Chapter1

Prelude

【Shanghai · Summer】

In the years that followed, Yu Manyi would often think of that afternoon. She and Song Qi were sitting in the garden of his aunt's old Western-style house. The sunlight was warm and soft, shining down on them, making people drowsy.

That day, the two of them were sulking, neither willing to speak to the other. But the pleasant atmosphere made it impossible to stay angry. In the end, Yu Manyi couldn’t hold back first and muttered under her breath, “But my cousin studied abroad.”

At that point, she no longer loved her cousin, so she had said it just to provoke him. She also knew those words wouldn’t hurt Song Qi—after all, that man had never known the meaning of the word “inferiority.”

Hearing her speak, he glanced at her from the corner of his eye, then looked away, leaning back slightly into the wicker chair. Since he was visiting his aunt, Song Qi had uncharacteristically dressed up, wearing a very high-end three-piece suit. According to his classmates who mocked him sarcastically: the capitalist playboy pretending to be proletariat had finally revealed his true form.

As for Yu Manyi, she should have worn the purple long-sleeved robe and skirt she had brought from home in Shaoxing. That was the most proper outfit the daughters of the Yu family wore when meeting elders. But just like everything else she brought from the Yu family, that outfit had been burned to ashes by Song Qi in a single fire. With that fire, he told her that from the moment she entered his world, everything in her past no longer counted.

So she had no choice but to wear the long-sleeved, floor-length qipao he had taken her to have custom made. He had chosen the floor-length style—it was what all the female celebrities in Shanghai were wearing at the time. It clung tightly to the waist, so she insisted on long sleeves, preserving a bit of her identity as the conservative young lady from a large landlord family.

Of course, Song Qi found it tacky. But Yu Manyi thought his distaste was different from her cousin's. Her cousin thought she was tacky, thought the whole Yu family was tacky, even believed all of Shaoxing was beneath his noble, foreign-educated status. But Song Qi simply found those sleeves tacky—it was a matter of style. As he often said during their arguments: “You’re feudal.”

To Song Qi, “feudal” was the worst kind of tacky—worse than wearing rags or shouting on the street like a shrew. So when Yu Manyi brought up her cousin studying abroad to compare him to Song Qi, he didn’t get angry at all. He just leaned back lazily in the rattan chair, smirking coldly: “Then he must be the tackiest of all the men who came back from studying abroad.”

Fuming, she lowered her head to sip the coffee his aunt had poured her to taste. The beans were a gift from a Jewish man pursuing his aunt. Brewed, the coffee was bitter like Chinese medicine. Yu Manyi couldn’t understand Song Qi’s fondness for coffee—her cousin had spent years in Europe and still hadn’t gotten used to it.

Song Qi said, “Any man who rushes to break off an engagement the moment he returns from studying abroad is tacky. Comparing him to me? That’s an insult to my status.”

Yu Manyi was too bitter to respond and ignored him for the moment. The garden fell quiet. After a while, Song Qi got up to pour himself some coffee. The coffee pot tilted across the table, and the rising steam blurred Yu Manyi’s vision. Through the haze, she saw him drop two sugar cubes into his cup and then sit back down like nothing had happened.

The sugar cubes were honeycombed on the inside, melting quickly in the hot water until only a thin layer remained. Yu Manyi used the tip of her tongue to push that thin slice of sugar beneath her tongue and held it there while she sipped the coffee. Her eyes and brows slowly curved into a soft, subtle smile.For the rest of her life, Yu Manyi kept searching for the brand of those coffee sugar cubes—searching until her hair turned white, and fine lines appeared on her forehead. Searching until she could no longer remember his face, his voice, his bad temper, and his thin patience with others.

He truly wasn’t a very good lover. But fortunately, he died. Once someone dies, people only remember the good things about them.