The consequence of forcing down alcohol was that she nearly brought up everything she’d eaten the night before.

Zhu Yun had never imagined she would one day find herself hunched over a toilet like this — and then, when it was finally over, tilt her head back up at the fluorescent tube above and giggle to herself.

There’s no saving me. I’m done for.

She went to the basin and washed her face with cold water, praying for her senses to return. When she looked up, the face in the mirror was flushed deep red. She touched her cheek. Hot.

She came out of the bathroom to find Li Xun waiting at the door.

“Are you all right? Why did you drink that fast?” Li Xun had one hand on his hip, brow creased. His long legs drew attention even standing still.

Zhu Yun walked straight toward those legs.

“Hey!” Li Xun raised a hand and braced against her. “Are you going to make it?”

Zhu Yun shook her head. Li Xun’s frown deepened. He thought for a moment, then grabbed her by the arm and headed outside, dialing as he walked.

Shortly after, Gao Jianhong emerged supporting a thoroughly drunk Han Jiakang.

A little while later, Ren Di came out as well with her guitar on her back.

“What’s going on here?” Ren Di came over to Zhu Yun and waved a hand in front of her face. “Hey!”

Zhu Yun waved back. “Hey!”

Ren Di laughed. Li Xun asked her, “Can you leave now?”

“Yeah, it’s about time. I’ll let the others handle the rest.”

Li Xun nodded, then pushed Zhu Yun into Ren Di’s arms. “You take her.”

The sudden shove made Zhu Yun feel like she might be sick again. Ren Di patted her on the back. “Hold it together. Let’s go.”

Walking along the late-night pavement, Zhu Yun asked in a foggy haze, “This isn’t the way back to school.”

Li Xun, smoking, said, “Look at the time. We’re not going back to school.”

Zhu Yun: “Then where are we going?”

Ren Di steadied her. “Back to my studio.”

Ren Di’s studio was in an office building two streets south of the campus — fourth floor, a little over a hundred square meters. To make room for the equipment, the interior walls had been taken out entirely, leaving only a few load-bearing columns standing in an open loft-like space.

The southern end was the rehearsal area, the floor cluttered with instruments, speakers, and a tangle of cables. The northern end was where people slept — spartan and rough, two large shared beds heaped with things in no particular order.

It was nearly two in the morning.

After an exhausting day, everyone was running on fumes. Gao Jianhong dropped Han Jiakang onto one of the beds, then face-planted beside him and was asleep in under half a minute.

Ren Di put down her guitar, pulled Zhu Yun onto the other bed, and collapsed without even taking off her stage makeup.

Only a small, low-wattage lamp had been left on in the studio, casting everything in a dim glow. Zhu Yun looked around the room. Over in the corner she could see Li Xun’s bag and some of his clothes. She asked Ren Di quietly, “Does Li Xun sleep here at night?”

Ren Di could barely keep her eyes open. “Sometimes. When it gets too late, he comes here instead of the lab.”

“You’re letting him use this place as a free hotel?”

“He’s the band’s sponsor.”

“What?”

Ren Di turned over, her voice fading. “You were curious about what we were to each other, weren’t you? That’s what we are. He’s the investor I pulled in.”

Zhu Yun blinked.

Ren Di yawned, already half gone. “Can’t anymore… dead tired… going to sleep…”

Zhu Yun turned her head and saw Li Xun standing beside a load-bearing column. She called across the room:

“Hey — are you going to sleep?”

Li Xun seemed to be thinking about something. He heard her and looked over. “In a bit. You go ahead.” With that, he switched off the small low-wattage bulb.

The room went instantly dark.

Zhu Yun lay down with her head facing Li Xun’s direction, shifted around a couple of times on the bed, and then noticed a faint sliver of light coming from above her head.

She looked up. Li Xun had finished his cigarette, settled himself on the floor, leaned back against the load-bearing column, and opened his laptop.

Everyone else was asleep. She spoke in barely a breath. “What are you doing—”

Li Xun said flatly, “Nothing. Go to sleep.”

Zhu Yun craned her neck. “The project’s done. What are you still writing?”

Li Xun impatiently lit another cigarette, and looked back at her. “Are you going to sleep or not? You’ve had a bit of alcohol and now you won’t stop talking.”

“…”

Silence.

Three seconds of silence. Li Xun had just turned back, about to get to work—

“Is it a new project?”

“…”

“What’s it about?”

“Ss—!” The ash burned his fingers. Li Xun slammed his laptop shut with force.

The irritation was palpable from five meters away. Zhu Yun hastily retreated. “All right, all right, I’m not saying another word, I’m going to sleep.”

The world went quiet again.

A few minutes later, Li Xun sensed something was off.

In the darkness, something soft and fuzzy seemed to be advancing on him from just behind and to his left.

Li Xun rarely broke concentration when he was working, but this fuzzy thing was nearly within range of his screen. He had no choice but to pause. He turned his head. Zhu Yun’s head was creeping closer and closer — her lower half hidden behind the load-bearing column, she was inching her way toward him little by little.

Li Xun was not a man easily unsettled, but anyone less composed would have been frightened half to death at the sight.

“Lan—” a small voice began to murmur.

The moment she opened her mouth, Li Xun reacted instantly — he set down the laptop and clamped a hand over her mouth.

“—guan Company!” Zhu Yun struggled to get the words out. “Lan mmph mmph mmph—!”

“Keep your voice down!” Li Xun hissed. Then his hand suddenly stung. “Did you just bite me?!”

Biting was the least of it. She was kicking too.

Zhu Yun’s feet flailed wildly, infuriating Li Xun to the point where he finally pinned both arms down and bore his full weight on her, pressing her flat.

“Would you hold still!”

“Langan Company!”

In the struggle her glasses had gone missing somewhere. To get a better look at her opponent and hold her ground, Zhu Yun glared up at him from point-blank range, nose to nose with Li Xun.

“I saw it!” She was panting, the smell of alcohol heavy on her breath. “Don’t think I couldn’t tell — that was for Langan Company! What kind of project is it, how long have you been working on it, what are you doing behind our backs, come clean—”

Her voice was climbing. Li Xun, worried she’d wake the others, moved to cover her mouth again.

This time Zhu Yun was ready. The moment his grip loosened slightly, she hooked both legs up in a flash and locked them around Li Xun in an iron grip, then dropped her full weight downward.

Li Xun went straight to his knees.

“What the—!”

His kneecaps hit the concrete floor. Li Xun gritted his teeth against the pain.

Zhu Yun, having successfully reversed the situation, continued pressing her advantage with a withering stare and a sound effect to match—

“Ha!”

Li Xun: “………………”

There was movement from one of the beds. Li Xun glanced over, then back at Zhu Yun still attached to him, and finally exhaled in defeat. He closed the laptop, picked himself up off the floor — Zhu Yun clinging to him like a koala — and carried the whole arrangement out to the balcony.

The moment the door closed behind them, Li Xun detached Zhu Yun.

“You’re absolutely deranged when you’ve had something to drink.” He looked at Zhu Yun with her hair in complete disarray and couldn’t help muttering.

Zhu Yun pointed at him. “Don’t change the subject. What was that?”

Li Xun leaned sideways against the balcony railing, looked out at the still night, and said with mild irritation, “This is exactly why I can’t stand women like you. Nagging, endlessly digging at things.”

“What was it?”

Li Xun glanced at her, then turned and started back inside. Zhu Yun moved to grab him. Li Xun turned back, raised one hand, and caught her by the chin.

He was very close now.

“Enough,” he said quietly. “Wait here.”

So Zhu Yun waited on the balcony like a good girl.

After a moment, Li Xun came back out with his laptop and set it directly in her arms, then took the opportunity to light another cigarette.

As Zhu Yun scrolled through, Li Xun began, “The main function of this system is—”

“No, no, no.” Zhu Yun cut him off. “I can see the functions myself.”

Li Xun raised an eyebrow.

Zhu Yun’s still-slightly-drunk face broke into a self-satisfied expression. She said slowly, “I can read your code now. I won’t suffocate trying to figure it out anymore.”

The memory surfaced. Li Xun laughed despite himself.

Zhu Yun dropped down to sit on the floor and said, “Just tell me — why did you build this?”

“To sell.”

“Sell?”

“The Langan website is too bare in its later development. At this rate it’ll struggle to even break even, let alone make real money.”

Zhu Yun looked up. Li Xun leaned against the balcony railing. The cigarette in his hand had been lit but wasn’t being smoked — he was just turning it between his fingers.

Upstairs was a foot massage parlor, its sign glowing in a lurid peach-pink that fell across his golden hair — grimy and beautiful at the same time.

“If you knew it wouldn’t make money, why didn’t you tell them?” she asked.

Li Xun looked amused. “If I tell them, what do I gain?”

Zhu Yun looked down and said nothing.

Li Xun: “There are so many shopping websites, including some major platforms. Langan produces and sells its own goods — the site has nothing to distinguish it. Why would anyone go there to buy? They can’t even identify their own strengths. All they know is how to follow trends and chase the crowd. Do they think money is that easy to make?”

Zhu Yun still said nothing.

The atmosphere settled.

Li Xun was quiet for a moment, then said in a lower voice, “I wasn’t deliberately hiding it from you. That wasn’t my original plan. If Zhang Xiaobei hadn’t gotten involved, once we’d signed off on the contract I would have given them my honest assessment. But once she barged in, I had no choice but to deal with things this way.”

Li Xun dropped the burned-down cigarette to the floor and crushed it underfoot.

The quiet was beginning to bother him.

“Don’t sulk. I don’t do coaxing.” He frowned, looking at Zhu Yun with her head bowed. “You—”

Snoring.

“…”

Li Xun crouched down. Zhu Yun’s head had dropped forward — she was fast asleep. He stared at her in wordless disbelief for a long moment before finally saying, under his breath: “…I really have had it.”

He picked Zhu Yun up and carried her back to the bed inside, sincerely hoping she would wake up in the morning remembering nothing.

The next day.

By the time Zhu Yun got up, Li Xun had already left. She and Gao Jianhong went back to campus together, sat through their classes, and then went straight to the lab.

Li Xun was there, deep in conversation with his new girlfriend from the Broadcasting College. Zhu Yun walked over, took the girlfriend gently by the waist, and moved her to one side. “There you go, you just wait here for a moment.”

“Hey!” The girlfriend was not pleased.

Zhu Yun pulled out a chair, sat down squarely, and looked Li Xun dead in the eye. “Our conversation from last night isn’t finished.”

Li Xun experienced, for the first time, the particular headache that comes from a sleepless night.

He stood, pulled Zhu Yun out into the corridor, and at that moment Gao Jianhong happened to walk in. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” Li Xun said, already moving faster, Zhu Yun more or less being towed along. They went all the way to the bend in the corridor, where Li Xun shoved her against the wall.

“Are you ever going to let this go?”

Li Xun was tall, and looking down from that angle gave him a formidable advantage. Zhu Yun quietly rose up on her toes. It didn’t help much.

“Explain yourself properly.”

“There’s nothing to explain!”

She shoved him — she couldn’t help it. It didn’t move him, but it said what it needed to say.

“We put everything into building that website, and then you write it off like it’s worth nothing. Does that mean everything we worked on for all that time was a complete waste?”

“A waste?” Li Xun said coldly. “You finished the project and came away with nothing?”

Zhu Yun said quietly, “…That’s not quite what I meant.”

“If I’d told you the website wasn’t going to turn a profit and would eventually be replaced by something better, would you have worked that hard?”

Zhu Yun: “But—”

“No buts. The website is fine. The quality is high. Whether it makes money depends on a whole range of factors.”

Zhu Yun: “You could have told us, and we could have worked together directly on something better.”

“You drank right through everything Han Jiakang said, didn’t you.”

“…”

“Work on something better directly — as employees? Making money for someone else?”

Zhu Yun muttered, “Money, money, money — it’s all you ever talk about. Honestly, you and Zhang Xiaobei are well matched.”

Smack.

Li Xun’s palm hit the wall right beside Zhu Yun’s face.

“Your Highness.”

“…”

“You really have no idea how the world works, do you.”

Oh?

Li Xun said, “Do you have any idea how much Ren Di’s little band burns through in a month?”

Zhu Yun shook her head. Li Xun gave a short laugh. He tilted his chin and asked:

“Does the lab run fast?”

A nod.

“Do you know what the specs are?”

A shake of the head.

“Have you ever wondered why that one classroom is the only one in the whole school with computers that fast?”

Another shake.

“Did the school just decide to spend money on equipment for your benefit? On what basis? Because you’re good-looking?”

Hm?

You think I’m good-looking?

Zhu Yun noticed her train of thought had completely derailed.

Li Xun gave her a sideways look, then straightened up. “Good projects are finite. If you don’t fight for them, they’re gone. Don’t expect me to give up resources. That’s not happening.”

Zhu Yun looked at him from the corner of her eye.

Li Xun had one hand on his hip, gaze turned slightly to the side, turning something over in his mind.

He really does look like a calm, feral dog.

Zhu Yun asked, “If you were unhappy with Zhang Xiaobei, why didn’t you say something sooner instead of swallowing it all?”

“Saying something sooner would have just meant everyone talking past each other endlessly.” He glanced at Zhu Yun. “There are a lot of ways to solve a problem. I could build something better. You and the others could use this project to sharpen your process and build experience. So there was no point wasting time on it. As for Zhang Xiaobei—” Li Xun let out a short, contemptuous laugh, “—there’s an endless supply of people like her. If I made a point of fighting every single one to the bitter end, I’d never get anything else done.”

“…”

Zhu Yun’s head was down. Li Xun asked, “What are you thinking?”

Zhu Yun pursed her lips. “I’m savoring something.”

“Savoring what?”

“That motivational poison you brewed for me.”

“…”

Zhu Yun cleared her throat and adopted Li Xun’s manner of speaking, delivering it with great feeling: “‘Everything is only its truest self at the very beginning. The further along it goes, the more it drifts — but it’s still worth fighting for. By fighting, we can keep it from drifting even further. Don’t you think so?'” She raised an eyebrow at him. “Well? Do you?”

Zhu Yun had meant it as a tease. She hadn’t counted on Li Xun’s lips pressing together as he said, “You remembered that word for word.”

“………………”

“Not bad.”

The victorious general strode back toward the lab with his head held high. Zhu Yun stewed for a moment, then broke into a quick jog after him and drove both palms into his back with all the force of wounded pride.

Li Xun stumbled, spun around. “What was that for?!”

Zhu Yun fixed him with a fierce stare. “You insufferable golden-haired menace — hmph!” And with one final withering glare, she turned on her heel and swept away.