Chapter 40.1

“Lin Jinshen!”

The voice escaped her lips—urgent, frightened. Like Alice tumbling into the rabbit hole, she was falling, endlessly, into the unknown.

“Keep your voice down,” Lin Jinshen murmured, pressing a kiss to the corner of her lips. “Didn’t you say the room isn’t soundproof?”

He didn’t point out the absurdity of her logic about the first and second floors’ sound insulation. After all, the room below hers was the living room. Who could possibly hear them?

Instead, he skillfully turned her own argument against her, leaving her at a loss for words.

“If it’s too much, you can bite me,” he offered.

“…”

“Not here.” Lin Jinshen moved her jaw gently away from his neck and positioned it against his shoulder. “Here, bite if you need to.”

“…”

Lu Yi was on the verge of losing her mind. All she wanted was to nestle close to him, seeking comfort in his embrace, perhaps bury her face in his neck. Biting him? That thought hadn’t even crossed her mind!

What age would someone have to be to resort to something so childish?

Besides, his shoulder felt like it was made of steel—hard and unyielding. If she bit him, she’d only hurt herself.

Lu Yi shut her eyes, her lashes damp with tears, her muffled sounds escaping intermittently through her nose. Trying to stop was futile. Things were already spiraling out of control.

Lin Jinshen had entered this “experiment” again, but unlike before, this time the method was different. Yet the previous “data” served as a foundation, and he seamlessly adapted it. While the essence remained the same, the circumstances had shifted.

Previously, he had been a participant, a subject in the “experiment.” Now, he was more of an observer, fully focused on her reactions—pleasing her, measuring the peak of her heart rate, and cherishing every unintentional sound she made as his ultimate reward.

Unlike before, his satisfaction this time was purely on a mental level.

When the “experiment” concluded and her heart rate peaked before sharply declining, Lu Yi wanted nothing more than to hide under the covers. Yet even those covers no longer smelled the same; they were tinged with new, unfamiliar scents.

Her body felt as though it had been steamed, radiating heat. If the lights were on, her skin would surely be flushed red, like a freshly boiled shrimp.

Lin Jinshen wasn’t faring much better. His chest heaved with suppressed restlessness, but his actions remained deliberate and gentle.

In the dark, Lu Yi heard the sound of tissues being pulled—once, twice, three times. He was cleaning up the aftermath of the “experiment.” Despite the tension evident in his rigid posture, his hands moved with care.

Her ears burned as though dripping blood. She risked opening one eye to steal a glance at him, only to quickly close it again, as if scalded. Her voice, small as a mosquito’s buzz, broke the silence: “Do you want to shower first?”

“Hmm.”

After a pause, he added, “Or would you like to help me?”

Lu Yi stammered, “But I don’t know how.”

“It’s not hard,” he replied, taking her hand in his. “You’re smart—you learn everything quickly.”

For the first time in her life, Lu Yi didn’t appreciate being called clever. She felt like a turtle retreating into its shell at the slightest provocation, except one of her hands was still held firmly in his, the heat from his palm seeping into her chest.

The sensation was unusually vivid, triggering her imagination to fill in the blanks of what she dared not look at directly.

She felt as if she were being consumed, parched beyond reason.

Time dragged on longer than she expected. Lu Yi, whose endurance had always been lacking, felt an urge to retreat. Sensing her hesitation, Lin Jinshen captured her lips, muffling her protests and drawing her deeper into his embrace.

Finally, a low, hoarse groan escaped him, like the sound of release and liberation.

Lu Yi froze completely, her limbs stiff, while her brain spun at a dizzying speed. What about the bedsheets? She had just changed them two days ago. If she changed them again, would her parents notice? More importantly, where were the clean sheets stored?

Lin Jinshen took care of it all—cleaning up the traces, replacing the sheets, and ensuring everything was neat again.

Her wrists ached, her palms still warm from the earlier contact. No matter how hard she tried, the memories refused to fade, embedding themselves deeply in her mind.

She curled up under the freshly changed covers, wracking her brain for an excuse about the bedsheets.

“Would you like some water?” Lin Jinshen asked, standing by the bedside with a glass in hand.

Instinctively, she shook her head.

He remained in place. “Are you sure?”

He didn’t need to add, “You lost a lot of fluids just now,” because she could already hear it in his tone. If people puffed up like pufferfish when angry, she would’ve been fully inflated by now.

Looking at the clear water in the glass, she hesitated and then nodded.

He approached, handed her the glass, and as she drank, he suggested, “As for the bedsheets, you could say Puff accidentally spilled some water.”

Puff, who hadn’t slept a wink, perked up her little ears. Someone had mentioned her name.

Lu Yi nearly choked on her water. Immoral as it was, it was also plausible. Raising a cat had its benefits—it could occasionally take the blame for her.

She handed back the half-empty glass. Lin Jinshen finished it in one gulp, then poured himself another, drinking it all as well.

Heading toward his side of the bed, he passed by Puff’s little nest. The kitten tilted her head curiously, but Lin Jinshen adjusted her bed, turning it so Puff faced the wall and away from the bed.

Some things weren’t suitable for little kittens to see.

Puff: “?”

—

The next morning, Lu Yi lazily hugged the covers, staring at the ceiling. She still wasn’t used to life without work—no alarms, just waking naturally.

By the time she went downstairs, it was nearly lunchtime.

Mrs. Xu was sipping tea. Seeing Lu Yi, she remarked, “If you’d come down any later, you’d have missed lunch.”

“Then I’m early, aren’t I?”

Fair enough. After eating, Lu Yi finalized the bridesmaid dress with Yu Yin and returned to her room. She lay in bed watching a drama on her tablet but dozed off halfway through the episode.

Her recent lethargy was normal, Yu Yin had assured her, a kind of post-work “revenge rest.”

In the afternoon, she woke up feeling groggy, her body heavy with the aftermath of oversleeping. She stretched lazily until she heard the sound of pages turning.

She turned toward the noise, spotting a figure by the window.

It was Lin Jinshen.

He had casually picked a book from her shelf, already halfway through it. He must have been there for a while.

Propping herself up slowly, Lu Yi asked, “Didn’t you go to the office?”

“Not today. Dad and I met someone for a golf meeting. Things went smoother than expected, so we came home early,” he explained, his gaze landing on her. “I came back while you were still sleeping. Were you that tired from last night?”

Mrs. Xu had already informed him she only woke up at noon and went back to bed after lunch. He could only attribute her exhaustion to the night before.

“…”

Lu Yi didn’t know how to respond. Saying yes didn’t feel right, but denying it felt even worse.

So, she changed the subject. “Have you just been reading since you came back?”

“I didn’t touch anything else of yours.”

Lu Yi hummed softly and said, “You can touch other things too. Nothing here is particularly precious.”

There weren’t any secrets either.

At most, it was just keepsakes from her school days and some gifts exchanged between friends.

Seeing it was getting late, Lu Yi mentioned she would head downstairs to check on dinner preparations. Before leaving, she said, “Take a break. I’ll call you when it’s ready.”

“Alright.”

Lin Jinshen closed the book. What he said earlier wasn’t entirely true. He hadn’t touched anything else, but he also hadn’t been reading the whole time.

He had been examining the arrangement of her room. Most of her things were personal, and he refrained from touching them. While browsing the bookshelf, he picked out a few books—some he had read before, others he hadn’t. One of them was a collection by Borges, The Moon Across the Way.

As he casually flipped through it, he came across a page where someone had written:

“You will entrust me with that shore of your life which you yourself do not possess.
Plunging into silence,
I shall recognize the last beach of your being,
and perhaps I shall see you for the first time,
as God must see you—
the fiction of Time destroyed,
without love, without me.”

Lin Jinshen wasn’t particularly interested in poetry and was about to close the book and return it when he noticed some handwriting on the blank space at the back.

It read:
“Farewell to dusk’s whispers,
Fireworks year after year.”
Signed: Li Xian.

He recognized that Lu Yi often underlined passages and annotated her books in her neat and elegant handwriting. However, these lines clearly belonged to a man.

And the signature made it even more obvious.

How to describe what he felt in that moment? He thought he was calm, glancing at the text before closing the book as if it were just another on the shelf. His actions betrayed no emotion, as though it didn’t matter.

But the words lingered in his mind, surfacing again even as he returned the book to its place.

He did care. It was like a fishbone lodged in his throat—not enough to cause major discomfort, but irritating nonetheless.

Footsteps echoed from the staircase.

Lu Yi pushed the door open, knocking lightly on the frame. She smiled and said, “Mr. Lin, dinner is ready.”

Lin Jinshen’s gaze fell on her bright eyes. The slight annoyance dissolved in an instant. It didn’t matter. Whatever had existed in her past, he owned her present and her future. That name scribbled in the book belonged to the past.

—

On Sunday, Lu Yi and Lin Jinshen moved back to Chengxi Garden.

She felt relaxed, as though she’d just returned from a long vacation.

For Lu Yi, the break was ending. For Lin Jinshen, it was just beginning. Within a day, he exhausted their weekly agreed-upon limit. Even when Lu Yi reminded him that they’d already used up one of their “allowances” earlier in the week, he corrected her: technically, that was only half. If she preferred to count it as half, they could revisit that method.

At the mention of that particular night, Lu Yi’s arms began to ache. She preferred completing the full “allowance” at once.