The atmosphere was somewhat peculiar — tense, even.

To describe it more precisely, it was like those period costume dramas, where two men stand on the verge of drawing swords, yet neither makes the first move. Both holding back. Or rather, waiting.

Jiang Ruoqiao: “……”

Today could officially be written into her personal history.

She had imagined this day might come. She just hadn’t expected it would arrive so soon.

She looked toward Lu Yicheng.

Lu Yicheng looked back at her.

From Jiang Yan’s perspective, the two of them were exchanging a look. His breathing grew heavier as he stared unblinkingly at Jiang Ruoqiao. If he hadn’t witnessed it with his own eyes, he never would have believed that one day he’d see his closest friend standing here with the person he had feelings for. And even if such a day ever came, whether it was Du Yu or Wang Jiangfeng — it should never have been Lu Yicheng.

Lu Yicheng understood. From this point on, what remained was between him and Jiang Yan.

He lowered his voice, speaking to Jiang Ruoqiao in a calm, composed tone: “Didn’t you say you have a lot to do tomorrow? Go on up.”

*Leave the rest to me.* That was what he meant.

Jiang Ruoqiao thought — fair enough. Three people squaring off would just be messy and exhausting. Since Lu Yicheng had volunteered to handle it, she wasn’t going to undermine him at a time like this. She gave a small nod. “Alright then.”

What she had no way of knowing was that this perfectly ordinary exchange felt, to Jiang Yan, like a blade driven straight through the heart.

He hadn’t even realized — without his knowledge, without him being there to see it — that these two had grown this close.

Jiang Ruoqiao continued walking toward the dormitory building. She would have to pass right by Jiang Yan.

At that moment, Jiang Yan reached out and grabbed her wrist.

For just one instant, something shifted in Lu Yicheng’s otherwise calm eyes — an emotion that hadn’t been there before. He nearly stepped forward, but stopped himself.

Some things were between him and Jiang Yan.

Other things were between her and Jiang Yan…

Jiang Ruoqiao gave the lightest of struggles, and Jiang Yan let go immediately, as if he’d been burned.

To be fair, aside from the matter involving his sister — which was deeply problematic — Jiang Yan had been a perfectly good boyfriend in every other respect. He never pushed her into anything. Whatever she was unwilling to do, he simply would not make her do. Take the truth-or-dare incident, for example: when she hadn’t wanted to play along, he had quietly absorbed his negative emotions rather than using his position as her boyfriend to force her hand.

She resisted, she refused — and he let go.

Jiang Yan’s voice came out rough and strained, a bitter smile in it: “I only wanted to give you your birthday gift. Ruoqiao — happy birthday.”

Jiang Ruoqiao was not a cold-hearted person. She and Jiang Yan had shared sweet moments together.

Anyone else might have felt reluctant, might have felt a pang of sadness. But she was Jiang Ruoqiao — a woman who could observe her own joy and grief from a distance, let alone someone else’s.

What did Jiang Yan represent?

Danger. Uncertainty.

His lingering feelings for her were, more than anything, a complication. If he had simply let go after the breakup, treated her as a stranger the next time they met — she might have felt the tiniest sliver of gratitude toward him, because being forgotten, being released, would have meant she was truly breaking free from the story’s entanglements.

As for his gift — that was something she absolutely could not accept.

She didn’t even glance at the beautifully wrapped package. In an even tone, she said: “Jiang Yan, this isn’t appropriate.”

With that, she walked briskly into the dormitory building.

Left behind: Jiang Yan, hollowed out and quietly devastated — and Lu Yicheng, standing to the side with unhurried composure, technically an observer and yet undeniably a participant.

Once Jiang Ruoqiao was gone, Jiang Yan seemed to become a different person entirely — someone who had entered a state of war, an agitated male whose territory had been encroached upon.

When Jiang Yan looked at Lu Yicheng again, all traces of the warmth and familiarity from before were gone, replaced by ice and fury.

“Lu Yicheng…” He practically ground the name out between his teeth.

Lu Yicheng, for his part, seemed entirely unaware that he was in any danger.

There were still a few people lingering near the girls’ dormitory at this hour, not many, but enough that there was always a chance someone might overhear them.

One hand tucked into his trouser pocket, Lu Yicheng’s expression remained as unreadable as ever — though the gentle warmth he usually carried was conspicuously absent. “If you want to talk, let’s go somewhere else.”

Jiang Yan clenched his jaw hard.

Lu Yicheng paid him no mind and simply turned to walk in another direction. Jiang Yan had no choice but to follow, his gaze dark and cold. There was an undeveloped patch of wasteland on the campus of A’Da — far from the liveliness of the lecture halls and dormitories, rarely visited even in daylight, let alone on a night like this.

Once they had both come to a stop, Lu Yicheng sensed a rush of air and moved quickly to dodge — Jiang Yan had thrown a punch at him.

Even in evasion, Lu Yicheng moved without a hint of dishevelment. The two men faced each other. Jiang Yan desperately wanted to beat him senseless, but he hadn’t gotten his answers yet, and acting on impulse would only make him look childish. He forced down the urge to hit him, and demanded in a sharp voice: “Lu Yicheng — what do you think you’re doing? What is the meaning of this!”

Lu Yicheng looked at Jiang Yan — livid, humiliated, burning with rage — and his expression remained utterly still. After a few seconds of silence, he said evenly: “Exactly what you’re seeing.”

Even with some mental preparation, hearing that answer was more than Jiang Yan could accept. He stared at him in disbelief. “You’re my brother.”

They had been that close.

Two years as classmates, and he had genuinely believed they were the kind of friends who could last a lifetime — yet this person, this friend he had trusted, had harbored feelings for his girlfriend? Jiang Yan could not accept it. The mere thought made his eyes go bloodshot with fury.

Lu Yicheng said nothing for a moment.

But when he caught a glimpse of Jiang Yan’s expression — the stunned, furious look of someone who had been betrayed by both a close friend and a girlfriend — he finally spoke. “I have never done anything unworthy of being called a friend.”

Perhaps even he had been startled by the feelings he discovered within himself.

But he had nothing to feel guilty about. He truly had done nothing to betray their friendship.

From beginning to end, he had only ever watched from the sidelines.

“You haven’t done anything?” Jiang Yan’s voice climbed higher. “You call this nothing? Then tell me — what exactly are you doing right now?!”

Lu Yicheng replied: “The two of you have already broken up.”

He might have been better off not bringing that up. The moment he did, Jiang Yan felt an urge to demolish everything in sight.

He had never imagined something like this would happen to him.

What an absolute disaster.

Jiang Yan, seething: “Breaking up doesn’t make it okay!”

Lu Yicheng glanced up calmly. “That’s not for you to decide.”

The contrast between the two of them could not have been more stark.

Both were standout figures in their department — striking in appearance, exceptional in academics — but their temperaments couldn’t have been more different. Lu Yicheng, needless to say, was the gentle, herbivore-type campus heartthrob that the older and younger female students adored. Jiang Yan was sports-obsessed, with a deceptively languid manner that concealed a sharp edge, the kind of person who didn’t seem worth provoking — which was precisely why everyone had been so astonished when he became a devoted, loyal boyfriend after getting together with Jiang Ruoqiao.

By all logic, a genuinely decent guy like Lu Yicheng should have been overshadowed.

But his other qualities were simply too exceptional, and so the title of campus heartthrob had settled on him in a way that everyone found entirely convincing.

Right now, Lu Yicheng was calm. Jiang Yan was furious. And looking closely, it was somehow still Lu Yicheng who was quietly holding the room.

Jiang Yan clearly noticed this as well.

*Don’t be impulsive.* He forced himself to cool down, and looked at Lu Yicheng. “When did this start.” The more he thought about it, the more it grated on him, and even as he tried to stay composed, the words came out carelessly: “Was it before we even broke up? Were the two of you already—”

Lu Yicheng cut him off sharply. “That’s enough.”

Jiang Yan stared at him coldly.

“Watch what you say,” Lu Yicheng said. “Don’t insult me, and don’t insult her. The breakup happened because you overstepped boundaries, because you did something wrong. It has nothing to do with anyone else.”

Jiang Yan drew a long breath.

Angry as he was, he could hear the truth in what Lu Yicheng was saying.

And besides, he had never had any intention of denying what he himself had done wrong.

Jiang Yan asked: “Then let me ask you directly — do you have feelings for her?”

Even as he asked it, there was still a small remnant of hope in him. He hoped Lu Yicheng would say *no*. Hoped he’d say it was only coincidence, that they’d happened to cross paths for a while and nothing more.

He wanted so much for Lu Yicheng to say *no.*

The question left Lu Yicheng silent.

Not because he didn’t want to answer — but because he didn’t know how. How could he tell someone else something he himself wasn’t certain of? A person like Lu Yicheng, when it came to confirming something, needed at least several convincing reasons — reasons one, two, three, four, five — a minimum of five pieces of evidence before he could draw any conclusion. How else could you determine something like this?

Did he have feelings for Jiang Ruoqiao?

Why? What was it about her?

He couldn’t work out the logic himself, so how could he answer? A person had to stand behind the words they said, especially for something this important.

Did he *not* have feelings for Jiang Ruoqiao?

That didn’t seem quite right either. If there were truly no feelings, he wouldn’t have paid her so much attention, and there would have been no reason for those complicated emotions to arise.

So — he didn’t know.

When you don’t know something, of course you stay silent.

But to Jiang Yan, his silence was as good as an admission.

Jiang Yan closed his eyes for a moment, fists clenched, utterly at a loss. The peak of his anger had already passed. What remained, right now, was nothing but the desire to laugh at himself. What a failure of a person he was — first he’d lost the woman he cared about, and now he was being told that the friend he’d trusted most apparently had feelings for her too.

Was he just that worthless?

Jiang Yan thought back to the spray bottle he’d seen at Lu Yicheng’s apartment that day. That was the thing that had been gnawing at him, scratching at his heart — he needed to know.

“One last question.” Jiang Yan asked, exhausted. “That spray bottle I saw at your place that day — was it hers?”

Lu Yicheng didn’t know how to answer this one either.

If he said yes — back then, Jiang Yan and she were still together. Saying yes would cast her in a bad light, suggesting she had come to his apartment while she was still in a relationship.

And if he told the full truth, it would drag Siyan into this.

Besides, he had his own way of thinking about it. If the day ever came to bring this up with a fourth person, it would only be with both his and Siyan’s agreement.

She wasn’t here right now. He had no right to speak of Siyan’s situation on his own.

So Lu Yicheng didn’t answer yes or no directly.

He only said: “It’s Siyan’s mother’s.”

Jiang Yan, who had been coiled tight as a spring, finally let out a breath at that answer. A genuine sense of relief settled through him.

Good. It wasn’t what he’d feared. Things between them hadn’t gone that far.

There was nothing left to say.

Moonlight poured down around them.

The bitterness had left Jiang Yan’s face, replaced by something closer to cold resolve. He turned away and said in a low voice: “From this point on, we are no longer friends.”

And with that, he walked away in long strides.

After he left, Lu Yicheng raised his head and looked up at the clear, pale light of the moon.

*It’s been a long time since we were,* he thought.

—