Because Ruan Yu liked Xu Huaisong, everything suddenly had an answer.

All those times he had written in the drafts folder — you’re so short, why did you sign up for basketball in PE class? — all those times he had wondered — what did you do wrong, are you here watching from the stands as punishment too? — the answer had been right there, waiting on the other side of this piano.

But he had never looked.

So he never knew. Every seemingly careless coincidence had been something she had carefully engineered. Every sleepless night that had kept him turning — she had been thinking of him too.

Xu Huaishi switched on her flashlight, snapped two photos of the wall, and then suddenly let out a wail: “Zhao Yi — this is so touching —”

Zhao Yi lunged to cover her mouth, but it was a moment too late. The security guard patrolling the corridor below heard the noise and came charging up with a high-powered flashlight.

He scowled and hissed under his breath, “Your common sense is pretty touching too!”

Xu Huaishi hung her head, dejected, and was duly marched off by the security guard to the moral education office.

The head of moral education, Zhu Feng, assumed they were in a relationship and refused to be swayed by any of their explanations — he insisted on contacting both sets of parents.

Zhao Yi was an old hand at this sort of thing. Zhu Feng pointed at him with a look that said I’ll deal with you in a moment, then turned to Xu Huaishi. “You first. Parents’ contact information.” He picked up the receiver of the desk phone.

“Mr. Zhu, I know I was wrong—”

“Don’t want to give it? Then I’ll ask your homeroom teacher.”

The homeroom teacher had Tao Rong’s number on file. Xu Huaishi panicked and hurried to cut that off. “209-*–**!” she blurted — then, before Zhu Feng could raise an eyebrow, rushed to add, “That’s the one — my parents are in America!”

Thinking a foreign number would get her off the hook? Zhu Feng huffed, dialed with “001” in front, and launched into labored English: “Hah-lo, ai mahm—”

The male voice on the other end cut him off before he could get any further. “Hello.”

Zhu Feng cleared his throat, introduced himself, and explained the particulars of Xu Huaishi’s “deplorable” conduct.

Xu Huaishi pressed close and held her breath, straining to make out what was being said on the other end of the line.

She had called her mother from the bubble tea shop earlier and lied about being out late for dinner with a friend — that story absolutely could not be blown open right now. She could only pray her brother would show some mercy.

But the very next second, Xu Huaisong’s voice came through, utterly without compassion: “I’m not in a position to handle her affairs at the moment. Please call this number and contact—”

He was about to give Tao Rong’s number. Xu Huaishi lurched forward to grab the receiver, was silenced by one look from Zhu Feng, and could only stamp her feet as she yelled toward the phone, “You’re the worst, brother!”

Someone who acted like this deserved to fail at love. She would take the secret of Senior Ruan liking him to her grave.

At one in the morning, Ruan Yu and Shen Mingying lay tucked in the same bed, each staring at their phones in a daze.

The incident had been unfolding for over twenty-four hours. Online, the rumors showed no signs of dying down. Ruan Yu had posted her clarification, but it had done nothing to stop people with bad intentions from speculating further. Shen Mingying had been worried about leaving her alone in the apartment in this state, so she’d come to keep her company.

Early that evening, they had noticed that the other author had read the private message, and assumed a reply would come soon — but as of now, the conversation window was still silent.

The counter-comparison chart was being put together with the help of colleagues in the industry, but it wasn’t finished yet. They had done everything they could. All that was left was to wait.

Eventually they could no longer keep their eyes open and drifted off.

The next morning, Ruan Yu opened her eyes and immediately began feeling around in the blankets for her phone. When she unlocked the screen, she found, unexpectedly, a message from “Xie Shiren.”

Sent at two in the morning.

Xie Shiren: Hello. I sincerely apologize for the trouble this has caused you. “Her Eyes Smile” was not an original concept of my own — it was written based on an outline my friend purchased from a studio. If it has infringed upon your work, I am willing to offer a public explanation and apology, delete the story, and retire this pen name. I have drafted a statement below for your review. I hope this can go some way toward making up for the harm done. My apologies again.

Ruan Yu jolted awake and nudged Shen Mingying, holding out the phone for her to read.

“So it really was an outline leak?” Shen Mingying murmured, rubbing her eyes once she’d finished.

From the moment the incident began, both of them had considered the possibility of an outline leak. But the problem was that Shen Mingying was the only person Ruan Yu had shared the outline with, apart from a publisher she’d worked with for years — and on the basis of that document alone, it would have been impossible to replicate so many specific details.

That was why they had held off on drawing any conclusions.

Ruan Yu frowned. “Could my computer have been hit with a virus?”

Shen Mingying finished rubbing her eyes and came fully awake. She made a sharp sound and grabbed Ruan Yu by the shoulder. “The flash drive! That day at the café — did you bring it back with you?”

Ruan Yu felt a jolt go through her. She jumped out of bed and tore through everything in a frantic search. Half an hour later she was kneeling on the bed, on the verge of tears. “No…”

The day her mother had turned up unexpectedly, she’d rushed back to the apartment — she genuinely couldn’t remember whether she’d taken the flash drive with her. And Shen Mingying had left shortly after her, taking only her own laptop.

Both of them pressed their hands to their foreheads.

An ordinary outline leak could never have caused this kind of damage. Only the flash drive — the one with the vast majority of Ruan Yu’s diary entries and their specific plot details — could have.

A minute later, Shen Mingying looked up. “I’ll go to the café. You, for once in your life, don’t just sit there and stew — reach out to the other author and see what you can find out.”

Ruan Yu nodded. She understood what she meant.

Even though the other party had offered the most favorable resolution available under the circumstances, they couldn’t simply let the studio’s theft and sale of the outline go unaddressed.

She typed out a message: Hello. I’d like to know — which studio, specifically, did your friend purchase the outline from?

On the other end of the screen, bleary-eyed and with hair like a bird’s nest, Xu Huaishi called Zhao Yi. “What do I do, what do I say? I told you your plan wasn’t going to work—”

“Well, then just tell her the truth.”

“Absolutely not!”

If Ruan Yu found out the full story, her brother would almost certainly hear about what she’d done. She said, “My brother is terrifying — he’d cut me off without a second thought!”

“He’s a lawyer, isn’t he? He’s not going to actually beat you to death.”

“He can cut off my allowance — what’s the difference?”

“Alright, here’s what you do: say your friend can’t disclose the source due to confidentiality between the parties involved. If she doesn’t have any kind of connection in those circles, she won’t be able to trace you anyway.”

“But isn’t that totally unfair to Senior Ruan…”

“You’ve already issued a public apology, deleted the story, and retired the pen name. As far as she’s concerned, that’s the best possible outcome. If you go ahead and explain the actual ridiculous truth to everyone, people will probably think you’re making it up.”

Xu Huaishi was still wavering. “What if my brother still likes Senior Ruan and thinks I’ve actually done a good thing, and rewards me instead of punishing me?”

“Don’t be absurd. He still likes someone after eight years? You think your brother lives on nothing but a distant, unattainable first love, with no other needs whatsoever?”

“Fair point…”

“Anyway — either come clean or don’t. Just know that if you don’t, you can forget about treats and idol stuff for a while.”

Xu Huaishi shuddered, and followed Zhao Yi’s advice in the end.

As he had predicted, with her staying quiet, Ruan Yu couldn’t get to the bottom of it in the short term.

She wasn’t sure how much Ruan Yu believed, but after a few more exchanges, a message came through: Could you please go ahead and post the statement first.

From the tone of it, she probably hadn’t given up on investigating — she was just choosing to let the situation settle first, cutting her losses.

Xu Huaishi felt guilty, and apologized several more times before posting the revised statement to Weibo — Ruan Yu had reworked the wording to make it more precise. A few minutes later, she saw “Wen Xiang” repost it with a partial transcript of their conversation attached.

But she couldn’t bring herself to feel relieved.

One moment of cowardice had led to one lie, which had required countless more to hold together. Now, even though she had done everything she could to make it right, she felt worse than before.

She sighed and burrowed under her blankets like an ostrich.

After reposting the statement, Ruan Yu didn’t feel lighter either. The other author’s evasiveness left her uneasy, and she wanted to see how things were going on Shen Mingying’s end.

When Shen Mingying came back, though, she reported that the café claimed to have no recollection of noticing any personal belongings left behind that day. A police report had been filed to access nearby security footage, but the item was too small to spot on camera — there was no sign of any suspicious individuals. The most they could do was log it officially, but with a month having passed, it was unlikely to lead anywhere.

So while her reputation had been cleared, the whole affair still left a splinter lodged somewhere in Ruan Yu’s chest.

She didn’t have much time to dwell on it, though.

Because not long after the statement went up, a fresh wave of what appeared to be coordinated accounts swarmed into her Weibo, bombarding her with claims that she had paid “Xie Shiren” off to produce a false apology.

They had nothing to back it up, yet they spun the invented story with such conviction that it drew a heated battle between themselves and those who had read the statement and come out in support of Ruan Yu.

Her Weibo comment section devolved into a mud-slinging storm.

Then on Sunday morning, a writer from the same platform posted a lengthy Weibo entry. It named no one directly, but the implication was unmistakable: someone had not only plagiarized but had bullied a newcomer into silence, forcing a complete unknown to retire their pen name — a disgrace to the entire original creative community.

The post spread with uncanny speed, rallying response after response. By the time it had been fermenting all day, it had made its way onto the trending topics list.

Xu Huaishi had been following all of this, and it was only now that she fully grasped the gravity of the situation.

Anyone thinking clearly should have believed Ruan Yu by this point — but when there was malice, accusations would always find a form. There were simply people out there determined to smear her, deliberately steering public opinion.

Looking back, Xu Huaishi had only just registered a pen name, had no readership to speak of, and her story had been read by virtually no one. For the incident to have started this way, someone had almost certainly been behind it from the very beginning.

She and Zhao Yi had both thought far too simply about how these things worked.

Xu Huaishi was frightened now. She spent a while carefully choosing her words, intending to reach out to Ruan Yu again.

But before she could send the message, she saw a new post from Ruan Yu: Temporarily closing comments and private messages.

Below it was a screenshot — a private message someone had sent to “Wen Xiang,” with the sender’s username and profile picture both blurred out. The content was an image: threatening in nature.

A screen full of paint tipped over, several lurid red handprints — and over it all, words in stark red: Plagiarist, go die.

Even in the small thumbnail, Xu Huaishi nearly dropped her phone in fright.

Her hands began to shake. She couldn’t even hear the shrill bell signaling evening study hall. She ducked into the girls’ bathroom in the teaching block, rushed into a stall, and dialed Xu Huaisong’s number.

It was already past three in the morning in San Francisco. But this couldn’t wait.

The call connected, and she stumbled over her words immediately: “Brother… I — I’ve done something terrible.”

Xu Huaisong was, in fact, still awake. There was a murmur of voices in the background, the rapid back-and-forth of English conversation. He seemed to be in the middle of going through documents, so his response came out somewhat distracted: “What is it? I have an emergency meeting in five minutes — if it’s not urgent—”

“It is urgent!” Xu Huaishi insisted — and then the words that followed came out with the faint tremor of someone trying not to cry. “Brother, I’ve hurt Senior Ruan…”

A silence on the other end. Then, after a moment: “Who?”

She sniffled. “Ruan Yu. Senior Ruan. You don’t remember her?”

This time, the silence that followed lasted considerably longer.

Xu Huaishi was about to go on when footsteps sounded outside the bathroom door. Not wanting to be caught using her phone during evening study hall, she cut herself off and held her breath.

She counted to about fifteen before the murmur of voices from the background on the call disappeared.

Xu Huaisong seemed to have stepped away somewhere quieter. Then he said, “Stop crying. Tell me clearly.”

Xu Huaishi couldn’t talk — the girl who’d come to use the bathroom hadn’t left yet. She stayed perfectly still, focused only on breathing.

Xu Huaisong asked again: “Where are you?”

There was something in his tone now that wasn’t entirely steady. Xu Huaishi still couldn’t speak. The urgency seized her and she ended the call, quickly switching to send a WeChat message: I’m hiding in the school bathroom, someone came in, I’ll type it to you. Let me show you a photo first.

She pulled up the photo of the practice room wall from her camera roll and sent it, adding: The night before last, I found this in practice room 301 in the school arts building.

On the other end of the screen, Xu Huaisong stood in the bright, open corridor outside a conference room, dressed in a sharply fitted dark navy suit. He frowned and opened the chat window.

A white woman in stilettos clicked toward him and called his name: “Hanson.” She held out a thick stack of loose documents — the materials he’d requested, running to nearly a hundred pages.

His eyes were still on the screen. He reached out to take the documents without looking up — and then opened the photograph.

When he made out the English letters on the wall, the fingertips that had been about to close around the papers went completely slack.

All hundred-odd sheets cascaded to the floor, fanning out like snowflakes, scattering in an instant into complete disarray.

In the long, quiet corridor, Xu Huaisong stood very still, and heard his own heartbeat — one pulse after another — thunderously loud.