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

It was the first time anyone had ever said something like this to her. Ning Sui’s lashes trembled where he had kissed them. She forgot to breathe, closed her eyes, and buried her face in the curve between Xie Yichen’s neck and shoulder.

The sound of her own heartbeat filled her ears.

Thud. Thud. Thud. It knocked against the inside of her chest, like a butterfly taking flight from inside a flower.

Ning Sui had always believed that only perfection was worthy of being loved — that only if you did well enough would others appreciate and like you. Perhaps that wasn’t true.

All those moments of things going wrong, all those trembling, unguarded vulnerabilities — were those endearing to him as well?

Ning Sui reached up and wrapped her arms around Xie Yichen’s neck, her breath warm and close against him, her heart the same — she didn’t know how to express what she was feeling in that moment, so she simply pressed her head up against him, nuzzling under his jaw.

She rustled and shifted quietly for a moment: “Really?”

She heard his voice, clear and unhurried, from above her: “Mm. Really.”

Ning Sui lay quietly against him, listening to the sound inside his chest. Her heart felt like warm springs, and like the full, sweet tangerine that had been peeled open for her just a moment ago — struck through, all at once, with a soft and trembling warmth. “I’m sorry.”

Xie Yichen paused, his breath shifting slightly: “What are you apologising for now?”

Ning Sui pressed her face down: “In our third year of high school — I shouldn’t have cut off contact without a word.”

She had only been thinking of relieving her own anxiety at the time, and had never considered his feelings.

So she had no idea what it had been like for him when the replies simply stopped one day.

Thinking about it now, Ning Sui said into the fabric of his shirt, her voice muffled: “Were you a little angry, back then?”

Xie Yichen said nothing, and his palm came to rest lightly against her face, brushing the dampness away. Ning Sui lifted her head after a moment’s delay and looked at him — and found herself falling into the deep, dark pools of Xie Yichen’s eyes.

“Not angry.” His voice was low.

Ning Sui sniffled faintly, and even as close as this, she still wanted to examine every expression on his face.

She was afraid he might be concealing something in this particular feeling — not willing to let it show.

She was also afraid that her attempt at comfort hadn’t been enough, that there was still some lingering hurt. So her chest remained taut with a breath she didn’t quite dare release.

Then, as Ning Sui was sitting there in anxious uncertainty, Xie Yichen looked steadily back at her, and after a moment reached out to pinch the curve of her ear gently, letting out a soft exhale: “You’ve cried yourself into a little mess.”

Ning Sui went still, feeling her ear grow hot and red all the way through. Xie Yichen cupped her cheek warmly and said in a familiar, affectionate tone: “Really, not angry.”

He was candid, his eyes clean and direct: “But it was a little lonely.”

Ning Sui looked up at him with wide, earnest eyes, and immediately made the connection to everything that came after — pressing her lips together: “Then, if we hadn’t run into each other in Yunnan — would we have just missed each other completely?”

Ning Sui found that now, even the thought of that imagined outcome made something inside her feel quietly, achingly sore.

She couldn’t bring herself to think too hard about whether there might have been some other possibility.

“No.” Xie Yichen spoke suddenly.

His tone was certain, without hesitation. Ning Sui stilled, and something inside her seemed to stir like a ripple on still water.

She reached up and tugged lightly at the drawstring of his collar, her voice carrying a faint, unintentional note of pleading: “…How do you know that.”

It was that involuntary kind of softness, the kind that didn’t know it was softness. Xie Yichen looked down at her, his lashes lowering, and then he broke into a laugh: “I remembered everything.”

Ning Sui was puzzled: “Hmm?”

Xie Yichen tapped the tip of her nose and found her endearing even like this, slightly dazed and out of focus: “I remembered your name. Your face. I knew your school. One inquiry would have told me everything I needed to know.”

“That classmate of yours in the same class who competed in the physics olympiad — his name was Cheng Feng, wasn’t it? I got your WeChat from him later.”

Xie Yichen raised an eyebrow with his characteristic easy carelessness and said in an unhurried tone, “I had it all planned out. The moment I got to Beijing, I was going to come find you, and sort out the whole why and what. Even if you hadn’t wanted to see me then, it wouldn’t have mattered — so there was no way we would have missed each other.”

Ning Sui stared at him, her heartbeat leaping. She raised her eyes and met his, so dark they shone.

In the quiet between them, Xie Yichen reached into his pocket from somewhere and produced a soft candy in green grape flavour, pressing it into her hand.

The serrated edges of the wrapper pressed into her palm, but Ning Sui wasn’t looking at the candy. She was looking at him.

The hazy amber glow of the film still shifted and played around them, dim and warm. Impossibly close. The warmth of two young people tangled together, both feverish, both earnest.

“Xie Yichen.”

Since they had found each other again, Ning Sui especially loved saying his name — full name, every syllable spoken clearly.

Xie Yichen’s gaze lowered. His throat moved, and he looked at her without blinking: “Mm?”

Ning Sui said: “I don’t think I’ve ever told you.”

“Told me what?”

Her heartbeat was quick. She looked at him for a moment, then leaned in and pressed her lips to his jaw: “I really, really like you.”

—

At the tail end of winter, Huai’an at night was a romantic place in its own right — quiet under a deep, still sky, every streetlamp a warm point of gold, occasional figures in their heavy coats strolling together along the road, their shadows stretched long and gentle beneath the lights, the air cool and refreshingly clear.

The film was just short of finishing, but Ning Sui’s attention had long since gone elsewhere. They left the intimate enclosure of the private screening room and stepped back out onto the wide, clean street.

They passed the twenty-four-hour convenience store again. Its bright light spilled outward. Ning Sui received a message from Ning Deyan urging her home, so she paused and typed a few lines back.

People drifted in and out of the store. Ning Sui finished her reply and glanced up at Xie Yichen.

He had his bag slung loosely over one shoulder, hands tucked casually into his pockets, his expression unhurried as he looked across the street — but the patience in it was obvious.

Looking more closely, there was something that made a stark contrast with the sharp lines of his dark hair and dark eyes: his lips. The pale corners of his mouth bore a faint, visible red, a tiny, scattered mark. It was from what they’d done in the private cinema earlier.

Which, to be fair, was entirely because after he had heard what she said and leaned in to kiss her, she had bitten him on pure reflex.

Ning Sui couldn’t help looking a few more times. Xie Yichen seemed to notice, and slanted a glance in her direction, mouth curving: “Something wrong?”

He was already good-looking at rest, and the particular quality of that smile — spirited and slightly bold — was even more so. Ning Sui paused, glanced instinctively at the corner of his mouth, and held back what she had been about to say: “…Nothing.”

She changed the subject: “Are you going back to Hong Kong again tomorrow?”

In principle, Xie Zhenlin still had things to take care of there, so Xie Yichen would probably need to go back together.

Xie Yichen paused briefly, then replied: “Mm.”

Ning Sui stepped a little closer and straightened his collar carefully, then said with sincere concern: “Then please dress warmly. Wear more layers. Late spring cold snaps are the cruelest.”

Xie Yichen looked down at her, the curve at the corner of his lips deepening slightly: “Alright.”

He paused: “If there’s anything you want, tell me and I’ll bring it back from Hong Kong.”

Ning Sui wasn’t particularly drawn to cosmetics or luxury goods and couldn’t think of anything she needed, but still turned the corners of her mouth up: “Okay.”

To avoid Ning Deyan calling to urge her home, the two of them didn’t linger outside much longer.

By the time she got back, it was past midnight. To her relief, Ning Deyan and Ning Yue had very sensibly already gone to sleep. They had left a small wall lamp on for her in the living room.

Ning Sui washed up quickly, changed into her soft cotton pyjamas, and got into bed.

She opened her phone. Nothing out of the ordinary in the chat window.

A certain person had been very quiet today.

Under normal circumstances, that would have been deeply unusual — but then again, they had never had a fight this fierce before, so there was no past reference to draw from.

Ning Sui stared at the screen for a moment, pressing her lips together, then dimmed her phone and set it on the nightstand. She turned off the bedroom light.

There was still a slight heaviness in some part of her, a vague, drifting sense of something lost. She quietly pushed aside the scattered thoughts wandering through her mind, lay on her side, curled herself inward, and went to sleep.

She slept until morning.

Early the next day, Ning Sui was startled awake by Beethoven at full force. Young Ning Yue was pounding away at the Fate Symphony, and listening to it, one couldn’t help but feel rather sorry for him.

Sunlight streamed generously through the window. Ning Sui blinked her eyes open in a haze, half-listening to the muffled, resentful crashes of the piano — thud thud thud — while staring vaguely up at the white ceiling.

Compared to last night’s groggy awakening, her mood felt considerably lighter. Layered on top of that came the particular relief of knowing she would never have to practice piano again, and along with it a wry kind of amusement she couldn’t quite keep from smiling at.

Nestled in the warmth of her blanket, Ning Sui rolled over and reached for her phone out of habit, unlocking it to check WeChat.

Her finger tapped the screen. She lay on her side, face half-buried in the soft pillow, still in that in-between state of half-asleep.

She must have brushed against something, because a pinned conversation at the top of the screen expanded into a long, long message.

Ning Sui went completely still, her gaze fixing on the words before her.

— At three in the morning, Xia Fanghui had sent her a long letter.

【Ning Sui, I’m sorry.】

White text, a long and flowing block of it, spread across Ning Sui’s vision. Her heart gave a trembling, hollow beat. She let her eyes continue downward.

【Ning Sui, your mom is in the hotel that the company booked for me. I have to get up early tomorrow to go to the project site, but I’ve been lying here unable to sleep, and I still wanted to write you this letter in the most sincere way I know how, to tell you some things from my heart.

In my memory, you’re still that little girl who used to cling to me and your father asking to be lifted up on our shoulders for an “airplane ride.” And yet, somehow, all these years have passed, and in the blink of an eye you’ve grown up. You’re no longer that soft, babbling child who didn’t understand the world yet. Your mom has been watching you grow all along — I feel proud of you, but also just a little bit tangled up, because it seems like you’re growing further and further away from me.

Your grandmother never had much tenderness to spare for me — there was never much warmth in how she raised me. And your paternal grandparents lived far away, so we rarely communicated. When I gave birth to you, they weren’t willing to spend a few hundred yuan to come and see me even once. The moment my water broke, your father was working overtime and didn’t answer his phone. It was a neighbour who drove me to the hospital. It was past midnight, and there was not a single person by my side. I still remember that feeling of helplessness clearly.

You were my first child, and for a long time, you were my whole life. I had no idea how to take care of a baby. We had no money to hire a monthly nurse or a nanny, and your father left early and came home late. I had to figure it all out on my own.

Back then I was only twenty-four years old — a first-time mother, just like you are a first-time daughter. In the middle of the night, when you couldn’t sleep and you cried and cried until your little voice was hoarse, I lay awake too, sick with worry. Your stomach was delicate when you were small — the slightest imprecision in what you ate and you would bring it back up. I often got up alone in the small hours to change your sheets. But once you were finally asleep, I would look at you lying there, soft and sweet and peaceful, rosy pink and lovely, and feel as though everything was worth it. I would feel deeply content, deeply fulfilled. So many times I’ve thought: you are one of the main reasons I live, one of the greatest meanings in my life.

Your father and I have had a relatively smooth marriage over these many years, without any great turbulence between us emotionally, though there have been small bumps and dissatisfactions. Your father is a good-natured person, but also very lazy — he doesn’t want to concern himself with anything around the house, which means everything falls to me. There is so much to manage, and if I take my eyes off it for a moment, something slips through the cracks. That is how, over time, I became the sharp and impatient person I am.

I still remember the time you slipped away to a classmate’s house to play games after school without telling me. I couldn’t find you, and I was shaking — convinced something terrible had happened. I remember I slapped you when we found each other. You were heartbroken and cried and cried, and for days afterwards I was filled with guilt and regret. You were only eight years old. You hadn’t done it to hurt me on purpose. No matter what, I should never have been that harsh with you. I should have been gentler. I should have sat down and talked to you properly.

Your mom knows that there are many ways in which I’ve managed you that have made you feel uncomfortable. But I am genuinely terrified of losing you, and terrified of the day when you no longer need me the way you do now. You don’t know — when you depend on me, when you come to me, your mom feels so happy and so full. I want you to have the best of everything in this world, and I want you to never lose your way, and to live a peaceful and steady life for all your days.

But perhaps it’s exactly this urgency — this desperation to keep you from any harm — that has caused the harm itself. So many times I only thought of what would put my own heart at ease, and didn’t truly consider it from your perspective.

I’m sorry. Truly, I am so sorry.

Your mom wants to apologise for the harsh words she said to you this afternoon. I was too agitated, and I said things without thinking, and I hurt you, and I hurt someone you care about. Your mom apologises to him too.

You said this young man comes from a good background and has treated you well. Honestly, what matters more to me is the latter.

Your mom doesn’t place much weight on any outward conditions. As long as this person truly means well by you — as long as he respects you, accepts you, and understands you — that is more than enough.

Perhaps many people are drawn to you because of how you look, your personality, your academic achievements, your many abilities. These qualities draw people in easily — but these kinds of feelings usually carry many expectations along with them.

And then there are those who care for you because they have seen you cry and seen you at your most unkempt, who know your fragile places and your hardships, who can accept your imperfections and your small flaws, and who still want to give you their shoulder and their sweetness.

Those are the people worth spending a life with.

Your mom trusts that you have your own judgement.

There is so much I’ve said, and I want to end by saying: your mom is an intensely emotional person, with a very quick temper, and I know it’s been you looking after me all these years. I know you are a sensible and understanding child — you have never rebelled, and you have maturely tolerated and made way for me, this mother who, in so many ways, is the bigger child.

It is I who depends on you more.

Ning Sui, thank you for all your quiet patience. Your mom is going to work on herself from now on — to give you more space, to stop interfering in your private life and your freedom, and to respect your thoughts and your choices the way a friend would.

I don’t know if you’re asleep right now. I hope that tonight, you’re not sad anymore, and that you have a beautiful dream.】

Ten minutes later, Xia Fanghui added:

【By the way, your birthday present — your mom finally got it! It’s two concert tickets in Xiamen. They sold out in seconds on the app at the end of January, so I had to go through a colleague to buy them.】

【It’s that band you’ve always loved, Kuiyu Xingqiu. The concert is in March. You’ve always wanted to go to a live concert, haven’t you? You can take Ke’er or your boyfriend with you — either is fine.】