The temperature in Hang Shi remained unstable even into April. After several consecutive days of warming, it promptly reverted — right on cue with the old saying: the Qingming season brings its share of rain.

On the last day of the Qingming holiday, Ruan Yu went to meet Shen Mingying. The moment she stepped out of her apartment building, a gust of cold rain hit her full in the face and made her shudder. She went back upstairs, threw on a thicker coat, and came back down, making her way through the wet streets to the café, folding her umbrella as she pushed open the door.

The damp that had caught in her lashes slowly dried.

In the private booth, Shen Mingying had already ordered coffee. The moment she saw Ruan Yu’s outfit — a plain cotton t-shirt under a heavy wool coat — she didn’t hold back: “You’re getting more and more careless about your appearance. Just because you’re good-looking doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want.”

“You should count yourself lucky I bothered to wash my hair for this. It’s not like I’m walking a runway.”

“A single woman ought to always be ready for a chance encounter.” Shen Mingying gave her a sideways look, then slid her laptop forward. “Alright, hand over the flash drive — let me see what this stubborn little writer with her mournful romantic tragedies has actually come up with.”

Ruan Yu fished a white flash drive from her bag and passed it over, then picked up a latte and settled in, scrolling through Weibo and narrating the amusing parts to Shen Mingying as she found them.

Shen Mingying laughed along at first, but gradually fell completely silent, her focus entirely consumed by the screen.

“What’s going on?” Ruan Yu set down her phone and asked.

Shen Mingying slowly lifted her eyes from the depths of the document. “This story of yours… I think it might actually blow up.”

“But last time you said—”

Shen Mingying cut her off with a wave, like a talent scout who had just discovered a hidden gem and needed a moment to compose herself before she could speak. “What I said would fail was the kind of thing so idealized it had nothing to do with reality. But your story captures the genuine texture of an ordinary school — the kind readers actually recognize. It’ll resonate.”

Ruan Yu had based it on Su Shi No. 1 High School, after all — of course it felt real.

She leaned forward, angling for more praise. “And?”

And the truth was — whenever Ruan Yu’s thinking opened up, her writing had a natural spark to it. Five years in the industry, and among writers of comparable experience, her achievements were genuinely exceptional.

A veteran author had once described her this way: in a few spare words, she digs rot out of the romantic, and then transforms that rot into something luminous. There is a rare clarity in this young woman’s writing.

Shen Mingying distilled this simply as “exceptional craft,” scrolled a bit further, and sighed with feeling: “Writing from lived experience really does go straight to the heart. Not bad at all — a textbook case of someone who loved deeply.”

“Don’t use that against me!”

“Who was it that used to go on and on about Xu Huaisong in my ear every single day?”

Ruan Yu muttered under her breath, “Everyone has a cringe phase.”

“So,” Shen Mingying studied her, “does this mean you’re completely over him now?”

Ruan Yu gave a small nod.

Honestly, if not for the diary, she’d barely have remembered Xu Huaisong at all. Even though, for the sake of getting into the right headspace for writing, she’d spent the past few days replaying every memory that involved him — what remained was only a faint, mild ache.

About the same feeling that had brought her back to her old house out of nostalgia.

Still in love? After eight years without seeing each other? Did anyone really pine that faithfully?

She added, “If I hadn’t made peace with it, writing this book would just be putting myself through misery.”

“Fair enough.” Shen Mingying clicked her tongue. “But aren’t you worried the person in question might stumble across it? That would be quite awkward.”

Ruan Yu said it wouldn’t happen. The novel was largely told from the female lead’s perspective, and she’d fictionalized and adapted the details — after so many years, who could identify a real person from a blurry impression?

Besides, she doubted Xu Huaisong had ever properly matched her name to her face to begin with. And someone like him — practically descended from the heavens, untouched by the ordinary world — would he even read romance novels?

Just as she was saying this, her phone rang.

Shen Mingying heard the ringtone — a piano piece she’d recently switched to — and suddenly recalled a passage she’d just read in the manuscript: the female lead hiding in the school flower beds, secretly listening to the male lead play piano.

Something clicked. “That’s ‘After the Rain,’ isn’t it.”

Ruan Yu nodded as she answered the call. “Mom.” She gave a few brief replies, then said, “I’m on my way.”

“What’s happened?” Shen Mingying asked.

“My mom suddenly showed up at my apartment.”

“Go on ahead then.”

Ruan Yu started gathering her things. Before she left, she said, “She’s probably come to work on my mindset — nudge me toward going on dates.”

“And how are you planning to escape?”

She scrunched up her face. “She’s come all the way from the suburbs on a cold, rainy day to show up in person. Tactically speaking, I’m probably done for.”

With that, Ruan Yu picked up her umbrella and headed briskly for the door.

Shen Mingying, never one to resist a bit of gleeful meddling, called after her retreating figure: “Make sure you livestream the date when it happens!”

After Qingming passed, the late spring cold finally let up, and Ruan Yu’s new novel, I Really Want to Whisper in Your Ear, began its serialization on Jinjiang Literature City.

Shen Mingying had once been an editor at Jinjiang and had a sharp eye for these things — and as she had predicted, after a year of silence, the pen name “Wen Xiang” made a resounding comeback in the web fiction world.

In the final days of April, the novel launched and shot up the popularity charts overnight.

It wasn’t long before a film company came knocking at the website’s door.

On a Thursday evening in early May, after posting that day’s installment of the serial, Ruan Yu made her way to a restaurant in the city center for a blind date.

Showing up had been more or less coerced, but she understood where her family was coming from. It wasn’t that her parents were in a rush to marry her off — they were simply worried about where she was at. Four years since graduation, and she hadn’t had a single relationship. Since getting into writing, she’d all but cut off even the most basic social contact. Kept up long enough, they feared she might develop some sort of psychological issue.

After all, social anxiety wasn’t exactly rare these days.

So while they called it a blind date, the real purpose was just to get her out of the apartment and making connections with people. If she happened to find someone she liked and could settle things, so much the better — but that wasn’t the main point.

Ruan Yu couldn’t find a way out of it, so she decided to treat it as a research outing.

Given that it was a first meeting, both parties opted for the main dining hall rather than a small, enclosed private room — narrow spaces could make the awkwardness worse.

The man’s family name was Liu. He was three years older than Ruan Yu, with clean, pleasant features that looked soft and agreeable under the restaurant’s gleaming overhead lights. He seemed equally inexperienced, though — stiff throughout, visibly on edge.

Before the food arrived, the two of them sat across from each other with cups of tea, making stilted small talk, staring at a loss. When the dishes finally came, they both seemed to exhale and turned their attention gratefully to eating.

Somehow, that made the atmosphere a good deal more comfortable.

The restaurant’s style was an assortment of small, delicate portions — everything refined and designed to be eaten with a certain decorum. Ruan Yu had taken a few bites of her main dish and was leaning down to have some chicken velvet soup when Liu Mao asked about her hobbies and interests.

She set down her spoon and looked up — the shoulder-length layers of her hair swaying gently with the movement — and answered in a few sentences. Keeping the conversation mutual, she asked offhandedly about his profession: “I heard that Mr. Liu is currently a partner at a law firm. ‘Young and accomplished’ seems the fitting description.”

This was clearly easier ground for him. He relaxed a little and responded with modest deflection: “I wouldn’t quite say that. We have four partners at the firm, and I’m only at the junior level — the one doing the day-to-day work. There’s a senior partner who’s been based abroad for years. Now that’s someone genuinely impressive.”

Ruan Yu didn’t know much about the legal world, and the conversation had already arrived at a natural dead end. To avoid a lull, she pressed on along the thread he’d offered: “Based abroad and not handling the day-to-day work — so what does he do?”

Liu Mao gave a slightly bashful smile. “Capital support, mostly.”

This made Ruan Yu smile as well.

Liu Mao’s gaze drifted briefly to her smiling eyes, curved like crescents, and to the two deep dimples that appeared in her cheeks — and for a moment he went blank.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

He quickly shook his head to indicate nothing, hardly able to say aloud that her smile had caught him off guard. Just as the awkwardness was peaking, his phone rang and rescued him.

He excused himself with an apology, took his phone, and made his way out through half the length of the restaurant to a quiet corner before answering. “Huaisong?”

A man’s voice came through. “Yeah.”

Liu Mao glanced at his watch. “It’s nearly four in the morning where you are, isn’t it? Something urgent?”

“Need a document. Saw you weren’t responding.”

“Ah, my apologies — I’m out on a blind date tonight. I’ll have someone take care of it now.”

He was about to hang up when he heard a hesitant pause on the other end. “…A blind date?”

“That’s right. Why?”

“Is that something people in China still do?”

He laughed. “They do indeed. Nice and quiet out there in California, I’d imagine?”

The other man gave a short laugh in return. “Nothing to do with where you are. Mainly just your age.”

“…”

The person on the other end delivered that dry, matter-of-fact jab, told him to enjoy the rest of his blind date, and promptly ended the call.

Liu Mao twitched the corner of his mouth, then rang one of his junior colleagues, passed along the work instructions, put the phone away, and walked back to the table. He’d been about to offer Ruan Yu another apology when he noticed she too was on the phone, her expression suggesting something had come up.

Seeing him return, she held up a hand in apology, then leaned in and asked the person on the line in a lowered voice, “Something like that has happened?” A beat later: “I’ll head back right now.”

When she ended the call, Liu Mao quickly asked, “Has something happened, Miss Ruan?”

“I’m sorry — there’s been a small issue with my work. I need to get back to my apartment.”

“Of course, work comes first. Let me drive you.”

Ruan Yu said it wasn’t necessary, but Liu Mao insisted, and she didn’t refuse again.

At that hour of the evening, traffic in the city center was at a complete standstill. She used the time in the back seat to get a head start, pulling out her phone and logging into her Jinjiang account.

Shen Mingying had called in a panic a short while earlier, speaking in an urgent rush: someone had posted anonymously on Jinjiang’s forum, “Bìshuǐ Jiāngtīng,” making a claim that I Really Want to Whisper in Your Ear bore a striking resemblance to another short story currently in serial on the site, titled Her Eyes Smile. Just from the first halves of both stories published so far, eleven overlapping plot elements had already been identified.

The comparison chart the original poster attached looked like a palette of paint had been knocked over — the matching points were laid out in a way that was jarring to look at. The conclusion: Wen Xiang’s I Really Want to Whisper in Your Ear was suspected of plagiarism.

In under an hour, the thread had accumulated over two thousand replies.

Overlapping plot elements on their own weren’t the problem. The problem was a chain of them. Worse still, the other story had been published before hers. At first glance, it genuinely looked like something she couldn’t wash her hands of no matter how hard she tried.

And this poster seemed to have come prepared — before publishing the thread, they had already filed a report with the site’s complaint center, and had only released half the comparison chart publicly, holding the rest in reserve.

Ruan Yu’s conscience was clear and she had nothing to hide, so she’d stayed fairly calm at first, saying she’d deal with it when she got home after the date.

But Shen Mingying had stopped her: “You’d better handle this quickly. I just looked through it — eleven specific overlapping details, each one a solid match. Even the school setting is identical, and quite a few of the dialogue exchanges are very similar too.”

“The most obvious difference is that your story is told from the female lead’s perspective — while the other one… is written from the male lead’s.”