Ming Shao wasn’t sure how he made it back home.
The coffee today had tasted bitter, and as he sat on the couch, his mind drifted back to the congee Shen Luo used to make.
The café had been noisy, and the assistant’s lips had moved, but Ming Shao hadn’t absorbed a single word.
The house remained untouched, with the toppled tissue box still on the table and the slippers by the door left askew.
A sense of disarray grew from the cracks in the floor, chaos boiling in the empty corners.
The evergreen tree, once visible from the window, had snapped in half during the last storm. Its trunk was split down the middle, standing bare and forlorn.
Evergreen trees don’t turn yellow, but they do lose their leaves.
After a few storms, after a few cold winds.
Ming Shao stubbornly took out his phone. A few days ago, he had added an “A” in front of Shen Luo’s name, so he quickly found it in his contacts.
After a brief “beep,” the familiar mechanical voice sounded again: “Sorry, the number you have dialed is currently switched off. Please try again later—”
Ming Shao had once read that if the phone you’re calling is genuinely switched off, the mechanical voice would notify you immediately. However, if you’ve been blocked, there would be a quick “beep” before the notification.
He wasn’t sure if that was true, but since Shen Luo left, he hadn’t been able to get through to him once.
The data analysis he had carefully prepared was now crumpled in his hands. He had spent an entire morning preparing, feeling uncharacteristically nervous as he made assumptions and contingency plans, even brushing up on negotiation techniques.
…But none of it had been used because the person he was waiting for hadn’t shown up at all.
Divorce? How could they be getting a divorce?
Abroad?
Shen Luo was avoiding even meeting him?
Shen Luo… wasn’t coming home?
“Hey, I need you to track down Shen Luo’s whereabouts,” Ming Shao instructed his assistant over the phone.
He had expected quick results, but to his frustration, time passed with little progress.
After half a month of confusion, reality finally began to sink in.
With the reality came a suffocating sense of helplessness. His mind was blank, and his heart felt like it was plummeting to the ground.
The knot in his chest twisted tighter and tighter, and Ming Shao closed his eyes in pain.
But every time he closed his eyes, Shen Luo’s face appeared.
Whenever Shen Luo had the time, he would wait for Ming Shao to come home, sitting on the couch, sometimes watching TV, sometimes reading. The moment Ming Shao walked through the door, he would be greeted by Shen Luo’s hopeful gaze.
“You’re back? I got off work early today too. Have you eaten? I made something—would you like to eat together?”
Shen Luo would walk over, always using the same excuse, yet every day there would be different dishes, all tailored to Ming Shao’s taste.
Ming Shao shifted to the side, settling into the spot where Shen Luo used to sit, as if replaying countless nights from before.
Shen Luo used to wait for him here, but now, for the first time, Ming Shao was sitting there himself.
But Shen Luo wasn’t there.
Shen Luo had just finished a project and was leaving the company with his business partner when the sunlight outside struck him as particularly bright.
Recently, the projects he’d been working on had made significant progress, and Shen Luo had thrown himself into his work, rarely allowing himself to think about the past.
It wasn’t that he didn’t think about it.
He just didn’t dare to.
His pride had been crushed into dust, and his crush had been shattered by repeated indifference, rotting away until it poisoned him entirely.
So he didn’t dare to hope, didn’t dare to yearn. He was disheartened, numb yet painfully aware.
The business partner invited Shen Luo to dinner, but Shen Luo politely declined with a smile.
His phone rang, and Shen Luo answered.
“Hello?” Shen Luo had just learned a couple of days ago that his new assistant was actually the boss’s child, sent to gain experience.
“Shen-ge,” the assistant began formally, then proceeded to report on their work, “I’ve arranged the first meeting with Mr. Ming regarding the divorce agreement.”
“…And?” Shen Luo asked, unconsciously gripping the steering wheel.
“Mr. Ming seemed dissatisfied with some parts and listed a lot of data about the losses involved in the divorce.”
“Data?” Shen Luo straightened up, recalling the terms of the agreement.
“Let’s do this: send me the data he provided, and I’ll review it tonight.”
The divorce involved a lot of entangled matters. Some small projects and less important details didn’t concern Shen Luo too much, but Ming Shao was a meticulous person, and Shen Luo knew he would have calculated everything carefully.
Shen Luo forced a smile. He could almost picture Ming Shao crunching those numbers. That man always relied on data analysis, never bothering with anything unnecessary.
But… it was good to have everything clear. That way, neither of them would owe the other anything anymore.
The afternoon sun was warm, and with an afternoon off, Shen Luo decided not to think about anything. He drove himself to the beach.
The sea breeze was gentle.
Meanwhile, Ming Shao had come down with a high fever.
The temperature had dropped sharply recently, and after sleeping on the couch all night with the window open, even his iron constitution couldn’t withstand it.
Ming Shao spent half the day at work in a daze, yet managed to complete two days’ worth of tasks with impressive efficiency. He even meticulously rearranged his assistant’s schedule, squeezing out three days of free time.
It wasn’t until he collapsed upon leaving the office that his assistant realized something was wrong.
A high fever of 39 degrees, yet the Alpha stubbornly refused to go to the hospital. He merely washed down two fever-reducing pills with some mineral water and insisted on catching a flight.
He wouldn’t listen to anyone, incoherently shouting about needing to see someone.
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