Chapter 132: It Was I Who Stole It

At Mi Cai’s insistence, I went back to my room to fetch the racing car I had exchanged for, flashlight in hand to serve as a spotlight, creating a grand atmosphere as if stepping onto a stage.

Mi Cai sat up on the bed, gazing expectantly at the newspaper-wrapped gift.

I waved the flashlight around dramatically, coughed twice, and said mysteriously, “Now comes the moment to witness the miracle…”

She watched intently, her anticipation growing stronger.

Suddenly, I turned off the flashlight and casually said, “Guess what it is.”

Mi Cai bit her lip, looked angrily at me, then threw the pillow from the bed at me, exclaiming, “Can you not be so annoying? You’re wasting my emotions!”

“If I weren’t annoying, I’d die…”

Mi Cai seemed genuinely upset, lying back down, wrapping herself in the quilt and turning away from me without a word.

“Hey… I was just teasing you, is it really that bad?”

“It is. I’ve never met someone as unscrupulous as you. It’s a waste of emotions being with you.”

“We’re both not serious, okay? Don’t you remember how you were hugging me, and my dad saw it.”

“It’s your fault I’m like this… You’re already in the late stages of being unscrupulous, incurable!”

“So you’re saying you can still be saved?” I asked along with Mi Cai.

“Obviously. As long as you stay far away from me and avoid the pathogen, I still have a chance.”

This wasn’t meant to be a particularly funny remark, but coming from Mi Cai, I couldn’t help but find it amusing. After a while, I suppressed my laughter and nudged her, saying, “It’s fine if I stay away from you, but are you really not going to accept the gift I gave you?”

“I don’t want it anymore. Anyway, you won’t give me anything decent.”

“That’s not necessarily true.”

As I spoke, I unwrapped the newspaper and pulled out the racing car. Once turned on, the powerful engine roared arrogantly in the room, and the smell of gasoline quickly filled the space.

Sure enough, Mi Cai sat up again, staring at the racing car for a long time…

“What do you think? Pretty cool, right… It’s yours!”

“Zhaoyang… You really bought it!”

“You don’t have to be too moved. Just enjoy it.”

Mi Cai extended her hand toward me, and my heart sank. Was this going to be an affectionate hug from her? I couldn’t accept such a gesture! After all, deep down, I still considered myself a decent man.

Suddenly, Mi Cai urged me, “Give me the remote control.”

It felt like a bucket of cold water had been poured over me. I hesitated for a moment before saying to Mi Cai, “The room is too small to play with it, and the gasoline smell is too strong!”

“Then let’s go outside to play.”

I turned off the racing car and seriously told Mi Cai, “Forget about it tonight. Drink the ginger soup immediately and get a good night’s sleep.”

This time, Mi Cai surprisingly complied. She picked up the ginger soup from the bedside table and drank it in a few gulps. Then she quietly lay back down on the bed, looking at me without speaking.

I felt uneasy and hesitantly asked, “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Did this racing car cost you all your money?” Mi Cai softly replied.

“Not all of it. I exchanged my own racing car and added some money to get it. I still have enough for small expenses,” I quickly explained, fearing she might offer to pay me back, which would ruin the meaning of giving her the car and make me seem like a kept man.

“You exchanged your own car?”

“Yeah, so what? It’s not a big deal. I was already tired of that car.” I said with a smile, but my heart sank again, recalling how I had bought that car with the lottery money during a desperate time. It felt like a whip lashing my soul, judging my life… Now that the car was gone, I preferred to regard it as another beginning in my life.

Mi Cai didn’t say anything else, and I took the bowl from her after she finished the ginger soup and left the room. After washing it, I stood on the balcony facing the cold wind and, as usual, lit a cigarette for myself.

As the smoke spread, I couldn’t help but recall the days since I returned to Suzhou. It seemed as if I had fallen in love with Mi Cai in this short period, yet I felt the love was baseless and was afraid it was superficial. After all, a woman like Mi Cai possessed an irresistible beauty that no man could resist.

So what exactly is love, and where does it come from? I couldn’t quite figure it out. Perhaps so-called love is just a colorful butterfly that looks beautiful but can never be approached. If you really try to grasp it tightly in your hand, it will struggle, and in the struggle, all its colors will be rubbed off, leaving it pale.

I seemed to understand why I had been so cautious all along—it was because I was afraid of failing to touch her soul and instead wiping off that beautiful layer of color!

I smiled helplessly again, looked up at the sky, and noticed how beautiful the moonlight was tonight. Its glow seemed to tell me love stories from thousands of years ago. I immersed myself in those colorful tales, yet gradually saw their colors fading with the passage of time!

So, perhaps it’s better to numb all desires and calmly accept everything as it comes! Even without a lover, I can still sing to the moon…

I took a deep puff of my cigarette, then put it out, finally managing to suppress all emotions. I went back to Mi Cai’s room and tucked her in as she had already fallen asleep. At that moment, I didn’t want to get anything from her—I just wanted to be a man who silently gives, protecting her colorful wings.

…

The next morning when I woke up, Mi Cai still didn’t give me the chance to prepare breakfast for her, having left early. However, she had left behind the jacket I had given her to be dry-cleaned.

I recalled: she had been in Shanghai all day yesterday, meaning she had taken the jacket to Shanghai for dry-cleaning. This made me feel pleased, since it showed how much she cared about me.

So I comforted myself, not to demand anything. These little joys she gave me were precious and irreplaceable.

Around noon, as promised the day before, Bada came to our place with lots of ingredients to prepare lunch for us and asked if Mi Cai would come back for lunch.

I was equally concerned about this question, so I immediately called Mi Cai. She was indeed in Suzhou but refused to come back for lunch, saying she felt embarrassed facing Bada. However, she didn’t want to miss out on the meal Bada had prepared, so she asked me to bring her a portion to Zhuo Mei after lunch.

I tried to persuade her for a while, assuring her that Bada wouldn’t look down on her for hugging me the way she did yesterday. But she absolutely refused to come back, saying: after all, she was a girl, not as thick-skinned as me.

This made me even more puzzled—why did she care so much about Bada’s opinion of her? It was as if she were an unmarried daughter-in-law of the Zhao family.

…

A while later, I was still on the phone with Mi Cai when Bada suddenly came out of my room with those photos he had taken from Mi Cai’s office before, curiously asking me, “Zhaoyang, is this girl in the photo Xiaomi?”

I quickly covered the microphone and whispered to Bada, “Where did you find these?”

“I was helping you tidy up the room, and they fell out from a book,” Bada replied as he went back to the room enthusiastically looking for a photo frame.

I was stunned for a while, until I heard Mi Cai coldly asking me through the phone, “Zhaoyang, did you steal the photos from my office drawer?”

“Don’t accuse me without evidence!”

“Hmph, besides you, no one dares to touch anything in my office. I’ve suspected it for a long time… Zhaoyang, are you even a real man? You have the guts to steal but not to admit it!”

Hearing Mi Cai question my masculinity, I got angry immediately and confessed on the spot, “So what if I stole them? It’s just a few photos of you pouting and widening your eyes like you’re poisoned!”