Zhu Yunque hadn’t been short of possible reasons for why Lu Rangchen might have suddenly shown up.

Maybe he’d finished up with whatever he’d been working on. Maybe Deng Zhe had dragged him over. Maybe he’d simply felt like getting dinner.

But however many possibilities she’d considered — she hadn’t considered that he’d come specifically to congratulate her. And the way he framed it was entirely too high-minded for what it was.

Zhu Yunque felt an immediate flood of self-conscious embarrassment, and denied it in a quiet voice. “…Don’t tease me.”

She was hardly the one who deserved to be called first.

The Lu Rangchen standing in front of her right now was the one who genuinely deserved that title.

Lu Rangchen simply gave a low, quiet laugh at that.

That unhurried, thoroughly unbothered looseness of his — easy and disarming.

Zhu Yunque’s heartbeat betrayed her again. By the time she recovered herself, Lu Rangchen had already ordered another dish.

A light, clear radish ball soup with glass noodles.

Not wanting her to read too much into it, Lu Rangchen said, “There are a lot of us — better to have enough.”

He was referring to Zhou Chuang — three tall young men with big appetites, three or four dishes between them was pushing it.

Zhu Yunque immediately shook her head. “Of course — you should. I should have thought of it.”

Lu Rangchen gave a neutral sound, then asked: “Is there anything you’d like?”

The young man’s voice held a careless gentleness in that moment — gentle enough to melt you.

Without warning, another server squeezed past from behind, calling out loudly in a thick regional accent: “Coming through!”

Lu Rangchen caught it in his peripheral vision. He reached out and lightly guided Zhu Yunque aside, then left his hand suspended in the air just behind her shoulders — not quite touching, but close — courteous and protecting, shielding her slight frame and the back of her neck.

Every nerve in Zhu Yunque’s body went taut. Her thoughts scattered completely.

But the server’s patience had run out. “Anything else?”

Zhu Yunque, flustered, blurted the first thing that came to mind: “A braised pork belly with brown sugar, please.”

And just like that, five people ordered six dishes.

Plus their respective portions of rice and drinks.

Once the order was placed, the server tore off the ticket and handed it to Zhu Yunque, indicating she should settle the bill at the front counter.

When they reached the counter, however, Lu Rangchen had already pulled three hundred yuan from his black wallet and paid before she could get there.

Zhu Yunque had a brief moment of disorientation. “No — I said I was going to —”

The word “treat” hadn’t made it out of her mouth yet.

Lu Rangchen tilted his brow up in that particular way of his and cut her off. “Three grown men — three mouths to feed. You think I’m not embarrassed to let you pay for that?”

“…”

The logic was sound. But Zhu Yunque still felt bad about it.

After all, this dinner was nominally for her, to celebrate — and on top of that, Lu Rangchen had already treated her multiple times before.

After a moment, she said genuinely, “Then next time — remind me when there’s an occasion. Let me make it up to you.”

“Sure. When I’m too broke to buy dinner, I’ll come find you in Class B.”

Lu Rangchen gave his brow a lazy tilt. “Just don’t back out of it.”

“…I would never back out.”

Zhu Yunque thought to herself — she’d be more than happy to.

After paying, the two of them walked back together.

Deng Zhe and Zhou Chuang had already settled in. Through some arrangement the three boys appeared to have worked out among themselves, Zhu Yunque’s original seat had been taken by Zhou Chuang, and Xu Linda was now beside Deng Zhe.

The remaining space in the small area left exactly two adjacent seats.

Zhu Yunque registered this a moment later and felt a flicker of inexplicable discomfort.

Xu Linda, acting as though it were the most obvious thing in the world, said to Zhu Yunque, “I moved your stuff over there, okay? You’re the smallest one here — it only makes sense you take the inside seat.”

Every word a perfectly placed provocation.

Whatever bystanders might have made of it, Zhu Yunque could read Xu Linda’s real intentions with perfect clarity.

She suddenly felt a spike of fear — fear that the three boys would see through Xu Linda’s transparent meddling.

Fortunately, Lu Rangchen said nothing, and even helped pull out the inner chair for her.

Zhu Yunque’s cheeks went warm.

She sat down without objecting.

The space inside was tight — if she let her guard down for a moment, her leg would brush against Lu Rangchen’s.

On high alert now, Zhu Yunque had to consciously moderate every movement she made — keeping herself scrupulously contained in her own half of the shared space.

Lu Rangchen, meanwhile, seemed entirely unaware of any of this, maintaining his usual loose, unhurried ease throughout, engaging with the conversation in his half-committed way.

Before long, the dishes arrived.

Deng Zhe rolled up his sleeves and told everyone to dig in.

Perhaps because Lu Rangchen was beside her, Zhu Yunque ate with even more restraint than usual — barely making a sound as she chewed.

Xu Linda noticed and couldn’t resist ribbing her. “Look at Zhu Yunque, everyone. Doesn’t she look like she’s eating under duress?”

Several sets of eyes turned her way.

Zhu Yunque had been carefully drinking her soup in small sips. The teasing nearly made her choke.

And of course, at precisely that moment, Lu Rangchen turned and looked at her sidelong — arched his brow with that deliberate air of his and delivered, with complete conviction: “Mm. Kind of like my cat.”

Zhu Yunque: “…”

The tips of her ears went red as pomegranate seeds.

She couldn’t decide whether it was the way Lu Rangchen looked at her, or that particular line of his — slightly too intimate for what it was, just the right amount of ambiguous.

Deng Zhe clicked his tongue in Xu Linda’s direction, as though placing blame. “This is your fault — insisting she sit in the corner, now she can’t even reach the dishes.”

There did seem to be something to this.

Lu Rangchen paused, then reached over and switched the braised pork belly and the radish ball soup — moving the closer dish into easier reach for her.

Zhu Yunque pressed her lips together and watched without saying anything.

Xu Linda’s smile stretched so wide it almost took flight — she was in absolute heaven.

Then she turned to Deng Zhe with a light dismissive sound. “What do you know.”

Deng Zhe didn’t know. He had no idea about any of Xu Linda’s deliberate engineering.

The two of them bickered at each other the way they always did, and no one at the table thought twice about it — no one would read anything into it.

Only Zhu Yunque.

The girl sat there with a heart that felt very full and heavy, and was never quite able to relax.

Quietly, she set two pieces of the braised pork belly on top of her rice, and after a moment, said softly to Lu Rangchen, “You have a cat?”

Lu Rangchen’s eating style wasn’t exactly refined, but it was clean — no mess, no self-consciousness about it. There was something genuinely free about it, the kind of ease that only someone young and unselfconscious has.

He paused when she asked.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket, found the photo with patient deliberateness, and passed it to her. “Just got one not long ago.”

She looked at his hand as she took the phone.

Heart jumping.

She looked carefully at what was on the screen.

A very chubby orange cat — a Golden Chinchilla, by the look of it — round and gleaming with an endearing, slightly dopey look about him.

“Did you buy him?”

“No — a friend’s. She needed someone to look after him for a while.”

“And the cat doesn’t mind?”

“Feed him well, give him a good home, and he wouldn’t dare mind.”

Zhu Yunque let out a small, involuntary laugh.

Zhou Chuang jumped in right at that moment. “Hey, Lu Rangchen — is your cat still as demanding as before?”

Lu Rangchen answered with perfect calm. “Calmed down some. Nowhere near as clingy as when he first arrived.”

Deng Zhe, who had a somewhat closer acquaintance with the cat, couldn’t resist elaborating. “When he first moved in, he was a complete nightmare — going to the bathroom everywhere, glued to everyone, drove the housekeeper half-crazy. She was ready to make him leave and Lu Rangchen basically had to fight for the right to keep him.”

Then he turned to Zhu Yunque. “You remember that night you all went to the bar? That’s what he was going home to deal with.”

Zhu Yunque blinked. It clicked into place.

Lu Rangchen caught her expression and held back a snort of amusement. “What — were you under the impression I was going home to someone?”

Zhu Yunque: “…”

Deng Zhe, happily oblivious: “Someone? What someone?”

Zhou Chuang’s eyes went wide. “A girlfriend? You have a girlfriend?”

Xu Linda, startled: “Rangchen, you’re in a relationship?!”

The three of them had all the comedic timing of a well-rehearsed act.

This was not, technically speaking, a topic that had anything to do with Zhu Yunque. And yet her complexion went through at least two distinct colour changes.

Lu Rangchen was far too tired to engage with any of them. He made a dismissive sound. “I have no girlfriend whatsoever.”

As he said it, he glanced sidelong at Zhu Yunque and steered the topic away without fanfare. “Speaking of which — I’ve been meaning to ask. This exam — how did you do it?”

The last syllable had a slight, playful upturn — the teasing rhythm that people who are actually close to each other fall into.

“…”

Zhu Yunque tightened her hold on her chopsticks.

Zhou Chuang, who was himself languishing at the bottom of Class A, found this newly interesting. “Oh right — tell us. How did you manage it? Give us something to work with.”

All at once, several pairs of eyes were back on her.

Being the centre of attention always made Zhu Yunque’s throat tighten.

She swallowed, and said quietly, “Isn’t it possible that I was just always this strong to begin with?”

That landed with a brief, mutual bafflement from both Zhou Chuang and Deng Zhe. They looked at each other.

Lu Rangchen, on the other hand, looked as though some prior suspicion had just been confirmed — and he let himself smile, without surprise.

Xu Linda had a moment of sudden, total enlightenment. “Zhu Yunque! You hid this so well!!!”

Deng Zhe stared at her. “What does that mean?”

Xu Linda turned to him with the gaze typically reserved for those who are beyond saving. “It means she was pretending to be bad at school. Obviously.”

And then, with a satisfied air: “Anyway, I’ve always thought my Yunque was smart and hardworking — of course she’d do well. Today proves it! I knew it all along!”

Zhou Chuang was nearly knocked off his chair in shock. “Wait — pretending? I’ve heard of people pretending to score a hundred to look modest, but never someone pretending to be bad at school in the first place. Why would you do that? What’s in it for you?”

His bafflement was entirely genuine. He looked at Zhu Yunque like she was a puzzle with pieces missing.

The question landed with no easy answer. Zhu Yunque went quiet — this involved things she didn’t want to get into, matters that were private to her family.

Lu Rangchen chose that moment to deliver a firm kick under the table in Zhou Chuang’s direction.

It landed on Deng Zhe.

Deng Zhe made a noise. “Hey — if you’ve got a problem with him, you kick him. Why am I getting it?”

Lu Rangchen didn’t miss a beat. “You can shut up too.”

With two natural-born entertainers at the table, that dinner turned out to be one of the better ones in recent memory.

Time, however, had its limits.

The meal hadn’t gone on long before Lu Rangchen said he needed to leave.

Zhu Yunque assumed it was because they were in a rush to get home, but when she asked, it turned out the three of them had to return to school for team practice — preparation for an upcoming provincial tennis tournament.

Deng Zhe, as an alternate, had more flexibility.

Lu Rangchen and Zhou Chuang had only been able to arrange an hour’s leave from the coach.

Of course, none of the three boys mentioned any of this at dinner.

And so Zhu Yunque had no idea. She only knew she shouldn’t disrupt their training, so when Lu Rangchen said he was leaving, she agreed without hesitation.

But just then, the restaurant owner appeared with a lottery box — she turned out to be the proprietor herself, running a promotion: one draw per one hundred yuan spent. Since the meal had come to three hundred yuan, there were three chances.

Xu Linda’s eyes lit up at the news.

Deng Zhe deflated her. “Today’s about Yunque, okay? Don’t be greedy.”

Xu Linda turned and fixed him with a pointed look.

Zhu Yunque said, “No — go ahead, if you want to. I don’t mind.”

Xu Linda lit up. “I’ll take one draw. The other two are yours.”

Zhu Yunque nodded.

Then, thinking of it, she glanced over at Lu Rangchen.

Before she could say anything, she noticed he had his head tilted down, replying to a WeChat message.

Zhu Yunque quietly looked away. She didn’t want to interrupt him — so after Xu Linda finished her draw, she quickly did her own two.

The key chains from this restaurant were, to their credit, genuinely well made.

Xu Linda got a strawberry rabbit plush key chain.

Zhu Yunque drew two small bears.

One male, one female. The female bear was brown, wearing a butterfly bow and a cake-patterned skirt. The male bear was black, wearing jeans and trainers.

Even Xu Linda — who was obsessed with soft toys — felt a pull when she saw them. She held them and turned them over, reluctant to put them down.

Zhu Yunque suggested, “You take one.”

But Xu Linda refused, point blank.

By now, the five of them had left the restaurant and were walking in the direction of the school.

Lu Rangchen, broad-shouldered and long-legged, strolled ahead with his hands in his pockets alongside Zhou Chuang and Deng Zhe.

Zhu Yunque and Xu Linda walked arm in arm behind them.

Afraid the boys would overhear, Xu Linda kept her voice low. “Give the black bear to Rangchen.”

The suggestion short-circuited Zhu Yunque’s thoughts entirely.

Several seconds passed before her face went red and she said in a measured voice, “…Would he even want something like this?”

“Besides.”

“Isn’t it a bit strange?”

However gender-neutral the design, for Lu Rangchen it would border on too cute. She could already picture the look of disdain on his face.

Xu Linda pressed with impatience. “What’s strange about it? He paid for dinner — shouldn’t he get something in return?”

“…”

“And even if he doesn’t want it, it’s not a big deal — you could still just ask! There’s nothing wrong with that!”

Lu Rangchen paying for dinner was something all five of them knew.

So the reasoning was legitimate.

Zhu Yunque thought it through carefully and found, to her surprise, that Xu Linda had a point.

But every instinct of natural reserve and shyness pushed back.

She hesitated — hedging. “Maybe not — what if he doesn’t like it.”

Xu Linda was exasperated enough to roll her eyes. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you — we’re almost back at school. If you don’t give it to him now, handing it to him later is going to look so much more deliberate!”

And right on cue, before Zhu Yunque could respond —

Xu Linda raised her voice and called clearly to the young men ahead: “Rangchen! Zhu Yunque has something to say to you.”

Lu Rangchen stopped. He turned and looked at the two girls behind him with completely undisturbed composure.

The other two also stopped.

Xu Linda promptly abandoned Zhu Yunque to her fate — she grabbed Deng Zhe (who was delighted to have a front-row seat) and Zhou Chuang and steered them forward, leaving Lu Rangchen standing perfectly still in the middle of the path.

His silhouette was long and upright. That unhurried, faintly reckless quality of his — and he simply stood there and watched her with that composed, patient look.

Zhu Yunque felt her ears catch fire.

She had no choice but to walk toward him. She took out the black bear key chain and held it out.

She didn’t quite look at him as she spoke — the words came out a little unnatural. “You paid for dinner — Xu Linda said you should get one.”

Lu Rangchen’s gaze moved from her pink-white face, down to the palm-sized stuffed toy in her hand.

Zhu Yunque, half-convinced he wouldn’t want it, let her voice go taut. “…You don’t have to take it if you don’t want to. I’ll just keep it for —”

“Keep it for yourself” hadn’t made it out yet.

Lu Rangchen spoke, easy and unhurried. “Who said I didn’t want it?”

Zhu Yunque: “…”

She looked up at him, startled.

Lu Rangchen’s brow tilted up slightly. He sounded, genuinely, almost a little serious about it. “It’d probably look pretty good hanging off a backpack, wouldn’t it?”