It was the tail end of winter. The night air moved in soft, cool currents.

When Ning Sui had changed and come downstairs, she spotted Xie Yichen immediately.

He was still wearing the grey hoodie she had seen him off in that morning, loose and slightly baggy on his frame. He had a bag slung over one shoulder. The lines of his profile were sharp and clear — tall, upright, and effortlessly composed, leaning idly against a lamppost.

Ning Sui had only grabbed her phone before rushing down. As she came through the front door, Xie Yichen happened to turn his head. Their eyes met, and he walked toward her in long, easy strides.

Ning Sui quickened her pace. The two of them met beneath the banyan tree. She pinched the hem of her jacket and asked softly: “Why did you come back?”

She had just woken up, and her voice still carried a slightly muffled quality.

Xie Yichen looked down at her softly lowered lashes and said: “Nothing going on tonight there. Boring to stay.”

“Oh.” Ning Sui stared at his chest and said quietly: “But didn’t you plan to be there for two days?”

Xie Yichen reached out and carefully tugged together the open lapels of her jacket, then said after a moment, drawing out his words in a languid tone: “Well, there’s a certain little coconut who said she missed me.”

“……”

For some reason, hearing him say that, the composure Ning Sui had worked so hard to recover began to unravel, and she tightened her grip around her fingertips.

There was a faint mist in the air, and instinctively she started to press her cheek downward, trying to bury it in her scarf — but he suddenly cupped her chin and tilted her face back up.

Ning Sui hadn’t been crying. Even so, both her eyes held a very faint, shallow glimmer in the lamplight, like a gentle ripple of light across water.

“What happened?” Xie Yichen’s throat moved. He dropped his voice.

Ning Sui’s lashes trembled. Then suddenly she reached out and grabbed the hem of his jacket and said plaintively: “Hug me.”

Xie Yichen’s dark gaze held steady. He asked nothing, and simply opened his arms and drew her into them.

His chest was solid and broad, and the moment she was pressed against it, a profound and overwhelming sense of safety settled over Ning Sui.

The side of her face was close against Xie Yichen’s chest, and she could hear the steady, deliberate beat of his heart.

Ning Sui’s throat felt thick. She called out softly: “Xie Yichen.”

His voice was low, with the faintest roughness to it: “Mm?”

“My mom found out about us.”

“……I was taking my brother out for his class, and I didn’t think she’d go through my phone and read our messages. I got into a big argument with her outside this afternoon.”

Xie Yichen’s lashes shifted. He tightened both arms around her, his right palm curling protectively over the back of her head.

Ning Sui pressed the side of her face into the warmth of his embrace, gently nuzzling him — and then the image of the afternoon at the subway station surfaced again, of the argument with Xia Fanghui that had stripped away every last layer of pretense.

Xia Fanghui had always been this way: she wanted to know everything, and she had never had any regard for her privacy. It made you feel as if you couldn’t breathe.

Ning Sui’s voice caught faintly. There was a heaviness in her chest. She held on tighter around his waist and said again: “I’m sorry. I let her see all those messages between us.”

“She said she won’t tell anyone, but I still…”

She felt terrible about it.

And she was afraid that he might, because of this, feel unhappy.

Ning Sui didn’t know what his reaction would be — whether he might regret having told her those things, or whether he would feel that she had brought him trouble.

She pressed herself against him, rigid and still like a wooden post, not daring to raise her head — until warm breath fell above her, and Xie Yichen’s chest rose and fell in a slow, gentle rhythm. His voice, low and quiet and intimate, reached her ear: “You’ve been upset about this all evening?”

Ning Sui stilled.

She opened her eyes wide. A mist gathered quickly, and she felt the tenderness in his voice, but didn’t know how to answer.

Xie Yichen pinched the soft flesh of her cheek and asked again: “Is it because you feel like you didn’t protect me?”

Protect.

That word, coming from his mouth, felt somehow unexpectedly tender.

Ning Sui felt her heart give a small, stumbling beat, and the old wave of hurt rose up again.

She was buried against his chest. She answered in a muffled, subdued voice: “Mm.”

When they had been pen friends back in their second year of high school, Ning Sui had told him things like this, and Xie Yichen had a rough understanding of Xia Fanghui’s temperament — he could probably guess what kind of reaction she’d had.

“It’s fine. It’s not a big deal.” Xie Yichen smoothed her hair, soft and straight beneath his hand, then pressed her closer against him. “This isn’t your fault. Don’t blame yourself.”

They held on for a long time.

There was warmth all around her, and the world was slightly blurring at the edges. Ning Sui blinked hard, forcing the feeling back.

Because he had sensed something was wrong, he had returned from Hong Kong without a second thought.

He had heard something like this and felt no displeasure — had instead been steady and calm, and turned it around to comfort her.

How could he be this good.

Ning Sui suddenly felt the sharpness that had been lodged in her chest gently smoothed away, and even the suffocating tightness that had seized her all day — that acute, out-of-control sensation — began to recede, like a tide pulling back.

Just then, Xie Yichen’s fingers found her cheek, grazing it lightly.

He didn’t bring up Xia Fanghui’s name again, only asked: “You didn’t eat dinner properly either, did you?”

Ning Sui’s lashes drooped. She nodded: “Mm.”

“Hungry?” Xie Yichen looked down, then gave a soft laugh. “Want me to take you to get something good to eat?”

……

Hand in hand, the two of them wandered through the nighttime streets.

This area was a quiet residential neighbourhood near the school district. Pedestrians were sparse, and the streetlamps stretched the still, silent shadows of winter into long, gentle pools of light.

It was getting late, and many restaurants had already closed. Ning Sui wanted fish tofu, so Xie Yichen brought her to the nearby 7-Eleven. He bought not just fish tofu but beef balls and oden as well, along with a bottle of warm milk.

She had eaten too little for dinner, and she was genuinely hungry. Xie Yichen brought everything to her, and she sat on the small stool inside the convenience store, eating in silence.

Slowly, carefully.

Xie Yichen noticed that Ning Sui seemed to have a particular fondness for mushrooms, and with evident enjoyment, she arranged several mushroom slices on her bamboo skewer into the shape of a complete mushroom cloud. But when she lifted it to her lips, she hesitated, and then turned and extended it toward him.

Xie Yichen raised an eyebrow: “What’s this?”

Ning Sui wore the noble expression of someone making a great personal sacrifice: “You like soft brown things, don’t you?”

“……”

Once they were full and content, the two of them set out again, wandering aimlessly along the edge of the commercial street.

Ning Deyan had taken Ning Yue home and sent her a private message asking where she was. It was possible that Ning Yue’s disastrously poor piano playing had claimed the entirety of his father’s attention — when Ning Sui sent a quick message on WeChat saying she was out getting a late-night snack, he didn’t press further.

As for Xia Fanghui.

Ning Sui supposed she must currently be locked in a cold war with her.

Since the afternoon, the two of them had not exchanged a single word, had not sent each other a single message. Xia Fanghui had seemed to vanish from the world entirely — her chat window silent and empty, and in a departure from her usual habits, she hadn’t posted a single thing in the group chat.

Ning Sui knew that if she was out walking, Xia Fanghui could see her step count ticking upward on WeChat. But right now, she was in a thoroughly rebellious mood — a kind of reckless, throw-caution-to-the-wind defiance — so she walked faster and faster, as if she were competing for the gold medal in an Olympic speed-walking event, every step full of purpose.

— This was actually the first time she had ever gone out without any restraints at all, and there was a soaring kind of freedom in it.

She could do anything she liked, and she didn’t want to go home.

They passed a small private cinema — the facade was clean and relatively new, and it was open until two in the morning, with plenty of time left.

Ning Sui had never been to a place like this before, and she peered curiously through the entrance. Seeing her expression, Xie Yichen smiled and asked: “Want to watch a film together?”

The wall clock showed just past ten.

If they watched a film, they probably wouldn’t be done until after midnight — well past the usual curfew.

Ning Sui’s eyes lit up, and she made up her mind on the spot: “Yes.”

The owner naturally led them to a couple’s screening room, and asked what they’d like to watch.

The available titles were all classics. Ning Sui looked through them and picked something from 1997 at random — a foreign film, Good Will Hunting.

She had come across reviews of it before. Apparently the lead character was a rebellious young man with an extraordinary gift for mathematics.

— A perfect match for her current state of mind.

The room was small and the light dim, the screen filling every inch of the view ahead. The chairs were brown sofas, designed for two, with no armrest in the middle, and when Ning Sui sat down, she could feel her heartbeat was a little tight.

Xie Yichen, by comparison, was completely at ease.

On the low glass coffee table in front of them, the owner had placed some snacks and fruit, along with beers — all arranged on the surface. He leaned back lazily against the sofa cushion, wiped his hands with an alcohol wipe, then casually picked up a tangerine to peel.

Ning Sui watched him out of the corner of her eye.

The desire for food was practically written across her face. Before she could say a word, Xie Yichen split a few small segments of tangerine and fed them to her.

……Ah.

She was given a whole mouthful in one go.

Ning Sui’s cheeks puffed out, soaked in sweetness.

She turned her head, and found herself looking directly into his eyes.

Xie Yichen raised an eyebrow: “Good?”

Ning Sui chewed a few times, then nodded.

Ning Sui had always loved very sweet fruit. Xie Yichen smiled, and after she swallowed, fed her a couple more small segments.

Like feeding a little animal. Ning Sui looked at the screen; Xie Yichen moved unhurriedly, and fed her the entire tangerine piece by piece, not eating a single segment himself.

The two of them settled in and began watching the film in earnest.

The lead character, Will, was a janitor at MIT — but also a mathematical genius who could effortlessly solve the high-difficulty problems a professor had written on the blackboard for students to attempt.

But Ning Sui hadn’t anticipated that Will, the male lead, was also avoidant in personality.

Because of this avoidance, he was always entering relationships quickly and withdrawing from them just as quickly, arrogant in an extreme way, resistant to structure, unwilling to get close to the maths professor who wanted to help him, and rejecting the counselling sessions the professor arranged for him.

Ning Sui recalled what Professor Jiang had said in the psychology lecture: “This type of personality is often formed because the person did not receive love in the form they needed during childhood.” Will was exactly this — he had experienced abuse in his early years.

Ning Sui’s lips parted slightly. She was about to turn and say something to Xie Yichen when her phone suddenly rang.

She stiffened instinctively, sat up straight, and pulled it out to silence it.

It was only when she looked at the screen that she saw it was a spam call.

She didn’t answer. She dismissed the call in silence, and then, as if something inside her had gone slack, sank back rigidly against the sofa cushion.

Ning Sui realized that she had developed some kind of intensely aversive reaction to the sound of sudden, urgent ringing.

Just then, for that brief instant, she had thought it was Xia Fanghui — and her heart had nearly plummeted all over again.

“……”

Xie Yichen had already turned down the film’s volume, ready to give her space to take the call. Now he narrowed his gaze slightly and looked over at her.

— She had been fairly relaxed just a moment ago, and now she was clouded again.

She seemed to be in a slight daze, her eyes downcast, staring ahead.

Xie Yichen watched her for a moment, then took her hand where it was resting carefully on her knee and held it in his palm, giving it a gentle squeeze: “What is it?”

“……”

His gaze swept forward, and the corner of his mouth tugged upward. He asked lightly: “Is the film not good? You seem distracted.”

Ning Sui pressed her lips together and looked at him.

Xie Yichen lowered his gaze, softened his voice: “Tell me?”

Ning Sui’s breath stilled quietly, and after a long moment, she began: “Actually, for a period in our second year of high school, I was genuinely terrified of hearing my phone ring like that.”

“……”

“If my mom couldn’t reach me, she would call over and over again, frantically.”

During the training camp in Nanjing, there had been one evening when she was so absorbed in working through problems that she missed a call. By the time she looked at her phone again, there had been over sixty missed calls.

Ning Sui had gone out onto the balcony in the freezing wind, struggling to dial back with fingers stiff from the cold, and had been met immediately with Xia Fanghui’s furious reprimand.

“I know she was worried about my safety. But her need for control — it had gotten to the point where I couldn’t handle it anymore.”

Ning Sui still remembered: the first time Xia Fanghui had hit her, Ning Sui had been in primary school. She had gone to a classmate’s home after school without telling her mother.

It had been a special circumstance — some kind of holiday, and school had let out early, a full hour before the usual dismissal time. Although Xia Fanghui always came to pick her up at the school gate, their home was actually not far away, just ten minutes on foot.

So that day, when a friend from the same apartment complex invited her to come home and play, Ning Sui eagerly agreed.

She knew her mother would never have allowed her to go to a classmate’s house on her own — but she really wanted to go, and all her other friends moved around this way. There was still an hour left. She figured she could sneak away and play for forty minutes, then come back to wait at the gate.

Her classmate brought her home, and the two of them turned on the computer to play the newest online game. They got so absorbed they lost track of time entirely, and Xia Fanghui arrived at the school gate to find her missing. She was frantic.

She called the homeroom teacher, the academic affairs office, and Ning Sui’s children’s phone — dozens of times. She finally managed to get through, and the two of them found each other at the entrance to the residential complex. Xia Fanghui, shaking with rage, had slapped her across the face right there in public.

Ning Sui lowered her head: “Growing up, everything was decided for me. What to wear, what classes to take, even who to spend time with.”

Xia Fanghui would meticulously arrange every aspect of Ning Sui’s life — from big things like school and tutoring, down to the style of her shoes and socks. In middle school, all of Ning Sui’s clothes were bought by her mother. How to dress when going out was also managed. Xia Fanghui rarely allowed her to go out on her own in middle school. Even when a close friend invited Ning Sui to browse the central bookshop in Huai’an — within the city itself — Xia Fanghui still wouldn’t feel at ease.

So from middle school through high school, Ning Sui had barely ever agreed to go out with classmates. When others organized trips to concerts in nearby cities, she could only stay at home.

What should have been the most uninhibited, carefree years of her life, Ning Sui had spent feeling subtly out of step with everyone around her. Eventually, many gatherings just stopped including her.

“I really hated learning piano, too.” Ning Sui drew a quiet breath through her nose, her voice gradually steadying. “She heard that the exam certification might help with bonus points, so I started lessons when I was four.”

“But the first teacher was too lax and unprofessional. After more than a year, I still couldn’t read a score properly. My mother wasn’t satisfied and switched me to a much stricter teacher. What she didn’t know was that the second teacher had a violent streak. Every time my mother wasn’t in the room during the lesson, she would hit the backs of my hands hard with a wooden ruler.”

“I told my mom. She was upset about it and even warned the teacher. But because the results were noticeably better than with the first teacher, she still had me keep trying.”

For two more years Ning Sui endured it, until she had become so terrified that she would start sobbing before she even reached the teacher’s building, paralyzed and resistant. Only then had Xia Fanghui finally let it go.

There were many, many more examples like these. In childhood, Ning Sui had been enrolled in every kind of interest class imaginable — ballet, painting, singing, mental arithmetic, badminton, and so on. Her life was like a chessboard, every piece assigned neatly to its place in black and white.

But there was no space at all that was hers — she could only force herself to like the things she had been given.

“She cared very much about my grades. Whenever I didn’t do well, she would criticize me for being careless or not working hard enough.” Ning Sui’s throat felt a little raw. “When I didn’t do as well as she expected in the middle school entrance exam, she compared me to my closest friend for a long time.”

That friend had ranked around fiftieth in the year group normally, but had come out of nowhere in the exam to place first in the entire school. Ning Sui had maintained excellent grades all along but, because her state of mind had been unstable, came in only around thirtieth — and had nearly not made it into the top tier of the senior high school.

Xia Fanghui was a person entirely oriented toward results, and because of the heavy emphasis she placed on outcomes, Ning Sui had over time become acutely prone to anxiety.

“There were so many times I just felt so much resentment — resenting her for controlling everything.” Ning Sui said. “Resenting her sharp temper. The moment I did anything wrong, she would come at me.”

“Sometimes I just felt, what is wrong with me? Why can I never seem to satisfy her?”

Ning Sui’s voice caught for just a moment, barely audible. She turned her face away, pausing for a brief second, before saying: “And I resented myself too. This version of myself, full of flaws.”

Xie Yichen had been listening quietly throughout. Now he drew her into his arms, his voice very low: “Ning Coconut, who ever said you were all flaws?”

“……Nobody said it. I just feel that way.”

Ning Sui had been aware for a long time that her personality leaned toward extreme avoidance.

There were moments when she would behave in ways she herself couldn’t accept — when she would see that her true self was built on a very small, fragile core of strength. Fractured in many places, tender in many others.

She was strongly averse to people getting close to her, and lived carefully within the boundaries of her own world. She was afraid of intimacy, afraid that relationships would spiral beyond her control. Afraid that what she had been given would be taken away again. Even as she gradually learned the techniques of performing confidence, she was never truly strong enough.

Ning Sui had thought before about seeking help.

In the first semester of her third year of secondary school, she’d realized that her difficulty with physical contact had reached a fairly serious level. So she told Xia Fanghui she wanted to see a psychologist.

And what had been Xia Fanghui’s response?

— She said Ning Sui was making a fuss over nothing.

In truth, it wasn’t so different from what Ning Deyan had said.

You’re causing problems for yourself. You’re perfectly fine — you just keep convincing yourself otherwise. Stop wallowing. We’re under pressure too and you don’t hear us complaining. Young people these days fall apart over the slightest thing. Why are you so fragile?

Back then she still hadn’t understood. She truly believed she had a poor tolerance for hardship — and felt, on one hand, that she was useless and a burden to her parents, and on the other, found no outlet for what she felt, no way to let it go.

It was like walking down a long, dark corridor with no light visible at the end, and no one coming to take her hand.

They only wanted to impose their own will on her. But no one would ever patiently listen to what she had to say.

And so Ning Sui had kept walking alone through those long nights, solitary and unhurried.

Until that snowfall in Nanjing, when she had dimly glimpsed a brightness in the distance.

— Truthfully, from the very first moment she laid eyes on him, Ning Sui had thought Xie Yichen was extraordinary.

Bright, warm, and full of a light that seemed to radiate from within.

There was nothing about him that wasn’t easy to love.

During those two weeks when they hadn’t been in contact, Xie Yichen’s life without her had undeniably still been full and vivid. Attending events, being tagged by classmates in social media posts. Even getting close to him was something others treated as something to boast about.

But if she turned the question back on herself and asked honestly — she couldn’t quite convince herself that there was anything truly special about her, anything worth someone going out of their way for.

There was no question that Ning Sui knew herself to be deeply capable.

But this capability was a cultivated, manufactured quality — something forced into shape under pressure. It was artificial, and it didn’t feel like anything distinct or irreplaceable. Exchange her for anyone else, and they could be molded into the same thing.

Besides, Tsinghua and Peking University were never short of exceptional girls.

Ning Sui had always felt that the real her — stripped of the polished surface — was full of faults. Remove the filter, and she was nothing like what others saw from the outside.

She was terrified of disappointing people. Terrified that those who had once liked her would take that liking back. So the unease she felt was especially acute.

Once she had thought she had learned how to make peace with herself. But so often, she was not even honest with herself — she would just smother the problem, cover it over, and pretend to have no cares, anything to keep her days from being burdened further.

Every person has two sides to their character, and Fanfan’s distrust of her, and the need for control, had still managed to leave a quiet undercurrent of inadequacy in Ning Sui.

The light from the screen changed soundlessly before her. Ning Sui still had her face turned away, her gaze lowered, but the glow still found its way in through every gap around her.

Slowly, a thin film of moisture gathered before her eyes. She said very quietly: “Actually, I lied to you before.”

“……”

“When we were in our third year of high school — it wasn’t because I lost my account login credentials for the maths help website that I stopped reaching out.”

Ning Sui’s nose started to ache with the distinct sharpness of unshed tears. “It was because I realized I was becoming too emotionally dependent on you.”

“So I was scared that one day, when a connection like this couldn’t be sustained, you would suddenly disappear.”

Better for her to be the one to cut it off first.

At the time, to stop herself from constantly thinking about him, she had deliberately changed the password to one she rarely used and tried to make herself forget.

After that, she never logged in again.

“My personality is just a bit awkward, and I’m on the sensitive side. I’ve tried to change it, but it’s so hard.” Ning Sui steadied herself against the feeling, and after a moment, her voice came out with a faint, pressed-down thickness: “I just worry — do you ever feel like being with me is too troublesome? That it’s exhausting?”

“……”

Opening herself up to someone had always been one of the hardest things for her to do.

Even the gentlest touch could make her feel a flicker of fear.

Ning Sui drew her shoulders in slightly, her lashes trembling.

At that moment, she felt Xie Yichen hold her a little tighter, then he reached up and took hold of her fingers, lifting them to rest on his shoulder.

“Look at me.” His voice was gentle.

Xie Yichen’s voice was clear and measured. It was as though Ning Sui’s heart had been submerged, in an instant, into warm spring water. Her body gave a small tremor, and she carefully raised her head.

“I don’t think you’re awkward. And I don’t think you’re overly sensitive.” He lowered his gaze to hers, reached out and touched her warm cheek, looking at her steadily. “On the contrary, I think you’re thoughtful and perceptive.”

“And when have you ever caused me trouble?”

“The pen friend thing, and the sports meet, and the artificial intelligence assignment, and Hong Kong, and keeping our relationship a secret, and you — you even got into a fight on my behalf and got hurt…” Ning Sui listed the points, one by one. He had always been the one accommodating her.

Xie Yichen’s gaze was very deep and still. He looked at her and raised his hand, letting the pads of his fingers trace gently across her cheek: “And what does any of that amount to?”

Ning Sui’s eyes were faintly pink at the corners. She watched as his dark, striking brows and eyes drew close: “None of those things are trouble, to me. I like that you confide in me. I like that you depend on me, and I like that you care about wherever I’ve been hurt. And even if something does come up — I’m genuinely glad to be able to help you with it.”

The tears that had been circling in her eyes, gathering weight, finally tipped and fell — a single drop, then silence.

The tip of Ning Sui’s tongue caught the faint salt-and-sour taste of it, and even her lashes were damp. Xie Yichen’s warm breath was close, and with patient care, he reached up and wiped her tears away, then said sincerely: “I have never felt tired. And I have never felt burdened.”

“……”

He patted the top of her head and gave a quiet laugh: “Ning Coconut, let me tell you a secret. Do you want to hear it?”

“Hm?”

Dark eyes like polished jet, bright with a young man’s spirit and warmth. Ning Sui stared at him blankly.

Xie Yichen pulled her close and leaned in, pressing a kiss to the wet corner of her eye.

“All those so-called imperfections you see in yourself — to me, they are the most endearing and lovable parts of you.”