CHAPTER 357: CHAPTER 350: THE FLOWER WILL BLOOM

At the end of September, Qin Guanglin officially resigned.

He treated his acquaintances at work to a meal, which Chen Rui also attended. The atmosphere was quite joyful. Since Qin Guanglin still had to go home to take care of his pregnant wife, no one urged him to drink. They simply made a token toast.

Yu Le could be considered half an apprentice to Qin Guanglin and found it especially hard to part, getting inadvertently drunk and calling out to his master in a slurred voice, leaving Qin Guanglin caught between laughter and tears.

"When can we expect your new work?"

After a few rounds of drinks, with the tipsy ones resting their heads on the table, Chen Rui pulled Qin Guanglin aside to talk.

"No rush, I haven’t decided on the style yet... Can you give me some guidance?" Qin Guanglin took out He Fang’s novel from his bag. Ever since He Fang told him to take on the illustration, he had kept it with him, planning to glance at it whenever idle. Yet, after nearly a month, he’d hardly turned a few pages.

"You’re going to draw for this?!"

Chen Rui saw the cover of the novel in Qin Guanglin’s hand and clearly showed surprise. He pulled the book from Qin Guanglin’s grasp to have a closer look and silently observed the two signatures on the title page.

"...Do you know this author?"

"She’s my wife," Qin Guanglin said, scratching his head for no reason, "Haven’t I mentioned it before? She writes novels in her spare time."

"Your wife?!" Chen Rui was even more astonished, startling everyone nearby with his outburst, causing them to glance over.

"Keep it down... What’s the matter?"

"So ’Blossoms Bloom’ is your wife?! This... This..."

Chen Rui ran his hands over the cover but couldn’t form coherent thoughts. Seeing Qin Guanglin’s puzzled expression, he let out a sigh and explained, "I heard someone wanted to buy the book rights so I also wanted to mix in, but then I heard it wasn’t sold and I gave up. Look at that, ’waste not, want not,’ no need to purchase—directly at your disposal."

Thinking about how Qin Guanglin’s work would still be around after his departure, Chen Rui couldn’t help but chuckle as he spoke, "It’s great, tsk... I’m jealous, you see... hey, it’s really good."

"..."

Qin Guanglin was speechless, never having imagined his job could intersect with He Fang’s work... After giving it some thought, and knowing that Chen Rui had the adaptation rights of several novels in hand, he came to terms with it.

"It suits you well. It’s perfect to follow up on ’The Wife’ with another similar-themed work in a different style—couldn’t be more fitting..."

Chen Rui had entertained thoughts of getting involved to help create a hit, especially for Qin Guanglin as his next major work. Before he could act, though, Qin Guanglin had already tendered his resignation, which had quelled his enthusiasm. Now, to his surprise, there was an unexpected delight.

"Wait... which company wanted to buy the rights?"

Qin Guanglin’s curiosity blazed.

"Trade secret."

"Fine then..."

The farewell dinner ended with Chen Rui beaming joyfully, grinning ear to ear as he left. Having drunk a bit too, Qin Guanglin called a designated driver, sitting half-awake in the passenger seat, and when they passed by the office, he suddenly turned his head and glanced through the car window up at the eighth floor.

That place held four and a half years of his youth.

From the age of twenty-five to nearly thirty, the best years of his life had been there. Now, it was finally time to say goodbye to that familiar building.

...

...

The complex emotions lasted just one night. The next day, Qin Guanglin felt reborn.

He was free.

As if he had shed some shackles, no longer needing to drive to work every day and clock in, the sunshine seemed much brighter.

"Why did you seem so down yesterday and suddenly change today?" He Fang noticed Qin Guanglin’s changes. Sitting at the dining table, she watched him humming a tune while bringing out dishes and asked.

"I, from today, am free."

"Oh."

"I’m going to be a full-time dad now. Aren’t you excited? Aren’t you happy?" Qin Guanglin propped his elbow on the table, looking at He Fang with joy.

He Fang snorted dismissively, uninterested in indulging him, "You are thirty years old, stop being so childish."

"Where am I being childish? ...I’m still months away from thirty. I’ll only turn thirty by the lunar calendar after the New Year; I’m still twenty-nine by the solar calendar."

Qin Guanglin corrected her very seriously, "As long as I’m not thirty years old, I’m still a youth every day."

"Okay okay, you’re young."

There was no work on National Day, and after breakfast, they took a stroll together in the community downstairs, sat under the pagoda tree for a while, and then it was lunchtime. Qin Guanglin wasn’t hungry, but He Fang, the pregnant woman, needed to eat. With a big belly, she had to have smaller, more frequent meals. Earlier in the pregnancy, when it was not yet the latter stages and he was still working, he could only manage to buy her low-fat dairy products to take to school. Now, with the conditions right, he had started arranging five meals a day for her.

It was tiring, but it was just for these few months, and no matter how exhausting, he had to persist.

If they didn’t want a second child, it would be just these few months of exhaustion in his lifetime. Qin Guanglin was happily tired, wiping the sweat beads from his forehead as he peeked out of the kitchen to glance at He Fang, his motivation through the roof.

"I’ve really shortchanged you by resigning, you know?" he said, talking to He Fang from the kitchen.

"How have I been shortchanged?"

"Didn’t you say someone wanted to buy the rights to your work? Chen Rui also intended to do so. If I hadn’t resigned, you could have sold it to Chen Rui, and he would definitely have given it to me to draw—now that I’ve resigned, after I draw it, it still has to be first published on Chen Rui’s platform. You tell me, isn’t that a loss?"

"How can you calculate it like that? Him buying it and giving it to me to draw is not the same as you drawing it directly for me."

"...Right, haha. When will you write something new? From now on, I will specialize in turning the novels you write into comics."

"No rush; I’ll think about it slowly."

After that novel ended, He Fang did not pick up a pen again.

She was a creator. Writing novels was just a hobby, creating new stories was what she liked, not repeating herself, not doing the same thing over and over again.

She wrote this part because she had regrets, so she rewrote it to change the ending.

"The flowers will bloom soon."

Qin Guanglin took off his apron and came out of the kitchen, noticing He Fang sitting on a stool by the corner near the potted flower, and casually mentioned.

"Yes, they are about to bloom."

"This plant..." Qin Guanglin leaned in to look at the flower bud, and recalling her pen name, he asked out of curiosity, "Does it have a story?"

"A story... No."

He Fang had not mentioned this flower on that day at Emei Golden Summit; after all, it was just her guess, with no solid evidence to prove that time travel was because of it.

After hesitating for a moment, she was helped up by Qin Guanglin to sit at the dining table before starting to speak: "But last time, it hadn’t bloomed for ten years."

"Hmm? That’s amazing?" Qin Guanglin looked back in surprise, "But it blooms every year."

"Yes, that’s why I think..."

He Fang relayed her entire hypothesis, blowing on the soup bowl and saying, "It’s very likely that there was some mysterious power in that one flower, and now this one is no longer that same flower."

Qin Guanglin fell silent for a long while, then nodded, "That’s quite mystical."

"Regardless, it’s fine as long as we’re good now. Let the past be the past. It’s also nice to just take care of a normal flower." He Fang smiled, "They are just similar after all..."

She halted mid-sentence, her eyelashes trembling twice, then she bowed her head to take a sip of soup, casually calling out to him, "Eat up before it gets cold."

"I’m afraid if I develop an appetite, there won’t be any left for you. You eat your fill first, and then I will start." Qin Guanglin said with a smile as he helped her with the food onto her plate, "Don’t just drink soup; eat some rice too."

"Okay."

They didn’t cook much for lunch; Qin Guanglin wanted to maintain a consistent diet with her and ate not too much either. Recently, He Fang had been controlling her weight very steadily; she refrained from stuffing herself after feeling full, increased her exercise a bit, and thus easily solved the problem of excess nutrition through these combined efforts.

After lunch and a walk, He Fang returned to the bedroom, drew the curtains, and napped. Once she was asleep, Qin Guanglin carefully got out of bed to the living room, closed the bedroom door behind him, and squatted in front of the cluster of flower buds.

Similar flowers...

The last piece of the puzzle in his heart finally fit into place.

Finding that Anya which He Fang mentioned out of perhaps millions, or even tens of billions of sperm accumulated over a few days was obviously unrealistic; He Fang was not such an unrealistic idealist, self-deception wasn’t her style.

Turns out, she had always been the most clear-sighted person.

Qin Guanglin quietly looked at the flower buds in front of him for a long time before finally letting out a deep sigh.

Ignorance is bliss.