Right now, Jiang Yan had no one to talk to.

In the past, he would have gone to Lu Yicheng. Lu Yicheng was a friend he trusted. But now, the two of them couldn’t possibly remain friends — it took considerable effort just to maintain the surface-level coldness between them. As for Du Yu and Wang Jiangfeng — Du Yu went without saying. He had always been a loud, boisterous type who never managed to give any useful advice. Wang Jiangfeng was a decent person, but their friendship had never been particularly close.

He had ended up at the women’s dormitory building without quite knowing how.

He had originally meant to stay for a moment and leave. He hadn’t expected Ruoqiao to come back.

He couldn’t help thinking — how much better everything would be if he and Ruoqiao hadn’t broken up yet.

And now, as Jiang Yan looked ready to launch into his shock and his sense of total devastation, Jiang Ruoqiao had already run out of patience. In her eyes, Jiang Yan’s mother had a thousand flaws — in fact, it was fair to say that in the original novel, the female supporting character’s ending had been largely driven by Jiang Yan’s mother’s machinations. But no matter how carefully Jiang Yan’s mother had schemed, the one who ultimately benefited from all of it was Jiang Yan. Maybe she was just too pragmatic, too grounded in cold realities — but if a person grew rich through their mother’s not-entirely-honest means, acquiring a house and a car and rising to become a powerful figure, and then stood there looking pained and said his mother had harmed him… she felt something like dissonance. Real dissonance.

And so their breakup had been inevitable.

Because for all that they seemed alike, they were not truly the same kind of person.

She could not empathize with him.

His pain, his struggle, his anguish — even if today she were still his girlfriend, she could only manage the surface of comfort. Inside, she would feel nothing but a numb detachment.

Jiang Yan had simply been too protected by his mother for too long.

Jiang Ruoqiao’s feeling was that she could not become anyone’s salvation. If someone needed her to save them, she would turn around and run — run as far away as she could. In this life, you saved yourself. She didn’t ask for a bodhisattva to come save her, and she wouldn’t go saving anyone else either.

“Enough,” Jiang Ruoqiao said, cutting him off. “I can’t comfort you. You won’t find any comfort from me.”

Jiang Yan: “I wasn’t asking for comfort.”

Jiang Ruoqiao turned around and looked at him, her expression blank. “Can you see how exhausted I am right now? All I want is to go lie down.”

She had been awake before five that morning.

The night before, she had stayed up nearly until midnight translating a document. All told, she’d had barely four hours of sleep.

Then she’d shot for four hours straight first thing in the morning, and now she had just taken a long ride back to school with only one wish in the world — to rest.

She genuinely couldn’t understand it. Couldn’t he see how tired she was?

Jiang Yan was thrown off balance immediately. “Ruoqiao…”

Jiang Ruoqiao held up a hand. “Enough — we’re not friends. I’m going up.”

She couldn’t put the full blame on Jiang Yan either.

If she really had to blame someone, she could only blame herself for being such an incorrigible gossip.

After saying that, she walked away. Jiang Yan stood there in a daze, watching her go.

Jiang Ruoqiao had barely made it into the dormitory before she received a call from Lu Siyan. The little one loved making phone calls — so much so that his monthly bill was nearly catching up with hers.

“Mommy, wasn’t the hairy crab super delicious?!” Lu Siyan had been opening the refrigerator drawer every now and then to peer in at the crabs — still very much alive and bubbling — with great suspense. “Today’s crab was even better than yesterday’s! It’s such a pity Daddy will only let me have one.”

He stared at the crabs, making little sounds of longing, saliva practically pooling in his mouth.

Could the crabs please be a little more sensible? Climb out of the refrigerator on their own, crawl into the pot on their own, switch on the stove on their own?

And then wait nicely for him to come eat them?

Jiang Ruoqiao caught the key detail immediately. “Your daddy bought more hairy crab today?”

“No no, a student’s parent sent it as a gift — they’re even bigger than yesterday’s!” Lu Siyan said. “Daddy said he was going to bring two over to you. Mommy, haven’t you gotten them yet?”

Jiang Ruoqiao: Not yet…

She asked, “Do you remember what time your daddy left?”

Lu Siyan pattered off to the living room to check the clock.

The little one was impressively capable — he had learned to tell time quite early.

“I remember! Daddy left at twelve thirty!”

Jiang Ruoqiao glanced at her watch. It was already twelve fifty.

Twenty minutes had already passed.

At Lu Yicheng’s pace, it was no more than an eight-minute walk from the apartment to school.

There was no reason it should be taking this long.

Jiang Ruoqiao had been puzzling over it when it suddenly occurred to her — Jiang Yan standing downstairs. And it clicked. He must have seen her and Jiang Yan talking and simply left.

Oh, she didn’t know whether to call herself unlucky, really — the hairy crab that was practically in her hands had just flown away.

“Something probably came up and delayed him,” Jiang Ruoqiao told Lu Siyan, before slipping naturally into the persona she couldn’t seem to help adopting whenever she spoke to him. “While your daddy’s not home, don’t go opening the door for anyone you don’t know…”

Lu Siyan could recite this list in his sleep.

He counted off on his fingers: “I know I know — don’t open the door for strangers, don’t go outside, don’t play with the power outlets, don’t turn on the tap and splash around, don’t turn on the stove, don’t lean out the window, Mommy!! I am sitting very very still on the sofa right now and I haven’t moved a single muscle!!”

Oh, wait — he’d forgotten to mention something.

Just a moment ago he had dragged over his little step stool and sneaked the refrigerator door open to check on the crabs.

Jiang Ruoqiao smiled, then put on a slightly wounded air. “Are you calling me a nag?”

Lu Siyan immediately said: “No! I’m not!”

He rushed to explain himself: “It’s just that Daddy and Mommy always say these things, so I’ve memorized them by now… When Daddy and Mommy aren’t home, I’m like — like —” He thought for a moment and landed on a comparison: “Like a great master has sealed my pressure points! I can’t move at all. Right now the only thing moving is my mouth. A mosquito just bit me and I didn’t even swat it.”

From her time spent with Lu Siyan, Jiang Ruoqiao had come to appreciate fully and completely just how rich a child’s range of comparison was, and how wonderfully romantic a small child’s inner world could be.

For instance, two evenings ago, Lu Siyan had been looking out at the moon and had said to her, out of nowhere: Mommy, look — it’s like a lamp hung up in the sky.

And another time, when she had come to pick him up with her parasol open, he’d said: Mommy coming with an umbrella looks like she’s carrying a bouquet of flowers.

“You’re allowed to move now,” Jiang Ruoqiao told him. “You can go swat it.”

Then immediately she started second-guessing herself — had that been too bloodthirsty of her…?

Ugh, being a mother was just so much work!

Lu Siyan said mischievously: “Then Mommy-hero, you have to unseal my pressure points first, otherwise I can’t move.”

Jiang Ruoqiao’s face was full of amusement: “Ah — and how do we unseal them?”

Lu Siyan: “Mua~ Like this.”

Jiang Ruoqiao couldn’t hold back a laugh, but she still made a little kissing sound into the phone. “There.”

Lu Siyan really got into it, letting out a dramatic, heavy sigh of relief. “Thank you, Mommy-hero. Now I can move again. But the mosquito already flew away. It probably decided one more sip of calories today would push it over its limit.”

Jiang Ruoqiao: “……”

She had been ever so slightly roasted.

But her little one was just too clever! A mosquito deciding not to bite because the calories would exceed its daily allowance — too adorable!

If only Lu Siyan were in front of her right now — she would have to kiss him at least twice!

Lu Siyan rattled on cheerfully: “After all, I eat quite a lot every day — chicken wings, milk, lots of meat, and I don’t really like vegetables — so my blood must have quite high caloric content.”

Jiang Ruoqiao: “Hahaha darling, you are too cute.”

Mommy hereby declares: you are the cutest little one in all the world — no, the universe — bar none.

Lu Siyan’s ears went a little red at the word “darling.” “Mommy had better not be saying that just to say it, because I’m going to take it seriously.”

Jiang Ruoqiao laughed. “When have I ever lied to you? Alright, I need to call your daddy now, because the delivery-daddy is running late.”

Lu Siyan: “Okay!”

He paused, then added: “Even though the delivery-daddy is late, Mommy still has to give him five stars.”

Jiang Ruoqiao: “Haha, stop being cheeky!”

After hanging up, Jiang Ruoqiao’s face and eyes were still full of smiles.

Her feelings were the same as Lu Yicheng’s: where Lu Siyan had once been a complication, an uncertain variable in her life, he had now become someone she couldn’t do without.

Jiang Ruoqiao thought it through, then dialed Lu Yicheng’s number.

It took quite a while before he picked up.

Jiang Ruoqiao thought: alright — so the earnest, oblivious one is having a mood.

In the past, whenever she called him, he had never taken this long to answer. Today he had broken his own record.

“Hello.” His voice, as always, was unhurried and calm.

Jiang Ruoqiao said: “Where are the crabs?”

Lu Yicheng let out a helpless sigh. “I left them with the dormitory manager.”

He had indeed considered just leaving.

But as he was nearly at the school gates, he thought about how much she liked this food and turned back toward the dormitory building. Fortunately, Jiang Yan had already gone, and she had gone upstairs too, so he handed the steamed crabs to the dormitory manager.

Jiang Ruoqiao sighed as well.

She really was… someone who had a very hard time empathizing with others.

She had been like that for a long time. Even with her closest, most beloved friends — when one of them had suffered a terrible breakup and stopped eating, she had been unable to understand it.

Even when her own mother stood in front of her crying over years of hardship, she had mostly felt numb, far more than she felt moved.

She was selfish. She was perhaps even what some would call cold-blooded. And yet — for reasons she couldn’t explain — even though she hadn’t done anything wrong, she still had this persistent feeling of having somehow been unkind to Lu Yicheng.

On something of an impulse, she said: “That audio file I sent you — have you opened it and listened?”

Lu Yicheng hadn’t expected her to bring that up. He paused. “……No.”

Jiang Ruoqiao let out a quiet laugh. “Not even a little curious?”

“That’s not it,” Lu Yicheng said honestly. “You said to keep it safe for you.”

He hadn’t said she could listen.

Jiang Ruoqiao: what an honest soul.

She thought about it for a moment. “If you want to listen, you can.”

Lu Yicheng was quiet for a few seconds. “……It’s alright.”

“Why not? Aren’t you curious?”

Something seemed to shift in his mood — he even made a small joke: “There’s a saying: curiosity killed the cat.”

Jiang Ruoqiao: “……”

She was genuinely impressed.

Her eyes curved into a smile: “Fair enough. Thanks for today.”

Lu Yicheng only then registered what she meant. “Don’t mention it. Of course.”

After hanging up, Jiang Ruoqiao was in good spirits. She opened WeChat and sent Lu Yicheng a message of her own accord — five star emojis.

Lu Yicheng: 【?】

Jiang Ruoqiao: 【Five-star rating.】

Lu Yicheng looked at the message, then back at the five stars she had sent, and finally couldn’t keep a straight face.

He knew her, really. Even if they hadn’t spent that many days together, he knew: she was someone with a very firm and decided will.

Once she decided on a breakup, the breakup would happen. And after a breakup, she would never look back.

So then why — why did he still get these inexplicable emotions that didn’t make any sense at all?