The restroom was large, and those words echoed on and on. Lin Weixia’s voice was cold. She stared at a black mark on the white wall opposite, her mind going blank. Even as she said it, she couldn’t picture his expression.

She felt Ban Sheng’s body stiffen involuntarily — and then, slowly, the arm encircling her waist began to release its hold.

The force that had bound her lifted entirely, and the warmth of him gradually retreated, then disappeared completely.

After Ban Sheng left, the empty restroom held only Lin Weixia. She stood where she was for a long moment, dazed, then walked to the sink. She pulled out two paper towels and blew her nose, then crumpled them into a ball and tossed them in the bin.

In truth, what Lin Weixia had said to Ban Sheng just now wasn’t entirely anger talking — mixed in was a trace of genuine bewilderment. The way things had developed, she truly couldn’t see how to keep going.

Lin Weixia continued attending classes, going to the library to study, and visiting Song Yihang’s home to provide his regular psychological sessions. Without Ban Sheng, her life was calm as the surface of a lake — her heart no longer surged up and down, no longer churned with the roaring tides he stirred in her.

Midway through, Ban Sheng called twice. Both calls were rejected. After that, her phone screen never lit up with his name again.

Only once, by complete coincidence — several classroom windows in the engineering faculty building across campus had been shattered by a blizzard, so the students over there were borrowing classrooms on her side for a week.

Wednesday. Heavy snow.

The snowfall came swiftly and thickly. Everywhere was blanketed in dense, gleaming white. Lin Weixia walked through the campus with her books tucked against her chest. Behind her, the continuous snap of snow-laden branches breaking — small, sharp sounds punctuating the air. The biting wind drove straight into her bones, and she instinctively pulled her coat tighter, quickening her pace.

Each long lecture had a fifteen-minute break midway through. After the first half of class, Lin Weixia closed her copy of Social Psychology, picked up her thermos, and stepped out of the classroom intending to walk to the far end of the corridor to fill it with hot water.

Passing a row of classrooms, she smiled and returned greetings from classmates she recognized along the way. Then, without meaning to, her gaze drifted sideways — and settled on a familiar figure. Her eyes stopped.

He wore a black hoodie and leaned against the railing in a completely languid pose, shoulders slightly dipped. A white cigarette dangled from his mouth; he was about to light it when someone beside him said something to him. He turned his face to the side, and the line of his jaw curved with a careless ease.

Ban Sheng standing there was, in itself, the center of gravity for the entire space.

Lin Weixia tightened her grip on the thermos, lowered her eyes, and walked past them without a sideways glance. A girl with long legs came walking toward her from the opposite direction, her steps lively and buoyant. She paused when she reached Ban Sheng, mimicked his pose — both hands propped on the railing — tilted her head, and asked him:

“Ban Sheng, are you coming to the zero-degree bar at ten tonight for the bet?”

At that moment, a gust of wind swept through. Ban Sheng’s voice sounded somehow slightly unreal on the wind. He lowered his head to light the cigarette. A click — the tobacco caught, and with an exhale, a wisp of white vapor drifted from his lips, floating toward where Lin Weixia was. He said:

“I’ll be there.”

Lin Weixia couldn’t help tightening her fist. Her fingernails went pale, the faint blue veins beneath her skin rising to the surface. She walked past the two of them.

Menzi was the first to notice that something was off with Lin Weixia. When they ate together at home, Lin Weixia would typically set down her chopsticks after only two bites and leave most of the meal untouched. Even when Menzi talked to her, she seemed miles away, like a girl who’d lost her soul.

“Weixia, what’s wrong?” Menzi asked, worried. “You’ll feel better if you talk about it.”

Lin Weixia hesitated, then told her everything that had happened over this period of time. At first, Menzi listened with murmured responses of “mm” and “I see,” but as the story went on, she abruptly became furious:

“Am I hearing this right? You were giving everything you had to pull him out of the mess he was in, and he told you to get out of the car?”

Lin Weixia nodded. She got up and moved to the couch, picked up a throw pillow, pressed her cheek flat against it, and stared into the distance listlessly. “Was I pushing too hard?”

She had heard it said before that after a breakup, the depth of love is measured by how much either person still thinks of the other. Over these years, Lin Weixia had found she couldn’t forget Ban Sheng — so when they met again, she had tried very hard to close the distance between them.

But Ban Sheng? He always wore the expression of someone who had the upper hand and could see through everything. He’d entangle himself with Lin Weixia, play at ambiguity, but never lay it all bare — never have a single honest, calm conversation with her.

She had tried to push open the door to the innermost part of Ban Sheng, but he had shut it.

Menzi sat beside her. Her phone let out a soft chime. She glanced at it and understood at once. She looked sideways at Lin Weixia — at this dispirited listlessness that had dragged on all week — and suddenly had an idea:

“Weixia, there’s a gathering this weekend at a resort in a town just outside Jingbei. About two or three hours by car — it lands right on the weekend. Do you want to come? Let me take you somewhere to clear your head.”

Seeing that Lin Weixia still had her eyes cast down, thinking it over, Menzi kept at her: “Come on. A change of scenery — maybe whatever you haven’t been able to sort out will suddenly click.”

“Alright.” Lin Weixia finally agreed.

Menzi said goodbye to Lin Weixia and stepped out of her home. The sky had grown dark. Menzi had done a gorgeous purple smoky eye today, and with a leather jacket and a sharp, confident outfit, she was on her way to a themed party.

On a spontaneous whim, Menzi held up her phone, snapped a selfie, then opened Ning Chao’s WeChat and sent the photo to him.

The chat window showed seven or eight messages above, almost all of them Menzi’s one-sided attempts at flirting:

[Ning Sir, would you like to admire your own abs? I’ve set them as my wallpaper.]

Ning Chao hadn’t responded. The next day, Menzi tried again: [Did you eat? Ning Sir?]

[Ning Sir, what kind of girl do you like?]

The message sat there a long time, and Ning Chao only replied five hours later, in his usual cold and unapproachable tone:

[Any type except yours.]

But who was Menzi? She had a diamond heart — you could hurl it at the floor and it still wouldn’t crack. When it came to men she’d set her sights on, the only two categories were ones she wanted and ones she didn’t. The ones she wanted, she would always chase down.

The more Ning Chao ignored her, the more spirited she became.

After sending the photo, Menzi typed her message, fingers tapping away. She asked:

[Pretty?]

This time, barely five minutes after she sent it, her phone screen lit up. Ning Chao replied with one word:

[Ugly.]

Menzi’s brow went up. She let out a huff, muttered something about his lack of taste, stuffed her phone back into her pocket with mild annoyance, and walked to the roadside to flag down a car to take her to the party.

The moment she arrived, her earlier bad mood evaporated entirely. She drank herself into a stupor at the party, and a friend eventually drove her home.

Back home, Menzi kicked off her heels, rushed over, and wrapped herself around the toilet for a good round of retching. After that, gripping the doorframe, she staggered out and sat down at her vanity to remove her makeup.

Done with that, Menzi drew a bath. Once the hot water had soaked through her skin, her head cleared considerably. After the bath, Menzi, eyes half-shut, made it to her room, flung her slippers aside, and collapsed into bed.

She was drifting off into a muzzy half-sleep when something came back to her. She lurched up from the bed, fumbled under her pillow, and pulled out her phone. She thought again of the photo she’d sent that afternoon — and Ning Chao calling her ugly.

The more she thought about it, the more annoyed she got. So tipsy Menzi picked up her phone, pointed it at herself and took another shot, then lay back down and sent it over without a single word of explanation.

Ning Chao got the message sometime just past eleven. The dormitory was almost at lights-out. The phone on his pillow buzzed. He unlocked it with his thumb to see it was another message from that irritating girl, and dismissively swept away the notification dot — then his gaze froze.

It was a bare-faced photo of Menzi.

Her hair was half-damp, falling softly down her back. She wore a crescent-white slip dress, the line of her neck and shoulders perfectly fluid. Her features were inherently striking, but with the makeup stripped away, the boldness of them softened, just slightly, into something more delicate.

Truth be told, the smoky eye photo Menzi had sent earlier in the day wasn’t unattractive — the makeup was simply too heavy, concealing her actual features and making her look somewhat unreal.

Ning Chao stared at the photo without looking away. A flicker of something passed through his eyes. His roommate called out to him, repeated it several times before he finally snapped back, switched off the phone screen, and turned his head.

“What is it?”

“You got a bewitching woman living in that phone of yours?” his roommate teased.

Ning Chao snorted and cursed: “Get out of here.”

By Friday, the snow had finally stopped, but it had piled up half a foot deep. Walking through it took real effort, and the city management crews had begun clearing and shoveling the streets.

Lin Weixia and Menzi both had no classes Friday afternoon, so they packed their things and planned to head out around noon.

When Menzi sent Lin Weixia a message, Lin Weixia was in the middle of wrapping her scarf. She tidied her hair, picked up her travel bag, and went downstairs.

Menzi had a pair of sunglasses perched on her high, straight nose. She took Lin Weixia’s travel bag and put it in the trunk. Lin Weixia climbed into the passenger seat, Menzi started the car, then pulled a steaming corn cob from a brown paper bag and said:

“You haven’t eaten yet, have you?”

Menzi freed one hand and took it, biting into it — sweet and glutinous. She exclaimed, “Weixia, my dear, where on earth do you find someone as thoughtful as you? Just marry me instead. I’ll hand over my salary card.”

Menzi successfully coaxed a laugh out of Lin Weixia. “Alright,” she agreed.

The car merged onto the highway. Through the window, ginkgo trees, low-lying hills, and frozen lake surfaces streamed past in reverse. Lin Weixia reclined in her seat and chatted with Menzi for a while, but the exhaustion from pulling an all-nighter the previous day to finish an assignment crept over her, and she couldn’t help yawning. Lin Weixia grabbed the headrest pillow from behind her and turned to Menzi:

“Menzi, let me sleep for a bit. When you get tired, wake me up to take over.”

“Sure, get some rest. Two hours is nothing.”

Lin Weixia turned her head to lean against the seat back and drifted slowly to sleep. She had a fragmented dream — in it, she chased a black silhouette for a long, long time, but could never see its face. Each time her hand nearly reached the figure, it vanished instantly.

By the time Lin Weixia opened her eyes and woke from the dream, she found they had already entered the Xueyun Chong scenic area.

The car wound along its way, passing one standalone villa after another, along with various guesthouses. Not far off was a large animal farm — Lin Weixia could spot a woolly sheep standing at the fence from a distance.

Colorful flags were strung together as boundary markers between zones. The elevation here was higher, the weather colder, the snow thicker. Mountains and peaks were all blanketed in white, and a blue sign bore five characters: Chong Chong Ski Resort.

At last they arrived. The car pulled up in front of a blue-and-white standalone guesthouse. Lin Weixia had just woken, and her neck and shoulders ached; her entire upper body felt numb. She kneaded her neck, opened the car door, and stepped out to circle around to the trunk for her luggage.

She was just about to turn away when a young man in a dark navy padded jacket with silver-rimmed glasses walked over. The corners of his mouth lifted in a slight smile as he extended a hand. “Allow me.”

It was Jiang Heng.

The last time at the bar, she had expected Lin Weixia to quietly accept being pushed around. Then he’d mixed her that drink, the Fallen Angel.

Lin Weixia was just about to say there was no need, when he pushed his glasses up and said:

“Don’t mention it. I’ll take yours and Menzi’s both — I’m the guy here, after all.”

Menzi took off her sunglasses and tucked them in her pocket, then hooked her arm through Lin Weixia’s and led her toward the guesthouse, saying there were fun activities waiting for them later. The two of them chatted and laughed as they walked, with Jiang Heng trailing behind carrying both women’s bags.

A faint smile rested on Lin Weixia’s face. When they were almost at the door, she happened to glance forward — and the smile froze.

A young man in a black athletic jacket stood with one shoulder leaning lazily against the doorframe, his jacket open at the front, the line of his neck long and slender. He had his head bowed over his phone.

At the sound of approaching footsteps, Ban Sheng turned his head slightly. His cool, defined face was turned fully toward her, and as the bones of his neck shifted, the small mole on his cheek came into clear view.

Striking. Bewitching.

Lin Weixia stopped in her tracks. The moment she saw him, she turned to leave — and Ban Sheng clearly saw her as well, and Jiang Heng standing behind her. He didn’t move from the doorframe.

Menzi quickly caught up with her, reaching her in three steps. She grabbed Lin Weixia’s arm, startled by the detachment on her face, and said:

“I swear, Jiang Heng is the one who invited me. I genuinely had no idea he’d be here too. The place is this remote — everyone drove themselves, how would you get back alone? Let’s just ignore him. Don’t talk to him. With me here, what’s he going to do to you?”

Menzi coaxed and reasoned with her until Lin Weixia had calmed down somewhat. Once her emotions settled, she let Menzi bring her back inside.

The reason Lin Weixia had wanted to leave just then was that she was afraid — afraid that if she got tangled up with Ban Sheng again, she’d turn back into that version of herself with no dignity and no principles.

Ban Sheng was still leaning at the entrance. As Lin Weixia passed by him, she felt a scorching gaze land on her. She didn’t look at him. She walked straight past, shoulder to shoulder with him, without a second glance.

Once Lin Weixia went inside, Ban Sheng tucked his cigarette and lighter into his pocket and followed.

This two-day, one-night short trip had drawn quite a crowd. The ground floor was lively — some people were playing games, others were drinking and fooling around, everything radiating the carefree energy of youth.

Ban Sheng sat on the couch, elbows resting on his knees, and reached for a glass on the nearby table, preparing to mix himself a drink.

A young man sidled over, bold enough to say: “Ban-ge, ever since Lin Weixia walked in, your eyes haven’t left her. Has she even once looked back at you?”