Qian Wei woke up with a mild headache. Opening her eyes, she immediately sensed that this was clearly not her own home. A dim floor lamp lit the room, giving the whole space a hazy, suggestive atmosphere. She touched the bed beneath her—it was the kind of large hotel bed with uniformly plush, heavy bedding, and judging by the furnishings and decor, this was clearly a rather high-end five-star hotel, and a suite at that. She checked her clothes—still on, thankfully—and felt a mix of relief and alarm. She had almost no memory of what had happened after she got drunk, only a vague recollection of a remarkably vivid, wonderful dream, after which everything went blank.

She was deeply annoyed at herself for getting drunk. Her tolerance had never been great, and she really shouldn’t have pushed her limits. If it had been Qian Chuan, he’d have definitely taken her straight home. So if she was in a hotel now, could it be that some opportunistic predator had taken advantage of her while she was passed out and brought her here to a room???

Just as suspicion was creeping in, the door of the outer suite clicked open with the swipe of a key card.

Oh no, oh no, the pervert’s back! And a rich pervert at that!

On maximum alert, Qian Wei fumbled and grabbed a heavy pillow, ducking into the shadows of the sitting room under cover of the dim light.

Sure enough, the “pervert” had already entered and was currently facing away from her, closing the door—a tall, well-built man.

Without a second thought, Qian Wei swung the heavy pillow and smashed it right at him, and in the split second while he was stunned and instinctively raised his arms to block, she dropped the pillow and bolted for the door.

But her plan didn’t work out quite as well as she’d hoped—the moment her hand touched the door, her other arm was yanked back forcefully by the man, and off balance, she went stumbling straight into his arms.

“Qian Wei, it’s me.”

Along with that familiar, low voice came a scent she knew well—a man’s cologne, cool and woodsy. All the tension that had just been coiled up inside Qian Wei suddenly released at once.

“Lu Xun.” Thankfully, the dim lighting hid the flush spreading across her face. For some reason, in a space with just the two of them, the mere scent of him was enough to make her heart race.

To cover her embarrassment, she spoke up. “How did I end up here? What happened just now?” Qian Wei wasn’t sure if the whole business of trashing him in front of his parents had come out yet, but she decided to give herself an escape route first. “I got pretty drunk earlier, I honestly can’t remember anything that happened. Whatever I did while I was drunk, it wasn’t really me, so please don’t take it the wrong way!”

But she hadn’t anticipated that Lu Xun would go completely silent after that. He said nothing for a long while, and when he finally spoke, his voice was somewhat hoarse. “So everything that happened earlier—that was all just some misunderstanding you made under the influence?”

Oh no, oh no, he really does know!

She could tell Lu Xun was working hard to hold his emotions in check. Qian Wei could only nod frantically. “Yes! It was all a misunderstanding! I really hope this little incident doesn’t change anything between us!”

For some reason, Lu Xun’s expression flickered for a moment with something like disappointment and discomfort, but when Qian Wei looked more closely, his handsome face had already smoothed back into unreadable composure.

The atmosphere fell into an awkward silence for a moment. Qian Wei scratched her head and changed the subject to break the tension. “Where’s Qian Chuan?” She glanced at her phone. “I definitely texted him.”

“He took Liu Shiyun home.”

Qian Wei’s face was a giant question mark. What did that even mean? Weren’t the two of them not on good terms? So why, at a moment like this, would he abandon his own twin sister at the hotel to run off with Liu Shiyun instead? Which meant her drunken dream about him and Liu Shiyun earlier had actually been some kind of omen after all!

Lu Xun pressed his lips together, and only now seemed to remember something, handing Qian Wei a bottle of Perrier. “Just went down to buy it. You’ve had a lot to drink, sparkling water should help settle your stomach.”

After finishing the water, Qian Wei looked up at Lu Xun. “What about you? What about your parents and your cousin?”

“I got them a taxi home.”

Qian Wei felt a bit guilty. “You should have gone with your family.”

“And just leave you here at the hotel in that state?” Lu Xun lowered his head. “Even setting aside anything else between us, I’m still your boss. A superior shouldn’t leave a subordinate at risk. You fell asleep right after, so I got a room here at the Hyatt for you to rest.”

As a boss, Lu Xun’s conduct was, admittedly, exemplary. And yet, hearing this, Qian Wei couldn’t help but feel a bitter twinge. Right, “setting aside anything else between us”—did he really have to draw such a clear line between them? She thought, worried, was her inappropriate crush that obvious? Had Lu Xun already seen right through her?

Now that the alcohol had worn off, there was naturally no excuse left to keep Lu Xun there any longer. He said nothing more and simply drove Qian Wei home. The whole ride, he—already a man of few words—was unusually, strikingly silent.

Despite the drinking, for some reason, the next day Qian Wei woke up unusually energetic and glowing. She had a corporate client dealing with a labor dispute among senior executives that needed mediation that morning, so she spent the whole morning at the client’s company handling it. By the time she made it back to the firm, it was already noon.

But the moment she stepped into the office, she noticed something was off about the atmosphere—rather than working, everyone was clustered together, deep in heated discussion.

“Oh my god, I never expected Lawyer Lu to be this passionate. I totally misjudged him, totally misjudged him.”

“So Lawyer Lu really is off the market? Just like that?!”

Hearing Lu Xun’s name, Qian Wei instinctively leaned in. “What are you all looking at?”

Several female lawyers, along with a group of interns, were all crowded around a phone. Seeing Qian Wei’s curiosity, one of her closer colleagues eagerly waved her over. “The ‘Passionate Kiss Incident,’ don’t you know about it?”

“Passionate kiss incident???”

“Last night, our Lawyer Lu had a passionate kiss with some mystery beauty right in the lobby of the Hyatt, in front of everyone! Lawyer Qian, you really don’t keep up with gossip, do you? This video’s already got almost a million views!”

Qian Wei was utterly confused. “Let me see.” She took the phone and found it was a page on the A University campus forum, with a post marked “hot,” posted last night at ten o’clock, and by now had an astonishing number of replies. The title of the post was extremely clickbait—

“Weeping with shock! A University Law School’s coldest, most untouchable snow lotus Lu Xun caught kissing a mystery beauty in public! Another eligible bachelor bites the dust!”

Qian Wei’s heart suddenly lurched, a bad feeling washing over her. Her hands trembling, she clicked on the post and played the video…

The footage seemed to have been shot from a distance, and it was indeed the Hyatt lobby she’d been at just last night. There was a bit of background noise, and while the female lead’s face was unclear due to the angle and distance, Lu Xun’s face was captured with perfect clarity.

But just because no one else recognized Qian Wei didn’t mean she didn’t recognize herself… Her eyes went wide as she watched the video—the woman in four-inch heels and a red dress on screen, who else could that be but herself?!

Even more horrifying, there she was, stubbornly sitting on the lobby floor, refusing to let Lu Xun pull her up.

Qian Wei’s heart pounded like a drum. This—this was exactly what had happened in her “dream” last night???

“Wait for it, they’re about to kiss, this is the intense part!”

Someone, out of the goodness of their heart, gave Qian Wei a helpful “trailer” for what was coming.

Right on cue, in the video, Lu Xun leaned down and kissed the woman sitting on the floor, then pulled her up, and the two of them, tangled together, went on to kiss right there in the lobby, oblivious to everyone around them.

Whoever had come up with that tacky name, “Passionate Kiss Incident,” Qian Wei had to admit—based on how intensely she and Lu Xun were going at it in the video, the description was, unfortunately, extremely apt…

“Did you see that?! It’s a French kiss!! An actual French kiss!” If there had been a chalkboard nearby, Qian Wei had no doubt this intern would have started rapping on it with a pointer. “Absolutely textbook kissing technique!” she gushed. “Lawyer Lu is way too good-looking, this is like watching a drama! I never expected our normally so cold and reserved Lawyer Lu to be this passionate once he lets loose! I’m honestly so jealous of this girl, does anyone know who she is?”

“No idea. Her figure looks amazing though. One of our corporate clients’ female execs, maybe? Wait, didn’t someone say Lawyer Lu went to the Hyatt for a blind date last night? So this must be the blind date girl?”

“Kissing this passionately on the very first meeting—must’ve been love at first sight. I’m calling it now, we’ll be eating Lawyer Lu’s wedding candy within six months.”

“Hey, why does this girl’s silhouette kind of look like Qian Wei’s?”

Qian Wei quickly waved her hands, keeping a straight face as she protested with practiced ease. “Don’t be ridiculous! That’s not me! Don’t you all think my figure’s even better than hers?”

“Pfft!”

The group let out a chorus of boos, and thankfully no one pursued the theory further. Qian Wei could only be grateful that, in her plan to crash the date, she’d changed out of her usual professional work attire before going to the Hyatt, into that bright red dress and heels, so completely unlike her normal style…

She’d fooled her coworkers, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t actually happened… Qian Wei thought back to what she’d assumed was a dream last night, and now all the blood seemed to rush straight to her head, her whole face burning red. Trashing Lu Xun in front of his own parents was bad enough, but then flirting with their son right in front of them, and then throwing a tantrum, demanding a kiss, and kissing him passionately in public?! She didn’t have the courage to watch that video again—it was simply too mortifying, too eye-searing!

Getting drunk and making a scene, fine, she could accept that about herself. But why had Lu Xun—normally so composed, always so calm and collected—played along so obediently?!

Qian Wei bit her lip. Since she’d already thrown away all her dignity and demanded a kiss, Lu Xun had no business playing dumb either. They’d kissed passionately in a hotel lobby last night, and yet since sobering up, he still hadn’t reached out to her at all—was this some legendary case of turning cold the moment the alcohol wore off?!

As these thoughts swirled through her mind, Qian Wei marched straight toward Lu Xun’s office—he absolutely owed her an explanation!

“Hey, hey! Qian Wei, Lawyer Lu’s not in his office!” a colleague, Lawyer Zhang, called out, stopping her. “He left for the airport an hour ago. There’s some issue with the financing for the client company in City B, he had to go handle it in person—two-day business trip. Oh, by the way, didn’t you handle a bankruptcy restructuring case before? Do you have any reference materials I could borrow?”

“Hey, hey, Qian Wei? Where are you going? That bankruptcy restructuring case, could you send me some reference materials?”

Even though she knew perfectly well she could simply wait at the firm for Lu Xun to return from his trip, for some reason, Qian Wei’s heart was pounding wildly, and she felt like she couldn’t wait even one more minute, one more second.

Her heart felt like a giant, tangled ball of thread, and she was inching, step by step, toward some deeper truth. She desperately wanted to see Lu Xun, desperately wanted to hear his voice, desperately wanted to be by his side.

Perhaps, sometimes, everything really was simpler than she’d thought. Stripping away every outside factor, in this ever-shifting world, there was only one thing that remained truly simple.

She liked Lu Xun.

Qian Wei got Lu Xun’s flight number from the firm’s admin department while in the taxi, and the moment she got out, she rushed straight into the airport terminal. Surrounded by the bustling crowds of the airport, Qian Wei finally began to register how reckless this all was—even knowing his flight number didn’t guarantee she’d actually catch him. The texts she’d sent him on the way over had all gone unanswered.

He wasn’t at the airline’s service counter. He wasn’t at baggage check either. But perhaps by some stroke of fate, just as Qian Wei was about to give up hope, she finally spotted him.

He was standing in the security check line, waiting his turn.

“Lu Xun!”

Qian Wei stopped caring about anything else and called out his name loudly at his back.

Lu Xun paused, then turned around. Seeing Qian Wei, an expression of undisguised shock crossed his face. “What are you—”

“Lu Xun, I like you!” Qian Wei cut him off directly. “I like you so much I want to marry you!”

There were still quite a few people in the security line, and Qian Wei’s loud declaration drew every eye in the vicinity, but she couldn’t have cared less. In this moment, Lu Xun was the only thing that existed for her. She didn’t care about the rest of the world—she only cared about him.

She’d already demanded a kiss once—what could possibly be more embarrassing than that?

At this point, Qian Wei simply let go completely. She bit her lip and gathered every ounce of courage she had.

“You kissed me last night! So you have to take responsibility!”

Lu Xun’s entire body seemed to freeze. His eyes went wide, staring at Qian Wei in complete disbelief. Just as Qian Wei was starting to think, with mortification, that her confession had failed, Lu Xun finally seemed to thaw, regaining control of his limbs, and walked straight out of the security line to stand in front of her.

Without a word, Lu Xun cupped Qian Wei’s face in his hands and kissed her.

The crowd at security, including the airport staff, broke into cheers and whistles, and at that exact moment, the boarding announcement for Lu Xun’s flight rang out.

Time was short, and all he could do was come and go in a hurry.

“Wait for me to come back.” These were the words Lu Xun left in Qian Wei’s ear before he left, his voice carrying just the faintest tremor at the end. It was the first time Qian Wei had ever heard him sound like that—just like her, it turned out he’d been nervous too.

So he could get nervous too.