The Early Spring - Chapter 41

Chapter 41 - No Love

Shang Zhitao couldn't figure out why she had gotten into Luan Nian's car once again. She had clearly been standing there waiting for the bus, but the bus hadn't come. She had seen Luan Nian's car drive over, and the tiny bit of self-respect she had left made her turn her face away, pretending not to see him.

Luan Nian, however, parked the car right in front of her and said to her, "Get in."

"Thank you, sir, I'm waiting for the bus." Shang Zhitao stopped speaking and wouldn't look at him either. The grievance in her heart had nowhere to go, just hiding away in the depths of her soul—not intensely painful, but not entirely imperceptible either. She held a faint expectation that Luan Nian might say one or two soft words, such as "You've been working hard, I see it," or "To err is human, everyone makes mistakes. It doesn't matter if you mess up, I've got your back." Just one or two sentences like that, the way he treated Kitty, would have been enough. Shang Zhitao didn't know why she always compared herself to Kitty; all feelings of misfortune stem from comparison.

Luan Nian didn't speak either, just looked at her like that. This kind of stalemate between a man and a woman always comes down to seeing who is weaker. Shang Zhitao couldn't withstand his scrutiny; even though she turned sideways, she could still feel Luan Nian's lukewarm gaze wrapping tightly around her.

A young girl who had never engaged in this kind of mental tug-of-war with anyone gradually began to lose ground, eventually defeated in utter disarray, and dazedly got into Luan Nian's car.

"Where to?" Luan Nian asked her, seemingly handing the decision-making power over to her, though both of them knew the answer with absolute clarity: Shang Zhitao could only go to his place. Luan Nian understood Shang Zhitao better than she understood herself.

Shang Zhitao played hardball with him, turned a blind eye, and avoided him. She looked full of backbone and stubbornness, but deep down, inside and out, it was crystal clear: Shang Zhitao liked Luan Nian. And Luan Nian could see it.

This visible affection piqued Luan Nian's interest. He was often liked by others, but Shang Zhitao's sacrificial style of love felt fresh. As he drove, he thought to himself that he was actually quite despicable. It was he who had first felt desire toward the girl, weaving a net to catch her in it. Sometimes, when he looked at Shang Zhitao's clumsy attempts to cover up her feelings, he couldn't help but feel that he would eventually get what was coming to him.

He parked the car in the underground garage, but didn't get out right away. Instead, he said to Shang Zhitao, "Flora, let's talk."

Shang Zhitao turned her head to look at him, the light in her eyes exceptionally warm.

"First of all, our relationship is that of sex partners rather than romantic partners. Do you agree?" Luan Nian wanted to lay everything out on the table once and for all so that from then on, they wouldn't have to waste energy trying to define what was between them. Sex was sex, and love was love, kept strictly separate from one another.

Shang Zhitao turned her face away again to look out the car window. Her mind went blank for a second or two before she finally said, "Mm, I agree."

"Therefore, we don't need to restrict each other. Whichever of us wants to enter a romantic relationship, or wants to have a physical relationship with someone else, we just need to state it honestly, and then our relationship ends. Do you agree?"

Shang Zhitao finally understood what a sex partner was. So that was how it worked—satisfying each other's needs without hindering the possibility of meeting someone else. It really was very free. She nodded. "I agree."

"Then does that mean we cannot tell anyone about our relationship, including family, friends, and colleagues?" Shang Zhitao asked him.

"I think so. Is that what you think too?"

How utterly lacking in assertiveness Shang Zhitao was. She had experienced far too little of society and the world, and she had no idea if all girls went through things like this. Clearly, she had rejected Luan Nian in her heart, yet her head nodded anyway. She saw Luan Nian smile. Luan Nian looked exceptionally handsome when he smiled; he didn't do it often, and that rare occasional smile could make someone utterly lose themselves.

Later on, when her train pulled away from Beijing, and the wheels ground a dull roar against the rails—making her heart feel as though it had been run over—she suddenly remembered Luan Nian's smile from that night. He had clearly been laughing at her for being a fool.

"Luke, I'm hungry. Can you make me something to eat?" She couldn't break the habit of using formal honorifics when addressing Luan Nian; in her heart, she was forever filled with a sense of awe toward him. Shang Zhitao ended the conversation there, feeling there was nothing left to discuss anyway. It was already a hopelessly lost game with a clear winner and loser; he only had to move a random piece, and she was checkmated.

"Alright." Luan Nian got out of the car and opened the door for her.

She loved watching Luan Nian cook. She obediently waited there, watching him roll up his sleeves to make pasta and pan-seared steak for her. That cold, aloof man looked as though he had stepped down from a divine pedestal. Shang Zhitao thought this scene was impossibly sexy. She walked up to him and pinched the corner of his shirt with her fingertips, giving it a light tug.

"Luke, I don't want to eat anymore."

"Mm?"

Luan Nian tilted his head to look at her. Shang Zhitao stood on her tiptoes and pressed her lips lightly against his jaw, a fleeting, almost weightless touch, then lifted her eyes to look at him. "Let's do something else."

Luan Nian's voice was slightly husky. "Such as?"

Shang Zhitao didn't speak. Her hand tugged at his collar, forcing him to lower his head as her teeth nipped at his chin. "Like this."

Shang Zhitao hadn't been such an open person before; when she was with Xin Zhaozhou, she had always been shy. But in front of Luan Nian, she let go completely. Her body obeyed her own will, doing whatever her heart desired while a voice in her head screamed: We aren't in love anyway.

If there was no love, then there was only sex.

Shang Zhitao thought about it with absolute clarity and thoroughness. Since it was only about sex, she might as well enjoy sex to the fullest. This novel experience opened her eyes to the other side of the world. On this other side, everything wasn't as bright as imagined, but neither was it pitch black; reality was simply raw and unvarnished, yet devoid of grand romantic illusions.

Leaning against the sofa, Shang Zhitao suddenly lifted her head and caught sight of a few lonely streaks of snow outside, blurting out in a broken sentence, "It's snowing." It was the first snow of the winter in Beijing that year. Beijing hadn't seen much snow in those years, and that thin layer on that particular day felt immensely precious.

"Want to watch the snow?" Luan Nian asked her.

"Okay."

He carried her over to the window. The dim, warm light inside the small courtyard, the faint snow, and the desolate scenery—the icy glass pressed tightly against her burning skin, raising a fine layer of goosebumps. She let out a soft whimpering moan and curled up into his arms. "It's cold..." With that breathy sigh, all her strength drained away, leaving her entirely at his mercy.

How much does a child who grew up in the Ice City love the snow? Shang Zhitao refused to go upstairs; wrapped in a quilt, she sat right there watching the snow fall. Luan Nian didn't go upstairs either, sitting on the sofa flipping through a book. He felt a rare sense of satisfaction; the hostility in his heart lessened just a fraction, and looking at Shang Zhitao now, he felt she was actually quite a pleasing sight.

And wasn't she? A woman who had just emerged from a bout of wild, passionate lovemaking was now quietly reclining there, a lingering flush still gracing her cheeks as she earnestly watched the snow. She looked exceptionally pleasing to the eye.

Luan Nian wanted for nothing more. This was quite nice as it was.

At four in the morning, Shang Zhitao could no longer fight off the exhaustion and went upstairs to the guest bedroom. Although it was only the third time she had slept here, she was already quite familiar with it. She said goodnight to Luan Nian, closed the door, climbed into bed, and turned off the night light. Darkness descended right on schedule, and the girl from the northern frontier, catching the scent of snow from outside, fell into an exceptionally deep sleep.

She had let go of all her worries. In truth, she hadn't had much to worry about anyway; her anxieties from the previous few days had merely been about stubborn pride against Luan Nian. When she opened her eyes the next morning, she recalled what Luan Nian had told her the night before—their relationship was clear and defined from that moment on, requiring no further elaboration.

She got up and got dressed. Luan Nian was still asleep, so she quietly brushed her teeth and washed her face before leaving his home. The villa complex was quite large, and it took her over ten minutes of walking every time just to reach the front gate. Strangely enough, the security guards already recognized her and even nodded in her direction. Yet their gazes were rather odd, impossible to tell whether they held contempt or pity. Shang Zhitao had no mental energy to ponder such things; her thirst for knowledge made her eager to get home early, as Sun Yuanzhu had promised to teach her the logic of data analysis.

Shang Zhitao wanted to become better. She hadn't thought about how much better, precisely, but she hoped to make a little progress every day. In her imagination, a few years down the line, she would become truly strong, and by then, she would be able to hold an equal conversation with Luan Nian.

When she unlocked the door, Sun Yuanzhu was already awake. Seeing Shang Zhitao, he smiled at her. "You're back?"

Shang Zhitao nodded.

In a city like Beijing, there were many things you didn't need to explain in detail. When a girl stayed out all night with the physical evidence of the previous evening still lingering on her skin, everything became self-explanatory; asking an extra question was just a waste of breath. Sun Yuanzhu wasn't stupid.

However, he didn't misunderstand Shang Zhitao because of this. He simply assumed that Shang Zhitao had fallen into love—a romance that hadn't brought her much happiness.

"Get some more sleep. I've got some work to finish, and I'll teach you this afternoon, alright?"

"Okay. Thank you." Shang Zhitao went back to her bedroom, truly crawled back into bed, and slept a little longer.

The relationship between her and Luan Nian was confined exclusively to Friday nights. This actually suited Shang Zhitao quite well, as she had originally planned her weekends around studying, meaning nothing at all was disrupted.

Sun Yuanzhu was an exceptional teacher.

He even brought his own blackboard, placing it in front of the dining table and standing before it like a youth frozen in time. How could anyone be so pure and untainted? Sun Yu sat next to Shang Zhitao and sent her a message: "Shang Zhitao, why is Sun Yuanzhu so pure?"

Shang Zhitao didn't know why either. Sun Yuanzhu was simply that kind of person—someone who still carried the clean, untainted air of a young boy at twenty-six years old. In Shang Zhitao's heart, Sun Yuanzhu was untouched by worldly dust. He always had been.

"Shang Zhitao, I'm being fickle. I only went through a breakup two or three months ago, but now I've fallen in love with Sun Yuanzhu," Sun Yu messaged her again.

Shang Zhitao let out a soft gasp and lifted her head from her phone. Sun Yuanzhu stopped his lecture and asked with genuine curiosity, "Is there a problem, classmate?"

Shang Zhitao shook her head and glanced at Sun Yu. "Teacher, I don't have a problem. She does."

Sun Yu blushed—a rare occurrence. "I don't either. Umm, Teacher, could you explain the whole thing from the beginning again? I didn't understand a single word starting from the very first sentence." As clever as Sun Yu was—someone who could calculate discount prices and refunds purely in her head—she claimed she didn't understand, purely because she wanted to hear Sun Yuanzhu speak a few more words.

Sun Yuanzhu possessed an endless amount of patience, both patient and slightly clumsy. "Alright, let me go over it one more time."

"Should I leave?" Shang Zhitao secretly texted Sun Yu.

"Don't," Sun Yu replied. "I was just saying it on a whim. I don't have the courage."

"You don't have the courage?" Shang Zhitao was a bit surprised. You're the fearless Sun Yu, how could you possibly lack courage?

"I really don't."

He is simply too good. Sun Yu thought to herself.

Sun Yu wasn't lying. A boy as warm and pristine as Sun Yuanzhu was someone who could only be admired from afar; even if other girls wanted to approach him, Sun Yu would feel a protective urge to stand in front of him.

Shang Zhitao studied with intense concentration. The fact that she was getting free access to top-tier data analysis lessons taught personally by an outstanding student representative from a premier national institution—other people didn't have that kind of luck, but she did.

She looked at Sun Yuanzhu, then looked at Sun Yu, her gaze gentle yet filled with unspoken stories.