Chapter 58
As the album pages turned one by one, time seemed to quietly flow backward beneath their fingertips.
The hazy bewilderment of infancy, the soft sweetness of toddlerhood, were gradually replaced by images that were brighter, sharper, more alive.
The settings in the photos expanded from the living room carpet and the courtyard to the kindergarten stage, the elementary school playground, the summer camp bonfire...
Those distant years, preserved in crisp color prints, were laid out before Wen Yan without reserve.
As she flipped through the album, she asked Jin Zijin about anything unusual she saw.
Jin Zijin really was patient; one could almost call her endlessly responsive.
From how she and Chi Chunxin met in kindergarten and used to yank each other’s hair, to fighting over toys, and then racing each other down the track...
Jin Zijin explained all sorts of grudges and entanglements to Wen Yan.
According to Jin Zijin, the two of them were simply destined to be at odds.
“Luckily, we still had Jianlan. Whenever the two of us started clawing at each other, she could always mediate between us.”
Wen Yan found that especially interesting and asked, “Did the two of you fight that often? If so, why were you still friends?”
Jin Zijin thought about it and said, “Because most of the time, our interests were pretty similar.”
“For example, we both loved Lego, documentaries, cartoons, history overview classes, and so on...”
“She had finished reading Records of the Grand Historian and Zizhi Tongjian in elementary school, and so had I. But that was exactly why we argued so easily.”
Wen Yan blinked. “For example?”
Jin Zijin tilted her head and thought for a moment. “For example...”
“Mm...”
She gave one example: “Like if we were discussing what would happen if Li Shimin were Qin Shi Huang’s son; how many years the Qin dynasty could have lasted...”
“Then we’d start arguing because she worshiped Li Shimin to the extreme and ignored the actual conditions of the time, blindly believing Qin could have lasted as long as Han...”
“And then we’d fight.”
Wen Yan: ...
Ah.
She understood now.
One of them was a rational brain, the other an emotional one; if those two got together and didn’t turn the place upside down, that would be the miracle.
Silently, she gave Jin Zijin a thumbs-up. “Amazing.”
Jin Zijin just laughed.
After a pause, Wen Yan added, “But the reason the two of you have been friends for so many years is also because you’re very similar. Even if the core is different, the way you present yourselves to the outside world lets you understand each other.”
As she said that, Wen Yan looked down at the picture of the three of them surrounding Ye Jianlan while posing for a photo; her eyes darkened slightly. “Having peers your own age to keep you company is really wonderful.”
Jin Zijin looked at her expression and remembered Wen Yan had once said she kept skipping grades; chances were, she didn’t have many friends.
She didn’t want Wen Yan to be sad, so she immediately turned the album page and said, “A twisted fate, all of it. Purely a hard-luck bond.”
“Small fights every three days, big fights every five; average of one breakup a week...”
“We were a riot. With your personality, you’d be better off studying quietly; otherwise this kind of relationship would wear you down.”
“I couldn’t stand to see you get worn down.”
Jin Zijin smiled as she comforted her, then continued flipping through the album.
She mentioned old events in a few casual words and turned page after page.
But there were just too many photos. Even though Wen Yan was doing her best, by midnight they had only made it to fifth grade.
The very last photo in the album was of a morning reading session.
Jin Zijin in the picture looked about eleven, wearing a school uniform dress faded slightly white with age, her hair tied into a neat, immaculate ponytail. She stood before the simple microphone on the stage in the school playground.
Her posture was straight, her chin slightly lifted, her eyes bright as if tempered by fire.
She was clutching a script that had clearly been crumpled and smoothed out again and again; her expression was one of stubborn, all-out defiance, standing there like a drawn sword.
Sharp-edged and cutting.
Wen Yan was instantly struck by it.
She reached out and lightly brushed the edge of the photo with her fingertips, then looked up at Jin Zijin and asked curiously, “Wasn’t this a speech at morning assembly? Why do you look so confrontational? Did something happen?”
Jin Zijin followed her gaze and smiled. “Oh, this one. That really was the three of us planning to make trouble.”
Wen Yan’s curiosity deepened at once. “What kind of trouble?”
Jin Zijin turned her head to look at her, her voice distant with memory. “In the class next door, there was a girl whose family went bankrupt. She was bullied by her classmates, and Chi Chunxin found her crying in the bathroom.”
“Chi Chunxin helped her once. The next day, though, the girl was bullied even worse.”
Wen Yan nodded. “Then what?”
“Then...” Jin Zijin paused before continuing, “Chi Chunxin went with her to find the teacher. Things blew up, and a parents’ meeting was called.”
“Not long after, the two families made peace, saying it was just ‘kids being kids,’ and the matter got suppressed.”
“And that child ended up transferring out soon after.”
A very typical case of rich-kid bullying.
Wen Yan’s eyes darkened as she listened.
Jin Zijin’s expression also cooled. “Chi Chunxin was the first one to explode. She pulled Jianlan and me along and said we couldn’t just let it go.”
“The three of us stayed up half the night collecting evidence and writing a speech. The next morning at the assembly, it just happened to be my turn on duty.”
“I took the microphone and exposed everything; I told the whole school how the school had shielded the bullies.”
“And I even said things like, no one can be rich and powerful forever; what happens to others today will one day happen to you and me.”
“Anyway, after we pulled off a big move like that, we were ready to transfer schools.”
Wen Yan imagined the scene: a girl not yet fully grown, but stubbornly set in her brows and eyes, standing on the stage and speaking up for a classmate before the entire school, each word ringing with conviction.
The teachers below the stage had gone pale; the students had erupted into an uproar.
A small smile tugged at Wen Yan’s lips, but a sharp ache passed through her heart.
She and her friends, too, had once had their fearless youth.
For fairness, for justice, for the right thing.
That kind of rare heat, that vivid courage, was something she had never taken part in.
How regrettable.
She had missed the heat of Jin Zijin’s youth.
Her heart felt sour. Her fingers tightened unconsciously around the album’s rigid cover, and she asked, almost reflexively, “What happened after that?”
“The principal got furious and called our parents in. All three families came. My grandmother said that children being full of reckless courage and liking to stand up for what’s unfair was perfectly normal, so she let it slide.”
“Two days later, the principal was removed, and the bullies got a disciplinary record. They behaved after that.”
Jin Zijin shrugged, her tone light as if she were talking about someone else’s business. “Anyway, from that time on, the three of us weren’t exactly well-behaved.”
“Picking fights with heaven, with earth, with the school; and while we were at it, tearing down the family nonsense too.”
Wen Yan rested her head against Jin Zijin’s shoulder; the crisp citrus-cold scent on her body drifted into Wen Yan’s nose. The sourness in her heart, though, spread like ink dropped into clear water, slowly dispersing in threads.
She squeezed Jin Zijin’s hand and said, “That’s great.”
“Teenagers should look like teenagers; brave, kind, sincere, and full of passion.”
Wen Yan lifted her eyes to Jin Zijin, her gaze soft. “Zijin...”
Jin Zijin was baffled by the way she looked at her. “Mm? What is it?”
Wen Yan curved her brows and eyes, but in the end, she still couldn’t help herself and said, “I really regret not meeting you earlier.”
Jin Zijin froze for a moment, then laughed helplessly.
She reached out, took Wen Yan’s hand, and gently squeezed it. “You fool. My temper was so bad; if we’d met earlier, with your personality, I don’t know how badly I would’ve bullied you.”
“It’s better now. I’m more mature. I know how to be tolerant and how to cherish people.”
“Meeting at this time is really good.”
“And also...” As she said that, Jin Zijin looked at Wen Yan, her gaze soft. “You see, people become adults at eighteen, right? I’m thirty-two now. If you count it that way, I’m just an adult who’s fourteen.”
“In a sense, that’s also my youth.”
“So you didn’t miss my youth; you’re still part of it.”
Wen Yan stared at her for a long time before finally leaning in and kissing her.
——————
The next day, Jin Zijin went on a business trip again.
When Wen Yan came home carrying Little Honey, the house felt empty, the huge place stripped of warmth and life.
She let the kitten out of the carrier and played with it in the living room for a while, then fed it some cat food before heading into the gym to work out.
After wielding the iron hammer and yelling “eighty” and “eighty” for a full hour, Wen Yan finally finished her training and returned to the master bedroom to wash up.
She ate the healthy muscle-building meal Aunt Liu had made with some sauced beef, then hugged Little Honey and went to the study to continue looking through the album.
The study was a strange place for Little Honey.
It was very timid and kept burrowing into Wen Yan’s arms.
Wen Yan rubbed its soft little head and said gently, “Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid... Mommy isn’t home today, so be good and stay with Mama, okay?”
As if it understood her, Little Honey let out a meow and hooked its paws into Wen Yan’s loungewear, no longer resisting.
It curled up in Wen Yan’s arms and quietly kept her company as she looked through the photos.
The iron triangle had always had a very good relationship. Especially after middle school and high school, they were together no matter what they did.
They skied together, rode mountain bikes together, went skydiving together, dove together...
Whatever was most thrilling, they did that.
It seemed as long as the three of them were together, there was nothing they feared.
Whenever Wen Yan saw a particularly unusual photo, she would send it to Jin Zijin.
For example, this set of activity photos taken out in the countryside on mountain terrain.
In the first photo, there was a stretch of damp mountain ground and a sky so blue it hurt to look at it.
In the foreground, Chi Chunxin was covered in mud, standing brazenly next to the mud-splattered motorcycle and grinning at the camera without a care in the world, even flashing a peace sign.
Behind her, Jin Zijin wore a sharp dark-gray shell jacket, her long hair tied into a high ponytail. She was crouched down checking the muddy motorcycle’s tires, her expression focused.
Ye Jianlan squatted beside her, handing over a wrench, brows slightly furrowed.
In the second photo, Jin Zijin wore a helmet and goggles, straddling a heavy motorcycle.
She turned her head slightly; the gear obscured most of her expression, leaving only a pair of dark, steady eyes visible as she looked behind her.
Chi Chunxin, covered head to toe in mud, sat behind her, one arm around her waist, wearing a triumphant smile as though to say, See? Got it done, easy as anything.
The girls were all breathtakingly beautiful, and under the camera they looked especially well matched, so much so that Wen Yan’s heart gave a little jolt.
Looking at those two photos, Wen Yan pressed her lips together; the tips of her fingers felt faintly cold.
After some hesitation, she still picked up her phone, took a picture, and sent it to Jin Zijin: “This is...?”
Jin Zijin replied very quickly, as if she were slacking off at work: “High school. Back then we were chasing thrills, so I followed an uncle in the family who raced cars and learned off-road riding for a while; it was just for fun.”
“There were more than ten of us there, a project team-building thing.”
“Chi Chunxin was the wildest one of all. She fell every time. When her bike toppled into the mud, she said she wanted to ride mine back, so I had no choice but to bring her back.”
“She was covered in mud, filthy as hell, and still insisted on clinging to me. I almost wanted to throw her off!!!”
Wen Yan: ...
Okay.
She could see that Jin Zijin was very angry.
She could also see that their relationship was genuinely excellent.
Wait... project team-building?
Wen Yan paused, then asked thoughtfully, “What kind of project were you doing back then?”
Jin Zijin answered very quickly: “We’d started a tech company back then, making games, so we all got together. Chi Chunxin was the company’s chief visual artist, and I was responsible for leading the programmers.”
Wen Yan: ...
The knot in Wen Yan’s heart sank a little further.
So even in those years when she had her head buried in medical textbooks, agonizing over one anatomical structure after another, Jin Zijin’s world had already been so vast and brilliant.
She had close friends, companions, a soul that loved adventure, and a team willing to follow her.
Her life had already been filled by countless people and countless things, full and brilliant and fearless.
How regrettable; she had missed so much.
Wen Yan’s heart felt sour. She held back the bitterness and kept turning the pages.
In the later high school photos, Jin Zijin’s “President Jin” aura became increasingly pronounced.
At the United Nations venue, at a business pitch competition stage, her features were still somewhat youthful, yet she was already able to wear a well-tailored suit and shake hands and converse with adults without the slightest awkwardness.
Her gaze was sharp; her bearing resolute.
Ye Jianlan and Chi Chunxin appeared less and less often.
Instead, accompanying her were a group of similarly dressed young people, a little older than her, their eyes full of admiring devotion.
They were her first assembled team, the earliest witnesses and companions of her career.
Amid those dazzling images, Wen Yan keenly caught sight of one particularly striking photo.
It was a very rare candid shot.
At an international youth science and technology exchange event, Jin Zijin looked about seventeen or eighteen, wearing a simple white shirt and standing among a group of foreign youths of different skin tones.
One blond, blue-eyed man held out his hands, his expression openly disdainful, his lips moving as though he were saying something.
Jin Zijin lifted her chin slightly, the line of her neck taut, her gaze as cold as ice.
A faint smile touched the corner of her mouth; her posture was open and proud, like a young bamboo shoot standing firm in the snow and wind.
Without hesitation, Wen Yan sent it over again.
Jin Zijin replied quickly: “Oh, this one was probably taken by Xu Ming.”
Wen Yan knew Xu Ming; she was Jin Zijin’s personal assistant.
So Xu Ming had been by Jin Zijin’s side since then?
As Wen Yan pondered it, Jin Zijin’s reply came quickly: “That time it was an energy technology exchange. Some so-called foreign expert publicly went on a tirade, saying our country had nothing decent in new energy technology, that we couldn’t even make basic chips, and that sooner or later we’d have to beg them to sell to us.”
“I couldn’t hold it in and shot back on the spot. I said we had vast land, abundant resources, and talented people everywhere; at most in three years, we’d definitely surpass them in one key technology for new energy storage.”
“And then?” Wen Yan asked, her heart feeling as if something had gently squeezed it, for that young and arrogant version of her, dazzling with brilliance.
“Then I ran off and threw all my spare time into that technical bottleneck.”
The chat interface showed “typing” for a long while before another message came through: “For those three years, I studied for a dual degree in computer science and energy while leading the team to break through the challenge.”
“Everyone lived in the lab every day; we were almost eating and sleeping together. If Chi Chunxin and Jianlan wanted to ask me out for a shopping trip, they had to book a week in advance, and I still stood them up all the time.”
Wen Yan could clearly feel the powerful willpower under that thunderous decisiveness, yet she couldn’t stop feeling sorry for her.
Sorry for the girl who, at such a young age, had to shoulder a team’s expectations and push forward through endless doubt and pressure.
Ye Jianlan and Chi Chunxin might have given her an embrace and a word of comfort when she was tired; her team might have charged ahead with her and overcome difficulties together.
At that time, Wen Yan herself had been on the other side of the city, doing everything she could to refine her medical skills.
She knew nothing of Jin Zijin’s struggle, her loneliness, or her sharp brilliance.
She had missed so many of the important moments in Jin Zijin’s life, and even the people who once stood beside her had to be pieced together from these frozen images and a few scraps of memory.
“At those times,” Wen Yan paused, then still sent the message, “did you feel... it was hard?”
Jin Zijin’s reply was especially light: “Not hard at all. I enjoy that feeling.”
“I like winning. I like the feeling of tackling difficult things together with everyone.”
She was a leader by nature; a winner by nature.
No wonder people called her a “tyrant.”
In her own company, she really was an emperor who carved out territory and built a formidable reputation.
Not just people like Chi Chunxin and Ye Jianlan, who were excellent mentors and friends.
Many loyal generals had appeared in her life; each one enriched her world and followed her ideals through thick and thin.
Was she supposed to be jealous?
But how could she even be jealous?
Because liking Jin Zijin was as simple as breathing or eating; who in the world didn’t love her?
So many people; how could she ever get jealous enough to keep up?
Wen Yan thought she ought to learn to let it go.
——————
It took Wen Yan two full days to finish the album in one go.
After university, Jin Zijin began to show her edge, leading her own team to sweep trophies across major competitions.
After the age of twenty-two, Jin Zijin began appearing more and more often in all kinds of formal and informal settings at the Jin Group.
At first she merely listened quietly in high-level meetings; gradually she participated in specific project discussions; then she independently took charge of a small business line...
Her clothing style also shifted quickly from the casual campus look to well-cut professional suits in restrained colors.
The last trace of schoolgirl lightness in her eyes had been completely refined away, replaced by the caution, composure, and decisive sharpness essential in the business world.
She was almost always surrounded by a group of people.
Different faces, but similar temperaments.
There were respectful executives, technical staff with furrowed brows, and legal consultants speaking at a rapid pace...
She stood in the center or at the front of the crowd, slightly nodding as she listened to reports, raising a hand to point out problems, or issuing instructions unhurriedly; her presence was powerful and impossible to ignore.
One photo was candidly captured at what looked like a victory banquet.
At twenty-two or twenty-three, Jin Zijin wore a black suit dress cut with exquisite precision, setting off her skin as white as snow and her figure graceful yet perfectly proportioned.
She held a slender champagne flute, her head slightly turned as she listened to a senior executive beside her speak.
She wore exactly the right amount of polished, impeccable social smile; yet in those beautiful eyes, there was calm stillness, with even a hint of distance that made her hard to approach.
Unpredictable in mood; utterly a tyrant.
Jin Zijin’s reply to that photo was this: “I remember this. It was the first time I fully led a major merger and acquisition case on my own.”
“There was an old hand on the other side’s team who thought he had seniority and that because I was young he could coast through and get away with it. In the meeting, he started talking in a sly, sarcastic way and said all kinds of inappropriate things.”
“And then?” Wen Yan asked, imagining the scene.
“And then?”
Jin Zijin sent a very long voice message: “I didn’t waste time on him. Right there, I pulled up three pages of core data analysis I’d prepared in advance, then threw out two legal loopholes in his agreements that he simply couldn’t explain away and might even have involved violations. One by one, sentence by sentence, I nailed him to his seat until he was sweating cold.”
In the next message, Jin Zijin’s tone was even more relaxed: “The next day, they sent someone else to negotiate with me.”
“Later, the company’s French-speaking team said, ‘Young President Jin gets serious, and she’s scarier than us old folks.’”
Wen Yan couldn’t help laughing when she heard that.
She turned her head and saw the albums she had already gone through stacked on the carpet beside her like a miniature tower of time.
Wen Yan felt a strange and complicated emotion.
She had looked at so many photos and heard Jin Zijin tell so many stories that it felt as though she had truly walked through the trajectory of Jin Zijin’s life over more than twenty years alongside those still images.
Those glorious and dazzling, lonely and cold, stubborn and unyielding, occasionally soft for a fleeting instant moments intertwined and wound together, finally gathering into the three words “Jin Zijin.”
Not some shallow label like “President Jin,” or “tyrant,” or “perfect wife,” but a more complex, broader, more dimensional Jin Zijin.
Jin Zijin had really done it.
Just as she promised, with an almost devout and open sincerity, she had invited Wen Yan without reservation.
Invited her to step into the world she had once known, to share all her secrets and memories.
She really...
loved her very much.
The moment Wen Yan realized that, all the jealousy she had felt over the missing past and the parts she couldn’t take part in were completely smoothed away.
What remained was only a deep, overwhelming love, washing over her from every direction.
Wen Yan suddenly wanted so badly to hug her, to kiss her, to pull her into her arms and fuse bone and blood together until they were completely one.
Just thinking of it made Wen Yan’s heart go weak and numb.
It was a feeling harder to endure than pure desire.
It was the wish to pour one’s love into someone else without holding anything back.
Wen Yan took a deep breath and opened the last album.
The final album was relatively thin, recording the past three or four years.
There were obviously fewer photos, but each one looked carefully selected.
There was the moment Jin Zijin formally took over the group’s most core division and signed her name at a major strategic agreement ceremony.
There was also a photo of her returning to her alma mater for an entrepreneurship speech, standing there confidently and proudly.
There was the warm side profile of her dining with her grandmother at the old family residence during a traditional holiday.
And there were rare moments of leisure, with Ye Jianlan and Chi Chunxin at a private courtyard terrace with excellent privacy, drinking tea and chatting with laughter in their voices.
Chi Chunxin seemed to be teasing her again in the photo, reaching out to grab her hair while Ye Jianlan smiled and tried to stop her...
Soon, she reached the last photo...
The moment Wen Yan saw it, her breath completely stopped, and excitement surged wildly in her chest.
It was a candid shot from their wedding day.
In the picture, the two of them were walking side by side, toasting relatives and friends.
Jin Zijin was wearing her formal gown, holding up a wine cup, the corners of her lips slightly lifted.
And Wen Yan, in a somewhat loose custom-tailored suit, stood beside her, staring at her without blinking, full of admiration.
So that day... she had been looking at her the entire time?
Was her liking for her that obvious from the very beginning?
Wen Yan gazed at the photo for a long, long time, her heart drifting again and again between sourness, softness, and surging warmth.
She had missed Jin Zijin’s babbling childhood, missed her stubborn and rebellious youth, missed her spirited and radiant young adulthood.
But.
She had this moment in the photo.
She had a future of walking side by side with Jin Zijin.
This was the true beginning of where their stories overlapped.
It was the convergence point of all the trajectories of the past, and also the first page of the long chapter to come.
And their future would always be together.
The moment she realized that, immense joy rose in Wen Yan’s heart.
She curved her lips into a smile, then thought about it and took a photo of this picture, sending it to Jin Zijin: “When you come back, let’s put the photos we took of our life before on display.”
“And then... start a new album.”
“Put a lot, a lot of friends in it, and you and me.”
Let our lives merge completely together.
Jin Zijin replied very quickly: “Then you have to take photos often too.”
“Your life photos should be put in together as well, so only then can it count as you and me together.”
When Wen Yan saw that message, she couldn’t help smiling faintly.
She lifted the corners of her mouth and quickly replied with one word: “Okay.”
————————
My tendinitis has been especially bad lately; it hurts like crazy [splitting]