Ruan Yu was lying flat on her back when she read that line. Her hand gave a jolt, and the phone came crashing straight down onto her face.

“Ow!” she yelped, and for the first time, movement stirred from outside. Xu Huaisong knocked three times on her bedroom door. “What happened?”

Ruan Yu pressed a hand to her forehead, curled up in pain like a shrimp, and called out through a grimace: “Nothing — my phone hit my face…”

Silence outside. Then Xu Huaisong’s voice returned: “Go to sleep early.”

Followed by the sound of footsteps gradually receding.

Ruan Yu, too pained to think about the pain anymore, grabbed her phone and typed furiously: My phone just hit me in the face and he didn’t even come in to check on me!!

Shen Mingying: Why did your phone hit you in the face?

Ruan Yu (Soft Jade): Why didn’t he come in to check on me?

Shen Mingying: Oh honestly, you girls who’ve just fallen in love — the man is being a gentleman, and you complain he’s being cold, like he must have no interest in you whatsoever. But if he really did go ahead and do something with you, you’d probably end up crying and saying, we only just started, and he’s already being so forward. Being a man is really not easy, you know.

Shen Mingying sent that and went to sleep, leaving Ruan Yu alone, curled under the covers, clutching her phone and biting her lip.

On the other side of the door, Xu Huaisong sat with a deep furrow in his brow, fingers occasionally scrolling across the laptop touchpad. The screen in front of him was filled with psychology research reports, dense columns of Chinese and English interwoven.

Even though Lu Shenglan had only mentioned it in passing and said it probably wasn’t serious, he had spent the flight back squeezing in time to consult a high school classmate who worked as a psychologist about Ruan Yu’s situation.

The classmate had told him that even watching a horror film could leave someone with lingering fear afterward, so Ruan Yu’s behavior over the past few days wasn’t conclusive of anything. He recommended observing for another two days — if things didn’t improve but instead escalated, then they could consider whether further assessment was necessary.

This observation meant watching whether Ruan Yu could fall asleep normally without his voice present.

Ideally, Xu Huaisong should have left her alone at home without telling her it was a test, and cut off the voice call entirely. But he couldn’t bring himself to do that, so he had compromised — arriving at the current arrangement.

The arrangement where she was alone in her room, and he was on standby at any moment.

Not wanting to disturb her rest, he hadn’t turned on the overhead light in the living room, only a floor lamp. The glow of the computer screen was consequently all the brighter for it — after staring at it long enough, his eyes ached.

After finishing his tenth psychology report, Xu Huaisong took off his glasses and pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. Then his phone gave a sudden buzz.

A Weibo notification from a specially followed account.

Wen Xiang: Hit 1000 points!! [So happy]

Attached was a screenshot of a WeChat mini-game leaderboard.

“…”

He was here straining his eyes researching her psychological state, and she was over there in her room playing games without a single care for his existence, and on top of that, showing off her score to her fans?

Xu Huaisong tried to calm himself. It didn’t work. He put his glasses back on, stood up, and went to knock on her door.

A rustling of movement came from inside, along with Ruan Yu’s voice: “What is it?”

“Open the door.”

Ruan Yu scrambled out from under the covers, sat up, tidied her hair and her pajamas, switched on the bedside lamp, rotated the lampshade slightly to adjust the angle, and only then said: “It’s not locked.”

Xu Huaisong pressed down the handle, stood in the doorway, and said with great seriousness: “Still playing games at twelve-thirty?”

Ruan Yu blinked at him from the bed. “How did you find out so fast? You’ve specially followed my Weibo?”

That was a question she already knew the answer to.

Xu Huaisong didn’t bother with any roundabout approach: “Of course.”

She let out a light laugh. “I couldn’t sleep, so I played a few rounds.”

Xu Huaisong’s heart tightened for a moment — he was wondering whether her situation really did warrant a proper assessment — when something flickered at the edge of his attention. Something felt off.

The overhead light was off, leaving only the warm-toned bedside lamp. The lampshade appeared to have been manually angled — its light source now focused entirely on Ruan Yu, casting a perfectly soft and flattering glow across her face.

Exceptionally lovely.

After a moment of stillness, he suddenly lowered his head and let out a quiet laugh.

Even he could be played.

Ruan Yu cleared her throat. “I just said I can’t sleep. What are you laughing at?”

Xu Huaisong didn’t answer. He turned and switched off the floor lamp in the living room. When he came back, he said: “If I keep you company, will you be able to sleep?”

He pulled the bedroom door shut behind him. Seeing the meaningful smile on his face, Ruan Yu suddenly lost the ability to speak, hit by the sensation of having led a wolf into her own home.

Just like Shen Mingying had said. When he was aloof, she was unhappy. So she’d pulled a little scheme to bring him in — and now she was anxious all over again.

Classic. A walking, talking handful, the moment she was in love.

But nothing she was worried about happened.

Xu Huaisong simply sat down on the edge of her bed. “Alright. I’ll sit right here. You can sleep easy now. Lie down. Hand over the phone.”

A gentle command was sometimes more effective at getting compliance than a stern one.

Ruan Yu found it very agreeable. She obediently surrendered her phone and tucked herself back under the covers.

The air conditioning was set to a comfortable twenty-eight degrees. Xu Huaisong’s body blocked the light source, leaving the ambient brightness just right. She closed her eyes — it was like floating in a warm spring breeze.

Ruan Yu pinched the corner of the blanket, pressed her lips together, and let herself smile secretly.

They had found exactly the right way to be together.

This distance — neither too far nor too close — was deeply, perfectly satisfying.

Xu Huaisong caught a glimpse of the curve at the corner of her mouth. He reached over and brushed her fringe aside from her forehead, then with his other hand took out his phone and messaged the doctor classmate: She’s in the mood for romance and even schemed to get her boyfriend into her room. Sounds like the psychological trauma isn’t much of an issue anymore, right?

Zhu Feng: If you’re going to consult me, just consult me — why do you have to shove a mouthful of second-hand sweetness down my throat at midnight? Your girlfriend might be fine, but I’m the one with psychological damage now, do you understand?

Xu Huaisong smiled at his phone. Then he felt the back of his neck go suddenly cold.

He turned his head — and found Ruan Yu lying there, eyes wide open, watching him.

He instinctively pressed the lock-screen button. Then he heard her subdued voice: “Who are you texting in the middle of the night?”

“A male classmate from high school.” He answered immediately.

“Then why is your face making that expression like a lovesick teen—” The glow of a spring crush.

Xu Huaisong paused, then laughed. “Because I was talking about you.”

Ruan Yu perked up. “What were you saying about me?”

“You don’t want to know.”

She frowned and sat up. “You were saying bad things about me?”

Xu Huaisong shook his head. “No.”

Ruan Yu gave him a sideways look. “Fine. Don’t tell me, then.”

“I’ll tell you.” Xu Huaisong smiled and cleared his throat. “I was telling him about how my girlfriend schemed to get me into her room.”

“…”

Seeing her expression solidify into stone, he leaned in and added, in a quieter voice, his expression still entirely innocent: “I did say you wouldn’t want to know.”

Ruan Yu’s face flooded scarlet. She drew in a deep breath, yanked the blanket up over herself, rolled over to face away from him, and burrowed under it. A muffled voice came from inside: “Xu Huaisong. You can leave now.”

He laughed and leaned toward her. “Are you angry? If you hadn’t pushed for answers, I wouldn’t have said it either.”

Ruan Yu clapped her hands over her ears. Not listening.

Xu Huaisong shifted onto the bed and leaned in a little further. “Alright, it was me who wanted to come. Fair enough?”

“Say one more word about it and you can leave the living room too!”

He surrendered. “I won’t mention it again. Come out — you can’t sleep properly buried in the blanket like that.”

Ruan Yu wasn’t sulking too hard to come out. It was that her face was burning so hot — red enough to bleed — that she genuinely couldn’t move.

Xu Huaisong didn’t know that. He propped himself up on one elbow and reached over to tug at the covers.

“Hey, what are you doing!” She gripped the makeshift shield of the blanket for dear life, refusing to yield. After a brief, determined struggle, she was dragged out of it anyway — slightly breathless, smoothing her hair, glaring at him with unmasked indignation.

Xu Huaisong broke into laughter. “You read all three hundred of my messages, every last scheming line of them. You didn’t say anything about those.”

“That’s your own fault! That’s what you get for happily reading my novel before all this, and for making me read out loud—” She stopped dead.

Of all the things to bring up.

Sure enough, in the very next second, Xu Huaisong let out a soft, slow “hm,” as though he had suffered a sudden and convenient bout of amnesia. “Making you read what, exactly?”

She turned to lie back down. “Nothing. Sleep.”

Xu Huaisong caught her by the arm. “Say it clearly before you sleep.”

Ruan Yu was quiet for a moment. Then, deciding it was genuinely worth clearing up, she held up a hand as if taking an oath: “Then let me make a solemn declaration — that content was purely fictional to keep the readers engaged. I have absolutely never done anything like that… like that…”

Xu Huaisong lowered his head and gave a quiet laugh. In a voice soft enough that even he could barely hear it, he said: “But I have.”

“What did you say?”

He lifted his head, smiled. “I said — it was written quite convincingly. Never been in a relationship, and yet the kissing scenes are that vivid?”

Ruan Yu smoothed her fringe, straightened her back, and summoned her most authoritative tone: “Well of course. In our line of work, how can you get anywhere without real material to draw from? Even if you’ve never eaten pork, you’ve at least seen a pig—”

She stopped mid-sentence.

Xu Huaisong had just taken off his glasses and was leaning in toward her.

Ruan Yu stared blankly at the face that was now just inches away from hers. “You… what are you doing?”

Xu Huaisong blinked. His lashes cast a shadow across her eyes. He smiled. “Trying to feed you some pork.”

“?”

Before she could process that, something soft and cool touched her lips. Xu Huaisong, angled sideways on the bed, one hand bracing on the pillow, the other cradling her face, kissed her.

The inside of Ruan Yu’s mind erupted into a vast white blaze. Her heart lurched completely out of rhythm, and she scooted back half a step, losing all sense of direction.

He didn’t push further. A brush of contact, and then apart — but even as lips separated, noses remained touching, tip to tip.

At this closeness, both of them stopped breathing.

Ruan Yu clutched the bedsheet, her grip tightening inch by inch. Too afraid to exhale, her entire face suffused with red.

Xu Huaisong curved his lips, touched the tip of his nose lightly to hers, then pulled back and tilted his head slightly — the very picture of perfect, unruffled composure.

He was too calm. Like he had been eight years ago, telling that lie about holding the wrong hand, without a single trace of guilt showing on his face.

But Ruan Yu was not calm. That butterfly-light kiss, and the way he was looking at her now, had left her dizzy — it was as if a whole sky of colorful fireworks were going off simultaneously right in front of her eyes. She turned her head and made to flee off the bed.

Xu Huaisong caught her from behind, drew her back into his arms, and pressed her left ear against his heart.

Ruan Yu stilled, confused. And then, a moment later, she heard his voice from above, warm with a smile: “You can’t tell by looking at my face. You have to listen. It’s going off even louder than the fireworks.”

Author’s Note: Breaking news! Renowned director Gu Liaozhi has reportedly taken up a new career path — selling pork at a street stall!