Passion Raga Novel (Completed) - Chapter 29

While making a polite farewell and hanging up, Yuri didn’t take his eyes off him. He still couldn’t believe it.

“…’Compensation adjusted upwards by agreement according to internal employment standards, treatment equivalent to head manager level, working conditions include four annual…’ No, this isn’t it either. All the conditions they’re proposing are bad. There’s nowhere that looks particularly good.”

He read out the papers—which, upon closer inspection, were all envelopes—from the bundle, clicked his tongue, crumpled the paper, and threw it away. Another piece of paper trash was added to the pile at his feet. He took out another bundle from under his arm, read it, and threw it away, repeating this about three times before Yuri finally moved again.

“Mr. Ling Xinlu. What brings you here?”

When Yuri pronounced his name clearly, he smiled brightly. That still vibrant smile was unmistakably Ling Xinlu, himself.

“You came earlier than I expected. Did you meet Mr. Miller well? And the contract renewal?”

“No, not yet… But what brings you here,”

“This apartment building seems really old. Even if it’s a hallway, it’s inside the building, but it’s very cold.”

Ling Xinlu breathed into his hands, and Yuri watched him for a moment before silently taking out his keys and opening his door. The scattered paper trash on the floor seemed to have been made by this man while he was standing there. And presumably, the contents were the letters that would have been in Yuri’s mailbox.

Ling Xinlu, who had unhesitatingly opened and discarded someone else’s mail and yet stood confidently before its owner, readily stepped inside the door Yuri had opened. By the time Yuri said “Come in,” he was already standing inside the room, making the welcome feel empty.

He looked around the shabby and small room—just enough for one person—and walked over to the bed by the window, which was bathed in sunlight, and flopped down.

“It’s cozy and nice. The view from the top floor is good, and the breeze is refreshing…”

Ling Xinlu muttered, sounding pleased, and let his gaze wander around the room. Suddenly, he closed his mouth and smiled. Yuri, who had picked up the paper trash from in front of the door and brought it inside, looked at him quizzically. Ling Xinlu laughed aloud for a while before speaking.

“No, I just thought that a room really reflects its owner’s personality. There’s absolutely nothing unnecessary, but everything needed is here.”

“Is that so?”

Yuri, who had never consciously thought about such a thing before, looked around his familiar room anew, but there wasn’t much that seemed different from anyone else’s room.

“…I’m curious about Mr. Ling Xinlu’s room.”

He wondered what his room had more of, and what it had less of, compared to his own.

Ling Xinlu raised an eyebrow and smiled brightly. “Really?” he asked, and his tone somehow carried a subtle laugh. When Yuri looked back at him quizzically, he was smiling innocently, as if he hadn’t done anything.

“…? But what brings you here? I heard you went back to China.”

“I—I went home, hid in my room, and cried a bit, then came back.”

Yuri’s mouth tightened, and his eyes widened slightly. Ling Xinlu smiled, his mouth curving upwards, as if he had expected such a reaction, but the word “cried” bothered him more than anything else.

“Why?”

“But aren’t you going to comfort me?”

Yuri paused at Ling Xinlu’s sudden counter-question instead of an answer.

Come to think of it, he had been rejected again in the interim. After going through such physical and emotional pain, it had ultimately come to this.

“You worked hard. …You did well.”

Yuri muttered, feeling somewhat dejected. However, Ling Xinlu, the person in question, burst out laughing as soon as Yuri muttered that.

“You’re really still the same. It’s only a hair’s breadth from sarcasm, but it doesn’t sound like it.”

“Aren’t you actually incredibly cunning?” Ling Xinlu laughed openly, and Yuri looked at him with a troubled—yet still indifferent—expression, scratching his temple. After laughing for a long time, Ling Xinlu suddenly took a breath, “Hmm,” and stopped laughing. Then he looked at Yuri intently and suddenly spoke.

“I guess I was surprisingly delicate.”

“……?”

“When I went home and had a full check-up, they said my stomach was on the verge of perforation. And also, my father, who found out about the situation late, was so furious he almost collapsed, so I stayed quietly cooped up at home for a few days to rest. I wasn’t feeling well either.”

He spoke lightly now, tilting his head, but he must have been in a terrible mood. Yuri recalled Ling Tangyun saying, “He came back a bit dejected and wouldn’t come out of his room.” He had been so utterly distraught inside that he displayed his negative emotions so openly to others.

“Honestly, hundreds of times a day, I felt like just throwing a bomb at that guy’s house, since he’s bombing other countries. Even now, since I’ve come all this way, I feel like doing it.”

Ling Xinlu, who had been muttering with narrowed eyes, glanced at Yuri, then smiled and said, “Just kidding, just kidding.” But it didn’t seem entirely a joke. When Yuri quietly said, “I can give you the address,” Ling Xinlu’s eyes widened, then he snorted and laughed. “And then if I actually go to that house, you’d follow me and stop me, wouldn’t you?” Yuri didn’t answer his question.

“—Well, lying cooped up in my room like that, all my energy drained away. Life felt boring. Even if I wanted to joke around, everyone around me was just an idiot who couldn’t even understand a proper word. …As I was just having random thoughts in my room, I realized that Mr. Gable wasn’t boring, at least.”

Ling Xinlu looked up at the small skylight in the slanted ceiling, then lowered his gaze. He stared at Yuri intently, as if re-evaluating whether his judgment had been correct. His muttering sounded like he was talking to himself.

“…I wonder if my head is all better. I wonder if I drowned somewhere. I wonder if his not-quite-sarcasm is still the same. And then sometimes when I think of Serenge, I get unreasonably resentful and choke up.”

A calm smile appeared on Ling Xinlu’s lips as he spoke quietly. That smile twisted just slightly at the end, as if the resentment he had tried to bury had subtly resurfaced because he had brought it up.

“So, living like that, just being annoyed, my father finally said something. He asked what I was going to do if I couldn’t even control my own feelings.”

“My son must have looked pretty broken, I guess. My father is not the type to give me harsh words no matter what, he always just sweats trying to soothe and appease me,” Ling Xinlu muttered, then grabbed all the paper bundles he had haphazardly tossed on the bed and fiddled with, and threw them into the trash can at his feet. He didn’t seem to care that most of them were unopened letters, or that the recipient of those letters was right in front of him.

“So, about that—”

Ling Xinlu rummaged in his generous pocket, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and held it out to Yuri. Yuri looked at Ling Xinlu and the paper alternately, then silently took the paper and unfolded it. In front of Yuri, Ling Xinlu continued speaking cheerfully.

“Won’t you contract with me?”

At the words that came before he had even fully unfolded the paper, Yuri, who was just finishing unfolding it, paused. Ling Xinlu smiled like a pretty cat, watching Yuri silently gaze at him, who had spoken so casually in a childlike manner.

“When I’m with you, it’s quite pleasant and fun, but sometimes you say blunt things that make me flare up. And I get choked up when memories of Serenge come back. It seems like it would be good for cultivating my patience and managing my temper.”

“…Are you planning to cultivate your mind by looking at me? You, whose stomach was on the verge of perforation?”

The thought that he would get stomach perforation from stress every time he saw him—that thought alone was not at all welcome. Yet, he scanned the contents of the paper—a surprisingly proper contract for something just handed over like that.

“Well, that’s half the reason. The other half is, I need someone skilled to manage my personal affairs now that I’m getting my act together and learning about the family business. And it just so happened that Mr. Gable isn’t tied down anywhere else, is highly capable, and knows me to some extent.”

Still smiling, but with a serious expression, Ling Xinlu gestured with his chin at the paper Yuri was holding and playfully asked, “The employment conditions are written there. Are they insufficient?” Yuri shook his head and muttered, “No, they’re exceptional.”

The conditions alone were so excellent that he would be called a fool forever if he didn’t jump at them immediately. The work conditions, the treatment, the compensation. However, the reason he couldn’t nod immediately was because Yuri knew Ling Xinlu. He knew that Ling Xinlu, with his unstable and capricious side, was not a good contracting party as an employer. And Ling Xinlu himself must have known that fact. That’s why he had been watching Yuri with unsmiling eyes, waiting for his answer.

“And… it still hurts inside. It’s hard to sleep every night, so I have to take medicine. If I could just grab someone and vent, I might feel better, but there’s no one I can talk to. I can’t talk to anyone.”

“So it feels like a lump is forming inside,” he muttered, his mouth twisting slightly.

That was because he was Ling Xinlu.

Unless it was a case like Yuri’s—who had unintentionally witnessed his pride being shattered and torn to shreds—Ling Xinlu would never expose his broken and trampled pride to others and complain about his pain. Even if he writhed in pain every night, feeling like he was being scraped by a knife, he would suppress it alone. During the day, he would act as if he hadn’t been hurt at all.

“Won’t you help me?”

Ling Xinlu’s face, looking at Yuri with an anxious, clinging, pitiful expression, was probably a feigned expression to gain Yuri’s consent. Yuri wasn’t foolish enough to fall for that. Ling Xinlu probably knew that much too.

However, what he said was not a lie.

With a composed face, not wanting to reveal his unhealed wounds to anyone, he stood alone among people.

“If I refuse.”

Yuri opened his mouth, silently looking at the paper. Ling Xinlu’s expression cooled ever so slightly, but he quickly erased it.

“Will you perhaps interfere with my job search every time?”

Yuri took his eyes off the paper, looked at the pile of paper trash in the bin for a moment, then turned his gaze to Ling Xinlu. Ling Xinlu also looked at the trash can and shrugged with an embarrassed expression—though he wouldn’t have thought such a thing for a moment.

“If there’s a place that offers better conditions than me, I’ll readily yield.”

His beautiful smiling face, as if confident that such a place wouldn’t exist, implicitly suggested that he might interfere otherwise. Yuri looked at the paper again. Indeed, there probably wouldn’t be a place offering better conditions than this. Although it wasn’t a matter to be decided by conditions alone. His hand, fiddling with the paper, tightened slightly.

He was still deliberating, but he felt that even if he thought about it longer, the conclusion would likely be the same.

So, Yuri opened his mouth.

“Give me some time.”

To Yuri, who said that and met his gaze, Ling Xinlu seemed a little disappointed, but as if he had considered such an answer, he readily nodded.

“Okay. But I don’t want to wait long, so decide by tomorrow afternoon—”

“I’ve forgotten a lot of Chinese, so it will take a month or two of new study to be able to use it as before. Plus, if I’m going that far, there’s a lot I need to sort out here. So I’d like to start two months from now. If that’s okay.”

Yuri finished speaking. And he quietly waited for a reply from Ling Xinlu, who was looking at him with a strange expression.

Ling Xinlu was looking at Yuri with a strange face. It must have been the answer he wanted, but it seemed strange that such an answer came so quickly.

Eventually, Ling Xinlu slowly smiled.

“I’ll wait that long.”

His smile, as he spoke with a generous air, was unfamiliar despite having seen that face many times before. Joyful and natural laughter was in his eyes, his mouth, his eyebrows, his cheeks, his forehead.

Ah, yes. This is what I wanted to see. I missed this feeling of satisfaction just from looking.

Ling Xinlu seemed to quickly notice Yuri’s blank stare—well, he couldn’t not notice. Seeing him slowly stop smiling, Yuri belatedly asked.

“May I look?”

It was a question he had asked once before.

Ling Xinlu, who had been staring intently at Yuri, silently and earnestly waiting for an answer, suddenly let out a hollow laugh. The laugh, born of bewilderment, sounded almost like a snort.

He looked at Yuri, who was quietly watching him, for a while, then laughed again in bewilderment.

“Yes. You can look as much as you want during the contract period. Anytime, to your heart’s content.”

This time, Yuri nodded to Ling Xinlu, who readily granted permission without any conditions. “Thank you,” he muttered. Ling Xinlu, who was smiling at Yuri, suddenly asked.

“Well, do you think there’s a place that offers better conditions than me?”

To that arrogant and confident question, Yuri didn’t think for long and honestly shook his head.

Soon, a cheerful laugh erupted in the room.