The moment Lin Tao said that, the only sound left in the room was the television. Right at that moment, a commercial had cut in — the spokesperson’s soft, sweet voice drifted through the room.

The evening was closing in, and the sky outside had been swallowed up by a sunset at some point — large swaths of glowing light poured in through that narrow window.

The room was split into two separate scenes.

Jiang Yan sat in the shadowed half, posture unhurried and languid. His long legs were stretched out at a slight angle, his pale, slender fingers resting loosely across his abdomen, while his other hand held the TV remote.

He seemed to be in a daze. His features were clean and handsome, but there was no expression on his face. His curled lashes angled downward in a pleasing arc, casting a faint shadow beneath his eyes.

From this distance, Lin Tao couldn’t make out his expression clearly.

Time seemed to stretch on for a long while. Lin Tao watched as he opened his arms and — his lips parting slightly — his voice came out low and hoarse.

“Come here.”

“Hm?”

Come where?

…………………A hug??

I was joking and you actually took it seriously?

Man, you’re really making this easy for me!

Lin Tao stared at him for a few seconds, and once she was certain he wasn’t kidding, she drew in a small breath. The fingers curled in her lap had grown imperceptibly damp with sweat.

She looked into the young man’s eyes. He had leaned forward slightly, bringing himself fully into the light.

Those glass-bright eyes of his lacked their usual languid ease. Right now they were dark and still — like the surface of a calm sea that concealed infinite turbulence within.

To hug or not to hug?

Oh fine. Consider it a good deed for the day.

Lin Tao didn’t hesitate any longer. She set aside the throw pillow she’d been holding and stood up, stepping over to where he was. She leaned down slowly, and her warm voice drew closer to him inch by inch.

“All right then — lucky for you I’m a generous person. I’ll give you a hug.”

The words landed, and the embrace followed.

Warm. And soft.

Jiang Yan’s body stiffened slightly. His head rested against the girl’s thin shoulder, and his nose was filled with a familiar, faint scent of fruit.

The fingers hanging at his side shifted — and before he could do anything with them, the phone on the desk suddenly rang without warning.

Jiang Yan’s ringtone was one of those harsh default system tones — loud and sharp, cutting through the air like a blade, slicing a neat gash into the delicate fabric of this moment.

Jiang Yan closed his eyes briefly to press down the irritation in his chest. The warmth in front of him pulled back, and that trace of heat slowly retreated.

He let go of his clenched hand, leaned forward, and picked up the phone from the desk. His voice was flat. “Hello.”

On the other end, Xu Yichuan — who had no idea what he’d just interrupted — gave an involuntary shiver, and completely in the dark, said: “Jiang Yan, did you and Sis finish up at the hospital? We’re all waiting here to eat.”

The voice carried clearly through the receiver, unobstructed. Lin Tao heard it and suddenly remembered there was supposed to be a dinner tonight.

Jiang Yan rubbed the back of his neck and looked at Lin Tao — as if checking her preference. She shook her head. He turned his gaze away and said without inflection: “Not coming. Something came up.”

Without waiting for Xu Yichuan to respond, he ended the call, switched the ringer off, and tossed the phone aside.

The TV was still on. A somewhat difficult-to-name awkwardness settled over the room.

Lin Tao had already prepared what she was going to say after the hug.

I, Lin Tao, am a generous person. This hug is purely a gesture of comfort — no other unusual thoughts involved whatsoever.

But they’d barely been hugging for ten seconds before the phone rang.

Her prepared words had been cut off. She sank into her own silence now, chin in hand, staring at the television.

Jiang Yan sat diagonally behind her, his gaze resting on her.

Honestly, he hadn’t expected her to actually come over and do it. He had even prepared himself for the possibility of getting a throw pillow to the face.

But the next second, the girl had stood up and walked toward him, and the hug had arrived before he’d had any time to process.

That familiar scent — the one that was only hers — had wrapped around him completely.

For a moment Jiang Yan hadn’t been able to react at all. His mind had gone entirely blank. He hadn’t known where he was or what was happening.

The girl’s embrace was soft and slight. When she held him, she used almost no force — just a loose, gentle drape around him.

And yet he had felt, from somewhere deep in his chest, a rising sense of steadiness.

As though a person had been drifting alone for too long — and then, suddenly, someone had reached out a hand.

And slowly, slowly pulled him back from the haze of that other world, back into the glittering, breathing reality.

Letting him know that he still existed in this world.

Nothing more than that.

By early autumn, the sky went completely dark before six or seven o’clock. Lin Tao and Jiang Yan sat quietly and watched two full episodes of the drama.

Only one floor lamp was on in the room, and its light was dim.

Lin Tao had been sitting still for too long — her whole body had stiffened. She raised her arms in a long stretch, and only then realized she was quite hungry. She turned her head to look at Jiang Yan sitting beside her. “Want to eat?”

“Are you hungry?” Jiang Yan glanced at the pitch-black sky outside, stood up. “Come on. Let’s go downstairs and get something.”

Lin Tao put on her shoes and followed behind him as they headed downstairs.

Downstairs, the main area was even livelier than during the day. Guan Che and a young guy were sitting behind the front counter, chatting in that unhurried, intermittent way.

His gaze casually landed on the two coming down from upstairs, and he smiled. “Hungry? I ordered some hot pot. Let’s all eat together.”

Lin Tao hadn’t been that hungry to begin with, but the moment she heard the words “hot pot,” her eyes lit up. Before Jiang Yan could even ask her, she responded: “Sure!”

Guan Che kept smiling, glanced at his phone, then looked back at the two of them. “Should be a few hundred meters away. Go sit in the back first.”

Jiang Yan took Lin Tao to the small sitting room where they’d eaten breakfast before. The little square table had a few boxes of cigarettes on it, but there was only one lighter.

He went over and collected the cigarettes and lighter, tucked them into a nearby drawer, then walked to the small kitchen in the back and got her a carton of yogurt from the fridge. “Something to hold you over.”

Lin Tao took it. The moment her fingertips touched the packaging, it was ice cold — and she couldn’t help flinching.

Jiang Yan caught her reaction and glanced at her short-sleeved top. His gaze darkened slightly, and he got up and walked out.

Lin Tao didn’t know what he’d gone for. She was just terribly hungry at this point, so she bit down on the straw and drained the yogurt in a matter of moments.

Cold and refreshing — and once she’d finished, she felt even more chilled all over.

She rubbed her arms and looked around the small sitting room, taking in how everything here was small and narrow.

There was a lot of stuff, but none of it was chaotic — things were arranged in an orderly way, imperfect but not untidy, and compared to a normal internet café, this place was practically paradise.

A moment later, Jiang Yan came back in, a black jacket in his hand, which he held out to her. “Put this on.”

Lin Tao was genuinely cold, so she didn’t decline. She took it and pulled it on — the jacket carried a clean, cool scent of mint.

A familiar smell.

The jacket was cut for a man, so it was large on Lin Tao. Worn on her, the hem cleared her upper thighs by a fair margin, and her arms disappeared entirely inside the sleeves.

The sleeves were too long.

Lin Tao simply shoved them up, baring a length of pale arm — but the sleeve opening was still far too wide, and a few minutes later they slid back down again.

After pushing and re-pushing with no success, she gave up and let the sleeves bunch around her wrists. She asked offhandedly: “Does the owner of this place usually not come around?”

She’d been here twice now and still hadn’t seen anyone.

“He’s here.” Jiang Yan said this in a perfectly languid tone, looking like the picture of ease.

Then he suddenly reached his hand out toward Lin Tao.

Lin Tao reflexively shifted to the side. His hand kept moving, caught her by the wrist, and drew her toward him.

In the warm light, the young man bent his head, and with deft, unhurried fingers, began to fold her sleeve up for her.

Lin Tao felt her face grow oddly warm. She looked away in a rush. “Then how come I’ve never seen him?”

Jiang Yan finished rolling up the right sleeve, then started on the left. His eyes stayed lowered. When he was done, he glanced up and met her gaze, the corner of his mouth curving slightly. “You see me every day — what do you mean you’ve never seen him?”

“……”

Oh.

I thought he was just a hardworking student with a part-time job.

Turns out he’s a quiet little proprietor all along.

Jiang Yan let go of her arm and leaned back a bit.

He settled against the back of the chair, its front legs lifting off the ground slightly as he tilted back, posture all ease — like he was explaining something: “The original owner of this place needed money urgently.”

“I happened to have money available at the time.”

“So I decided to buy it.”

He said it as casually as if he were describing a trip to the market to pick up vegetables. But even Lin Tao — who had no head for these things — should have been able to sense how much a property like this was worth in this city. A small alley with buildings this close to Tenth High School, and several other universities nearby as well — this little lane could be called a school-district property.

And he had just — bought it. Just like that.

This wasn’t just a “quiet little proprietor.” This was someone so wealthy he didn’t know what to do with it — the kind who had a healthy stream of income rolling in every day.

“……”

Lin Tao felt she had never before in her life suffered such a blow to her dignity. Just that very afternoon she had told the taxi driver, perfectly straight-faced, that he had a condition where he thought he was the richest person in the world.

And now?

Turns out the man had no condition at all. He really was, in every legitimate sense, rich.

She was exhausted.

Lin Tao didn’t want to say anything more.

Right at that moment, Guan Che walked in with the hot pot delivery person. “Come on, come on, make some room — time to eat.”

A quick shuffle later, the little square table was loaded with food. A simmering pot sat in the center, broth bubbling away and sending its fragrance drifting through the room.

Lin Tao was genuinely moved to near tears. She was so, so hungry.

The three of them pulled up chairs around the little table. Guan Che called toward the front counter, “Xiao Wei, you sure you don’t want any?”

A reply came from outside: “No thanks, bro — I just ate before I came. You all go ahead, I’ll watch the shop.”

“All right.” Guan Che unwrapped his chopsticks. “Let’s eat then.”

The small room was steamy and fragrant. After a while, Lin Tao felt hot and took off the jacket.

Before they’d started eating, Jiang Yan had brought out a few cans of cold cola for her. Lin Tao ate and drank and, before long, felt quite full.

The two guys were still eating and chatting. Not wanting to be the one to put her chopsticks down, Lin Tao just slowed her pace.

Jiang Yan and Guan Che didn’t eat much. Most of the time they were holding cans of beer and drinking.

Between the two of them, they’d gone through seven or eight cans, while eating far less than Lin Tao had on her own.

Perhaps because Lin Tao was there, the two men’s conversation stayed fairly light — mostly about recent things that had happened at the internet café, with Guan Che doing most of the talking, and Jiang Yan responding every third sentence or so.

Partway through, Jiang Yan’s phone lit up on the table. He glanced at it, picked it up, and stepped outside.

Lin Tao set down her chopsticks and watched his retreating figure.

Guan Che sat across from her. Once Jiang Yan had walked out, Guan Che set down his beer and cleared his throat. “What happened today? When you two came back.”

“We ran into Jiang Yan’s mom at the hospital.” Lin Tao didn’t try to hide it. She felt Guan Che was different from Xu Yichuan and the others — he seemed to know Jiang Yan a little better, and his personality was more grounded. Maybe he’d know how to comfort and guide Jiang Yan.

Sure enough, the moment Guan Che heard this, his expression went cold in an instant. His tone was flat. “Is that so. She still has the nerve to come back.”

“……”

Lin Tao thought — this felt like a pretty significant statement.

Could a younger person really say something like that about an elder?

Guan Che seemed to catch that his own tone had been off. He pulled his expression back together, dropped the topic, and instead picked up a can of beer and looked at Lin Tao. “Want some?”

“I can’t drink.”

Lin Tao’s tolerance was very low — she got drunk easily — so outside, she generally never touched alcohol.

“Fair enough.” Guan Che let go, picked up his chopsticks, and fished some sliced meat out of the pot.

The two of them chatted in that meandering way, without any particular direction. Jiang Yan had gone out to take the call, and was taking a very long time to come back.

Lin Tao watched Guan Che drinking alone and, after a moment’s thought, picked up one of the beer cans from the table, cracked it open, and raised it toward him. “Let’s drink a bit together — call it celebrating the second time we’ve sat and eaten together.”

Guan Che thought this girl was genuinely interesting. He didn’t decline — raised his can and knocked it against hers, then asked offhandedly: “How did you and Jiang Yan meet?”

Lin Tao took a sip of beer. The bitterness spread across the tip of her tongue, and she took a moment before speaking. “Got put in the same class — after the year division.”

She paused, then remembered something else. “More precisely — last semester’s final exams, we were put in the same exam hall.”

Guan Che asked again: “What do you think of him?”

“Pretty good.” Lin Tao took small sips of the beer, her thoughts slightly blurred by the alcohol, her responses coming a little slow. “Hm? Why are you asking that?”

“Curious.” Guan Che lowered his gaze. “In all this time, I’ve never seen him treat any girl this well.”

Lin Tao was a little hazy, but she still caught the key words. “He treats me well? I think you should get your eyes checked.”

“……” Guan Che laughed. He looked across at her and hesitated. “You haven’t gotten drunk on just this little, have you?”

If she had, Jiang Yan was going to have his head.

“Not drunk — just a little dizzy.” Lin Tao held up her fingers to show the distance. “I think I need my eyes checked too — you’re going double on me.”

“……”

Guan Che was about to say something else when, out of the corner of his eye, he caught Jiang Yan walking toward them, phone in hand. “……”

He thought: the anniversary of my death is going to be the same day next year.

Jiang Yan had just finished a call with Yu Fengyan. The two of them had gotten into an argument, and his mood was already off.

So he was not prepared to walk back in and find his little seatmate cradling a can of beer with a very clearly tipsy expression.

His expression darkened. He kicked Guan Che’s stool. “Who the hell told you to give her alcohol?”

Guan Che almost toppled off his stool from the kick. “I didn’t give it to her — she wanted to drink on her own.”

That wasn’t a lie either. Lin Tao had said she couldn’t drink, and he hadn’t made her — she was the one who’d picked it up and said she wanted some. There was nothing he could have done to stop her.

Though honestly, he hadn’t tried to stop her.

He also hadn’t expected anyone’s tolerance to be this low. She hadn’t even finished a single can, and she looked like someone who’d had several shots of baijiu.

Jiang Yan: “……”

Lin Tao was visibly drunk at this point — her expression dazed, her cheeks faintly flushed. She showed no reaction to the two of them arguing.

She just felt dizzy. Like the room was spinning.

Then, without warning, she was lifted off the ground. Her heart gave a violent lurch. Before she could process it, the scene around her had completely changed.

Jiang Yan had originally planned to wait until after the meal and then send her home. But now she was completely sloshed — she probably couldn’t tell you where she lived — so the only thing he could do was bring her upstairs to sleep it off for a bit.

Except the moment he set her down on the sofa, she went off like she’d taken some kind of stimulant — kicked off her shoes, stood on the sofa, started bouncing around, and hummed something to herself.

“……”

Jiang Yan felt his head was about to split in two.

Guan Che, feeling guilty and responsible, made a cup of honey water downstairs and carried it up. The moment he walked in, he was greeted by Lin Tao in full drunk mode.

Jiang Yan stood to the side with a perfectly expressionless face, watching him. Guan Che gave a strained smile, set the cup on the table, and slipped right back out.

Who could have seen that coming?

This girl seemed so perfectly well-behaved. Drunk, she turned into this — you could tell just by looking that she’d been keeping herself too tightly reined in, every day.

Jiang Yan was at a complete loss with drunk Lin Tao. Whether he put on a stern expression or coaxed her gently, she paid no attention.

This person was simply impervious.

For a moment Jiang Yan genuinely wanted to hit her — but when he came back to his senses, he wanted to hit Guan Che even more.

“Lin Tao.” Jiang Yan sounded a little helpless. He went over and caught her by the wrist, then picked up the cup of honey water from the table, his voice going very quiet: “Stop bouncing. Drink some water and get some sleep, and I’ll take you home.”

“Who are you?” Lin Tao’s eyes were bright — and drunk, even brighter than usual. “You look just like my seatmate.”

She talked to herself, voice trailing off into a sigh: “Can’t be my seatmate, though. He’s too pitiful.”

“……”

“Too many secrets.” Lin Tao was drunk, and her words had no logic — she just said whatever had left the biggest impression on her. “Also too much money.”

“……”

Her bouncing had wound down. She sat cross-legged on the sofa, eyes glazed. “Where is this? Why am I here?”

“The internet café.” Jiang Yan felt his temples throbbing. He patiently explained: “You came here to eat hot pot. You got drunk.”

“Nonsense. Why would I come to an internet café? I’m a good student.” Lin Tao’s thoughts were jumping in all directions. She didn’t know what had come to mind, but her voice suddenly went small and a little aggrieved. “I want to go home.”

“I don’t want to live at Teacher Yang’s house.” The girl’s eyes had gone pink at the corners, and her voice was soft and small. “I want my mom and dad.”

Jiang Yan didn’t know what she’d been through before this. Hearing her say it, he could only piece together a rough picture. Watching this person who was usually so carefree and unbothered now look so forlorn, something moved in him that he couldn’t quite name.

He crouched down in front of her and kept his voice low, coaxing gently: “Okay. I’ll take you home. We won’t stay at Teacher Yang’s house, alright?”

His voice was low and unhurried, his tone soft — with a hint of soothing persuasion. “Be good. Drink your water, and I’ll take you home.”

Lin Tao looked down into his eyes and saw her own tiny reflection there. His eyes were dark, like a whirlpool slowly pulling her in.

For once she was compliant. She took the water he held out and drank it in small sips.

Seeing her take the honey water and start drinking, Jiang Yan let out a quiet breath of relief. Once she finished, he took the empty cup and set it on the table behind him.

He stood up, searching the sofa for his own phone. He’d brought it up and left it somewhere on the sofa at random — but with Lin Tao bouncing around in there, it had rolled off to who-knew-where.

He looked around and couldn’t find it. His eye caught Lin Tao’s phone sitting on the table. He reached over and picked it up.

Although Lin Tao was drunk, she had a very strong protective instinct toward things she was familiar with. When she saw Jiang Yan pick up her phone, a rush of alarm went through her and she scrambled up to snatch it back.

Jiang Yan hadn’t expected her to move like that. He had the phone in hand, and turned to ask: “Password —”

The sentence was barely started when he saw a figure lunge straight at him.

Afraid she’d fall and hurt herself, he didn’t dare dodge. His hands instinctively went to catch her — but she’d launched herself from the sofa and was almost level with him in height.

He caught her — and at the exact same moment, the girl’s head made solid contact with his nose. A dull, muffled impact.

Author’s note: I don’t really know what to say today. You all tell me qwq