Gou An indeed lost her way after a while of running away.
She turned her head in fear and found that the man who was about to catch up with her had, in fact, not caught up with her. She didn’t know if it was because he had been a liar for many years and his kidneys were actually weak and he couldn’t run anymore1…
But in any case, she was well and truly lost.
Gou An looked around blankly: it seemed like everything was the same. Looking up, she saw the narrow space between the similar-looking buildings, filled with all kinds of clothes hung out to dry by the residents…
Finally, she found an old lady who was drying beans in a place somewhat similar to a playground and asked for directions. Gou An was a little embarrassed at first, but the old lady just looked at her ill-fitting slippers and her feet dirty from running, and calmly pointed her in the right direction.
What made Gou An realize that her current image was probably perfectly integrated into the Zhaipu District was when the kind-hearted old lady reminded her, “The owner of a room in the second floor of Building No. 3 hasn’t been back for a long time and may not come back anymore… If you don’t have any money, don’t leave in a hurry, you can stay there temporarily.”
Gou An had no way of finding out why the old lady, at her age, could so nonchalantly say that a person ‘may not come back anymore’. She was just stunned for a moment and accidentally thought of Ye Lang again.
And his dilapidated house.
The entirety of his house was visible in one glance, and there weren’t many personal belongings that she saw. It seemed to meet the standard of ‘nothing to regret leaving behind if the owner disappears one day’…
Before becoming her bodyguard, did Ye Lang also live a life where he might not be able to return at any time?
… Forget it, it was none of her business.
She thanked the old lady politely, then walked out of the tube-shaped buildings area in her too-big slippers, walking carefully albeit a bit unevenly.
Miss Gou, who had no cell phone, no money, and was wearing over-sized slippers and looking shabby, walked down the street, suffering from cold and hunger.
Passing by elementary school students who were having breakfast, she looked at them with envy.
When she asked others if she could borrow their cell phone to make a call, they just looked at her and hurriedly took three steps back.
Gou An was so dazed that she didn’t even know how far she had walked—she had probably never walked so far in her life—before she arrived at a slightly more prosperous place…
The standard of prosperity was exemplified by the white Rolls-Royce parked in front of her.
Its window rolled down and the door opened.
The mature man in a suit and tie sitting in the back seat had a stack of half-read paper documents on his knees.
It looked like he was on his way to work.
At this moment, the man turned his head and looked at her emotionlessly, looking her up and down, taking in her disheveled appearance (his eyes stayed on her feet for at least five seconds), and said calmly, “Get in the car.”
It was He Jinxing.
… …
Gou An’s brain short-circuited for a moment.
Why is he here?
She moved her lips, unable to describe the rush of mixed emotions she felt at the moment——
Was her luck so bad that she’d meet the handcuff-manufacturing duo so early in the morning?
She just escaped from one person only to fall into the hands of the other—what a dangerous place ah!
Why don’t you go all out and just send me to the police station right now?? Get it done in one go, yeah! Although I haven’t done anything yet, it’s still gonna happen according to the plot. So what’s the point of it? This is not the first time I’ve been arrested!
Send me to jail!
Send me to jail now!
At most I would be imprisoned for ten or eight years, but then at least I won’t have to keep worrying about it all the time!
I may not be the first person in the country to go to jail while attending college, but I can be the first person in the country to go to jail in a Rolls-Royce!
… ….
So miserable.
She was really so miserable.
Seeing He Jinxing at this time only made her already gloomy mood even worse.
When the car door opened, the scent of familiar cologne wafted to her nose. It wasn’t actually strong, but it overwhelmed Gou An until she felt she was drowning in it.
There was an indescribable feeling of suffocation, as if Fate had her by the throat and was strangling her.
Gou An’s tears, which she had finally managed to stop with great difficulty while running wildly in Zhaipu District, burst out again like a flood that broke through a dam and all came rushing down some three thousand feet.
The tears fell down in big drops, crystal clear, expressing overwhelming, genuine feelings.
He Jinxing has never seen such big tears.
“Am I a human trafficker?”
The man in the car said in a bland tone.
The person crying hard made a confused ‘hmm’ sound from her nose, with tears still hanging on her eyelashes.
He sneered, “You’re crying so pitifully, if one didn’t know better a person would think I was kidnapping a little girl in broad daylight.”
Gou An: “…”
He Jinxing stopped talking; he just raised his hand and patted the seat next to him.
Gou An stared at the slightly raised corners of the man’s lips—as everyone knows, Mr. He was not a person who never smiled. On the contrary, he always seemed to be very polite. People who didn’t know him would feel that being with him was like being bathed in spring breeze.
But Gou An knew that this was just the basic rule of downward social interaction2. Beneath his smiling appearance, he was actually an inhuman tyrant.
Gou An was very sensible. With dirty men’s slippers on her feet, she climbed quietly into the spotless, light-colored luxury car under the throbbing gaze of the driver in the front seat.
The stench of alcohol that had fermented for the whole night made He Jinxing move aside.
The culprit was unaware of this. She sat still, wiped her tears, and then asked, “Where are we going?”
You’ve already gotten into the car obediently and only remember to ask now?
Mr. He looked at the defenseless, dirty kitten sitting next to him. It was hard not to smile a little—although he quickly stopped smiling.
He retracted his gaze, looked straight ahead, and said to the driver, “Go to the company.”
… … advance chapters available @ whitemoonlighttranslations.com
The He’s Building was a completely new section of the map for Gou An. She seemed to have never been here before. As they neared the building, she couldn’t help but look out of the car window and look up—
In the sunlight, the entire reinforced concrete building looked like a monster coated with silver light, snow-white all over, and very imposing.
No wonder she always heard those aunties gossiping at the mahjong table saying that the economic lifeline of Jiangcheng was now almost entirely in the hands of the He family…
The scale of this building was simply incomparable to Gou’s.
He Jinxing could probably crush her to death with just one finger.
Gou An pursed her lips, feeling a little sad. She couldn’t understand why He Jinxing couldn’t just be kind and let the Gou family go when he already had so much…
She has been to her father’s office many times. Compared to the building in front of her, Gou’s was like Xiaobai’s doghouse in the yard of Nohara Shinnosuke3‘s house.
“What are you thinking about?”
The man’s voice rang in her ears as the car slowly drove into the underground parking lot.
I’m wondering why you are so cruel.
Gou An withdrew her gaze from the window and turned her head. She had just cried bitterly, and now the tip of her nose was red, her fair face was dirty, and her even dirtier toes were curled up inside the men’s slippers—everything about her telegraphing sadness.
“Do you want to tell me what happened last night?” He Jinxing was still flipping through the documents in his hands, and it seemed like he was just asking casually.
His eyes glanced at the men’s slippers on her feet without leaving a trace.
Gou An didn’t notice it and was completely immersed in his sudden question.
This question perfectly reminded Gou An of the ups and downs she had experienced this morning. Tears welled up in her eyes again. She pursed her lips and tried hard to hold back the tears.
She could only say pitifully, “I don’t want to.”
He Jinxing paused while flipping through the documents—probably because he didn’t expect there would be such an ignorant answer option.
But he didn’t force her.
The car fell into silence again.
From the Day the Engagement was Broken translated by Maela @ whitemoonlighttranslations.com
If you’re enjoying my translations, do consider buying me ko-fi and get access to advance chapters as reward. Thank you for your support! ☺️
Chapter 22.3 — A Little Wild Cat
Chapter 23.1 — You Go Away Too
Chapter 23.2 — You Go Away Too
Chapter 24.1 — Business Card
Chapter 24.2 — Business Card
- Gou An is being really sarcastic here because kidney deficiency in Chinese medicine means impaired sexual function 😂 ↩︎
- Downward social interaction—she means that those at the top can afford to be polite and even gentle to those below him, like a gracious lord who wielded life and death over his people. ↩︎
- Nohara Shinnosuke is the 5-yr old protagonist in Crayon Shin-chan, a long-running manga/anime that began in the late 1990s. His dog, named ‘Shiro’ in the original, is called Xiaobai in Chinese (both ‘shiro’ and ‘bai’ mean ‘white’). Xiaobai’s doghouse is at the lower left of the image. ↩︎
WHITE MOONLIGHT TRANSLATIONS 
Leave a comment