My Darling (我的曼达林)

Untitled Part 2

Unhurriedly, he drank half a cup of warm water, then brought her account book over to himself, flipping through a few pages. "You've invested in Tong Fei's production company?"

"Yup. Didn't you know that already?"

"How much did you invest? Five hundred thousand?"

Two million. Sold her little apartment to do it.

Chu Jian silently converted this to become, "Not very much."

A while ago, when she was selling that little apartment of hers, she had told her parents that she wanted to expand her nail aesthetics training business and was opening three separate branches in Guangzhou and Beijing. Only in this way had she managed to cover up the matter. Jian Bianlin was one of the closest people to her parents. She could not let the secret slip.

He circled where he stood, like a supervisor inspecting the place, and while he was at it, he somewhat inquiringly surveyed that glass wall that had more than a hundred different colours of nail polish arranged on it, seeming lost in thought.

She could not think of what else he could ask. When she was praying for the third time in her mind that he would leave, he slipped his hands into the pocket of his coat again. With a manner and posture like he had just finished filming a cops and robbers movie on the streets of Macau, he told her, "On the way here just now, I invited Tong Fei out to go for a late-night meal. Want to come with us?"

"I'm not done doing the books..." She was halfway through what she wanted to say when she saw his expression turn somber, so she turned her words around. "But that sounds pretty good. I'm dying of hunger." Fine, I'll just view it as if I owe you something from our previous life.

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In regards to this matter, she genuinely felt baffled and innocent in it. The relationship between the two of them could be traced back to somewhere between ten and twenty years ago, when they were schoolmates in primary school.

Jian Bianlin's parents had divorced. He and his dad had moved from Guangzhou to Hangzhou, where they had rented an apartment next door to hers. And so, Chu Jian's oh dearest mother would volunteer herself to take the two out to play whenever she had nothing to do.

Gradually, in the course of this back and forth contact, the friendship between the two families deepened.

Then in middle school, when Chu Jian's understanding of feelings and relationships with the opposite gender had still not yet developed, there was already an unspoken view in her entire class—even her entire grade—that she was his girlfriend.

Later, she had felt that she did not have any of those feelings or that intention at all.

On a certain day after school, taking advantage of that moment in the stairwell when he was helping her lock up her bicycle to the railing, Chu Jian had mustered up her courage and declared truthfully to his backside—

"I actually honestly don't like you in that way."

At that time, he had merely gazed at her for a little more than a minute. Then, he had picked up both of their schoolbags and walked upstairs, not expressing any dissent.

Originally, if this story had been allowed to develop smoothly and normally, their relationship should have drifted apart, and then after graduation, they would not have had any contact with one another anymore.