Seven minutes later, the building alarm blared to life. The piercing ring, accompanied by the sound of doors opening and shutting one after another, jolted the entire building awake from its quiet.

Voices carried in from the corridor: “Is there a fire? Where’s the fire?”

“Hurry downstairs — don’t take the elevator!”

“Emergency stairwell, over here!”

The emergency stairwell filled with the chaotic thunder of footsteps.

Ruan Yu — the only person in the entire building who had not moved — stood on the dining table in her living room, holding a pot billowing with thick smoke up toward the smoke alarm, coughing into her hand with tears streaming down her face.

A minute later, the intercom at the door of Unit 1201 buzzed.

Ruan Yu’s heart pounded wildly. She glanced toward the intercom and began counting silently to herself.

She couldn’t let the alarm go on too long. If things escalated too far, a fire truck might be called — disturbing the neighbors was a minor offense, but filing a false fire alarm and wasting emergency resources was a genuine transgression.

She counted thirty seconds in her head, and was just about to put the lid back on the pot and smother the roiling smoke, when the sprinkler system in the ceiling suddenly activated and rained down a torrent of water.

Ruan Yu was drenched on the spot. She stood stunned for several seconds before jumping down from the table and running over to answer the intercom.

A rapid-fire male voice came through: “This is the fire control room! Is there a fire emergency in your unit?”

Ruan Yu was coughing so hard she could barely speak, and managed to get out, hoarse and muffled: “I burned my food…”

The person on the other end seemed to let out a breath of relief, then turned to someone beside him: “Shut off the alarm! Notify the residents! The sprinkler system in Unit 1201 has gone off — go manually close the valve, quickly!”

The entire building fell quiet in an instant — all except for the sprinkler system in Ruan Yu’s living room, which was still running. In less than a minute, water had spread across the floor like a flood.

The sprinkler system didn’t shut off quickly enough. Ruan Yu scrambled to rescue her laptop, and was absolutely soaked through from head to toe by the time she heard someone pounding on her front door.

Pounding was the right word for it.

She waded through the standing water and ran to answer it, assuming it was building management, and pressed down the door handle while already rushing out: “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry—”

Then she saw Xu Huaisong standing in the doorway.

His shirt had two buttons undone, and the hair at his forehead was plastered flat against his skin. The moment he saw she was safe and unharmed, he closed his eyes — then pressed a hand against the door frame, gripping the edge, breathing hard.

Ruan Yu felt something jolt through her chest. For a moment she lost the ability to speak.

Before either of them could exchange a word, two building management staff arrived. One went inside to handle the sprinkler system; the other stayed at the door asking for the details.

Ruan Yu asked urgently: “Have all the residents in the building been evacuated downstairs?”

The building management staff gave a solemn nod: “Ms. Ruan, we’ll need you to explain the situation to us. We have to give the residents currently waiting downstairs a reasonable account.”

She was nervous, her words stumbling: “I’m sorry — I was cooking, and the pot caught fire…”

The staff member peered through the door into the unit, puzzled: “Smoke from the kitchen can trigger the smoke alarm, certainly, but the sprinkler system only activates under high-temperature conditions. Are you sure you were just cooking?”

Ruan Yu wiped the water from her face: “I brought the pot that was on fire into the living room, so…” She trailed off and bowed to the staff member. “I’m truly sorry. I’ll take full responsibility for this — I’ll go downstairs and apologize in person, and offer compensation to everyone if necessary.”

Xu Huaisong frowned slightly and stepped in front of her, turning to her: “Go dry yourself off. Put something on. Stay here and rest. I’ll handle this.” Then he turned and headed downstairs with the building management staff.

Ten minutes later, the building management made emergency repairs to the sprinkler system, arranged a follow-up maintenance appointment with Ruan Yu, and left.

Seeing Xu Huaisong hadn’t come back yet, she took her automatically-shut-off phone into the dry bedroom to charge it and tried to reach him — but when she dialed his number, she found his phone was also dead. So she threw a jacket over her shoulders, shut her door, and went out.

Right at the door, she ran into her landlord and his family stepping out of the elevator.

The kind-faced landlady came forward, smiling: “Thank goodness it wasn’t a real fire. It’s all right — the alarm in this building has gone off like this before. Everyone can treat it as exercise, a fire drill — if a real accident ever does happen, won’t they know the way out and escape even faster?”

Knowing this was meant to comfort her, Ruan Yu nodded in gratitude: “I’m sorry for causing everyone so much trouble.”

The landlady waved it off to indicate it was fine, then asked: “The young man downstairs — is that your boyfriend?”

“Yes.”

“A very fine young man.” She smiled. “When we were evacuating, he was the only one running upward against the crowd. They tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t listen — he just kept saying, ‘My girlfriend is still up there.'”

Ruan Yu’s nose prickled. Her eyes, already reddened from the smoke, immediately grew much wetter.

Once the landlord’s family had returned to their unit, she walked to the corridor window and looked down. She could vaguely make out a handful of residents still lingering below — probably unwilling to let the matter drop without some proper explanation, pressing the building management for answers.

Under the streetlight, Xu Huaisong appeared to be apologizing to them, bowing to each person one by one — a full ninety-degree bow every time.

Ruan Yu turned and ran back to the elevator. By the time she reached the first floor, she saw Xu Huaisong coming back in through the entrance.

Without stopping to think that they were in a public space, she threw her arms around him and buried her face in his chest: “I put you through all that.”

Xu Huaisong rested his hand on the back of her head and lowered his head with a quiet smile: “Put me through what? It wasn’t a real fire — I got the chance to apologize. Isn’t that a good thing?”

Ruan Yu sniffled and held him tighter.

Then she heard a female voice from somewhere behind him: “I’m sorry…”

It was Sun Miaohan’s voice.

Ruan Yu quickly released Xu Huaisong and turned to look. Sun Miaohan’s eyes were red-rimmed, her hair disheveled. Ruan Yu stepped forward: “Are you all right?”

She shook her head, and tears began falling in drops.

Ruan Yu patted her shoulder in reassurance and asked: “Where is he?”

“Gone…” Sun Miaohan answered between sobs. “When the alarm went off, I used the commotion to run downstairs with the neighbors. I saw him drive away.”

Ruan Yu said nothing for a moment, then turned to Xu Huaisong: “I’m going to take her upstairs first.”

Considering there was a man present, it wasn’t convenient to ask Sun Miaohan too much in detail. Ruan Yu waited until they were inside her apartment before saying: “Tell me what happened.”

The moment she asked, she took in the state of the living room — a floor lamp knocked on its side, a glass shattered, a pillow with its stuffing torn out and scattered everywhere…

This wasn’t a casting couch situation.

This was an attempted assault.

Ruan Yu’s breath seized for a moment. Something lodged itself in her chest and wouldn’t move.

She couldn’t even bring herself to ask for the details of what had happened.

Sun Miaohan wiped her tears and said: “He’s a senior executive at Huan Shi. He came to watch my performance earlier and said he was very impressed with my acting — that he was thinking of making me the female lead. Tonight, he took me to dinner with a director, and afterward said he’d walk me home…”

“I was so stupid — I didn’t even understand what that meant. I thought being walked home just meant being walked home. It wasn’t until we were in the elevator and he started to touch me that I finally…”

She stopped there and didn’t continue. Perhaps she didn’t want to relive it, or couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud. She lowered her eyes, bent down, and picked up a broom, and began sweeping up the broken glass.

Ruan Yu crouched down beside her to help, steadying the fallen floor lamp, and asked: “You got through tonight. What are you going to do after this?”

Back in Ruan Yu’s apartment, Xu Huaisong had started cleaning up as well.

Water was everywhere in the living room, and more than half the furniture was soaked — getting everything dry was going to be a considerable undertaking.

He was wiping down the sofa with an absorbent towel when he suddenly heard vibrating from the bedroom. He went in and found Ruan Yu’s phone — charging — with Li Shican’s name on the screen.

He paused, and didn’t answer. But a moment later, the second call came through.

After three consecutive calls, he had no choice but to pick up. He had barely raised the phone when Li Shican’s voice came through breathless on the other end: “You finally answered — are you trying to give me a heart attack…”

Xu Huaisong’s greeting stuck in his throat before he could say it.

Hearing nothing from the other end, Li Shican said urgently: “What’s the situation over there right now? I’m downstairs at your building.”

Xu Huaisong finally answered: “She’s fine.”

The line went dead silent.

A full ten seconds passed before Li Shican, standing in front of the elevator on the first floor, let out an awkward half-laugh and confirmed: “Xu — Attorney Xu?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a relief. She called me a little while ago, but the line cut out halfway — I was worried, so I…”

“I see.”

“Then I’ll head back.”

“All right.”

The call ended. Xu Huaisong set the phone down quietly.

He didn’t need to check the call log. He didn’t need to ask any more questions.

At the time it had happened, Ruan Yu’s phone was nearly dead — and the last person she had called wasn’t him. It was Li Shican.

Xu Huaisong looked down at the screen of his phone, where seventeen missed calls were displayed. At the same moment, his mind replayed the scene: Li Shican, certain she was in danger, bursting through the break room door.

For a full ten minutes, he stood completely still in the dimly lit bedroom.

Until the front door clicked open, and Ruan Yu called from the living room: “Huaisong?”

He opened his mouth, but no sound came.

“Are you in the room?” Ruan Yu slipped on her house shoes, waded through the standing water with a puzzled expression, and pushed open the bedroom door — before she could make out anything clearly, a force pulled her in, and her back pressed against the wall.

In the dim light, a familiar masculine warmth swept over her. Xu Huaisong’s lips came down.

She startled, wanted to ask “what’s wrong” — and the moment she opened her mouth, he mistook her intent.

Xu Huaisong pressed into her — forceful, direct, unrelenting — as though he meant to consume her entirely, to take her apart piece by piece and fold her inside himself.

He held her pinned hard against the wall, their bodies sealed together without a breath of space between them.

Ruan Yu received the kiss passively, waves breaking through her mind one after another, and in her dazed state she felt him trembling.

He was trembling — through all this fierce, overwhelming intensity.

He was the one on the offensive, and yet he was afraid. Afraid of something, panicked about something — as though he was trying to find a signal of safety in this closeness.

Ruan Yu was gradually losing her breath. She lifted her hands and pushed against him.

But Xu Huaisong did not stop this time.

He consumed her, his burning palms beginning to move along the small of her back, as though searching for some outlet, some release, and finding none.

He released her lips and moved the kiss to behind her ear — and at the same time, his right hand slipped under the hem of her top and moved upward.

Ruan Yu’s whole body shuddered: “Huaisong — Huaisong, what’s wrong with you…”

Xu Huaisong kept moving, insistent, until that last stubborn button finally gave way. Ruan Yu startled, and reached for his hand.

He stopped.

He went still in an instant — still as a statue.

Author’s Note: Our poor Huaisong, he’s hurting.