Romance had never been something Song Nanyin particularly yearned for. At twenty-eight, she was long past the age when young girls dreamt of love, wrapped in pink bubbles from head to toe.

Dating Liu Zhaoran would have been lovely, of course, but even if she were heartbroken now, Song Nanyin didn’t think it was such a big deal. Pfft. It was just a breakup. The person she liked didn’t like her back. She’d been flattering herself all along.

This world wasn’t short of women other than Liu Zhaoran. She didn’t have to hang herself from that one particular tree. She didn’t care in the least.

Thinking this, Song Nanyin bit down hard on her pillow to keep any sob from slipping out. The shower was still running in the bathroom, but she knew Liu Zhaoran would emerge before long.

There wasn’t much time left for grieving.

Song Nanyin propped herself up, took the tissues she’d long since hidden beneath her pillow, and wiped away her tears, cleaning the lingering traces from her face.

Once that was done, at least she no longer looked such a wreck. Only then did she turn off the main light, leaving a single bedside lamp to light Liu Zhaoran’s way.

After her shower, Liu Zhaoran had been hoping to make use of the night’s good mood to do something with Song Nanyin. She hadn’t expected the woman to have the lights off already, looking as if she wanted nothing but rest.

Liu Zhaoran certainly didn’t believe Song Nanyin would fall asleep this early. She finished her evening skincare routine, climbed into bed, and wrapped her arms around the woman from behind.

“Are you going to sleep, Team Leader Song?” Liu Zhaoran asked softly, afraid that Song Nanyin might really be asleep and she would wake her. In truth, Song Nanyin’s nerves had been strung taut since the instant Liu Zhaoran stepped out of the bathroom, tracking her every move.

Her body was encircled by Liu Zhaoran’s embrace, which carried her pleasant scent and a warmth easy to drown in. Liu Zhaoran ran warm, not scorching the way Song Nanyin’s temperature ran all year round, but never cold either.

Liu Zhaoran’s temperature was like congee kept in a warming box, open it at any hour and it was ready to eat, never cold, never scalding.

She’d only just gotten her tears under control, yet held like this, Song Nanyin felt the urge to cry rising in her again.

She truly hated Liu Zhaoran. If she didn’t like her, why hold her at all? She hated her scent, her warmth, her voice. What she hated even more was herself, wanting to cry while her mouth said the opposite.

Even if she was just flattering herself, she still liked her after all.

“What are you doing? Stop it. I’m tired and I want to sleep.” Song Nanyin fought to keep her voice normal so Liu Zhaoran wouldn’t catch on. Even so, her nose was stuffy, her words thick with congestion.

“What’s wrong? Are you feeling unwell?” Song Nanyin’s voice was off, enough to worry Liu Zhaoran. Afraid she might turn on the light, Song Nanyin simply rolled over and, before Liu Zhaoran could react, pressed her down onto the bed and pulled her head into her arms.

“I already said I’m sleepy. Shut up, Black-Hearted Lotus. Tonight, I’m using you as a body pillow and holding you while I sleep.” Song Nanyin was somewhat glad she’d done it, because Liu Zhaoran really did settle down and asked nothing more.

The room fell very quiet, leaving only their two breathing voices rising and falling. With her nose clogged from crying, she would have struggled to breathe without opening her mouth.

So this was the price of heartbreak.

Thankfully, she hadn’t fallen in too deep. No matter how intense the liking, as long as it hadn’t ripened into love, getting hurt taught you to pull yourself out. Song Nanyin was suddenly grateful she’d sensed Liu Zhaoran’s lack of feeling this early, because it meant she had more time to heal the hurt.

From now on, she would keep this relationship just as it was.

Being good friends who could also go to bed together wasn’t so bad, was it?

Over the next few days, Song Nanyin and Liu Zhaoran toured the surrounding area, including Osaka and Nara, before finishing with a few days in Nagoya. With more than half a month of travel behind them, the two set off for home.

January was one of the colder stretches in Jiahai City, though snow rarely fell, and the chill was nothing compared to the frozen Northeast.

After getting off the plane, the two waited to collect their luggage while sorting through the souvenirs they’d bought for their colleagues.

“I mean, you buy this much every time. Do you really have that many people to give gifts to?” Watching Liu Zhaoran cram two suitcases full of presents, Song Nanyin couldn’t help asking. The woman went on no small number of business trips, and nearly every time she came back, she’d have bought a great many things for the people at the company.

Song Nanyin understood that this was essential workplace socializing. But Liu Zhaoran had reached her current position, so she really didn’t need to care what those people thought, did she?

“Team Leader Song, do you know why you always rank behind me in the popularity votes?” Hearing Song Nanyin’s question, Liu Zhaoran smiled and asked in return. In the past, such words from Liu Zhaoran would have made Song Nanyin angry, and she’d have cursed the woman as a schemer in her heart. Now, though, she was willing to seriously discuss with Liu Zhaoran the reason she was so “bad with people.”

“So? All this is just to buy them off so they’ll vote for you?” Song Nanyin didn’t think Liu Zhaoran was that childish.

“Of course not. It’s just that when the choice is between sending gifts and not sending them, I pick the former. You never know who might secretly dislike you, who might talk about you behind your back. But once people have accepted the gifts, even those who hate you the most will restrain themselves a little, at least at certain times.”

“One of these suitcases, I bought it for you.” Liu Zhaoran pointed at one of them. Hearing this, Song Nanyin looked up at Liu Zhaoran’s faintly smiling face and clenched her hand, feigning indifference.

Sometimes, that damn woman was so thoughtful it made you want to bite her. Not a hard, vicious bite, but a gentle one, born of the urge to hold her close.

“Who asked you to meddle? I’ll transfer the money to you later.”

“Okay then. I’ll put it on Team Leader Song’s tab. If you think that’s not a fair deal, you can always pay me back with your body.”

See? There it was again, that teasing that never knew the right time or place. She’d long since told herself to stop flattering herself, and the ache of heartbreak had eased quite a bit these past days. Yet hearing those words again, Song Nanyin still very much wanted to pound her fist against Liu Zhaoran’s chest.

To ask her why she couldn’t just like her back…

Fine. Song Nanyin tucked away her resentment, cast a sidelong glance at Liu Zhaoran, then reached out and thumped her on the shoulder. It wasn’t a hard hit, but it definitely had nothing in common with a coy little fist pounding a chest.

“Team Leader Song, Director Liu, what a coincidence.” Just as Song Nanyin and Liu Zhaoran were about to get into their car with their luggage, someone suddenly called out to them. The two turned around together and found it was Zhang Kai’s special assistant, apparently named Li Ran.

Li Ran rarely appeared at the company, usually handling external liaison work, so running into them here came as a surprise.

“Special Assistant Li, are you just back from a business trip too?”

“Mm. I just got off the plane and happened to see you two. I didn’t expect the two of you to be on such good terms.”

Li Ran’s words were snide, and the look in their eyes was off as well. Song Nanyin and Liu Zhaoran both sensed it and, by unspoken agreement, said nothing in response. Adults understood how to end things with silence, and between colleagues who weren’t close, that rule mattered all the more.

Without another word, Song Nanyin and Liu Zhaoran got into their car and left. Seeing that they had even left in the same vehicle, Li Ran’s eyes grew more puzzled still.

With the company-funded holiday that had looked like a business trip but was really a vacation now over, Song Nanyin and Liu Zhaoran planned to report back to work the next day. After all, neither of them was idle at the company. Half a month without touching their affairs, and the accumulated work must have piled up into quite a mountain.

The next day, Liu Zhaoran and Song Nanyin took the souvenirs they’d bought for their colleagues, handing shares first to the people they were closest to, then having their subordinates distribute them to every other colleague.

“Thank you, Director Liu, for being so considerate. This is the money for the gifts.” In the afternoon, Liu Zhaoran looked at her phone during a break and spotted at first glance the message and red packet Song Nanyin had sent.

The sentence looked perfectly normal, but Liu Zhaoran felt she could almost picture the faintly snide edge in Song Nanyin’s voice. It was as if, back in Japan, Song Nanyin had begun to act a little strange.

The most obvious change was that the woman seemed to have started resisting intimacy with her again recently. It wasn’t an outright refusal, but she would occasionally turn her down with tiredness as an excuse, and even when they did it, she’d always seem distracted.

Liu Zhaoran couldn’t guess the reason. She simply thought Song Nanyin might be nursing some new little scheme and planned to find a time to talk it over with her. Looking at the transfer she’d just received, she thought about it and decided not to accept it.

She hadn’t been after the gift money in the first place. And besides, more than repayment in credits, what she looked forward to was being paid back in the flesh.

“May I come in?” Just as Liu Zhaoran put away her phone, a familiar voice came from the doorway. Liu Zhaoran wasn’t curious about why Zhang Kai had come calling at this hour. After all, every time she returned from a business trip, the man would show up with his special lack of tact.

“General Manager Zhang, what brings you here so suddenly? Is there work you need me to handle?” Liu Zhaoran smiled lightly and adopted a by-the-book tone. Zhang Kai frowned faintly at it.

“Nothing, really. I just missed you, so I came to see you. You and Team Leader Song did a fine job on this trip. You must have had a few days of fun in Japan too, right? Yesterday, you two came back together?”

Zhang Kai asked with a note of testing, clearly meaning more than his words. Liu Zhaoran was a shrewd one, well versed in reading between the lines. This time, though, she couldn’t quite understand why Zhang Kai would suddenly bring up her and Song Nanyin.

“That’s right. Team Leader Song and I did some sightseeing in Japan.”

“Is that so? I can see the two of you are on much better terms than before. Did some misunderstanding get resolved?”

Zhang Kai pressed on, the look he gave Liu Zhaoran tinged with inquiry. In truth, he didn’t want to ask about Song Nanyin at all. It was just that what Li Ran had told him left him puzzled.

Li Ran had said they’d seen Liu Zhaoran and Song Nanyin at the airport, and that the two of them had seemed intimate to an excessive degree. Zhang Kai knew what the two were to each other. He was curious not only about what had happened between them, but also why Li Ran would use the word “intimate” to describe them.

“Team Leader Song and I have known each other since university. Perhaps it was because I exchanged a few words with her boyfriend back then that some distance grew between us. Now that we’ve said everything plainly, there’s naturally no problem anymore.”

Liu Zhaoran offered the most reasonable explanation she could think of, and Zhang Kai nodded in agreement at her words.

“Um, Director Liu, about the proposal I mentioned before, have you thought it over? You know, I’ve always liked you. I…”

“General Manager Zhang, actually, I’ve prepared a special gift for you. I think you’ll like it.”

Realizing Zhang Kai was about to bring up that tiresome business again, Liu Zhaoran hastily cut him off, then took an exquisite box from the cabinet and handed it to him. It was a tie, expensive, from a brand Zhang Kai liked very much.

At the sight of the tie, Zhang Kai’s eyes brightened, and he made no effort to hide his fondness for Liu Zhaoran.

“I…”

“General Manager Zhang, right now I still want to give my career everything I’ve got. You’re very accomplished, and I believe your standards for a partner go beyond something as shallow as looks. Two people need shared topics to go far together, don’t you think?”

“Yes, you’re right. I was too hasty. I’ll give you time. The company will be promoting a new vice president next year. Rest assured, I’ll do my best to give you work opportunities.”

Having obtained Liu Zhaoran’s “assurance” and the gift, Zhang Kai left in a good mood, forgetting every word Li Ran had said. Watching him walk away with the tie, Liu Zhaoran smiled disdainfully and locked the cabinet full of ties once more.

Fools were all alike, so why did some people have to be so insufferably foolish?