By the time Qian Wei made it downstairs, she found Lu Xun standing under a streetlamp not far from the women’s dorm, his figure drawing more than a few not-so-subtle glances from passing girls.

She walked over and noticed he was holding a cup of milk tea.

“For you.”

Claiming he wasn’t there to see her while having a cup of milk tea ready and waiting… Qian Wei gave him a knowing look. Lu Xun turned his head away, deflecting. “The moon’s really nice tonight. Want to take a walk?”

Qian Wei glanced up at the sky — thick, heavy clouds meant the moon wasn’t visible at all. She pointed up and looked at him. “The moon’s nice? Are you serious?”

Lu Xun, without missing a beat, looked her straight in the eye. “You’re like my moon.”

Honestly — Qian Wei thought — was there any line or situation Lu Xun couldn’t smooth-talk his way through?

Even as she thought it, though, somehow even complaining about him felt sweet. It was a December night, the wind carrying a heavy chill, the streets nearly empty and a little bleak — and yet walking side by side with Lu Xun, sipping warm milk tea, Qian Wei felt an odd illusion of eternal spring. She figured her brain must be broken by now.

They hadn’t gone far before Lu Xun reached over and took her hand. Even though they were officially a couple now, alone together they still sometimes carried that early, half-hidden bashfulness. The moment his fingers touched hers, they both felt a small flutter.

And yet Lu Xun still managed to keep up his straight-faced act. “My hand’s a bit cold. Let me warm it up with yours.”

Qian Wei couldn’t help wanting to laugh. She’d never known Lu Xun could tell such bald-faced lies with such conviction — his hand was clearly the warmer of the two.

They walked on and, without quite meaning to, found themselves at the campus’s well-known “Lovers’ Slope.” Planted with evergreen turf, it stayed green even in winter. Not far from the slope was A University’s famous Moon Bay — a small crescent-shaped lake, remarkable for being entirely natural rather than man-made, fed by a live water source. Just beyond Moon Bay stood the university library, from which half the bay’s view could be seen. The area was usually lively, though on a winter night there were normally few people around — except tonight seemed to be an exception.

Just as Qian Wei and Lu Xun rounded the back of the slope, a commotion in the distance caught their attention. It seemed to be coming from the direction of Moon Bay — a girl’s voice, crying and shouting accusations, mixed with a chaotic murmur of other voices. Probably another couple having a fight, Qian Wei figured, and neither of them had much interest in gawking.

“Let’s head back.”

But just as Qian Wei turned to follow Lu Xun back the way they came, a shrill, raised cry cut through the air.

“Qian Chuan! You’re single now! Why won’t you accept me?!”

Wait — Qian Chuan?? At the sound of his name, every nerve in Qian Wei’s body snapped taut. There was no way she could just walk past this now.

By the time she and Lu Xun reached Moon Bay, they found a small crowd gathered along the lakeside, many of them clutching books — clearly students just finishing up in the library, on their way back to the dorms.

Qian Wei pushed her way through the crowd and found, at the center of it all, none other than Qian Chuan. He stood on one side of the lake, Liu Shiyun beside him, and across from them, on the raised viewing platform overlooking the water, stood a girl. In the darkness her face was hard to make out, but her silhouette made clear she was heavyset.

“Qian Chuan, I’m asking you straight — will you be with me or not?” The heavyset girl’s voice was choked with tears, though her tone remained forceful. “You turned me down before because you had a girlfriend, but I found out you’ve broken up — you’re single now, so you have no reason left to refuse me!”

“Seriously, what reason does she even need? Is she some kind of goddess? Making a guy accept her when she’s that size — the nerve. She’s gotta be, what, two hundred pounds? Who’d dare date her, might get crushed…”

“Even single, no way he’d go for her. Has she looked in a mirror?”

The girl stood alone in the cold wind, shouting her case, while the crowd around her responded mostly with mockery and derision.

Public opinion and the whole situation had swung almost entirely in Qian Chuan’s favor — under these circumstances, whatever he did next would likely be met with sympathy.

Qian Chuan looked thoroughly pained by the whole thing. He called up to her. “Li Linlin, come down first!”

The name Li Linlin jogged Qian Wei’s memory — wasn’t this the girl who’d relentlessly pursued Qian Chuan before, so obsessively that she’d even disregarded his privacy in her confession attempts?

Lu Xun’s reaction to the name was noticeably strong too — after all, it was because of Li Linlin that his very first attempt at a written confession had ended so disastrously. He clearly remembered it well…

“I’m not coming down!” Li Linlin was resolute. “If you don’t say yes today, I’m jumping!” As she spoke, she made a show of preparing to leap.

Qian Chuan tried to keep her steady. “I’m single, but I really don’t want to date anyone right now. Come down first.”

“Liar! If you don’t want to date, why were you out at Lovers’ Slope in the middle of the night with that girl next to you?! And you were holding hands just now!!!” Li Linlin’s voice cracked with strain. “I was clearly first in line, waiting for you to be single again.”

Qian Chuan was at a loss. “This isn’t the kind of thing that goes by who got in line first!”

Despite her dramatic threats, Li Linlin’s logic proved sharp — she immediately seized on the hole in his argument. “Didn’t you just say you don’t want to date anyone at all? So how does ‘first come first served’ even apply now?! See, you’re clearly lying to me! You just don’t want to date me! Then I might as well just die!”

It wasn’t an idle threat — Moon Bay’s water was actually quite deep, and there had been incidents before of outsiders sneaking in for a summer night swim and drowning. If Li Linlin really jumped, in the pitch dark, it would genuinely be dangerous — especially in winter, when the water was cold enough that even a strong swimmer attempting a rescue could cramp up.

Qian Chuan looked ready to cry, utterly baffled as to how he’d ended up on the wrong side of this particular menace. “You can’t force feelings that aren’t there…”

“That’s fine, doesn’t need to be sweet. I’ll force it out first and worry about the rest later.”

“…”

Qian Wei pushed her way to Qian Chuan’s side. “What’s going on?”

But Qian Chuan didn’t even look at her — he looked straight past her, at Lu Xun, pleading. “Brother-in-law! What do I do?!”

Qian Wei thought, so much for all my devotion — the second this brat got a brother-in-law, he stopped giving me the time of day… the moment anything went wrong, it was like Lu Xun was his actual blood brother.

Lu Xun considered for a moment, then glanced at Li Linlin on the platform. Since she’d announced she was going to jump, the crowd had grown even larger — people were even leaning out of the library windows to watch. The onlookers buzzed with a mix of commentary, some earnestly urging her not to do anything rash, others goading her on just to see what would happen, clearly enjoying the spectacle. Li Linlin stood there in the cold wind, showing no sign of fear — if anything, the attention seemed to be exciting her further. She even took two more steps toward the platform’s edge, testing the danger.

Qian Chuan looked utterly miserable. “How do I get her to actually listen to me?!”

Liu Shiyun was getting anxious too. “Should we circle around behind her and just drag her away?”

“No.” Lu Xun looked at Li Linlin again. “Stop trying to talk her down.”

Qian Chuan: ???

“You have nothing to do with her. If she wants to die, that’s her business. Even if she jumps and drowns, it has nothing to do with you. She wants to kill herself, why are you trying to talk her out of it?” Lu Xun’s tone was cold. He glanced around at the crowd. “It’s freezing out, does everyone really have nothing better to do than stand around watching to see if she jumps or not? It’s getting late too — the dorms will lock up soon, and I heard it’s supposed to rain tonight. Let’s head back.”

Qian Chuan looked startled. “But what about Li Linlin—”

“Someone’s already called the police. They’ll be here soon.”

Lu Xun rarely raised his voice, but between his cold tone and his naturally commanding presence, quite a few onlookers looked suddenly embarrassed and began to disperse.

In the middle of the night, standing in the biting wind by Moon Bay, watching someone else’s suicide threat play out did suddenly seem like a fairly pointless way to spend one’s evening.

Before long, the half-circle of onlookers thinned rapidly down to just a handful of people, who — looking a bit sheepish themselves — soon began drifting away too.

Seeing everyone leave, Li Linlin visibly wavered. She called down to Qian Chuan, “I— I really am going to jump!”

“Even if you jump, Qian Chuan still won’t like you. If you die, the gossips around campus will talk about it for a few days at most, and within a month no one will remember you at all. It’s freezing out — hard to say whether you’d drown first or freeze first, but either way, a body that’s been in the water swells up, develops what’s called giant cell change, the eyes bulge out, the skin turns green, the face swells up to the size of a basketball, the stomach bloats from decomposition gas, and sometimes when they pull the body out, it can even burst open on its own—”

Not just Li Linlin, but Qian Chuan, Qian Wei, and Liu Shiyun all visibly paled.

“Ugh…” Liu Shiyun was the first to break. “Lu Xun, stop, please. Where do you even learn this stuff? Just imagining it is more than I can handle…”

“It’s in the Forensic Evidence course slides — there’s a whole diagram of the decomposition process. Try not to sleep through lecture next time.”

“…”

Regardless, Lu Xun’s little speech proved remarkably effective. Li Linlin’s resolve finally broke, and she began backing away. With the crowd gone, her emotions had gradually settled, and at that moment Lu Xun shot a look toward Qian Chuan, who slipped around behind her and pulled her firmly down off the ledge.

And with that, the whole spectacle finally came to an end, and everyone let out a breath of relief.

With his nerves finally settling, Qian Chuan took off his own jacket and draped it over Li Linlin, who was dressed far too lightly for the cold. “Don’t ever do something like this again. You can’t force feelings — using self-harm to get someone’s attention doesn’t actually accomplish anything. If something had really happened to you, think about your parents.”

Li Linlin gripped his jacket tightly, saying nothing.

Qian Chuan sighed. “Never mind. Let’s get you back to your dorm.”

“They wouldn’t care.”

“Hm?”

Li Linlin bit her lip. “My parents. They wouldn’t care about me. Maybe only if I actually died would they care.”

Qian Wei was caught off guard, but Li Linlin went on. “They only care about my little brother. Whatever I do normally, they don’t pay attention — it’s only when I do something really extreme that I get even a sliver of their attention.”

As she spoke, Li Linlin began to cry. Qian Chuan had never known what to do when a girl cried; he fumbled through comforting her, handing her tissues, but his gentle gesture only seemed to open the floodgates further, and she finally broke down sobbing in earnest.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! It’s all my fault…” she cried, halting and broken. “There’s something wrong with me. I know it’s not right, but I can’t help myself…”

Li Linlin was crying so hard that even Liu Shiyun, moved to sympathy, reached over to rub her back. “What happened?”

“Growing up, I never got my parents’ attention. They always felt like boys belonged to the family and girls were outsiders. And then when I got sick in middle school and had to take hormone medication, I ballooned up to two hundred pounds almost overnight, and they were even more embarrassed by me — they’d take my brother out and basically never take me anywhere. Eventually I noticed that the only time they showed me even a little concern was when I did something really extreme. So to get their attention, I started acting out more and more, without really meaning to.”

Qian Chuan seemed to catch on. “So the extreme behavior became a habit without you even realizing it?”

Li Linlin nodded through her tears. “At first it only happened at home, but eventually I couldn’t help doing it at school too. Every time I got someone’s attention — even if it was just people criticizing me — for some reason, it made me happy. It was like that was the only time I actually felt like a real, living person, instead of just being invisible to everyone.”

Qian Wei found herself surprised too — she’d never thought deeply about Li Linlin’s extreme behavior before. People usually just wrote off someone like that as “weird” and left it there. She’d had no idea there was a story like this behind it.

Qian Chuan looked stunned as well. “So that’s why you kept going after guys in different departments in such extreme ways? Just to get attention, to get that… psychological rush?”

“I’m sorry, Qian Chuan. You really are a good person.” Li Linlin wiped her eyes. “Out of everyone I’ve chased after, you’re the only one who was ever genuinely kind to me. Other guys either tossed my confession letters away right in front of me, or mocked me behind my back — but you never did either. You were always polite, always patient. You’re the only one who never once attacked me over my looks or my weight. And yet I kept escalating and harassing you anyway, because of how gentle you were, causing you so much trouble.” Her voice was full of anguish. “I kept telling myself I couldn’t keep doing this, but I couldn’t stop — I don’t even know why. Running into you tonight at Lovers’ Slope, I just couldn’t help myself again… I figured you’d be furious with me tonight, but you still put your jacket on me just now.” She seemed to gather her courage. “So I wanted to tell you all this, and I really do want to apologize. I went way too far before.”

“Histrionic personality disorder, probably.”

Li Linlin looked up, surprised, at Lu Xun. “You know about it too? I went to the hospital, and the doctor said the same thing. I’m on medication, but the doctor also said that once histrionic personality disorder develops, it’s very hard to fully cure with current treatments. Medication plus psychological counseling can help manage it, but that’s about it.” She looked despondent. “So honestly, I don’t know if this might happen again in the future.”

“You feel this urge to perform that you can’t resist, don’t you?”

Li Linlin looked at Qian Wei and nodded.

“You genuinely enjoy having everyone’s attention on you?”

“Mm…”

“And once that urge to perform and be noticed gets satisfied, you’re able to control yourself a bit better?”

“Yes.”

Qian Wei had a sudden idea. “Then why not try joining the drama club the student council’s been recruiting for lately?” She looked at Liu Shiyun. “Weren’t you just saying the drama club’s doing new member recruitment?”

“Since you have this urge to perform and want attention, why not channel it somewhere constructive? Join the drama club — the more dramatic and immersive your acting, the more applause and recognition you’ll get from the audience. You can release the pressure without it hurting anyone else, and combined with your medication over time, I really think you can get this under control!”

Li Linlin blinked, looking tempted, but then hesitated. “But I… with a body like mine, who’d want to watch me act? Even if I signed up, I doubt anyone would want to act opposite me…”

“Then we’ll sign up for the drama club together!” Liu Shiyun clapped her on the shoulder. “The student council actually wants me to help recruit more members for the drama club anyway! And in the meantime, we can all work out and get in shape together! Your features are actually really pretty — once you slim down, you’ll be gorgeous!”

“Really?”

“Really!”

Li Linlin managed a watery smile through her tears. “Thank you, both of you.” She glanced at Qian Chuan again. “So if I do lose weight and get pretty… Qian Chuan, can I go after you then?”

“No way!”

Qian Wei was quite surprised — because that firm, clearly enunciated “no way” hadn’t come from Qian Chuan himself, but from Liu Shiyun.

Under the sudden weight of everyone’s stares, Liu Shiyun seemed to realize her own slip. She tucked her hair back and explained, with forced nonchalance, “Didn’t Qian Chuan say he’s sworn off romance after his breakup, that he’s done with all that and just wants to focus on his studies? So obviously Li Linlin shouldn’t be chasing him — that would totally disrupt his self-cultivation, right?”

Qian Wei looked at Liu Shiyun, her tone pointed. “Wait a second, explain something to me first — didn’t you say you were heading to student council? Isn’t student council in the exact opposite direction? So how did you end up here at Lovers’ Slope with Qian Chuan in the middle of the night?”

Li Linlin cut in, sounding a little wronged. “I’m reporting this — when I ran into them, they were holding hands. That’s actually what set me off in the first place…”

“…”

Under Qian Wei and Lu Xun’s stares, Qian Chuan, red-faced, gritted his teeth and said, “We just suddenly wanted to compare whose hands were bigger.”

Qian Wei looked at Qian Chuan’s hand, clearly twice the size of Liu Shiyun’s. “Buddy, you could at least come up with a better excuse. Since when does that need comparing? Can’t you just look?”

Qian Chuan declared, with total conviction, “I don’t know what happened, I just went blind for a second there.”

“…”

Liu Shiyun, meanwhile, tried to redirect the fire onto Qian Wei and Lu Xun instead. “Qian Wei, I’ve got a question for you too — what were you and Lu Xun doing out here at Lovers’ Slope in the middle of the night? I’ve heard couples sneak into the bushes here all the time! Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on! You two are playing with fire! Watch yourselves, don’t cross any lines!”

At the word “cross,” Qian Wei’s face went red despite herself.

Lu Xun, on the other hand, remained perfectly composed. He glanced at Liu Shiyun and said, unhurried, “Whatever Qian Wei and I do, it’s all above board and official — unlike some people, sneaking around Lovers’ Slope without even being a couple. Might want to watch where the moral line is, wouldn’t want to stir up trouble.”

“…”

The bickering among the law students that followed was nothing short of ferocious. Qian Chuan tried pitifully to jump in, only to be shut down instantly by Liu Shiyun. “You’re bad with words, let me handle this!”

In the end, it was Li Linlin who couldn’t take it anymore. She asked, tentative, “Um… should I just leave you all to it? I’ll head out first?”