Even though this had cost Qian Wei quite a few lucrative cases and opportunities, hearing Lu Xun’s explanation now, she found that if this was the reason, she could almost accept having missed out on a few tens of millions.

“I’m sorry—that was my own selfishness, keeping you away from my cases. But I did speak with Attorney Zheng privately about it. All the projects on her team include you, plenty of cases that would build real practical experience, cases I thought would suit you—I made sure other lawyers recommended them to you. And when it comes to year-end bonuses and commissions, you’re actually earning more than anyone else on the team.”

“Did you have them pay me extra on purpose?”

“Yeah.”

Qian Wei was thoroughly astonished. “Lu Xun, honestly, do you even know the first principle of running a law firm? Don’t carry dead weight! Digging into your own pocket to give me special treatment like this—aren’t you worried about going bankrupt?”

“I can afford it.”

Qian Wei choked. It wasn’t often she got the chance to lecture Lu Xun from the moral high ground, and he’d shut her down anyway. Unfortunately, he wasn’t wrong—he really could afford it…

“Then why didn’t you confess to me sooner, a second time?” The thought of missing each other for nine years through nothing but sheer bad luck made Qian Wei want to cry. “Even if the first confession failed, couldn’t you have just tried again?”

“I asked Lu Sheng about it. He said if a girl turns you down once, confessing again too soon won’t get you anywhere.” Lu Xun lowered his eyes. “Better to quietly stay by her side until she gets used to your presence without even realizing it, and only then confess again—that’s the only way it could actually work. Confess too often, and not only will you get rejected again, you’ll put her off entirely, and you won’t even be able to stay friends.”

Qian Wei didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Lu Xun, was being ‘just friends’ really what you wanted? If you’re pursuing someone and you can’t win them over, why bother staying friends at all? Might as well go all in! If it fails, it fails—at least you tried. Isn’t that what youth is supposed to be about?”

“I couldn’t afford to fail.” Lu Xun stared into Qian Wei’s eyes, his words deliberate. “When it comes to you, I can’t bear failure.”

His voice was extraordinarily gentle, yet extraordinarily firm. “Qian Wei, you should know I’m an extremely persistent person—in my work, and in love, both the same. I never once considered the possibility of failing. If the person Lu Xun loves makes me wait five years, I’ll wait five years. Nine years, I’ll wait nine years. The first confession failing was fine—I’d just stay by your side, until you got used to me, depended on me, came to love me.”

“And you weren’t worried that while you waited, I’d just go find someone else and get married?”

Lu Xun seemed entirely confident about this. He smiled. “That was never going to happen.”

“Wait a minute, Lu Xun—all those nights you had me stay late working overtime with you, that was on purpose? So I wouldn’t have time to meet other men, wouldn’t have time to go on blind dates?”

Lu Xun cleared his throat and denied it with perfect composure. “You’re overthinking this.”

Though his tone was confident, his eyes didn’t quite dare meet hers. And that was how Qian Wei finally saw through it completely—the overtime had been Lu Xun’s scheme all along. He’d done it on purpose, to keep her from finding anyone else. And here she’d been, stubbornly assuming it was some kind of retaliation, because she thought she’d stolen his crush right out from under him…

Now that the long-standing misunderstanding was finally cleared up, Qian Wei told Lu Xun all about her own mistaken assumptions, and it was only then that Lu Xun learned about Mo Zixin’s self-staged confession scene, and realized just how deep Qian Wei’s misunderstanding had run.

“I never once suspected Mo Zixin had staged that whole thing herself. Because of that ‘confession,’ I always assumed you had feelings for her. I took your constant denials as just you being too proud to admit it. It was only during this coma, with the drug stimulating and strengthening my memory, that the memory of that so-called confession from Mo Zixin also got reinforced and dredged back up.” Qian Wei blinked. “I suppose it really did bother me more than I realized—my mind must have unconsciously replayed that scene over and over, magnifying every detail, until my brain started questioning, in my memory, whether the confession had even been real.”

“Or rather,” Lu Xun said, watching her, and suddenly smiled, “in your subconscious, you wanted that confession to be fake. Qian Wei, maybe you fell for me earlier than you ever realized. Knowing that makes me genuinely happy—it feels like everything I’ve ever worked toward in this life has already been accomplished.”

“But I still think it’s such a shame,” Qian Wei couldn’t help but say, regretful. “If we’d untangled all this sooner, we’d never have lost nine years at all. We could have been together at nineteen! Nineteen, come on! So young, so full of life! I know you at nineteen and you at twenty-eight are fundamentally the same person, but missing out on you at nineteen still leaves me with real regret.”

“So in those hallucinations of yours, you had a whole relationship with the nineteen-year-old me?”

“Yeah,” Qian Wei mumbled. “Nineteen-year-old you was so much cuter than you are now—straightforward, honest, adorably naive, sweet-talking constantly, so passionate, so full of energy…”

“So what exactly did you and nineteen-year-old me get up to?”

“Lots of things! Dates, meals together, studying together, watching movies together, dancing tango together, competing together in the law school’s professional skills competition, doing legal outreach events together, even starting a business together, going grocery shopping together, cooking together, watching games together, working out together, doing a stage play together… basically everything a normal college couple would do!”

Having cleared up the misunderstanding seemed to have gone to Qian Wei’s head a little, and she got carried away, rambling on unguarded. It wasn’t until she’d spent a solid fifteen minutes gushing about imaginary nineteen-year-old Lu Xun, and reminisced happily about that imagined relationship for a full half hour, that she finally noticed the actual twenty-eight-year-old Lu Xun sitting in front of her wore a distinctly unpleasant expression.

“You cooked together?” Lu Xun’s expression had turned subtly strange.

Qian Wei, suspecting nothing, nodded. “Yeah. In my imagination, nineteen-year-old you said you wanted to be a man who could hold his own in the kitchen and the parlor both—thoughtful, considerate, the whole package.”

“No, that’s not the point. The point is, since we were both living in the dorms at nineteen, where exactly did you two go to cook together? Care to explain that to me, Qian Wei?”

“That’s…” Qian Wei suddenly felt a flicker of nerves. Oh no, she thought—she really had gotten carried away and forgotten just how frighteningly sharp Lu Xun’s logic could be.

“And grocery shopping together, too?” Lu Xun wasn’t about to let her wriggle out of it. “Be honest with me. In your imagination, did you and nineteen-year-old me do something we shouldn’t have?”

“…” Qian Wei rubbed her head. “Oh dear, I’m suddenly feeling a bit dizzy. Might be another aftereffect…”

“Your acting is terrible.” Lu Xun wasn’t about to let her off easily; he pressed his advantage. “Did we live together?”

Qian Wei waved her hands frantically. “No! No, we didn’t! Really!”

But Lu Xun’s expression didn’t improve—if anything it grew more dangerous. “Then it was a one-night stand.”

Qian Wei instinctively kept denying it. “Lu Xun, I’m warning you, don’t go saying things like that, or I’ll call the police!”

“If it wasn’t one night, was it several?”

Cornered like a rabbit before a predator, Qian Wei finally gave up, covering her face. “One night! Just one night!”

“I never realized you had such indecent thoughts about me all along. Quite the imagination, buried in that subconscious of yours.”

Qian Wei clapped her hands over her ears, her whole face burning red. “Stop, just stop talking about it!”

Lu Xun let out a cold little laugh. “You were so enthusiastic just now, praising nineteen-year-old me so passionately—guess you like that version better than the twenty-eight-year-old me?” His tone carried a faint, biting edge. “Younger flesh, I suppose.”

Qian Wei stared at him, dumbfounded. This man was being ridiculous—actually getting jealous of himself?! Maybe it was simply that she knew him so well that even her imagined nineteen-year-old version matched his real personality perfectly. No matter his age, the man was, through and through, hopelessly possessive.

All she could do was say, half laughing, half exasperated, “Fine, starting tonight I’ll copy out sutras and purge myself of worldly desire, how about that!”

Lu Xun considered this, pressed his lips together, and delivered two words that were nearly impossible to satisfy him with. “No good.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?!”

Lu Xun didn’t answer. He simply stood, leaned down, and kissed Qian Wei where she sat on the sofa.

The rest of that night belonged only to the two of them.