Xu Huaisong walked out of the courthouse at a brisk pace, phone in hand, and said to Liu Mao: “My five-stroke input is a bit rusty.”

The words had barely left his mouth when a man in a suit came hurrying out of the towering white building behind him, specifically to express his gratitude — telling him that his arguments in court had been exceptionally well-delivered, and apologizing for having misjudged him earlier.

This was someone from the S.G. side. Yesterday, Xu Huaisong had left for China without a word of notice, and the man had initially taken it for desertion under fire — he’d nearly dismantled the entire firm Xu Huaisong worked for.

Xu Huaisong held his phone at a distance and said it was no trouble at all.

Pure, pleasant American English.

A Lincoln was parked not far away, and someone had already opened the door for him. He acknowledged the other man with a nod, settled into the back seat, and brought the phone back to his ear.

On the other end, Liu Mao moved on to business. “I got the case for you.”

This time, Xu Huaisong was perfectly gracious. “Much appreciated.”

Accordingly, Liu Mao turned blunt. “She’s been avoiding you like the plague. What you’re pulling is practically coercion — there are dozens of firms in Hang Shi. Why does it have to be Zhikun she chooses?”

“Because this lawsuit — I’m the only one who knows how to win it.”

“Any firm in the country could handle a civil dispute like this. Oh, and another thing — you’re clearly interested in her, and that’s your business, but in this matter you’re first and foremost a lawyer. You can’t just say yes to whatever the client wants. She names some demand and you agree without even blinking?”

Xu Huaisong laughed.

The driver up front, noticing he seemed to be in good spirits, caught his eye in the rearview mirror and grinned.

Xu Huaisong glanced back, gave a friendly nod, and when he spoke again his amusement was even more evident. “I did blink. And as for what my interest in her is — I don’t even know myself. How would you?”

Liu Mao was left speechless, marveling at how thoroughly he had sidestepped the actual point.

“I was talking about the case——”

“When I said it could be done, I was making a judgment as a lawyer.”

“No — the legal system here works differently from yours. In China, this case should be approached through the theft of the outline.”

“It should be approached through the theft of the outline regardless of the country,” Xu Huaisong corrected him, switching the phone to his other ear. “But what if — the outline was never stolen at all?”

Liu Mao paused. “What did you say?”

Xu Huaisong was just about to explain when his palm buzzed. He pulled the phone away and saw a new WeChat notification. He shifted course. “Did you send her my contact card?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s leave it there.”

On the other end, Liu Mao let out a “hey” in an attempt to stop him — but the call was already cut.

When Xu Huaisong opened WeChat, however, the message he found was from Xu Huaishi.

Poem Gremlin: Ge, Senior Ruan’s Weibo has been quiet for days — comments and DMs are still closed. Didn’t you tell me to stay out of it, and that you’d handle everything?

Implying: why, after all this time, had nothing been handled.

He looked down and typed: Not that fast. Focus on your studies.

Are you really sure you don’t want me to put out a new statement?

Xu Huaisong sent a voice message: “You talked yourself into telling a lie, and now you’re having second thoughts? Any statement comes with accountability. We’re right in the eye of the storm — if you tear everything down and start from scratch at a moment like this, have you thought about how much worse the public backlash will get? Do you honestly think there’s still anyone out there who’d believe you? Who’d believe her?”

Poem Gremlin: I know I was wrong… But shouldn’t we at least give Senior Ruan some kind of private explanation?

Xu Huaisong: There’s no “we” here. Any private explanation is between her and me. Keep your mouth shut.

Poem Gremlin: Oh… But Ge, this has been on my mind constantly — I can’t focus on my studies at all. I think I might need a large sum of money to take my mind off it. [cute face] Oh, by the way — Li Shican’s concert tickets are going on sale soon!

Xu Huaisong didn’t reply. He transferred the money and was about to put his phone down, when he glanced one more time at the contacts list below the message bar.

It was empty. No red notification badge with a number.

Ruan Yu wavered for a long while, and it was nearly evening before she finally stopped fighting herself. For the hundredth time, she opened Xu Huaisong’s contact card, steeled herself, and pressed “Add to Contacts” — only to get stuck at the verification message.

What was she supposed to say?

Hello Lawyer Xu, this is Ruan Yu?

Lawyer Xu, sorry to disturb you, please accept my request?

She shook her head, deleted the line she’d typed out, and flopped back into the sofa with her phone.

The whole situation felt uncannily like high school.

Back then, around the time she first fell for Xu Huaisong, she had actually considered confessing. Using the connection of her father being his homeroom teacher, she’d quietly gotten hold of his QQ number. But she never could work up the nerve to send the request — she could only spend her days scrolling back and forth across his profile, which never seemed to change.

One burst of courage, then it fades, then it runs out entirely — and so she went three years without ever adding him on QQ.

She’d been sitting there calming herself down for a while when her phone suddenly buzzed. Thinking it was a message from someone, she picked it up — and saw:

Xu Huaisong: I’ve accepted your friend request. We can now start chatting.

Ruan Yu shot upright.

She’d sent it? She’d pressed it by accident? Then what had she typed as her verification message?

No matter how many times she went over it, she couldn’t figure out the answer. In a panic, she leapt off the sofa, paced a few steps, then silently climbed back onto it and smoothed down her fringe.

On the other end, Xu Huaisong stared at the screen — at the greeting that read “blah blah blah blah blah” — and felt the corner of his mouth curve.

What on earth was she doing?

It was the middle of the night in San Francisco. Ruan Yu didn’t know he’d turned around and gone back to America in the blink of an eye — which was why she was sending messages at this hour.

He picked up the coffee sitting beside him and took a small sip, waiting for her to say something. But the screen stayed still.

This silence felt like the three-year “standoff” from high school. On a stage they’d each built for themselves, they had performed back to back — playing out scenes the other couldn’t see — each mistakenly believing that all the feeling was a one-person script.

But that curtain, after all these years, had finally been pulled aside.

Xu Huaisong looked down at his phone screen — at the Jinjiang novel interface he’d already read to pieces — then stood and drifted to the floor-to-ceiling window, gazing out over the city’s late-night brilliance, lights that never went dark. Golden pools of light fell across the broad expanse of water in the distance, rippling in the wind, scattered sparks of warmth flickering through the stillness.

After a while, his phone buzzed again.

Soft Jade: Hello Lawyer Xu, this is Ruan Yu. We met yesterday.

The tone of this made clear she intended to keep pretending she didn’t know him.

He blinked mildly and typed along with it: Hello.

Lawyer Xu, if it’s convenient, I’d like to ask you something.

Go ahead.

That, um… what did I write in the verification message I sent just now?

Xu Huaisong smiled at the screen — as if in that string of ellipses, he could read her entire spiral of mortification. Ten seconds later, he took a clean screenshot and sent it over.

Soft Jade: ……

Two full minutes of silence passed before the phone buzzed again.

Soft Jade: I’m so sorry, I pressed it by accident… Lawyer Xu, are you in America right now?

Xu Huaisong glanced at the network carrier information exposed in the screenshot, and replied: Mm.

Soft Jade: I didn’t realize, I’m sorry……

Xu Huaisong started to type it’s fine — he naturally stayed up late anyway. But when he finished, he felt the tone was off, and deleted it.

In that brief silence, Ruan Yu had already followed up: Sorry to disturb your rest. Let’s talk when you have time.

He looked back at the empty coffee cup and pressed his fingers to his brow.

She’d said her piece and made her exit — so that meant he could go to sleep?

Ruan Yu sent nothing more. He went to her Moments page, stared at the blank feed — and at the line that read “This user only shows Moments to mutual friends for the past three days” — for five full minutes, then pressed the lock button.

Seemingly irritated by her breezy, keep-everyone-at-a-distance act of playing dumb, Xu Huaisong turned and walked into the bathroom, undoing his robe again.

The shower ran from head to toe. When he came out from the bath, hair still damp, he looked at the phone on the table — and eventually picked it up after all, and replied: 5 p.m. San Francisco time, then.

And so Ruan Yu received another key piece of information: he was in San Francisco.

For the past eight years, he had perhaps been living in that place over ten thousand kilometers away from her, separated by the entire breadth of the Pacific Ocean.

And of course, it would stay that way going forward.

She felt, unexpectedly, a flicker of relief.

In that light, they wouldn’t need to speak face to face. Through a screen, all her secrets would be considerably safer.

So five minutes later, when Xu Huaisong added his email address and asked her to send over all the relevant materials first, she made up her mind, put the bigger picture first, and didn’t hesitate any further.

That night, all the same, Ruan Yu didn’t sleep particularly well. Because 5 p.m. San Francisco time was 8 a.m. Beijing time — which meant the moment she opened her eyes, she would have to discuss the case with Xu Huaisong.

These days, surrounded by the ongoing online storm, her sleep schedule was already a mess. With the added pressure of this appointment, she ended up lying awake for most of the night — so that when the alarm went off at 7:30, she had no resistance at all and silenced it instantly.

When she woke again, the agreed time had already passed. The screen read 08:27.

Ruan Yu jolted fully awake and scrambled out from under the covers.

She opened WeChat and found no messages, and let out a breath of relief. As a lawyer in California, Xu Huaisong surely wasn’t someone with time to spare — he wouldn’t just sit around waiting for her.

Still, an apology was in order.

She quickly sent a message: Lawyer Xu, I’m so sorry — I overslept. Are you free now?

No reply came for a long while.

Ruan Yu got out of bed, washed up, and made breakfast — and through all of it, her phone remained entirely quiet. This meant she didn’t have to bolt down her food, and could take her time eating her fill at a leisurely pace.

She had only just set down the empty tin of evaporated milk when her phone buzzed once — as though it had calculated exactly when she’d finish breakfast. She swiped it open to find Xu Huaisong had sent a single character: Mm.

Ruan Yu had no experience with lawsuits and wasn’t sure how communication with a lawyer was supposed to work. Given how distant he seemed and how he wasn’t taking the lead in the conversation, she had no choice but to type again: Shall we talk about the case, then?

Let’s meet in person.

Ruan Yu was momentarily thrown. Wasn’t he in San Francisco?

The next message arrived a second later.

Xu Huaisong: Video call, if that works for you.