Unless you’ve lived it, you will never truly understand what those years were like — from the age of four to the age of ten, a child wandering alone — or what he felt of the world’s warmth and its coldness. The whole, peaceful home he’d once had was gone. His kind mother, his hardworking father, the brother who had always shielded him — all of them left him in the space of a single day… And at four years old, having lost everything, with no home and no family left, he had to survive alone.

To survive, he dug through revolting heaps of garbage for food more times than he could count, snatched scraps from the mouths of stray dogs, was driven off and beaten and chased, had dogs set on him, ate things no ordinary person could imagine eating, and endured hardships no ordinary person could imagine enduring. More times than he could count, cold and hunger left him barely breathing… But however bitter it got, he never once begged. He had to keep himself alive with his own hands. He would not steal, he would not rob, and he would never bow his head. That pride had been rooted in his bones from the very beginning.

Later, a strange and powerful force welled up inside his body. He stopped falling ill; the cold stopped touching him… And his wandering ended when he met her… the great turning point of his life. From then on he had a new home, new family, a new hope and a future to look at…

Those memories, which could never come back, were carved into the deepest part of his heart and his soul, and could never be forgotten. Even now he did not know who he was supposed to blame for everything that had happened to him… He had always known that the world, that fate, had abandoned him. Had he not been different from other people, had he not possessed a toughness and a will far beyond his years, a four-year-old with nothing would have died in some unknown corner long ago. From the day he met her, from the day they were together, he had sworn in his heart: better that I wrong the whole world than that the world wrong me. Anyone who provoked him, anyone who tried to take what was his, would learn the meaning of regret.

Perhaps this was how he discharged the resentment toward the world he’d been accumulating since he was four… Or perhaps, once she was in his world, he could no longer bear to lose anything again, and so he had made himself into a hedgehog no one could touch…

But three years ago, he lost her anyway.

Watching his eyes turn suddenly desolate and unfocused, Su Feifei felt something sharp pierce her. She didn’t need him to answer; she already knew… If the world had not abandoned him once, if he had not been wounded deeply, how could he ever have become what he was today — this merciless, this frightening?

She shook her head and said with a light laugh, “Not at all. Don’t you know? Boys like you are exactly what girls like best, because with a boy like that you’ll always feel safe. Didn’t you notice? When you walked out just now, those waitresses couldn’t take their eyes off you… I suspect a single word from you and they’d all come quietly—”

“Yourself included?” The corner of Ye Tianxie’s mouth curved, and his eyes flicked lightly to the two hands wrapped around his arm.

Su Feifei’s step faltered. Her slender brows twitched, and she pursed her red lips. “Don’t flatter yourself. You’re just the bodyguard my family hired for three hundred million.”

Ye Tianxie shook his head, smiling. “Is that so? I had no idea being your family’s bodyguard was such a blessed position — the lady of the house personally cooking, washing, and cleaning for him… Do you routinely announce that your bodyguards are your boyfriend when you go out with them?”

Su Feifei turned her face away to hide her expression. “What I do is my own business. It’s got nothing to do with you!”

Ye Tianxie let out a quiet breath, his eyes on the road ahead, and said mildly, “Feifei. Remember this. I may not exactly be your bodyguard, but I’m only a man protecting you. With everything you have, you’ll have a future every girl alive will envy… And I already have someone I love. Carved into my bones. Even though she isn’t beside me now, I think of her every minute and every second, and if she never comes back, I will stay forever in the place that belongs to the two of us and wait for her. A clever girl wouldn’t choose me. That road only ends one way — a moth flying into a fire, and nothing left but wounds.”

Su Feifei: “…”

What does heartache feel like?

When her mother died, she had wept for days on end, weeping every time until she was drained, until she nearly passed out. She would never forget that grief and that pain as long as she lived. Even now, remembering it, she still tasted a faint sorrow.

In all her life, she had grieved that way only for her mother.

But now… what was this pain, like a needle in her chest? Why did it hurt so much that she suddenly didn’t know how to breathe?

Was it because of the girl… the girl who had lived in that room?

Remembering his reaction then, the one that had frightened her, remembering that filthy, chaotic house in which that one room alone was spotless — he must tend that room the way one tends a thin, fragile glass, with infinite care… And his feelings for that girl must run very, very deep.

What kind of girl could sink him this far… could leave him with room in his heart for no one else?

Su Feifei kept her face turned away so he wouldn’t see the film of water that had gone over her eyes in an instant. The traffic and the crowds blurred in her vision. She still held his arm and hadn’t let go, leaning against him like a lover, walking on step by step.

They were silent for a long time. Then Su Feifei turned back, a bright smile on her face. “Tianxie, you know you still haven’t told me who you really are. A man like Li Tianpeng takes one phone call and is willing to kneel in front of you. You injured all those people, and Li Group people at that, and not one policeman has come to arrest you… Can’t you let me understand you a little better?”

However hard she worked to mask her feelings and change the subject, Ye Tianxie had seen the glimmer at the corner of her eye that she hadn’t managed to dry. He was not a stupid man; Su Feifei’s behavior these past days had put him on alert, and to keep this from developing in a dangerous direction, this was the only way he could warn her… They had known each other less than ten days. Whatever fondness she felt, surely it couldn’t run that deep… So why was she crying?

He had genuinely underestimated Su Feifei’s stubbornness — the same stubbornness with which she had insisted on moving into his house in the first place.

“What do you want to know about me?” Ye Tianxie could only follow where she led.

“For instance, who is your father? And your mother? Do you have any other family? We’re such good friends by now, surely there’s no harm in telling me? I imagine they must be very impressive people.” Su Feifei said it smiling. Friends? Why, when she called them friends, was there an ache in her chest she could hardly bear?

Why tell me this so early? Can’t you even let me keep a few beautiful illusions?

“My father and mother died when I was three and a half. I had an older brother too… He died the same day.” Ye Tianxie didn’t hide it. He said it slowly, in a voice utterly flat, without a ripple of feeling in it.

Su Feifei had not remotely expected that answer. She shuddered, stopped walking, and turned to look at him. After a long moment she said quietly, “I… I’m sorry. I always thought I was the pitiful one. I never imagined…”

“I’m not pitiful. Perhaps I once was. But never again.” Ye Tianxie said it with a smile.

“All right, all right, you’re not the least bit pitiful… The pitiful ones are the people who accidentally cross you, and me, the young lady who does your washing and cooking and cleaning and waits on you hand and foot every day.” Su Feifei smiled, quietly pressing down the ache in her chest. “Fine, fine. You secretive, stingy creature, you’d never tell me anything else even if I asked. So instead — tell me this. When you were gambling with Li Tianpeng, did you or did you not pull something!”

Ye Tianxie shrugged, the picture of innocence.

“Hmph. Do you take this young lady for a pig? That casino belongs to Li Tianpeng’s family. That dealer must have been their finest — how could he possibly roll the highest number, eighteen, in a game where low wins? And then you just happen to roll seventeen… And besides, besides, your expression at the time said you’d known exactly how it would come out. Tell me, how did you do it? Do you have — like in the movies — superpowers?” Su Feifei tilted her head up and stared into his eyes, wearing the look of someone who would not rest until she got a full confession.

“…If I said I didn’t do anything at all, you wouldn’t believe me anyway, would you? Then let’s say I have superpowers.” Ye Tianxie looked thoroughly helpless.

In truth, that had genuinely been his first time playing dice. During the first two rounds, he had been listening — using his ears to catch the minute differences in sound that different faces made as they landed. After two rounds, his extraordinary perception had it mapped completely. And in the final, decisive round, he really had done nothing but shake the cup… The one who had swapped the dealer’s neatly stacked, one-showing dice for three sixes was Guoguo, whose presence not a soul could detect. And the violence with which he’d shaken the cup hadn’t been theatrics — it was a deliberate racket to jam the dealer’s hearing so he wouldn’t catch anything amiss.

Superpowers. Ye Tianxie genuinely didn’t have any.

Of course, the price of Guoguo’s assistance had been steep — three hundred lollipops. One hundred per die.

But if Guoguo had understood what three hundred million actually meant, she would surely have realized her asking price was far too low.

“Hmph. Obviously fobbing me off… Come on!”

“Where to?”

“To play, obviously. All the things I’ve always wanted to do and never have… And we need to buy a lot of things. That house of ours is enormous and I can’t find anything in it. And also, also, the things Dad sent last time are nearly finished, so we need to buy a lot of groceries, or you can just wait to starve to death.”

“…”

Looking at that stunning face, suddenly bright with a smile again, the guilt in Ye Tianxie’s chest finally began to fade. He discovered, all at once, that he had no wish whatsoever to see her sad… Without his noticing, she had become someone he cared about, and had begun to take up a place in his heart…

Su Feifei walked on smiling, her mood breaking free of the ache and the weight… So his heart belongs to someone else. What of it? However much he loves that girl, the one beside him now isn’t her. It’s me. Isn’t it? She could walk into his heart and claim it. So why can’t I?

Feifei, believe in yourself… There will probably never be another boy who moves you like this, who makes you want so badly to be with him. So don’t give up. Don’t lose heart… Feifei, you can do it!

Only with him is my heart this light. Only with him am I always this safe, with nothing left to fear at all… Feifei, you can do it! Happiness is something you have to fight for.

Two young people, close as lovers, walked on side by side, pressed together. Overhead, a white scar cut the vault of heaven in two, and a blazing sun was set into that sky-scar as though run clean through by it, pouring its heat down onto the earth without stint.

(End of Chapter 136)