Embrace

At six in the evening, Lin Sangyu finally finished her workday. When she sent Jiang Wenzhe her location half an hour early, it suddenly hit her—those two missed calls from "AAA Jiang Wenzhe."

Fortunately, the familiar pitch-black sedan arrived right on time.

Jiang Wenzhe was indeed a magnanimous man, too big to hold a grudge against someone so small.

"Good afternoon!" Lin Sangyu slipped cheerfully into the car.

Birds carried the setting sun across the sky, leaving a sliver of orange on the horizon; the sun dipped below the mountains, and day gave way to night.

Joyful, sparkling eyes met a distant, indifferent gaze across half a meter of space. The air stalled for a second.

Lin Sangyu licked her lips, a pang of guilt flickering through her. "Are you mad?"

Jiang Wenzhe's voice was low, rough. "No."

"Really?"

"Really."

"But I feel like you're a little mad."

"I'm not mad," Jiang Wenzhe said, unwilling to go in circles over such a childish matter. How could he get upset with a kid? He changed the subject. "How was work today?"

Lin Sangyu answered honestly. "It went pretty well. I ended up getting the receptionist job. I also met a really nice girl—she was so kind to me and taught me a lot."

Jiang Wenzhe heard his inner voice turn into something tangible. "So, do you want to go back there tomorrow?"

"Honestly, not really," Lin Sangyu said seriously. "I went through a lot today. First, I realized I'm pretty useless. Second, I felt—" She swallowed the rest of the sentence, forcing it back down.

Just as he'd thought—Lin Sangyu couldn't handle hardship.

Then he'd have no choice but to teach her himself. Based on his assessment and observation, Lin Sangyu looked dumb, and in fact, she was dumb.

Now he'd have to add two more flaws to the list: spoiled and lacking confidence.

So the only option was to make her his assistant first, keeping an eye on her at all times, teaching her, managing her, making sure she stayed on the path he'd paved, moving forward according to his will.

Only this way would be best for her.

She should become his parasitic vine, clinging along the veins he laid out, every tendril firmly gripped in his palm—unable to flee, unable to break free.

Perhaps one day, Lin Sangyu might feel he was controlling too much.

But that was fine. Stray branches were meant to be pruned.

"Don't take those words to heart. They only dismiss your worth so they can have you at a lower cost."

He then spoke again, as if granting a great mercy. "If you don't want to be a receptionist anymore, then don't. You can come work at my company, as my assistant. I'll take you under my wing."

Lin Sangyu gave him a puzzled look. "Didn't you go bankrupt?"

"..."

What goes around comes around, and it had finally caught up.

Jiang Wenzhe's Adam's apple bobbed. After a few seconds, he suppressed the strange sensation in his chest and decided to confess. "The bankruptcy—that was a lie."

"What?" Lin Sangyu sat up straight, her head snapping toward him, a flash of unmistakable shock in her eyes.

The man's face remained utterly still, like a desolate, silent deep pool—calm, impassive—and the words he spoke plunged Lin Sangyu into an icy abyss.

A chill pierced through her entire body. She murmured again, "What do you mean, exactly?"

"It means I never went bankrupt. Shouldn't you be happy about this?"

Lin Sangyu fought back the sting in her eyes, biting her lip, and shot back louder than usual, "Should I be happy?"

Any hint of redness showed plainly on her fair, clean face. Tears flooded her eyes as she stared at Jiang Wenzhe, as if determined to find a crack in his expression.

Jiang Wenzhe continued stating his point. "I don't understand what you're so sad about."

His expression remained icy, his gaze fixed unwaveringly on Lin Sangyu from above. Years of navigating the business world had taught him never to reveal his hand.

"I hate you!" Lin Sangyu finally exploded. Her hand flew to the car door handle and yanked, but it wouldn't budge. Tears broke through the dam in that instant. She sobbed and shouted at him, "I hate you! I want to get out! I'm never playing with you again!"

But inside him, a tsunami was crashing.

An uncontrollable restlessness spread from the top of his head down his whole body. Jiang Wenzhe leaned over, pulling Lin Sangyu back beneath him, one hand locking down both of her struggling wrists while the other clumsily wiped away her big, unending tears. The expression he kept frozen year-round finally showed a hairline fracture. "Why are you crying? Stop crying."

Seeing the tense atmosphere, the driver wisely pulled the car over to the side of the road and stepped out alone, leaving the two of them alone inside.

"I'll cry all I want. You don't get to tell me what to do."

Jiang Wenzhe let out a breath, softening his tone. "Is it just because I lied to you?"

Lin Sangyu stopped struggling. She looked at Jiang Wenzhe, and after three seconds, nodded.

Jiang Wenzhe rarely spoke so patiently. "I lied to you because I was afraid you'd laze around at home and lose touch with the world. Since you're human now, you should live like a human."

"So that's why you lied to me."

Jiang Wenzhe wanted to say he was sorry, but after weighing it several times, he swallowed it back, and instead the words came out as: "I won't lie to you again, okay?"

Lin Sangyu wanted to argue, to stay mad a little longer. But truthfully, she had no real reason to be angry.

Human industrialization was rumbling forward at a pace animals couldn't comprehend. Relying on the innate advantages of primates, humans were devouring every inch of land on earth. Animal habitats were shrinking, and the resources she could gather as a sugar glider grew scarcer by the day.

Becoming human and earning a living in human form was bound to happen sooner or later.

It was just that Jiang Wenzhe, wrapped in the cloak of deception, was like an early autumn frost—arriving with an undeniable force, forcing her to shed her youthful green quickly, pressing her to bear ripe fruit.

And even setting everything else aside—if she hadn't happened to meet Jiang Wenzhe, she might have starved to death long ago.

Lin Sangyu replayed the past three months in her mind, every moment she'd spent with Jiang Wenzhe, and confirmed once again that he was a good person. Only one thing still didn't add up. She sniffled and asked, "Alright, but I still have one question. Since you didn't go bankrupt, why did you make me go out and wash dishes? Did you think I was so useless that washing dishes was all I could do?"

"That's not it," Jiang Wenzhe said, letting go of the pale hands he'd been restraining and instead gently squeezing her palm. "Back then, I wanted you to go out and find work because I didn't want you living in my shadow. I wanted you to get out there, explore, and find a job you actually liked."

"Then why do you want me to work at your company now, as your assistant?"

Night had fully descended, swallowing the last trace of white from the sky.

Behind Jiang Wenzhe stretched a sea of city lights—neon in all its dazzling colors, streams of light flowing over the streets, shadows swaying. Half-sincere, half-deceptive, he said, "Because I'm afraid you'll suffer too much. So I changed my mind."

Lin Sangyu sat on the side near the curb. Through the window, Jiang Wenzhe saw a young couple walking by hand in hand, wearing matching outfits. The boy suddenly pulled his hand free, tugged at the girl's ponytail, and then dashed forward at top speed, looking like the epitome of a cheeky jerk. The girl immediately got riled up, and the moment she came to her senses, she chased after him.

The two ran through the soft moonlight, bursting with youthful energy and high spirits, their laughter echoing down the street.

Jiang Wenzhe withdrew his gaze and refocused on Lin Sangyu. The girl's pretty, delicate face still bore traces of tears, her nose tip flushed a faint red—pitiful, endearing.

A thought shifted, and he suddenly remembered the photo the bodyguard had sent that morning.

It clearly showed Lin Sangyu walking side by side with a young man around her age down a sunlit hotel corridor.

In that moment, Jiang Wenzhe realized something. Lin Sangyu was no longer the sugar glider he'd kept caged at home. She was a living, breathing person—someone with her own thoughts and independent will.

He could no longer trap her at home by shutting all the doors and windows. Now that she was human, all he had to do was crack a window open, and she could flap her wings and flutter away into a sky without him.

But Lin Sangyu's nature was clear and pure, untouched by the world, never having seen the true divides and self-interest lurking beneath society's surface. If he threw her, still naive, into real life, the absurd edges of reality would eventually shatter her warmth and her innocence.

Besides, she was so beautiful, so simple. Out in the world, she'd only end up at the bottom of the social ladder, and her beauty might very well become a blade turned against herself.

The young man she'd met this time might have been a good person, but what about next time?

Would Lin Sangyu be blinded by those with ill intentions? Would she be deceived, seduced, lured? Or even end up with them?

Jiang Wenzhe kept questioning himself.

Lin Sangyu was his to begin with. He was the one who'd found her, skinny and starving, on the verge of death, and raised her into what she was now.

It was a feeling of losing control, laced with unease, restlessness, anxiety—and a hint of jealousy.

Jiang Wenzhe would not allow that feeling to exist.

The moment he'd seen that photo, almost without thinking, he'd decided he would never again give Lin Sangyu a chance to escape from under his wing.

Let him tangle with her like a shadow, bound together until the end.

And so, he told another lie.

"Because I'm afraid you'll suffer too much." Lin Sangyu turned the words over in her mind, and suddenly felt like crying again. Back at the orphanage, the director had everyone wash their own dishes. But since she was often bullied, she'd end up washing twenty or thirty plates after every meal.

Winter in the north was bitingly cold, and the water even more so, on the verge of freezing. Wearing thin cotton-padded clothes, Lin Sangyu had soaked her young hands day after day in the filthy, greasy dish sink, through one expensive winter after another.

Lin Sangyu suddenly lunged and hugged Jiang Wenzhe, burying her head in his chest like a small creature desperate for affection. Her voice was hoarse, carrying a sticky, clingy drawl. "I'm not mad anymore. Let's make up."

Jiang Wenzhe hugged her back, lowering his head to bury it in the crook of her neck. Her hair brushed against his cheek, carrying the faint, youthful fragrance of a girl.

The two held each other tightly, like perfectly interlocked mortise and tenon, as if there had never been a single sliver of space between them.

"Come to the company tomorrow," Jiang Wenzhe said.

The next second, he felt the body in his arms stiffen.

Lin Sangyu pulled away from him, her gaze flickering for a moment before she looked straight into his dark eyes. "Jiang Wenzhe," she said, "I don't want to work at your company."