By the time she finished speaking, Ruan Yu hadn’t dared to look at Xu Huaisong even once — she kept her gaze locked dead on Liu Mao instead, as though she’d grabbed onto a lifeline. As long as he gave her one confirming glance, she could turn and bolt.
Across from her, Xu Huaisong seemed entirely indifferent. He finished listening, then lowered his head and started typing something on his phone.
In Ruan Yu’s estimation, it probably meant: You two talk, I don’t mind either way.
As for the oppressive tension hanging around them, Liu Mao was growing more and more bewildered. Before he could make sense of it, the decision had already been handed to him, and he found himself at a loss — he ended up saying something rather pointless: “Miss Ruan, have you thought it through?”
Ruan Yu hadn’t even answered when a ringtone cut through the air: “Ah, deep affection, the rain falls softly, the whole world exists only in your eyes…”
“……”
Liu Mao gave a quiet cough. “My apologies to you both — I need to take this call.” He turned and hurried out the door.
Not only did he leave, he pulled the door shut behind him. Ruan Yu grew even more uncomfortable, standing in front of the sofa chair in an awkward no-man’s-land, letting out an stilted laugh: “Lawyer Liu has quite refined taste.”
Xu Huaisong was quiet for a moment, then looked up at her. “Mm.”
Time suddenly slowed to a crawl — like standing on a bed of nails, every second an ordeal. She could only keep making conversation: “Last time I saw him, his ringtone was something different.”
He looked up again, this time lightly adjusting his glasses. “Last time?”
Ruan Yu hesitated and nodded, but then he seemed to lose interest in the matter almost immediately. He gestured with one hand, indicating she should sit, then lowered his head and began flipping through a stack of law firm promotional materials.
The wordless gesture of please sit was, as always, more effective than any verbal command — her uncooperative legs simply bent beneath her.
Xu Huaisong pointed toward the coffee table, signaling that she could set the documents she was clutching there. Then he immersed himself in the materials without looking at her again.
Only then did she feel safe enough to put down what had felt like a thousand-kilogram “hot potato.”
Liu Mao showed no sign of returning, and with no one to liven the mood, the consultation room became entirely unsuitable for any consultation.
Ruan Yu’s gaze drifted around for a while before it inevitably fell back on the person sitting across from her. In the stillness, she began to slowly accept the reality — that eight years after graduating from high school, she had actually run into Xu Huaisong.
And yet the person before her… felt like Xu Huaisong, and somehow didn’t.
Aside from his features being more or less the same, almost everything else about him had changed. He’d grown several inches taller, his frame had filled out — he was no longer the beanpole he’d been back then. A mature air seemed to have settled over him, refined and distilled by the passage of years.
Familiar, and yet a stranger.
Time had been remarkably generous to Xu Huaisong.
After all, for most people, the years left behind a receding hairline and a beer belly.
At that thought, she drew in a breath to let out a wistful sigh — but before it escaped her, the person across from her said out of nowhere: “Does Miss Ruan have some objection to me?”
Ruan Yu choked.
Back in school during morning exercises, she’d snuck glances at him every single time during the rotation movements, and he’d been oblivious as a “little deaf-blind boy.” But a few years of practicing law had apparently sharpened his senses considerably.
Still — he seemed to be in a rather bad mood?
She quickly waved her hand. “Not at all, not at all, I wouldn’t dare… I was lamenting my own unfortunate circumstances.” She pointed at the documents on the coffee table, implying she was troubled over the case.
Xu Huaisong followed her gesture and looked over.
She immediately sensed danger and reached out to nudge the semi-transparent document folder a little closer to her side.
Xu Huaisong looked away again and returned to the materials — but in his peripheral vision, he noticed that slender, pale hand ease the folder another centimeter outward. When he showed no reaction, a few seconds later, it crept out another two or three centimeters with painstaking caution.
Could the idiom “push an inch, take a foot” really be applied like this?
He thought about it, gauged exactly when she was about to make a third move, and suddenly looked up.
Ruan Yu was visibly startled — her whole body went rigid, like a shrimp dropped into boiling water. She gave him a stiff smile: “What is it, Lawyer Xu?”
The words “Lawyer Xu” felt awkward coming out, and just as awkward going in.
The atmosphere plummeted to freezing.
Liu Mao returned at precisely the moment it hit zero, apologizing to both of them and explaining that something had come up downstairs.
Ruan Yu had found her savior. She scooped up that ominous stack of documents and stood. “Lawyer Liu, I’ve made up my mind.”
Liu Mao’s expression showed a flicker of regret. “I respect your decision, Miss Ruan, but I’ve seen many clients hesitate at the last minute just like you — and in the end, they usually still choose to proceed with litigation. You’re welcome to think it over once more.”
“The type you’re referring to would be divorce clients.” Xu Huaisong, head still lowered, dropped this remark out of nowhere.
Liu Mao’s expression froze.
Ruan Yu blinked, puzzled. Were these two on bad terms? Why was Xu Huaisong undermining him so ruthlessly? As she remembered it, he hadn’t been the sharp-tongued type before.
In her memory, he was the kind of person who ran so cold that, unless absolutely necessary, he simply couldn’t be bothered to move his tongue.
She cleared her throat to break the awkwardness, and said to Liu Mao: “Thank you — I’ll think it over a bit more.”
Liu Mao said “of course,” then glanced out the window at the already-high sun: “It’s sweltering out there. Let me give you a lift back.”
Ruan Yu shook her head quickly. “You have work to do — making a round trip at this hour would mean missing lunch for you.”
“It’s no trouble.” He smiled warmly. “Isn’t there a restaurant near your apartment building?”
She caught on, and politely played along: “Then let me treat you to a meal — you helped me notarize a whole pile of documents yesterday. It was really quite a bother for you.”
The moment she finished speaking, Xu Huaisong stood up. “Western food?”
Liu Mao blinked. “There is a Western restaurant around there.”
“Fine.” He picked up his suit jacket from the back of the sofa, opened the door, and walked out ahead of them.
Liu Mao stood full of question marks, his memory drawing a blank. Had he and Ruan Yu just invited Xu Huaisong to join them?
Ruan Yu was equally at a loss: “Did you two already have plans to have lunch together?” — So Xu Huaisong had simply attached himself to the arrangement?
Liu Mao wanted to shake his head, but driven by some obscure impulse he couldn’t quite name, he nodded instead. “Yes — why don’t we reschedule for another time, then.”
Ruan Yu pointed toward the door. “But he’s already gone downstairs.”
Liu Mao said it was fine, then went downstairs and explained to Xu Huaisong that he wouldn’t be joining Ruan Yu for lunch after all, and asked him to wait at the firm until he got back.
Xu Huaisong glanced once at Ruan Yu standing behind Liu Mao, then looked away. “Is there a bed here?”
Liu Mao was momentarily thrown. He mentally calculated the jet lag adjustment and felt something didn’t quite add up. “You want to sleep now?”
“Mm. I’ll find a hotel.” Then he added: “I don’t have a driver’s license.”
Implying that Liu Mao should act as his chauffeur.
“Drop Miss Ruan off first, then?”
“Mm.”
The three of them walked one ahead and two behind to the parking lot. Liu Mao’s Range Rover looked like it had just been waxed — gleaming from every angle.
He opened the front passenger door for Ruan Yu, but she paused.
In her mind, the front passenger seat occupied a very particular significance. Generally speaking, when she wrote novels, whether the female lead was willing to sit in the front seat of the male lead’s car was a reflection of whether she’d developed feelings for him.
The front passenger seat signified a kind of possession and belonging.
She wasn’t sure whether Liu Mao had intended it or not — but to avoid raising any unnecessary expectations, she stepped back and turned to Xu Huaisong standing behind her: “After you, Lawyer Xu?”
Xu Huaisong looked at her, then at Liu Mao, who had gone slightly stiff. The corner of his mouth curved. He mouthed silently: Thank you, Lawyer Liu. Then he instantly returned to his cold expression and settled into the front passenger seat.
Ruan Yu had already turned toward the back seat and hadn’t noticed his little gesture at all.
Liu Mao, watching from an omniscient vantage point, felt his cheeks twitch.
As the car slowly pulled out of the parking lot, Ruan Yu hesitated before saying: “Lawyer Liu, I’m not heading back to my apartment — could we go to a friend’s place instead?”
At that, both people in the front seats seemed to go still at the same time. Thinking she’d made too much of an ask, she hurried to explain: “It won’t take up your time — it’s actually closer.”
Liu Mao quickly smiled. “No problem at all. Send me the address on WeChat.”
Ruan Yu forwarded the location pin.
For the rest of the drive, all three sat in silence. Only the gentle voice of the navigation system rang out at intervals: “In six hundred meters, turn left onto…”
They hit a red light. Liu Mao loosened his grip on the steering wheel and glanced over at Xu Huaisong on his right.
Xu Huaisong noticed, and looked back at him, giving a faint upward tilt of his chin.
Liu Mao looked again, frowning slightly — then he saw Xu Huaisong extend a fist in the smallest possible motion, imperceptible to anyone in the back seat.
He took a breath, glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Ruan Yu’s gaze resting on the window outside — she wasn’t watching them. He mouthed: Rock. Scissors. Paper.
On “paper,” he threw scissors. Xu Huaisong held his fist.
He conceded defeat. A small cough. One glance in the rearview mirror: “Pardon my asking — whose place is Miss Ruan visiting?”
Xu Huaisong shot him a sideways look. — Quite direct.
Liu Mao looked back. — Well, how else would you ask?
Ruan Yu hadn’t noticed their silent exchange just before. She turned at the question.
Xu Huaisong immediately straightened up, the temperature on his profile dropping well below zero.
Liu Mao found this bewildering — what had gotten into this man today? What was he playing at with all this cool aloofness?
Before he could work it out, Ruan Yu’s voice had already come: “Do you know Mingying? I had her ask a friend to contact Zhikun on my behalf.”
“Ah.” He came back to himself and nodded. “I know — that would be Miss Shen.”
Liu Mao said it, then glanced once more at Xu Huaisong, who looked every bit like someone who considered this entirely none of his business. — There. Got the answer. A female friend.
But this time, Xu Huaisong didn’t return the eye contact. He turned to look out at the passing scenery through the car window, his expression shadowed and unreadable.
Shen Mingying. He actually still remembered this person.
She had been Ruan Yu’s closest friend in high school. After all these years, he had thought he’d moved past it all — yet in the end, he hadn’t even forgotten the name of one of her friends.
After Ruan Yu got out of the car, no one spoke again.
She opened the door, thanked them both, went up to Shen Mingying’s apartment, and pressed the doorbell urgently.
Shen Mingying thought something had gone wrong, and asked with surprise: “What happened — did the case fall through?”
The composed façade Ruan Yu had maintained the entire way home collapsed completely. She put on an expression of utter misery. “Mingying, do you know who I ran into?”
“Liu Mao, right? Did he confess his feelings to you?”
Ruan Yu grabbed her by the sleeve, on the verge of tears: “It’s Xu Huaisong… I ran into the three-dimensional, real-life Xu Huaisong!”

Down at the base of the apartment building, Liu Mao started the car again and had driven a short distance before he stamped on the brake.
The moment he stopped, Xu Huaisong knew he’d finally reached his limit.
Sure enough, the very next second, Liu Mao turned to him. “That phone call just now — you had someone make it to get me out of the room on purpose, didn’t you?”
Xu Huaisong laughed. “With a reaction time that long, how did you ever become a lawyer?”
Liu Mao felt a stab in his chest, stunned and unsettled for a long moment before he asked: “Ex-girlfriend?”
Xu Huaisong seemed to pause at that term, turning it over twice in his mind — ex-girlfriend, ex-girlfriend — and then turned to look out the window at the tree-lined boulevard, his gaze traveling all the way to a red telephone booth at the far end of the road.
After a moment, he laughed — shameless, leaving his audience in suspense — and said slowly:
“Well… how do I put it…”