Lin Tao never did figure out when Jiang Yan had managed to install that thing on her phone. The moment she was able to unlock it the next morning, she uninstalled the app immediately. She also deleted Jiang Yan’s fingerprint from her phone, changed the password to something entirely new, and from that point forward kept her phone on her person for twenty out of every twenty-four hours.

For his part, Jiang Yan couldn’t come up with a good counter-strategy. Then, about a week later, Lin Tao unexpectedly handed him her phone one morning on her own.

“What’s going on?” Jiang Yan had been up writing practice papers until very late the night before, and when Lin Tao knocked and came in, he had only just gotten out of bed. His eyelids were heavy; he didn’t look particularly alert. His voice was thick with exhaustion. “Didn’t you say you’d rather die than let me touch your phone again?”

Lin Tao’s cheeks were puffed out slightly. She looked at him without speaking.

She seemed upset about something.

Like a blowfish holding its breath.

Jiang Yan couldn’t hold back a low laugh. “Alright, what happened?”

Lin Tao raised her chin slightly in a wordless gesture toward the phone.

Hearing her mention the phone, Jiang Yan assumed someone had sent her something problematic again.

He ran quickly through everything in his head — and apart from what Fang Yisong had discussed with him, he couldn’t think of anything he’d kept from Lin Tao.

Still, life had a way of springing unexpected things on a person. The sudden fear that he might have overlooked something important made Jiang Yan tense. He lowered his gaze and pressed his fingertip to the unlock sensor.

The screen lit up briefly — and flashed a message:

Fingerprint not recognized. Please press slightly harder and hold.

He tried the number passcode he’d used before.

Same result.

“……” Jiang Yan turned the screen toward her and said flatly, “I can’t get in.”

“I know.” Lin Tao said. “I deleted your fingerprint and changed the password. Of course you can’t get in.”

Jiang Yan laughed, though not unkindly. He stepped back a pace and leaned against the wardrobe behind him. “Then what exactly do you want me to look at? What’s the password?”

Lin Tao was quiet for a few seconds. Her voice dropped a little. “I forgot.”

“……”

Now it made sense. She had locked herself out of her own phone, and had come to take out her frustration on him.

“What about fingerprint unlock? Isn’t that still an option?”

Lin Tao sighed. “I turned it off.”

She had removed the fingerprint unlock because she was worried Jiang Yan might sneak the phone open when she wasn’t paying attention. And the number passwords she’d previously used all had personal significance — her birthday, her student ID, digits from her national ID number — combinations Jiang Yan already knew.

So when setting a new password, Lin Tao had deliberately ruled all of those out, and put together a few random digits with no particular meaning.

The problem was that a few days later, she couldn’t remember which digits those had been.

Jiang Yan’s lips curved slightly, his tone easy and unhurried. “Then why are you bringing this to me? I have no idea what your new password is.”

“……”

That did it. A flash of irritation rose up in Lin Tao, and her voice went up a notch. “And whose fault is that? If you hadn’t tried to take my phone in the first place, I never would have changed the password!”

The longer the two of them spent together, the more the small, impulsive edges of Lin Tao’s personality surfaced naturally in front of Jiang Yan.

Unreasonable moments happened often enough.

Jiang Yan mostly found it entertaining, and simply let her be. “Think about why I was taking your phone in the first place.”

“Obviously I know why.” Lin Tao sat down on the edge of his bed, wrapped in her soft cotton pink pajamas, looking entirely squishable. “Because you wanted to sneak into my Ant Forest and steal my energy the moment I wasn’t looking.”

“……”

After too many failed attempts, the phone had been automatically locked by the system, and no further password attempts were possible.

For Lin Tao, it felt like the sky was caving in.

She searched Baidu extensively on her laptop for every possible solution to the “forgot my password, how do I unlock my phone” problem. Without exception, the answer was always the same.

The most straightforward fix, according to everyone, was to take the phone to a shop and have it factory reset — the simplest and quickest method, for when you truly couldn’t remember the password at all.

“……”

Lin Tao felt quietly defeated.

A factory reset would wipe everything on the phone — and she had important documents and study materials saved on there. She really didn’t want to go that route. But she also had no way to unlock the phone any time soon.

Lin Tao let out a sigh, lamenting quietly to herself, “Ah… my life is hard. I’m suffering.”

At that, Jiang Yan — who had been sitting nearby working through a practice paper — glanced up. His gaze passed briefly over the laptop screen in front of her, and he said, in an unhurried voice, “You don’t need to factory reset it. Guan Che can unlock it.”

Lin Tao: “??”

Lin Tao: “!!”

“He’s been studying computer science,” Jiang Yan added, setting down his pen and giving his wrist a slow, easy roll. “Something like this is nothing for him.”

A full solution without any downsides — Lin Tao felt the heavy weight in her chest lift at once. But a second later, something else occurred to her. She leaned forward, bringing her face level with his, and demanded, “Then why didn’t you tell me that sooner?!”

Jiang Yan picked up a practice paper and placed it over her face. “You never asked.”

“……”

Fair enough, honestly.

Although a fix had been found, Guan Che was in the middle of an intensive closed-door competition training program at a university across town and wasn’t around, which meant Lin Tao’s phone would have to stay locked for the time being.

At least she didn’t have to factory reset it. Lin Tao figured she could wait a few days.

But those days without her phone were genuinely rough — she felt as though she’d been hurled back into the Stone Age.

During this same stretch, Jiang Yan also extended her daily tutoring sessions by an additional half hour.

One evening while working through practice papers, Lin Tao brought her laptop along and propped it up beside her, chatting with Meng Xin on an app:

Lin Tao: If I’d known I’d be living like this, I would have gone into the humanities stream instead. [Still Smiling Through the Pain.jpg]

Meng Xin: Hahaha please count your blessings — the top student in the year tutoring you personally? If that were me, I’d be smiling in my sleep.

Lin Tao: Then come trade places with me. [Serene Smile.jpg]

Meng Xin: ……

They’d barely gotten a few lines in before Jiang Yan came in from outside, carrying a paper bag.

As he walked closer, Lin Tao caught the smell drifting from it. “Did you go buy roasted sweet potatoes?”

“Guan Che bought them.” Jiang Yan sat down beside her.

“Hmm?” Lin Tao’s eyes lit up. “Guan Che-gē is back?”

Jiang Yan made a soft sound of assent, then added the second half of the sentence at an unhurried pace. “He just left.”

“……” Lin Tao was puzzled. “That’s strange — I told Guan Che-gē about my phone situation, and he said he’d sort it out as soon as he got back.”

“Must have slipped his mind. He’s probably busy.” Jiang Yan broke open a piping hot sweet potato and handed half to her. “Eat up, before it gets cold.”

There were also two disposable plastic spoons in the bag. Lin Tao took both of them out and held one toward him. “You’re not having any?”

Jiang Yan shook his head. “Not for me. Too sweet.”

Lin Tao didn’t press it. She handed over her most recently completed practice paper. “Done — have a look.”

Jiang Yan took it.

Lin Tao cradled the warm sweet potato in both hands, taking small, careful bites. The fragrance spread through the room. “Aren’t you heading off to intensive training soon?”

Both Jiang Yan and Guan Che were entered in this year’s national-level physics and mathematics competitions. Guan Che’s mathematics competition had started about half a month earlier than Jiang Yan’s physics one, and accordingly, his training program had gotten underway sooner.

“More or less.” While he spoke, Jiang Yan had already finished reviewing the multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank sections. “It’ll probably be fairly soon.”

“Where are you doing your training? At the same university as Guan Che?”

“I’m not sure yet — that hasn’t been announced.” Jiang Yan picked up a red pen from the desk and made several marks on her paper.

Lin Tao watched his hand moving across the page and edged cautiously closer. “Did I get a lot wrong?”

“Not too bad.” Jiang Yan kept writing as he spoke. “I’m just showing you an alternate solution — a bit more straightforward.”

Lin Tao looked at the problem he’d just rewritten. “I didn’t think this question type could be done another way. I thought my approach was already pretty efficient……”

“Yours is fine too. If you can write it the way you did in the actual exam, that’ll serve you perfectly well.”

Lin Tao swallowed a bite of sweet potato. “Then why bother going to the trouble of writing out another method?”

Jiang Yan set down the pen, and let out a quiet, low laugh. “Force of habit.”

“……”

Guan Che came back to the internet café from his family’s place the following evening. That same night, the school had an electrical fault, causing a full-building blackout. Evening study hall ended early as a result.

Before dismissal, Jiang Yan was called aside by old Teacher Yu, and he told Lin Tao to head back to the internet café without him.

The moment Lin Tao walked in, she spotted Guan Che behind the bar counter. Her eyes lit up. “Guan Che-gē!”

Guan Che smiled and responded. “Oh, that’s right — I brought you something.”

“Huh?” Lin Tao looked at him in surprise. “Did you go off to training or on a vacation?”

“Training, obviously.” Guan Che said. “But the gift wasn’t from me — one of my roommates gave it to me. I thought it would suit you.”

He didn’t say what it was.

Lin Tao didn’t ask — gifts could wait. What mattered right now was her phone. “Speaking of which, Guan Che-gē, I mentioned on the app that my phone’s been locked. Can you help me unlock it now?”

“Your phone?” Guan Che looked slightly confused. “You haven’t unlocked it yet?”

“Right, I can’t remember the password.”

“But when Jiang Yan came back last night, he told me you’d already sorted it out.” Guan Che said. “That’s actually why I went home — I figured there was no rush.”

“……” Lin Tao pressed her lips together, restraining every impulse to go outside and find Jiang Yan and give him a solid beating. “Never mind. Can you just unlock it for me anyway?”

“Of course. Bring your phone to my——” Guan Che had been about to say bring it to his room, but thought better of it and changed his mind. “——just bring it down to the lounge on this floor.”

“Sure.”

Lin Tao went up to get her phone. Guan Che headed back to get his laptop.

The two of them settled into the small lounge beside the bar counter.

Lin Tao watched Guan Che’s fingers flying across the keyboard, and after a moment said, “Guan Che-gē.”

Then nothing else followed.

“Hmm?” Guan Che paused and looked up. “What’s wrong?”

Lin Tao let out a breath. “Nothing, really. I was just thinking — how is it that you and Jiang Yan both seem to know so clearly what you love, and have such a definite sense of where you’re headed?”

And then go all-in to pursue it.

It was like having a clear track laid out in the middle of an otherwise formless life — knowing which direction to move in next, and what to do when you got there.

Completely unlike the lost, directionless feeling she had about her own future.

Guan Che didn’t answer right away. He finished writing the unlock script first, then thought for a while before asking her, “Have you ever thought about what you want to do with your future?”

Lin Tao nodded, then shook her head. “I’ve thought about it. But I never got anywhere with it.”

“Then do you know why Jiang Yan pushes you so hard with your studies?”

Lin Tao was quiet for a moment. “He wants us to go to the same school.”

“That’s part of it — but not the main reason.” Guan Che leaned back in his chair, the light catching the sharp, clean lines of his face. “He wants you to have more options later in life.”

Lin Tao didn’t quite follow. She looked at him.

Guan Che glanced at the progress bar of the unlock process, then continued, “Maybe, for you, it doesn’t really matter which school you end up at. Speaking bluntly — you’re the kind of person who, if you don’t study hard, could just go home and inherit a massive family fortune.”

“But the thing is, Jiang Yan knows — and you know, too — that that’s not the life you want. You’ve thought about what you’d like to do someday. You just haven’t figured it out yet.”

“Jiang Yan is making a decision for you in the meantime.” Guan Che understood Jiang Yan well. Saying these things himself was, in a way, giving voice to what Jiang Yan had wanted to say but never quite put into words. “He’s sending you to a top-tier university, so that whatever you eventually decide you want — whenever that moment comes — you’ll have a much wider range of paths to choose from than most people would.”

Besides, the environment of a university has a way of shaping who a person becomes over time.

Sometimes the difference between success and failure comes down to a single decision made at the right moment.

“Whether or not you’re at the same school as him doesn’t actually matter to Jiang Yan.” Guan Che said. “Once he decides someone is in his life, that’s for good. He just doesn’t want you to one day look back and regret the choices you made now.”

……

The unlock progress bar hit one hundred percent.

Guan Che clicked the mouse. The phone sitting beside them lit up.

Lin Tao glanced over and said quietly, “Thank you, Guan Che-gē.”

That single thank-you carried two meanings.

Lin Tao hadn’t spelled it out, but she knew Guan Che would understand.

“Don’t mention it.” Guan Che closed his laptop and tucked it back into his bag. “I don’t know what your old password was, so I’ve reset it to 123456. Change it yourself when you get a chance.”

“Okay.”

Guan Che smiled, said nothing more, and stood up with his laptop to leave.

Lin Tao sat in the small lounge for three or four minutes. She set a new password on her phone and added a fingerprint unlock as well.

Winter nights were deep and cold, the wind cutting and keen in every direction, moonlight drifting soft and hazed, the air carrying a biting edge. Outside the window, the tall buildings were studded with light, and the broken patterns of bare branches swayed and shifted, reflected in the glass.

Fine and scattered. Indistinct and soft.

From beyond the door came the sound of footsteps approaching, gradually drawing closer, until they stopped just outside.

Lin Tao looked up at the sound.

The young man stood at the threshold where lamplight met darkness, his features clear and clean, a smile on his face like a cool breeze and a bright moon.

Author’s note: Lin Tao: You don’t actually love me — you just want to inherit my Ant Forest. 🙂