Ruan Yu crouched in the corner of the balcony like a mushroom, gripping her phone in a state of barely-contained panic.
On the other end, Xu Huaisong said, “In a situation like this, it’s generally not the kind of criminal you’re imagining — and even if it were, they wouldn’t attempt a direct forced entry. You need to do two things right now. First, send me your location and the contact number for your building’s property management or security office. Second, take your phone and go check the peephole.”
His instructions came quickly and clearly. Ruan Yu scrambled to follow them, sent the information, stood up, and heard the doorbell ring again — twice in a row this time.
Xu Huaisong heard it too. “Don’t make a sound. If you see a suspicious individual but they haven’t made any move yet, do not lock the door — step back to about seven meters from the door, put me on speakerphone, and call my name out loud. Say you’re in the middle of laundry and ask me to go answer the door. Understood?”
He had deliberately broken the string of instructions into short, simple sentences so Ruan Yu could absorb them even with her mind in a fog. “If the conversation ends and they still haven’t left, lock the door and call the police immediately.”
Ruan Yu nodded — forgetting Xu Huaisong couldn’t see her — hunched over and crept silently across the living room, then pressed her eye carefully to the peephole, forcibly swallowing the gasp rising in her throat.
Standing outside the door was a tall, lean man in a black face mask and a cap pulled low, wearing all-dark clothing. He was looking down, scrolling through his phone, looking as if he was about to call someone to come up.
Her heart hammered wildly. She was just about to hold her breath and ease back away from the door when the phone in her palm suddenly vibrated hard.
An unknown number calling.
Her voice call with Xu Huaisong was forcibly interrupted. And that burst of vibration may very well have been audible to whoever was on the other side of the door.
She’d given herself away.
Ruan Yu’s mind went blank for an instant — and then from outside came a male voice: “Senior, you home?”
“…”
That voice — was it—
Li Shican?
She stood frozen for a moment, then heard him laugh — not loud, but because of his distinctive voice, it carried with unusual clarity: “Let me in — I don’t want to get photographed.”
With that, Ruan Yu was certain of his identity. She stepped forward and opened the door, caught off guard: “What are you doing here?”
Li Shican blinked a couple of times, looking a little put-upon. “Didn’t we make plans to catch up at the usual place the day before yesterday? I came downstairs to reach you and found your number was suspended. I just topped it up for you before I could get through.”
Ah — if there was any place between the two of them that could be called “the usual spot,” it was right here, beneath this apartment building.
In Ruan Yu’s final semester of her fourth year she had rarely stayed in the dormitory. Li Shican couldn’t catch her at school, so he would turn up here from time to time. He never did much — just bought a cup of the milk tea she liked and left it in the building’s milk delivery box downstairs, and sent her a message saying “tea at the usual place” regardless of whether she ever picked it up.
Still, Ruan Yu was confused: “Weren’t you only calling me because of the livestream?”
“You knew I was streaming?”
A flicker of surprise crossed Li Shican’s eyes, and Ruan Yu faltered.
She had originally gone along with his call as a way of playing along with a game, and then heard him clearly tell his livestream audience that he had no intention of actually showing up — so she had given the so-called appointment no further thought at all.
Seeing her falter, Li Shican tugged the corner of his mouth into a rueful murmur. “Right, that tracks. Otherwise why would you have agreed to meet me.”
Ruan Yu couldn’t find anything to say to that, and managed only an awkward laugh.
He didn’t seem embarrassed in the least. “Well, since I’m already here — aren’t you going to invite me in?” Without waiting for her to respond, as if afraid of being turned away, he quickly added, “I came all the way from Hai Shi, pushed back a work commitment. I came to talk to you about Cen Sisi.”
Surprise smoothed away some of the strangeness of years without contact. Ruan Yu blurted out, “You two know each other? How do you know about all this?” As she spoke, she stepped aside to let him in.
Li Shican closed the door behind him, pulling off his mask and cap. “Do you have cold water? Let me have a drink first, Senior, then I’ll explain.”
Having a grown man suddenly in her home — and a celebrity at that — made Ruan Yu vaguely uncomfortable. She gave an “oh,” set down her phone, and went to get him cold water.
Li Shican’s gaze swept over the row of slippers by the entryway.
Ruan Yu came back from the kitchen, found him standing there without moving, and handed over the water glass. “Sorry — I don’t have any men’s slippers. Just come on in.”
“You still don’t have a boyfriend?” Li Shican muttered under his breath.
The casual familiarity in his tone made it sound as though the two of them had seen each other just yesterday.
Ruan Yu sidestepped the question and guided him toward the living room, steering the conversation somewhere else to shake off the odd atmosphere that question had created. “Was that van downstairs yours?”
Li Shican took a long swallow of ice water and nodded. “Looks beat-up? It was raining in Hai Shi — the road splattered mud all over it.”
That explained it.
Ruan Yu pressed a hand to her forehead. As her palm touched her brow, she suddenly felt like she’d left something unfinished.
At the same moment, her computer on the coffee table chimed — a video call coming through on WeChat.
It came back to her. Xu Huaisong.
She had forgotten about Xu Huaisong.
Her expression shifted. Without sparing a glance for Li Shican, she hurried over and answered the call. The moment the screen lit up, she rushed to speak before Xu Huaisong could get a word in: “I’m so sorry, Attorney Xu — I forgot to let you know I was alright!”
The tension that had been burning in Xu Huaisong’s eyes extinguished in an instant — a great storm swiftly stilled. Because past Ruan Yu’s shoulder, just slightly behind her, his gaze had landed on Li Shican’s eyes.
Across the screen, their eyes met. A glacial cold settled between them.
It was Li Shican who eased his expression first. He lifted the water glass toward the person on screen and gave a single nod in greeting. “Hello.”
As he moved the glass, the ice shifted and clinked against the glass, producing a light, clear ringing sound — normally a pleasant noise, but at this moment oddly jarring.
Xu Huaisong said nothing. He gave a brief nod back, then glanced toward Ruan Yu and picked up where she’d left off: “No need to let me know you’re alright — tell the police.” With that, he ended the video call.
Ruan Yu stared at the screen that had gone suddenly dark and stood there for a moment.
Li Shican was equally puzzled. He leaned in and asked, “What police?”
His words had barely landed when the doorbell rang.
Ruan Yu understood at once. She jogged over and opened the door — and sure enough, two uniformed officers were standing outside, one of them armed.
Her building’s nearest police station was right at the complex entrance, but even so, the response time was truly something remarkable.
The armed officer spoke first. “Are you Ruan Yu, Ms. Ruan?”
Ruan Yu nodded. “I am.”
“We received a report—”
“I’m very sorry, officers,” Ruan Yu cut in quickly, to spare Li Shican from overhearing and creating a scene, “it was a misunderstanding — my friend got the wrong idea and filed the report. Everything is fine here…”
But there was no keeping it quiet.
Li Shican chose that exact moment to walk out of the living room. He had just opened his mouth when his phone rang. The voice on the other end came through in a panicked babble — it was his driver from the trip: “Shican, the police got me downstairs! Come rescue me!”
“…”
Ruan Yu and Li Shican were taken to the police station across from the complex.
Under ordinary circumstances the matter could have been clarified on the spot, and none of this might have been necessary — but Li Shican happened not to have his ID on him, and the armed Officer Fang had the sort of no-nonsense, by-the-book personality that made no exceptions for celebrities. He insisted on bringing everyone to the station to file a record, and also called the person who had filed the report to verify the situation.
It was Ruan Yu’s first time witnessing anything like it. By the time the report was cleared and they walked out of the station, she was thoroughly drained in both body and spirit, and would probably never let her imagination run away with her again.
It was nearly noon by then. Li Shican had originally planned to spend two hours in Hang Shi before heading back to Hai Shi for work commitments — those two hours had now been entirely consumed by the police station, and he had to leave in a hurry.
But barely had Ruan Yu returned home when she received a call from him.
He got straight to the point. “Senior, the main reason I came today was actually to apologize to you. Cen Sisi is the daughter of a business associate of my father’s. When she enrolled at Hang University, she chose it specifically to be at the same school as me. She’s had feelings for me since high school — that’s my fault for not handling it properly.”
In those few short sentences, everything clicked into place for Ruan Yu.
Cen Sisi had been treating her as a romantic rival all along. And the pen name initials — they were a reflection of her feelings for Li Shican.
But there was still something Ruan Yu didn’t understand. “How did she find out my pen name? And yours.”
Li Shican coughed, his tone going slightly sheepish. “Do you remember — when I was in my first year, I helped fix your computer once…”
“Oh…”
There would always have been traces left on a computer. She had only just started trying to write back then, and hadn’t been particularly careful about anything.
Li Shican continued. “As for her — I have a Weibo side account that only follows your professional blog. She must have found it somehow at some point, like a little spy. But I only found out about all of this a few days ago — otherwise I’d have dealt with her long ago.”
Ruan Yu picked up on the word “dealt with” and felt a flicker of wariness. “Those things that happened on Weibo over these past two days — was that your PR team?”
Li Shican was quiet for a moment. “Not entirely.”
“Not entirely?”
Then who else?
Li Shican didn’t give a direct answer, and glossed over it vaguely. “Anyway, it was trouble I caused you — I’ll clean it up. The rumors are under control now. Focus on your lawsuit, and leave the rest to me.”
Ruan Yu had just drawn breath to speak when he cut in as if reading her thoughts: “I know — I have a sense of proportion. As long as she doesn’t make any further moves, public opinion will stop where it is.”
Regardless of whatever else Cen Sisi had been plotting, under the combined pressure of the court, the law firm, and Li Shican’s management of the narrative, Ruan Yu suffered no further negative fallout.
Three days later, the storm had cooled. Ruan Yu was largely able to return to normal life. On Weibo, kindhearted messages of encouragement appeared, hoping she would find her footing again and continue writing — finish I Really Want to Whisper in Your Ear.
She had halted the serialization the day after the plagiarism incident broke out. Now that the skies had cleared, many readers were quietly lamenting the unfinished story.
But Ruan Yu hesitated.
Having learned the real reason Cen Sisi had been targeting her, she had actually made peace with the online abuse. The problem now was that her mental state still wasn’t strong enough to write sweetly affectionate scenes directly under the nose of the male lead.
Speaking of the male lead — since the day of that whole fiasco, the two of them hadn’t been in contact at all. To be more precise: her apology had gone unanswered, and the WeChat conversation consisted only of her own solitary one-sided messages.
Three messages. One a day.
The first day: Attorney Xu, I’m truly sorry about today — I made you worry for nothing.
The second day: Attorney Xu, do you have time to discuss the case right now?
The third day: Attorney Xu, I’ve sent the revised counter-comparison document to your email. Please check it when you have a moment.
Today was the fourth day.
Ruan Yu sighed. She couldn’t really blame Xu Huaisong — anyone who’d been made to fuss for nothing like that would be unhappy. And he was a very busy person to begin with.
So that noon, she sent her fourth message with determined persistence: Attorney Xu, have you looked at the document? When would you be available to go over it with me?
To her surprise, his reply came: In ten minutes.
Soft Jade: Then I’ll go turn on my computer.
Xu Huaisong: No need. Come downstairs.
Downstairs? He was back in the country?
Ruan Yu typed: Hm?
Xu Huaisong: Ten minutes. Below your building.