I Like You Too.
How difficult was it to like someone? And how simple?
Sometimes it required a long stretch of time, accumulating bit by bit. Other times, all it took was one glance at a particular moment.
How difficult was it to confirm that you liked someone? And how simple?
Sometimes, even after spending a long time deliberately trying to sort it out, you still could not make sense of it. Yet sometimes, just when you silently opened the door to your heart and stretched out a little feeler, only intending to test things out, it just so happened to connect with the feeler hidden deep inside the other person.
Because Fang Anyu had been touching cold water while wiping the flower leaves, his fingertips were icy cold. The moment he held Jun Yueyue’s face, Jun Yueyue woke from that drunken, sunset-warmed state.
But as she watched Fang Anyu draw closer and closer, she felt as if countless rabbits were jumping wildly inside her chest, as if they were about to crack open her ribcage and leap out.
Fang Anyu was half-kneeling on the floor. Jun Yueyue was still curled up, hugging herself tightly. When their lips touched, Jun Yueyue was still trying to retreat, but behind her was the back of the sofa, and in front of her was Fang Anyu’s pursuing breath. It was completely different from his cold fingers, scorching and burning hot, leaving her with nowhere to avoid.
Their lips met. Jun Yueyue’s eyelashes trembled slightly, but Fang Anyu closed his eyes. Holding her face, he gently moved against her lips.
She did not refuse…
Fang Anyu’s dimple appeared silently at the corner of his mouth.
What Anyan had said in the car today was true. Fang Anyu was indescribably happy.
She liked him too! She liked him, did not want to divorce him, and was even willing to give up the Jun family for him. Yet she had never told him—
Fang Anyu did not sense Jun Yueyue rejecting him, so he assumed he had already received permission. His actions gradually became bolder. One hand held Jun Yueyue’s face, while the other hooked her up from the sofa and pulled her tightly into his arms!
Jun Yueyue had never seen Fang Anyu like this before. Her hands rested on his shoulders, and she parted her lips slightly in surprise, which only made Fang Anyu’s movements more convenient.
What was going on? Could he somehow have heard what she had just said?!
Jun Yueyue leaned against the sofa, tilting her head back to cooperate with Fang Anyu’s movements. Her brain had been stirred into a pot of porridge by him. The thought even flashed through her mind… Could he be pretending to be deaf?
But in reality, this was indeed a beautiful misunderstanding.
What Fang Anyan had said to Fang Anyu during the day was—
I don’t know what purpose she has. She clearly liked me for so many years before, but now she’s changed too quickly. Brother, you need to be careful. Don’t let her deceive you.
She even told Old Master Jun that she likes you and wants to have your child. That sounds fake the moment you hear it. She said she wouldn’t divorce you, right? Brother, don’t believe her words so easily. I’ll find a time to have a proper talk with her…
Fang Anyan had laid out all his thoughts to Fang Anyu. He had even analysed when Jun Yueyue had begun changing her attitude, and had told Fang Anyu about how she had previously drugged the soup and planned to serve it to him. He only wanted Fang Anyu to be a little more alert around Jun Yueyue and not always be led around by her.
But Fang Anyu automatically filtered out all the many things Fang Anyan had said. He only remembered that Jun Yueyue liked him, refused to divorce him, argued with Old Master Jun, and even wanted to have his child…
As for those conspiracy-like guesses, they all went in one ear and out the other. His heart had turned toward her, placing a filter over Jun Yueyue more than six hundred times stronger, filtering all of it away.
In truth, Fang Anyu had always felt very inferior deep down. Because he was not normal, he always brought all kinds of trouble to others. He had too little contact with people, and the things he personally experienced were too limited. So when Jun Yueyue merely treated him a little more normally, it became “being good to him.”
This little bit of “goodness” was the only thing Fang Anyu had apart from what his family gave him. That was why he treasured it especially. The two of them were also husband and wife, a relationship that should be intimate. Jun Yueyue’s sudden change made him feel too many things he had never felt before, too much amazement, too many thoughts of, *So this is what it’s like.*
So he was like a little dog that remembered food but not beatings. He had long forgotten all the bad things the original body had done before, filtered them away with a six-hundred-times filter, and only remembered that Fang Anyan had said she said she liked him!
When he had first heard it, Fang Anyu had not dared believe it. After all, Jun Yueyue had rejected him many times and avoided his questions many times. So he endured and did not ask, even though enduring it was very difficult. Even after returning home, he did not dare ask immediately. He thought he would try once more at night. Hadn’t she wanted to see whether he had been damaged by the cold water?
If she did not refuse, then what Anyan said must be true.
In order not to make himself too obvious, Fang Anyu immediately found something to do when he returned home. He wiped the flower leaves one by one, soaking his hands in cold water to try to calm himself down.
But he could not help turning back to look at Jun Yueyue. Today’s sunset was truly too warm. She lay on the sofa, wrapped entirely in a layer of warm yellow light. The way she looked with her eyes closed was far too much like an orange cat he had once seen sunning itself by someone else’s fence.
Back then, he had wanted so much to touch it, but the moment he reached out, the cat had alertly run away. He had wanted a cat so much once, but in order not to make himself troublesome, he had never opened his mouth to say it.
He could not help approaching Jun Yueyue. He could not help reaching out, just as he had once tried to touch that cat, to touch her face. He could not help drawing closer to test whether she would alertly run away, whether she liked him, whether it was as Anyan had said.
He was twenty-five years old. For so many years, his life had been monotonous, like endlessly repeating black-and-white squares. Fang Anyu had once not even dared to own a cat, afraid it would not like him, afraid it would fall ill, afraid it would die. He had not even had the courage to ask for one.
But now, holding Jun Yueyue, he felt as if he possessed a treasure he had never dared imagine having in this lifetime.
He was a little too excited, so his enthusiasm also became a little too much. Jun Yueyue was kneaded into his arms, pressed so deeply into the sofa that she almost sank into it. For the first time, she felt that she was actually so small and delicate…
“Wait… mm…” Jun Yueyue could not understand why Fang Anyu had suddenly gone crazy. Once her excessive shock passed, she felt that he absolutely could not be pretending. The book had written that he was deaf and mute. He definitely had not heard what she said just now.
Jun Yueyue pressed against his shoulders and pushed him once, then patted his back, signalling for him to stop for a moment. Fang Anyu propped himself up and looked down at Jun Yueyue from above. That gaze… made Jun Yueyue’s scalp tingle a little.
She wiped her wet lips with the back of her hand and somewhat flusteredly felt around on the sofa. Finally, she found her phone in the gap and quickly typed for Fang Anyu to see:
Why are you suddenly like this?
Fang Anyu’s expression was frighteningly gentle, carrying the kind of precious care one would use when looking at something fragile. After reading what Jun Yueyue had typed, he did not answer her question. Instead, he slowly leaned down again. His curls fell over Jun Yueyue’s forehead, and the tip of his nose touched hers. Very intimately, he rubbed against her.
Jun Yueyue’s face, which had not reddened even after that kiss just now, slowly turned red because of this light rubbing of his nose against hers.
The ambiguous atmosphere was like thick honey congealing around the two of them. Jun Yueyue’s breathing became a little uneven. Fortunately, Fang Anyu did not remain in this state for too long. Soon, he held her and turned over, lying down on the sofa too.
How big could a sofa be? One adult lying on it was just right. Two adults lying on it made it far too crowded. They were almost face-to-face. Jun Yueyue was squeezed against the back of the sofa, with nowhere to put her hands and feet. Her clothes had been rubbed wrinkled, and Fang Anyu’s hand was still resting on her waist.
Her mind was full of questions. She grabbed her phone and, in that cramped space, typed with difficulty:
What exactly is wrong with you?!
Fang Anyu’s dimple was deep. He took the phone and typed:
I know everything now.
Jun Yueyue looked blank.
What do you know?
That you like me.
When Fang Anyu said this, Jun Yueyue’s heart gave a thump. Her brain short-circuited again. Was he really fucking pretending to be deaf?!
She stared wide-eyed at Fang Anyu, her shock overwhelming even her shyness.
But then Fang Anyu deleted the message and typed again:
I like you too. I also want to have children with you. If we have children, then we won’t need to divorce, right?
The moment Jun Yueyue saw “have children,” she immediately understood. Her suspended heart returned to its place… She knew it. He could not have heard her question, and even more so, he could not be pretending to be deaf…
Eh. Wait?
She exhaled and stared at the words on the screen—
I like you too.
Only belatedly did she realise that Fang Anyu was confessing to her. Her face and throat burned at the same time. This, this, this… this was not right!
What she had said to Old Master Jun was fake! What children… that was all said deliberately to anger Old Master Jun!
Jun Yueyue hurriedly typed on the phone:
Fang Anyan told you that, right! That was fak—
Jun Yueyue suddenly froze mid-action. From the corner of her eye, she could see that Fang Anyu was looking at the screen very attentively. He was also very nervous, because the hand he had around her waist tightened unconsciously, gripping her waist until it hurt.
It was not hard for her to imagine his always cautious attitude. Everything he did was careful. Even the two times he had asked about divorce, even his attempt to seek intimacy this morning—so long as she showed even the slightest hint of refusal, he immediately shrank back and absolutely would not pester her…
She knew that as long as she refused and explained clearly, Fang Anyu definitely would not say anything. He would apologise, get up, and continue wiping flower leaves. His deepest form of entanglement would merely be wanting, without any bottom line, to become her lover. After being refused by her, it would become being satisfied just to look at her once.
This kind of person, who absolutely gave no one any burden and practically had the words *bully me however you want, I don’t mind* written on his face, made Jun Yueyue think of what her mother had said when she abandoned her during the apocalypse.
However they treated her, it was fine. She did not matter.
How could it not matter? She also knew pain, knew hunger, knew cold and heat, knew fear.
What difference was there between Fang Anyu and the helpless, powerless self back then, who could only be abandoned and slaughtered by others?
Jun Yueyue knew that she absolutely should not respond to him at this moment. She still had a huge pile of things unresolved. From beginning to end, they had only known each other for a few days. Had she transmigrated, or been reborn into someone else’s body in the past? Could all of this even just be an illusion her unwilling soul had created after death?
Fondness and misunderstandings had both come at such a bad time. But facing Fang Anyu, who was fragile and soft like her past self, facing the heart he tremblingly and cautiously offered up to her, how could she bear to shatter it or make him stuff it back inside?
Even though she did not know what would happen in the future, and could not even confirm whether the feelings carried in Fang Anyu’s heart were freshness, dependence, or love, Jun Yueyue’s fingers still disobediently deleted the word “fake.”
She held the phone and fell into a long silence. She held it until her fingers went numb. Reason and emotion tugged back and forth. The three words “Fang Anyu” symbolised responsibility and trouble that she could not shake off. But these three words also represented the magical existence that could always make her laugh for no reason.
But making a choice was too hard. No one could understand Jun Yueyue’s desperate struggle right now. She was afraid. She did not dare admit it. She held the phone, the screen going dark then lighting up again, lighting up then going dark. For a long time, she did not type a single word.
If the person beside her were anyone else, they would have long lost patience and stopped waiting. With such a long struggle and hesitation, no one could avoid retreating, because when it came to feelings, this was far too impure.
But Fang Anyu was different. He had too much patience. What he wanted was far too simple. He did not even need the pure, reckless certainty that most people needed. He only wanted Jun Yueyue’s answer.
Later, Jun Yueyue’s fingers no longer worked properly from holding the same position for too long. Yet Fang Anyu still did not move at all. He simply stared at the dark screen together with her.
Finally, the sun had completely set, and the room darkened. Fang Anyu finally moved. Jun Yueyue closed her eyes, thinking he was going to give up. But he only slightly turned his head and kissed her cheek, carrying a strong sense of comfort.
Jun Yueyue turned to look at him. His expression was as gentle as ever. He had not been hurt by her long struggle. It seemed that even if Jun Yueyue could not personally admit anything today, he would still be fine.
This soft knife was even more powerful than forcing her hand to type the words. Once again, her hand refused to obey her brain. She lit up the phone and continued typing:
What he said is true.
Fang Anyu held Jun Yueyue. When he saw this line, he did not show any wildly overjoyed, excessive emotion. He only kissed her cheek again, took the phone down, stared closely at Jun Yueyue for a while, and then his lips touched hers once more.
This kiss was especially lingering. By the time it ended, Jun Yueyue’s breathing and heart were both a tangled mess.
She regretted it again. What should she do? He was not even that excited. It was not as if he would have been devastated if she refused. She really did not have to—
“Ah!”
Jun Yueyue cried out in shock. Under the darkening sky, she stared at Fang Anyu, whose face was pressed close to hers.
Fang Anyu held Jun Yueyue’s hand and personally took her to inspect the place that had not been damaged by the cold water.
Jun Yueyue fully felt his excitement and enthusiasm. The regret in her heart was instantly squeezed away until it vanished like smoke. She could not help bursting into laughter.
But although she laughed, and although she did not even take her hand back, Fang Anyu did not continue doing anything. Jun Yueyue understood what he meant. He was simply telling her that it was not broken.
Actually, it was broken. He himself had gone bad, Jun Yueyue thought.
When the two of them sat up from the cramped sofa, Jun Yueyue turned her head to look at Fang Anyu. She slowly inhaled, then slowly exhaled.
She regretted it, but it was too late.
She had already provoked someone. Their captain Lei Ze had once said that fooling around and not paying was not manly; promising to protect someone and then failing to do so would make your family jewels rot; and if you provoked a decent person who was not for sale and did not take responsibility, you would be torn apart by zombies.
Fang Anyu was a decent person who was not for sale. Jun Yueyue had been torn apart by zombies before. It was too terrifying. She did not dare provoke someone and then refuse to take responsibility.
She stood up and turned on the lights. Under the brightly lit room, she met Fang Anyu’s gaze again. She smiled, and tears fell with that smile.
She… had family again.
This time, you must never abandon me.
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