Zhou Jin pulled her arm free, closed the refrigerator door, and turned around.

She kept her head lowered, as if she wanted to say something but didn’t know where to begin.

Jiang Cheng studied her carefully. Her hair was tucked behind her ear, revealing the pale, soft curve of her earlobe.

Jiang Cheng placed his hand on her waist and tried to draw closer. Zhou Jin frowned and pushed his hand away. He tried again and was pushed away once more.

Fending him off, she said quietly, “Jiang Cheng, can you please not do this…”

That one sentence was like a tiny spark — small, but dropped into a calm pan of oil, igniting in an instant into a roaring blaze.

Jiang Cheng’s eyes darkened. Ignoring her resistance, he seized her by the arm and pressed her back against the refrigerator.

“Why not?”

The flame inside him burned hotter and hotter. The unease that had been lurking beneath the surface ever since he laid eyes on Zhou Jin again now broke through like a dam giving way, sweeping away every last shred of his reason in an instant.

Jiang Cheng said, “I never betrayed you, Zhou Jin. These past five years, I never touched another woman — not once…!”

His chest was locked tight with a grievance and anger that had no words, with the injustice he had buried in his heart for five years. He wanted to explain everything to Zhou Jin.

But before he could get another word out, Zhou Jin seemed to have finally gathered herself. Her voice came out resolute. “But I don’t have feelings for you anymore!”

It was as though ice-cold water had been poured over his head. A single sentence doused every burning emotion in him. He stood there frozen, the grip on her arm slackening — then abruptly tightening again.

“It’s because of Jiang Hansheng, isn’t it? How long have you even been together? Zhou Jin, do you even know who he is?”

“It has nothing to do with anyone else.” Zhou Jin raised her head. There was a glimmer of tears in her eyes, but not a trace of hesitation or retreat. She said, “Jiang Cheng, I can’t have feelings for you anymore.”

The moment she had rescued Jiang Cheng from Kuangshan West Lane, she had already begun to suspect there might have been a misunderstanding about what happened back then.

She felt a profound guilt toward Jiang Cheng — because he had done nothing wrong, and yet he had suffered so much, all for her sake and for Zhou Chuan’s case.

But at the same time, she still harbored resentment toward him. Even knowing about all the injustice he had endured, all the reasons he’d had no other choice, that resentment made it impossible for her to feel the same way she once had.

Because even though the betrayal had been false, the wound it had carved into her in that moment was real — so real that even now, she could not forget it.

That day, when she saw Jiang Cheng holding a bare, unclothed woman in his arms, her stomach had seized with such agonizing pain that her whole body trembled. She had run into the bathroom, retching over and over.

That experience — of falling in an instant from the clouds into an abyss — was something she never wanted to revisit.

Where before she had only known happiness when she looked at Jiang Cheng, now all she felt was a heaviness she couldn’t shake.

Zhou Jin said, “Jiang Cheng, I’m willing to do anything to make it up to you. Anything except this one thing.”

“You think I went undercover so that you’d feel guilty? So you’d make it up to me?” Jiang Cheng said. “Xiao Wu, I just wanted you to be happy. I wanted you to care about me. What did I do wrong — how did things end up like this?”

Zhou Jin said, “I’m sorry.”

Jiang Cheng watched her bow her head, unable to offer a single word in reply. Seeing Zhou Jin unable to lift her face in front of him hurt him more than learning she had feelings for someone else…

A dark impulse stirred inside him. He thought — if, only if, he simply refused to let Zhou Jin go, if he made her look at every scar on his body, perhaps she would no longer be able to refuse him.

But then Jiang Cheng remembered that day in the interrogation room — Jiang Hansheng looking at him with cold, flat eyes, saying: “And don’t ever use the fact that you went undercover as leverage over Zhou Jin.”

“…”

Jiang Cheng clenched his back molars. How could he possibly lose to Jiang Hansheng?

He drove his fist into the refrigerator. The metallic bang rang out, and Zhou Jin’s body gave a small jolt.

He grabbed Zhou Jin by the arm, hauled her toward the front door, and shoved her out into the hallway.

“Jiang Cheng!” Zhou Jin called.

She stepped forward. Jiang Cheng suddenly surged forward as well — at nearly one point nine meters, the sheer force of him closing in was like a mountain bearing down on her, and Zhou Jin nearly stumbled straight into his chest.

The aggressive advance sent her stepping backward again. She stared at him, caught off guard.

Jiang Cheng said, “You send a man home in the middle of the night — have you not stopped to think about what he might do to you?”

Zhou Jin was speechless.

“Don’t let this happen again.”

A heavy bang. The door slammed shut.

The world inside the apartment suddenly went very quiet. In truth, even the soft warm lighting was too much for Jiang Cheng to bear. He reached out and turned it off, and the darkness swallowed everything around him.

Without the sound of Zhou Jin moving back and forth, the air gradually grew heavy and suffocating.

Jiang Cheng drew a labored breath. The craving for a cigarette crept up, but his pockets were empty.

The restlessness became impossible to contain. He slid down the wall and sank slowly to the floor, his body lost in the darkness.

A long time passed before he finally muttered a low, bitter curse.

Zhou Jin left Jiang Cheng’s home and sat in her car for quite a while, forehead resting against the steering wheel, before she finally steadied herself.

She let out a long breath — a weight lifted from her shoulders. The time read half past eight in the evening. She figured Jiang Hansheng was probably still with Jiang Bozhi and Aunt Fang, so she may as well go pick him up on the way.

She called Jiang Hansheng, but unusually, it went straight to a powered-off tone. She tried Jiang Bozhi next, and this time the call went through.

The moment Jiang Bozhi heard that Zhou Jin was coming to pick someone up, he said, puzzled, “Hansheng didn’t come today. He said you were busy.”

Hearing that the story didn’t match up, Zhou Jin played along with what Jiang Hansheng had told him and said, “That’s right — the unit has been tied up with a case lately. I haven’t had a chance to come see you and Aunt Fang.”

“Young people, you’re all so busy these days,” Jiang Bozhi said.

That day, Jiang Hansheng had flared up at him with tremendous anger, and Jiang Bozhi still felt unsettled by it.

He couldn’t bring that up directly with Zhou Jin, so he only said, “Hansheng was always alone when he was little — I was busy running my business, and he was reserved by nature, never one to make friends easily. But I’ve always known that what Hansheng feels for you is genuine, Zhou Jin… Could you do something for me and look after him properly? He doesn’t always take care of himself.”

Zhou Jin smiled and agreed readily. “I will.”

Unable to locate Jiang Hansheng, she had no choice but to head home and check. Standing downstairs, she noticed the lights in the apartment were off — it didn’t look like anyone was inside.

She punched in the code, pushed open the door, and felt her way through the dark entryway toward the light switch. Before she could reach it, someone grabbed her from behind in a sudden, enveloping embrace.

Zhou Jin’s heart lurched with fright — but she also knew immediately that it was Jiang Hansheng. She asked, “You’re home? Didn’t you say you went to—”

His body leaned heavily into hers, as if he could barely keep himself upright.

Zhou Jin had no choice but to drop her bag and hold him steady, asking, “What’s wrong?” She turned to face him, and almost immediately caught the sharp, thick smell of alcohol on him. Zhou Jin snapped to alertness at once. “You’ve been drinking again!”

Jiang Hansheng finally spoke, his voice carrying the hazy, low quality that came with intoxication. “Zhou Jin, where have you been?”

He wrapped his arms tightly around her from behind, tilted his head close to her ear, and nuzzled in like a dog catching a scent. Then he said, “You smell like another man. It’s dirty.”

“…”

Zhou Jin sensed something was off about him. She pried his arms open and tried to look him directly in the eyes. “What are you talking about?”

Jiang Hansheng didn’t give her the chance. He pushed her forward.

She was pressed against the cold surface of the door, Jiang Hansheng’s body pressing in close from behind. There wasn’t even room for her to turn around.

This unfamiliar, hard-edged side of him sent a thread of unease through her.

“Have you been with Jiang Cheng this whole time?” Jiang Hansheng reached for the thin sash at her waist.

“…I was responsible for taking him home.”

Zhou Jin instinctively recoiled at the combination — him asking questions like this while at the same time trying to be intimate with her.

She seized his wrist and held it still.

“Home?” Jiang Hansheng’s body yielded to her, his movements stilling. But his lips stayed close to her ear, and he pressed on. “You and Jiang Cheng’s home?”

Zhou Jin fell silent.

The relentless interrogation and the near-offensive intrusion made her deeply uncomfortable.

She closed her eyes for a moment, then commanded in a cold, level voice, “Jiang Hansheng. Let go of me.”