The three of them headed to the high-speed rail station. The peak of the Spring Festival travel rush hadn’t arrived yet, and the station wasn’t very crowded. Lu Siyan was buzzing with excitement the whole way — children always met the prospect of a long trip with this kind of thrilled anticipation. Xi Shi was a city that could reasonably be called a tourist destination, and there were direct high-speed rail connections from Jing Shi, which meant this particular train was carrying quite a few passengers. Jiang Ruoqiao pulled her suitcase ahead and boarded first, while Lu Yicheng followed behind with Lu Siyan — they were held up for a few steps when someone cut in line and jostled past them.

Jiang Ruoqiao positioned her suitcase to the side, making sure it wasn’t blocking the aisle.

While she was still checking her ticket against the seat number, a young man approached, very enthusiastically. “Traveling alone, Miss? Here, let me help you with that.”

This sort of thing Jiang Ruoqiao had long since grown accustomed to.

Everywhere she went, before she could even ask for help, someone was already offering to carry her suitcase.

She had sensed, from early on, the goodwill this world extended toward her.

Only — just as the young man’s hand landed on the suitcase handle, a low and unhurried voice came from behind him: “Thank you, but I’ve got it.”

The young man turned around to find a student-looking young man behind him.

He was tall — somewhere around 185 centimeters — in a black down jacket, his bearing and appearance quietly striking.

This was…

Jiang Ruoqiao, seeing that Lu Yicheng had caught up, asked, “What took you so long?”

Lu Yicheng said, mildly helpless: “Someone cut in the line. We only fell behind a little.”

Lu Yicheng then turned back to the young man. The young man immediately withdrew his hand and let out a dry, awkward laugh. “I thought the young lady was traveling alone.”

Had he known she had a boyfriend, he certainly wouldn’t have come over and made things awkward for himself.

“Thank you all the same.” Lu Yicheng gave a pleasant, unhurried smile, then applied a bit of effort and lifted Jiang Ruoqiao’s suitcase into the overhead rack.

The car filled up quickly.

The three of them were seated in the same row, perfectly arranged.

The train began to glide gently forward.

Jiang Ruoqiao was by the window, Lu Siyan in the middle, and Lu Yicheng on the aisle side.

The vote for the outstanding student award had finally been confirmed. Jiang Ruoqiao was participating in this kind of thing for the first time and had no experience writing the required speech. Once they were on the train, she opened her tablet to work on revising it. She got stuck at the most critical point and leaned across Lu Siyan to ask Lu Yicheng: “Did you finish your speech?”

Lu Yicheng leaned across Lu Siyan as well, closing the distance to reply: “More or less. Did something come up?”

Jiang Ruoqiao nodded. “I feel like parts of it aren’t quite right. Can you take a look for me?”

With all this leaning back and forth over him, Lu Siyan complained: “You two might as well just switch seats with me!”

Sparing him the sensation of being completely redundant sandwiched in the middle.

Jiang Ruoqiao considered this thoughtfully. “That’s not out of the question.”

Lu Yicheng: “Let’s switch.”

Lu Siyan: “?”

*I was saying it casually.*

But they switched anyway. Lu Siyan moved to the aisle seat. Lu Yicheng gave his full attention to Jiang Ruoqiao’s draft, and the two of them exchanged thoughts back and forth in low voices. Left with nothing to do, the bored Lu Siyan could only gaze around him, and ended up attracting the attention of the young couple sitting nearby. Lu Siyan was the combined sum of Lu Yicheng and Jiang Ruoqiao’s best features — as a baby he had been round and cherubic, and now at five years old his features were handsome and pretty, his clothes fashionable and well-put-together, with his little mop of curls that made him irresistibly appealing.

The couple struck up a conversation. “Little one, are you going on a trip?”

Lu Siyan maintained an air of dignity at first.

But he was truly bored, and with both Mom and Dad right there beside him, he eventually gave a composed little nod and — after a moment’s thought — added, “It’s not a trip. I’m going back to my Mom’s home.”

Both Lu Yicheng and Jiang Ruoqiao noticed Lu Siyan chatting with the couple.

They each glanced at the pair briefly — they looked like students too, and this was a high-speed train, perfectly safe with both of them right there — then turned their attention back to the speech.

Lu Yicheng was still half-listening to Lu Siyan’s conversation with the couple, even while reviewing Jiang Ruoqiao’s draft. Lu Siyan was a remarkably sharp child — sometimes even Lu Yicheng and Jiang Ruoqiao couldn’t quite out-argue him — and he was often delightfully witty. By now Lu Yicheng had nearly relaxed his vigilance entirely, until the young woman asked Lu Siyan: “So who are the good-looking man and lady next to you, little one?”

It was understandable that she was curious.

The combination of these three was truly eye-catching. The young woman had delicate, refined features and seemed to radiate light, while the young man was lean but stood straight and tall — put together, they looked as though they might walk into a romance drama at any moment. But these two clearly-very-young adults were with a small child, a child who was handsome and adorable at that. What kind of relationship could these three share? The young woman wasn’t the only one curious — several other passengers in the car were clearly wondering too.

Lu Siyan blinked, and turned the question back around: “What do you think they are to me?”

The young woman thought about it. Perhaps good-looking people all tended to look a bit alike — they really did give off the impression of a family of three. But then again, thinking about it more carefully, the young woman and young man looked no older than their early twenties, and this child had to be five or six already…

“I can’t figure it out,” the young woman said, shaking her head.

Lu Siyan said with great mystery, “One of them is my big brother, and the other one” — he paused — “is my sister-in-law.”

Lu Yicheng: “?”

Jiang Ruoqiao: “??”

This could only be credited to the inspiration Jiang Ruoqiao’s maternal grandfather had once given Lu Siyan.

Back when Jiang Ruoqiao’s grandparents hadn’t known Lu Siyan’s true relationship to Lu Yicheng, they had supposed the two were brothers. After that, on one occasion, Lu Siyan had spun a tall tale to an outsider — saying Lu Yicheng was his big brother and Jiang Ruoqiao was his sister-in-law — and when Jiang Ruoqiao found out, he’d had his little mop of curls thoroughly ruffled as punishment.

Lu Siyan’s rebuttal had been swift and unbothered: in dramas, people said *an older brother is like a father, and an older sister-in-law is like a mother* — so calling Jiang Ruoqiao his “sister-in-law” was essentially calling her “Mom,” and calling Lu Yicheng his “big brother” was essentially calling him “Dad.” What other people made of it was none of his business.

*What nonsense? “An older brother is like a father, an older sister-in-law is like a mother?”*

*That was how he understood and used that expression?*

The young woman had an enlightened look. “Ah, I see!”

Jiang Ruoqiao and Lu Yicheng exchanged a glance: *…This child is asking for trouble again.*

—

From Jing Shi to Xi Shi, the journey was five hours and twenty minutes in total.

Jing Shi and Xi Shi had entirely different climates — winters in Xi Shi were that damp, bone-chilling kind of cold. Jiang Ruoqiao’s maternal grandfather had called at least ten times from when they boarded until they got off the train. For Lu Yicheng, this was his first time in Xi Shi, Jiang Ruoqiao’s birthplace and the city she had grown up in. He felt a strange sensation he couldn’t quite name. If a city could represent a person, then from this point on, this beautiful, picture-perfect city — in his heart — was Jiang Ruoqiao.

Years from now, whether they ended up together or not, he thought that even when he was old and white-haired and his eyes couldn’t see clearly and his ears couldn’t hear well — whenever he thought of Xi Shi, the first thing that would come flooding into his mind would still be her face, and her clear, bright voice —

“Lu Yicheng.”

“Lu Yicheng!”

Lu Yicheng snapped back to the present, quickly looking toward Jiang Ruoqiao.

He found that she had already pulled her suitcase several steps ahead of him and was looking back with a slight frown. “Hurry up!”

Lu Siyan, standing beside Lu Yicheng, gave a distinctly unimpressed little shake of his head. “Big brother is spacing out again.”

Lu Yicheng: “…”

Father and son hurried to catch up.

Jiang Ruoqiao had already ordered a ride-hailing car beforehand. From the station to her grandparents’ home was only about ten minutes. This was the old apartment Jiang Ruoqiao’s grandfather had been allocated by his former work unit — an entire neighborhood of longtime old neighbors.

“You two go ahead.” As they neared the entrance of the residential compound, Lu Yicheng said this.

Jiang Ruoqiao looked at him, puzzled. “You have something to do?”

Lu Yicheng wore a slightly awkward look. “Better if no one sees me. Take Siyan up first — I’ll come up shortly.”

Jiang Ruoqiao: “You’re surprisingly considerate.”

“Just tell me which building and which floor,” Lu Yicheng said.

Jiang Ruoqiao knew he was the type who felt things deeply and was conscious of appearances, so she didn’t argue with him about it. She nodded. “Alright.”

Once Jiang Ruoqiao had taken Lu Siyan inside the compound, Lu Yicheng let out a long breath. Worrying about causing her unnecessary trouble was one reason. The other reason was that he really couldn’t show up to her family home empty-handed. That would be far too impolite. But he didn’t know the local customs here…

Jiang Ruoqiao brought Lu Siyan inside. Her grandparents were already craning their necks looking out. “Where’s young Lu? Didn’t he come?”

Lu Siyan made himself right at home the moment he stepped inside, already slipping away into the apartment.

Jiang Ruoqiao was still changing into house slippers. “He had something to do. He’ll be up in a bit.”

Grandma thought for a moment and muttered, “That silly boy wouldn’t have gone off to buy things, would he?”

Jiang Ruoqiao: “?”

She straightened up and slapped her forehead.

How had that not even crossed her mind?

Her thinking had clearly been getting noticeably slower lately.

—

In the end, it was Grandma who picked up Jiang Ruoqiao’s phone and spoke to Lu Yicheng: “Don’t buy the expensive ones — cigarettes, two cartons, the two hundred yuan a carton kind is fine. Wine? Skip the wine, tomorrow let Grandpa take you to get some fresh-poured liquor, that’s what he drinks. Fruit? Get some apples and oranges. Jiang Ruoqiao likes oranges, Siyan likes apples. What? Car what? Cherries — no, no, none of us in this household likes those. Bird’s nest? That’s just swallow saliva. Don’t get it, don’t you dare. Get two cases of milk instead! That’s enough, that’s plenty.”

Jiang Ruoqiao: “??”

She had assumed Grandma was going to say the polite thing — *Don’t bother bringing anything…*

Instead, Grandma had rattled off a full shopping list like she was briefing one of her own family members.

Was this the grandmother she knew?

When Grandma finally hung up with a satisfied air and caught her granddaughter staring at her, she said, “You were the one who brought him to the door.”

Jiang Ruoqiao: fair enough.

—

Twenty minutes later, Lu Yicheng knocked at the door.

Jiang Ruoqiao was leaning in the doorway, and when she saw him laden with bags and parcels, she gave him a look caught between amusement and something else. “Well, Lu Yicheng. I didn’t realize you were like this.”

Lu Yicheng lowered his head. “Coming to someone’s home — you really can’t arrive empty-handed.”

Jiang Ruoqiao was in the mood to give him a hard time. “Do you do this every time you visit Du Yu and Wang Jiangfeng?”

Lu Yicheng: “They’re men.”

Jiang Ruoqiao stifled a laugh. “So you’re saying, the next time you visit some other girl’s home, you’d also bring all of this?”

Lu Yicheng was stumped by the question.

Jiang Ruoqiao turned back inside and nudged a pair of slippers toward him with her foot. “Yours. Put them on.”

She seemed to have let the question drop.

Lu Yicheng changed into the slippers and then, a beat too late, realized.

He shouldn’t have been stumped by that question at all.

He had never once thought about visiting any other girl’s home.

—

In the slightly cramped two-bedroom apartment, tonight was lively. Grandpa and Grandma were already debating sleeping arrangements.

“You and Ruoqiao can share her old room. You three boys — Grandpa, Lu Yicheng, and Siyan — can squeeze into the big bedroom. It’ll be a bit snug but should work.”

Lu Yicheng glanced at Jiang Ruoqiao and said, “Grandpa, Grandma, you really don’t need to go to all this trouble. I’ve already booked a hotel — it’s just on the street right outside.”

Grandpa glared at Lu Yicheng. “What a waste of money. Cancel it, cancel it. This is family — why would you stay in a hotel? Young Lu, you’ve become less frugal these days.”

Lu Yicheng declined again.

The two went back and forth, until Lu Yicheng — possibly because he had truly run out of responses and had exhausted every polite reason he could think of — let slip: “Next time!”

Grandpa and Grandma both froze, then burst out laughing. Grandpa followed his lead, saying, “Alright then, next time — next time you are absolutely not allowed to book a hotel.”

Grandma agreed: “Exactly. We’ll let you off this once, but next time, don’t go wasting money on that. It’s so much more comfortable here!”

Jiang Ruoqiao: “…”

Lu Yicheng finally registered what he had just said.

He instinctively looked toward Jiang Ruoqiao: *Finished. He had said the wrong thing again.*

—