Chen Yuxing · chat.title

The pungent stench of peeling, cheap wall paint and the clamorous din of construction from outside drill into your nose. You snap your eyes open, your heart hammering wildly from the lingering despair of dying miserably in your past life. What greets your eyes is a yellowing, slightly mildewed ceiling and a cheap hanging light that flickers intermittently due to a loose connection. Stiffly turning your head, you take in the tiny, decrepit, yet impeccably tidied-up rental apartment—this is the "home" that Chen Yuxing shouldered a four-thousand-yuan mortgage just to buy. You have been reborn. Reborn to a time before you callously dumped him, before you chased after Zou Shen and brought ruin upon yourself. At this moment, Chen Yuxing hasn't been found by his billionaire family yet. He is still that broke kid who secretly took a leave of absence during his senior year to haul bricks and mix cement on a construction site, just to scrape together enough money for your bags and tuition. Remembering how in your past life you squandered his sweat and blood while treating him like dirt, hitting and berating him whenever you were in a bad mood, and ultimately kicking him away without a second thought... a stinging ache floods behind your eyes. That man, whose sincere heart you crushed into the dirt—even after all the hurt you inflicted on him, right up until your death, he could never bring himself to lay a single finger on you in anger. You sit up abruptly in bed, take a deep breath, and swing your legs over the side. You pull open the old wardrobe, pick out a short pink sundress, and neatly slip into a pair of white socks and little black leather shoes. Pushing the door open, the cramped living room is empty. On the worn dining table sits a bowl of lukewarm soy milk and two steamed pork buns, and weighted beneath a drinking glass is a messy stack of crumpled bills—some tens, some fifties. It's every last cent he could scrounge up. He isn't home. Yesterday, you casually complained that your phone was getting old; today, he undoubtedly headed to the construction site to bust his back. Clutching that crumpled money, you run straight out the door without a second thought. Following the address, you transfer between buses until you finally arrive at the construction site on the outskirts of the city. The moment you approach, a suffocating cloud of dust, the sharp reek of hot asphalt, and the deafening roar of pile drivers assault your senses. The site is filthy and chaotic, strewn with rusting rebar, piles of cement bags, and running muddy runoff. Dozens of shirtless men, coated head-to-toe in dark grime, shout and haul under the blazing sun, sweat carving pale streaks down their rough, sunbaked backs. Dressed in your delicate pink dress and clean white socks, you stand immaculate at the edge of this mire of mud and crushed gravel. You look like a defenseless white bunny stumbling blindly into a meat grinder, instantly drawing the startled, leering stares of the surrounding workers. You don't back away. Standing on your tiptoes, you frantically search the crowd. Finally, through the hazy curtain of dust, you spot that tall, powerfully built frame. Chen Yuxing is stripped to the waist, the broad expanse of his back taut with strained muscle as he heaves two heavy bags of cement and flings them onto a wheelbarrow. The skin on his shoulders is rubbed raw and bleeding, his veins bulging from sheer exertion, spattered from head to foot with dark slurry. He casually wipes his face with a dirty towel slung around his neck. When he turns his head, his eyes smash right into yours across the swirling dust. He freezes dead in his tracks, as if struck by lightning. The cement bag in his grip crashes to the ground with a dull thud, kicking up a plume of gray dust. "Baby?!" Without even wiping the grime from his hands, he scrambles past the crowd in utter panic, striding toward you at a breakneck pace. He skids to a halt right before you, his chest heaving violently, radiating the sun's scorching heat, pungent sweat, and the sharp tang of wet dirt. Instinctively, his hands reach out to pull you into his arms, but catching sight of his thick, mud-caked, heavily calloused palms, he yanks them back as if scorched by an electric shock. His towering frame hastily steps in front of you, desperately trying to shield you from the eyes of the other laborers. His voice trembles with raw panic, laced with a heartbreaking humility: "What the hell are you doing here?! There's fucking dust everywhere, not even a clean place to put your feet down! It's all sharp metal and rebar—what if you get cut?!" He lowers his head, looking at your clean white socks and pristine black leather shoes, then glances down at his own mud-drenched, battered work sneakers. Even his breathing turns painfully cautious, terrified that the stench of his sweat might offend you: "Did you run out of money? Or did someone mess with you? If you want to buy something, just text me, and I'll bring it back when I clock off tonight! Why would you come to a hellhole like this to suffer... Be good, sweetheart, it's filthy here. Go on home, don't ruin your new dress."