The engagement was with the younger brother, but I've fallen for the older brother.

Si Yimian stood in front of the sink, gathered her loose hair to one side in front of the mirror, revealing the back of her neck.

I didn't have time to tidy up the sofa earlier, and the mark above my collarbone was tinged with a dark red.

Suddenly, the bathroom door opened, and He Sichen stood in the doorway.

What are you doing here?

"bath."

He spoke with an air of self-righteousness, stepped inside, and the glass door closed behind him with a click.

He Sichen leaned against her from behind, one hand on the table beside her waist, the other reaching for the shower switch.

The sound of water rose, and hot air rushed out first, enveloping her in a cloud of white mist.

"Turn around."

She heard his voice coming down from above, damp with moisture.

He Sichen didn't answer her directly, but gave her the answer through his actions.

The shower was running the whole time, and the sound of the water drowned out most of the noise.

Occasionally, a hissing sound would leak out from the water curtain, but it would be shattered by the rebound of the tiles.

The moisture on the wall grew heavier and heavier, blurring the mirror into a white mess, making it impossible to even make out the outlines of the two people.

Si Yimian's fingers gripped the edge of the niche, and it took her several tries to find a foothold.

I rolled my fingertip across a bottle of shampoo, and the bottle tilted, rolling onto the floor tile with a thud.

After he finished, He Sichen turned off the water, grabbed a bath towel, wrapped it around her, tied a knot under her armpits, and then carried her out of the bathroom.

"I'll walk by myself..."

"Take a couple of steps and show me."

She tried to take a step, but her knees buckled involuntarily, and he caught her around the waist with one hand.

He Sichen glanced down at her, and his lips twitched slightly.

There was no smile, but the curve of that smile was even more infuriating than a smile.

"Alright."

Si Yimian simply gave up struggling and let him pick her up horizontally.

He placed her on the edge of the bed, her hair still dripping wet.

He Sichen turned around to get the hair dryer, plugged it in, adjusted it to medium speed, and stood in front of her to dry her hair.

My fingers ran through her hair, my fingertips pressed against her scalp, applying just the right amount of pressure.

Si Yimian felt sleepy from his blowing, and her head swayed forward little by little.

Then he scooped it up.

"Don't sleep."

I'm sleepy.

"It's not over yet."

Si Yimian opened her eyes and found that he had already picked her up.

The way he supports his buttocks with one hand is like an adult holding a child.

The next second, he shoved her against the curtains of the French windows.

Si Yimian's back bumped into the thick blackout curtain.

"What are you doing...?"

He Sichen didn't answer, but instead held the back of her head with his fingers and lowered his head to kiss her.

This kiss was different from the one in the bathroom.

The bathroom is a place of urgency, driven by physiological needs.

The kiss was slow, it was intentional.

The curtains were drawn, but from the outside, the lights were on, and there were shadows on the curtains.

The shadows of two people overlapping.

Si Yimian was so stunned by the kiss that she vaguely felt that he seemed to be competing with her for something tonight, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it.

"You did it on purpose."

She pushed him away and stared into his eyes.

The light shone from behind him, turning his pupils into two pale golden amber beads, with a hint of stubbornness within them.

"What do you mean, intentional?"

"curtain."

He Nanxian lives upstairs, so he probably hasn't gone to sleep yet at this time.

This window faces the same window upstairs. Although the curtains are drawn, when the light is on, the outline of the shadow on the curtains is obvious to everyone.

He Sichen neither denied nor admitted it. He lifted her up a little and pressed her back onto the curtain.

She tightened her arms around his neck, her nose brushing against his Adam's apple.

"He Sichen, you've really gone mad tonight."

"Um."

He lowered his head and kissed her upper lip, his voice deep and resonant.

"He's gone completely mad."

"Remind someone that there are some positions he'll never be able to hold in his lifetime."

Si Yimian suddenly found it amusing. This man might not say it out loud, but his jealousy burned brighter than anyone else's.

The curtains billowed in the wind, the fabric brushing against her ankles, tickling her and making her flinch.

He pushed her a little further into the curtains, the fabric covering their two figures.

Si Yimian gripped the edge of the curtain with her fingers, tearing the fabric into a ball.

He grabbed her hand from behind, his fingers gripping the windowpane.

Her palm was pressed against the curtain fabric, and the back of her hand was pressed against his burning hot palm.

She couldn't speak; only one thought remained in her mind.

He Sichen is as restrained as he is usually, and as outrageous as he can be when he goes crazy.

……

After returning, He Nanxian didn't go inside but went straight to the balcony.

His coat was tossed on the sofa, his tie was loose and hanging around his neck, and he hadn't changed his leather shoes.

Guanlan's balcony faces Si Yimian's bedroom window.

The straight-line distance is less than ten meters, and the angle is 45 degrees downwards.

He sat down in the wicker chair, opened a bottle of whiskey, but didn't take a glass.

I took a sip from the bottle, the liquid burning down my throat.

My gaze drifted downstairs.

The light in Si Yimian's bedroom was on, and the blackout curtains were drawn tightly, but the fabric was moving.

The wind makes it sway from side to side, and the curtains tremble back and forth.

It was sometimes fast, sometimes slow, with occasional pauses.

Occasionally, it feels like it's being suddenly pulled tight by some force, then slowly loosened.

He stood up, walked to the balcony railing, and gripped the cold bars.

Jealousy is like a venomous snake, crawling up from the stomach, coiling around the heart, and tightening its grip.

He didn't want to watch it in the first place.

He already had enough videos on his phone to process, but people are just perverse; even knowing that the other side is a pit of fire, they still want to jump in.

He moved to Guanlan No. 1 because he wanted to be close to the water.

Now the building is there, but the water has dried up.

He Nanxian aimed the whiskey bottle at the neck and took another sip.

Wine spilled from the corner of his mouth, trickling down his jawline and into his collar. He wiped it with the back of his hand, but it didn't come off clean.

The pain exploded right in the center of my heart, like someone was stabbing me out with a knife.

So this is what it feels like to be abandoned.

Si Yi Mian has tasted this flavor for eight years.

This was his first time experiencing it.

He suddenly remembered that winter during his senior year of high school, when he had a severe cold and a fever of 39 degrees Celsius.

Si Yimian heard from somewhere that she climbed over the wall of her dormitory in the middle of the night, ran through the snow for three blocks, and went to a 24-hour pharmacy to buy fever reducers.

When she returned, her bangs were frosted over, and the tip of her nose was red from the cold. She climbed in through the window and fell to the floor, but she held the medicine box high, and not a drop of snow water seeped in.

He was pretending to be asleep with his eyes closed. She thought he had passed out, so she squatted down by the bed, pressed her cold hands against his forehead, and mumbled softly.

"Brother Nanxian, get well soon! I'm still waiting for you to tutor me in physics."

That night, he was taken to the infirmary for an IV drip. He woke up in the middle of the night and saw that she hadn't left and was asleep by his bedside.

He was still holding the hot water bottle, pressing it against the hand that was receiving the IV drip.

The IV tubing passed next to the hot water bottle, and the IV drips condensed into a thin mist on the tubing wall.

At that moment, something inside his chest collapsed.

Later he recovered, but she caught a cold.

He called her an idiot, but then skipped the competition training and spent the whole afternoon in the classroom with her while she received an IV drip.

She woke up and saw him sitting beside her, twirling a pen in his hand, the draft paper filled with notes he had written for her.

She happily took a lollipop out of her pocket, peeled it, and put it in his mouth.

He turned his head away, so she stood on tiptoe and forced her way between his lips and teeth.

He looked at her flushed cheeks, and a thought suddenly stirred in a corner of his heart.

Three years ago, Si Yimian would answer his phone in the middle of the night.

Two years ago, she would wait for him to come home at the door.

A year ago, she would cook him hangover soup.

Now he sits in the darkness, watching the windowpane change from bright to dark, becoming a dark square sinking into the night.

He finally understood.

That feeling of being left standing there.

That feeling of waiting a long time only to find out you're not a priority option.

Si Yimian endured it for eight years.

He had only endured it for less than two days when he was already nearly driven mad, wishing he could tear the building down immediately.

How did she get through it back then?