Shen Musi saw Fang Zhuo hanging by the doorway and craning her neck to look inside. He poked her in the back and said, “Stop worrying. Adults are all very smooth operators.”

Yan Lie laughed and slapped his hand away. “You mean ‘gracious.'”

Fang Zhuo pulled her gaze back and stood flat against the wall outside, waiting.

Yan Lie drifted over to her side, hands in his pockets, then fished out a lollipop — an extra one he’d bought earlier at the shop. The strawberry illustration on the wrapper was quite vivid. He shared it with Fang Zhuo with easy generosity, then went back to looking at his phone.

The faintly sweet flavour dissolved in her mouth. Fang Zhuo looked down and began folding the wrapper, lining up all four corners neatly, using the focused motion to clear away the trivial thoughts crowding her mind.

Wei Xi and a few others gathered together, chatting and laughing, then drifted over beside her and stood there watching her fold a paper crane.

Wei Xi rubbed her nose, turned her phrasing over inwardly about eighteen times, and then said, “Your uncle treats you very well.”

Fang Zhuo finished one crane, held it in her palm and looked at it for a moment, then unfolded it again, and nodded. “He does treat me well.”

“So then why didn’t he help you before?” Wei Xi’s patience only extended to that one diplomatic sentence. “Your father also seems… not the easiest person to deal with.”

Fang Zhuo looked up and said, “We only just found each other.”

The group all made vague, bewildered sounds.

The dormitory head said, “But he seems quite close to Lielie too?”

Yan Lie, who had ears like a bat, called through the gap, “Just found each other too!”

With only a wall between them and the door not fully closed, their voices had still carried into the room.

The parents sitting nearby turned to look in their direction, then looked curiously at Ye Yuncheng, trying to decide whether these young people were being sincere or having a joke.

Wei Xi, having pieced it all together, said with a puzzled expression, “So I was right — you rented him.”

“No — he’s my actual uncle, but we only met a little while ago,” Fang Zhuo said, somewhat vaguely. “For various reasons, we lost contact.”

The group nodded in a more-or-less understanding way and didn’t press further.

At some point Fang Zhuo turned around and slipped back in for a look, and found that Ye Yuncheng was perfectly at ease. He was listening with earnest attention, his eyes bright and sharp.

He wasn’t especially talkative, but he wasn’t uncomfortable with conversation either. And he read widely — he had a little knowledge of everything. If he wanted to talk to someone, he could find plenty to say. Even when he couldn’t follow the thread, he was a first-rate listener. Fang Zhuo didn’t need to worry about him too much.

Reflecting on this, Fang Zhuo realised that what was driving her concern was actually a desire for Ye Yuncheng to need her — the way she needed family. It was precisely this faint but meaningful sense of being wanted that was keeping her inner unease and loneliness at bay.

Her family had always been odd, like a stool with a leg missing — something not quite right about it. She could accept being incomplete. She just hoped for it to be stable.

Only in the matter of family, she had a remarkable and deeply unfortunate talent for being unwanted. Which made it impossible for her to offer herself any such reassurance.

Perhaps she was just not mature enough yet.

Fang Zhuo raised her eyes, catching in her peripheral vision the figure of the young man not far away.

Yan Lie, on the other hand, always handled these things so well. He could effortlessly win the affection of many older people.

The head teacher gave a brief summary of the term, then worked through each student’s achievements and areas of strength in a slideshow presentation — showing them one by one for the parents — doing her best to be even-handed. As the hour was already late, she distributed meal vouchers for the canteen to each parent, reminded everyone of the time for the afternoon’s general meeting, and called it finished.

Students poured back in, each leading their parents off for lunch.

Ye Yuncheng stood unhurriedly, waited until the people around him had mostly thinned out, and then drew out his walking stick and made his way over to Fang Zhuo.

“Did you get anything out of it?” she asked.

“Of course!” Ye Yuncheng said brightly. “I learned several new recipes for brain-nourishing food. I’ll make them for you both when I get back!”

Fang Zhuo played along. “What are they?”

“Boiled eggs,” Ye Yuncheng said.

Fang Zhuo: “…” Just end it all.

Ye Yuncheng laughed. “Eggs are very nutritious — you can’t skip them.”

Yan Lie sauntered over from behind. “Lunch is very important too — you can’t skip that either.”

“Lielie is right,” Ye Yuncheng agreed.

And so all three of them went to the canteen together.

School A’s canteen was enormous, divided into many sections, and at that hour it was buzzing with noise — though not excessively crowded.

Ye Yuncheng held the meal vouchers that had just been handed out, and Yan Lie took them from him. Fang Zhuo found a spot along the wall first, settled Ye Yuncheng into it, then went to find Yan Lie and help collect the food.

The canteen had been renovated a year or two earlier and still looked fresh and new. On the white wall hung a large, vivid hand-painted mural, with a food-waste reminder written beneath it in black regular script. The sophisticated artwork paired with the plain slogan created a certain stylistic collision.

Ye Yuncheng looked all around, finding it quite novel, then glanced down at the table and quickly shifted back a little.

The previous occupant had apparently just left, and the staff hadn’t had time to wipe down the table yet — a small amount of oil remained on the wooden surface.

He slipped off his overcoat, folded it carefully, and set it on the chair beside him, revealing a slightly creased shirt underneath.

The coat really had been borrowed. He would have to be careful with it.

He had just finished tidying himself when a few people who had been passing by sat down across from him.

Ye Yuncheng recognised them as Fang Zhuo’s classmates and gave them a nod and a smile.

“Our parents ducked out of the afternoon’s general meeting and went home early, so it’s just us left.”

Wei Xi set down a tray piled generously with dishes, arranging them one by one across the centre of the table.

“The meal vouchers would expire if we didn’t use them, so I grabbed a little extra — mustn’t waste. Uncle, please, eat with us.”

Taking advantage of Fang Zhuo’s absence, Ye Yuncheng took the opportunity to ask, “Does Fang Zhuo get along alright at school?”

“She does, she’s fine!” Wei Xi asked, “Uncle, what aspect did you mean in particular?”

Ye Yuncheng said thoughtfully, “She seems like someone who finds it difficult to get close to other people.”

Wei Xi scooped a mouthful of rice and mulled it over. “That’s true, a bit.”

Then she added, “But Zhuozhuo works hard and takes her studies seriously. She doesn’t cause trouble or put on airs, and she’s easy on the eye — we all like her. Not everyone needs to be as scatterbrained as me.”

The dormitory head laughed. “You know this about yourself?”

Wei Xi refused to concede defeat. “So what if I know? Can I change it?”

The dormitory head didn’t argue with her on that. Holding her chopsticks in midair, she answered with care, “Uncle, you don’t need to worry. Everyone in our class is quite united — no one forms cliques or picks on people. And Zhuozhuo gets along well with Yan Lie, and Yan Lie is our class’s ringleader. The boys all listen to him.”

Ye Yuncheng smiled and lifted his head, his gaze drifting to the space behind her.

Yan Lie had already arrived, setting down his tray and saying, not entirely seriously, “I leave for one moment and you’re all in here saying nice things about me?”

Wei Xi said, “We were saying nice things about Zhuozhuo, and you just happened to benefit!”

Shen Musi and Zhao Jiayou trotted in after him and sat down as well.

The long wide table filled up quickly.

Fang Zhuo set a bowl and chopsticks in front of Ye Yuncheng, and looked up to find Wei Xi across the table with her hand raised, eyes bright with anticipation. “Uncle, it’s my birthday this weekend — can Zhuozhuo come out with us?”

Ye Yuncheng looked at Fang Zhuo. She looked back at him with an expression of faint bewilderment — she had never received an invitation quite like this before.

He smiled. “Zhuozhuo can go if she wants to.”

Before Fang Zhuo could answer, Yan Lie spoke first. “We’re heading into town this weekend too — is it on the way? Musi was just trying to drag me to an escape room.”

Shen Musi nodded vigorously, his face lit up with excitement. “A premium escape room! No one on the forums has beaten it yet — let’s give it a try! There’s a special prize if you win!”

Wei Xi, who hadn’t made any concrete plans yet, thought this sounded rather good.

“Fang Zhuo, do you want to come?” Yan Lie asked. “I’ll take you through it.”

Fang Zhuo, still slightly dazed from the back-to-back invitations, had no idea what an escape room was, but said hesitantly, “Sure… let’s go?”

Shen Musi immediately lit up. “Then we’ve got a full group! Thank you, Zhuo-jie!”

Fang Zhuo didn’t quite follow what he meant, and lowered her head to eat.

Since she had plans with her friends that weekend, Fang Zhuo couldn’t go back with Ye Yuncheng.

The afternoon’s general meeting wasn’t necessary for him to attend — and standing for that long would be hard on him. Fang Zhuo suggested he head home first.

The whole group surrounded him — from the canteen to the classroom building, and then to the school gate.

They cheerfully talked about all sorts of inconsequential things, forming a loose, natural screen around Ye Yuncheng that shielded his halting gait from view.

Young people seemed to have an endless supply of things to say and energy that couldn’t be spent. And a certain unspoken, instinctive tenderness.

The autumn sunlight was soft and clear, pouring down in golden warmth, carrying with it the rich fragrance of osmanthus blossoms.

Walking along the broad, even concrete path, Fang Zhuo found herself thinking again of a dream she had once had. They had dredged up a sun that smelled of osmanthus from the water, and it had drifted over a vast and boundless blue sea.

It didn’t seem quite so impossible now.

All the way to the school gate, the group separated, arms across each other’s shoulders, heading their own ways.

Fang Zhuo insisted on walking Ye Yuncheng to the bus stop.

They walked slowly. There wasn’t much said between them along the way, but Ye Yuncheng looked up, and his eyes held something like sunlight — bright and luminous.

They stopped side by side in front of an advertising board. Ye Yuncheng said, “You have so many friends.”

Fang Zhuo wasn’t sure what exactly qualified as a friend, or what the measure of that was. Strictly speaking, she and the others hadn’t talked all that much.

But she nodded sincerely.

“You’ve found very good friends,” Ye Yuncheng said quietly. “That’s wonderful.”

Fang Zhuo leaned in close and linked her arm through his.

“That’s wonderful,” Ye Yuncheng said again, looking down at her with a smile. “Uncle’s not worried anymore.”

“What was there to worry about?” she said.

The bus came. Fang Zhuo moved to walk him to the steps.

Ye Yuncheng reached the edge of the platform and turned around, wrapping her in a hug and letting his warmth pass to her, before finally stepping up into the carriage.