Even though Zhu Yun was in reasonably good spirits, she still felt that standing on the side of the road grinning like an idiot in the middle of the night was a bit lacking in dignity.

“Come on, let’s head back.” Zhu Yun gave a small tug at the hem of Li Xun’s shirt, and the two of them walked together toward the hotel.

An unfamiliar campus. An unfamiliar night.

There was no one else on the path — just the two of them, walking in silence the whole way. The day’s events had been too turbulent for words, and now that the curtain had come down, the reverberations were still there.

Zhu Yun had countless things she wanted to ask Li Xun. Her mind was a jumble, and in the end she couldn’t figure out where to begin.

Maybe start with what the school decided to do about it…

Just as Zhu Yun was about to speak, Li Xun’s phone rang.

He unhurriedly dug it out.

“Hello? Oh, I just got out. Nothing’s going on, it’s fine. I’ll be back soon.”

…

Zhu Yun sharpened her ears and listened carefully.

The night was quiet enough that she could hear a girl’s voice on the other end of the line — just not what was actually being said.

A voice in her head asked —

Who?

Another voice answered —

Who else — that Xu girl, obviously.

The moment that thought surfaced, every sensible topic that had been forming in Zhu Yun’s mind instantly evaporated without a trace, leaving behind only the image from the competition venue earlier that day — Xu Lina’s excited expression and that bright, ringing whistle.

Li Xun hung up quickly. Zhu Yun asked, in what she hoped sounded like a casual tone, “Who was that?”

“Xu Lina.”

Just as she’d thought!

“What did she want?”

“Nothing much — just checking in.”

Zhu Yun made a noncommittal sound. Then Li Xun added, “She asked me to go find her tonight. Said she has something to tell me.”

That timing. Even a blind person could figure out what she was up to.

Warning bells erupted in Zhu Yun’s mind.

“Are you going to go?”

Just at that moment, Li Xun let out a yawn. Zhu Yun immediately seized the opening.

“You’re exhausted — just go straight to bed.”

“Sure.” Li Xun offered no resistance. He had well and truly reached his limit; he was fighting to keep his eyes open.

Inside, Zhu Yun pressed her palms together in silent gratitude. Thank heavens.

Zhu Yun walked Li Xun to his room door. Gao Jianhong had been waiting inside for some time and opened the door ready to bombard Li Xun with questions about what had happened — but Li Xun caught sight of the bed and dropped onto it like a felled tree, sound asleep in under two minutes.

Gao Jianhong turned to Zhu Yun. “Did he tell you what the outcome was?”

“No — we’ll ask tomorrow.” Zhu Yun said.

Zhu Yun returned to her own room. Her senior was already asleep. She crept to the bathroom and stood under a cool shower.

As the faint chill of the water traced its way over her skin, Zhu Yun felt every last trace of the negative emotions that had accumulated over these past days wash completely away.

She finished her shower, wrapped herself in a towel, and collapsed onto the bed.

Unlike Li Xun, she did not fall asleep immediately. On the contrary, she tossed and turned and couldn’t settle.

The distress from the competition had gone — but something else had begun to take root in the darkness of the night.

Zhu Yun’s head was entirely occupied by that Xu girl.

She lay there rolling back and forth like dough on a board until well past three in the morning. Finally, bleary-eyed and red-veined, Zhu Yun hauled herself up, grabbed her phone, and slipped out into the corridor.

The hallway was silent. Everyone was fast asleep. She went to the stairwell landing and sat down, then dialed a number.

The phone rang over a dozen times and then cut off on its own.

Not willing to give up, Zhu Yun called again. This time someone answered.

The person on the other end had been dragged forcibly out of sleep and was thoroughly miserable, their voice hoarse. “Listen here, Zhu Your Highness — do you know what time it is? I’m dying over here…”

Zhu Yun pressed her face against the phone. “Ren Di — help!”

Ren Di: “Help what — were you robbed?”

“No, Ren Di…”

She was being uncommonly whiny about it, and Ren Di finally let out a long sigh on the other end, got out of bed, grabbed a bandmate’s shirt from wherever it had landed, threw it over his shoulders, and pushed open the balcony door.

A breath of night air later, he was marginally more awake.

Ren Di lit a cigarette. “Alright, what did Li Xun do this time.”

Zhu Yun was speechless for three seconds. “How did you know it was about him?”

Ren Di snorted. “What else do you have going on?”

Do I really seem that one-track-minded?

“So it’s not about him?”

“…It is.”

“Then talk.”

Now that the moment had come to actually say it, Zhu Yun found herself tying herself in knots. She had spent her whole life being extraordinarily skilled at conducting elaborate inner monologues — relentless, fragmented self-analysis — but she had never once discussed this kind of topic with another person and had absolutely no idea how to begin.

Before Zhu Yun could stammer her way to a coherent sentence, Ren Di asked, “Is he chasing after someone over there?”

A blunt opening. Zhu Yun said, “…No.”

“Someone chasing him?”

“…”

Hearing no answer, Ren Di understood. “Sounds like that’s it. What’s she like?”

Someone with a deep well of revolutionary conviction.

Zhu Yun lowered her head and answered honestly, “A fairly pretty girl.”

“Local?”

“Probably.”

“Then it won’t go anywhere.” Ren Di said flatly. “If Li Xun could manage a long-distance relationship, the earth would have to be on the verge of ending first.”

“Is that so…”

Ren Di gave a short laugh and then said, “But what exactly is going through your head right now?”

Zhu Yun pressed a finger into the floor and tapped it rhythmically.

“Ren Di, let me ask you something.”

“Go ahead.”

Zhu Yun pressed her lips together, then said quietly, “If a girl makes the first move — does that make her look desperate?”

“If it’s Li Xun, you’ll look desperate either way.”

“…”

Zhu Yun fell silent again. Ren Di said, “This really is a tough spot you’re in.”

He exhaled against the night sky and explained, “Li Xun looks like trouble from a mile away — most people give him a wide berth. The girls who do go after him tend to be fairly experienced. Someone like you — and I say this with no good way to put it delicately — is completely out of your depth with him.”

Someone like you, with no good way to put it delicately…

Zhu Yun felt invisible daggers jabbing into her, one after the other.

Ren Di asked with gossipy curiosity, “How pretty is this girl — compared to that plastic Barbie Liu Sisi?”

Zhu Yun thought for a moment. “They’re not the same type, but I think Liu Sisi is prettier.”

“Interesting. What are you thinking of doing?”

Zhu Yun thought: if I knew, I wouldn’t have called.

Something floated up in her mind and she said it without thinking, “Oh, speaking of which — I saw a newspaper article not long ago saying the country’s male-to-female ratio is imbalanced, that there are significantly fewer women than men, and that in the future—”

“What are you on about.” Ren Di cut her off without mercy.

Zhu Yun said, “It was data from the national census.”

“Doesn’t matter who ran the numbers.” Ren Di said coolly. “It’s all an illusion. Zhu Yun, I’m going to tell you something important — listen carefully.”

Zhu Yun straightened up instinctively.

Ren Di said, “Regardless of what the male-to-female ratio looks like, good men have always been and will always be rarer than good women in this world.”

The moment he said it, Zhu Yun felt as if a bolt of lightning had passed straight through her — followed by the sudden, exhilarating clarity of genuine insight.

“So when you come across someone worthwhile, make your move before someone else does. All that hemming and hawing and going back and forth — that’s how you end up among the ones left over.” Ren Di stubbed out the finished cigarette and added, “And don’t idealize men too much. I’m not trying to scare you, but a man’s willpower can be breathtakingly weak sometimes — especially when he has options.”

There was a saying for this, wasn’t there?

Nine words to wake a wanderer from his path; one sentence to rouse the dreamer from his sleep.

Zhu Yun took a deep breath. “Ren Di…”

“Yeah?”

“I’m going.”

Ren Di laughed despite himself. “It’s this hour — where exactly are you going?”

Zhu Yun came back to herself and remembered it was the dead of night. Ren Di chuckled, “Wait until morning. And when you have good news, let me know.”

“Okay.”

Ren Di offered a final word of comfort: “And if it’s bad news, it’s fine too. Given how skilled both of you are at playing dumb, you could absolutely act like nothing happened at all — you really don’t need to worry about it being awkward.”

“…”

“No pressure. That scoundrel Li Xun has needed someone to deal with him for a long time now.”

One slap, then a sweet date — my nerves are worse now than before.

Zhu Yun’s thoughts were still tumbling about. Whatever surfaced came straight out of her mouth.

“He said once that he liked… ‘simple-minded girls’…”

“He says all kinds of things. Outside of the serious work you do at the lab, you can afford to ignore nine out of ten things he says. And besides…” Ren Di said with an amused snort, “do you think sneaking out alone in the middle of the night to call an emotional advice hotline is the behavior of a particularly sharp person? Stop flattering yourself.”

Fair enough.

They talked for a few more minutes, and Zhu Yun finally let Ren Di go to sleep.

“One more thing—” Just before she hung up, she said quietly, “Ren Di — thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Zhu Yun’s final question: “Do you think the two of us—”

“A perfect match.”

Zhu Yun beamed to herself in the quiet of the empty corridor.

She hung up. Zhu Yun felt considerably lighter — but the relief didn’t last long before the weight settled back onto her shoulders.

She made her way back to the room, still unable to sleep. She dragged her bag to the bathroom and began sorting through it.

She had been so single-mindedly focused on the competition that she’d paid no attention to any of this before — and only now did she realize that she hadn’t brought a single decent outfit with her. For the sake of convenience she’d packed nothing but plain shirts and trousers, and had been wearing trainers the whole time.

You never appreciate your wardrobe until you need it. Zhu Yun cast her mind back over how she’d been dressed these past few days — the spitting image of a supermarket promotions rep.

She sat on the edge of the bathtub, a little anxious, but far more excited — as though she’d just taken on a new project. She rallied herself: treat it like a challenging problem, throw yourself into it the same way you always do, and whatever happens in the end is up to fate.

With that resolution made, she waited until the sky was barely beginning to lighten. Without saying a word to anyone, she pocketed her bank card and slipped out the door.

She hailed a cab and made her way to the largest shopping mall in the area. The mall wasn’t open yet, so Zhu Yun waited outside and thought things through.

When the doors finally opened, she was in with the first wave of people, and spent the better part of the morning combing the floors in search of the brand of the dress Li Xun had once given her. It was a well-known label, and she found it without much difficulty — only to discover that the store’s collections had long since cycled over. The dress Li Xun had given her had been a heavier winter style; everything on the racks now was the lightest of summer fabrics.

Zhu Yun had only tried the dress from Li Xun on once before carefully putting it away, but the silhouette and the feel of it had stayed clearly in her memory. She moved through the store with a restless energy. The prices here were steep; Zhu Yun looked every bit the student she was, in her plain, understated clothes, and the shop assistants didn’t pay her much mind. At first one of them had trailed after her, but before long she’d drifted off to chat with her colleagues instead.

Zhu Yun paid this no attention and went through the pieces one by one on her own.

Li Xun had quite a distinctive aesthetic, and understated simplicity was probably not to his taste.

Going by the dress her mother had bought her, and the outfit Li Xun himself had given her, Zhu Yun reasoned that he likely had a preference for the kind of exquisitely crafted, elaborate princess-style dresses with real artistry in the making.

In the end, Zhu Yun settled on a sleeveless dress. The inner layer was a fitted black piece; over the skirt lay a stiff layer of grey mesh tulle, gathered into petal-shaped folds where it met the waist — delicate and beautiful — and flaring out below, with the short black dress underneath and a pair of long legs visible in hints and glimpses beneath.

Zhu Yun was not the lean, angular type. Years of good nutrition had given her a figure that was smooth and graceful, with a quiet fullness to it. She had always thought of this as one of her strong suits.

With the dress purchased, Zhu Yun went down to the ground floor to pick out a pair of black heels with a slender heel. While trying them on, she caught an incidental glimpse of herself in the mirror — her skin looked dull and dry from a sleepless night. She thought for a moment, then found a beauty salon and booked in for a complete facial treatment, makeup, and an updo.

Having gone a full night without sleep, spent the better part of a day on a shopping marathon, and then endured several hours at the beauty salon, Zhu Yun’s brain was, by the end of it all, so blunted that she had lost nearly all capacity for independent judgment.

She sat in the salon chair and murmured to the beautician who had been doing her makeup and hair:

“…Do you think it looks good?”

The beautician was a young woman. She paused at the question, looked in the mirror at the slightly dazed client before her, and said gently:

“If you were in a wedding dress right now, you could walk straight into the ceremony hall.”