When Lu Yicheng got home, Lu Siyan had already fallen into a deep sleep.

Ever since starting kindergarten, the little guy’s sleep schedule had been forcibly corrected. Jiang Ruoqiao was exhausted too, having been forcing herself to stay awake, and now that Lu Yicheng was back, she could prepare to head back to school. Lu Yicheng still insisted on walking her to the school gate. The September air was still warm and lively, especially around A’Da University, and the two of them cut through the side lanes. Perhaps because the Mid-Autumn Festival was drawing closer, the moon overhead had grown rounder and rounder, hanging in the sky — bright and luminous.

Lu Yicheng was still carrying that coffee cup. When they finally reached the school gate, he held it out to her.

Jiang Ruoqiao looked at him with a puzzled expression.

“A cup. For drinking coffee.”

Jiang Ruoqiao nodded. “I know.”

But why are you giving it to me? Where did it come from?

Jiang Ruoqiao recognized the cup — she’d wanted to buy one herself, but the prices online had been driven up to ridiculous levels, so she’d passed. She was the impulsive-spending type sometimes, but it was just a cup, and she really hadn’t wanted to be a fool about it.

Could this cup actually be something Lu Yicheng bought??

Even though the price had come down now, no matter how she looked at it, she just couldn’t picture him as the type to spend over two hundred yuan on a cup.

Lu Yicheng came clean: “I went to the company just now. Apparently it’s a Mid-Autumn Festival welfare gift.”

He deliberately omitted the most critical detail — like how Ge Li had let him go pick something out, and how there had been paper towels and cooking oil that would have been far more practical for him to take.

Well, at this moment even he found himself completely baffling. How could he have chosen a cup that wasn’t particularly useful for anything?

Jiang Ruoqiao suddenly understood. “Oh, so it’s a Mid-Autumn Festival gift.”

Lu Yicheng nodded. “I don’t drink coffee either, and Siyan already has his own sippy cup. It would be a shame to just let it collect dust at home.”

So nobody needed it, and that’s why he was giving it to her?

Jiang Ruoqiao made a sound of acknowledgment, and without any fuss, she accepted it. “Then thank you — I actually really like this cup.”

Lu Yicheng said, “That’s good then.”

Jiang Ruoqiao had half a mind to look up the current price of the cup and transfer him the money, but when the words were already forming, she caught the gentle smile on his face and swallowed them back down. Would that be too overly formal? But he’d given her the cup, and every morning he brought her breakfast… just looking at his expense notebook told you how frugal he was in his daily life.

Maybe she could take Siyan to the supermarket more often.

If she bought a bit more of Siyan’s everyday items and snacks and fruit, he’d have to buy less — and she could bring him groceries each time too, right?

“Oh, by the way.”

Just as they were about to part at the school gate, Jiang Ruoqiao called out to Lu Yicheng.

“You don’t need to bring me breakfast tomorrow morning,” she said. “I have to go out early, so I’ll grab breakfast outside.”

Lu Yicheng gave a nod. “Work?”

“Yeah.” Jiang Ruoqiao said, “It’ll keep me busy for a few days.”

Lu Yicheng made a sound of acknowledgment. “What about the day after tomorrow?”

Jiang Ruoqiao: “We’ll figure it out tomorrow.”

“Alright.”

After they parted, Jiang Ruoqiao walked back into the school grounds, glancing at the cup every so often, then replaying her conversation with Lu Yicheng in her mind — and she suddenly remembered something very, very important, something she had been overlooking entirely. As far as the outside world was concerned, Lu Yicheng was pursuing her. Which raised the question: when the time came, should she accept or reject him??

Jiang Ruoqiao stopped dead in her tracks and looked up at the sky: she had a feeling… it was like she’d stepped right into a trap.

Was Lu Yicheng really going to commit to a devoted-lover script where he spent years “doggedly pursuing her” without ever receiving either a rejection or an acceptance??

Jiang Ruoqiao, what is wrong with you!!

She’d clearly thought at the very beginning that she didn’t want to get tangled up with Lu Yicheng in any way. And yet, swept along by the so-called flow of events, step by step, here she was today — at least in the eyes of others, she and Lu Yicheng did have some kind of relationship now: pursuer and the one being pursued.

The plot was terrifying — this was the first time Jiang Ruoqiao had felt it so viscerally and concretely. The power of a predetermined future.

How terrifying.

She was willing to bet that Lu Yicheng wasn’t deliberately pursuing her, and she certainly wasn’t deliberately playing along with being pursued. The two of them had only been reluctantly thrown together out of unavoidable circumstances.

Otherwise there was no explaining why they kept getting closer and closer.

She’d only been making the best choices as things unfolded — and yet somehow it all seemed to be inching, little by little, toward the future Lu Siyan had described.

Was the ending in the original novel truly the final ending? Could it be that the future Lu Siyan came from was the world that existed after the original story concluded?

If marrying Lu Yicheng and giving birth to Siyan was the future that followed after the novel’s end —

Had she actually changed her own fate at all?

The more she thought about it, the more terrifying it became.

Frightened by her own thoughts, Jiang Ruoqiao picked up her pace and half-jogged toward the girls’ dormitory building.

The plot went too deep — she needed to go back and burrow under her covers!

While Jiang Ruoqiao was unable to calm down after stumbling upon this profound and unsettling question, on the other side of the city, Lu Yicheng had returned to the rental apartment as fast as he could. He stepped into the kitchen and discovered that Jiang Ruoqiao had already washed the plates and forks and put them away without leaving anything for him. Looking at the empty dish rack, he felt an unexpectedly hollow feeling. He tidied up all of Lu Siyan’s toys and picture books one by one, and then went to shower.

When he came out of the bathroom on his way back to the bedroom, he paused at the entrance to the study, and eventually, heeding something inside him, he went in.

He pulled his expense notebook out of the drawer.

He felt a little self-conscious doing it.

He had never hidden his poverty, never hidden the realities of his situation — yet just thinking about her having looked through his notebook made an emotion rise up in him that he couldn’t quite find words for.

He was still thinking about how she’d looked at it, how she’d looked at his life, when he noticed a sticky note had been placed on the cover of the notebook.

Once he read what it said, he paused first — and then genuine warmth spread through his eyes.

He couldn’t quite describe the feeling.

Back in his wayward childhood, there had been times he’d craved good food. He remembered one day when his grandmother came home from outside and brought him a starch sausage — and when he saw it, he’d been so startled and so happy all at once.

That feeling had lasted for days.

Yes — startled and happy all at once.

He looked at the little gold ingot she had drawn, and found it impossibly endearing.

Would he be wealthy one day? In truth, he’d never thought that far ahead. Before today, the farthest into the future he’d ever let himself think had never exceeded one month. The future had always been too remote for him — he had never dared to dream about how things might turn out. All he could do was watch the path beneath his feet and take it one solid step at a time.

But tonight, in this moment, he thought about the future.

—

Jiang Ruoqiao slept poorly all night. The next morning she was already up at the first light of dawn.

It was important work — of course she needed to bring every last bit of focus she had.

Moving as quietly as she could, she re-ironed her dress. The skirt had a flowing, drapey quality to it, so it was best to avoid wrinkles; she’d ironed it once the night before and still wanted to go over it one more time this morning. Then she carefully filled in her eyebrows and drew on her eyeliner. Her twenty-year-old face leaned toward the youthful and delicate side — she was probably just too young, so she was hoping to look a little more sharp and capable. Once she was ready, after confirming that everything from the top of her hair to her ankles was in order, she picked up her bag and documents and walked out of the dormitory.

Yesterday’s experience had given her a wealth of inspiration.

If not for this job, she would never have crossed paths with someone like Meili, and she would never have left a name and impression with the university leadership.

The translation work at the company involved both interpretation and written translation, and the clients were almost entirely from the business world. These were people she could never meet through school or through the hanfu shop. She wasn’t being so calculating as to think that working as a translator for them automatically made them close friends — she wasn’t that naive. She simply felt that she could learn something genuinely valuable from these people, things that could never be learned from textbooks.

Jiang Ruoqiao headed downstairs, heart full of limitless hope for the future.

One second of good mood — then it came to an abrupt halt.

Because there was someone standing outside the girls’ dormitory building.

Jiang Yan.

Instantly deflating. Without even thinking, Jiang Ruoqiao could guess he was here for her.

Jiang Yan had finally thought things through, and had decided to pull himself together. Since he still liked her, since he didn’t want to lose her, of course he had to win her back. He’d brought four sets of breakfast — coffee and croissants, things she liked.

Jiang Ruoqiao very much wanted to walk straight past him, but he fell into step beside her.

Jiang Ruoqiao: “……”

“I’m in a hurry,” she said.

Jiang Yan understood, and scrambled to hold out one of the breakfasts to her.

Jiang Ruoqiao declined. “No need.”

She turned to leave. From behind her, Jiang Yan said, “Ruoqiao, I know nothing I say right now will mean anything.”

Jiang Ruoqiao didn’t want to hear it. She walked faster.

Jiang Yan kept pace with her. “I’ll prove it to you through my actions. I’ll change, Ruoqiao — I just want to show you that I’m not a bad person.”

In the past, Jiang Ruoqiao might still have had the energy to fire back with “What about your Lin Kexing? What about your mother?” — but now she didn’t even have the energy for that. How to put it — in one phrase: her perspective had broadened.

Once your perspective opens up, you naturally stop wasting energy picking at things that have nothing to do with you.

She was still thinking about taking on more jobs and gaining more experience.

Compared to all the things between Jiang Yan and Lin Kexing, compared to the honey-tongued and knife-hearted behavior Jiang Yan’s mother had shown — wasn’t she herself more important?

Earning money and building herself up was the real priority!

Jiang Ruoqiao walked away quickly.

Fortunately, Jiang Yan didn’t continue chasing after her to pour out his feelings.

The incident was witnessed by a few people. Lu Yicheng was well-liked, and right after seeing Lu Siyan off on the school bus, he received a WeChat message from a friend: 【Lu Ge, what’s going on with you? How can you be so lax about pursuing the campus belle?】

This was a classmate from his high school days — they’d been in different classes the same year, both ended up at A’Da, and they got along well.

Lu Yicheng didn’t understand what he meant and replied: 【What do you mean?】

His friend replied almost instantly: 【? You didn’t know — I heard from my girlfriend that she saw Jiang Yan bringing Jiang Ruoqiao breakfast. Looks like he’s trying to get back together with her. Lu Ge, you’ve only been at it a few days and you’re already slacking? Someone will swoop in at this rate.】

Jiang Yan? Lu Yicheng’s expression became suddenly still.

In truth, it wasn’t all that surprising. Everyone could see that Jiang Yan liked Jiang Ruoqiao, and Jiang Yan wasn’t the type of person who gave up easily.

Lu Yicheng had been about to reply explaining that she’d had something urgent this morning, but on second thought, that kind of thing could be misread by others, so he simply replied honestly: 【Got it.】

Friend: 【??】

Friend: 【What, you’re giving up?】

Lu Yicheng: 【No.】

Friend: 【Then get your head in the game! Aim to be out of the single life before next year’s Qixi Festival.】

Next year’s Qixi Festival…

Lu Yicheng stared at that message, lost in thought.

What would things look like by next year’s Qixi Festival?

He’d probably still be in the middle of pursuing her. Maybe he would be pursuing her for many more years.

Lu Yicheng: 【Thank you.】

—