In the silent room, all that fierce intensity extinguished itself in an instant, leaving nothing behind but their intertwined breathing, echoing faintly against the drip and trickle of water from the living room.

Xu Huaisong stood motionless for a moment, then released her and stepped back.

Without anything to lean against, Ruan Yu’s knees buckled — she nearly slid down the wall, and it was only his steadying hand that kept her upright.

Ruan Yu didn’t know what had made him suddenly lose control, but that brief minute or more of closeness had made something clear to her — this was no longer eight years ago.

They were no longer at the age where holding hands and walking slowly along the street was the full extent of having each other.

Perhaps it had already begun much earlier — with the kiss on the night he left, that first stirring of something that belonged to the world of adults.

But they had been apart for nearly a month, the physical had been forced to cool — and so when they first came face to face again, Ruan Yu hadn’t adjusted yet. Caught off guard by the sudden advance, she had instinctively called a stop.

Only now, after the fact, did she find herself nervous — and something else rising through her body: a belated, faint, tingling warmth.

Her face burned a deep red. Her gaze went unmoored, drifting, until she finally dropped her eyes and fixed them on the tip of her own nose.

Xu Huaisong’s gaze coming to rest on her, and the loosened buttons at her back, left her completely at a loss.

Just as Ruan Yu was hesitating about whether to reach back and fasten them herself, she saw him move first — he raised his hand and reached around to her back.

His palm was startlingly warm, enough to make her flinch, but his movements were careful and precise.

Nothing like the storm of a moment ago. Through the damp fabric of her clothes, he found the buttons, pinched both ends between his fingers, and slowly ran his thumbs across them, feeling for their shape — as though he intended to fasten them back.

It had never once occurred to Ruan Yu that in a situation like this, the man involved would not be the one to quickly turn and disappear into the bathroom to “calm down” — but would instead patiently set right the mess he’d made.

Clumsy and tender at once.

Like taking a blow directly to the heart, Ruan Yu felt hers go soft and aching.

She thought of how her own action just now must have wounded him. While he was still painstakingly wrestling with the buttons, she suddenly reached out and wrapped her arms around him.

Xu Huaisong’s hands went still. He looked down at her.

Ruan Yu murmured quietly: “You can’t fasten them that way…”

Xu Huaisong’s hands were still pinching the buttons, not yet letting go. “What?”

“You could…” She buried her face against his chest, her voice muffled in the fabric of his shirt, indistinct. “You could reach inside to fasten them…”

Xu Huaisong’s throat moved. He made a sound of acknowledgment, and reached under the hem of her top again, this time navigating carefully around the smooth surface of her skin, trying to locate the buttons directly.

But it wasn’t easy. As though afraid that too much contact would again prompt her to pull away, he kept hesitating, not committing to the touch.

In the suffocating silence, Ruan Yu’s heart hammered. She gritted her teeth and said: “You can touch me…”

Xu Huaisong swallowed once more, paused, made a quiet sound of acknowledgment, and reached to feel his way.

The instant their skin made contact again, both of them shuddered at the same time.

He fastened the buttons, withdrew his hand, and offered no explanation for what had just happened. He looked down and said: “Go take a shower. I’ll clean up the living room — if it sits too long, it’ll leak through to the unit below.”

Ruan Yu nodded and went.

When she came back out, the chaos of the living room had already been restored to order.

Xu Huaisong was holding a hair dryer, aimed at a stack of manuscript pages sitting on the coffee table — pages covered in dense written annotations.

Seeing her emerge with her hair still wet, he clicked off the dryer and held it up, giving it a small wave in her direction.

Ruan Yu walked over and was just about to take it from him when he pulled it back and said: “Sit.”

She sat down in the chair, tilted her head back, and asked: “Are you going to dry it for me?”

Xu Huaisong made a sound of assent, switched the dryer on with his right hand, set it to medium heat, and pressed his left hand into her hair, working through it strand by strand, smoothing it out.

Ruan Yu was like a cat being attended to — she narrowed her eyes in comfort and tilted her head to the side, resting against his arm.

Xu Huaisong didn’t seem to find it inconvenient at all. He worked through her hair without a word.

When the dryer’s rattling noise finally fell silent, she opened her eyes and looked up: “Xu Huaisong.”

His mood still appeared subdued: “Mm.”

“You’re so good to me.”

His gaze flickered, just faintly: “There may be others who are equally good. They just haven’t had the chance to show it to you.”

Ruan Yu frowned, about to ask what he meant — but he had already set down the dryer and said: “It’s late. Go to sleep.”

She was genuinely exhausted, and let out a yawn: “What about you?”

“I’ll shower and then sleep too.” Xu Huaisong gestured toward the guest room. “I straightened it up a little while ago.”

Ruan Yu followed his gesture and looked, then paused for a beat. She watched him turn and go into the bathroom, and felt something quietly unsettled pressing down inside her.

She went to the kitchen, warmed a cup of milk, and held it out to him when he emerged, asking: “Are you in a bad mood? Did something happen in America?”

She asked — and then before he could even answer, talked herself out of it.

He had only started acting differently after she came back from the fifteenth floor. So it had nothing to do with what had happened before.

Xu Huaisong ruffled her hair and gave a small smile: “No. Just tired from the flight.” He took the milk and headed for the guest room. “Get some rest.”

Ruan Yu had no choice but to turn back to her own bedroom. Under the covers, she grew quietly restless, gripping her hair with a furrowed brow. She lay there for a long stretch, unable to sleep, and then reached over to the bedside table for her phone, which was still charging, and pressed her fingerprint to unlock it.

There, immediately in view, were seventeen missed calls.

From Li Shican.

Ruan Yu froze.

She looked at the timestamps, scrolled through the call log, and let out a quiet, low “ah” to herself.

When she had come back down from the fifteenth floor, Xu Huaisong had been in her bedroom. And Li Shican had, in that exact window of time, called her in an unrelenting chain.

Looking at this call history, everything fell into place.

She made a pained face and exhaled in frustration.

She should have figured it out sooner.

Ruan Yu sat there for a moment, and decided she couldn’t just let this sit.

A man who would rather write three hundred and twenty-seven text messages than say a single “I like you” — she absolutely could not expect him to take the initiative on something like this.

But if things stayed this way —

He would suffocate himself first, and then take her down with him.

Ruan Yu steeled herself, got out of bed, and just as she was about to open the bedroom door, paused.

He had just spent so many hours on the plane, and then had to deal with the building management, and then clean the whole living room — what if he was already too exhausted to stay awake?

With that thought, she lightened her footsteps, crept toward the guest room, and pressed her ear against the door.

She listened for a long time and couldn’t make out any sound. She was just weighing whether to leave it until tomorrow when Xu Pipi — always awake at odd hours — appeared out of nowhere and let out a long, drawn-out “meow” at her feet.

She immediately pressed a finger to her lips — but Xu Huaisong had already heard the sound from inside, and asked: “What is it?”

She had no choice but to clear her throat: “Can I come in?”

She received an affirmative answer and pressed down the door handle.

Xu Huaisong had just sat up and switched on the bedside lamp, and was about to say something — when he watched her draw a deep breath, shut the door behind her, and come charging across the room to launch herself onto his bed.

He blinked: “Can’t sleep?”

Ruan Yu nodded.

“What do you want to do about that?”

She was already on his bed — what did he mean, what to do about it?

Ruan Yu had thrown caution to the wind entirely. She inhaled and said: “Aren’t you going to invite me under the covers…?”

Xu Huaisong shifted over and lifted the blanket.

Ruan Yu crawled in.

He said: “You think you’ll sleep like this?”

She nodded and lay down.

This was, in the truest sense, the first time the two of them had shared a bed and the same blanket. But after Xu Huaisong reached over to switch off the bedside lamp, he kept a half-arm’s distance between them — a careful, uncrossed border.

Ruan Yu felt stifled, thinking over how to open the conversation. After a while, she said: “Do you know what happened on the fifteenth floor?”

He made a sound of acknowledgment: “I had a rough idea. You did well.”

“Do you know who it was?”

Xu Huaisong seemed to pause, and turned his head toward her: “Someone I know?”

She shook her head: “I never mentioned it to you before. He’s the producer of my film.”

Xu Huaisong went quiet, frowning in the darkness where she couldn’t see his expression.

Until this moment, he had assumed this was simply a matter that had already been resolved — a case of helping a stranger in need, done and finished. But if the man in question was the producer of her film, then the fallout might well be more complicated than that.

But Ruan Yu’s thoughts were on an entirely different track.

She explained: “The reason Li Shican burst into the break room that time was because I was on the same floor as that Director Wei at the time. He had already warned me not to get too close to that person. So today, when the situation arose, my first instinct was to call him — to ask him what he knew about Director Wei.”

“I thought, since he knows Director Wei, maybe he’d have some way to handle it. Otherwise I wouldn’t have called him.”

The hand Xu Huaisong had tucked under the blanket trembled almost imperceptibly, then curled into a fist. He turned onto his side to face her: “There was a dangerous person like that around you — why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

His tone had shifted, become more forceful. It was clear, unmistakably, that the knot in his chest had been loosened.

Ruan Yu thought inwardly, finally — and said, with a small pout: “You were in America. Telling you would only add to your worries. I was being careful not to go near him, and you saw — nothing happened before today. And after today, you’re right here with me.”

Xu Huaisong closed his eyes, as though shuddering at the thought of what might have been. A moment later, he pulled her into his arms: “Something like this — tell me the moment it happens, from now on. Whether I’m in America or Siberia, you tell me immediately.”

Ruan Yu bumped her head against his shoulder: “America wasn’t enough, now you have to go to Siberia too?”

“…”

Xu Huaisong pinched her chin and adjusted her so she was facing him properly: “That was an example. I’m being serious with you.”

Ruan Yu grinned and looped her arms around his neck: “Okay, okay, I understand. Are you still feeling bad?”

Xu Huaisong, his private feelings now exposed, fell silent.

Men had their pride, after all. Seeing that he wasn’t going to give a direct answer, Ruan Yu quickly changed the subject: “Is the air conditioning in the guest room not working properly? What temperature did you set it to — it’s so warm in here.”

But this subject change did not land well.

This second private feeling now also exposed, Xu Huaisong fell silent again.

Ruan Yu made to get up and find the remote, and was pulled back down.

Xu Huaisong said through gritted teeth: “Leave it. Eighteen degrees — that’s plenty cold.”

“Then why is it still so…”

Ruan Yu stopped herself mid-question.

Why else could it be? Any further asking and she’d be the foolish one.

A mutually understood answer spread between them, unspoken.

In the quiet room, two hearts beat their way to the same rhythm, as though racing.

But neither of them broke away from the other’s embrace.

In the end, it was Xu Huaisong who won the race.

Ruan Yu asked, concerned: “With a heart rate like that — you’re not going to drop dead, are you?”

“…”

He lightly tapped her on the forehead: “I won’t drop dead.”

Ruan Yu let out a hissing breath, feeling the tension locked through his entire body. He was probably deeply uncomfortable. She said: “Maybe I should just go back to my own room to sleep.”

“Have you ever seen a rabbit crawl into a wolf’s den and get let back out?”

“But the wolf just stares and won’t take a bite — isn’t that a terrible waste?”

Xu Huaisong choked: “Don’t say things like that.”

Ruan Yu blinked — and then heard him let out a slow breath: “The wolf didn’t bring utensils.”

Inside the explosive force of that declaration — “didn’t bring utensils” — Ruan Yu trembled straight through to the next morning, when she was finally jolted awake by the sound of the doorbell.

She opened her eyes, groggy, and gave Xu Huaisong beside her a push: “Is someone ringing the doorbell?”

He stirred but couldn’t open his eyes — no telling what hour he had finally fallen asleep the night before — and frowned: “Mm.”

Ruan Yu rubbed her eyes, threw off the blanket, and got out of bed, muttering: “Who comes by this early in the morning?”

Xu Huaisong ultimately dragged himself up as well and stepped in front of her: “I’ll go.”

He shuffled out in his slippers, checked through the peephole, then turned back to her: “Fifteenth floor.” And opened the door.

Ruan Yu came hurrying out and found Sun Miaohan standing in the doorway with dark circles under her eyes. Taking in the two of them, bleary and rumpled, she gave an apologetic nod: “Sorry to disturb you.”

Ruan Yu shook her head to indicate it was fine and invited her in: “Have you thought it over?”

The night before, she had asked her what she planned to do — whether to file a report, whether to stay at Huan Shi or leave. Sun Miaohan had said she needed to think about it.

Once inside, she didn’t sit down — she went straight to it: “I’ve thought it over. Sister, I wasn’t physically harmed in any lasting way — filing a report won’t do anything.”

Ruan Yu glanced at Xu Huaisong.

His expression told her Sun Miaohan was right.

“And after this?”

Sun Miaohan lowered her eyes: “I think maybe the entertainment industry just isn’t for me. I’m not signing a contract with Huan Shi, and I’m not staying in Hang Shi — I’m planning to go back home.”

Ruan Yu went quiet for a moment, then said “mm,” her expression showing a trace of regret.

Sun Miaohan gave a small smile: “Don’t feel sorry for me either. What kind of reputation could a film made by someone like that ever have? Not taking the role might actually be the better thing.”

Ruan Yu didn’t quite follow that: “Hm?”

“Last night I overheard Director Wei talking to a director — he said that the plagiarism controversy surrounding that IP was something he had stirred up himself from the beginning. And that afterward, he still planned to keep using all of it as material, packaging it together with Li Shican for another round of publicity.”

Ruan Yu went still.

What did it mean that the plagiarism controversy had been stirred up by Wei Jin himself?

She blinked twice, dumbfounded, and looked toward Xu Huaisong — who was frowning now as well.

Author’s Note: I apologize — in all of Gu Zhiao’s life, this is the first time she has ever heard someone describe “not having protection” with such elegance.