When Ying Hanyue woke up after a car accident, a man was sitting beside her bed.
His shirt was rumpled, and dark circles shadowed his eyes. He looked as if he hadn't slept in days, and there was a damp, gloomy air about him.
Suddenly, she remembered: three in the afternoon, Peninsula Cafe, a blind date.
So she asked, "Are you my blind date?"
The man fell silent.
"Hello, I'm Ying Hanyue," she said, summoning a professional smile. "Sorry you had to meet me in the hospital."
The man looked down at her and remained silent for a long time.
Long enough that Ying Hanyue thought he hadn't heard her. Then he spoke, his voice hoarse, as if sandpaper had scraped against it:
"...It's fine."
"I'm not picky about the location."
Ying Hanyue thought: This blind date is a little quiet, but I don't seem to mind him.
What she didn't know was this:
The man's name was Gu Mingqian. He was the boss she would rather quit than keep working for.
The day she got into the accident, she'd been on her way to confront him.
During the forty-eight hours she was unconscious, Gu Mingqian sent the driver who hit her to prison,
went through every WeChat contact in her phone who was a man, and had surveillance cameras installed in her new apartment.
Now she thought of him as her blind date,
and smiled at him as she asked, "What do you like to do in your spare time?"
Gu Mingqian watched her smile, fell silent for three seconds, then said,
"I like growing flowers."
2026.03.17
Theme: The end of "sin" may be another kind of redemption and confession.
