Chapter Three: Secrets Unknown to All

When the car door opened and the villa’s gilded light washed over Wen Zhi’s face, she only then realized where she was.

The clink of glasses. The hearty laughter of guests in conversation.

Her heels touched the floor, and every eye turned toward her in unison. Wen Zhi’s heart tightened. Before this, the grandest occasion she had ever attended was the one-hundred-day oath ceremony before the college entrance exam, when she recited a vow before thousands of people. As for the rest...

She had heard that those attending this engagement banquet were all prominent figures from every walk of life.

"Look at you, mute—what are you daydreaming about?"

"Take my arm."

Only then did she come back to herself and slip her arm through the man’s.

"Zhi Zhi, how are you feeling? Ah Ye said you had a fever just now," Jiang Shiwei said as she stepped forward.

Seeing the woman’s sign language, a flicker of embarrassment passed through Jiang Shiwei’s eyes. That trace of awkwardness happened to be caught by Wen Zhi, as if it had been deliberately shown to her.

Wen Zhi lowered her head, no longer daring to look at the person opposite her, like a child who had done something wrong.

"Ah Ye..."

Jiang Shiwei looked to Bo Ye for help.

"Are you blind? Would I bring her here if she still had a fever?"

Wen Zhi’s eyes widened at those words. Fortunately, her head was lowered. After graduating from high school this year, she had come to W City, still ignorant of the tangled affairs of the local elite families. She only knew that Jiang Shiwei was Bo Ye’s stepmother, and that when she had once been driven to desperation, it was Jiang Shiwei who had taken the initiative to contact her.

At least in Wen Zhi’s memory, Jiang Shiwei was a good person, always wearing a smile. Unlike Bo Ye, who looked fierce and had a strange temperament. She knew the two of them did not get along, and back then, in her search for shelter, she had casually said that she and Jiang Shiwei...

In truth, the only time the two had met was that trip to the hospital. After that came the matter of her going to see Bo Ye.

She froze in place, sensing that such harsh words would surely spark an argument.

But the quarrel she had expected never came. It turned out that the fight had always been one-sided, all from Bo Ye...

Jiang Shiwei’s face went pale, then she looked at Wen Zhi again and recovered her composure. "As long as you’re all right."

Bo Ye dragged Wen Zhi away with force, leaving Jiang Shiwei alone where she stood. The two of them wove through the sea of people, and from time to time someone greeted them. Whenever Wen Zhi noticed, she would nod and smile in return.

"It’s not even New Year yet. You don’t need to rush to play the lucky mascot," the man beside her said coldly.

How could this man’s mouth be so vile?

What a dog of a man.

"President Shen!"

Wen Zhi instinctively looked up and met the gaze of the man addressed as President Shen.

Their eyes met. A familiar figure. For a moment she forgot to breathe, standing frozen where she was.

"Mutey, have you lost your mind?"

The man’s voice dissolved into foam and drifted back to another time and place.

The man across from her did not hold her gaze for long before turning to look at Bo Ye.

Back in high school, that boy had favored light colors. In those school days when all the boys rejected the blue-and-white uniforms, he still somehow wore the ordinary school clothes with an air that made him look like the male lead of a novel.

Yet his style now was utterly different. Dressed in a pale gray suit with gold embroidery at the cuffs, he looked incomparably refined and distinguished, no longer the poor Shen Dan whose jeans had long since faded white.

At last returning to reality, the man beside her voice reached her ears again. "Mute! Did the fever fry your brain?"

Bo Ye made a show of testing her forehead with the back of his hand, but before he could touch her, the woman’s hand intercepted him first.

[I’m not feverish. Also, could you please stop calling me mute? My name is Wen Zhi.]

Her expression was a little indignant, her cheeks faintly flushed, her eyes fixed earnestly on him.

Bo Ye’s heart seemed to skip a beat under that serious gaze.

"Oh."

Not far away, Shen Dan broke the silence. "President Bo, and this is?"

She had not expected him to act as though he did not know her at all.

A dull ache spread through her heart.

It was only last year that he had been helping her braid her hair, and yet people changed so quickly.

Still, Wen Zhi ought to be happy for him. He no longer had to live a life of hardship. He had been taken back by the Shen family. He no longer had to worry about tomorrow morning’s breakfast.

Most importantly, he no longer had to be dragged down by her.

"My fiancee, Wen Zhi," Bo Ye said.

"She can’t speak. Take care of her."

The relationship between the two men seemed to be fairly cordial.

At those words, the woman beside Shen Dan happily looped her arm through his. "President Bo, don’t underestimate our Ah Dan. He’s busy most of the time. At first I always got angry with him, but later, after reading the reports, I learned he often goes to orphanages and places like that. As for sign language, he learned it long ago."

"Ah Wen."

The man smiled indulgently at her words, and their exchanged glances were full of intimacy.

Wen Zhi stared blankly, the blade in her heart sinking a little deeper.

"President Bo, then I wish you and Miss Wen a happy marriage and many children soon."

Shen Dan said with cultivated grace, looking sincerely at the two of them.

Bo Ye’s expression did not change in the slightest at this. There was neither the joy of becoming a father soon nor any tenderness of engagement.

Meanwhile, Wen Zhi’s eyes remained half-hidden beneath thick, heavy lashes. The two protagonists of the engagement banquet seemed, somehow, worlds apart.

Bo Ye gave a quiet "Mm," then picked up a glass of champagne and took Wen Zhi away. Her legs remained weak, as though she had only just learned contact with the floor. He led her through several rounds of toasts. She noticed that, aside from Shen Dan, almost everyone looked at her with hostility, while the man beside her paid no mind, concerned only with mechanically dragging her along to drink.

Suddenly, Bo Ye was called away by his father, and she lost her only support entirely. The moment the warmth at her side vanished, she realized just how cold the villa’s surroundings truly were.

Wen Zhi asked a server for a blanket. She could not speak, nor did she possess enough knowledge to move with ease through a world of power and prestige.

Her presence would only make everyone uncomfortable.

She found a corner and sat down. The villa’s lofty eaves obscured most of the light from this little sanctuary. Looking around, she could only make out blurry silhouettes.

She let her head droop and studied the floor beneath her feet.

She did not know where Bo Ye was. Only now and then, when she raised her head, could she immediately spot the person at the center of the room. He stood amid the crowd, talking and laughing with ease; as for the name Wen Zhi, perhaps it had already been cast beyond the clouds by him.

Her heart ached faintly, and her head lowered again.

—

After a long while, her eyelids grew heavy and closed on their own. Leaning against a pillar, she dozed lightly.

Bo Ye drank a mouthful of warm water, and the thick haze of alcohol pressing against his chest was finally eased.

His tolerance was not bad, but even he could not withstand this crowd’s manner of offering him one toast after another under the guise of blessings.

Far from the noise and bustle, he glanced over and saw the sleeping face of the girl in the corner. The dark dress she wore seemed, in that patch of shadow, as though it might swallow her whole.

But how could it? The exposed skin was pale and delicate, and her small face in profile, lit by the dim lamps, seemed to provide its own illumination.

There was no doubt she was beautiful.

It was only a pity that her thoughts could not be a little simpler.

Only then did he look away.

Not far off, Ren Wu jogged over.

"Look into why hardly anyone from the Wen family came."

The Bo family’s prestige was unmatched in all of W City. With so many well-known figures from political circles coming to the engagement banquet to show their support, Jiang Shiwei’s fawning intentions were laid bare for all to see.

"I heard the Wen family’s younger daughter is celebrating her birthday today."

"She has a younger sister too?"

"Yes. As far as I know, Wen Zhi had been raised in City Z because of poor health, and only returned to the city when she entered university this year. That’s probably why Miss Wen feels less attached to her family."

Just like an object that had been used to its full value could then be discarded, without needing the slightest shred of care ever again.