Shi Li had already seen his tattoo once before. Seeing it again, she still thought it was beautiful.

While everyone stared with unblinking focus at his swallowtail butterfly tattoo, marveling and admiring, Ban Sheng mercilessly grabbed the zipper and pulled it straight back up to his throat.

Darkness. Nothing to see at all.

“Am I your performing monkey?” Ban Sheng raised an eyebrow and asked.

A ripple of laughter ran through the group. Amid the laughter, only Shi Li spoke up. She looked at Ban Sheng, her eyes transparent with admiration, her tone half-joking:

“Wow, that butterfly tattoo is so beautiful. Can I get one just like it?”

The implication beneath the surface was: could I get a matching one with you?

Ban Sheng took a sip of his drink, his prominent throat moving in a slow roll upward and downward. The light that had been on him shifted away, and his face fell into shadow — his expression unreadable.

“It wouldn’t suit you,” Ban Sheng said.

Shi Li deflated slightly. She was about to say more when the door of the private room was suddenly pushed open, and in came a young woman wearing a fitted black turtleneck sweater, with a broad, umbrella-shaped mohair skirt.

The combination was slightly unusual, yet it suited the girl perfectly — she had the air of someone effortlessly well-bred and wealthy.

When the girl turned around, Lin Weixia finally saw her face clearly. It was Li Shengran.

Evidently, Li Shengran had also seen her.

Compared to the spoiled, quickly-tempered young lady she had been in high school, she had grown considerably since then. Seeing Lin Weixia, she showed neither anger nor contempt — she simply chose to ignore her.

The moment Li Shengran walked in, the energy in the room surged; her presence stirred things up immediately. Ban Sheng’s circle all seemed to know her, and greetings came from every direction:

“Young Lady, what took you so long.”

“Vany, you made it!”

“Your brother has had quite a lot to drink tonight — you here to look after him?”

Someone shuffled along the sofa to make room for Li Shengran. She spread her hands in a shrug:

“Do whatever you like. He may be my brother, but I follow reason over family loyalty.”

This got a laugh from the room. With Li Shengran joining in, another glass was added to the table, and the game resumed.

Throughout the whole game, Lin Weixia was somewhat distracted. She kept wondering what the butterfly tattoo meant to Ban Sheng — or whether he had simply thought it looked beautiful and decided on a whim.

She had no standing to ask.

She was still lost in thought when another burst of laughter broke out from the group, people laughing so hard some fell backward in their seats. Even Qiu Minghua looked a little exasperated:

“Ban Ye, I think there’s something wrong with the feng shui at your spot — your luck is terrible. You want to switch seats?”

Lin Weixia looked over and realized Ban Sheng had lost the 7-8-9 game again.

“Ask a question then,” Ban Sheng said.

“Alright, here it is. Your swallowtail butterfly tattoo — did you get it because of someone important to you?”

At the question, apart from Li Shengran, every person in the room was curious what Ban Sheng would say. Shi Li’s heart beat with restless anxiety as she waited. She was still hoping she hadn’t lost before the chase had even begun.

Lin Weixia picked up a glass of ice water from the table. She took a sip, and an ice cube accidentally slid into her mouth. She chewed it lazily, not really in the right headspace, just half-heartedly crunching it before trying to swallow it down.

A diamond-shaped ice cube lodged in her throat — cold and hard, slightly uncomfortable, as if something were caught there.

Ban Sheng had drunk quite a bit tonight. His whole person was slouched back against the sofa, head tilting backward, the corners of his eyes reddened. He had the look of someone dissolute and careless, his whole bearing sunk in a heavy, overcast air.

Lin Weixia watched him. Ban Sheng curved one corner of his lips, reached for a glass on the table, and tipped it back, drinking it down in one go.

He chose to drink.

He did not answer the question.

The group let Ban Sheng off after that. He seemed to have drunk too much; he wasn’t in good shape, and withdrew from the game, curling himself into the sofa with his phone out, playing a game on it.

Lin Weixia was still in the game. Distracted people tend to get penalized, and before long she rolled a 9. Everyone looked at her, and Qiu Minghua grinned: “Drink or truth or dare?”

“Truth,” said Lin Weixia.

Without waiting for anyone else to ask, Lin Weixia moved quickly and snatched the truth-or-dare card directly from Qiu Minghua’s hand. This way was safer than being asked a question by someone else.

She held the card up and opened it. Everyone looked over. It read: What is the bravest thing you have ever done?

Li Shengran glanced sideways, as if something had come to mind. She bent her head and plucked a strand of hair from her mohair skirt, a thin, cold smile forming at the corner of her lips.

“Does going alone to get a dermal piercing after the university entrance exams count?”

Lin Weixia’s voice was not loud, yet every person in the room fell quiet.

Ban Sheng was sunk deep in the sofa. He had been playing his game, fingers moving quickly across the screen — and then they stilled. A dark, furious energy settled in the space between his brows.

He said nothing. The phone in his grip played the sound of “game over” again and again.

“That absolutely counts!” One of the young men slapped his leg.

“That’s so cool. I’ve thought about it before but got talked out of it just thinking about the pain,” a girl said.

“Right after the college entrance exams — you’d barely just turned eighteen. That takes real courage.”

Someone asked: “Did it hurt?”

While they discussed it, Lin Weixia was aware the whole time of a murky, fixed gaze pressing down on her, pinning her to her seat, impossible to hide from anywhere. The person sitting across from her seemed to be scrutinizing her — weighing whether what she’d said was true or false. Those eyes were full of fury, as if they wanted to reduce her to ash.

At this point, Qiu Minghua — whether he had read that look, or guessed on his own — was just about to speak.

Shi Li suspiciously inserted herself: “That piercing wasn’t a couples’ one, was it?”

Eyes around the group immediately turned suggestive, all looking at Lin Weixia, clearly anticipating a story — all except Li Shengran, whose expression had gone somewhere uncomfortable.

Lin Weixia tugged at the corner of her lips. Was it a couples’ piercing?

No. Just now when Ban Sheng had pulled his zipper down and shown the tattoo, there had been no piercing beside his collarbone.

“That’ll be the subject of the next round then,” Lin Weixia said cleverly.

For the rest of the games, Lin Weixia stayed at full attention, guarding against any opening, and naturally no one found a moment to press her.

During a break, though, the girl who had said she thought Lin Weixia was cool leaned over and asked quietly:

“Can I see your piercing? I’ve been wanting one for a long time, but I’m too scared.”

Lin Weixia looked at the girl — her eyes filled with a plea. After a moment’s hesitation:

“Sure.”

Lin Weixia was wearing a white low-neckline sweater that day, paired with a long maple-plaid skirt.

She tugged at the neckline with effort, pulling it down. The girl leaned in to look.

The red glow of the room cast its hazy, ambiguous light, and with two girls leaning close together, one seeming to be pulling at the other’s clothing, they quickly drew other people’s attention.

The girl quickly positioned herself in front of Lin Weixia and called out:

“Back off, you lot — go play your game. Nobody gets to look at a beautiful girl’s collarbone, got it?”

“Alright, alright, not looking.” The few young men retracted their craning necks.

The white sweater folded down, revealing two musical-note-curved collarbones set against a chest pale and smooth as frozen jade.

On the lower side of the left collarbone, three silver dermal piercings were set in a row — beautiful, like a crescent moon strung together.

“Wow, gorgeous. Did it hurt?” The girl stared at the piercings.

Lin Weixia shook her head, her tone flat: “Not really.”

“Really? Don’t lie to me.”

Lin Weixia was about to add something more when she glimpsed the tall figure across from her suddenly rising to his feet. He scooped up his cigarettes and lighter from the table and walked straight out — the fabric of his trousers brushing accidentally against her knee as he passed. Ban Sheng didn’t spare her so much as a glance, his whole body radiating an unapproachable coldness as he left.

After he was gone, Lin Weixia pulled her gaze back. The girl beside her was still waiting for her answer.

She said quietly: “It actually hurt a lot.”

Five minutes later, Lin Weixia’s phone in her pocket buzzed with a series of messages. She pulled it out — it was from Ban Sheng, words few and tone cool:

[Come out.]

Lin Weixia turned off the screen and followed him out. Free of the bar’s noise and heat, her head began to clear.

She pushed open the bar door. A cold, damp gust of wind hit her. It had begun to rain in the winter dark.

A steady stream of strangers was going in. Lin Weixia turned sideways, both hands tucked into her coat pockets, and on instinct let her gaze sweep to the right — finding a dark silhouette at the far end of the corridor.

She walked over. Ban Sheng was standing at the very edge, his whole body leaning against the wall, slightly hunched over, one long leg propped against the wall, head bent as he smoked.

The hand holding the cigarette had gone red from the cold. Rain kept falling. Drops were landing on his arm at intervals; the black outdoor jacket was covered in tiny beads of water.

Like spiderwebs.

He radiated cold, darkness, and an oppressive weight.

Lin Weixia watched him smoke with such intensity and almost said something — wanted to tell him to cut back. But that would only invite his mockery.

The words rose in her throat, then shifted at her lips to become: “What did you want?”

Ban Sheng stopped smoking. With a toss of his hand, the glowing red stub arced in a parabola through the rain and landed perfectly in the bin.

She followed his gaze — and before she could react, a cold hand found the back of her neck. She was pulled sharply forward, and again she was pushed back against the wall.

Ban Sheng’s large palm moved from the back of her neck, his thumb and forefinger gripping her chin with steady force, the pressure gradually tightening.

From the side, it looked as if he were choking her.

But he wasn’t — not really.

Lin Weixia was pinned by him, chin clamped in place, forced to tilt her head back. She couldn’t move. A pair of clear, quiet eyes looked directly back at his.

Ban Sheng’s brows and eyes were sharp with fury. He stared at the young woman before him with something between hatred and torment in his gaze, his eyes reddened at the corners, as if holding something down.

For a split second, Lin Weixia wondered whether Ban Sheng wanted to choke the life out of her.

Ban Sheng looked at her and gave a cold laugh:

“Here you are again.”

“Coming to test how much sincerity I still have left for you?” Ban Sheng looked at her, enunciating each word.

His voice came slowly, his tone mocking:

“Lin Weixia, do you know what you’re good at? Acting.”

What version of Lin Weixia had he not seen — keeping her face calm while lying, playing the victim to stir his pity, always holding back two-thirds of her real heart, rationing him small pieces of it when he moved her, relying on the fact that he would indulge her unconditionally to make promises easily, and then personally breaking every one of them.

Lin Weixia’s eyes went wet. She rolled her gaze sideways and forced the burning in her eye sockets back down, staring out at the thick curtain of falling rain.

After the university entrance exams ended, Lin Weixia had walked under a blistering sun through the narrow alleyways of town, alone, until she found the piercing studio.

When she pushed aside the curtain and stepped in, the owner had just finished with a customer. Through a half-open door, Lin Weixia saw someone who had just had a dermal piercing done lying on the table, face chalk-white.

For a moment, Lin Weixia hesitated.

The studio owner noticed the uncertainty in her eyes and asked: “How old are you, young lady, coming in for a piercing at your age?”

“Eighteen.” Lin Weixia, afraid the owner might refuse, took out her identity card and showed it.

The owner took it and looked. She raised an eyebrow: “Just barely, hm. Still young.”

Lin Weixia didn’t respond. She just stood there, her eyes calm and still. The owner could tell immediately that this girl had a stubborn streak, and shrugged her shoulders:

“Come with me then.”

The owner led Lin Weixia into a private work cubicle. Lin Weixia lay down as instructed. The owner prepared the row of piercing tools, and when the forceps held a cotton swab and came to sterilize the collarbone area, a cool sensation spread across it.

“Relax — no, don’t tense up… oh, dear.” The owner let out a quiet sigh.

She observed the young woman’s reaction. At a glance, she could tell Lin Weixia had a sensitive constitution — the kind that experienced pain more acutely than most, even from ordinary injections. Someone like this was going to have a particularly hard time with a dermal piercing.

The owner gave the girl before her a measured look. Her collarbone skin was pale and unblemished, without a single imperfection. She had Lin Weixia sit up.

Lin Weixia didn’t understand what the owner meant. She sat up and leaned against the wall, watching quietly.

The owner spoke: “Young woman, you’re exactly the same age as my little sister at home, so let me say one more thing. These piercings are done without anesthetic. The machine punches the holes, and the jewelry is set into the skin and flesh. Recovery takes three months. If you haven’t really made up your mind yet, you can come back another day — bring someone with you, or take some more time to think.”

The owner’s voice was gentle — she was genuinely worried for her. Lin Weixia, whose expression had been completely calm up until that last sentence, suddenly couldn’t hold it together anymore. She wrapped her arms around her knees and began to cry — her eyes reddened, and she sobbed so hard she couldn’t catch her breath, her words coming out in broken hiccups:

“There’s no one… there’s no one to come with me.”

“I can’t… I can’t leave every single promise unfulfilled.”

She already owed him more than enough.

In the end, the owner did the piercings for her. From the moment the needle pierced through, to the jewelry being pressed into the skin, Lin Weixia broke out in a cold sweat from head to toe — but she didn’t make a single sound. She endured every bit of it in silence.

The rain grew heavier. It struck the ground in a roar that pulled Lin Weixia’s thoughts back to the present. She looked at the young man before her.

“If you wanted to know about my change of major — my father made me change. He’s already pushing into the medical device industry.” Ban Sheng released the hand gripping her chin and spoke slowly.

Ban Sheng’s message was clear: she had the answer she came for, and she could stop now.

Lin Weixia knew anything she said would only sound like excuses. And this — the truth she had carried so long — still seemed small and pale when spoken aloud. She said quietly:

“I just don’t want to keep lying.”

A flicker of surprise crossed Ban Sheng’s face. His dark lashes were like a storm — emotions dense and impossible to read.

At that moment, a girl’s voice came from not far away:

“Brother — are you done?”

Lin Weixia looked over. Li Shengran was standing nearby, holding an umbrella, her skirt making her look tall and poised. Her expression was composed — as if she was certain Ban Sheng would come to her.

Ban Sheng pulled his gaze away from her and walked over. He took the umbrella from Li Shengran’s hand, bent down slightly, and opened it. His shoulders were broad; the rain falling at an angle had darkened them. Then the two of them walked together into the rain side by side.

And disappeared from Lin Weixia’s sight.