While Zhu Yun and Gao Jianhong were caught in their confrontation, Li Xun and Hou Ning were in the middle of their own — though to be precise, it was Hou Ning doing all the raging on his own. The reason: Li Xun had refused to leave the country with him.

“You’re going back?” Hou Ning couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

He was an intensely emotional person, everything visible on his face. Right now his face was flushed red, his lips and eyelids twitching with barely suppressed agitation.

“Look at your old friends — one tanked your company outright, another turned ungrateful and won’t give you a cent, and then your ex-girlfriend, you saw it yourself, she’s already moved on with someone else. Tell me what you’re holding on for. You weren’t this wishy-washy when we were inside.”

Li Xun simply sat on the edge of the bed and smoked.

Hou Ning had noticed, though. Over these past few days, Li Xun’s entire bearing had shifted from when he’d first come out. Then, he’d been wrapped in something like barely-contained fury. Now the fury was still there, but his feet were more grounded — planted firmly on the floor. He exhaled smoke with unhurried ease, arriving at a decision he would not revisit.

Hou Ning was two years younger than Li Xun. He had always been slight and thin, but he was sharp-minded. He had been sold out and ended up inside, spent his time getting pushed around — until Li Xun stepped in. He had always thought of Li Xun as his own kind, treated him as a true companion — and now Li Xun was choosing to stay.

“Do you want to stay too?” Li Xun asked.

“No.” Hou Ning didn’t even hesitate. “You’re just out for the first time. You don’t know what this society does to people like us.”

Li Xun said nothing. Hou Ning pressed on: “And you’ve been out of the industry this long. If you’re thinking of going after that company through legitimate means, how long do you think that would take? There are simpler ways. Why make it so hard on yourself?”

“No reason.” Li Xun dropped the cigarette to the floor and stamped it out. “I just don’t like simple. It doesn’t matter how grueling it is — I need to swallow this grievance the right way.”

He said it without drama, his gaze dark and settled.

Hou Ning had been struck by that look more than once. It was something someone like him could never possess. Aggressive in the deepest sense — like black fire. You wouldn’t know how hot it burned until it touched you, and by then, you were already scorched.

“Can’t we go abroad?” Hou Ning made one last attempt. “We could still get justice from over there.”

“These people aren’t worth me running from,” Li Xun said. “If I leave, that’s a total defeat.”

With the decision made, every trace of ambiguity vanished. He looked at Hou Ning clean and direct:

“I’m asking you one last time. Are you staying or not?”

Hou Ning was jolted out of his thoughts. His back was damp with sweat.

“No…”

He remembered the first time he’d gotten out. He’d also let himself imagine he could live like a “normal person” — and reality had beaten that out of him, one lesson at a time.

He shook his head hard, enough that sweat formed at his brow.

“No. I’m not staying. I can’t take a life of bowing and scraping. Li Xun, you’re absolutely going to regret this.”

Li Xun watched him quietly. Hou Ning ground his teeth.

“Just wait. You’ll come crawling back to me eventually!”

He shoved through the door and slammed it behind him. The sound rang through the whole floor. A pile of empty plastic bottles someone had left stacked outside the neighboring door was knocked over and rattled away, rolling down to the lower landing.

Li Xun tipped his head back and lay down on the bed.

The room was very old. The ceiling was shedding flakes of plaster and showed faint patches of mold near the edges.

Li Xun closed his eyes. He hadn’t been sitting long, but his lower back had already stiffened up. He tried rolling his neck and heard the joints give a soft crack.

He thought, with a kind of bleak amusement, that he wasn’t entirely alone after all — at least this punishing back of his had been with him without fail, through everything.

In the middle of that month, the fourteenth Internet Conference, hosted by the China Internet Association, opened in the city. The venue was the International Convention Center of Huajiang Grand Hotel.

Zhu Yun had obtained her entry badge through a company she’d previously collaborated with. She arrived early — only three or four people were ahead of her in the security line. The wide corridor leading inside was carpeted in a thin red runner, flanked on both sides by promotional banners from exhibitors and IT companies attending the conference. Each company had some activity running at their booth — scan a code, download an app, and in return you’d get a USB drive and a portable charger, or a fruit drink.

Zhu Yun happened to be a little thirsty. She scanned the code for a financial management app, and a volunteer cheerfully handed her a small fruit plate. Zhu Yun was popping a piece of apple into her mouth when she opened the app she’d just downloaded.

It crashed immediately.

“…”

She swallowed the apple and uninstalled it.

In recent years, internet businesses had expanded rapidly. Business models like P2P and O2O had taken hold, reshaping daily life in sweeping ways. Smaller IT firms had been sprouting up in clusters, and this conference reflected that — most of the attendees were salespeople or operations staff from up-and-coming companies hoping to expand their reach.

Zhu Yun made her way into the main hall. The conference was still in the preparation stage.

The Huajiang Group had deep pockets, and the entire convention center had been dressed in lavish style. To create a high-tech atmosphere, the towering floor-to-ceiling windows on all four walls — nearly ten meters high — were blocked by heavy hanging drapes that kept out the daylight entirely. Three massive disco mirror balls hung from the ceiling, spinning out cascades of brilliant color. The hall seated close to a thousand people, each chair draped in white fabric, with a pocket attached beneath holding the conference program, the list of award categories, and a booklet introducing the guest speakers.

Zhu Yun found a seat, opened the speaker booklet, and found herself looking at a full-color photograph of Fang Zhijing, beaming with confidence on the very first page.

Ji Li was one of five companies that had been invited to the conference — and it was also the enterprise the Huajiang Group was preparing to invest in. Its representatives were seated in the front row, center — in chairs noticeably different from the rest: pristine white European-style high-backed chairs in genuine leather, regal and commanding.

She didn’t read the introduction. She closed the booklet.

She was here to wait for Li Xun. She had a feeling he would come.

Over the weeks before this, she had tried repeatedly to reach him, with no success. He had vanished as completely as if he’d evaporated. She asked Ren Di and Fu Yizhuo — they couldn’t find him either. It was then that she understood: every meeting since Li Xun’s release had happened because he sought her out. When they tried to reach him, there was nowhere to start.

That realization made her want to laugh — he was in the state he was in, and yet he was still the one holding all the cards, with everyone moving according to his moods.

Fu Yizhuo was right. Some things seep into the bone and can’t be changed.

After a solid week of trying and failing to find him, Tian Xiuzhu had suggested she take a break. It was around that time that the Internet Conference announcement landed in her inbox, and she saw that Ji Li would be represented there.

She had wanted to call Li Xun — but however hard she tried, she couldn’t recall the number she had glimpsed on Hou Ning’s phone that day, brief as the glance had been.

“If you could memorize that,” Tian Xiuzhu had said with a smile, “I’d move back to France.”

Zhu Yun, a beat late, caught what Tian Xiuzhu meant.

Tian Xiuzhu had a gift for making people feel at ease. His thoughtfulness ran all the way through him. He never made anyone uncomfortable, never put anyone in an awkward position — he was like that garden of Monet’s: quiet and still, beautiful simply by existing.

They had known each other for years, and he had helped her through a great deal.

“You’ve gone quiet,” Tian Xiuzhu said. He had his back to her, perched on a pale yellow wooden barstool, applying color to the canvas in front of him with calm, methodical strokes. He finished the last one, then turned around, his expression unhurried. “Joking. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Does this make things awkward for you?” Zhu Yun asked.

Technically they weren’t together — but Zhu Yun acknowledged that what existed between them went beyond ordinary friendship.

She herself had been surprised by how much Li Xun’s release had shaken her. It was like someone raising a battle standard in the middle of a chaotic field — the situation was grim, but she felt something stir to life in her. She was restless, eager. She hadn’t cared this much about something in a very long time.

“I can’t stand by while Li Xun and that company remain unresolved,” Zhu Yun told Tian Xiuzhu. “I’ll definitely go to him.”

“So,” Tian Xiuzhu said, “are you going to him for work, or for love?”

Zhu Yun looked at him. “Either way, my energy will be going in that direction. Stop wasting your time on me. It’s not fair to you.”

Tian Xiuzhu couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re so completely honest.”

Zhu Yun was quiet.

“Relax,” Tian Xiuzhu said. He wore a white shirt, which made his face look softer and more at ease. “You make human relationships far more complicated than they need to be. I’m staying in the country because I have work to do. And I find being around you comfortable. We give each other what the other needs — it’s as simple as that.”

Perhaps it was years of living abroad, but Tian Xiuzhu was unusually frank about emotions. He rarely beat around the bush and always expressed himself directly.

He added: “He came out and you lit up like someone had switched a current on in you.”

That much was undeniable.

“Let me think,” Tian Xiuzhu said. “Sometimes the people who work most closely together end up finding it hard to become something more — that’s how it works in television dramas, anyway. Right now you two are colleagues in the trenches at most. For him, the goal will always matter more than love.”

Zhu Yun looked away. Her gaze settled on the pair of headphones lying on the table — Tian Xiuzhu liked to listen to music while he painted, though only when she wasn’t there.

Tian Xiuzhu said gently: “But between you and me — there will never be anything more important than love. I’m a lazy person. I don’t have particularly grand goals or ambitions. To me, home and family are everything. I could give up everything else for that — and that’s the one thing I can promise you. He can’t.”

Tian Xiuzhu looked at her — his gaze was warm and steady, and he meant every word. He rarely lied, and he never went out of his way to keep score in matters of the heart. He could accept the harder end of a deal in love — something entirely unlike Li Xun.

He picked up his palette and brush again. The paint had dried slightly in the short rest — he worked the surface gently with the tip of the brush until the colors moved freely again.

“That dream of yours — the way it ended, as violently as it did — it makes sense that it left something unfinished in you. Different fields, I know, but everyone has their summit they want to reach. The more capable the person, the harder it is to make peace with a dream left only half-lived. I understand that.” He drew a slow stroke across the canvas — the most beautiful shade of jade green. Then, lightly: “I used to say you weren’t ruthless enough to get justice. Well. Someone ruthless enough has arrived. Let him be your leverage — pull that thorn out of your chest, and then we’ll go back to France together. Live the quietest life possible. Women shouldn’t have to fight their whole lives. That’s a sad way to live.”