Ruan Yu wore an expression of earnest, humble attentiveness.

Xu Huaisong laced his fingers together, sat with a straight back, and looked at her as he outlined the key points: “For a phone recording to be legally valid, you first need to get the other party to confirm their identity — you have to seize that advantage the moment the call connects.”

She nodded and asked, “And then?”

“Recordings submitted to the court cannot be edited, but court time is limited, so you need to keep the call short. Get straight to the point without letting the other party catch on.”

In other words, since they were already highly suspicious that Cen Sisi had maliciously hired online trolls and purchased trending search slots, they needed to lure her into revealing the truth herself.

Ruan Yu furrowed her brow. “Would anyone really be foolish enough to admit it out loud?”

“Not under normal circumstances — which is precisely what makes it difficult.” As Xu Huaisong spoke, he glanced at her empty hands.

Ruan Yu caught on immediately, snatching the sticky-note pad and pen from the desk and fixing her full attention on him. “Please continue, Attorney Xu. Please go on.”

Half an hour later, her sticky-note pad was covered in dense, cramped writing. Seeing that Xu Huaisong had finished, she asked, “Do we call now?”

He shook his head. “Beijing time, noon.”

That time slot was right after lunch — blood flow to the brain was reduced, the other party’s thinking would be slower, and she’d be relatively less likely to grow suspicious.

“But by then, won’t my own intelligence be lower too?”

Xu Huaisong choked slightly. When had he ever noticed before — she was actually a little endearingly ditzy…

He looked up and said, “You can’t eat lunch early?”

“…” Fair point.

Ruan Yu awkwardly covered her forehead with her hand. After a brief moment of embarrassment, she remembered something and suddenly looked up.

That one look up, and she found Xu Huaisong staring intently at his screen.

She froze. She opened her mouth to ask what was wrong, but noticed that his right hand seemed to be scrolling the mouse — he appeared to be reviewing some document.

Not looking at her.

Ruan Yu quietly felt her face grow warm. She cleared her throat and called out, “Attorney Xu.”

Xu Huaisong gave a single nod — apparently too idle to speak — gesturing for her to say whatever she had to say.

“When we do the phone recording later, I don’t know if any situations might come up that I can’t handle on my own, so…” She pointed at the camera. “Could you keep the video call going?”

Ruan Yu’s attitude was nothing more than the professional trust a patient places in a doctor, but this look of I can’t do this without you landed very differently in Xu Huaisong’s eyes.

He gave a quiet “Mm,” tilted his head, and took a sip of coffee, attempting to soothe that strange, unsettled feeling rising inside him.

Ruan Yu breathed a quiet sigh of relief and silently began running through the conversation in her head. About half an hour later, she heard Xu Huaisong knock on his desk.

“It’s half past ten,” he said.

“Then I’ll go make something to eat.” She set down the sticky-note pad and pointed at the screen. “Shall I turn off the video?”

“No need — I’m going to eat as well.”

Ruan Yu blinked in mild surprise.

It had to be seven-thirty in the evening in San Francisco by now. He hadn’t eaten yet? And he’d just been drinking coffee on an empty stomach?

In that brief moment of distraction, Xu Huaisong had already stood up and stepped away from his seat. Ruan Yu didn’t feel it was her place to casually close the video, so she turned and headed to the kitchen instead, opening the refrigerator to think about what to make.

But perhaps it was the nerves — she had absolutely no appetite. She grabbed a cup of yogurt, stirred in a few spoonfuls of fruit granola, and returned to her computer.

She figured she could use the time to review the conversation script. Xu Huaisong wasn’t there, after all.

With that thought, she looked up and met a pair of eyes staring back at her through the screen.

“…”

“…”

Xu Huaisong hadn’t left at all. He was sitting right at his computer, eating pasta.

Ruan Yu’s eyes made one slow, full rotation.

Whatever happened to going to eat? Why had he brought his food over to the computer? Was he trying to peek at her while she was gone?

On her end, she stood frozen in front of the computer without moving. Xu Huaisong, however, seemed entirely unperturbed — after a brief pause, he resumed eating with unhurried, refined composure, while flipping through a document beside him.

He was eating and working at the same time.

Once she realized she had once again read too much into things, Ruan Yu sat down with a flush of embarrassment — one hand flipping open the sticky-note pad, the other slowly stirring her yogurt.

But when she scooped up a spoonful and put it in her mouth, she froze again.

The granola hadn’t softened yet. Chewing it would produce some rather vigorous crunching sounds, which didn’t quite suit the atmosphere.

After all, she and Xu Huaisong had barely exchanged a handful of words back in high school, and they certainly couldn’t be called close now. Sitting here facing each other through a screen while eating — and with her making loud crunching noises on top of it — felt unbearably awkward.

Ruan Yu suffered through that spoonful of yogurt, holding it in her mouth until the granola was soft enough, then chewed it down little by little. She gave a light, deliberate cough and said, “Attorney Xu, you seem quite busy?”

Xu Huaisong had just put a forkful of pasta in his mouth and couldn’t speak, so he simply nodded in response.

Ruan Yu’s face lit up. “Then you carry on — I’ll get in touch when it’s time!”

He still had pasta in his mouth and had no reasonable grounds to shake his head, so he had no choice but to nod again.

Ruan Yu exhaled a great breath of relief and clicked to end the call as fast as she could.

It wasn’t until Beijing time, a quarter past noon, that the two of them connected on video again.

Ruan Yu gripped her phone, breathing slowly and deeply.

Xu Huaisong could see plainly that she was nervous — if she called like this, she’d give herself away for certain. And they only had one shot at gathering this evidence. A missed opportunity wouldn’t come again.

He thought for a moment, and instead of answering her, asked a question of his own: “Want to do a round of eye exercises?”

“Huh?”

He held up the manuscript he had beside him and gave it a shake. “Looks effective.”

Ah — he was referring to the scene in I Really Want to Whisper in Your Ear where, on the night the female lead’s hand was held by the male lead, she was so excited she couldn’t sleep no matter how hard she tried, and only managed to calm down enough to drift off after doing the eye exercises over a dozen times.

But that was her romanticized, embellished version of events.

Ruan Yu gave a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Novels are all lies.”

The truth was that she had jolted awake near dawn, thought that since Xu Huaisong said he’d grabbed the wrong hand, he probably had someone he cared for already — then, equal parts aggrieved and indignant, she had cursed him out as a scoundrel a hundred times in her head before finally drifting back to sleep.

An eighteen-year-old girl had been terribly unreasonable. Looking back now, what wrong had Xu Huaisong actually done by not liking her?

She was just glad she hadn’t written the word “scoundrel” into the novel.

Xu Huaisong didn’t know any of these wayward thoughts running through her head. Hearing her say “novels are all lies,” he paused for a brief moment, then quietly lowered his gaze.

It was Ruan Yu who loosened up considerably, clutching her phone and saying, “I’m calling now?”

He came back to himself. “Mm.”

Ruan Yu activated the recording app, dialed Cen Sisi’s number, and put it on speakerphone.

Ten seconds later, the call connected.

She spoke first. “Hello, this is Ruan Yu — is this Cen Sisi?”

The other party answered immediately, “It’s me! Senior, I have your number saved!”

Identity confirmed.

Ruan Yu glanced at the screen where Xu Huaisong gave her a confirming nod, and continued, “Are you free to talk right now?”

“Of course, go ahead.”

“It’s like this — regarding the settlement, I had originally planned to have my lawyer speak with you tomorrow, but I thought it over and felt I should talk to you first.”

“Oh?”

“Actually, some time ago, a film production company reached out to me about acquiring the adaptation rights.”

Cen Sisi let out a soft “ah,” as if sensing where things were heading.

“They want me to handle this scandal carefully, otherwise the film and television adaptation deal will fall through as well. So this time, my lawyer isn’t only representing my personal interests — they’re requiring that your public apology statement acknowledge not only that you published that long Weibo post with insinuating content, but also that you hired online trolls and purchased trending search slots to attack me.”

“I — I didn’t do that, Senior!”

This was a critical juncture in the conversation. Ruan Yu’s anxiety surged back, and she instinctively looked toward Xu Huaisong while clutching her phone.

He couldn’t make a sound. He simply gave her one nod and mouthed: Keep going.

Ruan Yu pressed her lips together. “This statement really does put you in a difficult position, but the production company’s stance is that if there’s no settlement, they’ll continue pursuing the lawsuit.”

“But Senior, I truly never intentionally attacked you…”

“I know — after all, you didn’t realize at the time that Wen Xiang was me. The fact that I’m calling you now means I want to hear your side of things. We trained under the same teacher. Businesspeople have no room for sentiment, but surely I do?”

Meeting a scheming lotus with the methods of a scheming lotus — those were words that even moved Ruan Yu herself as she said them. Xu Huaisong’s prime-time drama dialogue really did flow like water.

“But if you take sentiment into account, what about the production company?”

This question hadn’t been part of the plan. Ruan Yu stumbled slightly — then saw a message pop up on screen from Xu Huaisong: Sigh.

She immediately summoned a sigh.

On the other end, Cen Sisi seemed to hear the conflict in her voice and played the emotional card: “Senior, I never imagined things would escalate this far. At the time I only hired a small batch of trolls just to try it out — I had no idea it would get completely out of hand and shoot all the way up to the trending searches… You have to help me. Ask them to make an exception somehow, otherwise I… I’ll be completely finished…”

Xu Huaisong made a gesture signaling: That’s enough.

Ruan Yu glanced at him and quickly said, “Alright — whatever I can do, I’ll definitely do it. I’ll speak with my lawyer again.”

The call ended. She carefully pressed stop on the recording, leaned close to the camera, and asked, “Is this enough?”

Xu Huaisong nodded. “Send the recording to Liu Mao.”

Ruan Yu breathed out in relief.

The logic behind this approach wasn’t actually that complicated, when you thought about it. As Xu Huaisong had explained, under the law, only the original author had standing to bring an infringement suit against copyright violations. Cen Sisi had no grounds to sue anyone herself — the reason she was saying one thing in public while doing another behind the scenes was purely to play for time, to buy a chance for “Xie Shiren” to succeed with the lawsuit first.

So in that situation, if Ruan Yu appeared to be wavering about the settlement, Cen Sisi would need to keep her in place — and to do that, she would inevitably make verbal concessions she believed were harmless.

And reality had played out exactly as Xu Huaisong had predicted, without a single deviation.

After the tension released, Ruan Yu felt a wave of ease wash through her entire body.

What was this deliciously crafty feeling? Was it really this satisfying to do something slightly underhanded — and completely legal — alongside a lawyer?

Her good mood made her a little reckless. “Was my acting good enough for a prime-time drama?”

Xu Huaisong lowered his eyes and typed away at his keyboard, seemingly occupied with something, and said offhandedly, “Good enough to fool someone who doesn’t know better.”

She faltered. Was he saying he did know better — that her performance was transparent to him?

She was just beginning to worry whether her acting had been embarrassingly obvious in front of him, when she heard his phone ring.

Xu Huaisong didn’t close the video, and answered directly, speaking in Mandarin: “At home.”

Ruan Yu couldn’t hear the voice on the other end — she could only catch his sparse, one-sided replies: “Can’t rule out that it was retaliatory action carried out by the defendant. S.G.’s senior management would know best — the defendant has the capability to remotely control the device via computer.”

Xu Huaisong’s tone was perfectly calm, but Ruan Yu felt a jolt of alarm.

He seemed to notice her startled expression, glanced at her, picked up his phone, and walked toward the window. “That’s a matter for the police…”

After that, Ruan Yu could no longer make out what he was saying. When he returned, she couldn’t hold back. “Did something happen?”

Xu Huaisong shook his head, indicating it was nothing.

“Oh,” she said. “Thank you for today, Attorney Xu.”

Xu Huaisong raised an eyebrow. She’d gotten what she needed and was now delivering her closing remarks?

Seeing no reaction from him, Ruan Yu continued on her own. “I was originally going to discuss the case, but it’s already so late where you are…”

Just then, from somewhere nearby came a soft mrrrow.

She stopped and looked around.

But of course it hadn’t come from her side.

There were no cats in her home anymore. Right after graduation she had kept one, but it had fallen ill and died, and she’d been heartbroken for a long time. She still loved them dearly, yet didn’t dare devote her heart to raising another.

So the sound had to have come from Xu Huaisong’s side.

She was still puzzling over this when the figure on screen stood up from his seat again, stepped away briefly, then returned — with a cat cradled in his arms.

A small orange cat, looking to be about two or three months old, with bright, lively eyes.

Ruan Yu’s gaze was immediately snagged.

Xu Huaisong stroked the cat’s fur and glanced at her. “What were you just saying?”

She stared at the kitten for a full five seconds, her resolve crumbling, and swallowed audibly. “I was saying it’s already so late where you are… would it be alright to keep talking about the case?”

Xu Huaisong gave a nod, his tone perfunctory. “Fine, I suppose.”