"Oh." Qin Han had always worn obedient reverence and awe towards her mother. Growing up, her mother had trained her thoroughly to become the lady of the Qin Family, teaching her the art of handling worldly matters discretely. So much so that she had perfectly adopted the tact of Li Yueyi, even surpassing the tutor herself.
Qin Han, accompanied by a helper, searched for people, first upstairs in the Banquet Hall's guest rooms and then gradually expanded their radius.
Qin Yin got into Nan Sichen's fancy Maserati. She sat in the co-pilot seat because Nan Sichen chose not to summon a driver and had to temporarily take the driver's seat himself.
"Which hospital should we head to?" he suddenly turned to ask her.
However, he saw that her petite face was flushed at the moment. Her incredibly fair skin was touched with a hint of pink, akin to a juicy peach and irresistibly tempting.
His Adam's apple bobbed, and he swiftly looked away.
At that moment, Qin Yin's mind was blank. She sat bewilderingly in the car, feeling as if millions of ants were nibbling away at her heart. It was an itching-heart sensation.
She had not a clue what she wanted; she just felt hollow, like she always needed someone to fill the void.
The car was not being driven smoothly because Nan Sichen couldn't help but keep turning around to glance at Qin Yin, he too, felt as if a fire was burning within him.
This girl, he had known her since they were young, yet they never blended into their respective social circles.
He loved watching her as a child, sitting on a small stool by his door, staring up at the sky with her big eyes, calmly painting the clouds onto a piece of paper.
The clouds in the sky were clearly white, but she always tinged them red, a blood-red color.
He remembered how curious he was as a child, always secretly running over to steal her sketches when she popped into her house to grab a drink, get paint, or use the restroom.
Every time when she found that her sketches were missing, she would merely widen her eyes in surprise, and then wordlessly pick up her brush and continue painting her clouds.
Once he asked her why she was always painting such bloody red clouds, she looked up at him with her big watery eyes and said: "These are burning clouds. My mother says they are the most beautiful things in this world. They symbolize hope and happiness, because they only appear in the morning and at dusk. The mornings represent hope, while the dusk represents happiness."
He remembers asking her "Why?"
Qin Yin gave him an incredulous answer, saying: "Because the sun rises in the morning, that's the start of a new day when everything can begin anew, so it symbolises hope."
"What about the dusk?"
Qin Yin cocked her head and thought for a while. It seemed she couldn't quite make head or tail of it either, so she just made something up: "Because it's bedtime at dusk. And isn't it happiness to sleep?"
Nan Sichen: "........."
That was their first encounter. Since then, they occasionally sat together for a chat, but they always ended up having funny conversations because Qin Yin would say some profound things but could never explain them clearly. Maybe even she didn't understand half of what she was saying - it was all something her profoundly cultured mother had taught her.
Then they both slowly grew up and he gradually became more reclusive, his interactions with Qin Yin becoming less and less.