The next day, the meeting at the base proceeded as usual.

Gao Jianhong had been talking for a while when he noticed that Zhu Yun seemed distracted.

“Something wrong? Any questions?”

“Hm?” Zhu Yun snapped back to attention and shook her head. “No, nothing.” She glanced around. “Where’s Li Xun today?”

Gao Jianhong: “No idea. He called me this morning and said he had something going on — asked me to handle the base today.”

Something going on?

Was it related to that woman from last night?

Zhu Yun didn’t want to let her mind wander, but couldn’t help it.

“Come on, let’s keep going.” Gao Jianhong crooks a finger at her.

Li Xun skipped every class that day. When Zhu Yun arrived at the base after afternoon sessions, she found him already back — curled into his chair writing code as usual, as though nothing had happened.

Zhu Yun sat down and asked, as casually as she could: “Where did you go today?”

Li Xun: “Wandered around the city center.”

Zhu Yun: “The city center? What were you doing there?”

Li Xun glanced at her, his tone sardonic. “What — has Her Royal Highness’s competition project reached such a flawless state that she now has the mental bandwidth to concern herself with other people’s affairs?”

“…”

Like I actually care about your business, you debt-ridden top scorer.

Zhu Yun harrumphed internally and turned back to her own work. Her eyes drifted without thinking to a bag sitting at Li Xun’s feet — it looked like it was from the central sports stadium…

That evening, Gao Jianhong called Zhu Yun to go eat dinner together. He was still mulling over the competition project on the way there. “Analysis of malicious programs is something quite a few teams have already done in previous competitions. Should we try to do something more original?”

Zhu Yun said: “Sure, but security competitions only have so many major directions. What if we approached it from the hardware side—” She stopped mid-sentence. Gao Jianhong asked, “What is it?”

Zhu Yun was looking toward the school gate. There seemed to be someone standing on the other side of the road.

“Zhu Yun?”

“Uh…” Zhu Yun opened her mouth. Gao Jianhong said, “Come on, let’s go — what do you want to eat? Should we go somewhere outside?”

Zhu Yun: “It’s fine, let’s just eat at school and then head back to work.”

Gao Jianhong smiled. “No need to be in such a rush. Take it easy — I’m not Li Xun.”

They walked toward the cafeteria. Zhu Yun kept her head down the whole way, counting the stone slabs underfoot, not registering a single word Gao Jianhong said. Finally, at the very moment she set foot on the steps leading inside, she stopped.

“Actually…” Zhu Yun called after Gao Jianhong. “I just remembered something. I need to make a quick trip back to the dorm.”

“What for?”

Zhu Yun improvised: “My mom asked me to mail something for her and I completely forgot. You don’t have to wait for me — go ahead and eat. I’ll see you at the base tonight.”

“Alright then.”

Gao Jianhong headed into the cafeteria alone. Zhu Yun half-jogged to the school gate.

Is she there? Is she there? Is she there?

Zhu Yun scanned in every direction and finally spotted that figure at the entrance of a dessert shop across the road.

At this distance, making out someone’s face was genuinely difficult — Zhu Yun mainly identified her by the outfit, which was as hopelessly unfashionable as she remembered.

She pretended to be just passing by, walking past the woman and using her peripheral vision to sweep a quick assessment as their shoulders nearly brushed. The woman’s complexion was sallow, her skin in poor condition. She had a large bag hanging from one hand, shoulders slouched, looking thoroughly exhausted.

After passing, Zhu Yun turned around and walked by again.

She did this three or four times in a row before finally stopping, taking one last look back toward the school to confirm there was no sign of Li Xun, and then walking straight up to the woman.

“Oh!”

Zhu Yun bumped into the woman from behind and immediately began apologizing profusely: “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry!”

The woman seemed startled too, but collected herself quickly. “It’s— it’s fine.”

Zhu Yun: “I really am sorry, I was lost in thought and just wasn’t paying attention…”

The woman shook her head. “It’s alright.”

She had a strong regional accent, but her voice had no force behind it. She was thin, visibly weighed down by worry.

Zhu Yun struck up a casual conversation, probing gently: “Carrying all that luggage on your own — are you visiting from out of town?”

“What? Oh… yes, yes, from out of town.”

“Here for sightseeing?”

“No…”

“Then what brings you here?”

The woman was slow to respond. After each question Zhu Yun asked, several seconds would pass before an answer came.

“…I’m here to find my younger brother.”

Zhu Yun took one second to process that sentence, and then her mind erupted.

Her younger brother!

Her YOUNGER BROTHER!!

It’s a younger BROTHER —!!!

Zhu Yun looked at the woman’s face again.

Now that she mentioned it, Zhu Yun realized the woman was actually quite tall. Zhu Yun herself stood at a respectable 168 centimeters, and yet she was still noticeably shorter than this woman. Looking more carefully, the woman’s face was actually not bad at all — despite the lack of grooming and the rough skin, the underlying features were decent enough…

And those eyes — those inner-lidded phoenix eyes…

Zhu Yun felt a slight unease creep in.

She couldn’t quite say why. She had crossed paths with all sorts of stylish girlfriends and voluptuous ex-girlfriends of Li Xun’s before, and none of them had made her feel this way.

But the person in front of her was Li Xun’s older sister.

She was his family.

Zhu Yun had a decent memory. She still clearly remembered how Zhang Xiaobei had once used this against Li Xun — his household registration was rural, and the school had no way of contacting his family…

He didn’t even go home for the New Year.

Judging from how Li Xun had treated this woman last night, his relationship with his family was clearly very poor. If she started meddling and Li Xun found out, she had a feeling he wouldn’t treat it as a laughing matter.

Zhu Yun weighed whether she should simply retreat and pretend she had never seen the woman at all.

The woman was still looking downward. Around her feet were piled old, battered cloth bags coated in dust, and she was still holding the large bag in her hand. Despite her tall frame, she was truly thin — standing alone by the roadside, completely worn out.

Zhu Yun felt a pang of reluctance. This was still his sister, whatever the situation. She pointed toward a café nearby. “How about we go sit for a bit?”

The woman immediately waved her off. “Oh no, there’s no need.”

Zhu Yun: “I happen to be waiting for someone too — come wait inside with me.”

“Really, it’s fine.”

Zhu Yun deployed every ounce of charm she possessed, summoning the kindest and most earnest smile of her entire life, until her face was nearly cramping — and at last managed to coax the woman into the café.

This café on the college strip was not a low-end establishment. The server was a student working part-time, with the sharp eye of someone who sized people up quickly, and one look at the woman’s clothing and stack of luggage produced a distinct change in expression.

“We do have a minimum spend requirement here.”

Zhu Yun had never in her life had anyone speak to her in that tone. The shock nearly sent her reaching for the coffee on the neighboring table to splash in the server’s face.

The woman bowed her head. “Perhaps I should just wait outside…”

“No, no, no — come, come and sit.” Zhu Yun steered the woman firmly into a seat and ordered two coffees.

The coffees arrived. The woman didn’t touch hers — she just sat with her head down, not daring to reach for anything.

Zhu Yun cast around for something to say.

“So, um… what’s your name?”

“Li Lan.”

Also surnamed Li.

“Are you and your brother biological siblings?”

Li Lan shook her head.

“Cousins?”

She shook her head again.

…

Zhu Yun changed approach. “How long has it been since you last saw him?”

Li Lan’s voice was barely above a whisper. “A very, very long time.”

Zhu Yun asked a few more questions, then noticed that Li Lan was growing quieter and quieter, until she had gone almost completely still. Looking more closely, Zhu Yun noticed Li Lan’s shoulders trembling faintly. She was crying.

“Are you alright?”

Li Lan: “I’m fine.”

She looked anything but fine.

Zhu Yun hesitated, then reached for her phone. “Is your brother a student at our school? What’s his name — maybe I know him. I can find him for you.”

“No.” Li Lan declined immediately. She lifted her head — her eyes were, as expected, red-rimmed. “Don’t find him. He doesn’t want to see me…”

There are a lot of things he doesn’t want. Not everything can go his way.

“It’s just one meeting. It’ll be fine.”

“No, please don’t, he’ll be angry!”

Zhu Yun watched Li Lan’s timid, shrinking manner and felt a deep frustration stir inside her. She frowned, abandoned all pretense of subtlety, and asked directly —

“If you’re siblings, what on earth happened between you? Why can’t you see each other? Does he hate you that much?”

Li Lan’s face went pale in an instant.

Oh no—

Zhu Yun realized her mistake and rushed to walk it back: “I didn’t mean it like that — I just meant, I think—”

“He should hate us.” Li Lan murmured. She covered her face with her hands. “It’s right that he doesn’t want to see us…”

What?

Zhu Yun slowly, carefully, began to draw her out — guiding her to lower her guard.

It seemed Li Lan had very few people in her day-to-day life she could talk to about any of this. Faced with this kind and sympathetic stranger, she began, little by little, to open up.

Zhu Yun listened as Li Lan spoke of the past, and felt a quiet dread settling in her chest. Not because the story itself was particularly dramatic — but because the person at its center was Li Xun.

She was looking into his secrets without his permission.

She wanted to stop. She couldn’t.

Li Lan and Li Xun’s hometown was in a place known for its rice and fish — Zhu Yun had heard of it. There was a famous lake there; the view of the mountains and water was beautiful, even if it was a rural area.

That explains why his skin is so good, Zhu Yun thought. Good land nurtures good people.

Li Lan had received little formal education, and many things she tried to explain came out muddled no matter how many times she circled back to them.

But what matters most in a story is feeling. From Li Lan’s halting, stumbling account, Zhu Yun heard the weight of all the emotion buried beneath those plain, simple years.

The two of them were half-siblings. Li Xun had come to live with Li Lan’s family when he was six years old, and before that, no one had known he existed.

Li Lan’s father, Li Chengbo, had started out as a farmer. He later rode the wave of the times into foreign trade, enjoyed a period of prosperity, and opened a factory. The factory was of decent scale in those days, with many workers — and Li Xun’s mother had been one of them.

According to Li Lan, Li Xun’s mother was strikingly beautiful. It was a kind of beauty that set her apart from everyone else on the factory floor — vivid and unapologetic. She was poor, but she lived fashionably, sewed herself the prettiest clothes, and listened to the most popular band recordings on cassette tape.

She was talked about relentlessly behind her back at the factory. She didn’t care in the slightest.

Li Chengbo quickly took notice of this unusual woman. He concealed the fact that he already had a family and began pursuing her.

Judging from Li Xun’s own looks, Li Chengbo must have been very handsome — tall, in the full vigor of his youth, full of confident ambition.

She fell for him easily, and became pregnant with Li Xun.

Li Chengbo had the mindset common among older generations in the countryside — a strong preference for sons. At the time, a doctor at a small clinic had determined the baby was a girl. Li Chengbo told her to terminate the pregnancy. Li Xun’s mother refused absolutely; eight months along, she left the factory.

Later, Li Chengbo’s business failed and he returned to his hometown with nothing. His temper turned volatile and unpredictable after that.

Li Lan was five at the time, the youngest child in the family, with three older brothers above her. Li Chengbo didn’t like her — he often struck her or berated her, and her mother, afraid of her husband, never dared show her too much warmth. Li Lan did the heaviest work from the time she was small, and wore nothing but her brothers’ cast-offs.

Later, Li Chengbo fell into gambling and drinking. The household was in constant turmoil, everyone’s tempers perpetually frayed — everyone except Li Lan, because there was no one in that family she could vent her frustrations at.

Then, in the year Li Lan turned ten, Li Xun’s mother arrived at the house with Li Xun.

Li Lan was still young then and didn’t fully understand what the arrival of mother and son actually meant. She was simply happy — she was no longer the youngest in the family. Maybe now she’d finally have someone she could take her frustrations out on. But reality was harsh; Li Lan quickly realized that this new little brother was tougher than all three of her older brothers combined.

It wasn’t that she bullied him — just stepping near him was enough to earn a fierce glare.

Still, Li Xun’s arrival did bring one benefit to Li Lan: she was no longer the target her brothers and mother took their anger out on. They had found a new target. They even, remarkably, pulled Li Lan onto their side — a united front against the outsiders.

The whole family had previously been ground down by Li Chengbo’s drinking. Now the food chain extended one link further downward, and what that meant for Li Xun and his mother was plain to see. Li Lan’s mother summoned more backbone than she had ever shown in her life in dealing with these uninvited newcomers. Li Xun’s mother bore it relatively quietly, but whatever treatment they handed out, Li Xun returned it in full measure and then some, which only stoked Li Lan’s mother’s fury further.

Even so — ever since Li Xun and his mother arrived, Li Lan’s mother had something to occupy her every day. In a strange way, life had more color to it than before.

Despite living this way, Li Xun’s mother refused to leave. She had already fallen gravely ill by then, and had no family of her own to turn to. Without this roof over their heads, there was no future for six-year-old Li Xun.

Fortunately, Li Chengbo was reasonably satisfied with his newfound son, and with him keeping the peace, Li Lan’s mother couldn’t go too far.

Li Xun’s mother tried desperately to help her son find a place in this family. It was futile. Li Xun never once gave any of them a straight look, and for that, he bore the full brunt of the three older brothers’ mistreatment. They paid no mind whatsoever to his pride.

Li Lan would often be washing and cleaning late into the night, long after everyone else had gone to sleep. She witnessed it several times — Li Xun’s mother standing in the moonlight, quietly urging her son to soften his ways. This isn’t like before, when the two of us were on our own, she would tell him. You have to get along with your brothers. Li Xun never responded. When his mother lost patience and raised a hand to him, he cried until he was heartbroken — but still refused to agree.

Li Lan’s heart softened. She kept feeling that they were not the terrible people her family made them out to be. She pitied them.

Li Lan began quietly helping them in small ways. By that point Li Xun’s mother was severely ill — the pain kept her awake through the nights. Li Lan would wait until the rest of the family was asleep and sneak out to make her rice porridge, sitting up to tend to her.

Gradually, she began to genuinely care for Li Xun’s mother. Li Xun’s mother made her a dress from the simplest cloth she had — it was the first dress Li Lan had ever owned. She also let her listen to the band cassette tapes, and Li Lan took to them instantly, becoming completely absorbed in these new and thrilling sounds, seeking them out every spare moment she had.

Li Xun was not skilled at caring for people; he was helpless in the face of his mother’s illness. Li Lan put on a big-sister air and scolded him: “You need to listen to your mother.” She knew those three brothers of hers well — they liked picking on people who were stubborn. If you just went along with them, they’d lose interest quickly enough.

She meant it kindly, but Li Xun ignored her completely. Li Lan said, frustrated: “It’s what your mother wants!”

Li Xun glared at her. “It is not!”

There was no reasoning with him. Li Lan gave up and ignored him too.

Then Li Xun’s mother passed away.

Her end was terrible — the illness had reduced her to something barely recognizable, a shrunken, frightful shape that kept even Li Lan’s mother from looking for trouble with them for those few days.

She died in the middle of the night. Li Lan was there. Perhaps Li Xun had known his mother was near the end — he wept as though something were tearing him apart. In her final moments, his mother held his hand and mechanically enjoined him, one last time, to find his place in the family and live well. Looking at her like that, Li Xun finally nodded and gave her his word.

It should have been the fulfillment of her deepest wish. But for reasons no one could explain, at the very instant he said yes, his mother reacted as though she had received some tremendous shock — she raised a withered arm and gripped the back of his neck, her touch full of endless longing and unwillingness to let go.

“No…” She spent the very last of her strength to say to her son: “Li Xun, you must never become like them.”

Li Xun heard her, his jaw clenched tight. He pressed his face deep into the hollow of her palm, and promised her: “I understand.”

His mother left peacefully.

Li Lan stood at the side and watched it all. She didn’t know how to describe what she felt in that moment — it was the first time she had ever encountered a kind of love so different from anything her family had shown her.

From then on, she started finding every way she could to help this younger brother who had never once called her sister.

Li Xun eventually started school. Back in their hometown, schools were sparse — primary and middle school students were all in the same building. Li Lan’s oldest brother had already graduated; the second and third were in middle school. Li Lan herself had only finished three years of primary school before being pulled home to help with work.

From the moment Li Xun started school, Li Lan noticed that her brothers’ cruelty toward him had intensified. She couldn’t understand where all their hatred came from — they treated him as though he were a mortal enemy.

Li Xun never complained. But he was still just a child, and when he couldn’t fight back, all he could do was endure. Before long, he was covered in injuries.

The brothers would secretly tear up his textbooks, throw away his school bag, and manufacture every possible obstacle to keep him from attending school. But no matter how badly hurt he was, no matter what state his books were in, Li Xun never missed a single day of class. And he had learned — not to study when his brothers were around.

So when night fell, beneath the tile lantern in the small courtyard, beside Li Lan doing the laundry, there was now also Li Xun, reviewing his lessons by the light.

One time Li Lan asked him: “Why do you like reading so much?”

Li Xun replied without warmth: “Like you’d understand even if I told you.”

His manner toward her was as cool as it had always been — in truth, he carried a deep hostility toward everyone in that household. But Li Lan had stopped minding. There were plenty of people who treated her badly; besides, she felt that Li Xun’s sharpness wasn’t the true kind of sharpness.

She looked after him quietly — washed his clothes, cooked for him, found ways to divert her brothers’ attention away from him.

The days passed. Then one evening, Li Lan was surprised to find that Li Xun hadn’t come out to study. She searched the back courtyard storage area and found him there, pressing a hand against his ribs, saying nothing when she asked what was wrong.

Li Lan found out later what had happened. Li Xun had been admitted to the only decent advanced class at their poorly-resourced school — it was in the north building, a bit removed from where her brothers had their classes.

But the advanced class required an additional tuition fee. Li Lan’s mother would never have paid it for Li Xun. So he never got to go, and was sent back to where he had been before.

His brothers were thrilled. Li Xun got into another conflict with them. They gave him a cheerful beating — two cracked ribs.

Li Xun didn’t go to the hospital. Li Lan cleaned and dressed his wounds, and secretly saved up money to buy pork ribs to make him bone broth.

When Li Xun was well enough to stand again, he spoke to Li Lan for the first time on his own initiative — he asked to borrow money.

Li Lan had no money herself, but Li Xun didn’t care. He shouted and raged at her. Li Lan grew so anxious that she cried, and in the end told a lie to pry some money from her mother.

Li Xun took the money and went to the county town alone. When he came back, everyone — Li Lan included — was completely taken aback.

He had dyed his hair pure gold.

Hair dyeing was not yet common in those days, and a color this vivid and extreme was almost unheard of.

Because of this wildly unconventional hair color, Li Xun faced even more cruelty than before. Even Li Chengbo flew into a rage over it. When Li Chengbo lost his temper, the whole family cowered in corners, no one daring to approach.

More than once, Li Lan thought her father might actually beat Li Xun to death.

But all the way to the end, Li Xun never apologized. He never dyed his hair back.

Eventually, everyone grew tired of hitting him, tired of screaming at him, and simply got used to it.

And so that small boy, through this simple, almost childlike act of defiance, declared to the world that he was different from all of them.