I'm sorry, but your fiancé loves me.

Yun Muqian moved quickly, almost instinctively, tucked the photo back into the notebook, closed it, and then casually stood up and put the notebook back on the bookshelf.

She gently pressed her finger on the spine of the book, as if to make sure it was secure, then turned around with a relaxed smile on her face.

"I'm so sorry, I accidentally knocked over your things."

Chi Qiusheng stood still, her expression natural, the corners of her mouth curved, her gaze calm.

If he hadn't just seen her squatting on the ground staring at that photo for several seconds, he probably would have been fooled by her.

Actually, he felt a sense of familiarity when he first met her.

It was at a friend's gathering. Although they were called friends, some of the faces were unfamiliar to him. That's how people in this circle are; socializing is fine, but whether you're really familiar with someone or not isn't that important.

To save face for a friend he hadn't seen in a long time, he went anyway.

He remembered that a man named Qin Qihan was drinking when he suddenly called a woman to come and entertain him. She was a very beautiful woman with exquisite makeup and expensive perfume.

In that instant, he couldn't explain why, but he inexplicably felt that she was somewhat familiar. It was a feeling, and everyone's feelings were different.

It wasn't until she spoke that his memories were stirred, and he began to look at her seriously.

They met several more times after that, and each time they met, he felt more and more familiar with each other, and that feeling of being about to burst forth filled his heart.

At their last class reunion, she came as someone's date, but he stared at her almost rudely.

Finally, when she turned her head to listen to the other person speak, she habitually tilted her head slightly, her lips pursed, as if she was seriously thinking about something.

That expression went through his mind for a moment.

He remembered—he had seen that expression before. Every time the monthly exam results were released, she would stand in front of the list in her blue and white school uniform, looking at her ranking, tilting her head slightly and pursing her lips.

is her.

It's her.

He started asking around to find out where she was. He asked several of his high school classmates, but no one knew where she was or what she was doing. Some people said she seemed to have gone to university in another province, while others said she had changed her phone number several times.

Some people also said that she hadn't kept in touch with her classmates much after graduation.

So he stopped looking for her through his old social circle. Qin Qihan was a prominent figure in the city, and he managed to get her contact information through various people and learned about her schedule.

He hadn't planned to get close to her so soon.

He just wanted to know if she was doing well, and he came up with many reasons for himself, but he overturned each of them.

In the end, he could only admit that he just wanted to see her.

So at the charity gala that day, he found her from afar, across the crowd.

She was wearing a dark green velvet dress, completely different from the drab girl she was in high school. But he held his wine glass and looked at her for a long time, thinking that she was just as beautiful and lovely as she was then and now.

When she walked onto the terrace alone, he went over to her, and then he couldn't control himself.

I asked her many questions, each one a test.

He asked her where she was from and what university she attended, and without hesitation, she gave two answers that were completely different from what he remembered.

He didn't expose her, but silently kept those words in his heart.

That night, she drank too much, so he took her back to his home, his mind filled with the thought that he could finally take care of her and become her support.

While she slept in the guest room, he sat on the sofa in the living room, not sleeping at all, afraid that she might be uncomfortable.

Now, she stood right in front of him, exposing the secret he had kept hidden for so long. She was less than two steps away from him, yet she refused to tell him the truth. He suddenly felt a pang of sadness in his chest.

She didn't recognize him.

Or rather, she recognized her, but chose not to.

After this thought settled in his mind, he felt that he should cooperate with her. If she decided to erase everything from the past, then that naturally included him.

He thought he could suppress his emotions, but he was wrong. By the time he realized what he was doing, he had already taken a step forward, reached out, and gently hugged her.

Yun Muqian was stunned.

She could feel his wrist around her back, his chin resting above her hair, his breathing shallow, his chest pressed against her forehead, his warm body temperature radiating through her clothes.

He didn't hug her tightly; in fact, it was a loose, restrained embrace.

But this restraint itself made the hug feel heavy—as heavy as someone who had been hiding for many years finally finding an outlet, cramming all the pent-up words into this one gesture.

"I'm sorry," he said, his voice low and just above her head, "I just wanted to hug you."

She didn't push him away; her hand hung at her side, her fingertips curling slightly before relaxing again.

Chi Qiusheng's breath hit the skin on the side of her neck. His body trembled, a slight, almost imperceptible tremor, and then she felt a drop of warmth.

The warm drop landed in the hollow of her neck, slid down the curve of her skin a short distance, and stopped above her collarbone.

Before she could even react to what it was, a second drop fell, and then a third.

Chi Qiusheng cried.

He didn't make a sound, but buried his face in the side of her neck, his forehead against her shoulder, and hot tears seeped into her collar one after another.

Those tears, still warm from her body, made her tense up as they fell.

She had never seen a man cry like that before.

Qin Qihan wouldn't cry; she couldn't even imagine Qin Qihan shedding tears. The men she knew—Zhou Yao, and all the faces that came and went in the business world—

Everyone is dignified, restrained, and keeps all their emotions hidden beneath their skin.

But Chi Qiusheng is not like that; he is real, passionate, and warm.

He wept, crying over the years of no contact, crying because he hadn't confessed his feelings sooner, and crying because she must have suffered a lot, even though she herself had hardly cried at all.

Many years ago, when her father passed away, he held her hand and told her:

"Dad can't be with you anymore. You must find a man who truly loves you in the future."

At that moment, she thought, the man who truly loved her was right in front of her.

She had already met him.

Chi Qiusheng's voice came from the hollow of her shoulder, muffled and with a heavy nasal tone:

"I've been looking for you for a long time."