Qian Wei had no idea how late things had gone the night before. All she knew was that Lu Xun seemed to possess an almost inhuman amount of stamina. After they were both thoroughly spent, he’d showered, booked himself a red-eye flight, kissed her lightly as she drifted in and out of sleep, and left. She’d only managed, in her half-conscious state, to catch the last trace of his clean, cool aftershave.

Sure enough, she overslept the next morning, waking with the feeling that her entire body had come apart at the seams. She felt like an old tractor that had finally been patched up enough to get back on the road, only to be driven by some reckless driver straight toward another breakdown.

She was, naturally, late for work. Fortunately, there wasn’t much going on that day.

“Qian Wei, want some bubble tea?”

The moment Qian Wei sat down, Xiao Yan from administration came bustling over, carrying five or six cups, beaming. “I won five hundred kuai on a scratch ticket today, so I’m giving back to society—bubble tea for everyone!”

Qian Wei thanked her with a smile and picked out a cup. She took a sip—the milk flavor was rich, clearly real milk rather than creamer, and the black tea tasted authentic too. She couldn’t help but remark, “This is really good! Did you get it near our building? Which shop? That’s such good quality for the price!”

Xiao Yan handed out the rest of the cups as she answered. “It’s the shop on the ground floor of our building. That old Western restaurant on the corner closed down, and last month this drink shop opened in its place—it’s a cat café. They’ve got some great cats, five ragdolls alone. I go sit there almost every lunch break. Even Boss Lu went in there once!”

Before Qian Wei could even voice her doubt, someone else beat her to it. “No way. Boss Lu, at a cat café? That can’t be right—isn’t he allergic to cats?”

Just then, another senior partner, Attorney Zheng, happened to be passing by. She was forty-five, quite close with Lu Xun’s mother, and something of a half-elder to Lu Xun. She smiled. “He is allergic, but he’s known that since he was very young—he always carries antihistamines with him. Sitting in a cat café isn’t a problem for him; it’s just a bit of a hassle. He just takes the medicine and he’s fine.” She gave Qian Wei a meaningful look. “Other people might not know, but he told you about it once. You just didn’t seem to pay it any mind.”

Qian Wei blinked. She remembered now—the first time Lu Xun had a serious allergic reaction, a client had brought in a cat, an adorable orange tabby. Qian Wei had loved it, petted it again and again; the cat had been friendly, nuzzling into her arms and refusing to leave, and Qian Wei, utterly smitten, had even carried it over to show Lu Xun.

Now that Attorney Zheng had brought it up, she finally recalled it, hazily—that when she’d held the cat up in front of him, his body had gone rigid, tense with reluctance. His behavior that day had been strange, but Qian Wei had been so absorbed in the cat that she hadn’t noticed anything off about him at all.

What must Lu Xun have felt in that moment? He’d told her, right to her face, that he was allergic to cats—only to be completely overlooked by her carelessness, forced to watch, helpless, as the person he loved paid him no mind at all. That couldn’t have felt good.

And yet, carrying around that kind of quiet disappointment, he’d still gone and schemed to get Qian Wei to take care of him—deliberately skipping his allergy medication on purpose. Qian Wei thought, this man really took the cake. Shameless, absolutely shameless.

Xiao Yan, still fairly new to the firm, didn’t know about Lu Xun’s earlier severe allergic reaction and looked baffled. “But that day I definitely saw Boss Lu go into the cat café after work. I was right behind him when he ordered, and he even deliberately went and petted the British shorthair. He didn’t take any medicine either, and later, upstairs, I saw him break out in hives. I wanted to take him to the hospital, but he said it wasn’t necessary…”

Well, that explained her own aborted blind date that had ended halfway through, too. This man had done it on purpose—deliberately gone down to the cat café to pet a cat and skip his medication, staging a convenient little “allergic reaction” right on cue, purely to sabotage her date.

Qian Wei didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but she also felt an unexpected pang of tenderness. It was so foolish of him. She’d never imagined that Lu Xun—at twenty-eight, a man who could make or break outcomes with a word in the legal world—would resort to a scheme this clumsy, this almost embarrassingly childish.

She couldn’t help but want to bury her face in her hands. This man, always so quiet and reserved on the surface—just how much did he actually love her?

“The Ruiyi Law Firm case has a result! The Justice Bureau’s administrative penalty decision has come down—Wang Yue’s law license has been revoked! And the second-instance criminal verdict is out too—he’s been sentenced to one year for obstruction of testimony!” Attorney Zhang came bursting in from the hallway, visibly excited. “I just came back from the courthouse—heard the other lawyers gossiping about it. Serves him right!”

“Huh?” Qian Wei blinked. So even Ruiyi Law Firm and Wang Yue were real people who existed in this reality?

She asked, curious, “What happened, exactly?”

“Remember that legal aid case you took on about two months ago—helping a migrant worker recover unpaid wages?”

Qian Wei nodded. “Yeah, that happened. Didn’t we already get the wages back for him successfully? What does that have to do with Ruiyi?”

“Ruiyi had originally been trying to sweet-talk that migrant worker into hiring them, and then we swooped in with legal aid and stole their client right out from under them. And this wasn’t even the first time it happened, either—how could they not hold a grudge?” Attorney Zhang looked a little surprised. “You’ve been the one snatching Wang Yue’s cheese out from under him more than once now. Don’t you remember he actually stormed into our office once, looking to make trouble with you?”

Qian Wei was thoroughly shocked. “That actually happened? I had no idea at all!”

“You happened to be out at a hearing that day. Boss Lu was here and blocked him. Worried Wang Yue would keep looking for ways to get back at you afterward, he insisted, flat out, that you’d already left the firm. Wang Yue couldn’t find you, and I guess it didn’t sit right with him, because it led to a bit of a scuffle—he smashed a cup, and the flying glass shards even cut Boss Lu’s arm.”

“Why didn’t any of you tell me about this?! I had no idea whatsoever!”

Attorney Zhang made a shushing gesture. “Boss Lu told us not to say anything—didn’t want it affecting your mood, or putting any extra weight or pressure on you. Doesn’t matter now, though. Do you remember, the last time you came back from court, we were in the middle of discussing something about Wang Yue and Ruiyi…”

Qian Wei thought about it, and it suddenly clicked! There really had been something like that—she vaguely recalled overhearing her colleagues talking about something to do with Ruiyi, and when she’d walked over to ask, everyone had, with suspicious unanimity, immediately steered the conversation toward last night’s melodramatic TV drama instead…

Maybe memory and the brain really were remarkable things—here and there, scattered through all these ordinary little moments, there had already been traces all along of Lu Xun loving her, protecting her…

At that moment, Qian Wei almost felt grateful for the accident that had put her in a coma in the first place. Maybe fate really did work in mysterious ways, weaving together this whole chain of events just to reveal to her all those hidden secrets and quiet devotion from the past. Missing out on nine years was a genuine regret—but she could seize the present now, and she and Lu Xun still had a long, long future ahead of them, a whole lifetime’s worth.

Learning about the Ruiyi and Wang Yue situation only strengthened something Qian Wei had already begun to feel in her heart—that somewhere deep in her subconscious, she’d always wanted to help people who couldn’t afford expensive legal fees, and that was why, in her hallucination, she’d built herself an entire imagined career as an entrepreneur around exactly that.

She might no longer be nineteen, but at twenty-eight, as a practicing lawyer, she now had far more credible work experience and a much broader professional network than she ever could have had back then.

Qian Wei felt a surge of passion welling up inside her. She wanted to genuinely build that public-interest legal consultation website. She wanted to give a voice to people struggling at the bottom of society. She wanted everyone—rich or poor, educated or not—to be able to access the convenience of the law, to have that right belong to them too. She wanted to sweep away the countless disreputable firms like Ruiyi, wanted to leave crooked lawyers like Wang Yue with nowhere left to hide, wanted to restore some dignity to the legal profession’s reputation, wanted a healthy, well-ordered legal environment.

The ambition was grand, but Qian Wei’s heart was full of optimism and passion. People needed dreams to live for—even dreams that looked hopelessly naive to others. What if you actually tried, and it actually worked out? she told herself encouragingly. Even the untouchable, aloof Lu Xun had ended up falling head over heels for her—what in this world was truly impossible? Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

With that thought, Qian Wei threw herself immediately into drafting the business plan for the legal aid website. Now she could reach out for a partnership with the law school, and with her standing as a practicing attorney, she’d soon be able to open doors at other firms as well!

“Oh my god, you’ll never guess who I just saw! I was in the parking garage and I saw Li Mengyan! You know, the one who blew up overnight because of how good her acting is! I have no idea why she’d be in our building’s parking garage, but she looks exactly as gorgeous in person as in photos—tiny face, perfect skin, amazing figure! She had on a mask, hat, and sunglasses, but there’s no way I got it wrong!”

Just as Qian Wei was deep into researching material for the legal website, her colleague Attorney Chen came dashing in, eyes shining. Chen was normally a perfectly proper, serious lawyer, but the moment evening rolled around, she turned into a full-blown fangirl, practically an encyclopedia of entertainment industry gossip. Li Mengyan was her latest obsession, and Qian Wei had already heard plenty of her gushing—about her acting chops, her solid values, how down-to-earth she was despite the fame.

But before Attorney Chen could finish, Qian Wei saw, walking in right behind her, the very same newly-famous Li Mengyan.

“Excuse me…”

Attorney Chen turned around and, sure enough, was hit with a wave of pure shock. “Li—Li—Li Mengyan!”

Li Mengyan really didn’t carry herself like a diva. She took off her mask and sunglasses, revealing a delicate, finely featured face. Qian Wei took one look and had to admit—she really was beautiful. Maybe it was just that she’d been getting so much buzz lately, but something about her seemed vaguely familiar to Qian Wei.

In broad daylight, having such a high-profile celebrity show up at the firm sent the administrative staff scrambling to usher her into a conference room. Lu Xun had started expanding into entertainment-industry clients about six months back, and after successfully closing a few film financing deals, talent agencies and production companies had begun approaching the firm for partnerships. But a celebrity coming in personally to consult on legal matters—and without an appointment, no less—was a first.

Xiao Yan, looking a little nervous, stammered out an explanation to Li Mengyan. “Miss Li, our Attorney Lu is out of town on business. If you’re looking for him…”

Li Mengyan just smiled. “No, I’m not here for him.” She turned and looked at Qian Wei. “Qian Wei. I’m here for you.”

Qian Wei: ???

Under the weight of everyone’s fascinated stares, Qian Wei looked at Li Mengyan, utterly bewildered.

“I happened to be filming nearby today, and my scenes wrapped early. I’d asked around about you before and found out you worked at this firm, so I came specifically to see you.” Li Mengyan looked at Qian Wei. “There’s something I’ve wanted to say to you in person for a while now.”

Not until the two of them were seated in the conference room did Qian Wei’s disbelief finally start to fade. She pointed at herself. “Is there some kind of mistake? I mean, yes, I’m Qian Wei, but—do we actually know each other?”

“You might not know Li Mengyan. But Li Linlin—do you remember that name?”