When they parted that evening, Zhu Yun pressed a small notebook into Wang Yuxuan’s hands.

“There’s a route planned out inside, plus the shops I’d recommend. Call me tomorrow if you run into any problems.”

Wang Yuxuan made a dissatisfied sound, his displeasure plainly written on his face.

Zhu Yun said: “About that…”

“Mm?”

“I really do have something urgent. Don’t be cross.”

Wang Yuxuan looked back at her. Zhu Yun felt guilty and couldn’t quite meet his eyes. Wang Yuxuan laughed. “You’ve spent close to four figures on dinner for me. How would I dare to be cross?”

“…”

“Well.” Wang Yuxuan put on a performance of great suffering. “As the saying goes — you can’t bite the hand that feeds you. I accept my fate.”

Zhu Yun immediately looked up. “In that case — if my mother calls to check in, don’t let anything slip.”

“Don’t push it!”

Zhu Yun gave Wang Yuxuan a clap on the shoulder, smiled, said “Just play along — I’ll take you out again next time,” and turned back toward the campus. Wang Yuxuan rubbed the spot where she’d patted him and muttered under his breath, “Terribly perfunctory.” He opened the notebook. The contents, however, were thorough and detailed — clearly written with genuine care — and that softened his mood a fraction.

Zhu Yun returned to the dormitory, showered, changed, got everything sorted, then spun around in her chair several times before finally settling down and staring at the box sitting on her desk.

Compared to the dress box, the lighter box was considerably smaller.

Would it seem underwhelming by comparison?

In the quiet of the night, Zhu Yun’s thoughts churned.

How was she going to give it to him?

She didn’t want it to be too casual — that would seem dismissive — but she didn’t want to make too much of it either, in case it looked like she was conceding ground.

How could she pull this off with the kind of effortless finesse that matched the atmosphere of a princess has to wear a dress…

She had no idea what kind of competition she was engaged in with herself. Over something this small, Zhu Yun thought until her head nearly bled.

The next day, she showed up at the workspace sporting impressive dark circles.

Li Xun had already broken down the project requirements ahead of time and sent Zhu Yun her portion in a separate document.

A few hours later, Li Xun came to check her progress. “The page sizing is wrong. Where is your head?”

Zhu Yun said: “I haven’t finished slicing it yet.”

“One holiday and your hands forget everything?”

“…” She was just a little distracted, that was all.

The lighter was sitting right there in her coat pocket.

Zhu Yun glanced toward Li Xun’s side of the desk. He already had a lighter beside his laptop.

There was no opening…

Li Xun: “Forget it, better to do nothing than to do it with your head somewhere else. Go eat, you pick the place.” The boss was in an unusually generous mood today. He stood to get his jacket from the back, and Zhu Yun stood up too.

In that flash of a moment as she rose, something sparked in Zhu Yun’s mind. She shot a lightning-quick glance at Li Xun, then in one seamless, unhesitating motion swept the lighter off his desk and tucked it behind the computer tower.

The whole sequence was accomplished in a single fluid movement. Li Xun finished putting on his jacket and came back without noticing a thing.

“Let’s go.”

“Mm.” Zhu Yun nodded, face entirely untroubled. “Let’s go.”

They went to the plaza near the university. Term hadn’t officially started yet, and many of the shops were still closed.

They passed a cosmetics shop. The exterior wall was a full-length mirror panel. Li Xun stopped in his tracks.

Zhu Yun watched him check his own reflection and run a hand through his hair, and something in her quietly gave up.

Just how narcissistic are you…

“Come here.” The boss commanded.

Zhu Yun trudged over.

“Have a look.”

Look at what…

This was not the slimming mirror of a clothing boutique, and there was no flattering dim light to soften anything. The mall lighting blazed with the brightness of direct examination, and the tiled floor reflected light from every angle — it revealed people exactly as they were.

His looks genuinely held up under any conditions…

And herself? How did she look today?

Zhu Yun studied her own reflection without letting anything show on her face.

She looked exhausted…

All because of that lighter.

Her thoughts wandered. She didn’t dare meet Li Xun’s eyes in the mirror in case he noticed something off about her, so she kept shifting and moving in small ways, making sure he couldn’t get a static picture of her.

“It’s gotten a bit long, hasn’t it?” Li Xun said.

“What has?”

Li Xun frowned and raked his fingers through his own hair. “You can see the black coming through now.”

Only then did Zhu Yun notice that Li Xun’s hair had grown out a little. He parted it with a finger to show the dark roots at the base.

“What a pain in the ass.”

So why exactly do you insist on dyeing it gold in the first place?

Li Xun muttered something under his breath and pushed open the cosmetics shop door.

Zhu Yun followed him in, and watched as he made his way with practiced ease to a particular shelf and picked up a box of hair dye.

It was an imported product. A Chinese translation label had been stuck over the original packaging. Zhu Yun only caught the last line, printed in large characters:

Natural hold, non-stiff! Imperial platinum blonde!

She had nothing to say to that.

Hair dye purchased, they went in search of somewhere to eat.

“Why don’t you just go to a salon?” Zhu Yun asked.

“Nothing’s open yet. Going into the city center would be too far. Not worth it.”

Zhu Yun nodded, then looked up and found Li Xun watching her.

“You pick the restaurant. I’m paying.”

He’d already said that.

“And then come back and dye my hair for me.”

“………………”

That condition had not been mentioned before.

“I don’t know how.”

“It’s fine.”

“I genuinely don’t know how.”

“Read the instructions and you’ll figure it out.”

“I’ve never dyed hair before…” Nobody around her had ever dyed their hair — he was the first.

Li Xun finally ran out of patience. “If you can’t manage something this simple, can you even call yourself a woman?”

“…”

So being a woman comes with a compulsory hair-dyeing requirement?!

Zhu Yun very much wanted to snap back at him, but one look at the boss’s expression made her think better of it.

To register her displeasure, she deliberately chose a Japanese restaurant that wasn’t cheap. Li Xun walked in without a word, yawning as he went.

Throughout the meal, Zhu Yun kept finding her gaze drifting to Li Xun’s hair.

“Stop staring. Eat.”

The man across from her bit off half a sushi roll in one go.

Under that inexplicable pressure, Zhu Yun ate without tasting a thing and wasted a perfectly good meal.

Outside the restaurant, Zhu Yun watched the direction Li Xun was heading and said: “Are we going to Ren Di’s studio?”

“Mm.”

“Ren Di’s back too?”

“Not yet. He’ll be back when term starts.”

“Oh.”

Zhu Yun looked around at their surroundings.

It was still the holiday, and the university neighborhood had that inevitable quiet of an empty campus. She thought of how it had felt the previous evening in the dormitory — the campus so still, so vast, so open.

Just the two of them, two points connected by a single line.

The studio had much less in it than usual — the members had probably taken their instruments home with them.

On the south wall there was a full-length mirror. Li Xun came in, dragged a stool directly in front of it, sat down, and tossed the box of hair dye into Zhu Yun’s arms.

“Figure it out.”

Zhu Yun opened the box and took out the instruction leaflet.

The process looked simple enough. After reading it through, her confidence climbed considerably.

“Alright then, I’m going to start…” Don’t blame me if it goes wrong, she thought, pulling on the plastic gloves.

It was overcast outside. It was only the afternoon, but the room had already begun to darken — not yet enough to need the lights, but heading there.

Zhu Yun squeezed both developer tubes together and mixed them until even.

There was nowhere nearby to set the bowl down. Zhu Yun held it out to Li Xun. “Can you hold this.”

Li Xun took it with languid indifference.

Things that look easy often prove otherwise.

This was Zhu Yun’s first time dyeing anyone’s hair, and her competence was, to put it charitably, limited. Afraid of getting the dye anywhere it shouldn’t go, she applied it with such careful, tentative strokes that after a long time she had made barely any progress.

“Did you not eat enough?”

Zhu Yun looked up and caught Li Xun’s eyes looking back at her in the mirror.

With his hair damp, the lines of his face looked even sharper.

“I ate plenty,” Zhu Yun said.

“Plenty, and that’s all the strength you have?”

Zhu Yun gave a small cough and pressed down with slightly more force. Through the thin layer of the glove, the warmth of Li Xun’s scalp — its temperature, its texture — transmitted clearly through her fingertips and straight to the center of her being.

Silence.

The wide, bare room with its cool concrete walls made every sensation more immediate.

“Pass me a cigarette,” he said quietly.

Zhu Yun peeled off one glove and reached into his jacket pocket for the box. She took out a cigarette. Li Xun lowered his head, lips parting gently.

She could see behind him — the line of his neck, his shoulders, descending into the darkness of his collar.

A darkness full of mystery.

In the moment she placed the cigarette between his lips, something struck her.

Fire…

There was a cigarette.

A cigarette needed fire.

Fire…

Oh my god, the opportunity — !!!!!!!!

The heavens had taken pity on her.

The question that had kept her awake an entire night — how to pull this off with the finesse that matched the atmosphere of “a princess has to wear a dress” — had just answered itself.

“Are you going to light it or not. What are you thinking about.” He spoke softly around the cigarette in his mouth.

Zhu Yun suppressed the volcanic eruption threatening to break through her composure, made a calm sound of acknowledgment, and drew the lighter out of her own coat pocket.

His gaze locked onto it the instant it appeared.

It was, genuinely, a striking lighter — a classic gold-wrapped snowflake pattern, luminous all over, beautiful in every detail.

She ran her thumb lightly over the wheel. The flame leapt up in a clean, smooth arc.

It was fortunate she had practiced the night before. This lighter was not like an ordinary one — it took a certain technique to strike.

He watched it for a moment, then tilted his head slightly, eyes lowering, lashes dropping, and drew gently toward the flame.

His hair still damp, his neck long and graceful — it looked like a slow-motion shot from a film, the firelight casting over his face a quality of beauty that was difficult to put into words.

He exhaled a breath of smoke and looked at the lighter.

“That’s quite something.”

Zhu Yun’s hand had begun to shake very slightly. A torrent of possible lines churned through her mind — and then time ran out, and she grabbed whatever came to her first:

“If you like it, keep it.”

Oh. That actually wasn’t bad.

Li Xun dropped his head. His shoulders trembled.

He was laughing…

Was it really that funny…

Li Xun started with a low laugh, and then the sound grew, as though he couldn’t contain it, and he threw his head back and laughed out loud.

The bright, clear sound rang through the empty room, bouncing off every wall, finding its way into every corner and straight into the chest.

Zhu Yun broke out in goosebumps all over. She could feel herself on the verge of collapse, desperately wishing for a crack in the floor to swallow her whole.

Just when she was about to lose all composure, Li Xun finally stopped. The sustained laughter had put a faint flush on his face, and his eyes were curved with the remnants of it. “Fair enough. I’ll keep it. Come put it away for me.”

A success.

Whatever else might be said — the plan had succeeded.

Zhu Yun turned to put the lighter into his jacket pocket.

“Where are you going?”

She looked back. Li Xun was leaning relaxed in his chair, the same smile still on his face, the cigarette held lightly between his teeth, eyes half-narrowed as he looked downward.

“I meant here.”

Zhu Yun followed his gaze.

His right leg was extended. At the top of the thigh, there was a pocket.

Oh for the love of —

Li Xun, I have completely underestimated you.

Zhu Yun looked at that expression of his — utterly composed, not a trace of discomfort — and absolutely refused to be the one to back down. She walked over and pushed the lighter into his trouser pocket.

He was seated. The fabric was pulled taut — especially across the thigh.

There seemed to be something already in the pocket. A wallet, or keys?

His legs were solid — not a powerfully built frame, but the muscle was long and smooth and had real give to it.

These are Li Xun’s legs…

The moment that thought fully formed, Zhu Yun’s knees went soft.

She kept her head bent — apparently focused on the task — but really she was hiding her face.

It had to be red. Absolutely had to be.

Li Xun was very close. The smell of cigarette smoke drifted around them.

She finally managed to get the lighter in. Zhu Yun straightened up. In that instant, quite incidentally, their cheeks grazed past one another.

Against the heat radiating from her own skin, his face felt cool and faintly smooth — like fine silk.

Zhu Yun’s nerve broke completely.

Li Xun was still smiling.

“…I need to use the bathroom.” She kept her eyes down, said it in a muffled voice, turned around, and walked straight out. She went directly into the bathroom, locked it behind her, and pressed her back against the door.

Both hands balled into fists. She bore down with all her strength — more, and more still. The small figure in her chest threw its head back and howled at the sky.

Could you pull yourself together for even one moment?!

Fortunately Zhu Yun had a resilient constitution. It wasn’t long before she’d splashed cold water on her hands, and walked back out with her expression entirely restored.

The lighter episode passed. The hair came out fine. Back at the workspace, Zhu Yun was finally able to throw herself into the project with a clear head.

After that, everything went back to normal. The two of them carried on as though nothing whatsoever had happened.

A few days later, Gao Jianhong returned. He happened to notice Li Xun’s new lighter, and his curiosity immediately got the better of him. “Hey, that’s fancy — where did that come from? Let me have a look.”

“Back off.” The top scholar closed his hand around the lighter. “Use your time. Go coordinate the project with the princess. Finish before term starts — there are other things to deal with after.”