The day after his eighteenth birthday, Bai Yelin went with his childhood friend to get a tattoo after a breakup.
The tattoo shop owner was named Zhi Sun. He smelled of dry wood and grapefruit. He smiled at Bai Yelin, his eyes curving into crescents, and said, “Happy adulthood, big kid.”
Later, Zhi Sun invited him out, helped him study for exams, and waited for him outside the school gates after the college entrance exam.
Until Bai Yelin accidentally overheard those words:
“The Bai family has connections. I need to clean up my image.”
So from beginning to end, he had only ever been a useful pawn.
The next day, Bai Yelin bought a plane ticket abroad.
Five years later, Bai Yelin returned to the country for a banquet. He was no longer the young master he had once been, but an overseas investor who had everything under control. As for Zhi Sun, the tattoo shop owner who had once been so rebellious, he had become a chairman who would stop at nothing.
Everyone who knew Zhi Sun knew about the tattoo on his collarbone: a leaf with clearly etched veins.
After they reunited, Zhi Sun tried to win him back. Bai Yelin smiled and accepted his confession.
Zhi Sun thought everything was back on track. But Bai Yelin was waiting for the perfect moment to say the words that were five years overdue:
“Let’s break up.”
You used me once. Now it’s my turn.
But what he didn’t know was that the leaf on Zhi Sun’s collarbone wasn’t an ornament of regret. It was a contract of guilt. From the very beginning, that man had never planned to walk away unscathed.
Early on: the refined young master of a wealthy family × the rebellious tattoo shop owner
Later: the shrewd overseas investor × the ruthless chairman chasing his husband
