Yancheng’s summer always has a period of continuous rainfall.

Lin Qingye didn’t like this season in high school, feeling that the air was permeated with a musty smell of things that hadn’t seen sunlight for a long time. But in reality, he didn’t much like the sun either. Back then, he would always play with his buddies until very late before going home, sleeping until evening when the sun was already setting.

But perhaps even when deeply imprisoned, the yearning for sunlight is instinctive.

Just like what Xu Zhinan meant to him.

On another evening, he was awakened by his cell phone ringing at the bedside, and answered sleepily: “Hello?”

A high school classmate on the other end amid a noisy background shouted at him: “Are you coming out to play?!”

Lin Qingye frowned, impatient: “No.”

After saying that, he directly hung up the phone, tossed it aside, and continued sleeping.

Soon after, the phone rang again, and this time Lin Qingye turned it off directly.

When he woke up again, he turned on his phone to find several missed calls and messages. Lin Qingye casually glanced at them and closed it again.

After washing up, he went downstairs. The servant in the house looked up at the sound of footsteps, and was momentarily stunned upon seeing him, apparently not expecting him to be home at this time. After a pause, she said: “Young master, I thought you weren’t home. I’ll heat dinner for you right away.”

Lin Qingye said flatly: “No need, I’ll eat out.”

He didn’t stay home long. As he was closing the door, he heard the sound of Fu Xueming talking to the servant. Lin Qingye’s fingers paused slightly, and he took out his phone to reply to that person from earlier: Where are you?

That person sent back a voice message, first criticizing his earlier action of turning off his phone, and then giving the address of an internet café.

Lin Qingye took a taxi there, arriving just as the group finished playing games and came out. Guan Chi and Shi Si were also among them, and the group went to dinner together.

This area was a commercial pedestrian street, and on Saturday, there were many students.

They chose a barbecue restaurant, sitting by the window.

There had been a thunderstorm at noon, and the ground was still wet. The air had a stuffy and humid smell.

Soon, the barbecue was served. Lin Qingye didn’t eat much meat, leaning by the window listening to their idle chat.

Later, someone suddenly called out: “Hey, isn’t that the girl from First High that Qin Tang is pursuing?”

The others all looked over to see Xu Zhinan walking by arm in arm with a friend.

“Why is she still wearing a school uniform on a Saturday? Such a nerd.”

“What do you know? I think their First High sometimes has classes on Saturday afternoon. Too miserable, six days of classes in a seven-day week.”

“You think everyone’s like you? She looks like a good girl who loves studying.”

The group teased for a while, and at this point, Lin Qingye stood up.

“Where are you going?” one of them asked.

Lin Qingye raised the cigarette in his hand and went out.

Xu Zhinan was at the milk tea shop next to the barbecue restaurant with her friend, each ordering a cup.

Lin Qingye lit a cigarette, clenched it between his teeth, took a deep drag, his cheeks slightly hollowing, and then slowly exhaled a mouthful of smoke, warmed by the stuffy heat of the summer evening outside.

“Ah Nan, with your grades so good, have you thought about which university you want to apply to?” her friend asked.

Xu Zhinan answered: “I want to apply to Pingchuan University, but I don’t know if I can get in. The score line was quite high last year.”

“You definitely can, your grades are so good.”

Lin Qingye leaned against the wall, flicking his cigarette ash with his fingers, seemingly lost in thought or something else.

He was strikingly handsome, and several passing girls cast appreciative glances his way, excitedly sharing with their friends in hushed tones.

It was at this moment that another unexpected downpour began.

Xu Zhinan and her friend grabbed their milk tea, neither having brought umbrellas, and stood helplessly under the eaves of the milk tea shop.

Her friend said, “I think there’s a printing shop upstairs. Let’s go print out those materials the teacher mentioned earlier. Maybe the rain will stop in a bit.”

“Sounds good, did you bring a USB drive?” Xu Zhinan asked.

“I did.” Her friend patted her schoolbag.

There was a staircase next to the milk tea shop leading to the second floor, mostly occupied by printing shops, eyewear stores, and the like.

Lin Qingye didn’t even glance in their direction. After finishing his cigarette, he tossed the butt into a trash can, looked around, and spotted a convenience store across the street.

He pressed down his hat brim, walked into the pouring rain, bought an umbrella from the convenience store, and placed it on the handrail of the staircase they had just gone up.

Lin Qingye didn’t stay any longer, shook off the rainwater on himself, and returned to the barbecue restaurant.

“Captain, didn’t you go out to smoke? How did you get caught in the rain?” Guan Chi asked.

“Had to go somewhere.”

He was vague, but the others were used to his personality and didn’t ask further.

Everyone ate for a while longer. After the rain, the sky had already darkened early, and they prepared to move on to continue playing elsewhere.

Everyone walked out of the barbecue restaurant together, stepping on the wet ground, passing by the milk tea shop. Lin Qingye turned his head to look—the umbrella was still there, lonely, with even its outer cover not opened.

Lin Qingye calmly turned away and continued walking with everyone.

At that time, Xu Zhinan was in her second year of high school, and Lin Qingye was in his third year.

Half a year after this moment, Lin Qingye’s “Acacia” would win the Golden Melody Award.

The Golden Melody Award is highly prestigious, even a goal for industry veterans who have been in the music scene for many years. When it was suddenly awarded to an unknown high school student’s band, it immediately caused a sensation in the music world.

Besides the olive branches extended to him from the entertainment industry, another change came in the form of admission offers from several prestigious schools.

Most were formidable music academies, with only Pingchuan University being a comprehensive institution, though its arts programs were no less impressive than specialized academies.

Since Lin Qingye was the lyricist, composer, and lead vocalist for “Acacia,” he was the only one in the Acacia band to receive admission offers.

“Captain, where are you planning to go?” Ji Yan asked.

Lin Qingye leaned on the studio sofa, lazy, paused for a few seconds, and said flatly: “Ping University, I guess.”

“Why Ping University? Seems harder to graduate from than those pure music schools.”

“It’s closer.”

Ji Yan nodded: “That’s true, more convenient.”

Lin Qingye didn’t say anything more, lit another cigarette, closed his eyes, and rested.

But at this moment, in his mind appeared the scene from half a year ago when he encountered Xu Zhinan outside the barbecue restaurant.

The young girl wearing the blue and white uniform of First High, with a ponytail and a few loose strands of hair at her temples, not looking messy at all but rather radiating an inexplicable youthful vigor. It was raining outside, but seeing her was like smelling the scent of sunshine.

That day, she had told her friend she wanted to attend Pingchuan University.

Lin Qingye’s eyelashes trembled slightly, and he took a hard drag on his cigarette.

He wasn’t sure why he had chosen Pingchuan University, only making the decision instinctively, and only afterward remembering that he had heard Xu Zhinan say she also wanted to go to Pingchuan University that day.

However, a year later, it was confirmed that his choice had been correct.

Xu Zhinan did get into Ping University, and they also formed a connection through some of his less-than-honorable methods.

At this point, Lin Qingye didn’t think he had fallen in love with Xu Zhinan.

The concept of “liking” was too distant from his understanding.

But his feelings toward Xu Zhinan were indeed different. Lin Qingye regarded this as an obsession stemming from their first encounter on that snowy night.

This relationship between them continued for a long time.

Lin Qingye was clever and indeed had a sufficiently attractive appearance, knowing how to make people like him.

In this relationship, it seemed he was the one in control, with Xu Zhinan below.

But no one ever knew how, in those years hidden from others, he had seen her in his dreams time and again, and how he had strategically maneuvered to reach this point.

Like that night at the Acacia band’s last bar performance, when Xu Zhinan came to see his show.

After the performance, they met outside the side door of the bar, when unexpectedly a downpour began.

Again in this situation, he was momentarily reminded of that summer rainy day years ago, and that umbrella he had left on the stair railing that was never opened.

Xu Zhinan asked: “Do you have an umbrella?”

Lin Qingye laughed: “No.”

Xu Zhinan stood under the eaves, looking worriedly at the downpour.

Lin Qingye flicked his cigarette ash and turned his head: “Run?”

“Ah…?”

While Xu Zhinan was still hesitating, Lin Qingye had already taken off his jacket and put it over her, directly grabbing her hand and running into the rain.

The raindrops splashed up from the muddy puddles, hitting their calves, ice-cold.

At that time, Lin Qingye didn’t know that Xu Zhinan had always felt they weren’t people of the same world. On rainy days, she would use an umbrella, while Lin Qingye would pull her to run wildly in the rain.

But Xu Zhinan also didn’t know that, from the very beginning, Lin Qingye was the one willing to buy an umbrella for her.

Perhaps because Lin Qingye’s initial approach to her was flawed, this relationship was destined not to last.

In front of everyone, Lin Qingye was drenched with a bottle of water and called a bastard.

He was indeed a bastard; he knew it himself.

But he had originally thought he could, like the bastard he was, easily remove Xu Zhinan from his life. He had already possessed her, conquered her, seen her tear-rimmed eyes—that obsession could finally be dispelled.

Unexpectedly, what awaited him was increasingly intense irritability and jealousy.

Until one time when Xu Zhinan calmly looked at him, her voice also undisturbed.

She said: “Because I found that you seem to like me very much.”

His secret had been caught.

His true heart had finally been exposed and completely laid bare.

Past trauma from his family made him never want to actively express his affection, because he never wanted to experience again the feeling of dismissal and coldness like what Fu Xueming had shown him.

But before him was Xu Zhinan.

He admitted it.

He gave in.

Even though at that time Xu Zhinan seemed to have completely moved on, and he was nothing more to her than a contemptible scumbag she had once encountered.

But he still put down the iron walls of self-esteem he had struggled to build, trampling them underfoot.

He didn’t even dare to touch her, hands pressed on his knees, back bent, gaze level with hers.

He pleaded humbly: “Ah Nan, let me like you one more time.”

From then on, he gradually opened up his real self to Xu Zhinan, and she came to know all his self-reproach and self-loathing.

That Lin Qingye, who was slapped by Fu Xueming.

That Lin Qingye, who was obsessed with the day his brother died.

That Lin Qingye, whom his mother viewed as an enemy.

He was no longer what Xu Zhinan had once thought—lofty, adored by all, arrogant and conceited.

But he could be mired in a quagmire, unable to extricate himself, yet still radiate brilliance that made everyone look up to him.

With his blue hair, in the thunderous roar of the music festival, he introduced himself: “Hello everyone, I’m Lin Qingye.”

Holding up a trophy, he said: “I’ve won your birthday gift back.”

When she was afraid, he held her in his arms, repeatedly soothing in a low voice: “I’m here.”

Standing on the steps in the dim morning light, he said: “Trust me, I’m Lin Qingye.”

Lying on the broken boards on the roof of an abandoned building, he said: “I love you.”

…

Xu Zhinan used to read fairy tales where the princess always ended up with her prince charming.

But Lin Qingye didn’t fit the conventional definition of a prince at all.

The prince in fairy tales has a handsome appearance, a distinguished background, rides a spotless white horse, gallant and dashing, cutting through thorns and slaying dragons, welcoming his princess amid everyone’s blessings.

All the dragons or thorns exist to make him appear more heroic and magnificent.

But Lin Qingye wasn’t like that. He didn’t have that spotless white horse, and the hardships along the way even directly cut off his leg, imprisoned, unable to move.

He was imprisoned.

The once carefree, uninhibited, unrestricted Lin Qingye was imprisoned.

Daily routines had to follow arrangements, waking up and eating on schedule, working uniformly on schedule, and washing and sleeping on schedule.

Though everything seemed orderly on the surface, it was chaotic, a place filled with various evils. To survive in such a place, one could only assimilate.

To avoid being bullied, one had to be tough enough to be feared.

When he first entered, many people couldn’t stand him.

That day, Lin Qingye had just finished a fight, with a cut at the corner of his eye, but he had won.

That night, as he stood before the mirror washing up, looking at himself, the wound at the corner of his eye untreated, the blood already dried, he washed his face, feeling the sting.

He turned sideways to look at the tattoo on his back in the mirror.

But seeing the gently smiling Xu Zhinan on his back, he also felt a kind of helpless inferiority.

She was just too wonderful.

Too wonderful to be tainted by any evil.

Soon, it was time for bed, and Lin Qingye returned to his bed.

He wasn’t used to sleeping early, so he took out paper and pen, forcefully writing stroke by stroke—

That girl, ah

I’ve never so urgently wanted to see her

But she doesn’t speak

Like a silent deity

…

Finally, at the top, he wrote the song title—”Murmuring.”

He wrote these two characters with extreme force, even tearing the paper several times.

After writing, he looked at it for a long time, suddenly lowered his head, and buried deeply into the pillow. The moonlight poured in, and he silently wept.

All his perseverance and strength completely collapsed and shattered in the quiet night.

Inferiority pressed upon him layer by layer, sweeping over him, almost suffocating.

Lin Qingye spent two and a half years in this state. The moment he breathed the outside air again felt like another world, and even Xu Zhinan’s image had become very blurry.

He didn’t immediately go to see Xu Zhinan.

Inferiority, fear of not knowing what to say, fear that she might have a new boyfriend, also fear that she might still be waiting for him.

He felt he was no longer worthy of her.

But Ji Yan told him that Xu Zhinan had dyed her hair blue, and had kept it blue for as long as he had been gone.

Uncle Wang told him that now only he could make it up to Xu Zhinan.

Lin Qingye hesitated for a day, from morning until nightfall.

He went to the studio, touched all his instruments again, listened to his old songs again, trying hard to remember his once high-spirited days.

Then he went to find Xu Zhinan.

How his self-esteem had been broken before, that’s how he picked it up now.

Even if he was just putting up a front, he had at least managed to hold himself together.

Standing at the door of the tattoo shop, seeing the man talking to Xu Zhinan, he smiled contemptuously and arrogantly: “Hey, before you try to pick up a girl, you might want to find out whose girl she is.”

Identical to the Lin Qingye of before.

Like an illusion.

Then he stood a bit straighter, shifting his gaze to Xu Zhinan.

His lover, whom he hadn’t seen for two and a half years.

“Ah Nan,” he smiled, “I’m Lin Qingye.”

In this moment, Lin Qingye pushed himself to the edge, completely shattered his inferiority, and from the ruins of that inferiority, forced himself to take on unprecedented responsibility.

Even if he had once been mired in hell, now he would revere Xu Zhinan as a deity.

He thought at this moment—

Perhaps it doesn’t have to be only princes who are worthy of princesses.

Even if he were that despised and spat-upon dragon, he would still break through the wind and waves, cut through thorns, and protect the princess well in her castle.

“Captain, Captain.” A voice came over.

Lin Qingye frowned slightly, tearing himself from the dream.

Around him, lights blazed, with the rustle of voices. Looking up, he saw Shi Si’s face.

“Are you okay?” Shi Si hadn’t seen him like this in a long time.

Lin Qingye rubbed his face hard: “I’m fine, how long did I sleep?”

“Quite a while, almost an hour. You must be too tired from preparing for the concert lately. The makeup artist was calling you to do your hair.”

His Adam’s apple moved slightly: “Mm.”

Probably because he was too tired recently, this dream was particularly deep, spanning a timeline of many years, yet every detail was so real, as if it had taken him through his early life all over again.

Backstage at the concert, everyone was bustling about, preparing costumes, preparing lights, preparing for the final series of equipment checks; everyone was busy around his new album concert.

The dream had abruptly ended at his lowest point, and opening his eyes to such a scene left him somewhat dazed.

The stylist fixed his costume and hairstyle, and the audience was already orderly entering the venue.

Today had another special aspect: Lin Huairan would also be appearing on stage with him.

Among all of Lin Qingye’s instruments at home, though he could play many, he was especially fond of the drums, and today he would accompany his father.

“Look, isn’t he cool?” The stylist brought little Huairan over.

Lin Qingye patted his head: “Nervous?”

“What’s there to be nervous about?”

Lin Qingye laughed: “Good, that’s good.”

At eight o’clock, Lin Qingye took the stage.

Thunderous screams and cheers, and a sea of blue as far as the eye could see.

“Hello everyone,” he began.

Then he raised the microphone.

The audience answered in unison: “Lin Qingye—!”

This was already his fourth album, and he had held countless concerts.

Over the years, he had won numerous awards, achieving legendary status again and again.

But this one had special significance, returning to that Olympic Sports Center.

A venue for 80,000 people.

The place where he held his first concert after his comeback.

He had some emotional connection to this place.

It was here that he first introduced the Acacia band to so many people, and it was here that he revealed the large tattoo on his back in front of everyone, publicly announcing his relationship.

And now, his child with Xu Zhinan was about to join him on stage.

It was truly remarkable.

As the concert came to an end with the last song, the lights swept over the accompanying band behind, and some sharp-eyed fans spotted a small figure among them.

“Hey? Is that Huairan?!”

“Where?”

“Behind! The one playing the drums!”

“Oh my god! It is! So cool!!!!!!”

“Ahhhhhhh!”

…

After the last song ended, Lin Qingye inserted the microphone into the stand, turned around, and beckoned with his hand. Lin Huairan walked from behind into the spotlight.

Lin Qingye put his hand on his shoulder, and father and son bowed together.

The big screen beside also displayed a close-up of the father and son, allowing audiences in the back rows who couldn’t see clearly to now see them, and the entire venue erupted in even more passionate cheers.

“Thank you all for coming to listen to our songs today,” Lin Qingye said.

Many in the audience were maternal fans of Lin Huairan, and after “Baby Style” ended, they had no way to know how he was doing. Now seeing him up close, they were all extremely excited.

Among the shouts calling “Lin Qingye’s” name were mixed a few calls of “Lin Huairan.”

And suddenly, in a moment when the entire venue finally quieted down, an extremely loud voice came out: “Where’s my Nan Nan!!!”

The crowd burst into laughter.

Lin Qingye also heard it, looked over, picked up the microphone, and a deep laugh came through the speakers: “Of course she’s here.”

Everyone looked around, trying to find Xu Zhinan’s figure.

Before they could discover her, the lighting designer had already directed a spotlight over.

A woman with a hat in the central front row, also shown on the big screen. Although only the lower part of her face beneath the hat brim was visible, it was still clear she was extremely beautiful—indeed Xu Zhinan.

But now the focus wasn’t on her, but on the little pink bundle sitting on her lap.

A, never-before-seen, little pink bundle.

A pair of round black eyes, like black grapes, blinking at the camera, not intimidated at all, with two particularly cute little pigtails.

Everyone was shocked, shocked enough that the 80,000-person Olympic Sports Center temporarily fell silent.

Lin Qingye stood on the stage, his gaze shedding its former sharpness, gentle beyond measure: “Ah Nan, come to me.”

Xu Zhinan carried the little pink bundle forward, to the front of the stage, and was helped up by Lin Qingye.

Lin Qingye stood beside Xu Zhinan, cradling the pink bundle in his arm, with his other hand holding the microphone, and said softly to the audience: “Let me introduce our family’s new member.”

Lin Qingye thought, his decision to force himself, to feign courage and seek out Xu Zhinan again, looking at this moment, had indeed been the right choice.

He and Xu Zhinan had ultimately achieved career success, happiness, and health, and were blessed with both a son and a daughter.