Chapter 65: North City

Chapter 65: Beicheng

No artist does not love their muse.

Even if Bai Li was not an artist, Fang Ye was most certainly her muse.

Bai Li patiently spent over twenty minutes sharing the interesting events of the past few days. Even while deliberately exercising restraint, her gaze still occasionally drifted toward the man's profile, where a subtle stud earring hung, adding a touch of sensual atmosphere to his aura.

He seemed to be looking at something, his expression serious and sharp.

For a fleeting second, Bai Li fell into a trance.

When she snapped back to reality, Fang Ye's eyes were already fixed on her, carrying a gentler warmth in their depths than just a moment ago.

"What are you daydreaming about? Are you sleepy?"

"Not sleepy." Bai Li quickly bit her lip and shook her head, banishing the lingering infatuation in her heart. Unwilling to hang up the video call just yet, she naturally thought of another topic: "Brother, what kind of place is Beicheng?"

She was about to head to Beicheng to attend university—the very same university Fang Ye attended.

She was endlessly curious about it.

She had once searched for information about the city online, but the answers she found were vague and ambiguous.

Some said the city was cold and indifferent; while outwardly prosperous and beautiful, inwardly it devoured the dreams of countless outsiders.

Others said that although the city was not the capital, it was a super-tier metropolis with more opportunities than the capital, offering absolute freedom.

Beneath the trending comments of netizens, the tags associated with Beicheng were forever "loneliness" and "success."

This ambiguous unfamiliarity only magnified the fear within a person's heart.

Yet Bai Li could not generate a single trace of rejection, because... Fang Ye was there.

"Beicheng." Fang Ye paused for a second, sensing the young girl's nervous state of mind, and replied very gently, "It's a city with many parasol trees, plenty of scenery suitable for you to paint, and numerous ancient structures. Don't be afraid."

Tonight's night sky was filled with countless stars, and the evening breeze became lost in the young girl's eyes.

Whether it was Bai Li's imagination or not, she managed to catch a hint of comfort in his words, and she began to imagination long streets lined with parasol trees, along with Fang Ye standing beneath them.

The sultry heat radiated everywhere, making her cheeks burn uncontrollably.

Mimicking his posture, Bai Li cupped her chin and smiled as she nodded, "Mm, I'm not afraid."

...

Speaking of going to Beicheng.

However, before leaving Lingjiang, Bai Li had many issues to resolve.

Her first task was to find a courier station in Beicheng and ship all the new clothes Fang Ye had previously bought for her over there.

In this batch of clothing, more than half were brand new. She hadn't even had the chance to wear them before they were constantly being shipped to various places by different delivery personnel.

In late August, she received her full month's salary. The tavern owner was a kind person; seeing that she often helped attract tourists and boost business, he gave her an extra thousand yuan, bringing her total to six thousand yuan flat.

As he handed it to Bai Li, he smiled and said, "Study hard, and when you have time in the future, come back to Lingjiang to visit more often."

Bai Li accepted her wages. This was only the second time in real life that she had earned money with her own two hands. The people here were exceptionally kind, and Bai Li felt a deep sense of gratitude.

"Thank you, Brother Zhang. I will come back often."

Holding the money cautiously, as she passed by a shopping mall, she happened to catch sight of a long, thick scarf and found herself rooted to the spot.

Beicheng was not a southern city; it would start snowing as early as December.

She spent five hundred yuan to buy that scarf, intending to give it to Fang Ye when the weather turned cold.

On the very last night before leaving Lingjiang, dark clouds that had gathered in the sky for a long time finally broke, turning into a torrential downpour in the blink of an eye. The window of the room Bai Li rented got jammed on something and refused to budge, leaving a gap where rain mixed with cold wind constantly whipped into the room.

Gritting her teeth, she could only cover her basins and quilts and move them all into the living room. Her bed, however, was already soaked through by the rain, and the floor was covered in mottled puddles.

The rain grew heavier and heavier.

There was no way anyone could sleep in this room tonight.

Standing barefoot in the rain, Bai Li had no choice but to take out her phone and send a message to Fang Ye.

[Bai Li: Brother, can I sleep in your room tonight?]

She worried for a long time, figuring that given Fang Ye's busy habits, it would probably take a while for him to reply.

Besides, she couldn't just walk in directly; nobody knew if there might be things inside that Fang Ye wouldn't want others to see.

But very soon, a reply came through.

[Fang Ye: Sure. What happened to your room?]

Bai Li retreated two steps to the doorway, took a video of the precarious and miserable state of her wind-and-rain-battered room, and sent it to the chat window.

[Bai Li: The window broke and won't close. Right now, I feel like a monkey trapped in a tropical rainforest.]

This description was thoroughly ungraceful, yet remarkably apt.

Especially when paired with the strands of hair soaked by rain while she was rescuing her basins, her reflection in the glossy glass made her look both pathetic and comical.

Fang Ye replied even faster: [I'll have someone from the apartment complex deal with it tomorrow. You... little monkey, go sleep in my room. Don't catch a cold.]

The teasing in those words was too deliberate to ignore.

Blushing, Bai Li replied with a [Okay.]

Even so, she didn't just leave things as they were.

A girl's thoughts are delicate; she couldn't bear to let the rain ruin the large bed, and she was even more terrified that this incident would cause the landlord to make Fang Ye pay for damages. So, she hunted down a large piece of shock-proof plastic sheeting from a delivery box, carefully wiped it clean with tissues, and spread it out over the bed piece by piece.

After making sure the rainwater wouldn't seep through, she finally turned and walked out, bypassed the living room, and opened the door to Fang Ye's room.

A sea of white met her eyes. Wherever Fang Ye lived was always impeccably clean, devoid of any superfluous decorations.

Inhaling the lingering woody fragrance remaining in the air, Bai Li suddenly felt the nervous sensation of having covertly trespassed into someone else's world.

She walked into the shower room to wash up, wrapped her damp hair in a towel, and cautiously lay down on the bed, finally letting out a sigh of relief.

The next second, however, she couldn't help but bury her face in the pillow.

This was the room where Fang Ye slept, and that pleasant scent came directly from the bedsheets.

Night fell completely, painting the horizon in an eerie orange-red. The bed was positioned very close to the floor-to-ceiling window, and Bai Li only had to reach out her hand to touch the icy glass.

She poked her head out from under the quilt, raised a hand to lightly trace a Q-version portrait on the pane, only to wipe it away because it didn't match Fang Ye's temperament.

Then, she gently wrote a single character for "Ye" upon the glass.

Once this year passed, she would turn eighteen.

She would systematically and orderly become an adult.

She would finally possess the qualification, by worldly standards, to truly like someone.

Yet why... was the person she liked still so impossibly far away from her?

Outside the window that night, lightning flashed and thunder rumbled, while the wind forced its way through every gap in the door, emitting a suppressed, sobbing wail.

Bai Li slept restlessly.

Perhaps because she was heading to a much more unfamiliar place tomorrow, her psychological pressure was heavy, and nightmares plagued her repeatedly.

That dream played before Bai Li's eyes like a movie, yet when the next day arrived, Bai Li couldn't remember a single detail of it, leaving her waking up with hot tears continuously streaming down the corners of her eyes.

She sat up and clutched her chest.

Though she couldn't clearly recall what kind of dream it was, the lingering feeling of regret felt as though it had melted into her bones.

She thought.

When she had the chance, she should visit a temple to pray.

Or perhaps see a therapist.

Such a dream was simply too bizarre.