This scene was actually quite strange.
The two of them sat there—Wen Zenian perched primly on the edge of the sofa, with Meng Ning half-reclining behind her, gently massaging the back of her neck.
The posture was too cozy, too intimate and everyday. Logically, the conversation could have revolved around what they’d each eaten or done over the past few days, the grumpy cat Meng Ning had run into, or whether Wen Zenian had let slip any curses amid her business frustrations.
But in reality, as they sat there, they were talking about parting ways.
Meng Ning’s tone was remarkably even-keeled. Now it was her turn to lay out the logic for Wen Zenian. “I know if I don’t pull myself together, you won’t feel right heading off to Paris. But have you ever heard the saying? ‘A woman who isn’t ruthless can’t hold her empire.’ Haha, yeah.”
“You know my mom—your Aunt Shiyang. She was too soft-hearted, always unable to let me go on my own. But what did that leave her with?” Meng Ning let out a dry laugh here.
“You’re a modern woman. You need to toughen up a little, okay? And honestly, it’s hard for me to get better when I’m with you. I keep wondering why I’m so blissfully happy. Once you’re gone, who knows—maybe that’s when I’ll turn the corner.”
Wen Zenian fell silent for a long moment. “So what you’re saying is that I’m the one holding you back?”
“Haha.” Meng Ning replied, “I’d love to put it that way, but we both know it’s not true. I’m not scared to be straight with you—it’s me who’s terrified of dragging you down.”
I’m afraid you’d abandon the life you deserve for my sake.
I’m afraid you’d stay by my side like Shi Yang, only to end up with a life devoid of joy.
I couldn’t bear that weight.
Wen Zenian gave a faint nod, and Meng Ning’s hands paused at the nape of her neck, ceasing their motion.
Wen Zenian seemed to curl her tongue thoughtfully before asking, “So you’re saying we’re just… over? Just like that?”
Outside on the terrace, waves crashed against the shoreline, dissolving into foam that scattered like the Little Mermaid herself, vanishing into the ether.
“Mm.”
Wen Zenian pressed for confirmation. “So we’re breaking up, then? Right?” To Meng Ning’s surprise, she let out a low, soft chuckle.
Meng Ning thought, What’s so funny about that?
Wen Zenian answered quickly enough. “It feels absurd to me. Sitting here uttering the words ‘break up’… I don’t even sound convincing. Maybe, deep down, you’ve never truly believed we were together.”
Meng Ning parted her lips, then closed them again.
Wen Zenian nodded faintly once more. “All right. I get it.”
She rose to her feet and turned to face Meng Ning. Her expression was eerily serene—overly so—with only the slightest droop at the corners of her eyes, lending her an air of quiet exhaustion.
“Can you stay the night here before you go?” she asked. “You can take the second bedroom. There’s a speedboat leaving the island first thing tomorrow. Though if you’d rather leave now, I can arrange one right away.”
She regarded Meng Ning with utter composure.
“Tomorrow morning,” Meng Ning managed, her tongue leaden. “That works.”
Wen Zenian nodded. “Feel free to use the second bedroom bathroom, then. I’m going to shower—I’m beat, and I’ve got an early meeting tomorrow.”
With that, she headed toward the master bedroom.
Meng Ning lingered on the sofa for another two minutes before rising and making her way to the second bedroom’s bathroom.
She stood under the showerhead, lost in a daze for a full two minutes, reflecting that the words were finally out—and it wasn’t the end of the world.
Wen Zenian had dodged her for days precisely to avoid this conversation. When she’d said, with all those meaningful hints, “Don’t rush,” Meng Ning hadn’t missed it. Wen Zenian had wanted her not to hurry out to the island for this talk.
As if Meng Ning were still tangled in the emotional whirlwind of that fateful night. As if stalling would somehow shift her resolve.
But she knew better. It wouldn’t.
She’d wanted to voice these words for far too long—perhaps for the dozen-plus years since she was fourteen, mulling them over day and night. Right now, Wen Zenian didn’t want to leave; Meng Ning understood that perfectly. In the heat of passion, neither wanted the other to go.
But what about later? Someday—maybe when half her life had slipped away—Wen Zenian would sit alone in her study one evening, pour herself a glass of white wine, and realize: This isn’t right. My life should amount to so much more.
Meng Ning couldn’t bear to reach that point and beg forgiveness then.
Some words terrified her to even contemplate saying. But once spoken, they were just… words. She wasn’t crumbling in despair. She was right here, under the five-star hotel’s luxurious shower, smoothing lavender-scented body wash over her skin.
Then she flung herself onto the second bedroom’s equally sumptuous goose-down bed.
In that moment, she felt a flicker of relief that she’d chased Wen Zenian all the way to C Sea Island for this talk.
She hadn’t wanted to rouse anyone in the middle of the night to ferry her off the island, so overnight it was. They were worlds apart in the suite, but still sharing the same roof.
Meng Ning curled into one corner of the bed, scarcely daring to shift position.
Anyone who’s lain awake all night, listening intently to the sea, would notice how the waves evolve. Thick and resonant in the dead of night, growing lighter and more ethereal come dawn.
As the surf thinned to a misty whisper, Meng Ning heard Wen Zenian’s voice drift from afar, murmuring softly, “Turn on the lights.”
But that particular enchantment was no longer cast for her benefit.
The master bedroom light flickered on in response. The second bedroom remained shrouded in profound darkness.
Wen Zenian’s ablutions and footfalls were whisper-quiet. Yet the administrative suite was so vast that Meng Ning’s straining ears couldn’t even capture those final, precious sounds she yearned to etch into memory like grooves on a black vinyl record.
Until the gentle click of the door—Wen Zenian was gone.
Meng Ning twitched her legs ever so slightly beneath the covers. Part of her wanted to lift an arm across her eyes, but the gesture felt too theatrical.
She stayed put.
The bed stretched vast as the ocean itself. She huddled in the corner, arms crossed over her chest, knees drawn up tight.
Wen Zenian had once likened the pose to a fetus nestled in its amniotic sac.
Dawn finally broke, and Meng Ning rose to freshen up.
In the secondary living room, she spotted the white sofa and low table they so often shared. An ashtray pinned down a note there.
Wen Zenian’s script was ever graceful—
“Room card here. Drop the temporary pass at the dock office.
—G”
Meng Ning stared at that lone “G” for ages. Wen Zenian’s English cursive was exquisite, mirroring her poised elegance: beautiful, authoritative, touched with pride.
No one could doubt she was destined for a truly splendid life.
The thermos from the low table had vanished.
Meng Ning cracked a wry, self-mocking grin. Another thermos bites the dust—over a hundred bucks gone.
She fished into her pocket and retrieved the lighter she’d swiped from Wen Zenian ages ago, setting it alongside the room card and the note.
That lighter had kept her company through half the night on her trek toward the Black Sea, tucked in her coat pocket beside her own and the second-hand one she’d meant for Wen Zenian.
Then she’d abandoned the coat on the beach and waded into the waves, mind fogged.
Later, the search team recovered the coat. With Wen Zenian tied up at the hospital, Qi Xiao had emptied the pocket of those three lighters and handed them back to her.
She’d been stripped bare back then—no money, no bags, not even spare underwear. Those lighters felt like the sole remnants of her old self.
Now, departing the administrative suite for the final time, she’d considered leaving the second-hand lighter too—the one she’d bought for Wen Zenian. But in the end, she pocketed it.
She fired off a WeChat to Qi Xiao: “Heading off island first. Keep crushing it at work.”
No reply—Qi Xiao must have been swamped.
At the dock, the morning mist lingered, wreathing the sea in veils. Meng Ning surrendered the temporary pass to the management office and awaited the speedboat.
It pulled in soon enough. And who should be at the helm but Xiao Zhang, beaming at the sight of her. “Meng Ning jie, you heading back?”
Meng Ning smiled faintly. “Yeah.”
“All squared away?”
“All done.”
She was the boat’s sole passenger. Xiao Zhang chatted amiably at the helm. “So, Meng Ning jie, what’s the deal with your video channel? Gotta spill sometime.”
Meng Ning quirked her lips. “Why the curiosity?”
“It’s cool—folks around you blowing up online.”
Meng Ning laughed lightly. “If I were really popping off, you’d know my handle by now.”
“Build it steady,” Xiao Zhang advised. “Those influencers? Nailing the video topics is half the battle.”
To her surprise, Meng Ning dove right into the discussion with him, full of enthusiasm.
Chatter flying, she gripped the seat’s edge and glanced back at the C Hotel—a fairy-tale confection shrouded in the boundless morning haze.
“Back to the real world at last,” she murmured inwardly, voicing the sigh that escaped every soul departing the C Hotel.
Only her dream hadn’t been a place.
It had been a person.
Meng Ning realized her sorrow wasn’t the raging torrent she’d feared.
Likely because she’d long trusted that adage deep in her bones: “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”
A dreamlike romance, all tangled and tender.
That was enough.
That very evening, Meng Ning fielded a video call from Qi Xiao. “She’s leaving?”
Meng Ning hesitated. “Uh.”
“Uh, what?” Qi Xiao pressed, flustered. “Did you know, or…?”
“I knew,” Meng Ning said, lips curving upward.
Qi Xiao caught on. “Here I thought you were glued to her hip. You jetted out to the island last night just for this talk, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“And now?”
“Part—” Meng Ning started, then faltered. Wen Zenian had nailed it—even voicing “break up” felt so surreal and detached. Subconsciously, she’d never fully bought that they were together.
Or more precisely, that they’d always end up apart.
She rephrased for Qi Xiao. “We decided to go our separate ways.”
“Temporarily, or for good?”
“For good.”
The words felt oddly foreign on her tongue.
People pledged “together forever.” Yet “forever” could wed the harsh “apart” into “apart forever,” ringing almost like a vow.
Qi Xiao gaped on the screen, clamped her mouth shut, gaped again—speechless still.
She resembled a fish gulping without bubbles. Meng Ning grinned anew.
“Hey, you…” Qi Xiao nearly blurted that she shouldn’t smile like that—some grins cut deeper than tears. But it felt unfair to say.
Without knowing Meng Ning’s hidden history, would she have even spotted the cracks in that smile?
Qi Xiao realized that some part of her didn’t even want to play peacemaker.
Their shared past weighed too heavily on both of them. People only had a pair of slender shoulders, after all—carry the burden if they could, run if they couldn’t. Just like her; she’d fled far from the north, and aside from herself, no one ever brought up those old matters.
When someone struck up a conversation with her, she was genuinely thrilled.
Maybe things were going great between her and Fang Ji. Maybe her life would just drift by, easy and uneventful.
She spoke into the video call. “So, you…”
Meng Ning replied calmly, “I’d clean the house, cook, do some volunteer work. Maybe spend more time in the sun each day. They say it’s good for your mood.”
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