At that time, when the needle pointed to seven o'clock, the last ray of light in the horizon was swept away and rows of street lamps suddenly turned on neatly and uniformly. Even if the layer of light was filtered through the curtains hundreds of miles away, Ruan Sixian still felt dazzled by it.
She covered her eyes and turned to turn on the light.
Before her hand touched the switch, she heard the person behind her say: "If it were you, how would you choose?"
Ruan Sixian's hand froze in mid-air. The light wasn't turned on, and the living room was still dark.
Dong Xian stood two meters away from her and said faintly: "Between the last chance in this life to take the pilot test and to continue to stay at home with your husband and child, which one will you choose?"
There was a long silence in the room, and even the air seemed to stagnate.
The surrounding atmosphere squeezed her neck tightly and her brain couldn't think. Her nerves jumped abruptly, as if they would explode in the next second.
"I won't let her choose one out of two."
Suddenly, a hand covered the back of Ruan Sixian's hand and pressed the switch. The bright light illuminated the entire living room.
He held Ruan Sixian's hand and stood sideways in front of her, blocking Dong Xian's direct gaze.
"Auntie, it's meaningless for you to ask such a question. This kind of assumption doesn't hold up here in my place."
Hearing his firm voice, Ruan Sixian raised her head and looked at him blankly. Her throat feels itchy.
It was very windy outside. He had just returned, and there was still cold air on his clothes, but his palms were warm.
When Dong Xian asked this, Ruan Sixian's temple suddenly tightened and she had the feeling as if she was standing on the steel wire on the cliff, and she might fall if she moved.
His voice, like a strong rope, pulled her ashore again.
Fu Mingyu's sudden arrival broke the delicate stalemate between Dong Xian and Ruan Sixian.
He glanced into the dining room and saw the dishes on the table seemed like it was not touched at all.
"Have you eaten, Auntie? Do you want to sit down and have dinner together?"
His 'invitation' seemed to be an unceremonious order for the guest to get out instead.
Dong Xian didn't need to say much anymore. She weighed the status of herself and Fu Mingyu in this house, and the answer was clear.
She clearly felt Ruan Sixian's dependence on Fu Mingyu.
The two stood opposite her, and there seemed to be a barrier in the middle, indicating that they stood in different positions.
In the end, it's still parting unhappily.
She sighed silently, walked to the table and tried the temperature of the soup with the back of her hand.
"It's still hot." She said, "The pigeon is very fresh, and the medicinal materials inside are also carefully selected. They can calm the nerves. Drink it while it's still hot."
The moment the door closed, Fu Mingyu turned and looked at Ruan Sixian.
He raised his hand to touch her cheek.
However, before his hand touched her skin, she suddenly walked forward, fell on the sofa and fell into the pillow.
"I am so sleepy."
While Fu Mingyu wasn't paying attention, she rubbed her eyes, "Why are you here?"
"I am afraid my baby will be bullied." Fu Mingyu picked up the dishes on the table and walked to the kitchen: "And doesn't someone want me to eat dinner with her?"
Ruan Sixian rolled her eyes on the sofa and turned over while holding the pillow, turning her back to him. Then the corners of her mouth curved before she stood up and ran into the kitchen with the rest of the dishes.
Fu Mingyu put the dishes into the microwave, "Why did Auntie come today?"
"She came to send me something to eat." Ruan Sixian pointed to the table outside. "See that? Fresh pigeon soup."
When the first dish was done, he brought it out and asked at the same time: "Just to send you something to eat?"
Ruan Sixian said "Oh" and "And also had a little heart-to-heart communication."
Was the heart-to-heart communication to such an extent that it created such an atmosphere?
If it wasn't for him knowing that Dong Xian was coming, and he felt a little uneasy in his heart so he rushed back immediately, maybe with Ruan Sixian's temper, she would have had a big fight with the other party at home already.
Fu Mingyu turned around and leaned against the cabinet, then slightly hunched his back so that he was just in line with Ruan Sixian's line of sight.
There was a shallow smile at the corner of his mouth, "Have you quarreled with your mom?"
"Hmmph." Ruan Sixian turned around to serve the meal, with a hint of indifference in her tone, "Didn't you hear it already?"
Fu Mingyu wrapped his arms around her neck and bent his wrists to hold her chin: "Then tell me, what are you quarreling with your mom about?"
His tone was relaxed, and he sounded like an older brother who is coaxing a child.
But Ruan Sixian always knew that since sometime ago, Fu Mingyu already had a vague guess about her family's affairs.
But she didn't talk about it, so he didn't ask either.
Ruan Sixian lowered her head and didn't speak.
The microwave dinged, so Fu Mingyu let go of her and reached out to open the microwave.
"It doesn't matter. It's fine if you don't want to say it. Let's eat first."
When Ruan Sixian has no important thing to do, she always eats only until 70% full for dinner.
It's easy to feel sleepy when one eats too much, and the brain will not be sober either.
But in the one hour when Dong Xian was here, she seemed to have exhausted all her energy. Her stomach was very empty and she unknowingly added a bowl of rice.
The bowl of pigeon soup was put aside. It had become cold at some unknown time and it even gave off a fishy smell.
Fu Mingyu sat opposite her and filled a bowl of winter melon soup.
Ruan Sixian was about to reach for it, but the other party sent it to his own mouth instead.
"......"
Fu Mingyu paused, "Can you still eat?"
Ruan Sixian retracted her hand and nodded resignedly.
"Fine. I can't eat anymore."
Fu Mingyu smiled and took a sip. The temperature of the soup was just right, so he handed it to Ruan Sixian.
Ruan Sixian turned her head and said: "I never eat food that is handed out in contempt."
The person opposite raised his head to look at her, then half-squinted his eyes and said, "Do you want me to feed you?"
According to common sense, Ruan Sixian would roll her eyes and say: "I am not disabled."
But recalling what Zheng You'an said at noon today, she lowered her head and touched her fingernails, "But I heard that when some girls dated a boyfriend, they never washed their own fruit, never tied their own shoelaces, and even never twisted open their own mineral water bottles by themself."
"That is someone else." Fu Mingyu drank the soup and nodded, "You are different. You are a woman who can open the bottle cap with one hand."
"......"
"Let me tell you something." Across the table, Ruan Sixian kicked Fu Mingyu's calf. "I am very popular right now. You'd better be nice to me, or each and every one of my 63,108 Weibo fans can scold you to death."
Not only that, many media outlets already rushed to interview her just in the early hours of yesterday morning alone.
Ruan Sixian didn't have the energy or time, so she refused most of them, and only agreed to a few very formal invitations from mainstream media. Otherwise, if she accepts all of them, she has to find an agent already.
Fu Mingyu chuckled lightly.
Ruan Sixian heard a bit of disdain from his laughter.
"What do you mean?"
Fu Mingtang looked up at her, raised his brows, got up and walked to her side.
"Open your mouth."
Ruan Sixian seemed to have PTSD on these three words. As soon as she heard it, she could recall all kinds of things that happened this morning. Not only did she not open her mouth, she gritted her teeth too.
Seeing her appearance, Fu Mingyu stirred the soup in the bowl with a spoon, and said casually: "Didn't you want me to feed you?"
"You said the same thing in the morning——" The spoon was fed to Ruan Sixian's mouth. Her brain got stuck and her earlobes slowly turned red.
"Huh?" Fu Ming touched her lower lip with a spoon, "What did I say this morning?"
Ruan Sixian grabbed the bowl from his hand and pushed him away with both hands and feet, "Go away, I'm not disabled."
While she was drinking the soup, Fu Mingyu had been sitting next to her, leaning against the back of the chair, thinking about something with his head down.
He touched his trousers and there was a hard box inside.
Just as he wanted to take it out, he thought about it again, and decided to drop it again.
"You can smoke if you want."
Ruan Sixian put down her bowl and said, "It's not like I have never been a passive smoker."
"Just one." Fu Mingyu took out his cigarette box. "I don't have time to sleep. I am very sleepy."
Ruan Sixian sneered.
"Say you have no time to sleep but you could lie in bed without closing your eyes and still did this and did that."
"Did what?"
"......"
Ruan Sixian snatched away the lighter in his hand, lit the lighter and looked at him fiercely, "Is there a shortage of incense at the grave?"
Not only did this move not deter Fu Mingyu, but he tilted his head and lit his cigarette with the fire in Ruan Sixian's hand instead.
He lowered his head with a cigarette in his mouth. The outline of the eyebrow bone and the bridge of his nose was covered with a layer of shadow, so deep that it felt unreal.
But this unreal feeling made her unable to move her eyes away and tightly staring at the movie-like picture.
After a while, a puff of white smoke floated up beside her.
The soup in the bowl had bottomed out. Ruan Sixian put down the lighter and the spoon in her hand touched the wall of the ceramic bowl, making a crisp sound.
"The last time I drank this soup was during the summer vacation of the third grade of junior high school."
"Hm?"
She suddenly mentioned this without rhyme or reason. Fu Mingyu's fingertips paused slightly and a few ashes were shaken off.
"At that time, this shop had just opened. My mom came to school to pick me up for a meal. This is the store that sells this soup."
This sentence is a chance she found after brewing it for a long time in her entire meal time.
Just now, Fu Mingyu asked her about her family, but she didn't open her mouth. It wasn't because she didn't want to say it, but because she didn't know where to start.
Dong Xian is not a stranger. She is her mother, and she is also the wife of the boss of Fu Mingyu's cooperative company. He should be in the know both in emotion and reason.
He is different from others.
If she can't even talk to him, Ruan Sixian doesn't know who else to talk to.
So even if he didn't ask, Ruan Sixian would find a chance to tell him.
It's just that no matter how old the past is, it's also a scar. It will hurt even if you touch it lightly.
It takes more courage to speak out.
"When I was 14 years old, my mom divorced my dad. Later, she seemed very busy. She came to see me once or twice a year. The first time she came back, she brought me to eat in Western Banquet. Before, our family could never afford such a restaurant."
Ruan Sixian started from the beginning of the story, her voice was neither light nor heavy, as if she were telling someone else's story.
At the time when she reached the misunderstanding part, she even laughed at herself.
The high school period was very boring. She just finished it in two sentences.
"In the third year of high school, there are airlines that recruit students to enter the Flight Academy, but they don't recruit girls. Do you know that?"
Fu Mingyu nodded, "I know."
This is not a special case that happened only in Hengshi Airlines. At that time, almost all airlines were like this.
"Later, when I was in my third year of university, there were also airlines that came to the campus to recruit students on a tour." Ruan Sixian raised her chin, "At that time, I was very confident that I would definitely be selected because the interviewer liked me very much and the captain who came to preach also left me his contact information, so I packed my bags after I returned to the dormitory."
Fu Mingyu raised his head and said: "He left you his contact information?"
"Yeah. He is very handsome. Do you want to take a look?"
Ruan Sixian took out her mobile phone and showed it to him.
Fu Mingyu didn't look at her mobile phone, and only saw her smiling very cunningly. He snorted coldly and said: "You are quite well-connected."
"If I had been well-connected, I wouldn't have ended up in that field" Ruan Sixian put down her mobile phone heavily, thinking of that incident with a look of contempt in her eyes. "As a result, I thought I got the VIP pass, but it turned out to be just for s*x. I didn't even know that the place was robbed by someone I know. There was no movement at all, but I finally learned it from the mouths of others."
More than half of the cigarette on his fingertips had burned, and the half-finger-length ash was crumbling.
He sighed softly, shook off the ash and also snuffed out the cigarette.
Under the warm yellow light of the dining room, Fu Mingyu's eyes looked dim.
Ruan Sixian was holding her face and looking at him, and she suddenly had a strange feeling.
If she had not been squeezed out of the place at that time, she might have met Fu Mingyu long ago.
"If I had met you at that time." She thought of something and asked directly, "Will you like me?"
Only a trace of smoke lingered in the trash can, curling up between Ruan Sixian and Fu Mingyu, slowing down the passage of time.
"If I met you at that time." Fu Mingyu looked straight at her, "Then you are already Mrs. Fu now."
Mrs. Fu.
Ruan Sixian was stunned. A strange feeling slowly crept into her heart, tickling and scratching like a cat's claws.
The two words 'Mrs. Fu' are strangely very pleasant to hear.
The main reason is it makes people feel rich when they hear it. It's 'Rich Madam' anyway.
(T/N: Mrs. Fu and Rich Madam have the same pronunciation.)
Ruan Sixian opened her fingers and covered half of her face. She didn't even look at him. Her heart was beating so fast. She quickly changed the topic: "My dad didn't buy commercial insurance, and he didn't leave me much money after his death. I have to earn my own living expenses in university. When others go out on dates and travel, I am working part-time all the time."
Fu Mingyu frowned.
It was hard for him to imagine how Ruan Sixian went through all of it alone at that time.
If only he could meet her earlier.
He would never let her live like that.
At this time, Ruan Sixian suddenly raised her head and smiled proudly: "But when I was in university, I was one of the richest in my class."
"......"
Fu Mingyu's thoughts came to an abrupt end.
"There's no way either. Who let me be born beautiful." Ruan Sixian straightened her hair and dispelled Fu Mingyu's doubts, "There are Taobao shops looking for me to be a model all day long, and I can earn 1,000 a day for shooting. There was also a shop that invited me to go to the beach to shoot at public expense. It gives me 2,500 a day. After four years, my small treasury has grown into tens of thousands."
"......"
Fu Mingyu held back his overflowing compassion and raised his eyebrows. "The beach?"
"Yeah."
"What did you wear?"
"Is this important?" Ruan Sixian closed her eyes and inhaled. She was about to get angry at him. "The main point is two thousand and five hundred a day."
"Is there any pictures?"
Ruan Sixian was stunned for a moment.
She does have it.
And maybe because the store owner was very satisfied with her picture, it was put on the homepage of the store at that time and when the small picture was clicked, its bigger sized picture would appear. She also saved the original picture.
Anyway, it was so well done and there's nothing she can't show him about.
Ruan Sixian turned on her mobile phone and found the pictures from the cloud storage.
Although it was taken a few years ago, the aesthetics of photographers at that time was very good, and it does not even seem like it is not out of date now.
And although the store is an online store, it is positioned as a mid-range swimsuit, sexy but not vulgar. Everyone will even believe that it is an art photo after the watermark is removed.
Blue sea, blue sky and golden sand. A twenty-year-old girl wearing a fresh-toned sat on the rock with one leg stretched down and her toes touched the sand, so white that it was dazzling.
Fu Mingyu took Ruan Sixian's mobile phone and looked at it a few times with an unclear expression.
"It doesn't look good?"
Ruan Sixian stared at him.
If you dare to say 'yes', you will die.
Fu Mingyu didn't answer her. He turned off the mobile phone' screen and put it on the table with the screen facing the surface of the table.
"If I say it looks good, will you wear it for me tonight?"
"I have no swimsuit. Go away!"
Fu Mingyu glanced at her, stood up and walked towards her room.
"I really have none!" Ruan Sixian immediately stood up and reached out to stop him, "I haven't been in the water for a long time!"
"You have none? It doesn't matter."
Fu Mingyu leaned into her ear and said, "I will buy it for you next time. It's even better if it's super revealing."
He paused for a while, then lowered his voice and said: "Better choose one with straps. It's easier to take off."
Ruan Sixian pursed her lips and nodded, "You take off one layer of my clothes, and I take off one layer of your skin, okay?"
"......"
Fu Mingyu was in a stalemate with her and also nodded, "Okay, whatever you want."
He put on his coat and touched her ear. "After the interview tomorrow afternoon, my parents want to invite you home for a meal."
"Yeah, okay——wait."
Ruan Sixian suddenly grabbed his arm, "Why do they want to invite me to a meal?"
Fu Mingyu felt amused: "Shouldn't it be like this?"
When he looked down and saw her hesitation, Fu Mingyu comforted her softly: "You don't need to be stressed by it. I didn't mean to force you. They invited you to a meal because of what happened yesterday."
Although Fu Mingyu said there is no need to stress about it, it will be the first time she goes to her boyfriend's house for a meal anyway. She is more nervous about it than her first job interview in college.
In order to have a good state, Ruan Sixian immediately drove Fu Mingyu home, then took a bath and applied a facial mask and hair mask... After one round of operation, she fell asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.
Fu Mingyu left Ruan Sixian's house and walked into the elevator. Suddenly, he thought of something and called home.
Doudou, I am sorry. I am going to wrong you tomorrow.
The next afternoon.
The media team arrived at Hengshi Airlines' building on time, and Ruan Sixian was also styled by a makeup artist at the designated place.
In fact, there is nothing to be styled either. She still has to wear a uniform, her hair must be tied up, and her makeup must not be too heavy. It should give people a serious feeling.
This is also good, because she doesn't have to clean up and redo her makeup again when she goes to Fu Mingyu's house after the interview.
The originally scheduled three-hour interview ended in two and a half hours, and the process went very smoothly without encountering any jams at all.
On the way to Huguang Mansion, Ruan Sixian used her mobile phone as a mirror and looked left and right. "My makeup is not heavy, right?"
Fu Mingyu didn't even lift his head and gave a "Yeah".