Although the winter holiday wasn’t as long as the summer one, her plans were proceeding on schedule. Ning Sui had successfully registered for the driving licence exam — the written theory portion was actually quite simple. She spent a few days working through the digital question bank and passed it on her first attempt.

Next came the GRE.

At Tsinghua University, everyone was fiercely competitive. Hu Ke’er had told her that practically everyone in the foreign languages department had a high GRE and IELTS score. Ning Sui didn’t think her own ambitions were particularly ahead of the curve.

But the Lunar New Year was approaching soon, and because she felt that Xia Fanghui had been paying especially close attention to her these days, she had been staying home more often — which meant she rarely got to see Xie Yichen.

So every evening, she would call him.

There was no fixed subject to their conversations. Sometimes she would curl up in her blankets and chat about what she had seen and done that day. Sometimes they were both busy, each absorbed in their own tasks, but still connected by an open microphone.

Ning Sui liked talking with him this way — free and unhurried, without any constraint.

He knew a great deal about a great many things, with an extraordinarily broad wealth of knowledge that constantly left her astonished.

For instance, it was only after hearing it from Xie Yichen that she learned the centre of the Milky Way supposedly smelled like rum — because it was permeated by the gaseous nebulae of Sagittarius, whose primary chemical compound was ethyl formate. And also that starfish have their eyes at the ends of their feet, and that a single cloud can weigh hundreds of thousands of kilograms.

Ning Sui held her phone up, rolled herself up in her blanket, and tumbled across the bed until she had accidentally wrapped herself into something resembling a piece of sushi. Nestled in her cotton cocoon, she laughed in a soft, muffled way, then asked with complete seriousness: “Xie Yichen, did you secretly eat encyclopedias when you were little? How do you know everything?”

Xie Yichen laughed on the other end too.

After a moment, he drew out his last syllable: “I secretly ate Oreos.”

Ning Sui: “……”

She had almost forgotten about that.

Noticing the silence on her end, Xie Yichen raised an eyebrow and said in an unhurried tone: “You still haven’t told me — what does that phone contact label actually mean?”

Ning Sui went quiet for another moment, then began slowly: “Because……”

“Twist it, lick it, dunk it?”

Xie Yichen: “?”

……

As their conversation rambled on, Ning Sui asked: “How much did that pumpkin carriage cost, actually?”

Xie Yichen said: “It really wasn’t expensive.”

Ning Sui didn’t believe him.

She had gone back to that Jieyou Sundry Shop a couple of weeks earlier. Every item inside could be considered one-of-a-kind — a single glance told you they were casually priced in the thousands, leaning toward the higher end.

The shopkeeper had still been wearing a cloak, with a cluster of multicoloured feathers tied to the top of their head, though they maintained a perfectly professional ethic — no matter what, they refused to reveal the price of any previous transaction.

Her little carriage was so lovely. It had to be worth a considerable sum.

Ning Sui said: “Tell me.”

Back in Yunnan, Xie Yichen had already noticed this slightly irritating little habit of hers — she liked to calculate everything precisely with others, whether it was a thirty-yuan sesame roll or a three-hundred-yuan entry ticket. Ning Sui had a particular aversion to feeling indebted to people.

She had asked him before and he hadn’t told her, but she still hadn’t given up and had kept asking, several times in a row.

At this point, Xie Yichen lowered his voice, his breath soft and indistinct: “Do you really need to keep such a careful account with me?”

Ning Sui could tell, on some level, that he didn’t love how much she kept him at arm’s length in this way — but it wasn’t intentional on her part. Somewhere deep in her instincts, she felt that spending other people’s money was a kind of bad behaviour, a drain on her own sense of self-worth and on others’ goodwill toward her. And so it made her feel genuinely uncomfortable.

This was the burden of an avoidant personality — Ning Sui had only realized it after hearing that psychology lecture at Tsinghua. All the awkward, prickly edges of her character could be traced back to something: a deep-seated insecurity, a fear that if she imposed on people, they would grow to resent her.

Ning Sui said hesitantly: “No.”

A brief quiet settled on the other end. She pressed her lips together, and was just about to start explaining when she heard Xie Yichen’s voice come through in that lazy, warm baritone: “You really want to know that badly?”

Ning Sui on her end was nodding rapidly, almost frantically.

Xie Yichen made a show of mulling it over, then said with leisurely ease: “5,200 kisses.”

“……”

Seeing that she had gone silent, Xie Yichen added with complete shamelessness: “Come on, I’m ready and waiting.”

Ning Sui: “……”

She had actually only realized it that day — that a genuinely good relationship really does make you into a better person. He was undeniably secure in his attachment, emotionally steady, with a wonderful character, and no matter what moment you caught him in, his core always radiated a sense of quiet strength.

A young man like this — being with him truly made you feel like there was nothing to be afraid of.

As long as you held his hand, you could stride forward without looking back.

That night when they were hanging up, Xie Yichen said something to her.

“Listen carefully, Ning Sui.”

“Not everything needs to be weighed for its value, calculated for its costs and benefits, do you understand?”

“And you don’t need to settle accounts so precisely with everyone. Especially not with me.”

“I just want to treat you well,” he said, every word deliberate, his voice carrying that characteristically spirited and unrestrained quality. “And you don’t have to do anything in return — just accept it.”

—

Ning Sui’s Lunar New Year was a rich and flavourful one.

On New Year’s Eve, the whole family gathered to see out the old year — hanging spring couplets, decorating with lights and lanterns.

Fanfan had gone and listened to some fortune-teller again, buying a string of little gourd ornaments, all jingling and jangling together, to hang in the house. Ning Yue wanted to slack off and refused to budge, so Ning Deyan hoisted him up to scrape off last year’s painting of the wealth deity above the front door.

He was put down less than ten minutes later.

Ning Deyan headed to the bathroom, speechless, to clean the paper debris off his hair.

Fanfan had ordered a large pot of Buddha Jumps Over the Wall online — abalone, sea cucumber, fish maw, and all manner of nourishing ingredients. The family gathered around the round table, relaxed and chatting.

The New Year’s Eve dinner had been made together by Fanfan and a part-time housekeeper they’d hired for the occasion. The housekeeper had already left, and Fanfan bent her head close to one of the dishes, sniffing carefully: “Is it just me, or does this tofu have a slightly off smell?”

Xia Fanghui had an extremely sensitive nose — she could generally detect when any dish had gone off. Sometimes, however, she was a little too sensitive, and while everyone else was happily eating something perfectly fine, she would announce that it seemed to have gone bad, completely killing the mood.

Ning Yue glanced up without any trace of surprise and said in an old-soul kind of tone: “Mom, what people usually call that is ‘flavour.'”

Fanfan was a little put out and gave a small, haughty eye-roll: “Hmph.”

The meal stretched on for a long time. Ning Deyan put on the Spring Gala as background noise for their conversation.

As the family talked, somehow the topic drifted to keeping pets. Ning Sui had always been fond of small animals, especially fluffy ones like cats, though she privately felt she wasn’t really capable of looking after them properly.

After all, she had owned quite a few as a child — rabbits, turtles, goldfish, silkworms, hamsters — and without exception, every single one of them had departed this beautiful world in some deeply unusual manner: the goldfish was eaten by the turtle, the turtle inexplicably fell to its death, the silkworms completed their chrysalis and emerged as moths, only to be accidentally stepped on by Fanfan…

All manner of absurdities. Deeply bewildering.

Fanfan, who was superstitious, had heard from some fortune-teller that dog ownership was auspicious for stock investors because dogs attracted wealth — but she was also afraid of dogs, so she had never gone through with it.

Ning Yue had long been interested in the idea. Knowing his mother wasn’t particularly enthusiastic, he turned to lobby his father: “Dad, please! Can we get a dog?!”

Fanfan glanced over, something visibly on the tip of her tongue.

Ning Deyan patted the boy’s head with paternal warmth and said gently: “Well, we’ve already got you, haven’t we?”

Ning Yue: “?”

—

Around the seventh day of the new year, young Comrade Ning Yue returned to his painting class.

In the morning, Ning Sui helped Ning Yue work through some of his holiday homework, and around ten o’clock she walked him to class.

As they headed out, she realized she’d forgotten her phone. Considering the distance was quite short and Ning Yue was about to be late, she decided not to go back for it.

The siblings chatted as they walked. Ning Sui asked: “What are they teaching you these days?”

Ning Yue was visibly unimpressed, his head drooping: “Sketching. Drawing rectangular prisms and cones every day, practising line work. So boring.”

Ning Sui laughed: “Even Leonardo da Vinci went through exactly this.”

Ning Yue looked like he had lost the will to live: “I don’t want to be Da Vinci. I don’t want to be Tchaikovsky either. I just want to be the world’s most magnificently useless couch potato.”

“……”

Ning Sui let out a gentle sigh and patted his shoulder in commiseration: “Just endure it.”

Ning Yue thought about it — yeah, that was probably right. If he didn’t learn these standard fundamentals, his mother would likely decide he had nothing better to do and sign him up for something else entirely, like Ancient Egyptian for all he knew.

Today, Xie Yichen was heading down to Hong Kong. Xie Zhenlin and Qiu Ruoyun had already gone ahead of him a few days ago — the company had some business to attend to, and they needed to meet with some foreign investment banks. Xie Zhenlin had asked Xie Yichen to come along too. Ning Sui had nothing in particular going on, so she said she would come to the border crossing in the afternoon to see him off.

Both Xia Fanghui and Ning Deyan were at home. Before leaving, Ning Sui told Xia Fanghui that Hu Ke’er wanted to go see an exhibition and needed someone to go with her — it might take a little over an hour.

Xie Yichen hadn’t brought much with him — just a simple backpack. In public, Ning Sui still didn’t dare to do anything affectionate with him, afraid of being spotted by familiar faces or elders from Huai’an. So she kept a distance that was neither too close nor too far, all the way to the departure gate.

Before he left, she hugged him anyway. Xie Yichen patted her head and said: “I’ll probably be back in a couple of days.”

Ning Sui tilted her head up, her bright peach-blossom eyes catching the light: “Okay.”

“Have you booked your ticket to Beijing yet?”

Ning Sui shook her head: “No, I’m waiting so we can go together.”

Xie Yichen smiled: “Alright. We’ll sort that out when I’m back.”

Ning Sui watched as he made his way in, passed through security, and then turned back to wave at her.

Ning Sui also smiled and waved, rising on her tiptoes.

It wasn’t any grand sort of parting, but she was clearly aware that she didn’t want to let him go.

She was becoming more and more dependent on him, it seemed.

Ning Sui stood there a moment longer, raised her arm to check the time, and decided it was about time to head back.

She thought she’d take the subway, so she started walking toward the nearby station. Her thoughts were a little unfocused, and she wasn’t watching the road carefully.

So when she saw Xia Fanghui, her first instinct was to simply stand frozen where she was.

A long moment passed before she found her voice again, her throat going slightly tight: “…Mom?”

Xia Fanghui’s face wore no smile. She was standing some distance away, looking at her, and that expression instantly brought to mind the time in middle school when her mother had come to the academic affairs office to collect her — she had worn exactly the same look.

Back then, Ning Sui had already started having some social contact difficulties.

Her resistance to physical contact with girls was relatively mild, but with boys it was far more pronounced. The moment any boy tried to approach her, she would feel a visceral, physiological revulsion.

There had been a boy in the class who likely had a crush on her. Wanting to tease her, he had tugged her braid. But Ning Sui’s instinctive resistance was such that, without thinking, she reflexively shoved him away with considerable force.

The boy hadn’t anticipated her reaction at all, and his eye caught the corner of a nearby cabinet with no warning — blood appeared immediately.

Although it turned out later that the injury wasn’t serious, the sight of him clutching his eye and wailing had terrified her at the time, convinced she had genuinely crippled him.

Ning Sui remembered how frightened she had been.

She stood in the nurse’s room. The boy’s parents arrived — his mother reprimanded her sharply, then took him away to go to the hospital. The father stayed behind to wait for Xia Fanghui. The head teacher then brought Ning Sui to the office and told her to wait.

Throughout all of this, not one person said a single word to her. Only the teacher, herself, and a strange man. Ning Sui’s fingers clutched the hem of her clothes, trembling slightly, at a complete loss for what to do.

And then Xia Fanghui came hurrying in, dressed in her work suit.

She listened to the head teacher explain what had happened, reviewed the security footage, and confirmed that the boy had indeed tugged on Ning Sui’s braid first. Xia Fanghui apologized to the boy’s father and discussed the matter of compensation.

Then, wearing that same expression, she took Ning Sui’s hand without a single word and walked out.

“Mom…” Ning Sui had felt, in that moment, that both her hand and her mother’s were cold. For the first time, she found herself asking a question she had never dared ask before, her voice halting: “Am I… Is there something wrong with my… psychology?”

Xia Fanghui had immediately cut her off with a sharp rebuke: “Don’t say such things. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

……

Now, Xia Fanghui stood several metres away, sunlight and the dappled shadow of trees falling across her in patches. Ning Sui felt something heavy settle into her chest. With a sense of unease, she made herself move forward: “…Mom.”

Xia Fanghui looked at her for a long moment, then asked: “How long?”

Ning Sui understood that her mother had probably just seen Xie Yichen, and lowered her head: “Just over a month.”

Xia Fanghui’s voice was as cool as ever: “Why did you lie?”

Ning Sui curled her fingertips inward, well aware that her mother was genuinely angry — lying was something they had reached a firm understanding about long ago, an absolute forbidden line.

Her heartbeat grew more and more urgent. Pressing down her breathing so as not to make any rash move, she bit her lip and said:

“I’m sorry, Mom.”

Xia Fanghui didn’t take the opening: “If I hadn’t seen you here today, when exactly did you plan on telling me?”

Ning Sui opened her mouth: “I…”

“Didn’t I say that even if you want to date, you shouldn’t rush into it, and that if you found a suitable person, you should tell me so I could take a look?” Xia Fanghui looked at her. “How long has it been since you last lied? Ning Sui, you’ve really disappointed me.”

“I’m sorry.” Ning Sui could only keep repeating those words.

“When you get home, you’re going to tell your father about this.” Xia Fanghui ignored her response.

She turned and started walking on her own. Ning Sui’s chest went tight. She hurried after her: “…But I’m just dating someone.”

Was that some kind of heinous crime?

She couldn’t understand it.

Perhaps lying was wrong, but all she wanted was to have a space of her own — a private world, a temporary refuge from scrutiny and interference.

“Just dating someone?” Xia Fanghui’s voice rose sharply. “The entire winter holiday, running out every day to meet him, sharing a room — look at what you’ve become.”

Ning Sui said: “I didn’t share a room with him. That was a self-study room —”

She had barely started to explain when she suddenly realized something and went stiff: “You looked through my phone?”

“……”

Then the full implication sank in — perhaps this wasn’t a coincidence at all. Xia Fanghui might have seen their arranged time and meeting place in the messages, and followed her here deliberately. “How could you go through my private messages without my permission?!”

Even though she had instantly pieced together what her mother must have seen — their chat messages arranging a meeting — and misunderstood the nature of it, Ning Sui still felt deeply, genuinely hurt.

She stared at Xia Fanghui with that expression, and Xia Fanghui’s chest heaved, her own emotions flaring in response: “Yes, I looked. And what of it? You came from my body. I carried you, I raised you. What could you possibly have that I’m not allowed to see?!”

Near the subway entrance, a few pedestrians drifted past, and the sound of their argument drew glances.

Ning Sui’s face burned — with anger, humiliation, and hurt — but she still forced down the emotions churning inside her and said: “Can we please go home first, not here…”

Xia Fanghui didn’t move. She said, unyielding: “You’re going to finish this conversation with me right here.”

Ning Sui clenched her fists. Her feet felt as though they had been nailed to the concrete, her breathing faintly unsteady.

In the past, Xia Fanghui had always come to pick her up after school. If she came out even slightly late, she would be scolded for it, and if her mother was in a bad mood, she might even erupt at her right in front of the school gates, completely heedless of Ning Sui’s dignity or the stares of passersby. It had even happened in front of classmates from her year group.

It felt as though she had been thrown back to one of those moments.

The only difference was that there weren’t many people around right now — yet Ning Sui still felt the urge to curl herself into the smallest possible shape and disappear.

But Xia Fanghui was still speaking, her voice low and relentless: “Fine. Even if I was wrong about that, do you truly know what kind of person he is? Getting involved so deeply this quickly — don’t you think that’s rather reckless?”

Ning Sui jerked her head up: “I don’t think it’s reckless. I’ve known him for a long time. I knew him back in high school.”

“High school?” Xia Fanghui had immediately caught hold of the key word, her tone sharpening. “So all that time in high school when you were always buried in your phone, you were talking to him? And your poor maths results in your second year — was that because of him too?”

Ning Sui couldn’t understand how everything had spun so out of control.

“No!”

“My grades were already declining before I even knew him. If it weren’t for the way he encouraged me, I wouldn’t have done as well as I did on the college entrance exams. He’s extremely academic himself — he was the provincial top scholar.”

Ning Sui pressed her fingertip hard into her palm until it stung, genuinely distressed, but she kept her voice controlled as best she could. “And if we’re going to talk about family backgrounds, it’s us who aren’t in a position to match his. I don’t understand what grudge you have against him, or why you’re directing this level of anger at me.”

The air went still.

Xia Fanghui fell silent.

The two of them faced each other in a standoff, tensions drawn razor-tight. After a long moment, Xia Fanghui spoke again — the force behind her words diminished somewhat: “Is that so?”

Ning Sui’s lips were pressed into a hard, rigid line. She said nothing.

Xia Fanghui seemed to draw a long, slow breath. Her tone softened considerably: “Don’t be angry, Ning Sui.”

She hesitated, but eventually said what she had been holding back: “Mom is only worried because his family situation seems… honestly, a bit of a mess. His father has someone on the outside. His mother — who knows what her situation is. A child raised in that kind of environment — I can’t feel at ease.”

“……”

So Xia Fanghui had seen those messages about Zhang Yue.

Because of that misunderstanding, she had reacted with such fury.

Ning Sui could understand her mother’s intentions, but she felt a sharp stab of guilt — because of her, the wound Xie Yichen found most difficult to speak of had been laid bare under the open sky, with nowhere to hide.

Without even a thread of cover.

“But it’s not like he wanted any of that. He also deserves a normal family. His parents’ choices have caused him harm too — why should he be the one held responsible for their actions?”

Ning Sui felt as though the shell she had slowly, carefully let open at Xie Yichen’s patient coaxing was beginning to close again. She gripped her fingers tightly together, her eyes slowly reddening. “Besides, he’s nothing like his parents. He has always been good to me!”

“……”

Xia Fanghui said nothing.

Ning Sui rubbed at her eyes, filled with self-reproach: “And besides, it was a secret — he told me because he trusted me…”

Xia Fanghui pressed her lips together: “Mom won’t tell anyone.”

Ning Sui shook her head: “Mom, you always do this. You apply your own standards to judge everyone and everything around me. You pass judgement on people without asking a single question. Have you ever — even for one moment — considered how that makes me feel?”

Xia Fanghui went visibly still.

“Do you know,” — Ning Sui’s heart was slamming wildly in her chest — “I really, truly,” she said with a quiet, strained sound, “do not like you interfering in my life.”

“I didn’t like those interest classes you signed me up for. I didn’t like you arranging what I should learn and when. I don’t like you prying into my privacy.”

“I’m eighteen years old. I’m an adult. I’m a living person, with my own interests, my own life, my own friends. Why do you have to control everything?”

“I’m not your possession. I’m not a doll for you to arrange. Can’t you give me even the most basic level of respect?”

She raised her eyes and finally said everything she had wanted to say for all these years, biting down on every single word: “Mom, your need to control me has reached the point where I feel like I can barely breathe. Do you know that?”

Xia Fanghui stared at her, words rising up in her throat and lodging there.

The winter sunlight was harsh and bright. It couldn’t melt the fractures and fault lines that had solidified in the air between them. The two of them stood facing each other in the afternoon light, out in the cold, and neither one spoke again.

—

When they got home, Ning Sui shut herself in her room and refused to open the door for anyone.

She curled up in her blankets in the corner of the bed, doing her best to calm herself down. Her eyes grew damp, and she raised her hand to wipe them dry.

Back in middle school, Ning Sui had gone behind Xia Fanghui’s back to see the school counsellor. After talking with her, the counsellor had complimented her, saying she was someone with a remarkably strong capacity for empathy but also excellent self-regulation — though Ning Sui suspected it might just have been a kind thing to say, she had carried those words with her ever since.

So she stopped crying fairly quickly, though her entire body felt leaden and heavy and difficult, and she wrapped her arms around her knees and stared at nothing.

At some point there was what seemed to be a soft knock on the door, but with no response coming from inside, the person outside paused in silence for a moment, then turned and left.

“……”

Later, Ning Sui fell asleep, and when she woke it was well past dinnertime — nearly eight o’clock.

Outside it was perfectly quiet, and no one came to knock again.

When Ning Sui finally pushed open her bedroom door and stepped out, the apartment was empty — not a single person anywhere.

The table had a warm meal waiting on it, covered with small umbrella-shaped dish covers: steamed spareribs with yellow soybeans and kelp, a plate of young cabbage, and a bowl of noodle soup.

And then Ning Sui suddenly remembered — Xia Fanghui had mentioned she had a business trip out of town this evening. Her father was probably still accompanying Ning Yue at his piano class.

Ning Sui had no particular appetite, but she ate a little, then went back to her room.

After a while, she noticed that she had started drifting into a blank state again. Ning Sui shook herself back to alertness, sat up, and pulled open the drawer, and there was the little carriage she had placed so carefully in the middle of it.

She stared at it for a moment, then took out her phone, hesitating as she sent Xie Yichen a message: 【Can I call?】

Not even two minutes later, his name lit up on her screen as an incoming call.

Ning Sui’s heart gave a small jump. She gently cleared her throat, and only once she was certain her voice sounded normal did she answer: “…Hello?”

She still sounded a little hoarse. Xie Yichen’s voice on the other end, by contrast, came through clear and close, as if he were right there beside her.

“Ning Coconut, you awake?”

“Hmm?” She still hadn’t quite found her footing.

Then his low voice came through: “Come downstairs when you’re up.”