Li Xun’s smile knocked the wind right out of Zhu Yun.
She had come here on a surge of courage — the kind that deflates the longer it’s left to sit.
At first Li Xun only chuckled softly, but soon he couldn’t hold it back anymore and bent double with laughter. Zhu Yun wanted nothing more than to find a crack in the ground and disappear into it.
No — there was no crack wide enough for her down there. Something big enough to swallow her whole would have to be a storm drain.
While Zhu Yun was busy mentally mocking herself, Li Xun finally laughed himself out. He straightened up, his expression softened by the lingering warmth of his amusement — tender in a way that defied ordinary description.
Then again, plain “tenderness” could never quite capture the look on Li Xun’s face. Woven through all that warmth, Zhu Yun could plainly see the teasing satisfaction of a man who knew he had already won.
“Say it again.” He was still fighting back a smile. “What exactly are you going to do to me?”
Zhu Yun: “……”
“Come on. Let me hear it one more time.”
She had been so fired up when she said it — and now, with even a little calm restored, she was overcome by a peculiar, inexplicable embarrassment.
She dropped her head low. The curtain of her falling hair formed a natural barrier between them, and she stared fixedly at the stone tiles beneath her feet.
A moment later, the light in front of her dimmed. Someone bent down and peered up at her from below.
“Why so quiet all of a sudden?”
He reached out with his long, slender fingers and swept aside half her hair — like lifting a doorway curtain — and said, with exaggerated wonder: “I have never in my life heard such a creative confession.”
Zhu Yun: “……”
The mud she was sinking into kept getting deeper. She decided she couldn’t just stand there and let him keep going like this.
Besides, the most important question hadn’t even been asked yet —
Zhu Yun finally looked up. “Where’s Xu Lina?”
Li Xun: “She didn’t come.”
Zhu Yun: “Didn’t come? What time did you two agree on? Is she stuck in traffic?”
Li Xun shrugged with easy indifference. “Who knows.”
So it was Zhu Yun who had spoken first, after all. She didn’t know the full story behind it, but the heavy stone that had been sitting in her chest quietly lifted.
She looked at Li Xun and said, in a deliberately casual tone: “Traffic gets really bad in the evenings. She should have left earlier.”
Li Xun shrugged again.
Zhu Yun pressed on, adding fuel to the fire: “It’s almost like she doesn’t really take you that seriously.”
Li Xun replied with a look of mock regret: “Seems like it.”
So far, so good.
Then, without warning, she felt a lightness in her hand — Li Xun had taken hold of it, while his other hand produced a cigarette and lit it.
He took her hand so naturally, Zhu Yun thought — exactly like a parent picking up their kindergartener after school.
Except she was not a kindergartener. No kindergarten in the world would take a giant baby like her.
…Why was her brain going in this direction at a moment like this.
Li Xun flagged down a taxi at the intersection. They both climbed into the back seat. The driver asked where they were headed, and Li Xun said: just follow this road and keep going.
Zhu Yun didn’t bother thinking about it. She felt weightless, like she was floating.
He was still holding her hand — not too tight, not too loose. His palm was warm and dry.
The scenery outside flashed past in an instant. The streets were all lit up in a blaze of neon and nightlife, yet somehow what filled her vision was the image of his hand — the shape of each finger, the curve of each knuckle, the color of his skin, all of it perfectly clear.
She had no idea where he was taking her. Or rather — she felt that it didn’t matter where. Even if this car drove on forever, that would have been fine too.
That thought stayed with her, right up until the moment Li Xun told the driver to stop.
The ride hadn’t actually been very long. Li Xun himself hadn’t seemed to have a fixed destination in mind — he had been watching out the window the whole time, as though searching for something. Now, apparently, he had found it.
Zhu Yun looked up.
It was a hotel.
……
…………
………………
What kind of move was this?
The plot was fast-forwarding at an alarming pace.
Before the pure and innocent breeze had even had a chance to drift through her heart, a far more turbulent storm had already arrived.
Zhu Yun stood frozen on the side of the road. Li Xun went into the convenience store next door, came back half a minute later — Zhu Yun studied him but noticed nothing out of the ordinary.
What did he buy?
He returned and, just as naturally as before, took hold of Zhu Yun’s hand and started walking toward the hotel entrance. Without even thinking, Zhu Yun grabbed his arm.
Li Xun looked at her. “What’s wrong?”
“I……” Zhu Yun turned it over in her head, then finally managed: “I don’t have my ID on me.”
“Oh.” Li Xun let go of her hand. “Wait here, then.”
He went in alone, checked in at the front desk, and sent Zhu Yun a text message.
“301.”
Zhu Yun had no idea what to say back. She put her phone away and, without letting herself think about it, walked straight inside. The hotel was small; there was only one person at the front desk, currently absorbed in a prime-time TV drama and thoroughly uninterested in anything else.
Zhu Yun slipped through the lobby and down the corridor without incident. She looked up — Li Xun was waiting at the elevator doors.
The elevator closed. Zhu Yun was still in a daze. She had a vague feeling that this wasn’t quite how things were supposed to unfold… but she couldn’t say exactly how they should unfold, either. She had absolutely no experience in this.
They reached 301. Li Xun opened the door. Zhu Yun was startled to discover it was a single room — one bed.
A light push from behind her. Zhu Yun stepped across the threshold into unknown territory. Before she could process anything, she felt a hand close around her wrist — Li Xun pulled her back, shut the door behind them with his other hand, and turned, pressing her up against the door.
The light stayed off. Everything around them was dark.
Zhu Yun’s heart was hammering. Her entire body stiffened. She felt as though she had stepped fully into his world.
“I’m in a really bad mood today.” His lips were at her ear, and in the darkness, his voice surrounded her like surround sound from every direction.
Zhu Yun felt like a spring wound too tight — her stomach seized with a cramp.
“Last night I was too exhausted to think about anything else. I was planning to wake up this morning and let you wait on me properly.”
“……”
“But there wasn’t even a shadow of you to be found.”
As he spoke, he brushed along her cheek and the side of her neck. Zhu Yun felt heat rising all over her skin — she didn’t know if it was because the air conditioning wasn’t on.
“I kept thinking to myself — truly worthy of a princess. She uses people and then kicks them to the curb. Impressive.”
Zhu Yun finally found her voice again: “No, that’s not — at the time I——” Her words cut off abruptly as she felt the faintest press of lips against the hollow of her throat. In that split second, every nerve in her body lit up all at once, like a jolt of electricity. Her shoulders flinched inward and the rest of her sentence dissolved.
Li Xun lifted his gaze to look at her, and laughed softly: “You’ve got quite the ability.”
Being complimented at a moment like this — it definitely wasn’t for anything wholesome.
Sure enough, the next instant Zhu Yun’s breath caught. A hand closed over the curve of her hip, pressing through the mesh fabric of her skirt, and he said quietly: “You’ve figured out my preferences with uncanny accuracy.”
His touch sent something blazing through her body — she felt like she was on the verge of combustion. Trying desperately to reclaim some footing, she managed, with great difficulty: “It’s not hard at all. Just lead with whatever’s most unrefined, and you’re there.”
Li Xun raised an eyebrow.
He pressed her closer with one hand, and with the other cupped her chin, tilting her face up to look at him.
“Say that again.”
Zhu Yun: “……”
“Say it again for me, Miss Zhu — so refined, so above it all.”
A scene with an eerily familiar feeling.
Against her will, Zhu Yun found herself thinking of the past — of that other time. That memory and this moment became entangled with each other, woven through with the dense darkness of the night, layering together into something endless and dreamlike.
Li Xun’s face was directly across from hers. Each of them could feel the other’s breathing, clear and close. His chest rose and fell with every word he spoke — vivid and alive in a way that made her want to cry.
Zhu Yun’s face burned. Her gaze drifted for a moment — and then, for the first time that evening, she looked him directly in the eyes.
Four eyes meeting. Many things were different now.
Li Xun tilted his head slightly, and touched his forehead to hers. With a quiet laugh he said: “In my experience, at this distance, there are only two options — fighting or kissing. Your Highness, pick one.”
……
Honestly, fighting sounded a little appealing.
Zhu Yun took a half-step forward. Even in her high heels, she had to rise up onto the balls of her feet.
She steadied herself against his shoulders, and closed her eyes.
In the moment their lips finally met, she felt a sense of wanting nothing more than this — this was her first kiss, given to the one person she would never regret giving it to.
She didn’t really know what she was doing. After that one brave first move, she quickly became clumsy and uncertain.
By the end of the kiss, Li Xun was quietly laughing.
“Princess — breathe.”
Zhu Yun’s face was burning red.
Li Xun didn’t actually tease her for it. He swept her up into his arms, carried her to the bed, and lowered himself over her.
Li Xun was tall, with a long frame, and had her backed up against the headboard. He propped himself up on one hand beside her face and looked at her, asking: “Am I handsome?”
“……”
Zhu Yun said quietly: “You were, right up until you asked that.”
Li Xun laughed, then hooked her chin back with two fingers, making her look directly at him.
“Still talking back, hm.”
Zhu Yun shrank into her shoulders. Li Xun leaned even closer — close enough that Zhu Yun could sense the faint warmth of his skin on the tip of her nose.
He said into her ear, very softly: “Let’s just admit it. You’ve been hopelessly gone on me for a long time, haven’t you.”
Zhu Yun felt she was about to be reduced to ash.
Li Xun’s skin was running hot too. He stopped talking, and his hand moved to her thigh beneath the hem of her skirt.
And then, without warning — Zhu Yun’s mind went completely clear.
She wrapped her hand around his wrist and stopped him.
Li Xun’s voice came low.
“Not okay?”
Zhu Yun looked at him in silence.
From yesterday onward, she had been stumbling around like a fly without a head — anxious, flustered, colliding with everything. Today’s visit to find him had been no different; from beginning to end, it had been him guiding her along every step.
But right now, in this moment alone, something in Zhu Yun’s expression had changed. She seemed like a different person — with an air, strangely, of looking down from a height.
“Li Xun.”
He answered.
“I’m not Liu Sisi,” Zhu Yun said. “And I’m not Juliet.”
“Mm.”
“Do you understand what I mean?”
He nodded.
“More or less.”
She believed that he did.
Someone as perceptive as him — what wouldn’t he understand?
She waited for his answer. In the few seconds of his silence, she felt her heart slowly, painfully clench.
Whatever the outcome — just say it quickly. This feeling was unbearable.
Li Xun looked at Zhu Yun like this, then shifted his weight and propped himself up on one elbow. He looked considerably more at ease than she did — draped over her with an unhurried looseness, his expression unreadable.
Zhu Yun couldn’t stop herself from asking: “What are you thinking?”
Li Xun answered with perfect seriousness: “I’m thinking — for a man like me to settle down this early, it’s practically a crime.”
She really, really wanted to pick up her shoe and smack him with it……
“Though the probability of this actually happening is extremely low, I’ll ask anyway.” He idly toyed with the hem of her skirt, unhurried and unbothered: “If — hypothetically — I ever strayed from the right path somewhere down the line, what exactly would Your Highness plan to do about it?”
Zhu Yun answered without a moment’s hesitation: “Go to hell.”
“……”
Li Xun looked up, and looked at her with complete seriousness. She looked back at him with equal seriousness.
A moment later, he pushed himself off her and sat up.
“Actually, forget it.”
A bucket of ice water, dumped over her head. Zhu Yun was in disbelief. She nearly roared it out.
“Li Xun?!”
His shoulders trembled. He had barely started sitting up before he couldn’t hold it together any longer — he burst out laughing.
He was kneeling over her, and with both hands crossed, he gripped the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head.
In front of her: a clean, unobstructed view.
Li Xun tossed the shirt aside, looked down at her, and said with calm simplicity:
“Then it’s decided. The one who betrays the other goes to hell.”
In the depths of the night, the bell in her chest rang long and clear.
……Yes. That was it. As his hand traced upward along the line of her leg, Zhu Yun stared at the ceiling and thought, quietly, to herself.
This was just how he was — he always did this. No matter what the situation, he always put on that air of absolute indifference, maddening you until you were on the verge of giving up, ready to abandon everything — and then, without a ripple of effort, he resolved it all. Something that could have been settled with a single sentence, he would instead take you on a roller coaster through a hundred twists and turns, as though without all that, he couldn’t quite feel like himself.
He pressed his lips hard against the curve of her neck — something raw and venting in it — and said: “I’ve been waiting a goddamn long time for you to finally give in.”
Zhu Yun felt much the same way. Everything had at last settled into place, and fortunately, it had all landed exactly where she wanted it to.
Just as Zhu Yun was immersed in this quietly momentous inner feeling, she suddenly felt herself become lighter — her left shoulder was lifted, and Li Xun flipped her over, then pulled her hips up from behind, positioning her kneeling face-down on the bed.
Hm?
Wait.
Wait wait wait WAIT?!
Zhu Yun’s eyes went involuntarily wide. This was not exactly what she would call a beginner’s position!?