The door shut with a sharp crack. The black GTR tore past Lin Weixia in a rush of wind and was gone.

The night was pitch black. A bitter gust swept through. Lin Weixia instinctively raised a hand and pulled the scarf around her neck higher, covering most of her face until only her eyes were visible.

She walked along the dark road for roughly seven or eight minutes before Qiu Minghua caught up behind her in a car. He eventually got Lin Weixia to get in.

Lin Weixia sat inside the car. Qiu Minghua looked at her — silent and composed — and sighed, then started talking. Lin Weixia leaned against the car window and watched his lips moving without registering a word.

Halfway through the journey, a torrential rain broke open — a white, blinding sheet. The entire city was swallowed in damp. The car window wasn’t shut all the way, and a few drops of rain found their way through, cold and sharp against her skin.

Lin Weixia thought about Ban Sheng’s expression earlier — that revulsion, that impatience. Every expression on his face, every movement of his body, had said the same thing: stay away from me.

That thought sent a pain through her chest in waves. Breathing became difficult.

More than an hour later, the rain let up, though it was still falling. Lin Weixia opened the car door. A sheet of cold, damp air swept in sideways. She murmured a soft thank-you to Qiu Minghua, then walked directly into the rain without looking back.

Qiu Minghua was twisted around in his seat, stretching to grab an umbrella from the back. He watched Lin Weixia walking into the rain and called out anxiously: “Aren’t you taking an umbrella?”

Lin Weixia, both hands deep in her coat pockets, kept walking. She forced one hand out just long enough to wave it vaguely behind her without turning around.

She got home. Turned on the heat. Lin Weixia had been soaked through nearly entirely. Outside, the cold had bleached her lips almost white. She went into her bedroom, gathered her things, and walked to the bathroom.

She turned on the hot water. The shower head released a column of steaming water that poured over her skin, and the coiled tension in her nerves slowly unwound.

When she came out, she felt much better. She poured a glass of warm water and drank it down in small, slow sips. Shengxia came panting over and tried to leap up on her.

Lin Weixia set her glass down on the table, crouched down, and wrapped her arms around the little dog. She pressed her cheek against Shengxia’s soft, round head and stared at a point across the room, unseeing. A single tear, clear as glass, landed on the back of her own hand.

Before going to sleep, Lin Weixia slid her phone from under her pillow and lit up the screen. Nothing. Ban Sheng hadn’t sent a single message.

The next day, Lin Weixia woke up. Sleep had taken the edge off last night’s distress, and the early sunlight falling across the windowsill made her feel easier.

She made herself a sandwich and a cup of milk coffee for breakfast. In the daytime, her thoughts were clearer. She ate her sandwich slowly, methodically, and went back over what had happened the night before.

Last night, her emotions had been running high. Now, with her reason gathered back in, she could see that Ban Sheng’s reaction had been unusual — as though he’d been triggered by something, an instinctive, involuntary response.

Lin Weixia didn’t want to leap to conclusions without understanding more. She drank a sip of coffee, picked up her phone, found the black profile icon, and opened the chat window to compose a message.

Her thumb tapped out: We need to talk — she was about to send it, but then she thought of Ban Sheng’s expression from the night before, and something in her chest seized. She deleted it and started over.

Xia: [We need to talk — but if you think there’s nothing to discuss, forget it.]

She sent the message. Lin Weixia had expected at least some response. But the message was like a stone dropped into still water, leaving nothing. The black profile icon never showed a notification dot again.

In class, or during group project sessions with classmates, Lin Weixia couldn’t help but turn things over in her mind — had Ban Sheng seen the message and chosen not to reply, or had he not seen it at all?

But her rational mind told her: they lived in the modern world. Everyone needed their phone for something, at some point or another.

He had probably seen it. He had just decided there was nothing worth discussing.

When that conclusion settled in, Lin Weixia was in the middle of copying her notes. The red pen scored a heavy line across the page. That page of notes was ruined.

She let out a quiet sigh.

December now. After a brief spell of clear weather, the north of the capital was hit with another heavy snowfall. From the night of that incident onward, Lin Weixia never saw Ban Sheng again. Along with the snow, he seemed to vanish entirely from her world.

Everything that had happened during this time felt like a dream.

As though he had been in America all along. As though he had never come back.

When their schedules matched, Lin Weixia and Menzi would eat together at the canteen. They sat across from each other in the noisy dining hall. Menzi caught her drifting away more than once and asked, with a note of concern:

“Sweetheart, what’s the matter with you?”

Lin Weixia pulled the corner of her mouth upward. Then she noticed that Menzi’s eyes couldn’t quite contain a bubbling happiness. She turned the question around: “What about you — what’s got you so cheerful?”

At that, Menzi’s attention instantly redirected. She propped her chin in her hands, and those usually sharp, bold eyes softened into something warmer and more luminous. She smiled:

“That friend of yours is proving rather hard to pursue. But he’s interesting. Upright and naive — the kind that makes you want to rise to the challenge.”

Lin Weixia understood. She nodded and said: “He’s a genuinely good person though. Don’t underestimate him — you might find that in the end, he’s the one who reels you in.”

Menzi smoothed her thumb back and forth across her jaw in a slow, contemplative circle, narrowed her eyes and revisited the scene from yesterday, then murmured: “Really? He’s quite something.”

Menzi had recently taken on a job filming a promotional short for the police academy affiliated with the university. As it happened, the filming location was Ning Chao’s school. The moment Menzi walked through the gates of the police college with her outside crew, she was hit by a wave of concentrated testosterone.

A formation passed by her — young university men in dark blue training fatigues, marching in precise lockstep, voices ringing out their cadence in unison, sweat running down their jaws without any of them lifting a hand to wipe it away, holding discipline to the last.

The cameraman beside her teased: “Director Menzi, stop staring — your eyes are about to pop.”

Menzi sighed. “From today forward, this is my type. Muscled, in uniform, and handsome.”

“Director Menzi, they might look impressive right now, but off duty they’re rough as anything — don’t shower much, socks piled everywhere, smell like old sweat.”

Menzi raised one finger and gave a slow wave, her elegant brow furrowed. “I’ll thank you not to shatter my illusions.”

A campus staff member came to receive them, and the group was led to the filming location. In practice, aside from the two necessary assistants for shooting and editing, every other stage of the short film was handled by Menzi alone.

They came to the training grounds to scout for shots, arriving just as the Class Three Year Two students were mid-endurance run. Menzi immediately gave the assistant behind her a look. Equipment was switched on, and the cameras began to follow and track.

Through the crowd, Menzi spotted him immediately — third from the left in the last row: Ning Chao. He wore the blue training fatigues. Tall, broad-shouldered, his profile cut hard and clean, that untamed energy unmistakable even from a distance.

Menzi picked up her camera and moved in. They were doing a low crawl drill. She crouched and tracked alongside them. Ning Chao was flat on both palms, holding the crawling position. The instructor’s next command hadn’t come, which meant no one could move.

Holding the same position for too long made the muscles ache and stiffen. Ning Chao was fighting to endure it, sweat rolling down his cheek from his forehead, when he suddenly felt a warm, delicate scent drift across his face — like something small and alive, carrying a deliberately unsettling quality.

His lower abdomen clenched. A restless heat was coaxed out of him. The itch on his face intensified. He turned his eyes — and met an alluring face right there beside him. Menzi was looking at him with a smile.

Ning Chao drew a slow, deep breath. He couldn’t do anything about it — but he wasn’t about to let this woman have her way with him either. His eyes issued a clear warning. The two of them went back and forth several times, and toward the end, when Menzi saw him clench his back teeth in genuine irritation, she decided she had pushed far enough and pulled back.

During the break, Ning Chao leaned against a poplar tree, a bottle of mineral water in one hand. Despite the cold, his jacket was draped aside and he wore only a short-sleeved shirt, the muscles of his arms taut and defined. He tilted his head back to drink, throat working as the water went down, drops sliding to his collarbone. His dark lashes were damp with a faint sweat — a wild, rough-edged quality radiating off him.

Menzi put her hands behind her back and strolled over. She stood in front of him. Ning Chao tightened the cap on his bottle, didn’t so much as glance at her, and treated her like she wasn’t there.

“Hm. I just filmed your abs from quite close, and I’ve already sent the video to my phone,” Menzi said with great ceremony, raising her phone as if to savor the footage.

Ning Chao’s face darkened. He moved to take her phone. Menzi dodged him with quick reflexes, staring at him with open provocation. He seized her wrist directly, grip tightening without meaning to, and ground out through his teeth:

“Have you no shame — acting like this?”

“Desire is basic human instinct. I don’t have any shame, and frankly, on nights when I’m thinking about men, I’ll be playing this clip on repeat. Really something — your breathing is in it too.” Menzi said, grinning.

Menzi had expected Ning Chao to scold her, or to pin her hands behind her back as he had last time. What she hadn’t expected was this: after she finished speaking, that face of his — which usually carried an air of strict, untouchable dignity — flushed suddenly red, all the way to the roots.

She very much wanted to reach out and test just how hot that ear actually was.

…

After listening to Menzi’s account, Lin Weixia said nothing. She simply gave a thumbs-up.

The two finished lunch and parted ways at the canteen entrance — Menzi heading back to her studio to edit the footage, Lin Weixia going to the library to review for a major subject-level assessment she had in two days.

Friday. Lin Weixia was at Song Yihang’s house giving him a session in the therapy room. Near the end, Song Yihang suddenly threw his toy to the floor, jumped up, and ran to the window, standing on his tiptoes to look outside.

Lin Weixia looked over in puzzled surprise. It was snowing.

White flakes, soft as feathers, drifted down through the air and covered the ash-grey ground in silver-white within moments. Lin Weixia glanced at the time, tucked her textbook under her arm, and walked out into the living room. The housekeeper, as always, came over with a cup of hot tea.

Lin Weixia looked down and tucked her phone and keys into her bag, accepted the cup, drank a few swallows, handed it back with a thank-you, then picked up her scarf and bag and moved to leave.

“Teacher Lin, why not stay for lunch? It’s snowing out there — the roads will be difficult for a while.”

“I can’t — I have an exam this afternoon.” Lin Weixia smiled and politely declined.

She turned to go. She had taken two steps when she felt her coat hem being tugged. She looked back — it was Song Yihang, holding fast to her coat, head bowed toward the floor.

“It seems the little young master wants you to stay too,” the housekeeper said with a smile, trying to persuade her.

Lin Weixia was caught between two minds. From somewhere on the spiral staircase came a quiet, unhurried voice — soft as smoke. Song Yihang’s uncle, Song Zhiyan, appeared at the top and said:

“The roads will be slippery in the snow. If Teacher Lin doesn’t mind staying, you’re welcome to join us for lunch.”

At that point, declining would have been needlessly difficult. Lin Weixia agreed.

Lunch was a generous spread. Song Zhiyan ate in near-complete silence, as composed and unreadable as the man himself. Lin Weixia ate quietly, turning the lazy susan at an easy pace, picking from this dish and that. When the plate of celery beef turned toward her, she paused.

She thought of him again.

The thought brought a familiar ache to her chest. Lin Weixia ate a little and found she had no appetite, so she set down her chopsticks. After the meal, Lin Weixia wandered out to the back garden.

The back garden was spacious. A wooden carousel horse stood in the center, buried under a thick layer of white snow — only its painted eyes peered out, like a miniature snowman.

Blood roses grew along the ground, spreading outward from below her feet. Snow kept falling onto her shoulders. Lin Weixia stood staring at the distance.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out the Marlboros and lighter that Ban Sheng had left behind.

She opened the pack. Only seven cigarettes left in the red and white hard case. She tipped one out, bit down on the filter, picked up Ban Sheng’s lighter, and tried to light it. An orange-red flame caught — and was immediately extinguished by the wind.

She tried again. And again.

Quietly frustrated, she was about to try once more when a large, capable hand appeared and curved around the flame, shielding it from the wind. She caught a glimpse of a brown plaid coat sleeve.

The flame stayed. Lin Weixia touched the cigarette to it and lit up successfully. She said a quiet thank-you, and the hand withdrew.

Smoking, as it turned out, was something you grew into. Lin Weixia smoked and looked straight ahead, not speaking. Song Zhiyan glanced at her.

Cherry-red lips around a cigarette. Lin Weixia brought it down, expression languid. Her posture was unpracticed, but when she narrowed her eyes and let out a slow breath of smoke, there was a cool, striking beauty to it.

Like a cat.

“You smoke very well,” Song Zhiyan remarked, the observation coming out of nowhere.

Lin Weixia gave a faint smile and said: “If he knew I was smoking, he’d definitely be furious.”

“That means he cares for you very much,” Song Zhiyan said with certainty.

Lin Weixia blinked, then pushed back: “Not necessarily — it might just be traditional thinking. Some men simply believe women shouldn’t smoke.”

The cigarette burned down quickly. Lin Weixia dropped it in the trash, thanked Song Zhiyan for his hospitality, and left. She wound the scarf properly around her neck, picked up her commuter bag, and walked out of the Song family home.

At the bus stop, Lin Weixia waited a good while and realized the bus was nowhere to be seen. She opened the public transit app on her phone — because of the heavy snowfall, multiple route lines had been suspended.

She switched to the ride-hailing app, entered her destination, and found the green icon spinning endlessly on the map. A prompt popped up: Heavy traffic. You are currently 57th in the queue.

Lin Weixia checked the time and felt a creeping anxiety. She couldn’t spend the entire afternoon stuck here and miss the exam.

She was worrying this through when a black Bentley pulled up in front of her. The window lowered halfway, revealing one half of Song Zhiyan’s composed profile. He asked, courteous and measured:

“Can I offer you a ride?”

Lin Weixia thought it over briefly and got in, saying thank you.

Forty minutes later, the car came to a smooth stop at the green bus shelter near the capital’s north university.

The car door opened. A gust of howling wind flooded in, and Lin Weixia instinctively pulled her neck back against the cold. She stepped out — and glanced toward the university entrance out of instinct.

In the crowd, she saw Ban Sheng.

Ban Sheng, who had been absent from her world for an entire week.

Ban Sheng saw her too. Their gazes collided in midair. Lin Weixia stood there. For a moment, she couldn’t move — she almost wanted to turn and run.

Behind her, a voice. Lin Weixia turned, startled. The window was still lowered; Song Zhiyan held out the hair tie she had dropped. Lin Weixia thanked him and took it. As she spoke, she felt a particular gaze settle on her from somewhere.

The car pulled away. She turned back. The gaze was gone.

Ban Sheng stood among the crowd, laughing and talking with the people around him, a rotating cast of men and women. He held a cigarette loosely between his fingers, listening to someone with an air of complete detachment. Zhou Jingze was there too, apparently — cigarette tucked in the corner of his mouth, unlit, his hand patting the front of his flight jacket, searching for a lighter and not finding one.

Ban Sheng’s cigarette was still burning, the ember glowing faintly red. He raised his hand and held it out. Zhou Jingze gave a lazy laugh, angled his head with the cigarette still between his lips, and borrowed the light.

After he lit up, Ban Sheng had clearly also seen her by now. His gaze rested on her for less than a second, then slid cleanly past.

His eyes were completely flat.

A passerby caught the scene and gasped: “That’s Ban Sheng, right? And the other one’s Zhou Jingze from the aviation institute next door.”

“Definitely them. Seeing two men like that in the same frame — it’s almost unfair. I’d print this out and paste it above my bed.”

Lin Weixia walked forward, both hands buried in her coat pockets, unhurried. She moved on her own, heading straight ahead. As she passed by the cluster of people, a cold wind cut through and lifted her hair.

As she passed right by them, Ban Sheng said nothing.

It was Zhou Jingze who called out to her.

Lin Weixia stopped and stood before them, speaking with Zhou Jingze. She had on a camel-colored wide-cut coat today, blue jeans, and a loose black-and-brown checked scarf looped casually around her hair — simple and striking in the same breath.

Ban Sheng didn’t pay attention to what they were saying. His gaze moved across her face — he caught the slight movement of her soft lips, and noticed the faint flush that the cold had pressed into the white of her cheeks.

“What brings you here today?”

“Just had a few things to take care of.”

“And who was that just now? Someone pursuing you, or a boyfriend?” Zhou Jingze asked, smiling.

“You wouldn’t know him. A student’s guardian,” Lin Weixia said.

The cigarette between Ban Sheng’s fingers had been burning all this time without being smoked. A fleck of ash drifted down onto the back of his hand in a quiet sting of heat. His gaze tracked to that small, soft stretch of pale skin at her earlobe — and saw a faint red dot there.

“I should head off — exam soon.” He heard her say.

Lin Weixia lowered her head and moved past that upright, steady figure.

A gust of wind swept through. The faint sweet scent in the air dissolved slowly into nothing. Ban Sheng pulled his gaze back from where it had followed her. He lowered his head and lit another cigarette.