When Su Xingyu stepped out, the sky was still clear—cloudless and bathed in golden sunlight.

This time, her trip to the supermarket was ostensibly “to browse and pick up some snacks,” but there was another purpose as well: she wanted to prepare a batch of calming herbal tea for Fu Yanqing.

After observing him over the past few days, she realized his sleep problems were far more serious than she’d imagined. Every morning when she went downstairs for breakfast, she could see dark circles under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept a wink all night. Zhou Shen said he’d “always had trouble sleeping,” but Su Xingyu didn’t think it was that simple.

How could someone’s vital energy have been suppressed for ten years without their body suffering any consequences?

She stood at the herbal medicine counter for a long while, carefully selecting several ingredients: sour jujube seed, polygala root, and Albizia bark—all known for their calming properties and gentle enough not to harm the body. As she paid, the cashier gave her an extra look: “Miss, are you a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner?”

“Sort of,” she replied with a smile, neatly wrapping the herbs and slipping them into a cloth bag.

After leaving the pharmacy, she stopped by the supermarket again, buying the soy sauce Zhou Shen had asked for, the peanuts Chen Bo loved, and the hawthorn cake she’d been craving for days. By the time she emerged, she was carrying two heavy bags.

Then the weather suddenly changed.

Su Xingyu stood at the supermarket entrance, staring at the torrential downpour outside, completely dumbfounded.

The rain had come without any warning, as if someone had just dumped a bucket of water from the sky. The curtain of rain was so thick she couldn’t even make out the street on the other side; puddles had already begun to form on the ground, and each raindrop splashed white spray upon impact.

She glanced down at the two bags in her hands—one a cloth bag, the other an eco-friendly tote—and realized neither was waterproof. She turned around and hurried back into the store to grab an umbrella.

Just as she reached an intersection, she saw a pregnant woman stepping out of the shop, standing hesitantly at the door, clearly troubled. Her belly was quite large—she looked to be seven or eight months along—and she was holding only a small bag, with no umbrella in sight.

Without a second thought, Su Xingyu handed her her own umbrella.

“Sister, please use this.”

The pregnant woman was taken aback. “But what about you, young lady?”

“I’m fine—I’m healthy; a little rain won’t hurt me,” she said with a cheerful smile, pressing the umbrella into the woman’s hands. “You’re carrying a baby, after all—you can’t get wet.”

Tears welled up in the woman’s eyes, moved beyond words. “How could I possibly accept this… What’s your name? How will I ever repay you for the umbrella?”

“No need to repay me—it’s just an umbrella,” Su Xingyu waved her hand. “Hurry now; the rain is getting heavier by the minute.”

With heartfelt thanks, the pregnant woman walked off, holding the umbrella and looking back every few steps.

Su Xingyu stood at the shop entrance, glancing up at the sky and then down at her bags, took a deep breath, and plunged into the rain.

The rain was even heavier than she’d imagined.

The icy rain instantly soaked her hair, clothes, and shoes, streaming down her cheeks. Squinting against the downpour, she ran forward, supporting the bottom of the bags with her hands to keep everything from spilling out.

By the time she reached the intersection, she was drenched through and through.

Just then, a black umbrella suddenly appeared above her head.

Had the rain stopped?

No—it wasn’t the rain that had stopped; someone had held up an umbrella, shielding her from every drop.

Su Xingyu looked up and saw Fu Yanqing.

He was wearing a dark gray overcoat and holding a long-handled black umbrella, standing right in front of her. Rainwater dripped off the edge of the umbrella, pooling into a small puddle at his feet.

His expression was calm, as if he’d simply happened to be passing by and decided to lend her a hand.

But Su Xingyu noticed water stains on his leather shoes and his pant legs were damp too—not like he’d driven here, but rather as if he’d walked a long way.

“How did you end up here?” she wiped the rain from her face and looked up at him.

Fu Yanqing’s gaze swept from her soaking-wet hair to the two nearly falling-apart bags in her arms, then to her shoulders, which were trembling slightly from the rain.

“Just passing by,” he said.

Su Xingyu stared at him for a moment, then suddenly smiled.

“It takes more than ten minutes to walk from the Old Family Residence to the supermarket—so you really did ‘pass by’ quite a distance, didn’t you?”

Fu Yanqing didn’t respond; instead, he tilted the umbrella slightly toward her, leaving half of his own shoulder exposed to the rain.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“Wait a minute,” Su Xingyu handed him the bags in her arms. “Help me carry these for a bit.”

Fu Yanqing took them and watched as she crouched down, pulling out a small package from one of the bags—cat food. She tore open the seal and poured it into a makeshift cat bed beneath a big tree by the roadside, muttering to herself, “That black cat hid here yesterday; on a rainy day, it surely won’t have anywhere to find food…”

Fu Yanqing stood in the rain, holding the umbrella, watching her squatting in the downpour to feed the cat. Suddenly, he felt something gently nudge his chest.

She was soaked to the bone, her hair plastered to her face, her clothes dripping with water, shivering from the cold. Yet she kept smiling, still worrying about that stray cat whose arrival remained uncertain.

Once Su Xingyu finished feeding the cat, she stood up, clapped her hands, and turned to him with a grin. “All right, let’s go.”

He just stared at her, unmoving.

“What’s wrong?”

“You’re drenched like this,” his voice was low. “Aren’t you afraid of catching a cold?”

“I’m fine—I’m perfectly healthy,” she sneezed, immediately covering her mouth. “It was… an accident.”

Fu Yanqing said nothing; he took off his coat and draped it over her.

End of Chapter 14: An Umbrella in the Rain