"Aren’t you cold, madam?"
"It doesn’t matter. Compared to what I’m feeling in my heart, the cold out here is nothing."
"In your heart? What’s wrong?"
"You wouldn’t understand even if I told you. Otherwise, you wouldn’t still be single at thirty."
"What’s the big deal about being single! I like it. You can’t even imagine how happy I am... Just eat your sushi and stop being so nosy!"
"Where’s the boss?"
"In the tent."
Atop the Iron Curtain Tower, steam wafted gently from outside a tent.
Two men in suits chatted as they scooped food out of a self-heating hot pot.
The cold wind assailed them.
In this environment, gazing out at Tokyo City while eating steaming hot pot had a certain unique appeal.
Inoue had told the two men to keep an eye on Jiangg Yao while he handled business inside the tent.
The two of them stared at Jiangg Yao’s back.
One didn’t understand why she was sitting there all alone, while the other understood perfectly and sighed with sympathy.
Getting stood up like this would make anyone feel terrible.
However, the two grunts couldn’t do anything about it. They could only stuff their faces with the sushi on their plates, using the full-bellied warmth to ward off the high-altitude chill.
"I’m on top of the tower. Look, isn’t the view amazing... You have a fear of heights even just through a video call? Wan, you’re such a scaredy-cat."
As the two men were busy gobbling down their food, a peal of laughter suddenly came from the edge of the tower.
They looked up.
Jiangg Yao was on a video call with someone, happily chatting.
Hearing her laugh for the first time in a while, the two men exchanged a glance and went back to eating with even more vigor.
They had been on this business trip for a few days, free from the bustling work back at the company. The "Tokyo Affairs Team," as assigned by their boss, spent all their time revolving around Jiangg Yao. As a result, they had come to form a clear picture of this esteemed lady.
Everyone was in agreement.
This Lady Huaxia, who had traveled all the way to Tokyo, was a dreamlike existence, even more "2D" than the 2D girls popular in the Neon Country.
Although the Neon Country was the birthplace of the 2D beautiful girl, they, who were steeped in this strange culture, understood clearly that such women simply didn’t exist in reality.
Back home in Huaxia, on the other hand, the conflict between the sexes was severe. In the workplace and on campus, men and women discriminated against each other, and their mutual stereotypes were impossible to overcome. Consequently, marriage and birth rates were declining year after year. It was extremely common for people in their thirties to be single with no desire to ever get married.
Even government intervention was of no use.
Compared to the dreamlike romance anime, the barrenness of reality seemed particularly ironic.
The kind of spouse men hoped for and the kind of spouse women hoped for were two starkly different things in both perception and reality.
Not to mention, most people were already struggling just to make ends meet. They already faced enough pressure, and marriage meant taking on the additional burden of a family.
But Jiangg Yao, as the members of the Tokyo Affairs Team had discovered over the past few days, was completely different from the women they encountered in their own lives.
Her lively personality, her occasional endearing dorkiness, her sincere laughter and sorrow, and even the playful little movements she made when she walked.
When Inoue and the others saw this, they felt strangely moved.
Especially the sincerity of her feelings for Mr. Jiang.
’So this kind of good woman really does exist in the world.’
It was precisely the beauty they possessed that drove people to pursue true love.
’Who wouldn’t want a girlfriend like that?’
On the tower.
Once the two men had eaten and drunk their fill, they started playing a very traditional game of word riddles.
If they knew that the relationship between Jiangg Yao and Chen Yuan they so admired wasn’t as pure and perfect as it appeared on the surface, but was instead full of twists and struggles, one wonders if they would still be as envious.
They were also unaware that besides Jiangg Yao, there was also Jiangg Ning...
...
Nearing midnight. 11:30 PM.
He had crossed international borders.
A long journey of several hours.
Chen Yuan had finally arrived in Tokyo.
When the driver dropped him off near his destination, the Iron Curtain Tower, his legs were still weak and his head was a bit fuzzy.
These were the aftereffects of drinking too much.
And that was with the help of a hangover cure.
If not for Ji Hai’s thoughtful arrangement of the hangover medicine, Chen Yuan probably wouldn’t even be able to walk straight right now.
"Are we almost there?" Chen Yuan licked his dry lips.
He had drunk countless bottles of water on the way, but he still felt thirsty. Yet, whenever he moved, he could feel his stomach sloshing with water.
"We’re almost there, Mr. Jiang," the driver said, glancing at the GPS. "Less than a kilometer to go."
"Faster."
"But..."
"I’m fine. Just drive faster."
Chen Yuan couldn’t help but urge him on.
He had originally promised Jiangg Yao he would arrive in the afternoon, but now it was almost midnight. He clutched his phone, not even daring to reply to her messages.
He wasn’t afraid of much, but he was afraid of making the two sisters angry.
It wasn’t that he was a coward.
It was just that if they got angry, he’d have to coax them, and there was no way around it.
Chen Yuan stared intently at the face of his watch, his mind racing as he watched the second hand tick by.
’I’m about to see Jiangg Yao. I have to prepare my excuse.’
"Mr. Jiang, we’re here," the driver’s voice suddenly cut in.
"Okay." Chen Yuan looked up.
After the driver had parked the car steadily, Chen Yuan got out. The moment he pushed the door open, a blast of cold wind made him shrink his neck.
He then looked around but couldn’t see Jiangg Yao anywhere.
Only a black Mitsubishi sedan was parked there.
KNOCK KNOCK—
As the car window rolled down, the member of the Tokyo office who was eating a sandwich froze for a second.
"Mr. Jiang!" The man in the suit scrambled out of the car.
"Where is she?"
Seeing Chen Yuan’s questioning gaze, the man wiped his mouth clean and pointed up.
"On top of the tower."
"Huh?"
Chen Yuan looked up at the several-hundred-meter-high Iron Curtain Tower, dumbfounded for a moment.
"The madam said she wanted to put a perfect end to this Tokyo trip, so she climbed the Iron Curtain Tower. There are a lot of tourists up there, all waiting to watch the sunrise tomorrow morning."
"Waiting up there?"
"To be precise, she’s enjoying the night view. Oh, right, we’ve prepared tents and food, enough to spend the night comfortably."
"...Alright."
Led by the man, Chen Yuan arrived at the base of the Iron Curtain Tower. What greeted his eyes were countless densely packed horizontal protrusions for handholds, with several safety ropes dangling to the ground.
He immediately swallowed hard.
"You have to climb it raw?"
"Well... the Iron Curtain Tower currently doesn’t have an elevator or a cable car, so this is the only way up. Of course, I will climb with you, Mr. Jiang, to ensure your safety. It rained in Tokyo last night, so the handholds are wet and slippery. You must be careful."
To be honest, Chen Yuan really didn’t want to climb.
He was already dead tired from the journey, and on top of that, he’d been drinking. He was now in a state of complete exhaustion—aching back, sore legs, the works. To then have to climb several hundred meters hand and foot... the agony was imaginable.
Chen Yuan took a deep breath and let it out.
...
「A few minutes later.」
High above the Iron Curtain Tower, a hundred meters in the air.
Inoue, who was busy working in his tent, was startled when the phone beside him suddenly began to RING RING RING.
He saw the caller ID and quickly answered.
"Mr. Jiang—"
But before he could finish, a roar came from the other end of the line.
"Who the hell gave her that idea? Is this tower even meant for people to climb?"
A drop of cold sweat trickled down Inoue’s forehead.
"Sir, please let me explain..."
...
Cold. Pain. Limbs growing numb and losing feeling. A terrifying shock when looking down, and utter despair when looking up.
The word "despair" couldn’t have been a more fitting description of Chen Yuan’s state.
He had already stopped to rest countless times on the way up. It was colder at night, making the climb much more difficult than it had been for the tourists that afternoon.
There was no other way.
He could only accept this brief agony as his punishment for being late.
After all, he was the one who hadn’t kept his promise.
"Just thirty meters left! Keep going, Mr. Jiang!" the man in the suit panted from below. "Once the clouds clear tomorrow morning, the sunrise will be beautiful."
"You be careful too... Let’s go!"
Chen Yuan gritted his teeth, tightened his grip on the handhold above, and hauled himself upward.
There were several tents on the tower, each with a glowing lamp on top. They swayed with the wind, their soft light resembling the glow of fireflies.
But in Chen Yuan’s eyes, the light seemed hazy and distant.
Standing on the tower, Chen Yuan felt waves of cold sweat break out all over his body. He had a premonition that he would definitely have a cold tomorrow.
He listened to his own ragged panting, his chest heaving.
"Yaoyao," Chen Yuan called out, steadying himself on the iron frame beside him.
In an instant.
Jiangg Yao’s shoulders trembled twice before she turned her head, her face a mask of disbelief.
"Why are you out here instead of in the tent? You’ll freeze to death!"
The moment she saw him, a frantic light flickered in Jiangg Yao’s eyes.
For a long moment.
She didn’t answer.
Not until Chen Yuan had walked up to her, just a breath away.
Only then did a somewhat suppressed, hoarse voice escape her lips.
"I thought you weren’t coming..."
Looking at her reddened eyes and her stubbornly pursed lips, Chen Yuan suddenly felt that climbing those several hundred meters had been worth it.
He scratched his head, sounding a little guilty.
"How could I not come? When I promise you something, I have to follow through—"
"You jerk!"
However, before he could finish, Jiangg Yao threw herself into his arms, burying her face in his clothes and holding on tight.
The long-missed fragrance washed over him, and Chen Yuan felt like his waist was about to be squeezed in two.
Jiangg Yao’s embrace was warm, seeming to drive away some of the chill. When she lifted her delicate little face, tears shimmered in her eyes.
"I thought you didn’t want me anymore... that you just wanted to stay with my sister. Do you know how scared I was... *sob*, why didn’t you reply to my messages? You wanna die, you... *sob*..."
Jiangg Yao’s words were harsh, but they had no bite. Her pitiful appearance made Chen Yuan’s heart melt in an instant.
"How is that possible? I would never abandon Yaoyao. Stop crying, it’s embarrassing if people see you with a runny nose," Chen Yuan coaxed in a low voice.
"Now you won’t even let me cry... *sob*... Why are your hands so cold?" Jiangg Yao sniffled, then flinched as if shocked when she touched his hand.
"You climbed too high! I nearly died coming up here!"
"There’s a heating blanket in the tent. Go sit down, quick." Jiangg Yao grabbed his hand and pulled him inside without another word.
Not far away.
Three men in suits stood together, silently watching the lovers’ reunion.
"How sweet~"
"Yeah, yeah, I’m so jealous."
"This must be love. Sigh, why am I getting a little emotional too?"
They murmured amongst themselves.
Suddenly.
A shout came from the climbing ladder of the Iron Curtain Tower.
"Hey, Lord Inoue! Help me! My hands are about to freeze solid!"
The man in the suit who had climbed up with Chen Yuan was poking his head over the edge, an expression of sheer agony on his face as he yelled at the three of them.
The three men exchanged a look.
In less than half a second, they had dashed back into their tent at the speed of light.
"You bastards!!" the man in the suit choked out through a sob.
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