Yun Jia and the other two girls found Jiang Yan and his entire circle thoroughly bad luck — they couldn’t stand the sight of any of them.

Since they had arrived in two cars — one belonging to Du Yu’s family and one that Jiang Yan had borrowed — Yun Jia asked the rural retreat’s owner to arrange a taxi for the three of them to get back to the city. Du Yu was infatuated with Yun Jia, and when it came to the woman he liked, his skin was thick enough to stop a bullet. He planted himself at Yun Jia’s side and worked his way through every argument he had until he finally managed to talk her around, and she accepted the car keys so the three girls could drive themselves back. Du Yu, in turn, rode with Jiang Yan.

If Yun Jia had absolutely no feelings for Du Yu at all, she would never have agreed to come on this trip in the first place, given her personality. She was still feeling the sting of it all, but after Luo Wen and Gao Jingjing had coaxed and reasoned with her repeatedly, she finally took the keys. Yun Jia had gotten her driver’s license right after the college entrance exams and had driven the family car around plenty since then — she was fully capable on the road.

Du Yu climbed into Jiang Yan’s car looking thoroughly dejected.

They had come out here full of jokes and high spirits, and now the atmosphere on the ride back felt like they were heading to a funeral.

Jiang Yan was at the wheel again. Du Yu sat in the passenger seat, staring at him.

Of the four in their dormitory, only Wang Jiangfeng didn’t have a driver’s license. Lu Yicheng had taken his test in his first year of university and gotten it done, though he’d barely had occasion to drive since.

So Wang Jiangfeng, Lu Yicheng, and Lu Siyan were all in the backseat.

Du Yu bluntly asked Jiang Yan: “So what are you planning to do now?”

Everyone knew perfectly well that Jiang Ruoqiao had broken up with Jiang Yan, and that she had been absolutely unambiguous about it.

Jiang Yan fixed his eyes on the road ahead, both hands on the wheel. He looked downcast — but beneath the dejection, a flicker of something resolute had emerged. “Apologize, and ask for forgiveness. If she won’t forgive me, I’ll pursue her all over again.”

Du Yu: “…”

He genuinely couldn’t summon any words of encouragement, nor any words of comfort.

This whole business was just… too much. When Jiang Yan had come to apologize the previous night, he’d also gotten the full account of what had happened out of him.

At the time, he had been completely stunned — Jiang Ruoqiao hadn’t actually taken a weapon to Jiang Yan?

That was actually an incredibly mild reaction.

Any girlfriend who caught her boyfriend kissing another woman would be well within her rights to beat him half to death and make him regret ever being born into this world.

Though Jiang Yan had looked deeply mortified as he explained that he’d mistaken Lin Kexing for Jiang Ruoqiao — thought she was her.

Still —

If you can’t even tell your own girlfriend apart from someone else, isn’t that just asking for disaster?

To lighten the mood a little, Du Yu glanced over at Wang Jiangfeng, who was deep in the study of some mystical text, and said with mock casualness: “Hey — since you haven’t exactly mastered your craft yet, why not use us as practice? Give Jiang Yan a reading. See if he and Jiang Ruoqiao have any chance of reconciling.”

Wang Jiangfeng: “…Didn’t you say this was superstitious nonsense?”

Du Yu let out a bark of laughter. “As the saying goes, science reaches its limits and becomes mysticism — nothing better to do, right? Go ahead, give them a reading.”

Jiang Yan didn’t object.

Normally he had no patience for this sort of thing, but right now his heart was in such turmoil, his desperation so acute, that he found himself without the will to refuse. He even said: “Sure, might as well try.”

Wang Jiangfeng: “…”

He stretched out his back, then remembered there was no room in the cramped back seat.

He glanced at Lu Yicheng, who had his eyes closed and was resting quietly, and said with a resigned sort of pride: “Right now among the four of us in this dormitory, Lu Yicheng is the only true and committed materialist.”

There was something almost self-congratulatory in his tone — as though he felt smugly pleased with himself for having managed to drag Du Yu and Jiang Yan down while Lu Yicheng alone remained standing on solid, rational ground, stubbornly refusing to join them in what Wang Jiangfeng called their “descent into mysticism.”

Lu Yicheng didn’t even open his eyes.

Lu Siyan was tucked in close beside him, and right now the mere sound of Jiang Yan’s voice irritated him. This person had wronged his mama.

And now this person was actually asking someone to do a reading on whether he and his mama might get back together.

If he could just come right out and say it: Not. A. Chance.

Not as long as he had anything to say about it!

Wang Jiangfeng said offhandedly: “Tell me your date and time of birth, roughly, and hers too — you do know hers, right?”

Jiang Yan thought for a moment. “More or less.”

He recited the birth dates and times of both people.

Wang Jiangfeng set to work on his phone.

Du Yu seized the moment to mock him: “You’re actually using an app for this kind of thing these days — can it still be called mysticism?”

“Absolutely,” Wang Jiangfeng said, his tone patient and slightly condescending. “With your level of intelligence, you’re simply not equipped to appreciate something this sophisticated.”

Then Wang Jiangfeng suddenly stopped mid-sentence and frowned.

He shook his head. “Alright, give me one more character — let me try a different method.”

Du Yu snorted with laughter. “What school of thought are you even following? You’re all over the place.”

Wang Jiangfeng: “Be quiet.”

Jiang Yan replied: “Qiao.”

Lu Yicheng opened his eyes and tapped Lu Siyan’s hand, a quiet signal to stop squirming around.

Wang Jiangfeng ran the numbers again. After that — silence. He sat there with his brow deeply furrowed.

Du Yu dropped the jokes. Jiang Yan was the one who asked: “Is the result bad?”

Wang Jiangfeng said: “It’s superstition. Don’t take it seriously. I’m just doing this for entertainment — exploring the unknown.”

Du Yu: “?”

So the result wasn’t bad. It was catastrophically bad. Otherwise Wang Jiangfeng wouldn’t be saying something like that.

Jiang Yan: “…”

Alright. Nothing more needed to be said.

Lu Siyan, with the sheer boldness only a small child possesses, decided he absolutely needed to know the outcome, and nudged Wang Jiangfeng beside him: “Uncle, come on, tell me — I really want to know what it says!”

Jiang Yan: “?”

Lu Yicheng: “…”

Wang Jiangfeng had a genuine soft spot for children, and at this moment, all thought of whether he was adding salt to Jiang Yan’s wounds went out the window. He smiled warmly and said: “It says nothing.”

A remark with two meanings, depending entirely on how the listener chose to hear it.

After roughly two or three hours of driving, they finally reached the city.

Du Yu and Wang Jiangfeng knew Jiang Yan was desperate to get to Jiang Ruoqiao, so once they reached a subway station, the two of them got out ahead of time. Lu Yicheng had the child with him and it was inconvenient, so without giving Lu Yicheng a chance to say otherwise, Jiang Yan drove them both home first. Lu Yicheng carried Lu Siyan out of the car, and Jiang Yan got out too.

As Lu Yicheng and Lu Siyan made their way toward the entrance of the residential building, Jiang Yan called after him: “Lu Yicheng — thanks. For yesterday.”

Lu Yicheng gave a complicated nod.

In truth, he had already sensed this for a while: his friendship with Jiang Yan was over.

This trip to the rural retreat had only made it undeniable, because he had discovered that he could no longer face Jiang Yan with the indifference he once had. In rare, fleeting instants — when Jiang Yan let something of his feelings for Jiang Ruoqiao show — something stirred in Lu Yicheng, an emotion he could neither name nor explain.

What kind of emotion?

He couldn’t say. In the moment when Jiang Yan had murmured “if you were me, you’d have done the same,” it had reached its peak. He had suppressed ninety percent of it to be able to say, as calmly as he could manage: I am not like you.

*If I were with her, I would never do something like that.*

That thought lodged itself in his mind. Lu Yicheng’s forward stride came to an abrupt halt.

Lu Siyan looked up at his father with wide, puzzled eyes. “Daddy, what’s wrong?”

He looked strange. His face had gone a funny color too, like someone who’d just lost money.

Lu Yicheng shook his head. It was a blazing hot day, and yet his expression was grave and still. He shifted his bag on his shoulder and tightened his grip, the veins in the back of his hand rising faintly.

It was nothing.

Lu Yicheng began to reason it out within himself. He had never been involved with anyone, and then quite suddenly a child had appeared in his life — and he had been told that in some future this child’s mother was going to be his wife. Even a saint couldn’t be expected to simply not notice her.

After dropping Lu Yicheng and Lu Siyan off at the building, Jiang Yan pressed the accelerator and pulled out of the residential complex, driving in the direction of Jiang Ruoqiao’s apartment.

His idea was straightforward enough. He didn’t know which door was hers, didn’t know which floor she was on — but he knew which building. He had no desire to cause her unnecessary distress. He only intended to wait in the courtyard below. Eventually he would see her, and when he did, he would apologize sincerely, offer his explanation, and make his promises.

What Jiang Yan hadn’t anticipated, however, was that Jiang Ruoqiao had seen right through him.

She had made up her mind to make a clean and complete break — to spend the rest of her life without a single point of connection to Jiang Yan. She didn’t want to give him any illusions, didn’t want him to believe for even a moment that she could be won back. So she had to be absolutely ruthless about it. Earlier that morning, alongside her interview preparations, she had packed her things and — after returning from the interview company — told the restaurant owner’s wife she was stepping out, then took her luggage and checked herself into a hotel.

She had no intention of letting some idol-drama scene play out beneath her apartment windows.

Once she had settled into the room, she posted the address and room number to the dormitory group chat.

She did feel genuinely bad for her three roommates — they had all set out in high spirits, only to be swept up in this mess. She didn’t really care whether Jiang Yan or Lin Kexing were sorry, but she did feel a bit apologetic to the girls. So she was planning to treat them to hot pot, then drinks, then manicures as a way of making it up to them.

Just as expected, Yun Jia and the others responded instantly.

The four of them had lived together for two years now and understood each other well. One look at Jiang Ruoqiao checking out of the apartment and into a hotel told them everything they needed to know. Yun Jia was the first to respond in the chat: [You can count on this organization, Comrade. No matter how hard Du Yu tries to pry information out of me, even under torture, I will not breathe a single word.]

Luo Wen: [You could be even more shameless about it.]

Gao Jingjing: [Hahahaha!]

Jiang Ruoqiao laughed.

That afternoon, the three of them crept quietly over to the hotel.

Yun Jia looked around the room, taking it all in.

Then she poked at Jiang Ruoqiao’s takeout delivery with the air of Conan unraveling a mystery, and said in a dramatically suspicious tone: “Something’s off. Jiang Ruoqiao, why have you suddenly become frugal?”

Jiang Ruoqiao: “?”

Frugal? Her?!

Gao Jingjing also nodded with a thoughtful expression. “First — you’re actually staying in a budget chain hotel.”

Jiang Ruoqiao: “…”

“Second — the takeout.” Yun Jia pointed at it. “Didn’t you always order those ridiculously expensive clean-eating dishes? And now look — what did you order? A chicken cutlet rice bowl. And look at this receipt — how much does it say? Twenty yuan!”

Jiang Ruoqiao had not anticipated that her roommates had the observational skills of forensic investigators.

But she absolutely couldn’t admit to it, so she kept up her front. “I think you all have the wrong idea about me. I’m not some extravagant person — I’m a plain, down-to-earth ordinary person.”

How had it gotten to the point where, in their minds, she apparently required mountains of gold and silver to function?

Actually…

She couldn’t help but start second-guessing herself: had she actually become frugal? Had she unknowingly “fallen” without even realizing it?

Yun Jia put her hands on her hips and went to inspect the bathroom, calling back casually: “If I didn’t know who you were, I’d almost think you were secretly supporting some man!”

Jiang Ruoqiao: “…………”