Four Years Ago, Her Husband Cheated on Her Body - Chapter 8

“Mr. Assistant sent over a phone, a gift from a business partner. How should we handle it?”

Lu Min received the corporate gift meant for Jia Qiao and, holding up his spiral-bound notebook, delivered the routine notice.

The Qianhe Group’s business scope includes electronic and digital products, so business partners often sent sample devices for Jia Qiao to test. However, he had never unsealed any of them.

According to Jia Qiao himself, he didn’t have anyone he needed to contact actively. Others who needed to reach him could do so through Lu Min, making a mobile phone unnecessary.

Lu Min expected the situation to be the same this time and, after going through the motions, was preparing to put the phone away.

There were already too many phones at home. As a mute person, he used four of the latest communication devices every day, listening to Siri, Xiao Ai, and Xiao Yi, a few artificial idiots, battle it out passionately.

“Wait.”

Jia Qiao stopped him and asked without looking up.

“Does it have a SIM card?”

“…!!!”

Hearing no movement for half a minute, Jia Qiao looked up to see Lu Min holding the phone box, his mouth wide open, a look of ‘Who are you? Get off my master right now’ shock on his face.

“Is there a problem?”

Lu Min nodded emphatically and held up his spiral notebook:

‘Of course there’s a problem! I thought you would never in your life touch a cell phone—that dirty thing that causes human thought to degenerate, spirits to fall, and minds to become depraved!’

‘Have you been possessed by a ghost? Why the sudden decision to embrace modern technology?’

“You’re so noisy.” Jia Qiao pushed the notebook away and explained calmly, “The person in charge of the interface asked to communicate via WeChat, and I happen to be taking a long trip soon. It’s more convenient to use a phone.”

Even though Jia Qiao hadn’t touched a phone for several years, he knew that traveling without a phone to scan QR codes would likely be difficult.

‘A long trip? Where are you going? Why haven’t you mentioned it?’

Lu Min drew a lonely little rabbit looking tearfully at Jia Qiao.

“A last-minute decision.” Jia Qiao took out an envelope and pointed at the sender’s address. “I’m going here, to open a blind box.”

The plane soared over the city, roaring as it touched down.

Air mixed with the sweet fragrance of Osmanthus flowers rushed in. The scenery that appeared before him was slightly different from his memory, but overall, still familiar.

Jia Qiao had not used a phone for so long that a problem did indeed occur.

The location for his ride-hailing app was inaccurate. The scenic area was very large, and the drop-off point was a full two to three kilometers away from his actual destination.

Jia Qiao realized this only after walking for a while after getting out of the car. He stopped by the roadside, preparing to call another ride.

“Osmanthus cakes—freshly steamed Osmanthus cakes—sweet, sweet and delicious—”

A long, drawn-out call drifted in the wind. Jia Qiao followed the sound.

Under a huge Osmanthus tree, an old woman sat at a stall, smiling at passersby and casually calling out a few times.

That figure, that calling out, was somehow familiar.

Many years ago, Jia Qiao had also been here, listening to the same ‘sweet and delicious.’

At that time, a certain slacker had absolutely no interest in traveling. Was it really necessary to travel thousands of miles just to see some mountains and rivers?

But Zhu Nanyu was different.

He held a romantic passion for the world and was very much looking forward to their first trip together. He had meticulously planned everything, created a travel itinerary, and even coaxed and tricked Jia Qiao, saying, ” Jia Qiao, travel isn’t just about seeing the sights, it’s also about tasting the food. The Osmanthus cakes there are the best in the country.”

It was only for the sake of the ‘country’s best Osmanthus cakes’ that Jia Qiao reluctantly set aside his game and was dragged onto a plane by Zhu Nanyu to this unfamiliar city.

“Where are the Osmanthus cakes?” As soon as they landed, Jia Qiao immediately held out his hand.

“Don’t rush, I’ll take you to buy them.”

Zhu Nanyu deliberately took a detour to buy Jia Qiao the Osmanthus cakes from this old woman.

The freshly steamed Osmanthus cakes were piping hot. Jia Qiao endured the heat and took a bite. The soft, glutinous rice cake melted on his tongue, and the hidden Osmanthus fragrance spilled out.

The candied Osmanthus in the middle was just the right amount of sweet. Occasionally chewing on a small piece of crushed flower, the overflowing floral fragrance spread, as if permeating the entire golden autumn.

“Delicious!” Jia Qiao held up the remaining half of the cake and fed it to Zhu Nanyu’s mouth. “You try it.”

“Osmanthus cake is too sweet.” Zhu Nanyu, who didn’t like sweets, shook his head, pressed down on his hand, and his gaze deepened. “For sweet things, having you is enough for me.”

“Tsk, you’re so cheesy.” Jia Qiao retracted his hand and mumbled angrily, “You don’t even eat Osmanthus cake. You just said the Osmanthus cake here was delicious to trick me into traveling with you, wasting my game time!”

Years later, Jia Qiao suddenly missed the taste of the Osmanthus cake.

Following the logic from back then, coming all this way, if he didn’t eat the Osmanthus cake, it would be a wasted trip.

“Grandma,” Jia Qiao walked over. “I’ll have one portion of Osmanthus cake.”

The old woman selling Osmanthus cakes seemed to be fixed in this landscape, her expression and tone just as they were back then, perfectly matching Jia Qiao’s memory.

“You’ve come again, alone this time?” She laughed and opened the steaming bamboo steamer, as if greeting an old friend. “Where is that very handsome young man?”

Jia Qiao was surprised and blurted out, “You still remember us?”

After five or six years, the old woman, who sat here every day welcoming people, actually remembered a guest she had only met once.

“Of course I remember.” The heat blurred the old woman’s face, but her words were all the more sincere. “That young man came a few days before you and tried all the Osmanthus cakes in the city, and then he said mine was the best. I’ve been selling Osmanthus cakes for most of my life, and that was the first time anyone praised me like that.”

As she spoke, the old woman handed the packaged Osmanthus cake to Jia Qiao. “The second time he came, he brought you with him. I could tell right away.”

The old woman lowered her voice. “Young men who’ve just started dating have a very pure heart. They just want to give the best to the other person.”

“Thank you.” Jia Qiao took the Osmanthus cake and sincerely praised, “Your Osmanthus cake is the best I’ve ever eaten.”

Jia Qiao slowly enjoyed the Osmanthus cake, following the directions on the signposts and the crowd to enjoy the sights he had once seen.

At some point, the surrounding crowds had all become couples, clinging tightly to each other.

An old stone bridge appeared before him. Magpies constantly flew back and forth above and below the bridge.

It was like the bridge from the myth of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, walked on the Seventh Night of the Seventh Moon.

The two people walking in front of Jia Qiao looked very young, as young as he had been back then.

The girl was carrying a bag and looking at the scenery, holding her phone in her left hand and half a cup of milk tea in her right.

The boy next to her looked extremely nervous, his hand close to the girls tightly clenched. When they reached the bridgehead, he unclenched his fist, rubbed the sweat from his palm hard on his clothes, and mustered up all his courage to reach out. “C-can I hold your hand?”

The girl was startled at first, then her face instantly flushed red. Her eyes darted around nervously.

When she noticed that every passing couple was holding hands, she nodded very quickly. “Y-yes, you can, but you have to help me hold the milk tea!”

Watching the timid young couple lightly link fingers, their heads turned awkwardly away from each other.

Jia Qiao walked up and calmly reminded them, “You should interlock your fingers.”

“Ah?”

The young couple was startled by the sudden voice and simultaneously turned to look at Jia Qiao, their faces full of shyness.

“There’s a legend here. Lovers who interlock their fingers and walk from one end of the bridge to the other will receive the Magpie God’s blessing and can stay together until old age.”

After speaking, Jia Qiao walked around the young couple, who didn’t dare to look at each other, and walked onto the bridge alone.

The so-called ‘legend’ was nothing more than finding an excuse to hold hands with the person you liked.

Yet Zhu Nanyu was particularly superstitious about this. Whenever he encountered an effective Matchmaker Temple, a Marriage Stone, or a Wishing Well, he would pull Jia Qiao along to complete the ritual, even if it meant a detour.

But facts proved that all those things were superstitions.

He had made so many wishes for a lifetime together, but in the end, none of them came true.

“Idiot.”

After crossing the Lovers’ Bridge, the bank was only a few hundred meters from Jia Qiao’s destination. The path ahead was covered with a layer of golden Osmanthus flowers.

As dusk deepened, the afterglow of the setting sun scattered. The magpies flying around the bridge suddenly flapped their wings at the same time and flew toward the distant woods.

A few little magpies flew slower and hovered low in front of Jia Qiao’s head, as if deliberately guiding him.

“Chirp, chirp!”

Jia Qiao broke up the unfinished Osmanthus cake and shared some with them.

The little magpies were not afraid of people. They immediately fluttered over and pecked in Jia Qiao’s palm.

“Caw! Caw!”

The large magpie leading the way, seeing that the young birds hadn’t kept up, circled back and kept urging them with “caw, caw.”

The little magpies quickly flapped their wings and caught up with the main flock.

But the leading magpie didn’t fly away and continued to “caw, caw” at Jia Qiao.

“Am I being rushed too?” Jia Qiao was surprised and murmured softly, “He’s just like him.”

Urged by the magpies, Jia Qiao arrived at the location where Zhu Nanyu had stored the safety deposit box just before the sun set.

It was less that he had stored something in a safety deposit box and more that he had deliberately built a ‘save point’ here just for the purpose of storing things.

The surrounding trees were lush and green. The deposit box, placed five or six years ago, was covered with climbing vines and had become one with nature.

The magpies that had flown ahead were using the deposit box as a resting place, perched on top to preen their feathers.

Jia Qiao walked up to the box, pulled the vines aside, revealing the gear-like combination dial, and sequentially turned to the six digits that surfaced in his mind.

‘Click—’

The door of the box opened in response.

Jia Qiao took out the contents. Borrowing the last rays of the setting sun, he saw that it was a crumpled travel itinerary, and there was also a photo inside the box.

The travel itinerary was marked with different colored sticky notes. The first page was the travel plan, densely written with over a dozen items.

However, apart from a few check marks ‘√’, the majority had a triangle ‘△’ next to them.

An annotation next to it explained that ‘△’ meant ‘Let’s come together again next time.’

The item ‘Hold hands while crossing the Lovers’ Bridge’ was marked with a large hexagram next to it by someone, with a key note: ‘Must be completed.’

“So boring.”

That idiot surely didn’t plan to bring him here to see this ‘trash’ when the safe deposit box was about to expire, all while feeling smug about his own manufactured romance, right?

When would Zhu Nanyu realize that the kind of romance he perceived as ‘touching the boyfriend to tears’ could not be conveyed to Jia Qiao?

Jia Qiao put down the travel itinerary and saw that there was also a photo in the box—one that Zhu Nanyu had insisted on taking with him while crossing the Lovers’ Bridge.

To get the shot of their interlocked fingers, Zhu Nanyu himself was out of the frame. Only Jia Qiao, standing by the bridge, was exceptionally clear.

The photo was flipped over. There were a few lines of text on the back.

It wasn’t written for Jia Qiao, surprisingly.

‘To Zhu Nanyu:

It is the seventh year of our acquaintance. Perhaps our feelings will settle into calm.

If so, before that happens, please tell the story of Zhu Nanyu falling in love with Jia Qiao again.’

Stars began to twinkle, and magpies chattered around the woods.

Jia Qiao picked up the photo, shielded his eyes with it, and a smile, which had been absent for a long time and was hard to conceal, spread across his lips.

“Who wants to hear it?”