The reason he had always kept his feelings for Jian Anning separate from love was that he had once experienced the sensation of his heart skipping a beat.
The girl in the Golden Hall who could play the piano, that fleeting glance that took his breath away. The girl whose gentle melody had pulled him from his father’s coercion and led him onto the path of music.
Yu Xingxing was someone with a strong sense of cleanliness, and that included cleanliness of the spirit.
He had always believed that platonic love was noble, pure, and worth fluttering one’s heart over for a lifetime. And his feelings for Jian Anning? They were nothing but a man’s instinctive attraction to a woman, a physiological need, a release akin to eating and sleeping, "food-se-xual" in nature.
Did he feel jealous over Jian Anning? Of course, he did. Whether it was Lu Jiayuan or any other man, if they showed an inclination to get close to Jian Anning, he would be irked and displeased. If Jian Anning was overly intimate with other men, he would be unhappy. But that wasn’t the same as love, right? It was like the possessiveness of a male lion king over his territory and mate, not the kind of mutual understanding and soul-to-soul connection of soulmates.
There was no such mutual understanding or telepathy between them; she didn’t even understand music or know how to play the piano. She just managed him all day long, forbidding him from doing this, from slacking off, and sometimes they would even have a big fight. Was this kind of relationship considered love?
Yu Zexiao shot Leng Yunlin a sideways glance, "Aren’t you the same? You clearly know what love is supposed to be like, yet you’ve been with so many women. Don’t tell me you’ve actually developed feelings for one of them!"
Leng Yunlin was also a bit perplexed, especially after hearing his words. The image of a cunning face involuntarily flashed through his mind.
It was two years ago, just after Luo Qingxue’s incident. In his grief and anger, he had fallen out with his brother, Leng Yunting, and had gone to a bar in a huff. There, indeed, he had met a woman—
Yes, just a woman, that woman, who like Luo Qingxue, was filled with an entrancing charm, seemingly ethereal, yet shared the same—pain as him.
At this moment, Leng Yunlin didn’t know that the woman he had encountered at his lowest point was his soulmate, Mu Qingyu. He just nodded slightly, a touch bewildered, "If you must ask—then yes. There’s someone, I think she’s a bit special."
Yu Zexiao glanced at him, "The special you’re talking about, what kind is it?"
Leng Yunlin shook his head, "If you really want me to say, I don’t know."
He said, laughing, "It was just a one-night stand, after all. I can’t even find her. What special are we talking about?"
Then, he looked toward Yu Zexiao, his handsome features curving into a hint of a smile, "And you, that little assistant... wasn’t she your first time?"
"Of course not!" he rejected immediately, "What are you talking about, how could I possibly with her!"
Well, if he didn’t want to admit it, then so be it. After all, on that day, all their buddies knew that he definitely hadn’t spent the night with the innocent college girl they had set him up with.