I'm Interested In Your Friend - Chapter 60

60

The next day at noon.

“What do you want to eat?” Tan Suran asked Yu Lili.

“Can I choose anything?”

“Yes, anything.”

Yu Lili smiled: “Then I want to eat… a meal made by you.”

Tan Suran hesitated.

“Is that not okay?” Yu Lili deliberately lowered her eyes, putting on a pitiful act.

“It’s not that it’s not okay… but it might not taste very good,” Tan Suran admitted honestly.

“I’ll love anything you make—” Before she could finish, Yu Lili’s phone rang.

She answered the call right in front of Tan Suran.

As she listened, the smile on her face froze.

After hanging up, Tan Suran noticed something was wrong and asked, “What happened?”

Yu Lili lowered her arm and blinked. “Yu Mu… Yu Mu wants to meet me.”

“Are you going?” Tan Suran asked.

After a pause, Yu Lili nodded.

“It’s the last time anyway,” she said softly, as if speaking more to herself than to Tan Suran.

“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” Tan Suran said.

Yu Lili shook her head.

Her emotions steadied, and she forced a smile again.

She quickly pecked Tan Suran on the cheek. “I’ll be back by the time you finish cooking. Don’t worry.”

After Yu Lili left, Tan Suran followed a tutorial and clumsily prepared a table full of dishes.

This experience taught her one thing: cooking was far harder than doing business.

The sky gradually darkened as clouds gathered, bringing rain.

The clock on the wall ticked away, minute by minute.

But the person who had said, “I’ll be right back,” never returned.

Tan Suran checked the door every minute, fifty times over, but Yu Lili was long overdue.

Leaning on the couch, Tan Suran called Yu Lili.

The dial tone rang—”Beep… beep… beep…”—until it cut off automatically.

No one answered.

Half an hour later, she called again.

…

After dozens of unanswered calls and searching every possible place Yu Lili might be in Lihe, Tan Suran couldn’t find her.

Sitting in the car, gripping the steering wheel, Tan Suran felt a rare pang of panic.

But Yu Mu’s plane had already taken off—she couldn’t possibly do anything to harm Yu Lili now.

Still, she couldn’t shake her unease.

Just as she was about to contact someone, she suddenly remembered one more place.

—

“Xiao Tan?”

At Zhushan Lodge, it was Li Qianman who first noticed Tan Suran standing in the rain.

She was leaning against a tree, her face illuminated by the yellow streetlight, her gaze fixed on the third-floor corner room.

The curtains were half-drawn, and only a dim light flickered behind the glass.

But that faint glow was enough.

As long as she knew Yu Lili was here—safe—that was all that mattered.

“Are you here to see Lili?” Li Qianman asked.

Tan Suran nodded faintly, then shook her head.

Clutching her car keys, rainwater dripped from her brows.

The landlady shifted her umbrella to cover Tan Suran. “It’s pouring—why didn’t you bring an umbrella?”

“It’s fine. I should go back now,” Tan Suran said, turning to leave.

“It’s the middle of the night, and the rain’s so heavy. Why not stay over?”

But Li Qianman couldn’t persuade her.

Watching Tan Suran’s retreating figure, a strangely familiar thought flickered through Li Qianman’s mind—but she couldn’t grasp it.

Still, she went upstairs and knocked on Yu Lili’s door.

“Your wife is here. Don’t you want to see her?”

By the time Yu Lili came down, Tan Suran had already gotten into her car.

She hadn’t started the engine yet.

The windows were rolled all the way down, letting the fine rain drift inside. She didn’t move to avoid it, her gaze fixed blankly outside, her expression desolate—like the last reed struggling in the cold wind, on the verge of snapping at any moment.

“Why didn’t you come up?”

Yu Lili’s voice snapped Tan Suran out of her daze.

She lifted her eyelids slightly, her eyes locking onto Yu Lili.

Her lips, slightly dry, pressed together before she spoke, her tone self-deprecating.

“You probably didn’t want to see me.”

“I… no.” Under Tan Suran’s gaze, Yu Lili couldn’t lie.

She admitted that after meeting Yu Mu, she had been in a foul mood and just wanted to be alone.

After a moment of silence, Tan Suran followed Yu Lili back to her room.

As soon as they entered, without turning on the lights, in the overwhelming darkness, Tan Suran pressed Yu Lili against the wall, finding her lips in a near-bruising kiss—like she was devouring a storm, or confirming her existence.

They both needed this—a fierce, wordless release.

Harsh and desperate.

Breathless and suffocating.

Love and resentment poured out in equal measure.

When the white-hot moment came, a clap of thunder echoed outside.

Tan Suran held Yu Lili tightly, trembling, as if trying to fuse her into her very being—so they’d never part, never have to doubt each other’s hearts again.

After showering, Tan Suran sat on the balcony swing, smoking with one arm propped up.

A trail of half-burnt cigarette butts littered the ground.

Yu Lili pushed open the glass door, unsure of what to say.

Only after seeing the missed calls on her phone (set to Do Not Disturb) did she realize how anxiously Tan Suran had been searching for her.

“I…” Yu Lili started, but Tan Suran cut her off.

“What am I to you?” Her voice was flat.

Her head was bowed, her slender neck pale and fragile, her tone weightless—yet it hit like a hammer.

“I’m sorry about today…” Yu Lili apologized, but Tan Suran didn’t react.

“That…” She didn’t know how to explain the gloom that had settled over her after meeting Yu Mu.

It was tangled with too much past—her ostracized childhood, the pain of being hated by someone she once considered family, the invisible scars of teenage bullying.

She didn’t have the energy or the words to unpack it all now.

“It’s late. Let’s sleep.”

Tan Suran stood up, her aura icy, brushing past Yu Lili’s shoulder before climbing into bed, turning her back to her, and closing her eyes.

The next day, when they returned home, Yu Lili saw the table of cold, untouched dishes—a lavish spread gone to waste.

It wasn’t hard to imagine how eagerly Tan Suran had waited for her, or how thoroughly she had crushed that anticipation.

Guilt overwhelmed her.

Yu Lili twisted her fingers together and apologized again.

Tan Suran didn’t even glance at her.

“I’m going to work,” she said before leaving.

Once Tan Suran was gone, the house felt hollow again.

Yu Lili sighed silently.

She took a small bowl from the kitchen, sat at the table, and ate every bite of the overnight meal, tears falling uncontrollably.

She couldn’t explain where this sudden wave of sadness came from.

After finishing, she wiped her tears, stewed in melancholy for a while, then steeled herself.

This was her fault.

If she’d ruined one of Tan Suran’s meals, she’d just have to make it up to her.

Yu Lili rushed to the supermarket, buying fresh meat and vegetables, then texted Tan Suran to come home for lunch.

While chopping onions, the fumes made her eyes water.

Hot oil splattered on her skin, stinging.

The cooking smoke choked her throat.

She burned her hand, scalded her foot—by the time the dishes were done, the kitchen was a disaster.

She covered each plate to keep them warm, then sat waiting for Tan Suran, chin in hand.

She waited.

And waited.

Until Tan Suran texted that she was busy.

Yu Lili’s shoulders slumped.

Staring at the messy kitchen and her own disheveled state, she felt numb.

She lay on the living room couch all afternoon, watching the clock’s hands crawl forward.

At first, she told herself it was fine—she just needed space.

She’d come back when she felt better.

But after a day of being unable to reach Tan Suran, after preparing a meal no one came home to eat, the weight of her own actions settled heavily on her.

If she felt this awful after just one instance, how much worse had Tan Suran felt last night?

Spending hours searching for her in the rain?

Yu Lili couldn’t help but reflect.

But how could she make it up to her angry kitten?

Was it too late to kneel outside her office now, shouting “I’m sorry, wife!” a hundred times?