What followed immediately after was the sound of wind rushing past her ears.
Tan Yin, practically on reflex, found herself being pulled along by Chu Hang, breaking into a run. The two of them dashed straight into the sea breeze, the police chasing after them from behind. Yet, in what should have been a thoroughly humiliating scene, Tan Yin instead felt her heart soaring with a sense of freedom. She couldn’t tell if it was the beauty of the sea at night, the pleasantness of the ocean breeze, or the warmth of the hand gripping hers, but she found, strangely, that she felt no fear at all — only tension, excitement, her heart racing fast, as if a little deer were leaping joyfully inside her chest…
So this was what it felt like to run from the police? Thrilling!
After running breathlessly for a long while, the two of them wound through the beachside residential lanes and finally managed to shake off the police.
She hadn’t noticed it while running, but now, Tan Yin became aware of the warmth radiating from Chu Hang’s hand still clasped around hers, and it made her feel almost feverish. Just as she was about to pull her hand back, as if fleeing, Chu Hang let go of her first.
For once, even Chu Hang seemed a little embarrassed. His chest was still rising and falling slightly from the sprint, his face a bit flushed. He glanced at Tan Yin only once before looking away. “How is it?”
“Huh?”
“Your hand. How is it?” Chu Hang pressed his lips together. “I’ll take you to the hospital.”
Tan Yin quickly waved her hands. “It’s fine, really, it’s fine — just a surface wound. Not even close to that time I was sawing wood and blood was spraying everywhere. The bleeding’s already stopped…” She kicked at the sand beneath her feet. “Even though we’re not really together, thanks for standing up for me just now…”
“Who stood up for you?” Chu Hang’s tone carried a hint of impatience. “I just suddenly felt like hitting someone.” He pressed his lips together. “Too much seafood — gave me a bit of heatiness.”
Tan Yin was about to say something, but when she looked up, she noticed Chu Hang’s lip — in the darkness of the night she hadn’t noticed before, but now she saw it clearly: a bruised, purplish mark, the skin broken, blood still seeping out. Against his skin, fairer than most people’s, it was a striking, almost shocking sight. On such a refined, handsome face, this wound created a stark contrast, yet somehow it didn’t feel out of place — instead, against the backdrop of the tide’s rhythmic sound in the quiet night, it lent him an illusion of ferocity mixed with tenderness.
“Your lip…”
Before Tan Yin could finish, Chu Hang cut her off, glancing at her. “I gave it back to him tenfold.”
Tan Yin recalled the sorry, bruised state of the thug boss’s face and felt a wave of admiration. “Chu Hang, I’ve discovered you’re actually a pretty vindictive person. Good thing it was me that thug harassed — if he’d harassed your girlfriend, would you have just killed him outright as an offering to the heavens?”
Chu Hang lifted an eyebrow coldly. “If I hadn’t happened to be passing by, you wouldn’t be saying ‘good thing’ right now.” He glanced at her. “The area around that beachside food stall is full of shady types — are you an idiot? Wandering around alone out there at night?”
Tan Yin felt wronged. “I just went to take a phone call — it was too loud at the stall — how far did I even walk? How was I supposed to know I’d run into thugs like that? How was I supposed to know they’d come bother me?”
Chu Hang didn’t look at Tan Yin. He walked on ahead by himself, ignoring her, and after a long silence, just as Tan Yin thought he wasn’t going to respond to her at all anymore, she heard his voice again—
“If you don’t want to be bothered by people like that again, change your clothes next time.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t dress like this.”
Tan Yin glanced down at her dress. Nothing wrong with it, was there? She refused to accept this. “This dress isn’t low-cut, doesn’t show my back, and it’s a long dress too — what could possibly be wrong with it?”
At this, Chu Hang finally stopped walking. He turned his head, glanced once at the hem of her dress, then quickly looked away.
After another pause, Tan Yin finally heard his answer—
“This dress of yours — the high slit. It’s no good.”
Before Tan Yin could reply, she heard Chu Hang add, quite solemnly, “Worse than a short skirt, even.”
Tan Yin was wearing a flowy, bohemian-style chiffon long dress with a high slit — a fairly common design for beach dresses like this, since, honestly, who really wants to wear a fully covered, buttoned-up long dress in this kind of heat by the sea? A dress with a high slit felt so much cooler with the sea breeze blowing through, the hem fluttering elegantly, and even without wind it still looked stylish. How was this worse than someone else’s short skirt that showed all the way up their thigh?
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. What exactly is wrong with it? Why would this kind of dress attract more thugs to harass me?”
Chu Hang clearly didn’t want to continue this topic. He pressed his lips together, too lazy to bother explaining, and simply stated his conclusion directly. “In short, it’s no good, doesn’t suit you, don’t wear this kind of dress. Wear pants next time.”
What kind of twisted logic was this?
“Wearing pants makes me safe?” Tan Yin’s debating spirit had been sparked. “If you run into a bad person, it doesn’t matter what you’re wearing, does it?”
“What someone wears shouldn’t determine what they deserve to have happen to them, but from a self-protection standpoint, some clothes are always safer than others.” Chu Hang lifted his head, staring at Tan Yin’s face for a moment before looking away, gazing at the coastline in the night. “Forget it — you’d probably attract the same kind of trouble even in pants. Some men really are that shallow, after all. Wear whatever you want.”
Tan Yin wanted to ask more, but as the two of them walked on, they found they’d unknowingly circled back near the food stall.
“Go on, hurry up and go in.”
Under Chu Hang’s urging, Tan Yin instinctively started walking toward the food stall, but after a few steps, she noticed Chu Hang was still standing there, not moving. “Aren’t you coming in?”
“Are we close enough for that?”
“Hmm?”
Chu Hang said coldly, “Do I need to report my reasons to you for not going in?”
Fine then… Tan Yin thought, feeling like she’d been overstepping. Here she’d thought that having fled from the police together might have at least earned them some fellow-fugitive camaraderie — looks like she’d been overthinking it…
So she stopped paying attention to Chu Hang and walked back to her seat at the food stall on her own.
The moment Jiang Yilu saw Tan Yin return, she immediately looked up and greeted her enthusiastically. “Where’d you go? The spicy crab’s gone cold! Hey, Tan Yin, what happened to your arm? Why’s it cut?”
Too tired to explain the whole complicated sequence of events, Tan Yin brushed it off. “I went for a walk along the coastline after my phone call, it was pitch black, and I accidentally tripped and fell. Just a scrape, nothing serious.”
By now, there weren’t many customers left at the food stall, and since Tan Yin’s table was close to Duan Yingfei’s, her words carried clearly to Duan Yingfei’s ears.
Sure enough, Duan Yingfei let out a haughty, cold laugh, her tone dripping with implication. “Someone who manages to trip on the beach either has a problem with their inner-ear balance, or a problem with their intelligence.”
Tan Yin was about to fire back when she saw Chu Hang, his expression frosty, walking in through the entrance of the food stall. He walked in without a word and sat back down beside Xu Yu, his face expressionless.
“Chu Hang gēge! Your face!”
“Chu Hang, what happened to your face?”
Duan Yingfei and Xu Yu both exclaimed at once, their attention immediately drawn to the wound on Chu Hang’s lip.
The person receiving all this attention, however, remained utterly unbothered. Chu Hang took a sip of his drink, his voice light and unconcerned. “Oh, I noticed the air outside was nice, so I took a walk along the beach. It was a bit dark, wasn’t paying attention, and I tripped and fell.”
“…”
Chu Hang, not suspecting anything, seemed a little confused by the sudden silence that followed. “What’s wrong?”
Duan Yingfei glared at the still-grinning Tan Yin and bit her lip. “Nothing, Chu Hang gēge — you should be more careful walking from now on. You must have been too deep in thought about something to trip like that.”
…
Regardless of everything, the meal finally wrapped up without further incident. Having eaten her fill of seafood but still shaken from the encounter with the thug leader, Tan Yin no longer dared linger outside, and went straight back to the guesthouse with Jiang Yilu. On the way back, though, Tan Yin turned the matter over and over in her mind and, in the end, couldn’t help herself.
“Hey, Jiang Yilu, this dress I’m wearing — is there something wrong with it?”
“Nothing’s wrong with it.” Jiang Yilu looked baffled. “What could be wrong with it? It looks great.”
“I mean, does it look like the kind of thing that might invite trouble?”
Jiang Yilu had just started to say “no” when a gust of sea breeze blew past, and as she glanced at Tan Yin’s legs a few times, a look of sudden realization dawned on her face. “Oh, I get it! Tan Yin, wearing this dress — there actually is a bit of an issue!”
“What?”
“I hadn’t noticed before, but now that I look at it, yeah — this is a long dress, but because of the high slit, it’s honestly pretty inviting for trouble.” Jiang Yilu rubbed her chin, sounding quite authoritative. “A short skirt is very effective on straight men too, but that kind of effect is pretty direct — nice legs, so a guy naturally looks a couple extra times, thinks it’s sexy, but that’s about it. It’s like when a girl wears something low-cut — guys look for a while, then get used to it. But this dress of yours — normally when you walk it looks perfectly modest, but the moment the sea breeze blows, that high slit flutters open with your steps and suddenly shows off your thighs.”
Jiang Yilu circled around Tan Yin once, clicking her tongue in amazement. “Tan Yin, Tan Yin, how did I never notice this before — even I find your legs a little heart-fluttering, so long and straight and pale, feels like I could just stare at them for a year. And this kind of subtle, half-hidden prettiness of yours is even more deadly than something fully exposed. Ever heard the saying? Sexiness that’s implied rather than shown outright is the highest level of sexy. You just stand there by the beach like that, and one gust of wind, any man would turn his head — this leg of yours, even I want to touch it.”
“…”
Jiang Yilu, your way of thinking is dangerous!
But after all that rambling, Jiang Yilu did remember the actual point. “So wait, did someone say something to you? Why are you suddenly asking about this?”
“No… nothing.”
“No way, it’s gotta be a guy, right? Which guy? Did you meet him out on the beach just now? Someone hitting on you? Was he good-looking? What’s his height and build? Any potential there? If he’s already noticed your legs, that sounds like it’s progressing fast!”
Tan Yin skillfully deflected by going on the offensive. “Forget about me — how reliable could some random guy hitting on me possibly be?” she said, feigning composure. “What about you and Xu Yu, though — seems like there’s something going on there. You two have already slept together and everything, and now you bicker every time you see each other — how am I catching a whiff of something suspicious here?”
Sure enough, Jiang Yilu took the bait and got distracted, protesting loudly. “Oh, come on, what’s there between me and him? Just thinking about it gives me indigestion…”
…
While Jiang Yilu had her suspicions about Tan Yin, on the other side, Xu Yu wasn’t about to let Chu Hang off the hook so easily either.
Duan Yingfei had been called away midway by her roommate, so on the walk back to the guesthouse, only Chu Hang and Xu Yu remained.
Xu Yu looked up at the wound on Chu Hang’s lip. “Did you get into a fight just now?”
Chu Hang pressed his lips together. “No.”
Xu Yu smiled. “That injury might fool Duan Yingfei, but I’m not stupid. You stepped out in the middle of the meal — did you run into trouble?” He looked at Chu Hang. “Knowing your personality, unless something crossed one of your core principles, you’d never resort to violence to solve a problem. Judging by the state of that cut on your lip, whoever you fought with must have come out looking pretty rough, huh?”
Chu Hang stopped walking. “Xu Yu, seems like you’ve got a lot of free time.”
Xu Yu gave Chu Hang a meaningful look. “In law school, we value logical reasoning above all else — let me lay it out for you. First, Duan Yingfei came back from the bathroom complaining that she’d seen Tan Yin tangled up with some shady-looking men outside the food stall. Then, not long after, you said you needed to use the bathroom and left. After that, quite a while later, Tan Yin came back with a cut on her arm, claiming she’d tripped in the dark. Right after that, you came back too, with an obvious fight wound on your lip, also claiming you’d tripped in the dark…”
“…”
“So here’s the question. Chu Hang — is there a causal connection between your injury and Tan Yin’s?”
“Xu Yu.” Chu Hang shot him a cold glance. “What exactly are you trying to imply? That I like Tan Yin? That I’d step in to help her out of a jam? That I’d fight for her sake? What does Tan Yin even have going for her, besides a decent face?”
Xu Yu shrugged. “Not just her face, either — I think her legs are pretty nice too.”
Chu Hang frowned. “What exactly have you been looking at?”
“I wasn’t looking.” Xu Yu said, all innocence. “I didn’t say that, actually — some other guys did. Earlier today, I was lying on the beach with the rest of you architecture guys, and I overheard them talking about the girls while looking at them — they all thought Tan Yin was pretty and had a nice figure, said her body proportions were really good, and that her legs especially were long and fair. A bunch of guys stared at her for quite a while, talking about it — I only heard because I was resting with my eyes closed nearby…”
“Vulgar.”
Before Xu Yu could even finish relaying the story, Chu Hang’s face had darkened, and he coldly spat out those two words before turning and walking away.
Normally, when guys talked about girls among themselves, things could get a lot more explicit than this — Xu Yu had personally heard Chu Hang’s roommates discussing various Japanese adult film “instructors” without Chu Hang batting an eye. So why was he suddenly acting so prudish over something like this? Xu Yu couldn’t figure it out — when had Chu Hang gotten so pure and proper all of a sudden?