“Fù Lǐ doesn’t have such strict privacy restrictions at all. There were even two foreign tourists at the scene. They wanted to photograph the Sand Chapel, and after explaining themselves to the newlyweds, they were allowed to join the ceremony.”
Qiao Qianqian was furious.
“You’re not wrong—Ying Yun is good-looking, but his personality is really the worst. If you two weren’t so unrelated, I’d think he was targeting you on purpose.”
Yang Xueyi really wanted to say, “Be bold—just say he IS targeting me on purpose.”
Of course, she couldn’t hold back and, right in front of Qiao Qianqian, she ranted about Ying Yun, not sparing a single word.
The Hokkaido Resort Village was packed during snow season.
At dinnertime, if you didn’t make a reservation in advance, you could only line up—and before nine o’clock, don’t even dream of getting dinner.
Because of Li Junxin’s invitation, Yang Xueyi had canceled her original dinner reservation for tonight.
Now, after being kicked out by Ying Yun, she was left with nothing to eat.
Luckily, Qiao Qianqian managed to sneak out from work, bringing some of her own staff meal to share with Yang Xueyi, and stuffed a cup of hot cocoa into her hands.
“Xiaoxue, eat something to fill your stomach. It’s freezing outside. Go back to your room, don’t wait for me.”
This shoot was exhausting, and by the time Qiao Qianqian finished filming, she’d be completely worn out.
In this cold weather, dragging heavy equipment back to her room alone would be too much.
Yang Xueyi didn’t want her to worry, so she just smiled.
“Go on, I’ll stay and watch the fireworks after the wedding. It’s my birthday today—no way I’m leaving without seeing the fireworks!”
But as soon as Qiao Qianqian left, Yang Xueyi’s smile faded.
To show off her looks in front of Li Junxin, Yang Xueyi hadn’t worn a bulky down jacket, but had chosen a slim, stylish coat instead—very elegant, but not at all warm.
Now, without the protection of the Ice Chapel, the outdoor wind let Yang Xueyi truly experience the power of Hokkaido’s sub-zero temperatures.
Her body was frozen as if she were trapped in an ice cellar, while her face burned as if on fire.
In front of all the guests, in front of her best friend, Yang Xueyi had been kicked out of the chapel by Ying Yun.
She’d thought she wouldn’t care.
But as all those eyes fell upon her, she still couldn’t help feeling utterly humiliated.
Getting kicked out was one thing, but Ying Yun even made her leave her drink behind!
It was like a slap across the face—making her look like some shameless opportunist scheming to crash the wedding for a free meal.
As expected, birthdays never go smoothly for her.
Inside the chapel, the bright and sacred wedding march played, celebrating this lavish and blessed wedding, filling the air with anticipation and joy, bearing witness to the most important day in the couple’s lives.
Outside the chapel, Yang Xueyi shivered in the cold, nibbling on a cold, simple sandwich, passing her twenty-fifth birthday in the freezing night, feeling both wronged and indignant.
Her mood now perfectly mirrored her fifteenth birthday.
It was as if fate had drawn a circle, echoing the past ten years.
Ten years ago, Yang Xueyi had just moved into the Ying household’s maid’s room.
Six months later, her fifteenth birthday arrived.
To be honest, although the maid’s room was in the basement, the whole villa was equipped with underfloor heating.
Even the tiles were warm to the touch, and the dehumidifier was powerful—it felt like spring all year round.
Aside from the single skylight and lack of windows, as soon as Ying Yun and his family went upstairs, the entire basement floor was Yang Xueyi’s space.
It was, in a way, perfect.
But Yang Xueyi couldn’t feel happy at all.
Ying Yun, now twenty-eight, treated her badly.
But back then, when he was eighteen, he’d treated her even worse.
“Why does she have to move in? I don’t like strangers in my private space.”
“I don’t want her here. If she hadn’t moved in, the movers wouldn’t have left the door open, and Roy wouldn’t have gotten out.”
“She came, and Roy died.”
“She’s unlucky. She jinxed my dog.”
A few days after moving in, Yang Xueyi accidentally overheard Ying Yun arguing with his parents.
That’s when she learned that Roy was Ying Yun’s dog.
The very day she moved in, Roy had slipped out of his leash and run away, only to be hit by a car.
Ying Yun had raised Roy since he was a pup.
He was deeply attached to that dog.
Roy’s death was all blamed on Yang Xueyi’s arrival, and from then on, Ying Yun never showed her a single kind face.
Yang Xueyi had spent more time dealing with this jerk than anyone else, and in return, she’d suffered the most.
Li Junxin’s mother wasn’t wrong—Yang Xueyi really had shamelessly tried to please Ying Yun for a while.
That was when she’d just squeezed into the Ying family’s maid’s room.
There weren’t many employers willing to let a live-in maid bring along her nearly grown daughter, especially ones who paid as well as the Ying family.
So even though Ying Yun was cold and hard to please, blamed her for the dog’s death, and even told her to her face that he hoped she’d leave, Yang Xueyi always smiled and greeted him.
To prove her worth and ease her mother’s workload, Yang Xueyi often took the initiative to tidy Ying Yun’s room, do his laundry, clean his desk—like a teenage housekeeper on a trial run.
Unfortunately, eighteen-year-old Ying Yun was even more unbearable than at twenty-eight. In the midst of his rebellious phase and grieving his dog, he wore a perpetual scowl, icy and arrogant, never hiding his hostility toward Yang Xueyi.
Thankfully, it wasn’t a feudal era—otherwise, with the Ying family’s status, he’d probably have executed her whole family for his dog, and buried her along with it.
Yang Xueyi endured it all, always giving Ying Yun her sweetest smile.
When he mocked her, she pretended not to understand.
When he ignored her, she smiled and greeted him anyway.
When he didn’t want her around, she never got angry.
Wherever Ying Yun went, she followed; whatever he did, she shamelessly praised.
When his high school prom partner was injured and couldn’t rehearse, she volunteered to help him practice.
Though her clumsy steps annoyed this proud young master, she persisted, secretly practicing ten hours a day until even that embarrassing dance became muscle memory.
In short, whenever Ying Yun needed her, Yang Xueyi would show up.
If he didn’t, she’d quietly disappear.
She always greeted him warmly—”Ying Yun-ge”—never holding a grudge, like the perfect sidekick, or a loyal puppy always wagging its tail for its master, almost as if she worshipped him.
Sometimes, Yang Xueyi felt like she’d been hired to compete for the position of the family dog after Roy died.
On her fifteenth birthday, she and her mother squeezed into the maid’s room.
Her mom had packed her a simple meal, made her some instant noodles, and that was it—no gifts, not even a cake or candles.
Her mom told her to make a wish over the noodles.
But at fifteen, Yang Xueyi no longer believed in birthday wishes.
If wishes worked, the English signed first edition of “The Last Summer” she’d saved for wouldn’t have been bought by someone else the day before her birthday.
Her grandmother wouldn’t have gotten sick and passed away, and she wouldn’t have had to move into the maid’s room to live as a tagalong.
“I see you get along well with Xiaoyun. He’s actually a good kid. Maybe you just don’t know him well yet, but I’ve worked for the Ying family for two years—I know he’s not a bad person, he’s kind and pure-hearted.”
“It’s just that a lot’s happened lately. He’s at that age, maybe under a lot of pressure. His personality’s changed a lot. He was supposed to go abroad to study business and come back to manage the company, but now he’s suddenly rebelling and insists on studying here. Things are tense with Mr. Ying and Mrs. Ying.”
“He’s just like that, very opinionated.”
“He’s willing to try anything, except business. But he’s Mr. Ying’s only son—he’ll have to take over someday. If he doesn’t study business or management, how can he run the company? That’s why he’s always fighting with his parents. He never used to be like this…”
To this day, Yang Xueyi still remembered her reply back then—
“I don’t know what he was like before, and no matter how good or kind he was, I never experienced it. I don’t like him at all now. I only act friendly so we can keep living here. It’s all one-sided tolerance, there’s no real friendship. Mom, don’t get the wrong idea—there’s nothing between us.”
Stirring the plain instant noodles in front of her, Yang Xueyi thought of the poached egg noodles her grandma used to make, and looked at her still-awkward mother, feeling aggrieved and at a loss for words.
Under the maid’s room’s spotlight, Yang Meiying’s face looked haggard and exhausted.
She was the same age as Mrs. Ying, yet looked a whole generation older.
She’d raised Yang Xueyi alone, scraping by to support the family.
For that, she’d had to be separated from her daughter.
She was too tired—she no longer had any energy or patience left for Yang Xueyi.
Today might be Yang Xueyi’s birthday, but first and foremost, it was the day Yang Meiying suffered to bring her into the world.
Yang Xueyi couldn’t bring herself to blame or vent at her mother, so she just turned away—
“I’ve never seen any kindness in Ying Yun. Where is it? Or do rich people have a different standard for kindness? Is throwing a grand funeral and picking the best plot for his dog considered kind?”
“He’s always so high and mighty, fake and pretentious, cold and noble—no matter how many nice things you say about him, he thinks it’s only right. He never considers anyone else’s feelings. How is that not bad? He’s got a terrible temper, a rotten personality, always looking like he’s at a funeral! He treats dogs better than people!”
“Anyway, even if he gets another dog, if he needs help, I’ll help. I’m allergic to fur, but I’ll just take allergy meds.”
“It’s not that I hate him, but Mrs. Ying and Mr. Ying are good people, and there aren’t many employers who’d let us stay. So don’t worry, Mom—I won’t fight with him. I’ll just endure.”
“My birthday wish is for him to get into a six-year PhD program, live in the dorms, and let me see him as little as possible.”
Back then, Yang Xueyi had said all that out of spite.
After six months of being the family scapegoat, Ying Yun was no longer as hostile as at first.
He no longer mocked her, at most just ignored her.
Aside from his bad temper, he hadn’t done anything worse.
Maybe, if she kept working at it, they could at least nod in passing.
But at the time, Yang Xueyi was still grieving her grandmother’s death, forced to become a burden in a world where she didn’t belong, sad about her makeshift birthday, yet unable to vent to her already exhausted mother.
What really stung was how her own mother always praised Ying Yun—she took better care of him than her own daughter.
Strictly speaking, she was more like Ying Yun’s mom than hers.
Yang Xueyi had only lived with her mother for six months, but Ying Yun had lived with her for years.
Her mother always went above and beyond for Ying Yun.
Even knowing it was just her job, Yang Xueyi still couldn’t convince herself not to mind.
Ying Yun had everything—wealth, looks, nothing lacking—yet he still had to take away her mother’s love.
Even his dog had more presence than she did.
With all these complicated feelings, wronged and unwilling, and anxious about the future, Yang Xueyi had vented about Ying Yun on her fifteenth birthday—and later, even felt a subtle guilt about it.
But now, ten years later, if Yang Xueyi could travel back, she’d tell her younger self, your judgment of Ying Yun was dead right.
Instead of blaming yourself, blame him!
All these years, Yang Xueyi had wished her mother would quit working for the Ying family, so she wouldn’t have to see that jerk anymore.
For someone like Ying Yun, there was no need to feel guilty—she should have cursed him even more!
After Yang Xueyi’s fifteenth birthday, Ying Yun never treated her any better.
In fact, just as things seemed to improve, his attitude took a sharp turn for the worse—right back to square one, even more extreme.
Ying Yun was like a villain bug in a game—no matter what you tried, you couldn’t change him.
All strategies failed.
Worst of all, as time went on, his brief rebellious phase seemed to vanish.
In every other way, he became the gentleman Yang Meiying described—polite and refined to everyone but Yang Xueyi, as if he’d packed all his leftover adolescent angst and dumped it on her.
He was coolly polite to everyone else, but to Yang Xueyi, he was as cold as autumn wind sweeping dead leaves.
So in the end, Yang Xueyi stopped bothering to smile at him.
If Ying Yun didn’t give her a kind face, then as long as no one else was around, she’d give it right back—tit for tat, right up to this very day.
Yang Xueyi’s misery was replaying itself.
That jerk Ying Yun hadn’t managed to kick her out of the villa, but he’d finally succeeded in throwing her out of the chapel.
Ten years now, and for someone who loved dogs as much as Ying Yun, after Roy died, he never got another one.
Yang Xueyi used to wonder why, but now, suddenly, she understood—how could he get another dog?
He’d become the dog himself—no need for more!
Yang Xueyi really, truly hated that dog—Ying Yun!
As the fireworks blossomed in the night sky, Yang Xueyi hopped up and down in the cold, pressing her palms together in a wish.
She was already here—who cared if it worked?
She’d make her wish anyway.
“My wish this year is for a successful career, a change of luck, and a big fortune!”
The moment Yang Xueyi finished speaking, she heard a snort of laughter behind her.
She turned around, and sure enough, who else but that jerk Ying Yun?
That trash—who knew when he’d slipped out of the chapel.
He must have come to watch the fireworks too.
Now, standing behind Yang Xueyi, the dazzling lights burst in the sky, casting their glow over him.
In that glittering brilliance, his features remained as cold as ice, and his laughter at her wish was just a faint twitch of the lips.
Why did even her birthday have to be spoiled by Ying Yun?
With no one else around, Yang Xueyi clenched her jaw and snapped at him, “What are you laughing at?”
Ying Yun stood tall, dressed in a suit despite the freezing snow, never losing his poise to the cold.
He barely lifted his eyes, glancing at Yang Xueyi with the air of a benevolent judge.
“Becoming a man counts as a career?”
He said coldly, “Seems you’re really desperate to change your luck and get rich.”
At that moment, Yang Xueyi wished the fireworks in the sky were bombs, and that one would land squarely on Ying Yun’s head.
Ying Yun’s lips were perfectly shaped, the corners slightly upturned—even if you ranked his features separately, his mouth would be top-tier.
But Yang Xueyi hated that mouth, because it had never said a kind word to her.
New and old grudges surged up.
Yang Xueyi couldn’t be bothered to argue.
She turned away and focused on the sky.
This year, she decided to be greedy and make two wishes.
“My first wish is for Ying Yun to have terrible luck.”
She didn’t know if Ying Yun’s face turned black behind her, but that was exactly what she wanted—say it right to his face.
“If only one of my two wishes can come true, then I hope Ying Yun has terrible luck!”
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