He Kept Me as His First Love's Stand-In, but I Saved Him First novel · Chapter 10 of 24
Chapter 10: Eleven Degrees
On the Sunday after the fever, Yu came to the annex with a cheque.
He did not knock.
He laid it on the table beside the stove, face up, and stood back with his hands in his pockets.
"Five million," he said. "Today. You've got a cough, Lu Wen will say so. Leave this afternoon."
Zhe looked at the cheque.
It was a very large number to see written on one piece of paper.
It was more than the debt and more than the lease, and nearly enough to buy Qiu's whole building.
"No," he said.
"You could have your shop by Christmas."
"I'll have it by the first of December."
"Eight more days of this." Yu's lip curled, but his voice had cracked on the middle word. "Han looks at you now. Did you notice? I catch him at it. Across the table, in the car, in the dark."
"He's looking for the song."
"He's looking at you."
"No," Zhe said. "He isn't. He wants me to stop."
Yu took the cheque back and tore it very slowly in half.
"Then I'll make sure of it," he said, and went out into the cold.
The household tea was held on the lake terrace at four.
It was an old custom, something Hanjing's mother had begun, and he kept it up: precisely, without enjoying it.
Twenty staff stood on the flagstones in good coats.
The gardener's granddaughter, six years old, in a red padded jacket, was allowed to run on the steps.
Zhe stood at the back with a paper cup, still weak, still carrying a faint ache in his chest.
Hanjing spoke a few words about the year.
Yu stood at his side with the whistle on the outside of his shirt.
Zhe heard the splash before he saw anything.
It wasn't loud. It was the sound of a stone dropped from a small height.
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