Lu Yicheng did want to find a moment to apologize to Jiang Ruoqiao, but the more he thought about it, the more he felt that trying to explain would only make things more awkward — so he left it alone.

He also felt rather helpless. How had he let those words — *next time* — slip out like that?

What had possessed him?

Dinner was served promptly at five o’clock. Jiang Ruoqiao’s grandfather was a good cook, and so was her grandmother, and with Lu Yicheng helping out, the three of them had a full spread ready before long — a table of dishes that looked, smelled, and tasted wonderful. At the dinner table, Grandpa placed a piece of fish belly in Jiang Ruoqiao’s bowl and asked, “So Ruoqiao, are you and young Lu going back to Jing Shi together?”

Jiang Ruoqiao nodded. “We’ve got an afternoon train tomorrow — we’ll arrive in Jing Shi in the evening.”

“So soon?”

“I have things to take care of. So does he.”

Jiang Ruoqiao was truly swamped. She would have loved to stay a few more days, but given the circumstances, she needed to get back to Jing Shi as soon as possible.

Lu Yicheng was also extremely busy — he had barely managed to carve out this window of time, and even tonight he would be going back to the hotel to work late.

“When do you plan to come back for the New Year?” Grandma asked.

Jiang Ruoqiao calculated. “Probably the twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth of the twelfth lunar month — maybe even later.”

“That late?” Grandma sighed. “And young Lu?”

Lu Yicheng, knowing that he had already said too many wrong things that day, had been unusually quiet throughout dinner, afraid that if he wasn’t careful, he would say something else out of place.

Suddenly called on by Grandma, he looked toward Jiang Ruoqiao.

Grandpa teased, “Young Lu, what’s this — she asks you, and you just look at Ruoqiao?”

Lu Yicheng didn’t quite understand himself either.

Lu Siyan said on his behalf, “You get used to it — my dad’s just like that.” He thought hard for a moment. “People say my dad is henpecked. What does ‘henpecked’ mean?”

Jiang Ruoqiao was blindsided by this and coughed several times.

Grandpa replied with a grin, “It means someone like your great-grandpa here.”

Grandma had something to say about that: “You think you’re fit to be called henpecked? You’re not henpecked, you’re just plain scared of me having asthma attacks!”

“Doesn’t that count?” Grandpa protested, the picture of wounded innocence. “In all the years I’ve known you, I’ve never once dared to smoke in front of you!”

“How impressive,” Grandma said. “Should I put together a plaque for you or something? If you were actually henpecked, you’d have quit smoking altogether. Look at young Lu — doesn’t touch alcohol, doesn’t touch cigarettes. Now there’s a fine young man.”

Grandpa grumbled, “He’s not old enough yet. Wait ’til he’s thirty.”

Lu Siyan raised his hand. “My dad doesn’t smoke or drink because my mom absolutely hates the smell of smoke!”

Grandpa: *Oh dear…*

Running the numbers, that meant Lu Yicheng still hadn’t touched cigarettes at thirty-two.

Grandpa, determined to defend his dignity as an elder, held his ground: “Fine then, we’ll wait until he’s forty.” And then he muttered, “Forty — I’ll have turned to ashes by then. Alright, you know what—” He looked over at Lu Yicheng. “When you’re forty, when you’re burning paper money for me and Ruoqiao, pass on a message to me: whether or not you’ve started smoking by then.”

Lu Yicheng was at a genuine loss for how to respond to this.

He could only look toward Jiang Ruoqiao once again.

Jiang Ruoqiao pushed back: “When he’s forty, you’ll only be ninety-two! You’ll live to be a hundred!”

“Ninety-two…” Grandpa shook his head. “I wouldn’t dare hope for that.”

“Be more ambitious,” Jiang Ruoqiao said. “Set a modest goal first — aim to reach a hundred.”

“You almost got us sidetracked,” Grandma said. “Young Lu, what are your plans for the New Year?”

Lu Yicheng answered carefully: “You’ll both be missing Siyan — I think Siyan should spend the New Year here. I’ll stay in Jing Shi.”

“All alone?”

Lu Yicheng paused, then nodded.

Truth be told, he was used to it.

Last New Year he had spent making dumplings by himself.

“Why not come spend it with us, then?”

To Grandma, it had nothing to do with Lu Siyan’s connection to the family — her warmth toward Lu Yicheng wasn’t coming from that.

In this young man, she saw so much.

Qualities that any elder would be deeply fond of.

In the old generation’s eyes, the Spring Festival was the most important holiday of the year. Spending such a day alone would be far too bleak and solitary.

Jiang Ruoqiao answered on Lu Yicheng’s behalf: “We’ll see — there are still two weeks to go.”

Lu Yicheng felt a quiet easing of tension inside, and followed her lead: “We’ll see closer to the time.”

He had noticed something about Jiang Ruoqiao — her words carried considerable weight in this household. If he had been the one to say *we’ll see*, Grandpa and Grandma would certainly have pressed him further. But when Jiang Ruoqiao said it, they simply let it rest.

After dinner, Lu Yicheng rose on his own initiative to help clear away the dishes and bowls.

Jiang Ruoqiao stopped him with a look. “You’re a guest. What kind of guest washes the dishes?”

Lu Yicheng did not dare think of himself as a guest.

But since Jiang Ruoqiao stopped him, and Grandma did as well, he had no choice but to step back. Even so, he kept glancing over toward the kitchen.

In the kitchen, Jiang Ruoqiao had put on an apron and was washing up.

Grandma called out from across the room, “Ruoqiao, remember to put on gloves.”

Jiang Ruoqiao answered back in the Xi Shi dialect, “I know, I know.”

Lu Yicheng sat rigid with discomfort.

He just couldn’t shake the feeling that something was deeply wrong about the two of them — her washing dishes in the kitchen while he sat watching television.

He felt restless as a cat on a hot tin roof.

Grandma noticed his visible awkwardness and laughed, giving a wave of her hand. “Alright then, young Lu — go on and help Ruoqiao. Much more of this and you’re going to wear a hole in my sofa.”

Lu Yicheng felt as though he had been granted a reprieve.

He sprang up, relinquished his seat to Grandma, and walked quickly into the kitchen. Old apartments were like this — the living room was narrow, but the kitchen was comparatively spacious. Jiang Ruoqiao was squeezing dish soap onto a sponge when Lu Yicheng walked in. She glanced at him, and he hurriedly explained, “Grandma sent me in to help.”

Jiang Ruoqiao made a sound of acknowledgment.

She appeared to be concentrating entirely on washing the dishes — but how could she possibly be entirely unbothered? There was a living, breathing person standing right next to her, and that person was Lu Yicheng.

She didn’t notice that her rolled-up sleeve had slipped back down.

It was nearly about to dip into the water. Lu Yicheng caught it and said quietly, “Mind your sleeve.”

Jiang Ruoqiao was wearing gloves, and the gloves were covered in soap foam — it would be difficult to push the sleeve back up with those on.

She cast her eyes downward. Acutely aware of Lu Yicheng’s breath and his gaze from just beside her, she said with practiced composure, “Help me roll the sleeve back up.”

Lu Yicheng offered a sensible alternative: “No need for all that — I’ll just wash them.”

Jiang Ruoqiao: “?”

*Fine then.*

The emperor wasn’t worried — actually, no, that wasn’t right.

In any case, he wasn’t worried either.

He didn’t know what he was missing out on. Jiang Ruoqiao, you’d better forgive him — he was simply a fool.

“Alright.” Jiang Ruoqiao promptly peeled the gloves off her hands. “If you want to wash them so much, go ahead.”

Lu Yicheng didn’t have the habit of wearing gloves to wash dishes.

He stood at the sink and dispatched every bowl and utensil with swift, efficient strokes, leaving them gleaming.

Jiang Ruoqiao didn’t leave the kitchen. She stayed where she was, standing beside him, watching.

The dish soap Grandma had bought was grapefruit-scented.

She wasn’t sure whether her senses were playing tricks on her, but there seemed to be a faint, clean trace of grapefruit drifting through the air.

After finishing the dishes, Lu Yicheng wiped down the stovetop and the range hood with a cloth as well. When he worked, his expression was focused and intent — the outside world didn’t seem to reach him. His lashes were downcast, his gaze low. Jiang Ruoqiao found her eyes drawn to the small scar he had mentioned once, on his wrist — from a splash of hot oil — a tiny thing, almost invisible if you weren’t looking for it.

The truth was, both in the past and now, Lu Yicheng had never been Jiang Ruoqiao’s type.

Too gentle, too contained — if you didn’t know him well, you might think he was the kind of man who was simply lukewarm, like still water.

She even felt that Lu Yicheng had come into her life as something of an accident.

The kind of person he was — she would never feel this way about anyone else like him. Only this one Lu Yicheng.

He wasn’t just an accident. More precisely — there was only one Lu Yicheng. There would never be another.

He was wonderful. Wonderful enough that she had set aside her calculations and her guardedness, and brought him to Xi Shi, and brought him home. She felt certain that in the rest of her life, no one else would ever throw her off balance like this — so thoroughly and without strategy.

This feeling stayed with her all the way to the moment Jiang Ruoqiao walked Lu Yicheng to the door to see him off.

Lu Siyan stayed home.

Grandpa and Grandma had insisted Jiang Ruoqiao walk Lu Yicheng to the hotel.

Winter evenings in Xi Shi grew dark early. By half past six, dusk had already blanketed the land. As they neared the hotel entrance, they passed a bus stop, and Jiang Ruoqiao suddenly came to a standstill. Lu Yicheng stopped beside her. Jiang Ruoqiao pointed at the route board and smiled. “You’ve never been to Xi Shi before, right? Do you want to go have a look around?”

Lu Yicheng smiled and nodded. “If it’s convenient for you, of course.”

Jiang Ruoqiao tilted her head to one side. “Nothing inconvenient about it. Hmm, where should we go? How about we just see which bus comes first?”

Lu Yicheng: “Not a bad idea. Very spontaneous — full of surprises.”

Xi Shi was not like Jing Shi.

At this hour, the bus stop had only a handful of people.

The two of them stood to one side. Jiang Ruoqiao found herself thinking of a story her close friend had once shared with her — a little scrap of sweetness.

Her friend had said she and her first boyfriend once made a bet at this very bus stop.

If the bus that came was a certain route, they’d be together.

When Jiang Ruoqiao had heard this, she had been completely baffled. “Are you two even from planet Earth? How can anyone be this childish?”

Now, standing here herself, she thought of that story, and her mind — equally childish, she had to admit — silently formed a wish: *If the bus that comes is that same route number, then…*

She hadn’t even gotten to the *then*.

In the distance, a bus rolled into view.

She looked up, and her eyes went wide — it actually was the very route she had thought of. She lit up at once, turning to Lu Yicheng. “It’s actually this bus! It really is!”

The way she looked in that moment — delighted, astonished, radiant — was purely like a little girl who had just received the toy she had been longing for.

That kind of happiness was entirely, completely, a little girl’s.

Lu Yicheng didn’t know what she was so thrilled about, but he smiled warmly all the same. “Well, then. That’s wonderful.”

—