With her phone confiscated, Xu Huaishi had nothing to do and borrowed Ruan Yu’s to play games for a couple of hours. As other parents started arriving one by one and Xu Huaisong still hadn’t appeared, she grew a little anxious. “Has my brother been held back by a teacher or something?”

Ruan Yu guessed Xu Huaisong had gone to speak with Vice Principal He about the rumors, and reassured her: “I’m sure he’s fine. If you’re worried, use my phone to send him a message.”

Xu Huaishi shook the phone in her hand to confirm. “Can I open your WeChat?”

“Go ahead — it’s not like I have any secrets. Just remember to tell him it’s you.”

“What if I don’t — would he start calling you ‘sweetheart’ and ‘darling’?” Xu Huaishi said it, then, without waiting for Ruan Yu’s reaction, gave a little shudder and rubbed the goosebumps on her arm. “Ugh… that’s so saccharine. I am not reading that kind of thing.”

Ruan Yu didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

As if Xu Huaisong had ever called her anything like that.

She watched Xu Huaishi finish typing, and a moment later the phone buzzed twice in quick succession. “What did he say?”

Xu Huaishi looked at the screen, paused briefly, and said: “Oh — he says it’ll be a little while longer. He says if we’re bored, we can take a walk around campus to get some air.”

“Do you want to?”

“Sure — I’ve been sitting here all afternoon, I’m about to suffocate!”

So the two of them left the dormitory building together. By now it was nearly evening, and a walk around campus felt perfectly comfortable. When they passed the arts building, Xu Huaishi seemed to remember something and pulled Ruan Yu toward the stairs.

“What is it?” Ruan Yu asked.

“I want to show you something.” She led her up with an air of mystery to Practice Room 301, opened the door, and pointed at the piano. “Look behind it.”

Ruan Yu smiled. “That’s behind the piano where I wrote your brother a love letter.”

Xu Huaishi shook her head. “Just go look again!”

Ruan Yu had no choice but to crouch down and squeeze behind the piano. And there, beneath the original row of faded letters on the wall, was a fresh line written in correction fluid: xhsyxhry.

— Xu Huaisong also likes Ruan Yu.

Compared to the yellowed, aged lettering above, it was brand new.

Who had written it needed no explanation.

Ruan Yu crouched there staring at it for a moment, then stood up, turned around, and said with a smile: “Your brother is so childish.”

The words had barely left her mouth when she realized — Xu Huaishi, who had been standing behind her, was gone. In her place stood her brother, whose expression had gone flat in an instant.

Ruan Yu startled. “Oh goodness, you scared me — when did you get here?”

Xu Huaisong pressed his teeth together, steadied himself for a moment, then said: “If I hadn’t come, would I have gotten to hear you give me such a heartfelt evaluation?”

She let out a laugh and tried to glide past the topic. “Where’s Huaishi?”

“Gone to her classroom to get her books.”

“Then how did you know we were here?”

“If you were walking around the school, where else would you go?”

Excuse me? What made him so certain? She hadn’t actually been planning to come here at all. Revisiting old haunts — that was something people did when they were pining. People in the early flush of a relationship didn’t look backward, because the present was already wonderful enough.

“Don’t accuse me of things — it was Huaishi who dragged me here…” She trailed off, a vague realization beginning to form. She looked at him with suspicion, took out her phone, and checked her WeChat messages.

Soft Jade: Brother, when are you going to be done? I’m using Jiejie’s phone to message you.

Xu Huaisong: Almost. Make some excuse to bring her to Practice Room 301 and have her look behind the piano, then delete this message so only one remains.

Xu Huaisong: It’ll be a little while longer — if you’re both bored, take a walk around campus to get some air.

Ruan Yu doubled over against the piano, clutching her stomach with laughter. “I was being generous calling you childish!”

Xu Huaisong stepped forward and took her phone to look — and went momentarily speechless.

In his mind’s ideal version of events, things were supposed to unfold like this: Ruan Yu would see those words and be moved to tears. Then he would appear at just the right moment, open his arms, and wait for her to fall into them. After that, he would settle her onto the piano bench and kiss her, and tell her — I want to give you the early romance we never had.

The whole sequence, from start to finish, would be a perfect and complete ritual of love — one rich with the meaning of putting the past to rest and stepping forward into something new.

What actually happened was that Ruan Yu leaned against the piano and laughed, saying between gasps: “Oh no — my stomach actually hurts…”

Xu Huaisong stood where he was and quietly brought the chaos in his chest under control.

Ruan Yu finally wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes and stopped, and seeing his expression dark enough to wring ink from, she stepped forward and took his arm. “Alright, alright — I saw the words. I really was touched. Genuinely.”

She would have been better off not adding that last part.

Xu Huaisong glanced down at her. “Do you have any idea how hard correction fluid is to find these days?”

Ruan Yu nearly started laughing again and held it back with effort. “Then I owe you a hardship fee.”

Perhaps unwilling to let his carefully written script come to nothing, he said: “No hardship fee needed. Give me the early romance instead.”

Ruan Yu blinked. “How would one even do that?”

Xu Huaisong fixed his gaze on her lips. “What do you think?”

She hesitated, then released his arm and stepped back a little, scratching her head. “Ah… what do I think?”

He said nothing and took a step toward her.

Ruan Yu gave a quiet cough and retreated further, step by step, until the back of her hand hit the uncovered piano keys — a bright, clean note rang out.

She stammered: “This… we’re at school…”

Xu Huaisong smiled, and ultimately turned back to his original script: he lifted her hands and wrapped them around his own waist, then said: “Then let me be the one to give it to you.”

With that, he placed both hands on the edge of the piano and slowly leaned his head down toward her lips.

The evening sun slanted in through the window, filling the entire practice room with warm, amber light.

Ruan Yu had the distinct feeling that a kiss in this atmosphere, in this light, would taste different from any that had come before — that it would carry her somewhere entirely new.

She was nervous; her lashes wouldn’t stop trembling. The hands she’d wrapped around his waist had bunched his suit jacket into a fistful of creases.

Then, at the very moment Xu Huaisong was about to reach her lips, a young, unpolished male voice rang out in the corridor beyond the door: “Xu Huaishi, why are you pressed up against the door like that — are you casing the place?”

“…”

Both of them froze. They turned their heads toward the door at the same time.

Xu Huaishi, who had been peering through the small window panel in the door, bolted in a flash, calling out at a sprint: “Ahh Zhao Yi you are my absolute nemesis, I’m going to get killed by my brother!”

It goes without saying that actually killing one’s younger sister was not an option — but Xu Huaisong’s expression alone was lethal enough that for the entire journey from the school back home, Xu Huaishi sat curled up in the back seat, clutching the headrest of Ruan Yu’s passenger seat and trembling.

Ruan Yu tried to smooth things over. “Should we go somewhere for dinner?”

Xu Huaisong shook his head. “There are snacks in the back. Have some if you’re hungry. We’ll drop her home and head back to Hang Shi.”

Xu Huaishi pressed her lips together and said in a small voice: “Brother, you won’t even stay for one meal with me…”

Xu Huaisong glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “I have something to take care of.”

Xu Huaishi gave an unconvinced “oh,” and seeing that he wasn’t giving her the time of day, turned to chat with Ruan Yu instead. “Jiejie, what have you been up to lately — have you been busy?”

Ruan Yu nodded. “I had a script meeting yesterday. The preparation is basically on track now, so for the next stretch I’ll be going in and out of Huan Vision every few days.”

“Oh wow — have you run into any major figures there?”

“The producer is fairly well known in the film industry.”

“What about the presenting producer?”

Ruan Yu shook her head. “I don’t know much about him. He hasn’t been at either of the meetings. I’ve heard his surname is Wei — apparently he’s a director at Huan Vision.”

“That sounds impressive.” Xu Huaishi looked suitably awed, then pivoted to flattery: “Either way, jiejie, please don’t wear yourself out. All the cooking and cleaning and dishes — you can leave all of that to my brother. Right, brother?”

Xu Huaisong was quiet for a moment, opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again. He said nothing until after they had dropped Xu Huaishi home. Then: “There’s something I need to tell you.”

Ruan Yu had just unclipped her seatbelt and was reaching into the back for snacks. The slightly serious tone gave her pause, and she turned back. “What is it?”

“I’m flying to America tonight.”

She let out a quiet sound. “Did something happen with your father’s health?”

“No.” Seeing that she’d retrieved the snacks, Xu Huaisong leaned across and helped her clip her seatbelt back in. “It’s a work commitment I’d planned for. There’s a court hearing the day after tomorrow.”

Ruan Yu let out a breath of relief. “I was worried — that’s fine, just go.” Then a vague unease surfaced. “Wait, is it going to be for a long time?”

“There are other cases after that, and some of the investigation and evidence work can’t be done remotely. I stopped taking on new cases a month ago, but the ones I already have need to be seen through.” A note of apology crept into Xu Huaisong’s voice. “If everything goes smoothly, this trip should be about two to three weeks. And over the next six months or so, I may need to go back like this from time to time — ten days here, a couple of weeks there.”

Ruan Yu nodded.

This was a career built over many years — it was never going to be neatly wrapped up in under two months. The legal profession had its own particular demands, too; you couldn’t just hand in a resignation letter, brief a replacement, and walk away. Every case already taken on had to be seen through properly, one by one, as an obligation to the clients.

She went quiet for a moment, then smiled. “It’s fine — two or three weeks goes by in a blink, and if you’re back and forth like this, I won’t get tired of you too quickly either!”

Xu Huaisong choked on a laugh and started the car.

After a moment Ruan Yu asked: “If you already knew you were leaving tonight, why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

The court date had indeed been set for a long time. Originally, after flying to America for matters related to his father, Xu Huaisong had planned to stay on through the hearing before coming back — but Ruan Yu had been in such a bad state at the time that he had cut the trip short and returned.

On the day he got back to the country, he had told her as much: Aren’t you having trouble sleeping? That’s why I flew back.

But Ruan Yu had been so absorbed in the joy of their newly confirmed relationship that she had never connected the dots from that remark.

Xu Huaisong glanced at her sideways. “Tell you early and have you start being unhappy early?”

That was a fair point.

No wonder he had deliberately avoided fixing his sleep schedule these past few days, and had specifically asked what she might like to do, and had been so uncharacteristically clingy about bringing her along to Su Shi, and had just now, back at the arts building, been angling for a kiss.

Ruan Yu opened a bag of crisps and held one up to his lips. “You can let me know about work plans in advance from now on. I’m not three years old — I won’t make a fuss. If you’d told me sooner, I would have just now…”

Given him a proper kiss.

“Would have what?” Xu Huaisong asked.

She let out a small laugh, shook her head as if it were nothing, and went back to eating her crisps.

The two of them talked animatedly all the way back, right up until the Hang Shi apartment, where Xu Huaisong walked her upstairs and said: “I won’t come in — Chen Hui is picking me up for the airport in five minutes.”

“Then make sure you eat something at the airport.”

Xu Huaisong nodded, watched from the doorway as she went inside, and helped ease the front door closed behind her.

The door was nearly shut when Xu Huaisong stopped — and Ruan Yu suddenly reached out and grabbed the door handle at the same time. One pushed, one pulled, and together they swung it back open.

Ruan Yu spoke first, her voice a little muffled. “Can I have a hug…”

Having learned his lesson last time, Xu Huaisong didn’t do this in the doorway. He stepped over the threshold and into the apartment.

Ruan Yu wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her face into his chest. “Make sure you eat properly over there.”

Xu Huaisong held her with one arm and rested his other hand gently on the top of her head. “You’ve said that eight times in the car.”

She tilted her head back. “But did you actually hear it?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll calculate the San Francisco time — send me a photo of your meals on time.”

Xu Huaisong smiled and let out a quiet sigh. “Understood.” He waited a moment, then, seeing her still holding on with no sign of letting go, said: “Chen Hui might already be downstairs.”

Ruan Yu made a small sound of acknowledgment, released him, and told him to go.

Xu Huaisong touched her face lightly, turned to reach for the door, then stopped again with his hand on the handle, and looked back.

“What is it?” Ruan Yu asked.

“Can I…” Xu Huaisong hesitated, his throat moving as he swallowed. “Kiss you before I go?”

Author’s note: Infatuated little fools in the early days of a romance are so impossible — there’s just no separating these two.