Chapter 4

Xu Cheng’an wasn’t good at sweet talk. If I worked late, he didn’t bombard me with messages asking why I wasn’t home. He quietly made dinner early and waited.

When the food cooled, he reheated it. If I still wasn’t back, he reheated it again. I told him so many times to eat first. He always agreed, and the next time he waited all the same.

After graduation, our jobs gradually became steady. His proposal involved neither a roomful of flowers nor friends cheering around us.

We had just moved into a little rented place. He spent the afternoon assembling a new bookcase, scattering sawdust across the floor.

I came home to find him crouching there, the backs of his hands dusty. He suddenly looked up.

“Shen Wangshu, would you pay a mortgage with me?”

I stared for a moment.

“What do you mean?”

He took a little box from beside the toolbox.

Inside was a ring. Nothing from an expensive brand, but it was the design I had secretly admired so often when we went shopping.

I asked whether he’d lost his mind. We were still a long way short of a down payment.

He smiled.

“We can take our time buying a home. But I need to propose first. What if, by the time we’ve saved enough, you decide I’m too old to marry?”

I laughed and cried, then held out my hand through my tears for him to put on the ring.

That night, in a room containing only a sofa and a newly assembled bookcase, we talked about our future until morning.

What sort of home we would buy. Whether we would have a cat. Who would cook and who would wash up. We even seriously discussed who would apologize first after an argument.

“Whoever’s wrong,” Cheng’an said.

I deliberately made it difficult.

“What if we both think we’re right?”

He thought for a while.

“Then we eat first. We can argue when we’re full.”

I laughed and called him hopeless. He held my hand tightly and grew very serious.

“Wangshu, I just want a quiet life with you.”

We chose September seventeenth for the wedding.

He took me to see three venues. In the end, we chose Elm Hall. It wasn’t the prettiest. It was a little old, without lavish decorations. But a tall elm stood outside the window, and at noon sunlight fell through the glass onto the aisle near the entrance.

I stood there, picturing myself walking in wearing a wedding gown.

Behind me, Cheng’an called:

“Shen Wangshu.”

“What?”

“What are you smiling about?”

I turned.

“Nothing.”

He came over, followed my gaze into the hall, and suddenly understood.

“Can’t wait to marry me?”

Blushing, I kicked him.

“Who says I want to marry you?”

He laughed and caught my hand.

“Suit yourself. I want to marry you anyway.”

Later, we argued about the wedding.

I wanted more friends there and more elaborate decorations. He insisted on cutting the budget.

I felt hurt that day, as though he didn’t take our wedding seriously. He listened without rushing to defend himself, then brought out the expenses and worked through them with me.

“Wangshu, it’s not that I don’t want to give you a grand wedding. But a wedding lasts one day. Afterward, we’ll have so many more days together. We can’t spend all the money we’ll need for our life on