Ruan Yu ended the call and frowned, opened Xu Huaisong’s WeChat conversation, scrolled up and down a few times, then set her phone down — and after a moment, picked it up again.

Was it simply a dead battery, or was there another reason?

Xu Huaisong had a history of overworking himself. In the first few days after arriving in America, he’d probably already been losing sleep to the jet lag. Then he’d stayed up through the night before last, and today had been a back-to-back day of court proceedings on top of that. Could something have gone wrong with his health?

How else could someone fall asleep before seven in the evening?

The more she thought about it, the more unsettled she became, and a creeping anxiety began to show in her eyes.

The other screenwriters in the car asked if something was wrong.

Ruan Yu shook her head to indicate it was nothing, but a feeling of helplessness quietly rose in her chest as she looked down.

She was so far from Xu Huaisong, and she didn’t know any of his friends over there. How was she supposed to confirm he was all right?

She turned her phone over and over in her hands, scrolling through her contacts — and her fingertip paused on Lu Shenglan’s WeChat conversation.

The sharp unease left her no room for hesitation. She tapped the cursor and typed: Miss Lu, I’m sorry to bother you so late. I’ve been unable to reach Huaisong and I’m a little worried about him. Would it be too much trouble to ask you to check with his roommate whether he’s all right?

Outside the car window, the passing scenery blurred past in reverse. Ruan Yu pressed send.

But Lu Shenglan probably didn’t check WeChat often, so there was no reply for a while.

The car left the highway and crossed into Su Shi. They drove all the way to the school gates of Su Shi No. 1 High School before a message came through from her: Give me a moment, I’ll check.

Ruan Yu let out a quiet breath and stepped out of the car — and immediately spotted Xu Huaishi standing at the school gate, waving at her. “Sister!”

Ruan Yu blinked. She exchanged a quick word with the screenwriters, then walked over. “It’s freezing out here — what are you doing standing here?”

“Waiting for you!” Xu Huaishi looked past her shoulder. “Didn’t the actors come with you?”

Ruan Yu gave a helpless smile. “The actors won’t arrive until evening. Do you want to keep waiting?”

Xu Huaishi hooked her arm through hers. “No thanks. If I stay with you, I’ll definitely see the stars eventually.”

Ruan Yu glanced at her sideways. One arm occupied, she used the other to take out her phone and check it.

“What are you looking at, Sister?”

“I can’t get through to your brother. I’m a little worried.”

“Hm? When did you start losing him?”

“About an hour ago. Someone tried calling him and it went straight to voicemail.”

“That’s strange — I called him just two hours ago.”

Ruan Yu paused. That would have been shortly before Zhou Jun tried to reach Xu Huaisong.

“Was he all right?”

Xu Huaishi gave a small huff. “He was fine. Just sounded really drowsy — I woke him up. He was in a terrible mood about it. Said his phone was almost dead and told me to hang up quickly.”

Ruan Yu exhaled.

So he really had just fallen asleep and run out of battery. She had completely let her worry run away with her — what on earth had she been imagining? She’d even gone so far as to message Lu Shenglan.

She was just about to send a message saying never mind, when Lu Shenglan’s reply came through: I checked. His roommate says he’s in his room sleeping. Do you want me to have him wake him up?

Ruan Yu quickly typed back: No need at all, please let him rest. Thank you so much for the trouble.

The stone in her chest set itself down. She felt the tension lift all at once. She turned to look at Xu Huaishi’s knee-length school uniform skirt. “Aren’t you freezing in that?”

“The film crew is coming to shoot on location tonight — they’re filming the New Year’s fireworks show here. We didn’t have any afternoon classes today, so some of my classmates and I signed up to be extras for the evening. Of course I had to dress nicely.”

“There’ll be thousands of people on that field, and it’ll be past midnight, and sparks flying everywhere — no one is going to be able to tell anyone apart.”

“Then why did you wear a short skirt to the fireworks show eight years ago, Sister?”

Ruan Yu went briefly speechless. This was the misery of having every detail of one’s romantic history made fully public knowledge.

She sighed. “If I’d known then that your brother would have liked me even if I’d wrapped myself up like a bear, I never would have been silly enough to stand there freezing.”

The two of them chatted as they walked inside.

Xu Huaishi said brightly, “Are you going straight to the field now, Sister?”

Ruan Yu nodded.

“Then you’ll be standing out in the cold until tonight! Your brother is going to be worried sick.”

“It’s work. I’ve got heat patches on — I’ll be fine.”

“The actors haven’t arrived yet, and the crew are still setting up the stage. You’ll just be sitting around doing nothing. Why don’t you come around with me instead? I’m getting together with a few of my classmates tonight to celebrate — we’ll treat you to barbecue!”

Ruan Yu shook her head. “You go with your classmates. Our director has a reputation in the industry for being terrifying. Taking time off on the very first day wouldn’t look good.”

Xu Huaishi’s face fell. “But I already bragged to everyone that there’s a future sister-in-law in the crew…”

Being called “future sister-in-law” stirred something in Ruan Yu — a sense of duty, a sense of purpose. She paused, then said: “Let me ask then.”

She called the director. She hadn’t even finished explaining what she wanted before she heard the man laughing on the other end: “Oh, you’re here already? My fault — I must have forgotten to tell you, you don’t need to be here until ten tonight.”

“So right now, I could —”

“Don’t stand around freezing on the field in this cold. I’ll let you know when the actors arrive.”

Ruan Yu ended the call and looked at Xu Huaishi’s expectant face. “Well? Is the director easy to talk to?”

Xu Huaishi nodded blankly.

So much for the acclaimed director with the fearsome reputation. He was as gentle as her father.

That evening, Ruan Yu went out with Xu Huaishi and the group of students who had signed up as extras, to a nearby barbecue restaurant.

The simple, modest décor was alive with warmth — the smell of grilled food, fizzy drinks, the overlapping voices of students, and the silly, earnest rounds of a truth-or-dare game. All of it together filled the gap left by Xu Huaisong’s absence and gave her the genuine feeling of being in a celebration, the kind that made even her heart feel younger.

She stayed with the noise and the laughter until nine in the evening, when a message from Xu Huaisong arrived: I’m up. What are you doing?

She set down her last trace of worry, told Xu Huaishi beside her, and stepped away from the table. Outside the barbecue restaurant, she dialed a voice call.

He picked up instantly. Standing in the cold wind, she was shivering, but her face wore a smile. “I’m at a barbecue place with Huaishi and her classmates. Youth is wonderful — I want to be seventeen again.”

Xu Huaisong gave a low laugh, his voice carrying the slight huskiness of someone who had not long woken up. “What’s so great about seventeen? That’s not even legal age.”

Ruan Yu paused, just about to ask him what he meant by legal age, when he added: “Can’t drink strong liquor yet.”

“…” He had developed an actual fondness for the stuff.

In the brief silence, the sound of a car horn came through the phone.

“You’re outside?” Ruan Yu asked, surprised.

“Yeah. Drove out to get some breakfast.”

“Then don’t keep the call going — drive properly. We can talk later.”

“All right.”

She ended the voice call, checked the time, and then rounded up the students to head back to school.

The sports field had been fully arranged. Lights blazed from all four sides. Several enormous cameras stood positioned on the grass, the extras were seated in the stands waiting on standby, and the production crew rushed back and forth below in busy preparation.

Ruan Yu parted ways with Xu Huaishi, greeted the director, and made her way to the actors’ tent, where she found Li Shican and Sun Miaohan in their Su Shi No. 1 High School uniforms, running lines together with their scripts.

She sat down across from them. She’d barely had time to rub her hands together when Li Shican held out a hand warmer. “I have a spare — take it.”

She thanked him and asked offhandedly: “How are the lines coming?”

Sun Miaohan patted her chest. “No problem at all!”

Li Shican nodded. “We’re ready.”

Ruan Yu looked at the two of them, their confidence perhaps a touch too complete, and felt not entirely reassured. She offered a reminder: “Don’t let the simplicity fool you. This scene only has six words of dialogue for the male lead, but the emotions it carries are the richest of the entire film. Think of a fountain pump pressed to its absolute limit — then suddenly held back at the very edge of explosion. The hardest thing to do is to externalize what isn’t said aloud. I keep wondering why they chose to open filming with this scene.”

Sun Miaohan quickly said, “Probably to save on budget? They have ready-made extras and atmosphere props right here.”

Ruan Yu nodded, then furrowed her brow and murmured: “But then why insist on waiting for midnight?”

The sky looked perfectly ready now. Wouldn’t it be better to wrap earlier? She still wanted to do a New Year countdown call with Xu Huaisong.

Sun Miaohan laughed sheepishly, scratched her head, and couldn’t come up with an answer. She nudged Li Shican with her elbow.

Li Shican said “oh” and explained: “Director Cen is big on ceremony. He thinks it sets a good omen for the production — so he insisted the director take the first shot right at midnight. I think the meaning behind it is lovely, don’t you think, Miaohan?”

“Absolutely, lovely!”

Ruan Yu blinked, flat-faced. She picked up her phone and typed a complaint to Xu Huaisong: This crew is something else. From the investors to the director to the actors — none of them seem entirely normal.

Huaisong: When you find that everyone around you seems abnormal, the one thing you might want to reflect on is whether you might actually be the abnormal one.

Soft Jade: What’s gotten into you? Did you hide a knife in your mouth?

Huaisong: Irritating my girlfriend and then coaxing her back into a good mood — it’s one of life’s little pleasures.

Soft Jade: You’re not acting normal either. Maybe it really is me who’s the problem…

Ruan Yu put her phone down and waited for midnight with a heart full of grievances.

It was not until eleven-thirty that the more than a thousand extras were finally called by the director to take their positions on the field. Then at eleven-fifty, the two lead actors walked out onto the grass.

Production staff moved back and forth confirming lighting and fireworks positions. At five minutes to midnight, someone called her name: “Sister Ruan, could you come take a look at the camera framing?”

Ruan Yu had just been about to dial Xu Huaisong for a New Year’s countdown call. She set down her phone at the sound of her name, got to her feet with a puzzled frown, and walked over.

Why would she be needed to look at the camera framing? She wasn’t the director.

She was led by a crew member to the center of the sports field, where the director spoke at length in technical terms she only half understood. The one sentence she managed to follow was: “Little Ruan, the opening shot won’t be on the lead actors — it’s going to be a wide landscape shot. Just stand at this point and feel whether the setting matches the spirit of the original work.”

“…”

She had never worked on a film before, but something about this felt distinctly off. Ruan Yu asked carefully: “Director, this is the center mark, isn’t it? Standing here — won’t I end up in the shot?”

The director said “no” and launched into another round of technical explanation.

She stood there absorbing it in a daze, and by the time she came back to herself, it was already fifty-nine minutes past eleven.

The director slapped his thigh with a sharp “ah,” raised his megaphone, and called out: “Get ready for the countdown.” Then he turned to her with great solemnity and said, “Stand firm at that mark, raise your head, and feel it with your heart!”

“…”

Ruan Yu was beginning to suspect she had landed herself in some spectacularly eccentric production.

At the director’s command, the extras on all sides gathered in and formed a circle around her, and she found herself standing — pushed there more than placed, like a duck herded onto a stage — at the very center of the sports field, gazing up at the deep blue sky.

The Milky Way was laid out overhead, and the sky burned with countless stars.

From all four sides, the countdown began: “Five — four — three — two —”

At “one,” the fireworks detonated. A blaze of light and fire shot upward in an instant, cascading across the sky in every brilliant color.

In that same moment, a hand took hold of hers.

She almost cried out. The exclamation rose to her lips — and stopped, because she had turned her head first and seen who it belonged to.

In the flickering, shifting light, she saw a man in a well-fitted suit, wearing gold-rimmed glasses, head slightly bowed, looking at her with a quiet smile.

Xu Huaisong.

Xu Huaisong, who should at this moment be on the other side of the world, more than ten thousand kilometers away.

Ruan Yu’s mouth fell open. She was so stunned she had no words for it. She turned her head stiffly and looked around at all the people on every side — smiling as they watched the two of them — and then she understood.

Films were never made like this.

There was no extraordinary production crew. There were only hearts that had been won over. More than a thousand hearts that had been won over.

She stared at Xu Huaisong. Her own heart, a beat behind the rest of her, began to race — matching the rhythm of the fireworks bursting overhead.

But this time, even after the last firework burned out, he did not let go of her hand.

As if sensing what was about to happen, Ruan Yu swallowed, her breath catching with nerves.

More than a thousand people surrounded them, and not one of them made a sound. Everyone was waiting for Xu Huaisong to speak.

Then, under lights bright as full daylight, they watched him take his leading lady’s hand and say:

“Eight years ago on this day, I stood in this place and told a lie — I deceived a girl I was in love with. Eight years later on this day, I have deceived her once more, and brought more than a thousand people along to spend an entire day in the deception with me. All those lies — each one told to explain the very first one. To tell her: I had a mouth full of untruths, and yet from first to last, I had only one heart — a heart that loved her.

Because I loved her, I never told her that in the ten minutes before the fireworks launched that year, I stood at the top of the stands searching, and only found her in the crowd — eyes darting left and right — in the final thirty seconds, before jumping over the railing to reach her.

Because I loved her, I never told her that it wasn’t only the stands — in the equipment room of the gymnasium, in the reading room of the library, at the serving window of the cafeteria, in the computer lab of the teaching building — I had searched for her, again and again.

Because I loved her, I never told her that her class’s assigned cleaning zone was always a mess — yet on every day she was on duty, not a fallen leaf remained to be seen. It wasn’t luck. It was because I had secretly swept it clean.

Because I loved her, I never told her that the practice math exam that year was not the least bit difficult. Going to the office to ask about the questions was only an excuse — a reason to hear whatever her father might let slip about her, so I could remember every single word that had anything to do with her.

Because I loved her, I kept too many secrets from her. I chose silence over speaking. But still, because I loved her, I spent eight years finding my way back — wandering and turning — to this day, to stand before her once again.”

Xu Huaisong paused here and smiled. He drew out a deep blue ring box, opened it, and knelt on one knee before her.

At that, the thousands of people surrounding them finally could no longer hold back their gasps and cheers.

But Ruan Yu’s eyes had already begun to sting. Her gaze shimmered and grew bright. The diamond ring reflected there, and the man who held it, seemed more radiant to her than all the stars above.

Xu Huaisong looked up at her and continued: “I have come here, wanting to spend the next eight years, the next eighteen years, the next eighty years, telling her every secret I kept — every secret about loving her — from those eight years ago. I want to ask if she is willing to listen. So, Ruan Yu — will you marry me?”

— Ruan Yu, will you marry me?

In the time before this moment had arrived, she had imagined — being a romance writer herself — that she would surely have many clever answers ready for a question like this.

Romantic ones. Unexpected ones. Answers that were her own and no one else’s.

But when the moment truly came, she found that in the vast, still silence surrounding her, she had lost all capacity for thought entirely.

Just as the only true reply to “I love you” seems to be “I love you too,” she could not find a single word that was unusual or rare.

Ordinary as they were, small as they were — when love found them at last, they fell into an ending as commonplace as any in the world.

And she, like every girl who has ever been loved, felt the tears rise to her eyes in that moment. She looked at the man gazing up at her, gave a solemn nod, and told him:

“I do.”

(— End of Main Story —)

Author’s note: Thank you all for your support over these two months for my first contemporary romance. The print edition should be out sometime next year. The web extras will start this Sunday — please allow me to rest for two days first. The next book will be either “Wine and Color” or “The Conqueror and the Delicate Flower” — the title may change before the book opens, so do save them to your collection so you don’t lose track! If you’re willing to show your support, please also visit my column and give me an author follow! See you Sunday for the extras.