“I’m an actress,” Nan Chu said.

Lin Luxiao pushed both hands deeper into his pockets and nodded in a way that said he understood — then gave a small, self-aware laugh. “Right. You’re an actress.”

And then a strange silence.

It seemed there was nothing left to say. He gave a parting remark — “Seven o’clock, at the meeting hall” — turned, and walked away.

Under the amber wash of the lane lamps, the straight back of him in uniform looked particularly tall.

Nan Chu watched him go, watching that hopelessly composed retreating figure, and sighed.

The woman materialized at her shoulder, seeming to appear from nowhere, leaning in with quiet concern: “Did you and Xiao Lin have a fight?”

Nan Chu startled and turned sharply — the woman’s face was right there, level with her shoulder. She slowly brought her attention back, watching until that green uniform disappeared into the white distance.

“Hmm.”

The woman sighed. “Are the two of you married?”

Nan Chu looked down. “Not yet.”

From the moment Lin Luxiao had brought Nan Chu through the door of the family quarters, the woman had thought the two of them were perfectly matched — he cool, she soft; he firm, she lovely. Even the small unspoken rhythms between them.

For instance: when they had first come in to register, Lin Luxiao had asked Nan Chu to get out her ID. As she dug through her bag with her head down, she had unlooped her scarf and handed it to Lin Luxiao without thought, asking him to hold it. He had taken it as though this were an entirely ordinary thing to do.

“When he first came here — you wouldn’t know — he was so silent. Talking to him was like pulling teeth. People assumed it was something about children from that part of the country, that they all came with this innate sense of superiority.”

“……”

The woman seemed to feel that wasn’t quite right, and waved her hand. “Not superiority exactly — more of an energy, a stubbornness, like he was fighting some internal battle with someone. The local boys here couldn’t get along with him at first — they were always getting under his skin. But within a month, he had them all in his back pocket. Turns out he had a military academy background, and these boys — all volunteers, every one of them dreaming of military school — had a real live example right there among them. They followed him around day and night asking questions. And he was patient about the professional ones, no airs at all. Spent enough time with him, and they couldn’t help but like him.”

“He takes a while to warm up.”

When she had first known him.

He had been exactly that cold. It had taken time to discover how entirely different he was once the distance closed.

The woman shook her head. “Zhao Guo told me later. He’d been broken up with.”

Nan Chu said nothing.

The woman’s expression turned knowing. “That was you, wasn’t it? I can see he’s different with you.” She lowered her voice as though sharing something privileged: “I just heard the boys talking — the orders came down. The leadership likes Xiao Lin a great deal. They want him to stay another year, as instructor.”

Nan Chu felt something cool at the tip of her nose. She raised a hand instinctively, and the cold, damp touch reached her fingertips. Reached something deeper.

When she looked up again.

The lamp threw its small circle of amber light against the dark, and within it, white flakes moved like drifting cotton.

It was snowing again.

Something in her chest felt as though a thousand threads were trying to push through at once.

She turned inward.

She had been deceiving herself all along.

Because he had always worn such studied ease, she had convinced herself he didn’t feel things as deeply — that even his pain had a ceiling. She had never truly stopped to think: how much damage had that breakup actually done to him?

She believed she understood him. And yet now, thinking it through again from where she stood —

She hadn’t understood him at all. Not his work, not his dreams, not the things that made him who he was.

In everything they had shared, it had been him accommodating her — every meal out, he would order with her preferences in mind without asking.

He remembered her cycle. He remembered she didn’t like spicy food.

When they stayed in watching films, he always found the romance she wanted to watch without prompting, then fought off sleep and sat through the whole thing with her.

Bedtime too.

She preferred one position, and he didn’t — but halfway through, she would simply turn herself over without discussion. He would prop himself up above her, helpless in his exasperation.

And in the end it was always whatever she wanted.

A man with that kind of temper at the station, and yet in the mornings when she struck out at him in her half-asleep frenzy, he would brace himself on the edge of the bed and coax her awake with a gentled voice and an expression of mild, resigned amusement.

When she’d sleep in and wake up furious — “Why didn’t you wake me!” — though there had been moments she had driven him past his limit, he had always pulled back from the edge. For her.

She had taken all of that for granted, all along. It had felt like the natural order of things.

No wonder Lin Luxiao had doubted whether she was truly invested. In truth, she had been operating entirely on impulse, and almost none of it had come from the mind.

……

At seven in the evening.

Nan Chu had changed and made her way over. From some distance away she could see the meeting hall, its entrance lit in the dark, Lin Luxiao in the middle of a group of soldiers, talking.

He had changed too — the precise lines of his dress uniform, the brim of his cap shading a face that was unruly and handsome beneath it. When he smiled, those eyebrows arched with a sharpness that the smile softened, the upward tilt of his eyes more visible. The collar of his uniform was neat, his jaw line clean.

He must have seen her coming.

The soldiers scattered, and Nan Chu came up. He ran a brief look over her, said nothing, and brought her inside.

A banner hung across the top of the meeting hall: Lushan Fire Station New Year Social Gathering.

“Sit.” He gestured at a seat near the front. “The leadership saved it for you.”

Nan Chu: “And where will you be?”

He tilted his chin to indicate the seat beside her. “Next to you.”

Nan Chu nodded, leaned back in her chair, and scrolled through her phone in quiet. Her hair fell forward, hanging to one side, softening the angle of her profile — making her look gentle and obedient.

She usually was, most of the time.

Lin Luxiao thought this.

The high-backed chairs in the front row, combined with Lin Luxiao standing to the side of her, formed a natural screen around Nan Chu.

Zhao Guo came hurtling in from outside, wild-eyed and waving. “Luxiao! Luxiao!”

Lin Luxiao glanced at him, then reached over and gave his head a light push. “What’s the matter with you?”

Zhao Guo had come sprinting from outside and wasn’t quite steady on his feet. He caught his breath. “You’ll never guess who I just saw.”

“Who?” Lin Luxiao was thoroughly unimpressed.

Zhao Guo’s face was bright red with urgency. “My wife’s little cousin!”

Lin Luxiao didn’t follow. “Who?”

“The one from your blind date that time! She signed up for tonight too! I was worried the girl from the family quarters might—”

He turned, and there was a young woman sitting in the chair beside him. Zhao Guo’s thoughts derailed completely. He blinked several times in rapid succession. “Is that — is that — is she… is she sister-in-law?”

The relationship between Lin Luxiao and Nan Chu was clearly still unresolved, but whichever way you looked at it, this seemed like the right address. At least it was warm.

The result was a firm smack to the back of the head. “Stop calling her that.”

Zhao Guo rubbed the spot, grinning.

Nan Chu looked up from her phone. She smiled at him — clean and full, all eight teeth — open and guileless, her features bright and fine, lips red against white.

Arresting, completely.

Good lord.

Zhao Guo was stopped cold. He had never in his life seen someone that beautiful. For a brief moment, he felt he understood something of how Lin Luxiao must have felt when she left. He suddenly felt, too, that his cousin-in-law was rather unremarkable in comparison.

He extended a hand, script-ready: “I’ve heard so much about you from Luxiao.”

He was cut off without ceremony. “Get out of here.”

Zhao Guo looked plaintively at Lin Luxiao.

Nan Chu gave him a warm, easy smile. “It’s fine. What’s your name?”

“Zhao Guo. The Zhao of the Zhao clan, the Guo of the nation.”

Nan Chu nodded. “Got it.”

“And what should I call you, Jie-jie?”

Nan Chu looked briefly at Lin Luxiao before answering: “Nan Chu.”

“Perfect — Nan—” He stopped dead. His mind went completely blank — as though swept clean by a sudden storm — and then he bellowed: “NAN — CHU—?!”

After which he stared at Lin Luxiao in absolute disbelief. She was actually a celebrity?

No wonder this man had never been interested in anyone.

Remarkable, truly. And if she was here, this man’s background had to be remarkable too.

After a moment of rebooting, Zhao Guo found his words again: “You’re so much more beautiful in person than on screen.”

Nan Chu replied, politely: “Thank you.”

The thing was, it was genuinely difficult to recognize screen faces in real life unless the person was one you knew very well. When Zhao Guo had first seen Nan Chu, he’d been struck by her beauty — felt faintly that he’d seen her somewhere — but hadn’t placed it. Nan Chu on screen was slightly rounder-faced than this. The impossible idea that a celebrity might show up here would have been dismissed in an instant.

The social gathering very nearly became a small fan event.

“I love the character you played, Liu Yingying — you looked incredible in the qipao!”

……

Most of these men had enlisted at eighteen and rarely went online beyond training days — their awareness of celebrity gossip was limited. They watched a few of the more popular films that circulated through the barracks. Recognizable faces were few.

Someone, however, immediately looked Nan Chu up.

And found, from about a year ago, the leaked post about Lin Luxiao and Nan Chu’s relationship. The comments in it were genuinely chilling to read. Everyone present, with good sense and without discussion, said not a word about it.

Lin Luxiao, for his part, chose to see nothing, and stepped outside to smoke.

The gathering was eventually called back to order by the senior officers’ voices cutting through the noise: “Do you all want to find wives or not?!”

“Yes! Yes we do!”

The social gathering officially began. The young women who had come in took to the floor with decisive focus — most seemed to have already done their assessment beforehand.

Nan Chu sat beside Lin Luxiao, surveying the row of women on the stage. “Which one is the little cousin?”

“Hmm?” He turned to look at her.

Nan Chu: “Wasn’t it a blind date?”

He gave a short, derisive laugh. “You really believed that?”

Nan Chu smiled back — her eyes dark and clear, his reflection in them, the smile completely candid. “I did.”

He shook his head with a quiet laugh and didn’t bother explaining. He scanned the stage, didn’t recognize which of them might be the cousin, pointed at one at random. “That one on the far end, probably.”

Nan Chu studied the young woman carefully. “She seems nice.”

“Don’t go trying to sound like you’re not jealous.”

Nan Chu considered him for a moment, then raised her hand toward the emcee on stage. The emcee looked her way. “Nan Chu has something to say.”

Nan Chu smiled pleasantly. “The man sitting next to me is also single. Why not give him a chance to come up?”

The moment the words landed.

The young women on stage visibly brightened, every gaze swinging with collective hope toward Lin Luxiao.

Lin Luxiao’s expression had gone dark enough to be visible from several seats away.

His squadmates, who had long believed no one in the world could get to this man, saw his expression and exchanged delighted looks. Apparently someone could.

Lin Luxiao was maneuvered onto the stage by the crowd.

With evident and undisguised reluctance, he went through a few interactive segments.

By the final confession segment, the man who had stood there the whole time with a black expression and fewer than ten words to his name somehow ended up receiving the most flowers.

The social event was only the beginning — genuine interest would lead to exchanged numbers and private follow-up. The real connections happened afterward.

And then the little cousin could no longer contain herself. She took the microphone directly from the emcee and addressed Lin Luxiao directly: “We only met once before, but I was very impressed by you. I’m here tonight because of you. I’ve thought about it seriously — if things were to work out between us and we got married and had children, I would be willing to…”

Here she lowered her head, suddenly shy. “I would be willing to quit my job and go to Beixun with you.”

Some of the other women, on hearing he was from another region, had shown some hesitation. This particular young woman had committed herself entirely. These past days of reflection had only deepened her feeling for him — she couldn’t stop thinking about him. She had come tonight with her full heart behind her.

“……”

The soldiers erupted.

Lin Luxiao glanced instinctively at Nan Chu.

Nan Chu was watching him with a quiet, even gaze. Smiling — warm, soft, and entirely composed.