That night, he was not the only sleepless one. There were at least two others as well, one was Feng Ping, one was An Yuesheng.
Ever since An Yuesheng saw Feng Ping"s photo, he constantly imagined how they would meet again. Of course, he also thought about it before he saw that photo too. At that time, he was too vain and his thoughts were too abstract. After seeing the photo, his thoughts became more specific, narrowing down.
She"s Tang Jianan"s fiance, Tang Jianan was the acting chairman of Beicheng, Beicheng was an important client for Yuanshi. The two companies were currently in the midst of collaborating on a real estate project. With this connection, they might have met each other at some business party…in the end, they met at an auction.
She didn"t look very different from her picture, but her aura was completely different from the old days. Three years ago, she was still a greenhorn and she would feel occasionally uncomfortable. Now, her temperament was so elegant, she could calmly raise the card to list a price, casually throwing out a few million without changing expressions.
Everyone said that the richer one was, the more imposing one would become. It was true.
He still remembered that fall day, she was fired, and she fought with someone over just ¥300 until the police were called. That was the first time he realized how much importance she placed on money, usually she seemed so indifferent about money. For example, when he was praising a specific car brand after seeing its commercial on TV, if she was in the middle of doing something else, she would still run over to him and joke, “If you like it, we"ll just go buy one.”—Such ridiculous nonsense, as if they could actually afford to buy one. He really, really hated her sense of humor, he didn"t like it at all, only feeling it was extremely distasteful. Every time this happened, he would find an excuse to go to the bathroom to smoke a cigarette so that he could calm his rage. When he came out, although she would not say anything, she would always go into the bathroom and open the small window.
As for his habits of throwing his underwear and his socks into the same laundry basket, she was extremely appalled. But he never changed—actually, in the beginning he did try to change, even if he secretly thought that she was making a mountain out of a molehill. However, towards the end, he did it intentionally, purposefully angering her. Moreover, he was unable to accept her extreme spending habits as well. The monthly salary was no more than ¥3000, but she insisted on purchasing imported brands for her daily necessities, from her shampoo to her pillow and eye mask, and especially that eye mask, whenever he saw it on her as she slept beside him, he thought it was extremely comical.
She was the stereotypical moonlight group(1), even though she never mentioned she lacked money, with such extravagant spending, there was no man that would want to spend the rest of their life with her, at least he didn"t. Furthermore, she was frequently unemployed, but because she had a pretty face, even though she wasn"t highly educated and the jobs she found were quite simple, it was also because of this that he did not even dare to imagine a future for them.
During the year or so they were together, she was unemployed five times. The reasons why could be made into a song, called ‘Blame Yourself For Being Too Beautiful". Because she was too pretty, her superiors or boss would compliment her all the time, and she was unable to withstand it, so she would always quit soon after. As a result, they had that fight. That day, they not only fought, they also did not get that money back, and they were even surrounded by an audience. Truthfully speaking, he felt so ashamed at that time. On the way home, neither spoke.
It seems that they became different after that incident.
But what did she want him to do? Help her argue? Sorry! He could not throw away his pride to do so, he would rather give her ¥300 of his own money instead. In this commercial city with several million people, he was equivalent to a little cricket. What did she want him to do? It was better for her to face this reality earlier, that way they could also end earlier as well.
From another point of view, he felt that through this incident, he was able to understand her much better. He largely based his judgment on people"s characters based on their att.i.tudes toward money. She usually never brought up the topic of money, and on the few occasions that she did, it was enough to suffocate someone, so he would never willingly bring up this topic on his own. He saw that she never really spent his money, so occasionally he would buy gifts for her and she would become very happy. On further examination, he was afraid that if he brought up this topic on his own initiative, he was afraid of drawing the fire towards him. It wasn"t that he was a stingy person, it was just that her spending habits really frightened him, not to mention that he wasn"t someone with a high income. Even if he was, and now he really did have a high income, he was never someone who would recklessly spend money because all of his money was earned through his hard work, unlike Tang Jianan.
She was a young and beautiful girl, but due to his hormones, he was impulsive. When the initial extreme feelings faded away, he was left with some unwillingness.—Seeing how she got engaged to Tang Jianan, she definitely had a limitless future.
So her departure was correct.
When they were together, they only restricted one another, causing a deadlock between them. Now he had a considerably successful career and she will most likely successfully marry into a wealthy family, it was a win-win situation.
It was just, he had to meet her again.
When she left, he thought that he would quickly forget about her. However, reality proved the opposite. Not only did he not forget her, but instead the memory of her became clearer than ever. After a very long period of time, he finally realized what this feeling was. It wasn"t because he was still in love with her, but rather because she left so suddenly, she didn"t give him a chance to make her stay—even though there was an 80%-90% chance he wouldn"t have tried to make her stay, his pride couldn"t accept that she left on her own terms.
As a result, he always thought of her.
She owed him an explanation.
That afternoon in the auction hall, they hadn"t gotten to the main topic yet when Tang Jianan suddenly appeared. She was clearly nervous. Hehe, actually, before he saw her, he was also nervous as well. Whenever he had free time, his imagination would roam, but when he finally saw her, he became very calm.
It wasn"t a big deal.
As An Yuesheng contemplated, a self-mocking smile appeared on his face. He stamped out the lit cigarette between his fingers, dropping it into the ashtray along with the eight other ones already in there. These past few years, he had cut down on the smoking, but because his emotions were in turmoil tonight, he had unconsciously indulged himself. He had no right to indulge though, even though tomorrow was the weekend, there were still work matters he had to take care of. The higher one"s position was, the heavier the responsibilities and the bigger the pressure, especially for someone like him who worked hard to crawl his way up from the bottom. He would definitely not let himself relax so easily.
(1) Slang term for people who spend their paycheck before receiving their next. It"s different from living paycheck to paycheck, because these people aren"t necessarily poor, they just have large expenditures compared to their income.