– CP | Chapter 4

“Since we’ve already come this far…”

He suddenly leaned closer.

I melted under the gaze in his eyes and froze in place.

The mood had been perfect.

Well… if he wanted to kiss me, that would have been okay.

I had even unconsciously moved my tongue in anticipation.

But then he stopped leisurely halfway.

Click.

The seatbelt slid upward across my chest and snapped back into place.

I swallowed.

“And then?”

“Then we’ve arrived.”

He tilted his chin forward.

Sure enough, across the street stood my shabby apartment complex.

I stiffly turned my head, reluctant for the evening to end.

He got out first and opened the door for me.

“Living in the old district isn’t bad,” he said. “Lots of people around, so it’s safe. Just a bit too much traffic.”

I looked at our shadows on the ground.

They overlapped.

The corners of my mouth curled upward without me realizing it.

I silently counted to five.

He raised his wrist and glanced at his watch.

Taking the hint, I waved goodbye.

The road was narrow.

Less than ten steps later, I turned around.

He was still standing beneath the streetlamp, tall and elegant.

When he saw I hadn’t gone inside yet, he pointed up at the streetlight and raised an eyebrow.

I answered with a bright smile and nodded enthusiastically.

— 

Not sleeping that night was inevitable.

Ever since moving to M City, my sleep hadn’t been great.

Combined with my habit of getting excited before bed, my dark circles were becoming increasingly obvious.

That night I lay there clutching my phone and waiting.

Nothing came.

I began imagining possibilities.

Had he lost his phone?

Gone out partying?

Gotten buried in work?

I even got up in the dark and checked myself in the mirror.

Maybe I simply wasn’t his type.

Maybe all those compliments had just been politeness.

I tossed and turned all night without sleeping.

Finally, at 9:03 the next morning, a message arrived.

Just as casually as ever:

Morning. 

Relief flooded through me.

Pouting at my screen, I replied:

Went to bed early last night?

He answered:

Yep. My heart rate was too high last night. You know I’m almost thirty. My heart can’t handle racing that fast anymore, so I went to sleep early.

Sitting at my desk, I practically clutched my chest like a lovesick heroine and asked what he’d eaten for breakfast.

A few messages later, he got busy again.

He stayed busy until evening.

I sent two more messages during the day.

He didn’t reply until nine at night.

I’d checked my phone so often I was practically cross-eyed.

Still, the constant waiting kept me glued to my desk, so my work productivity was actually pretty good.

Too busy. Pulling an all-nighter tonight.

That was his complaint.

I sympathetically comforted him for a while before leaving a dinner gathering with coworkers and heading home.

—

That day my roommate had brought someone back.

The moment I walked in, I heard voices coming from her room.

I stopped and listened for two seconds.

A man’s voice.

The man stayed for two days.

I suffered through both of them.

First, I wasn’t comfortable sharing a bathroom with a strange man.

Second, Han Che had been incredibly busy these past few days.

Without the adrenaline he gave me, I felt wilted and listless.

My great-aunt’s husband’s college roommate happened to be the owner of the design company where I worked.

That connection was the reason I’d traveled all the way to this city.

I wasn’t exactly a nepotism hire, but they were willing to do my relatives a favor.

At the end of the month, after my internship ended, my employee badge was changed to full-time status.

I told him the news.

He replied:

Congratulations. You should treat me to dinner.

Of course. When are you free?

At three in the morning, he replied:

Sister, let me survive this project first. I’m about to die.

Then he immediately added:

Actually, I’m fine. What kind of man isn’t fine?

Just a few short lines.

Yet they instantly swept away all my loneliness.

—

After our first date, two weeks passed without a second one.

I tried hard to understand how busy he was.

But my desire to be understanding only made me more anxious.

The feeling that he doesn’t actually like me grew stronger and stronger.

His replies became less frequent.

Whenever he did respond, he was still warm and enthusiastic, and his reasons always sounded reasonable.

But it was difficult not to imagine the worst.

I kept telling myself:

He’s just an online acquaintance.

Yet my heart refused to listen.

Ever since moving to M City, I’d spent so much time and emotional energy focused on his profile picture and message notifications that I couldn’t simply convince myself to let go.

—

One day, I casually searched his name online.

I wanted to know which company he worked for.

Maybe I’d accidentally run into him somewhere.

There were too many people with the same name.

No luck.

Searching “Han Che + Xi’an Jiaotong University” also turned up nothing.

I sighed.

Then I remembered a screenshot he’d once sent me.

The username displayed on the webpage had been Zach Han.

On a whim, I searched that username on Weibo.

And I actually found him.

His profile picture was unmistakably him.

He was wearing ski goggles and facing a fisheye camera lens.

Behind him stretched a snow-covered ski slope.

A few tourists and signboards appeared in the background.

It was obviously somewhere overseas.

Excited beyond belief, I clicked into the profile.

The photo albums were empty.

There were only a few scattered complaints from three or four years ago.

Everything else was reposts of NBA news and Zhihu discussions.

Back when Douban first became popular, we liked to say that using Douban made you sophisticated.

Zhihu was in a similar stage then.

Small, elite, full of experts showing off their knowledge.

Everywhere you looked were essay-length explanations and educational discussions.

Like the early days of Douban, before the user base exploded.

The experience was fantastic.

I clicked into several Zhihu posts he’d followed.

In a discussion about food in M City, the highest-rated answer belonged to a familiar username:

Zach Han.

I nearly danced on the spot.

It felt like I’d discovered buried treasure.

—

I spent the entire afternoon reading his Zhihu profile.

It completely overturned my worldview.

He was a minor Zhihu celebrity with over twenty thousand followers.

Most of them earned through sheer consistency.

Some of his answers focused on road and bridge engineering—highways, traffic-light placement, city planning.

When showing off his expertise, his writing was witty without becoming arrogant.

Whenever he started sounding too full of himself, he’d immediately make a joke at his own expense.

There was no distance between him and his readers.

It felt exactly like talking to him in person.

Another portion of his answers focused on food.

He clearly loved eating.

From street stalls to Michelin-starred restaurants, from China to overseas destinations, he’d tried everything.

His insights were sharp and entertaining.

As I scrolled through answer after answer, I couldn’t help smiling bitterly.

His Zhihu account was far more interesting than the quiet, nearly empty profile I’d seen on Douban.

But the most fascinating answers of all were the ones about dating.

—

He clearly knew the subject inside and out.

Men would ask questions about how to attract women.

Step by step, he’d explain exactly what to do.

Then he’d finish with a line like:

Girls, if you’re reading this—run.

It was clever.

Politically correct.

The men learned something.

The women learned something.

Everyone won.

Except me.

As I read through his tactics one by one, my body gradually stiffened.

A realization struck me.

I was just another fish.

He had hooked me.

Pulled me in.

And then thrown me away.

I’d been fooled.

It felt as though my entire world had been stolen.

And yet there was no one I could report it to.

My hands trembled with anger.

I immediately opened our chat window.

After hesitating for two seconds, I closed it again.

Not because I’d calmed down.

Because I remembered a conversation with another Douban friend.

Back when I was happily telling him about Han Che, I’d said:

I think I’m falling in love. We met online. He’s handsome, wealthy, funny, talented, almost thirty, and still unmarried. He’s perfect.

My friend had replied coldly:

Men like that don’t exist. If he seems that perfect, then he’s either married or a player. There’s no third option—unless you’ve won the lottery.

I’d ignored him.

I preferred the little fantasy world I’d built for myself.

Now his words hit me like enlightenment.

No one understands men better than other men.

—

I forced myself to calm down.

I organized my thoughts and clicked on Han Che’s profile again.

Only then did I notice something strange.

His QQ account level was extremely low.

Only two moons and one star.

Obviously a new account.

I opened my computer and restored our chat history.

Then, red-faced with embarrassment, I reread our conversations from the beginning.

My toes curled into the floor.

My hands clawed at my hair.

He was infuriating.

—

At eight-thirty that evening, he finally “got off work.”

One message arrived:

Good night.

Exhausted, I scrolled upward through our recent conversations.

The amount we’d talked during the past two weeks wasn’t even equal to half a day’s chatting during the early days.

The signs had been so obvious.

And I’d somehow missed all of them.

I imagined him on the other side of the screen frowning and thinking:

When is this idiot going to realize I’m not interested in her?

I didn’t reply.

I spent the night torn between two options:

Give up and move on.

Or dig until I uncovered the truth and exposed the scumbag.

Another sleepless night followed.

At two in the morning, my roommate returned with the man again.

They sounded drunk.

Furniture scraped.

Chairs moved.

The noise was impossible to ignore.

I knocked against the wall near my bed, but they didn’t hear me.

—

My mind drifted back to that photo of the decorative birdcage.

A home with interior design like that must be beautiful.

The soundproofing certainly wouldn’t be this bad.

I lived in the old district.

He lived in the new district.

The two areas weren’t far apart.

A single bridge marked the boundary between them.

Just a dozen meters of distance.

Yet housing prices doubled once you crossed it.

The old district preserved its historic character, so large-scale construction was restricted.

The shopping malls and luxury apartment complexes were all located in the new district.

The first time I visited M City, I fell in love with that area.

There was a lake called Moonlight Lake.

The apartments surrounding it were some of the most expensive in the city.

My relative had once taken me to dinner at my boss’s home.

His apartment overlooked the lake.

The view was breathtaking.

At the time, I’d half-joked that I wanted to move onto his balcony and never leave.

I’d mentioned that story to Han Che once.

He’d laughed and said:

Then just move into my place instead. My apartment faces the lake directly. The building you’re talking about doesn’t even have the best view.

Can you believe it?

I actually took him seriously.

I was insane.

Completely insane.

I buried my face in my pillow and kicked the foot of the bed in frustration.

By sheer luck, the noise outside immediately stopped.