Love Has Fireworks - Chapter 51

Chapter 51: Pressing Her Against the Wall to Kiss

A week later, Li Yifei moved out. During that entire week, he had barely come home at all.

Qian Fei looked at the empty, quiet apartment, an indescribable wave of sadness washing over her heart.

They had lived together for so long, and now, this massive apartment was left with her entirely alone once again.

Shaking herself out of her funk, she gave the apartment a thorough, top-to-bottom cleaning. While organizing the rooms, she discovered that Li Yifei had left quite a few things behind. She thought about it over and over, hesitating repeatedly, before finally deciding to give him a call. She wanted to ask if he still wanted these items.

As it turned out, no matter how many times she dialed, his phone was switched off.

She put her phone away, letting out a self-deprecating laugh.

It wasn't until two days later that Li Yifei actually called her back.

"I lost my phone, so it was off the whole time. I just got a new one today and saw the missed call notification from the answering service. Was there a reason you called?" He explained the situation briefly, his voice flat and businesslike, sounding exactly like a project lead delivering a status report to a team.

"Oh," Qian Fei murmured. "There are still some of your things left at the apartment. I wanted to ask if you still want them."

Li Yifei went silent for a moment before saying, "I don't need them. Just throw it all away."

Qian Fei replied, "Got it," and hung up the phone.

She posted a rental listing online, and in less than three days, the room was leased out again.

The new tenant was a woman in her early thirties who wasn't married yet. She was very polite but traveled constantly for business. Even though the room was occupied once more, Qian Fei felt the apartment remained profoundly quiet and cold. Sometimes she would look back on the days when she and Li Yifei sat in the living room, drinking beer and chatting—it felt as though it had happened in a completely different era. It felt so incredibly distant, vague and ephemeral, leaving her feeling increasingly lonely the more she reminisced.

In early July, Qian Fei overheard some people on her project team mentioning that Li Yifei, who worked for their partner brokerage firm, had passed the Sponsor Representative Qualification Exam. He was now a provisional sponsor. Coincidentally, his firm had a private placement project, and he had signed on as the associate sponsor. Very soon, he would officially register as a fully qualified Sponsor Representative and see his career skyrocket. Everyone was talking about how remarkably lucky he was.

Qian Fei listened from the sidelines without offering any comments, quietly walking away when they finished talking.

Ever since he moved out, they hadn't contacted each other at all. Even for work-related matters, she coordinated directly with Zhao De. Everything she learned about his current situation came strictly second-hand from other people.

Before she knew it, August arrived, bringing with it the hottest days of the year in Beijing.

For the past two months, Wang Ruohai had been diligently, single-mindedly playing the role of the prodigal son who had reformed his ways to become a good man. He truly was different from before. When Qian Fei ran late for their dates, he would always wait patiently, never showing a hint of irritation. When Qian Fei worked late at the office, he would buy dinner and deliver it to her floor, then wait out the hours in his car downstairs. Even if she worked until two in the morning and he spent the entire night feeding the local mosquitoes, he always looked completely content to do so.

Qian Fei found herself slightly moved by this man who felt simultaneously so foreign and so familiar. The initial resolve in her heart began to waver. On a breezy midnight after a late shift that lasted until two in the morning, she finally agreed to let Wang Ruohai come up to her place to "sit for a bit."

That night, she permitted Wang Ruohai to kiss her. Her body was relaxed, yet she simply could not bring herself to feel any genuine passion. She felt as detached as a bystander, looking on with cold eyes as he closed his eyes, kissing her with an intense, oblivious fervor.

Ultimately, her patience wore thin. She pushed him away, straightened her clothes and hair, and looked at his utterly stunned face, speaking in a flat, calm voice. "Wang Ruohai, let's stop right here. I don't think my heart or my body will ever open up to you again."

She stood up, walked over to the window, and pulled back the curtain. Looking out at the thousands of glowing lights across the city, she said placidly, "Wang Ruohai, do you know how I survived last year after you cheated on me and demanded a breakup?" She turned her head to look at him, speaking softly. "I originally wanted to put you through the exact same thing once. But now, I'm just tired. Let's just end it like this."

Wang Ruohai panicked instantly. His eyes turned red with anxiety, his voice thick with unshed tears. "Feifei, everything in the past was my fault! We can take things slow. One day, you'll accept me again!"

Qian Fei felt incredibly exhausted, from the depths of her soul down to her physical body.

"Wang Ruohai," she called his name quietly. "Sometimes I wonder, do you really still love me? Or is it because after I left you, I didn't fall apart, I didn't waste away, and I actually ended up glowing with life, which made you feel a sense of loss? Have you ever found yourself completely baffled by how your departure failed to bring me endless misery?

"Wang Ruohai, I think maybe you're just experiencing a temporary bout of resentment. You resent the fact that I left you, yet my life only kept getting better and better.

"I think it's truly impossible for us to be together again. In my heart, I will forever remember the sight of you opening the door for me while wearing that bathrobe. Forever."

She closed her eyes, murmuring, "Wang Ruohai, between the two of us, let's leave it at this."

●︶3︶●

The next day, Qian Fei called Yao Jingjing and told her, "Wang Ruohai and I broke up again."

Yao Jingjing was startled, shouting into the phone, "What happened? Did he cheat again?"

Qian Fei replied, "No, I was the one who ended it this time."

Yao Jingjing remained silent for a long while before finally speaking up. "Feifei, tell me the absolute truth. Do you have someone else in your heart?"

Qian Fei laughed. "I don't even know myself."

●︶3︶●

In late August, the two firms scheduled a progress meeting regarding their previous two collaborative projects. On the day of the meeting, Li Yifei did not show up.

Qian Fei tried her absolute best to sound completely casual as she asked Zhao De, "Why didn't Li Yifei come today?"

Zhao De let out a massive sigh and told her, "Don't even get me started. That guy has been completely buried under a mountain of legal trouble lately!"

Hearing this made Qian Fei incredibly anxious throughout the meeting. Once it concluded, Zhao De insisted that he hadn't seen her in ages and missed her terribly, dragging her along to have dinner at Yuxiang Renjia.

During the meal, Qian Fei noticed that Zhao De's face looked somewhat pale and he was breaking out in cold sweats. When she asked what was wrong, Zhao De waved it off. "It's nothing. My sleep schedule has probably just been terrible lately, and my chest has been feeling a bit tight. Once this project wraps up and I get some proper rest, I'll be fine!"

He immediately shifted the focus, looking at Qian Fei with a teasing grin. "Xiao Feifei, you really have to admire how much a person can change over time! You're getting more and more beautiful by the day! Do you have a boyfriend right now? Because if you don't, I might just start throwing my hat in the ring!"

Qian Fei merely smiled without giving an answer.

They kept eating and chatting about random things for a while until the conversation finally steered back to Li Yifei.

Qian Fei asked Zhao De what exactly was going on with him, and Zhao De groaned. "Man, don't even ask. Weren't they pulling him into that other team to handle a corporate bond issuance before? Well, all the documentation and materials were fully prepared, but the business owner kept stalling and refusing to let them file. They even manufactured some issues, leaving Yifei and the rest of the team stranded out there for the longest time, unable to return!

"When the team was finally sent back, they prepared the materials and sent them to the owner for final confirmation, waiting for his sign-off so they could file the paperwork with the regulatory commission. But while they were waiting, they suddenly discovered that the company had already issued their damn bonds! It turns out they thought our fees were too high, so they took the complete set of materials I put together and went behind our backs to use a different brokerage firm! Our company has already started a lawsuit against that rogue enterprise, suing them for breach of contract."

Qian Fei inquired, "But that's a corporate matter between the two companies. What does that have to do with Li Yifei personally?"

Zhao De took a sip of water and continued, "Listen to the rest of it! Since negotiations fell through, it's time for a lawsuit, right? So the firm hired a lawyer. That lawyer is incredibly arrogant and irritating. While organizing the documentation and evidence, he claimed that a specific guarantee contract went missing, and he adamantly insisted that it had been handed over to Yifei previously with strict instructions to keep it safe. Yifei had been acting weird during that period—like he'd lost his mind or something—so even he couldn't say for certain whether he had properly secured that contract or not.

"On top of that, the lawyer demanded that every single person on the project team compile their communication logs, text messages, and emails shared with the client enterprise, ordering them to print everything out for notarization to prove that the team had active business communication and had indeed completed all the groundwork for the bond issuance. But then Yifei said he lost his phone, meaning his call logs and texts were completely gone. To make matters worse, his email account was with Yahoo, which was shutting down, so he couldn't access it anymore and hadn't backed up any of his emails. Now that lawyer is running to the Vice President, filing formal complaints claiming Yifei is an inside mole. He's saying Yifei must have taken kickbacks from the enterprise to sabotage the lawsuit, arguing that with his lavish spending habits, there's no way his basic salary could cover his lifestyle!" (Note: Yahoo Mail closed its operations in China on August 19, 2013.)

Zhao De paused to take another sip of water.

Qian Fei spoke up with absolute certainty, "Li Yifei is not that kind of person!"

Zhao De picked up where he left off, "Exactly! None of us colleagues believe Yifei could ever do something like that. But it really is bizarre—he was definitely acting completely absentminded during that time. He lost files, he lost his phone, and it never even crossed his mind to transfer his emails before the service shut down. I honestly have no idea what kind of shock he was reeling from!"

Qian Fei countered, "Even so, they can't just definitively label him a mole based purely on coincidences like that! What kind of professional competence does that lawyer even have?"

Zhao De remarked, "My guess is that the lawyer is just using this to settle a personal score! Yifei wasn't in a great headspace back then, which naturally made him pretty irritable. Meanwhile, this lawyer was acting like a big shot every single day, bossing everyone around to accommodate him. Yifei openly snapped at him in front of the whole group once, leaving the guy completely embarrassed. Now that he's caught a break, of course he's going to trip Yifei up to get his revenge!"

Qian Fei asked, filled with deep anxiety, "Then what's going to happen next?"

Zhao De sighed. "Normally it wouldn't be a big deal, but the worst part is that this lawyer was brought in by upper management and has some personal connections with the big boss. If he keeps spouting nonsense, we might not believe it, but we're terrified the boss will! If the boss falls for it, Yifei will probably be forced out of the firm!"

Qian Fei asked urgently, "Then we have to find a way to prove that Li Yifei isn't a mole, right?"

Zhao De sighed deeply. "How do we prove it? His phone is gone, and his email is closed!"

For the remainder of the dinner, the food tasted like cardboard to Qian Fei.

The moment she got home, she turned on her computer with frantic urgency. She plugged her phone into the computer to charge while pulling up QQ.

She happened to have a junior high classmate who worked in Zhongguancun, and she figured she could ask him if there was any way to recover emails from a closed Yahoo account.

The moment her phone connected to the computer, iTunes automatically popped open. Qian Fei ignored it, logging straight into QQ.

Fortunately, tech workers seemed to live online year-round, so she found her old classmate without much effort. She explained the situation to him, and he agreed to help without a second thought, saying he could recover the emails for her.

When the classmate asked if she knew the email address and password, Qian Fei remembered that back when she helped Li Yifei set up his phone, he had given her his Apple App Store login credentials. The username was his professional email address—his full name spelled out—and the password was his birthday, which matched his email password. At the time, she had even teased him, saying, "You better change your password, or I'm going to snoop through your emails!"

And Li Yifei had replied, "Feel free to look all you want, it's nothing but work emails. If you manage to read every single email in my inbox, I bet your professional skills will skyrocket!"

She forwarded the login details to her old classmate. He asked for her address, adding, "I'm worried you won't know how to navigate the files, so I'll just print out all the emails for you and have them couriered to your office tomorrow!"

Qian Fei thanked him profusely, promising that she absolutely had to treat him to a spectacular meal another day.

With the email issue sorted out, her heart eased slightly.

As her mouse hovered past the iTunes window, a sudden spark of inspiration flashed through her mind.

 

Back when she had helped Li Yifei import his contact list, she had created a full backup of his phone's data on her computer! That backup included his call logs and sent and received text messages! Calculating the timeline, that was precisely when he had started interacting with the enterprise to negotiate the project—the exact period when their communications were most intensive and frequent!

Thinking of this, a brilliant ray of hope lit up inside her!

But right on the heels of that realization, a wave of panic struck her.

She had created that backup for Li Yifei using her old laptop, and she had given that laptop to Yao Jingjing's cousin!

Checking the time, it was already past ten at night. She had no choice but to hold back her restless legs and force herself to wash up and go to sleep. Early the next morning, she woke up ahead of schedule, requested a leave of absence from her firm, and took a taxi straight to the culinary arts school on the outskirts of the city.

When she arrived at the school to inquire, she discovered that Yao Jingjing's cousin had already completed her training and returned to her hometown. She smacked her own forehead in absolute frustration—what a textbook definition of being blinded by panic. She should have realized long ago that the cousin's courses would be over by now. Acting in haste truly created nothing but waste, and she had thrown away valuable time on a completely pointless trip.

She hurriedly dialed Yao Jingjing's number, giving her a brief summary of the situation before asking where her aunt lived and if there was a phone number to reach them.

Yao Jingjing provided her aunt's phone number first, then remarked, "Feifei, does Li Yifei have any idea that you're stressing out this much and running yourself ragged for his sake? What exactly are you gaining from this?"

Qian Fei replied, "I don't need him to know!"

Yao Jingjing let out a long sigh. "It's completely over."

Qian Fei asked, "What's completely over?"

Yao Jingjing clarified, "I'm saying Wang Ruohai is completely over. He doesn't stand a ghost of a chance anymore!"

Qian Fei had no time to waste bickering with her, so she hung up and called the aunt. Fortunately, the cousin was still at home and hadn't left to look for work yet. She asked the cousin if she had deleted any software or files from the laptop, and the cousin replied that she hadn't touched anything.

Qian Fei pressed her hands together, taking a deep breath as she silently thanked every deity she could think of.

Once she confirmed the aunt's home address, she ended the call.

Next, she called Xiao Yuan, asking her to help cover her absence for a two-day leave. Then she booked a flight ticket and took a taxi straight to the airport.

She slept fitfully throughout the flight, heading directly for the long-distance bus station the moment the plane touched down.

The aunt's house was located in a small village nestled beneath the provincial capital. There were no direct trains to the area, so her only option was to endure a four-hour ride on a long-distance coach.

As Qian Fei sat drenched in sweat, crammed inside a dilapidated, overcrowded bus with absolutely no air conditioning, she began to seriously ponder the words Yao Jingjing had spoken to her.

Why exactly was she worrying so much and running across the country for Li Yifei's sake? What did she hope to gain?

She didn't know the answer herself.

After a bumpy, four-hour journey that felt violent enough to shatter her internal organs, the small coach finally arrived at its destination. She stepped off the bus, covered in a sticky layer of sweat, only to see her aunt and cousin already standing by the roadside waiting for her.

The moment she caught sight of them, for some inexplicable reason, Qian Fei just wanted to burst into tears.

●︶3︶●

After successfully copying the backup files from the laptop, Qian Fei rested at her aunt's house for the night. She woke up early the following morning to catch the very first coach back to the provincial capital. By the time she boarded a flight from the capital, it was already afternoon. When she landed at Capital Airport, evening had arrived, and by the time she finally stepped foot inside her own apartment, the sky was pitch black.

Qian Fei collapsed onto her bed, so utterly exhausted that she didn't want to move a single muscle.

Her phone began to ring, and it took a monumental effort for her to push herself up to answer it.

It was Wang Ruohai. Ever since she had broken things off clearly with him, he would still call her from time to time under the guise of being classmates and friends, leaving her with no polite way to refuse him.

Wang Ruohai asked why her phone had been turned off just now. She didn't hide anything from him, explaining the whole situation exactly as it happened.

She could hear the distinct note of sorrow in his voice over the line.

He asked, "Feifei, why are you willing to run yourself ragged across the country for his sake? Have you fallen in love with him?"

Qian Fei spoke the absolute truth. "I don't know either. I just felt a deep desire in my heart to do something for him."

Wang Ruohai hung up the phone.

Qian Fei didn't know if her honesty was the right choice or the wrong one; she could tell that Wang Ruohai was deeply hurt. But a short, sharp pain was better than a lingering one. They truly could never return to how things used to be, and it was better to let him see the reality sooner rather than later.

She washed up haphazardly and crawled into bed, falling into a deep, heavy slumber.

The next day at the office, she printed out the call history logs and text message exchanges. Together with the printed email files her old classmate had sent her, she packaged everything up and shipped it to Li Yifei via Sto Express.

In the sender column of the shipping label, she left the space entirely blank.

By complete coincidence that afternoon, Zhao De came by her firm to deliver a document related to their joint sponsorship project. Once the workday ended, Qian Fei invited him out for a meal.

The moment they sat down, Zhao De was breaking out in cold sweats again, his complexion looking terrible as he complained about feeling a tightness in his chest after walking just a few steps.

Qian Fei let out a sigh, counseling him with deep sincerity, "Stop staying up late. The workload belongs to the firm, but your body belongs to you. There's absolutely no reason to ruin your health for a job!"

Zhao De nodded in agreement, vowing solemnly that he would absolutely go to bed early starting tonight.

Once the dishes were served, Zhao De spoke as he ate, "Feifei, let me tell you some fantastic news! Yifei's situation has been completely resolved!"

Qian Fei stared at him, freezing in place.

She had only sent out the express package earlier today—could Li Yifei have received it already? She quickly reconsidered; it was entirely possible since both of their offices were located within Financial Street.

Keeping her face carefully expressionless, she asked Zhao De, "What do you mean by that?"

Zhao De exclaimed, "Yifei's circle of friends is genuinely terrifying! A few of them handled that arrogant lawyer so thoroughly that the guy was practically brought to his knees! I have no clue what kind of leverage they used, but either way, that lawyer doesn't dare to utter another word of nonsense!" He paused for a moment, adding with a sense of awe, "I always felt Yifei was cut from a different cloth than the rest of us, but I never imagined his connections could be so wild and incredibly powerful!"

Qian Fei offered a small smile, echoing his sentiment briefly without adding anything else, though her mind was thrown into absolute turmoil.

It seemed that her express package had been entirely redundant.

When she returned home that evening, she tried calling the Sto Express delivery driver, wanting to see if it was still early enough to claw the package back. The driver informed her that the package had already been delivered to its destination at five-thirty that evening. Since the recipient had already left work, a colleague had signed for it on his behalf.

Hanging up the phone, Qian Fei slumped onto her bed, feeling completely dejected.

She really had made a useless, meddlesome effort.

●︶3︶●

Throughout the entire following day, Qian Fei did not receive a single call or text message from Li Yifei.

Her emotions surged up and down like a roller coaster. She had no idea whether he had actually received that package or not, nor did she know what his thoughts would be if he did. Would he guess that she was the one who sent it? If he did guess, how would he feel? Would he find her incredibly boring, view her actions as completely unnecessary, and find her utterly annoying?

She spent the entire day in a state of total distraction. When evening finally arrived and she was cut loose from work, she grabbed a bite from a roadside food stall in a complete daze, tasting absolutely nothing, before heading home. She couldn't even remember how she walked through the front door, how she changed out of her shoes, or how she ended up collapsing onto the sofa like a vegetable.

She was lost in a blur, completely unsure of what she was even thinking about, her memories cutting out as if they had been thoroughly soaked in alcohol.

It wasn't until a sudden, rapid pounding on her door rang out that her mind was abruptly jolted back to reality.

She stood up, walked over to the entrance, and called out listlessly, "Who is it?"

The knocking ceased instantly, and a profound silence fell over both sides of the door.

"It's me."

A deeply familiar voice echoed from outside.

Qian Fei froze, leaning forward to look through the peephole.

In an instant, her heart began to hammer like a drum.

She threw the door open.

She stood just inside the threshold with a look of absolute astonishment written across her face, while Li Yifei stood just outside, his chest heaving as he breathed heavily.

In the very next second, he violently grabbed her by the shoulders, lowered his head, and pressed his lips hard against hers.

He kissed her fiercely as he forced his way into the apartment, kicking his shoes off haphazardly and hooking the door shut with his foot behind him. Slamming her back against the wall, he poured every ounce of his strength into deeply drinking from her lips. He pressed his entire weight against her, his chest crushing her so tightly that she could barely draw a breath.

At first, her mind went completely blank. By the time she finally collected her senses, she was already pinned firmly against the wall, trapped in the grip of his desperate, overpowering kiss. She tried to push him away, but every single inch of her body was locked down against his, leaving her with absolutely no leverage to exert force. Gradually, the strength drained from her limbs; her entire body went soft as she began to respond to him, her head spinning in a dizzying haze.

His tongue parted her lips, dominantly sweeping through the warmth of her mouth. A wave of intense electricity surged from the soles of her feet all the way up her spine, leaving her knees so weak she could barely remain standing.

In this exact moment, the only sounds she could register were their ragged, heavy breathing and the thunderous pounding of their hearts.

She lost all track of how long they remained locked in that passionate embrace. She only knew that by the time he finally pulled back, her lips were completely swollen and numb.

Panting for air, she asked, "Why are you here?"

His voice sounded deeply raspy as he replied, "I received the package. I called Yao Jingjing, so I know you ran all the way out to the countryside!" He cupped her face, his nose practically brushing against hers as his eyes locked directly onto the depths of her gaze. His voice carried a heavily restrained, low grit as he demanded, "Why did you do all of this for me? Why? Tell me."

Listening to the frantic thudding of her own heart, Qian Fei caught her breath and answered quickly, "For no reason at all!"

Pressing his forehead against hers, a low laugh escaped him. "Yao Jingjing told me that you broke up with that guy named Wang again!" He leaned back down to capture her lips once more, whispering against them, "In that case, it's finally my turn, isn't it?"