“If you don’t like this keychain, then I won’t keep it.”
After throwing it away, Su Qinghan turned around. She looped the leather bag back over her shoulder, turned her head, and looked at Jiang Muyun seriously.
“Mu Yun, stop crying.”
Jiang Muyun’s crying slowly quieted down, turning from hysterical wails to soft sobs, and then from sobs to occasional sniffles. She wiped her tears with the back of her hand, smearing most of her makeup. Her mascara had run into two dark gray streaks under her eyes, making her look extremely disheveled.
“Qinghan…”
Her voice was hoarse, carrying that unique broken quality after crying.
“Tell me, you haven’t lied to me. You won’t fall for anyone other than me, right?”
Su Qinghan was silent for a second.
“Mm.”
Even though she wasn’t used to lying, she calmly gave Jiang Muyun the answer she wanted.
“I’ll only give you this one chance.”
Jiang Muyun sniffled, her voice carrying a petulant, childlike stubbornness.
“Next time—if there is a next time—I won’t forgive you.”
Su Qinghan nodded.
“Also,”
Jiang Muyun lowered her head, picking at the edge of her skirt with her nails, her voice muffled.
“You just said you’d give me anything I want, right?”
“…Right. Money isn’t an issue.”
She paused.
“I just don’t want to make you sad.”
When she said those words, even Su Qinghan felt a bitterness. ‘I don’t want to make you sad.’ That was true, but on the flip side of that sentence, Su Qinghan herself was sad. What was she sad about? She couldn’t say.
Maybe it was because she had to throw away that keychain. Maybe it was because she had to use money once again to bridge the rift between her and Jiang Muyun. Maybe it was because she suddenly realized that the relationship between her and Jiang Muyun seemed to have nothing left except money and gratitude.
For a moment, Su Qinghan even wondered: Did she really like Jiang Muyun? Did she like the person in front of her, or the vague, blurry shadow in her memories?
Jiang Muyun didn’t notice the fluctuation in Su Qinghan’s emotions. She finally broke into a smile through her tears. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand again and said with a heavy nasal voice, “Then it’s settled. When we graduate, we’ll be together.”
Su Qinghan twitched the corner of her mouth, a faint attempt at a smile.
“Okay.”
She said that, but she knew in her heart that the smile didn’t reach her eyes.
There was a time when Su Qinghan had thought about it—how much of Jiang Muyun’s feelings were genuine? Was she together with Su Qinghan because she liked her, or because she was the young lady of the Su family, because she had money, because she could buy everything Jiang Muyun wanted?
But every time that thought surfaced, Su Qinghan would remember that incident from her childhood. If it weren’t for Jiang Muyun, she might not have survived to this day. So even if Jiang Muyun had flaws, even if Jiang Muyun had shortcomings, even if Jiang Muyun never hesitated to spend her money, she shouldn’t treat Jiang Muyun’s kindness badly. Right?
Thinking like this, Su Qinghan forcefully suppressed the faint doubt in her heart.
After watching Jiang Muyun return to the villa, Su Qinghan stood in place for a while. The wind blew from afar, lifting the hem of her trench coat, then letting it fall. She looked up and glanced at the second-floor window of the villa. Jiang Muyun had already gone inside. The curtains were drawn, and warm yellow light leaked through the gaps, quiet and still. The streetlamp behind her was lit, casting her shadow on the ground in front of her.
After confirming that no one was watching her anymore, Su Qinghan took a step forward, then another. She walked to the patch of grass and crouched down.
She reached out with both hands, parting the leaves, searching through the grass in the dim yellow streetlight. The branches and leaves of the shrubs swayed gently in the night breeze, the dark green leaves covered with a thin layer of dust.
She remembered where she had thrown it. Probably at the root of this shrub, near the stone on the left. The keychain was small, milky white, and should have been quite noticeable in the green grass.
But she didn’t find it. She parted the leaves on the left, then the leaves on the right, her fingers groping on the ground, the tips stained with dirt and debris.
Nothing. How could it be gone?
She clearly remembered throwing it in this spot. Only a few minutes had passed—it couldn’t have been picked up by someone, nor could it have vanished into thin air. But that small, milky white shell keychain inlaid with a light blue gemstone seemed to have evaporated, impossible to find.
Su Qinghan knelt on the grass, bending over until her face was almost on the ground. Her hands groped back and forth through the grass, parting clump after clump of leaves, turning over stone after stone.
There was nothing.
The night wind blew, messing up her hair and chilling her heart. She finally stopped moving, crouching there with both hands hanging at her sides, her fingertips covered in dirt and grass stains.
Su Qinghan’s heart felt like a piece was missing. Not the kind of emptiness from sharp pain, but the kind where something had been slowly pulled away. She couldn’t name that emotion—it wasn’t sadness, anger, or regret, but a mix of all four, and yet none of them. Like a glass of wine mixed with all flavors, none prominent, but together, hard to swallow.
She had lost something Yan Yu gave her again. Last time it was that sincerity, this time it was this keychain.
She stood up, patted the dirt and grass clippings off her skirt, took a deep breath, and turned to walk toward the car parked by the roadside. She opened the door, sat in the driver’s seat, fastened her seatbelt, and started the engine. The engine growled low, the headlights came on, illuminating the dark asphalt road ahead.
Su Qinghan gripped the steering wheel, her gaze falling on the leather bag in the passenger seat. Deep brown pebbled leather, the metal buckle gleaming with a subtle sheen under the dashboard lights. It was still the same bag—expensive, delicate, enviable. But it looked different. It was missing that small keychain.
That worthless little thing, that cheap keychain—it was only eighty yuan. Losing it was no big deal, not worth feeling bad about. But Su Qinghan just felt unsettled. That unsettled feeling wasn’t about the money; it was like missing something that shouldn’t be missing, having an extra void that shouldn’t be there.
She pressed the gas, and the car slowly drove out of the villa’s driveway, merging into the city night traffic. Neon lights receded one by one—red, green, blue, yellow—flashing across her face and disappearing. The car stereo was off; the cabin only had the low hum of the engine and the rustle of tires rolling over the road outside.
She drove for a while, then her phone suddenly rang.
Ring ring ring ring…
The ringing was especially jarring in the enclosed cabin. Su Qinghan didn’t answer. She was driving, and she never had the habit of answering phone calls while driving because it wasn’t safe.
Her phone was on the passenger seat, screen lit up, vibrating with a buzz, bouncing slightly next to the leather bag.
The ringing stopped. A few seconds later, it rang again. Stopped, then rang again. Once, twice, three times, four times. Like a tireless alarm clock, stubbornly, relentlessly ringing.
Su Qinghan’s brow furrowed tighter. Her eyes darted back and forth between the road ahead and the phone screen flashing on the passenger seat. Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel, then loosened.
Who could it be?
The car passed a fork in the road, and she found a spot to pull over temporarily. She turned on the turn signal, pulled over, and stopped the engine. She picked up the phone and glanced at the caller ID. The screen showed two characters: “Father.”
Su Qinghan took a deep breath, pressed the answer button, and held the phone to her ear.
“Hello?”
“Su Qinghan, tell me, do you know how big a mistake was made in the ‘Binjiang New City’ project I assigned to you last time?”
The voice on the other end was cold like an iron railing in winter. It wasn’t a roar or a scream, but a low, restrained questioning filled with suppressed anger.
Su Qinghan’s heart sank. She knew about that project. The Binjiang New City real estate development was one of the Su Group’s most important projects this year, with a total investment exceeding one billion. Her father had entrusted this project to her to give her some hands-on experience before she formally took over the family business, allowing her to accumulate practical experience.
After taking over, she delegated most of the work to her team and only made decisions and signed documents on major directions. The early stages of the project went fairly smoothly—land approval, planning and design, construction bidding—every step proceeded according to plan.
But in a recent critical negotiation, the third-party intermediary agency she had hired made a major mistake. An important contract document was not fully reviewed before signing, and a hidden clause extremely unfavorable to Su Group was caught by the other party, forcing Su Group to concede nearly fifteen percent of its profit margin in subsequent cooperation.
Fifteen percent. It didn’t sound like much, but for a billion-level project, that was a loss of one hundred fifty million.
Her father’s voice came through the receiver with a disappointment she had never heard before.
“I’ve been fighting in the business world for thirty years! I’ve never suffered such a hidden loss. Qinghan, do you know what this means? It means you didn’t even do the most basic risk control. You handed the project over to others, you didn’t check every contract item clearly, and you signed.”
Su Qinghan’s fingers holding the phone trembled slightly: “I already checked the contract. I just…it was a momentary oversight. I didn’t think the other party would do this…”
“You didn’t think?”
Her father interrupted her, his voice finally rising a bit.
“You are the daughter of the Su family, the heir of the Su Group! You say ‘I didn’t think’—do you know how ridiculous that sounds?”
“But I was set up by others…”
There was silence on the other end for two seconds, like someone was trying to calm their emotions. Then her father’s voice sounded again, colder and calmer than before: “Business is a battlefield! Don’t think of yourself as some victim! Alright…Su Qinghan, from today onward, the family won’t give you a single cent!”