The Early Spring - Chapter 120

Chapter 120 - Battle

The last time Shang Zhitao had shed tears in front of Luan Nian was years ago.

That day, she had suffered a total breakdown, taking Luke with her as she left his home, walking through the snow for a long, long time. Luan Nian remembered that day vividly—he had followed behind her, yet he had never taken the step forward to join her.

In the time that followed, he regretted it countless times: why hadn't he stepped forward to embrace her while she was crying her eyes out?

Luan Nian walked up to her, let out a gentle sigh, and pulled her into his arms. Shang Zhitao rested her forehead against his chest, a slight distance still remaining between them, and wept freely for a good while. Her tears seeped through Luan Nian's clothes, dampening the fabric over his heart. He wanted to wrap his arms tightly around her, yet he sensed her subtle resistance. Relinquishing his grip, he simply let her lean her head against him.

Once she finished wiping away her tears, feeling a touch embarrassed, she offered him a soft thank-you and gently pushed him away, taking a step back.

"Did you come to see Luke?"

"Yes. I wanted to visit as soon as the travel restrictions were lifted, but I got held up by quite a few things."

"Alright. I'll bring him down on his leash. Please wait a moment."

Shang Zhitao went upstairs to fetch Luke. Having not seen each other for several months, Luke went wild with excitement once again. Clenching his own leash in his mouth, he shoved it toward Luan Nian, forcing Luan Nian to walk him around and around. In the interim, Shang Zhitao mentioned twice that it was time to head home, but Luke either sat firmly on his rump or jerked his neck backward—refusing to return under any circumstances.

"It's fine, I'll walk him a bit longer."

"No need. Come upstairs and play with him instead."

"Is it convenient?" Luan Nian asked her.

When had Luan Nian ever asked her if something was convenient in the past? He had always done whatever he pleased, eternally willful. Shang Zhitao considered it carefully: "It's convenient. Come on up."

Hearing those words, Luke practically dragged Luan Nian forward, running ahead: Hurry, let's go home.

The moment he bounded through the front door, he downed half a bowl of water—he was dying of thirst after walking outside for so long. Having finished drinking, he let out a low grunt and flopped onto the floor, his eyes darting between Luan Nian and Shang Zhitao.

Shang Zhitao retrieved a pair of slippers for Luan Nian and pointed toward the sofa: "Have a seat."

"Alright."

This was Luan Nian's first time visiting Shang Zhitao's home. Her place was decorated in a very warm and cozy manner—especially the book wall in the living room, which felt exquisitely inviting.

"Mind if I take a look around?" he asked Shang Zhitao.

"Sure."

Shang Zhitao gave Luan Nian a brief tour of her home. She had converted one of the bedrooms into a home gym, while the remaining two—the master bedroom and the guest room—were decorated in a clean, minimalist style.

"Have a seat for a moment; I'll boil some water," Shang Zhitao told him before heading over to boil water.

Luan Nian stood before the book wall and casually pulled out a book. Tucked inside the first page was a set of reading notes written in a powerful, vigorous hand—yet it was not Shang Zhitao's handwriting.

Shang Zhitao's handwriting did not look like this. Luan Nian gently placed the book back onto the shelf.

"Is warm water alright? There are no cold drinks left at home, as I haven't had time to buy any yet. Besides, we're all getting older, so it's best to avoid drinking things that are too cold."

...

Subconsciously, Luan Nian wanted to lecture her, but then he recalled how Tan Mian and the others had repeatedly warned him before he came: Don't mess things up. He swallowed his words back down and accepted the cup of water from Shang Zhitao.

"What was wrong with you just now?"

"Nothing much. It's just that having mortgaged my property to get the funds, I felt a little uncomfortable inside."

"Why did you mortgage your property?"

"Because our company is barely holding on. Fewer companies are hosting events this year, and employee overhead as well as rent require money. On top of that, hundreds of thousands in final payments are still tied up and uncollected."

"Mm," Luan Nian grunted softly, lowering his head to take a sip of water.

"What do you want to say? Go ahead and say it."

"What I want to say is: what is wrong with you? Running a company without preparing a backup plan? Driving yourself down a dead-end street? Oh, so you want to do ad agency work—then why didn't you start doing it earlier?" Luan Nian ultimately couldn't hold back. When he grew stern, he could be thoroughly intimidating.

"I lacked startup capital."

"I have it."

Luan Nian's plain statement—I have it—brought Shang Zhitao to a complete silence. She looked at him. In the past, she had been exceptionally reliant on him; no matter what issue arose, her immediate thought would be: I should consult Luke, Luke will guide me. But she had stepped out of that dependency now, establishing her own framework of mind—she didn't even like that sort of reliance anymore.

She pulled out her bank card and set it onto the table: "I mortgaged my property, sold my car, and I still have some savings left. I can start anew."

"Luan Nian, I don't need you to help me. Even though I know you mean well, thank you, but this time I want to rely on myself. From here on out, I want to rely on myself as well."

Shang Zhitao disliked being dependent on others.

Since she was burning her bridges, she was fully prepared to end up with nothing, yet she was equally determined to push through and succeed. After all, there were still over a dozen people waiting on her decisions.

"Then what were you crying for just now?"

"...I don't know. I cried because I wanted to cry—do I need to have a proper reason calculated just to cry?"

Sensing the tense atmosphere between them, Luke suddenly scrambled up, trotted right between the two of them to sit facing Luan Nian, and stuck out his tongue.

"You don't need a calculated reason to cry, but right now you need to figure out what I should do without a change of clothes."

"What do you mean? Aren't those clothes you're wearing right now?"

"I don't like going out in dirty clothes."

"I'll go buy some for you right now."

Shang Zhitao stood up and walked toward the door, and Luan Nian followed behind her out the entrance.

"Didn't you say you don't like going out in dirty clothes?"

"Don't clothes need to be tried on? Do you know my size?"

"Wouldn't casually buying any piece be fine?"

"I am never casual."

Shang Zhitao no longer had her car, and Luan Nian hadn't driven over either, leaving the two of them standing by the roadside just like that. With his hands shoved into his pockets, Luan Nian watched as Shang Zhitao hailed a taxi, beads of sweat still hanging from the tip of her nose. Suddenly, he recalled their very first business trip to Guangzhou—the momentary trance he had fallen into when his eyes brushed past her face while eating.

"How does it feel to have nothing left to lose?" Luan Nian spoke up to ask her.

Shang Zhitao raised her head to look at him: "Pretty terrible, but also pretty liberating. At the end of the day, I suppose I'm a gambler too." Having said that, she broke into a laugh all on her own—still that very lively girl at heart.

Then I wish you success!

It seemed they had never gone shopping together before.

Once inside the shopping mall, Shang Zhitao wanted to head straight for the menswear store, but Luan Nian veered into a coffee shop instead. He ordered an iced Americano, a bottle of soda water, and a slice of cake, finding a seat by the window to sit down.

Pushing the soda water over to Shang Zhitao, the two of them sat facing one another.

The weather in Harbin on the cusp of summer was delightfully pleasant. Rarely had they managed not to bicker; setting aside the various matters of the past, they sat together quietly like this for a short while.

Luan Nian shared a few things with Shang Zhitao.

He spoke of his parents returning to the country and how he would go into the city every week to eat with them. He also mentioned Song Qiuhan and Chen Kuannian, whom Shang Zhitao had met before, touching upon Song Qiuhan and Lin Chuner, as well as Chen Kuannian and Xiaomei.

He spoke in a somewhat scattered manner, yet she listened attentively to every word.

When Chen Kuannian was brought up, Shang Zhitao remarked, "I'm grateful to him. His final payment for the collection exhibition was remitted right on time, just before payday."

The corner of Luan Nian's mouth twitched slightly. Chen Kuannian wouldn't dare default on the payment—he had personally kept an eye on him until he made the transfer.

"So, how do you plan to handle the ad agency side?" Luan Nian asked her in all seriousness.

"I have a roommate who currently oversees commercialization at an internet company. I spoke with him to get a sense of the current industry landscape, and I'm preparing to start studying."

"Studying what?"

"Various ad practitioner certifications," Shang Zhitao thought for a moment before continuing. "Internet advertising differs from the traditional ad formats back at Lingmei. Although the underlying logic is interconnected, many of the operational tactics are different. So, I plan to have our entire company get certified first. Rather than rushing into the field, we'll hit the ground running with certifications in hand."

Luan Nian nodded: "What about clients? Lower-tier markets perform well under this kind of agency framework, and clients are bound to be carved up completely."

"A few supermarket and real estate clients we worked with in the past agreed to allocate funds for us to run tests. So I want to apply for those two verticals first."

"Pretty good."

"Do you have any other suggestions?"

"Didn't you want to rely on yourself?"

"But I can still listen to your advice."

"My advice is: just do it, and believe in yourself." Luan Nian stood up. "Let's go buy clothes."

"Alright."

Shang Zhitao led him to the menswear floor: "Pick a store. I don't know what brands you like."

Luan Nian casually stepped into a shop and pointed at a garment: "This one."

Seeing his impeccable demeanor, the salesperson tried to persuade him: "There's a sale going on right now, so you can pick up a few more pieces."

Luan Nian turned around and asked Shang Zhitao, "Two pieces?"

To an outsider's ears, it sounded as if he were being kept as a toy.

Shang Zhitao froze for a second before saying, "One piece."

"Then pay for it."

"?"

"Otherwise? I pay? Why should I?"

Seeing the salesperson's bewildered expression, Shang Zhitao didn't want to argue with him. She paid the bill and stepped out of the mall: "Why aren't you changing into it?"

"It hasn't been washed yet."

She had known back in the day that Luan Nian was a bit of a mysophobe, but she hadn't expected his neat-freak tendencies to remain intact after all this time. Still, she possessed a far greater capacity to respect human diversity now, so she merely nodded: "Then go back and wash it before wearing it."

"Alright."

Dusk had fallen. Luan Nian watched her as she stood in the evening glow—a completely clean, unburdened individual. His heart stirred quite a bit.

"Shang Zhitao, I'll drop by to see Luke once more tomorrow before heading to the airport. If there's an opportunity in the future, I'll come by again."

"You're welcome to visit Luke anytime."

"Alright."

Luan Nian took a step closer toward her, his eyes locking directly onto hers: "There's one thing I feel it's necessary to tell you in person. Back when you competed for the expert position, there were two abnormal evaluation forms. They weren't scored by me. If you can still recall, the form with the highest overall score was filled out by me. You kept telling me to be fair, and I was fair. Now let me ask you one thing: do you believe me?"

Shang Zhitao's eyes grew a bit warm. She actually knew—less than half a year after she had left, Grace was dismissed from Lingmei due to bribery and unfair competition. Given Luan Nian's usual temper, he should have sent her to prison, yet knowing her child was still young, Luan Nian had shown a flash of mercy. As for the other low-scoring form, it had come from another expert reviewer. The company had dispatched an all-hands email regarding it, and after she reconnected with Lumi, Lumi had screenshotted it for her right away, telling her: You're worth it.

"So, my score represented my attitude toward you. If you felt your technical level was terrible when you first joined Lingmei, lacking confidence to the point that you even thought I looked down on you when you left, then let me clear the air: you were indeed terrible when you joined, but when you left, you were the best employee I had ever trained."

Shang Zhitao suddenly recalled those six years—years spent braving wind and rain without daring to pause for a single instant, years endured by gritting her teeth.

With tears welling in her eyes, she said to Luan Nian, "Thank you."

"You can cry if you want; no need to hold it in. It's not like you haven't cried today already."

Luan Nian was truly a buzzkill—he could throw cold water on you at any given moment. Shang Zhitao was infuriated into a chuckle by his words, wiping away her tears with her fingertips: "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Luan Nian turned around and walked away.

Tan Mian and the others had told him: Between people, you have to trade heart for heart. He was only just starting to learn that love was a long-term cultivation. It was simply that he had learned it too late—he had already missed the time when Shang Zhitao loved him.

Shang Zhitao watched Luan Nian's figure depart, and upon arriving home, she initiated an online meeting. Her new teammates all logged on. Fu Dong took a few people to transition into sales, while the rest were assigned to Fu Dong's classmate Fang Ke to work alongside the other girls as media buyers and operations specialists.

Shang Zhitao addressed the meeting: "I know we're getting a late start, and I know this doesn't seem like the ideal timing. But I've mortgaged my property and sold my car, and I have no intention of turning back."

"So, comrades-in-arms, are we ready to enter the battle?"