortable.

An Ye watched him clean and cut the silver cod into bite-sized pieces, defrost the beef ribs, and season them with salt and black pepper before marinating them in a bowl.

He was so at ease, seemingly not needing her help.

An Ye opened the fridge.Unlike her old, empty huge fridge, Chi Tuo’s fridge was very full, with various ingredients neatly stacked. An Ye glanced inside; everything was arranged by production date.

She took an apple from the fresh-keeping layer, washed it, and took a bite.

Chi Tuo looked up at her and said, “Eat an orange instead. This apple is too sour, it needs to sit for two days.”

“I don’t want that. I like sour,” An Ye scrunched her face sourly but happily kept eating.

After finishing chopping the last bit of chili, Chi Tuo took off his apron, washed his hands, opened the fridge, and took an apple for himself.

He was still dressed all in black as always. After being pinned down by her in the entryway for a while, his shirt was a bit wrinkled, looking lazy.

An Ye licked her lips.

She could never reconcile this.

For example, now, part of her thought their relationship was truly strange beyond strange, but at the same time, Chi Tuo looked inexplicably appealing like this.

The veins on his arms rolled up by the cuff, the eyelashes drooping from half-lowered eyes biting the apple, and his lips, which looked thin but were surprisingly soft.

An Ye gently stood on tiptoe.

She felt that even this action of standing on tiptoe was comfortable—few male actors she worked with had ever made her stretch her toes to this extent.

Chi Tuo sensed something, raised his eyes to look at her.

An Ye closed her eyes, sighed softly, and pressed her lips lightly against Chi Tuo’s lips that looked thin but were unexpectedly soft.