Chapter 4

Take four bites.
When Ying Tao went downstairs, she still didn’t see anyone. She frowned, about to call, when two short honks sounded not far away.
She looked up.
Across the road, a pitch-black sports car was parked by the curb. Its lines were sleek, almost melting into the night—except for the aggressively showy rear wing. A man leaned lazily against the body of the car, tall and straight. He wore a black baseball cap pulled low; only a strip of cold, pale jaw showed beneath the brim. He tapped the horn twice again, a reminder.
Ying Tao strode over and held out her hand without ceremony. “Give me my photo back.”
He Mingye lifted his eyes and asked lazily, “What photo?”
Ying Tao’s eyes widened with rage. She had never met someone so shameless.
Then she got too worked up—and bit down on the hollowed-out tooth by accident.
Pain blasted through her. Her expression went green in an instant, delicate features twisting into a tight knot.
She clutched her cheek. Mist gathered in her apricot eyes. Even the glare she shot him lost its edge, making her look pitiful instead.
“What is it?” He Mingye’s casual smile vanished. He pinched her chin, forcing her to lift her face.
Her eyes were watery, her skin pale as jade. With her cheeks pressed up, she had no choice but to part her lips slightly. On the right, where her molars were, something was clearly wrong—there was a wad of cotton stuffed inside. Her lashes were damp, trembling, like butterfly wings soaked by rain.
She looked at him with a wronged expression. The toothache was sharp, but with her face held like that she couldn’t close her mouth. Even her voice came out blurred as she struggled and tried to pull his hand away.
“It hurts…”
He Mingye’s gaze darkened. He let go. “Your tooth again?”
Ying Tao rubbed her jaw where he’d pinched it, and snapped, “None of your business.”
“The first pack of pads you ever used—I bought it for you,” He Mingye said, looking down at her, faint mockery in his eyes. “What, you’ve grown up now and I’m not allowed to ‘mind my business’?”
Then his tone turned lazier, almost teasing.
“Back then, I wonder who it was, crying and begging me not to go.”
Old embarrassment got dragged into the light. Ying Tao’s face flared red. She lunged up, trying to cover his mouth with her hand.
“Don’t say it! You’re not allowed! Not a word!”
Ying Tao’s first period had come late. Girls her age all had theirs; she hadn’t.
She’d had the health class, sure. But in the compound she’d been the only girl her age, and by then Wen Yalan and Ying Zhaohui were already divorced. There was no older woman around to guide her properly, so her understanding of basic, normal body things was… patchy.
In seventh grade, during PE, her stomach started hurting so badly she couldn’t even stand. The teacher had classmates bring her back to the classroom to rest. She lay face-down on the desk for ages. When she finally woke up, she found blood on her pants—and on the chair, too.
She panicked. She didn’t dare move an inch.
All the way until school let out, until the classroom was nearly empty, she still didn’t dare shift.
The sun sank, the sky darkened. The room felt vast and hollow with only her in it. Ying Tao was terrified of being alone, and even more terrified that she had some strange illness and was about to die. Her stomach kept cramping—so painful she felt sick. She bit her lip and didn’t dare cry aloud, only sniffled softly and rubbed at her eyes.
When He Mingye came looking for her, the tension in her body snapped.
The boy was lean, his blue-and-white school uniform clean on him. He knocked on the classroom door.
“Shrimp. Time to go home.”
At first she tried not to cry, but after holding it in for too long, she couldn’t hide it anymore. She burst into loud sobs.
“Waaah—Gege, what do I do? I got the chair dirty!”
She was crying so hard. In all these years, aside from the times her cavities hurt so badly she couldn’t take it, and the one year she’d cried her lungs out over the divorce, she hardly ever cried like this.
She didn’t dare lift her butt off the chair. Her face burned. Tears smeared all over her cheeks.
“My stomach hurts and there’s so much blood. Gege… am I going to die?”
He Mingye was startled too. But after he understood what she was crying about, he fell silent for a moment and threw down one word:
“Wait.”
Ying Tao waited forever before he came back. When he did, his voice was low.
“Come here.”
She bit her lip, hesitant. “But the chair… the chair is dirty.”
He Mingye’s gaze stayed calm. “Stand up first.”
Ying Tao shifted slowly, got to her feet. He Mingye tugged off his jacket and tied it around her waist, then cleaned up the traces on the chair.
Ying Tao didn’t dare move. She clutched the hem of his shirt and wouldn’t let go.
“Gege… am I sick?”
He flicked her forehead and snorted. “How did you even pass health class?”
Only then did it click. But she still didn’t understand one thing.
“Then… why does my stomach hurt so much?”
The teacher hadn’t taught details. No one had said it could hurt like this.
He Mingye’s voice was full of ridicule. “Who was it last night, fighting me for that whole tub of ice cream? One good pain and you’ll remember.”
Her cramps never really got better, not even now. Without painkillers, every period felt like a life-or-death battle. But back then she knew nothing.
When they got home, He Mingye casually handed her a pack of pads and told her to go deal with it.
She didn’t know how. Aunt He wasn’t home. They could only do it over the phone. After she came out, she collapsed on the bed, limp and weak. Her lower belly twisted with pain; she curled up and didn’t want to move.
He Mingye came in with a hot-water bottle and a cup of brown sugar water.
“Drink.”
At least then she was obedient. She held the cup and took small sips.
The call with Aunt He was still connected. Aunt He reminded him, “If Little Peach’s cramps are really bad, go to the pharmacy and buy painkillers, or rub her stomach a little. Wrap the hot-water bottle with a towel and press it there—it’ll help. And is she wearing socks? Don’t set the AC too low. You two always chase the cold. These days are important—don’t let her get chilled. If she catches cold now, she’ll suffer every time later.”
He Mingye answered lazily, clearly just to get off the line. “Got it. I’m hanging up.”
Ying Tao drank the sugar water and held the hot-water bottle to her belly, but it still hurt. Her face was pale; she lay there listless.
He Mingye raised a brow. “Still hurts? Want me to go buy medicine?”
“No.” Ying Tao refused on instinct. With zero sense of security, she grabbed his hand in a death grip. “Gege, don’t go. Don’t leave me. I’m scared.”
“Just rub my stomach. If you rub it, it won’t hurt.”
She wouldn’t let go, so he didn’t leave. He stayed and rubbed her belly for a long time.
The memory was unbearable to revisit—awkward in a way she couldn’t put into words.
Ying Tao didn’t want him digging up her humiliating history. She tried hard to cover his mouth again. Her palm touched his lips—cool, strangely so.
“Shrimp.” His voice was still light and lazy, but his dark eyes carried a teasing glint now. “Are you trying to take advantage of your gege?”
Ying Tao finally realized how intimate the posture was—close enough that she could feel the heat of his body.
She jerked back at once, frowning. “Stop being so full of yourself. Give me the photo.”
That picture—something that should not be allowed to exist—needed to be destroyed.
“What photo?” He Mingye said. Then, with a slow, lazy tilt of his head: “This one?”
On his screen the image was crystal clear: her braces, and that godawful, dog-chewed fringe.
Ying Tao reached to snatch it. He Mingye leaned against the car, relaxed, and simply lifted his hand with the unfair advantage of height.
She hopped twice and still couldn’t reach it. Worse—she knocked her tooth again.
Pain flashed white. She glared at him, furious. “What do you want?”
He Mingye’s eyes slid over her, cool. “What did you call me on your phone just now?”
Ying Tao froze. She remembered how she’d barked at him through the screen, and a burst of guilt hit her.
But then she thought: seriously? Was he really this petty? It was just a nickname. And for that, he’d come all the way here in the dead of night—right to her campus?
She shot him a look, still stubborn, refusing to apologize. She muttered, “I wasn’t wrong.”
He really was a peacock—drawing bees and butterflies everywhere.
Back in school, she’d been forced more than once to act as a delivery dog for love letters. Those older girls knew she was He Mingye’s little sister. One after another they came to her classroom to cozy up—bringing her milk, buying her bread—just to get her to pass along a note.
At first Ying Tao had been pretty happy. Running errands wasn’t hard. Deliver one letter and get paid in snacks—pure profit.
She said yes to almost everyone. Every time an upperclass girl asked, she would smile sweetly, agree, and promise the mission would be completed.
Then, when she was still clumsy at the job, she got caught red-handed—trying to slip a letter into his desk.
He Mingye grabbed the back of her collar and looked down at the envelope in her hand, eyes cold.
“Who told you to deliver this?”
Ying Tao thought hard, then could only confess honestly, naming them one by one:
“Senior Wang in tenth grade… and Senior Qin, and Senior Shen… and then Senior Sun in eleventh grade, and Senior Song in twelfth—”
He Mingye actually laughed in disbelief. “You’re running a whole operation.”
“What did they pay you,” he asked, “for you to work this hard?”
He asked, she answered. She counted on her fingers like a little accountant, reciting proudly:
“Wangzai milk, White Rabbit candy, taro cream sandwich biscuits, and pork floss buns.”
He pinched her cheek, voice dripping with scorn. “For a few bottles of milk and some bread, you sell me out? Shrimp, do you have any ambition at all?”
At first she didn’t understand why he was mad. Later she realized—he thought she’d sold him too cheaply and damaged his “market price.”
Ying Tao didn’t bother arguing. Once her patience wore out, her temper rose. She pulled a face. “So are you giving it to me or not?”
“What’s the rush?” He Mingye looked down.
She was glaring, pretending to be fierce. Maybe she’d just showered—there was still a soft, damp sweetness clinging to her, a clean peachy scent. During their tug-of-war, her thin knit cardigan had slid down her shoulders. Her collarbones were sharp and straight; her shoulders were narrow and luminous.
She didn’t notice a thing. She only kept staring him down.
He Mingye lifted a brow.
“Call me gege,” he said lightly. “Let me hear it.”