Someone came out of the building — a man with striking, openly handsome features.

Zou Miao walked up to the entrance, spotted Shen Mu, gave him a bland greeting, then turned back toward the lobby and called loudly inside: “Come on, hurry up! I want to show you something!”

After a few seconds, a girl strolled out with her arms folded, unhurried and unimpressed. “What is it now?”

Lin Luxiao was standing there idly. His gaze wandered over without intent.

It paused for just a moment. Then, without any change of expression, he looked away and reached for the cigarette box in his jacket pocket.

Shen Mu, both hands in his pockets, gave a quiet cough.

Nan Chu, who hadn’t been paying attention to this side of things, happened to glance over at that moment.

Lin Luxiao was in all black. His dark hair caught the light with a faint gloss. The lines of his profile looked carved from something hard.

He pulled out a cigarette, brought it to his lips, lit it, dropped the lighter back into his pocket, drew a long breath, pinched the cigarette between his fingers, and exhaled. In the space of that breath, their gazes met.

Two sets of eyes tangled together with absolute shamelessness.

From ahead, Zou Miao grew impatient. He was standing beside the truck, calling out to her. “Nan Chu, come here!”

Nan Chu walked over.

Lin Luxiao curved his lips in a sardonic line, shifted his gaze away, and leaned against the car door smoking.

When that figure passed in front of him, he still didn’t look. He stood with his head to the side, jaw set, not one degree of give in his posture.

Shen Mu jabbed him with an elbow. “If it weren’t for today, I wouldn’t have even known those two—”

“Enough.” He cut him off, impatient.

Shen Mu tried carefully: “Uncomfortable?”

He had the cigarette between his lips. He let out a low scoff, bowed his head to flick off the ash. “What’s there to be uncomfortable about.”

Shen Mu: “So magnanimous?”

Lin Luxiao kept the cigarette in his mouth and didn’t say another word.

Maybe at twenty-something he would have waded straight in — stirred everything into chaos, laid the other man out so thoroughly he’d never think about touching anything of his again, then hauled that girl home and given her a proper talking to. But as the years piled up, certain emotions became more controllable.

More suppressible.

Lin Qingyuan had just reminded him recently: past the new year, he’d be a thirty-year-old man.

Nan Chu was walking slowly. Zou Miao ran out of patience, rushed over, grabbed her by the shoulder, and gestured broadly at the truckload of flowers. “All personally selected by yours truly.”

“Are you insane?” Nan Chu gave him a look.

Zou Miao grinned, thoroughly unbothered. “Absolutely.”

Nan Chu rolled her eyes and turned to leave. He grabbed her and wouldn’t let go.

Zou Miao dragged her back and straight into a hug, his head resting against hers. “Could you at least be a tiny bit moved, for crying out loud?”

Nan Chu pushed at him, no match for his strength, and was helplessly pinned against him. The only thing she could do was hiss a warning through her teeth: “Let. Go. Of me. Right now.”

Her head pressed to his shoulder by his hand, she looked out through the gap — and saw a dark figure by the car turn and walk away.

Without a single look back.

Nan Chu stared at that upright, retreating figure, and felt something unexpected rise in her throat. In truth, it was the military uniform that made him look most formidably himself — but he hadn’t looked at her, not once, from beginning to end. The corners of her eyes suddenly burned. She sniffled.

Zou Miao quickly pulled her out of his arms, took one look, and froze.

The girl was crying. Pear blossoms in rain — that kind of crying — and it wrecked him. His voice dropped, oddly soft of its own accord. “Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, HEY — what are you crying for?! You can’t possibly be this moved!!!!!”

“You’re going to make me afraid to give you surprises from now on!!!!!”

“Please stop, for pity’s sake!!!!!”

At three in the afternoon, the event started. When the charity auction segment came around, Zou Miao made the dramatically generous gesture of donating two million yuan worth of firefighting equipment to the volunteers, in Nan Chu’s name.

Shen Mu shook his head slowly. “This Zou Miao — he really does come prepared when he goes after someone.”

Someone beside him muttered, “Showing off.”

Every member of the media in attendance erupted immediately.

The resulting press mob circled entirely around the rumors about the two of them: “Are you planning to go public with your relationship?” “Do you have a child together?” “When is the wedding?”

Zou Miao, utterly shameless, even patiently engaged with the media one by one.

“If things move quickly, we could be toasting the guests at our wedding by the end of the year.”

Nan Chu wanted to throttle him on the spot.

And afterward, Zou Miao even used this as leverage. “Don’t back out now — the words are already out there. You can’t make me look like I was lying.”

Nan Chu blocked every contact associated with Zou Miao.

Zou Miao didn’t seem especially troubled. He’d show up at the filming location to collect her from time to time; when he couldn’t find her, he’d go entertain himself with his own friends.

He had somehow turned pursuing Nan Chu into a kind of hobby — watching the girl get feisty was genuinely amusing. As for marriage — not quite there yet, the girl was too cold. He hadn’t found anything else that captured his interest as effectively, though. For now, Nan Chu held the prize for generating the most.

Online, the speculation between the two of them kept getting hotter. Then a few photos surfaced that appeared to show Nan Chu and Zou Miao in a heated embrace at a hotel — from the angle, it looked like the evening of the blind date, with Nan Chu’s back against the wall and Zou Miao’s hand braced beside her, talking.

One day on set, Nan Chu got a call from Big Liu.

The moment the line connected, an enormous bellow hit her ear: “SISTER-IN-LAW!!”

The long-absent “sister-in-law” left her momentarily dazed. Big Liu rarely called her, and for him to call this urgently with this tone of voice — a bad feeling swelled up instinctively. Without even registering it, she didn’t correct the title. “What’s wrong?”

Big Liu stammered for a long time and said nothing.

His hemming and hawing pulled her temper right up to the surface. She pressed, hard: “Just say it!”

“Luxiao—”

Nan Chu’s grip on the phone tightened. Even the column of her throat clenched involuntarily, as if a breath were stopped mid-way. “Did something happen to him?”

Big Liu choked out: “He’s in the hospital!”

Nan Chu’s mind went blank, a single thunderclap of white. Her knuckles had gone pale where she gripped the phone. She drew a long breath and tried to keep her voice from trembling. “Is it serious?”

Big Liu glanced at Shen Mu standing beside him, trying to figure out what to say.

Shen Mu’s expression said: Tell her it’s serious.

Big Liu took the cue. “He was stabbed multiple times — and just now, he was calling your name…”

The reality was just one wound on his back — not deep — but it happened to overlap with an old scar, which made healing considerably harder. He had walked himself to the hospital.

On the other end, there was already nothing but a flat dial tone.

Big Liu hung up and exchanged a long look with Shen Mu. “She’s coming, right? Hey — did Luxiao actually call her name just now?”

Shen Mu gazed out at the night outside and smiled mildly. “Called it, all right! Grabbed my hand and called it several times without letting go.”

Big Liu clicked his tongue. Thinking through that image, he got chills.

Luxiao lying in a hospital bed calling out some woman’s name — it all felt slightly implausible. He half-suspected Shen Mu was pulling his leg, but then again — when a man is truly devoted, his intelligence drops several points and he becomes capable of anything.

When Nan Chu arrived, Big Liu and Shen Mu were just coming out. They saw her standing at the door, and exchanged a quiet, knowing smile. Shen Mu said: “That was fast.”

Nan Chu pulled off her mask. “Where is he?”

Shen Mu tilted his chin toward the inside. “In there, lying down. He just fell asleep. We’re going to his place to get some of his things — you sit with him for a bit.”

Nan Chu nodded. “How did he get hurt?”

Big Liu said: “Yesterday he was out in the streets helping to apprehend rioters — those people were vicious. He took several slashes right across the back. Completely done in—”

The actual truth was that someone had caught him from an unguarded angle — an accidental gash — and he had walked himself to the hospital.

Nan Chu said nothing. This man truly had no regard for his own life.

Big Liu clapped her on the shoulder in reassurance. “Alright, me and Shen Mu are heading out. You sit with him for a bit. Just now Luxiao was saying your name the whole time — we really couldn’t deal with it, so we called you in. Oh — and one more thing…” He paused. “You and that Zou Miao—”

“No,” she said, automatically.

Big Liu broke into a grin, as though he’d just been handed something valuable. “Good. All right, you two talk.”

Nan Chu went in. Not long after, Lin Luxiao woke up. Through the blur, he saw a slender figure with her back to him, and he lay there studying it for a long time, as if trying to be sure of something.

Nan Chu turned her head — and found him looking at her with both eyes wide open.

Their gazes collided for the second time.

A sudden silence.

Lin Luxiao pushed himself upright from the headboard. Nan Chu moved instinctively to help steady him. He pushed her hand away, and said with unbothered contempt: “What are you doing here?”

Outside, the wind and snow were merciless. Bitter cold.

She had bolted from the set so fast she hadn’t even grabbed her down coat — hadn’t turned back for it, just flagged down a taxi and headed straight here.

His attitude was colder than the frost outside. And it cut deeper.

Nan Chu sniffled and looked away. “Do you have to talk like that? Does it have to be that harsh?”

Lin Luxiao made a dismissive sound. “So what are you coming to find me for? Go and be your princess.”

Nan Chu was so exasperated she almost laughed, and the shine in her eyes suddenly became something else. “Lin Luxiao — are you jealous?!”

“Ridiculous.”

Probably the movement strained his wound, because he gave a short cough.

Nan Chu dragged a stool up to his bedside, sat down, and looked at him steadily. “Let’s stop fighting. All right?”

But those words — that one sentence — lit the fuse on the anger Lin Luxiao had been keeping compressed for days.

“You think this is just fighting? You do all that with that guy just to rile me up?”

That day — seeing Zou Miao’s arms around her, watching her cry into his shoulder — only Lin Luxiao knew what that had felt like. He had loved one woman in his entire life, and there she was being held and soothed by another man.

He admitted it. He was jealous. He was going out of his mind with it.

If Shen Mu hadn’t been there holding him back, he would have gone over and laid that man out completely.

But then what?

Their problem remained unsolved.

He suddenly reached for the cigarettes on the bedside table. Nan Chu pressed her hand over his, her voice quiet. “Don’t do that.”

Her small hand was cool, soft, and fine-boned over his. He said coldly, “Move your hand.”

“And were you entirely without fault? That night at Lushan — what gave you the right to treat me the way you did?” Nan Chu held his gaze stubbornly, her small face tight with suppressed anger — and even like that, still remarkably beautiful.

Lin Luxiao felt like something had gotten under his skin. He let out a sudden, self-mocking laugh. “Fine. I apologize. I shouldn’t have treated you that way that night.”

He had regretted it afterward.

If he had been even slightly softer in his manner, things between them today would not be this rigid.

Nan Chu suddenly found herself at a loss. She didn’t know what to do to make him trust her again. She had lost his trust, and she didn’t know how to earn it back.

And yet dragging this on was causing hurt to both of them.

And his manner still wouldn’t soften. Not even slightly.

He had been so indulgent with her before. Even when he was genuinely angry, she’d only need to coax him for a moment and his temper would vanish instantly. But this time — no matter what she tried, she couldn’t coax him back. And it was in that moment.

She suddenly understood: some things don’t come with a second chance.

A kind of desolation settled over her. She bowed her head. “When Big Liu called earlier, I was frightened. All I wanted was to come see that you were all right, and then go. But then Big Liu and Shen Mu said they were going to your place to get some things and asked me to stay a little while. I didn’t know how to face you — and I thought you were asleep and probably wouldn’t wake up. I was going to leave the moment they came back. Maybe I really shouldn’t have come today.”

She pulled her hand back. Bowed her head. A tear landed on the back of her hand.

“Let’s put everything from before to rest today. The fault was mine back then — I was a coward. When I found out your father had been hospitalized, that your background clearance hadn’t gone through, I was afraid of bringing you more trouble. You wouldn’t agree to break up. I was trying to find a way to tell you — but my mother took my phone, and the moment I was discharged she took me straight to the airport. I wanted Yan Dai to pass along a message, but after that day, no one came to see me. I had no way to reach anyone. By the time I was in America, I told myself I had to work harder. I had to get stronger. That was the only way I could protect you.”

Lin Luxiao’s hand, pressing down on the cigarette box, slowly clenched. There were barely any cigarettes left inside — the box buckled under the pressure and crumpled into a tight ball.

The muscle along his jaw shifted almost imperceptibly, suppressing something.

Nan Chu sniffled. In this quiet hospital room, the sound of it seemed to make everything more unbearable.

“Commander, I won’t come and disturb you anymore.”

She said it, and stood. “When Brother Mu and Big Liu get back, I’ll go. If you don’t want to look at me, I can wait at the door.”

She looked at Lin Luxiao one last time.

The man leaning against the headboard was in a hospital gown. Without the usual sharpness of his regular clothing, there was something slightly worn and tired in his face — yet to her eyes he was still striking beyond reason. She couldn’t look much longer.

If she kept looking, she would never be able to forget it.

She turned and walked toward the door.

And then someone grabbed her from behind.

Her whole body went rigid.

The person buried his face in the side of her neck and breathed in, slowly and deeply.

The next second, Lin Luxiao’s hands steadied her shoulders and turned her to face him. He looked into her eyes — those reddened, glistening eyes.

“Don’t you have a talent for tearing everything apart, and then walking away on your own? Are you ever going to fix that about yourself, in this lifetime? If we make up now and you run off again next time — where am I supposed to go looking? Hm?”

His voice was low and resonant, and still carried that magnetic warmth — but it was softer now than before, and held, of all things, a note of helpless resignation.

Nan Chu looked up at him abruptly.

Lin Luxiao held her gaze, his own calm and even. “Do you dare go get the marriage certificate with me?”