Chapter 47

*Crush: A Glimpse of Dawnlight*
“Was it Director Shen?”
Qin Sang tested his reaction. Aside from Shen Yi, who knew what had happened, she couldn’t think of how Xie Yuncheng could have found out what she was thinking.
“Shen Yi?”
Xie Yuncheng’s reaction didn’t seem fake. He paused slightly—only for an instant—looking puzzled.
So it wasn’t him.
Qin Sang pressed her lips together, her heart uneasy.
She’d thought it was Shen Yi who had let something slip—after all, Shen Yi was close to him, and it would be normal for something to come out in conversation.
Xie Yuncheng quickly understood. He gave a faint, self-mocking smile. “So that’s how it is.”
So Shen Yi knew.
No wonder that night, Shen Yi had suddenly said, “God Xie, you know I’ve always admired you, but on certain things you’re really too cold. If someone genuinely fell for you in the future, they’d be pretty unlucky.”
“Why think so far ahead—staring all the way into some distant future? Sometimes, stopping to look at the scenery right in front of you isn’t so bad either.”
Shen Yi saw things clearly.
That was why he’d reminded him not to miss the person in front of him.
Only Qin Sang still couldn’t understand. “When did you know? Know that my feelings for you weren’t… simple.”
She didn’t mind Xie Yuncheng knowing about that past. She just couldn’t figure out how he had learned it.
Or had he known from the beginning—cool-headedly watching her behave like a clown, making a show and inventing reasons just to get close to him?
“Sang-sang.” His voice was gentle. His gaze was deep, as if it could see through her thoughts. He spoke after a brief silence. “It’s not what you’re thinking.”
“At first, I didn’t know.”
He didn’t know what that reunion night had meant to her, and he didn’t know how hard she’d had to try just to act calm, like nothing had happened, and exchange a few polite words with him.
Every time she approached, it took immense courage—like dragging out her unknown past again and again and putting it to the knife.
“Then how did you…?”
Qin Sang felt dazed. She still couldn’t make sense of it.
She resisted and despised herself, yet couldn’t pull free.
It always felt like even getting him to pause for a moment was, to her, like being given a drug—luck she could hardly ever hope for in this life.
“Sang-sang.” Xie Yuncheng’s expression was clear. His tone carried a helpless, faintly bitter note. “Do you remember the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival? You told me you really liked that kind of mint candy, but later you searched the whole market and couldn’t find a substitute.”
She remembered. That night, she couldn’t bear to see him so downcast. He was someone she had once liked deeply; she always hoped he would live well.
She understood Zhou Yihong had his difficulties. She just hadn’t realized that maybe it hadn’t been as easy for Xie Yuncheng to get where he was as Zhou Yihong had assumed.
So she took out that mint candy.
The mint candy she used to only dare hide away.
“You knew I liked that mint candy. You knew the flavor I liked.”
“Before that, I wasn’t sure whether you had feelings for me—or whether it was only the camaraderie of classmates.”
He was surprised Qin Sang knew his small details so clearly.
He also faintly sensed something was off—but only that much.
His voice turned hoarse. “Even now—even before today—I still didn’t dare to be certain whether your feelings for me stopped at liking, or went deeper.”
Not until he heard her speak of her past with his own ears.
Only then did he learn that in a past he hadn’t noticed, someone had once liked him deeply—chasing after his shadow, stepping forward little by little, only to be a bit closer to him.
Spring and summer overlapped; seasons turned. In the cracks of time, how many springs and autumns, how many winters and summers she had lived through—no one knew.
So the secret she’d hidden away wasn’t “liking,” but that she had liked him—once.
She admitted it herself: she had liked him, and for many years.
She also said it herself: she planned to forget, planned to give up.
In that moment, his chest felt blocked, then came a dense swelling numbness. The emotion hit hard—and it was unfamiliar.
He had never believed in fate, yet in that instant he felt inexplicably grateful.
Before she completely forgot, he still had a chance to make it up.
…
Qin Sang fell silent. Her mind was blank; she wasn’t thinking anything at all.
Then, all at once, she seemed to realize.
“So that’s how it was.”
So she herself had given it away—because her liking was blatant, with no disguise.
Someone as smart and sharp as Xie Yuncheng might have noticed long ago.
Qin Sang could only sigh inwardly. “So my acting has gotten this bad. Even something this simple, and I still messed it up.”
She had been self-assured, thinking she hid it well and no one would ever notice—only to find her feelings had long been obvious.
“Then you…”
She really wanted to know. “Were you moved by that? When you confessed to me—was it pity, or were you touched?”
Because you sensed my liking, realized I’d secretly liked you for so many years—were you moved by my foolish pursuit, and so you confessed to fulfill it? Was that why?
His liking—was it because he truly liked her as a person, or because her feelings moved him and made him act on impulse?
Love that begins from being moved, from pity—that isn’t love. That’s only a higher position granting a little mercy to someone smaller.
Qin Sang was almost impressed with herself. In such a mess, she could still keep a sliver of reason and clarity—and still have the mind to ask how much of his liking was sincere.
She really wasn’t smart. Otherwise, how could she have taken so long and still not learned how to “forget”? She couldn’t even hide her tracks—caught this easily.
“Yes.” Qin Sang truly didn’t mind him knowing that past. What she minded was where his beginning came from. “I once had a crush on you, and even now, those feelings haven’t faded even a bit. I’m an ordinary, even vulgar person. That’s why I don’t want you to think I’m different just because of what I once felt.”
“I like you, but I want us to be equal. At least right now, I want the response I receive to come from sincerity—not mixed with other considerations.”
Why had she hidden her feelings? Why had she refused to let anyone glimpse even a fraction?
Seventeen-year-old Qin Sang had been self-conscious and timid. She felt she wasn’t good enough for Xie Yuncheng, and that it was impossible anyway—so why make herself a joke for a future that wasn’t even certain?
But twenty-seven-year-old Qin Sang thought simply: she wanted equality. She liked him—had always liked him—so she wanted an equal kind of love.
A crush is a one-person play. She never needed his response, because she was the only lead. She could cry until she broke, fall apart and go mad—it would still just be a dream. When she woke, no one would know; life would go on as usual.
Her liking had always been quiet. It hadn’t affected anyone, and it hadn’t caused him any trouble.
So even if people were ranked into classes—
Maybe she was insignificant, but her love wasn’t.
She only longed for his response, hoped that one day his eyes would pause for her.
She had never—not for a single moment—reached out and begged him for even a little pity.
She knew how outstanding Xie Yuncheng was.
So she kept working, quietly climbing upward.
She wanted to climb higher, to stand in a more visible place.
So she could hope—and wait—
That one day, she could stand in front of him calmly, even if only as a classmate, and say, “Long time no see.”
But she’d waited too long—so long she was exhausted.
So long she realized there were still many people she wanted to cherish.
So she decided to let herself go.
Reunion had been an accident.
She had to admit she truly couldn’t let go.
Her emotions were pulled by him at every moment, driving her to do many irrational things. But she had never wagged her tail and begged him for mercy or compassion.
So for that final step, she would wait for him to walk toward her first.
She had been certain that whatever he decided, he did it seriously.
Yet now she couldn’t help doubting: how much of that “seriousness” came from his true heart?
“Do you really like me—for me?”
“Or were you only moved by this crush, and you wanted to compensate me, so you acted on a moment of dizziness?”
Ten years of secret liking—if an ordinary person heard it, they probably couldn’t take it. The weight of that feeling was simply too heavy.
Maybe it would move them, and they’d make an impulsive decision.
Qin Sang’s eyes were clear. She looked into his, quietly.
She was waiting for his answer.
She wanted a definite answer.
“Sang-sang, you think too highly of me.”
“I’m not as good as you imagine, and I’m not as…” He paused. The corner of his mouth lifted, self-mocking. “…as human-hearted as you think.”
Zhou Wanqing had said he was cold and unfeeling. Thinking about it now, it really was so.
Three years as classmates, and he couldn’t even remember who was in the class, what their names were, what they looked like.
She hadn’t been an exception.
But at this moment, he regretted it.
How could she not have been an exception?
He faintly sensed the changes in his own hidden emotions. He had never restrained them, nor did he deny it: he had, in fact, been moved by her.
When had it started?
At the Huaitai venue?
Or even earlier—back then, when she fled from under the corridor. She was clearly in a sorry state, yet strikingly bright, like the afterglow of sunset—gentle, not harsh—skimming over an abyss full of scars.
“I didn’t lie to you. Every sentence I said to you—I meant it, and it came from my true heart.”
That night of the Mid-Autumn Festival—after they parted—
He had stood for a long time beneath a billboard printed with her face.
She was famous.
Shining, dazzling.
It seemed you could see her figure in every corner of this city.
In the past, he had passed by her countless times, yet never paid attention to who she was.
Not until that night did he suddenly realize.
So she had always been there.
So she existed in every corner of his world, filling all the cracks.
“Sang-sang.” Emotion brewed in Xie Yuncheng’s light brows and eyes. A thin, bitter smile hung at his lips. “I only regret that I had so many chances to get to know you, and I missed them all. If I could do it over, I only hope that I’d be the one who fell first.”