Looking back on that night, everything felt like a dream to Qi Xi.

Wearing the red evening gown, she’d actually only danced one dance with Gu Yan, yet that single dance had felt remarkably long, like a slow-motion movie scene—not dragging or overlong, but carrying a lingering, tender quality.

Even back in her room, lying in bed with the blanket pulled over her face, eyes closed, Qi Xi felt she could still recall every detail—Gu Yan’s focused gaze, his restrained steps, and the perfectly matched rhythm guiding her along.

Qi Xi had never understood Zhao Yiran’s enthusiasm for the graduation dance before, but having actually danced one dance with Gu Yan, she could finally empathize with what Zhao Yiran had been hoping for—if you got to dance a graduation dance with someone like Gu Yan, it really was a good memory to have.

Going into the listed company’s gala, what Qi Xi had looked forward to most was the prize drawing where everyone won something, and she had indeed gotten a new phone as her gala gift as hoped. But the joy from winning hadn’t felt nearly as significant. What stuck with her most from that night, surprisingly, was that dance—and what Gu Yan had said when they parted.

That conversation had happened in the car, with Gu Yan driving Qi Xi home.

At the time, Qi Xi had been looking through the photos Gu Yan had taken of her at the reception on her phone, blurring out her own face while drafting a message. “What are you doing? Is something wrong with the photos I took?”

Facing Gu Yan’s question, Qi Xi answered candidly: “Nothing’s wrong, you took great photos, they’ll work perfectly as sample display photos.”

Gu Yan sounded a bit confused. “Sample display?”

Qi Xi nodded. “Mm-hm, the dress has basically served its purpose now, and there probably won’t be many more occasions to wear it, so I’m planning to list it on a secondhand marketplace and see if I can sell it. Otherwise this red dress just takes up space with barely any chance to wear it again. Whatever I get from selling it, I can use to buy a small home printer.”

Gu Yan hadn’t said anything about it at the time—only after getting out to open the car door for Qi Xi, right as they were about to say goodbye, did the man suddenly say—

“I’ll sponsor the printer for you.”

Gu Yan pressed his lips together. “So you don’t need to sell the dress.”

Huh?

Qi Xi was still a bit confused when she heard Gu Yan continue: “Doesn’t it look good on you? So why sell it? It’s not even that expensive a dress—if you like it and it suits you, just keep it. You bought it for graduation, it has sentimental value too.”

Qi Xi was still a little dazed, while Gu Yan waved for her to hurry up and go inside.

“Don’t just stand there. It’s cold out. Hurry up.”

Qi Xi nodded almost instinctively, obediently. “Oh, okay.” She waved at Gu Yan, then went into the building and took the elevator up.

…

It hadn’t seemed like much of anything at the time, but now, lying in bed thinking back on it, Qi Xi found she could vividly recall even the smallest details of Gu Yan’s expression as he’d spoken.

It seemed like her memory turned unusually sharp for anything involving Gu Yan.

She felt Gu Yan was very good to her, felt he was a genuinely good person, and felt embarrassed for having once treated him as a hypothetical rival simply because she’d felt inferior. Looking back on it now, all that secret hostility she used to harbor toward him really hadn’t been fair to him at all.

She resolved that from now on, she’d treat him well, really well, to repay his open-mindedness, warmth, and patience.

Qi Xi found herself thinking about all sorts of things she wanted to do with Gu Yan in the future, and her busy, ordinary life suddenly felt like something worth looking forward to.

But the moment she thought of the girl Gu Yan had wanted to confess to at graduation, she no longer wanted to think further. She buried her head completely under the warm covers, trying to empty her mind of everything, and gradually her mood settled into calm.

Just as she was about to fall asleep, she heard the sound of a key turning in the door outside—Zhao Yiran finally home from working overtime.

With the year-end approaching, the court where Zhao Yiran worked had launched some slogan about closing out cases in a final push, and as a judge’s clerk, Zhao Yiran naturally couldn’t escape it, so she’d been coming home later and later these past few days.

“Ugh! Working at the court is so hard!” Zhao Yiran collapsed onto the couch, exhausted, full of complaints. “Can you believe it? At nine at night I was still on the phone with a litigant notifying them about their court date, and they cursed me out for it.”

Qi Xi’s drowsiness broke off abruptly, all traces of sleepiness gone, and she got up wide awake, sitting down next to Zhao Yiran, curious. “Why did they curse at you?”

“Accused me of running a scam, said everyone knows civil servants work nine-to-five, so who’s still working overtime at the court in the middle of the night—must be telecom fraud. Next thing I know he’s asking what extortion fee or bail bond I’m trying to scam out of him. I called the old guy five times and he hung up on me every time…”

“And there was another litigant who was clearly drunk—the second I called, he just laid into me with a torrent of abuse.”

Zhao Yiran grew more and more forlorn as she talked. “Those were the mild ones. The worst was, a few days ago our court sentenced some scumbag for intentionally injuring his ex-wife after abusing her, and it turns out this guy’s older brother is some kind of local thug who’s been coming to the court to cause trouble every day. Our presiding judge is a man who works out constantly, all muscle, so the thug doesn’t dare mess with him—instead he picked on me as the easy target. Somehow he got my phone number, and I’ve been getting harassing calls nonstop lately. Walking home tonight I kept feeling paranoid, like someone was following me.”

At this point Zhao Yiran couldn’t help but sigh. “People in the legal profession really need to work out more. At least you can outrun trouble.”

Zhao Yiran worked in the criminal division, so nearly all the litigants she dealt with were a rough, motley crowd—mostly violent offenders, many with unstable personalities or emotional issues.

“Take this thug—he’s already been in and out of prison three times himself for rape and forcible indecency. Every time he goes to prison it’s like some kind of finishing school for him—instead of feeling ashamed, he wears it as a badge of honor. He’s become completely hardened to it, arrogant as hell, so he’s not afraid of doing anything—the barefoot man fears no one wearing shoes, as they say.”

“That day this thug actually threatened to hack me to death with an axe if I didn’t get his brother’s sentence overturned! But I’m not even the presiding judge—what good would threatening me do! Besides, the law can’t be trifled with—how could we possibly change a verdict just because a litigant threatens us? The law is the law!”

Zhao Yiran’s expression darkened. “And a leopard can’t change its spots—this guy’s ambushed me outside the courthouse several times now, trying to grope me. It’s obviously just an excuse to harass me. Sex offenders like that are seriously the worst—I wish chemical castration were a thing here!”

Even with Qi Xi’s comforting, Zhao Yiran couldn’t help venting a bit more before finally rubbing her eyes, which had started to grow heavy with sleep. “Qi Xi, can you believe it? I worked both weekend days last week, and there are still too many cases to get through—this week I’ll have to work overtime every weeknight too…”

The two of them traded the usual complaints about work, discussed a few recent cases worth talking over, and then Qi Xi finally went to bed, yawning.

**

The next morning, Qi Xi got up right on time. She and Gu Yan had booked a private room at a small café, planning to rehearse their lines during lunch break.

That morning Qi Xi went to deliver some documents to the courthouse, and by the time she arrived at noon, Gu Yan was naturally already there. Qi Xi had only known Gu Yan to be punctual, but she’d never realized he actually always arrived early—whether for work meetings or anything else, Gu Yan had never once made her wait.

“I’ve already confirmed the script details with the bar association instructor. You don’t have too many lines—you mainly need to match the physical actions. For instance, after I pester you and confess, you need to coldly reject me; then when I try to forcibly assault you, you need to fight back hard.”

Qi Xi pointed at the script as she explained. “Since we’ve flipped the genders this time, to make it plausible for me to drug and assault you, I’ll first offer you a spiked drink. The instructor said this part was done well—it reminds the general public not to let their drink out of sight, and not to casually drink anything handed to them by a stranger or suspicious person.”

“Mm.”

Qi Xi and Gu Yan ran through the lines for several scenes. Both had good memories, and they nailed nearly every scene in one take, smoothly getting through the setup and buildup of the plot.

But the moment they reached the scene where Qi Xi’s character confessed to Gu Yan’s character, Gu Yan started raising objections repeatedly—

Qi Xi recited her assigned lines dutifully—an exaggerated confession, over-the-top and blunt, meant to sound absurd for the video’s comedic effect. According to the script, all Gu Yan needed to do at this point was coldly reject her as the female delinquent character. Instead…

Gu Yan frowned. “These lines are way too blunt. What normal person confesses like this? Confessing like that is basically asking to be rejected.”

“…”

“Revise it. At least make it a little more logical.”

Who cared whether the plot in one of these little PSA videos made logical sense! Exaggeration was the whole point!

But given Gu Yan’s insistence, Qi Xi had no choice but to improvise a revision on the spot—rewriting her confession to sound more sincere and heartfelt, expressing that she genuinely admired his character and abilities, and wanted to stay by his side through all of life’s seasons.

Qi Xi assumed this time Gu Yan would finally let it pass, but instead he flubbed the take.

He completely forgot his own line, just staring at Qi Xi, giving no response, no rejection, as if he were looking at something out of a dream.

Just as Qi Xi was about to prompt him, Gu Yan seemed to finally snap back to himself, and spoke—except what came out wasn’t in the script at all: “Are you being serious?”

Before Qi Xi could answer, he lowered his head and answered his own question: “You’re not being serious. You don’t actually like me.”

“Because if you actually liked me, you wouldn’t not even know what I actually like. You wouldn’t just believe rumors and only see the surface of things.” Gu Yan stared into Qi Xi’s eyes. “Qi Xi, you don’t actually like me at all, and you’ve never actually tried to understand me.”

Even though this was clearly improvised, and the scene could technically still work this way since all Gu Yan needed to do was reject her, Qi Xi still felt a rising panic inside. She pressed a hand to her chest, terrified Gu Yan might notice her racing heart.

She knew perfectly well it was just an improvised line for the scene, and yet Qi Xi felt oddly flustered and unsettled, along with a lingering unease and hurt from being called out like that.

Feigning composure, Qi Xi cleared her throat. “Gu Yan, you’re supposed to say ‘Xiaoya’! Did you mess up the name?”

Gu Yan lowered his gaze and apologized readily. “Sorry, I forgot for a second and said the wrong name. I’ll be careful going forward.”

After that, Gu Yan really didn’t mess up the name again.

They should have continued running through the lines after that, but for some reason, Qi Xi felt an inexplicable restlessness—as if she simply couldn’t focus no matter what, whenever she looked at Gu Yan’s face.

In that brief moment earlier, when Gu Yan had called her by name, Qi Xi had almost forgotten this was just a rehearsal. She wasn’t even sure whose perspective she’d slipped into, only that in that instant, it had felt like Gu Yan was truly speaking to her, truly accusing her—and that accusation left her genuinely upset and unsettled.

Had she really never made an effort to truly understand Gu Yan?

Anxious and restless inside, even though this was just Gu Yan’s improvisation, Qi Xi began to doubt herself.

Had she really never made a genuine effort to get to know Gu Yan?

Had she really just blindly trusted the “Gu Yan Compendium”?

From the very start—misunderstanding that love letter as Gu Yan’s before graduation, then, after joining Jingfa, studying the “Gu Yan Compendium” like an appliance manual to get close to him—she really hadn’t gotten to know him through her own genuine contact with him at all.

Even though Gu Yan had been by her side all along, Qi Xi realized she’d never actually made an effort to truly understand him—she’d just believed rumors, or projected her own preconceived image onto him.

The “Gu Yan Compendium,” after all, had been written by other people. Had those people really observed Gu Yan that carefully? Did they really understand him? Was what they wrote necessarily even correct?

What could possibly be faster, more accurate, and more direct than getting to know Gu Yan herself, firsthand?

Wasn’t the greatest respect you could give someone to understand them yourself, rather than through someone else’s account?

Someone like Gu Yan deserved, at the very least, the respect of being understood firsthand.

Thinking this way, Qi Xi found a tangle of complicated, inexplicable emotions welling up—guilt, unease, and something else too, like willow catkins drifting in spring, filling the air—you could try to avoid it, but as long as you kept breathing, there was no escaping it.

Sometimes Qi Xi genuinely wanted to get to know Gu Yan. But other times, she was almost afraid to.

She didn’t really understand what was going on with herself.

Something like the “Gu Yan Compendium,” a kind of instruction manual, actually gave her more of a sense of security.

But after wrestling with it, Qi Xi finally decided to abandon her old habit of thinking—she would stop consulting the “Gu Yan Compendium” and instead get to know Gu Yan for herself.

After all, she found herself genuinely puzzled—why exactly was she a little afraid to truly get to know Gu Yan?

**

The rehearsal, which she’d assumed would be simple, ended up progressing far more slowly than Qi Xi expected. During lunch break they’d only managed to run through the rough lines once, so Qi Xi and Gu Yan had to meet up again after work to keep rehearsing in the café’s private room. And Qi Xi was once again reminded of just how excruciatingly embarrassing rehearsing could be, especially once physical actions were involved—

Qi Xi pinned Gu Yan against the wall in a classic “wall-slam” pose. Though she tried hard to look forceful, fitting the delinquent persona, the height difference made the whole gesture look, no matter how she did it, like an awkward kid clumsily imitating something she’d seen elsewhere.

Half a head shorter than Gu Yan, with arms too short to properly pin him into the corner, it was actually Qi Xi, not Gu Yan, who ended up looking flustered.

The pose forced her to stand very close to him, and for the sake of the performance, she couldn’t look away either—she had to stare directly into Gu Yan’s eyes like a bold, unflinching delinquent, without showing any hint of nerves. In her improvisation, she even added a gesture, tilting his chin up with one finger.

At first she genuinely had no ulterior motive, only wanting to make the PSA video’s effect as convincing as possible, so she’d made the flirtatious gesture almost without thinking. But the moment her finger touched Gu Yan’s skin, Qi Xi felt a jolt, as if she wanted to bolt—except she couldn’t retreat now, since pulling her finger away would look far too deliberate and suspicious!

For the sake of that stubborn pride, Qi Xi had to hold the pose, keeping Gu Yan trapped in her arms, and began delivering those cringe-inducing lines…

Following the script, at this point Gu Yan’s character—a pure, innocent young man—was supposed to respond only with fear and shyness, not talk back, only tearfully begging Qi Xi’s character to let him go.

Instead, Gu Yan actually talked back!

Qi Xi shot him a look. “You don’t have that line!”

Gu Yan, however, stayed perfectly composed: “Didn’t you complain earlier that I wasn’t reacting at all, making it feel like a one-woman show, and tell me I could improvise depending on the scene?”

Qi Xi wasn’t having it: “Improvising is fine, but what do you mean by that? That’s such an ugly way to put it! It’s supposed to be me taking care of you, understand? A pure, innocent man surviving in modern society, decent-looking on top of it, single, walking down the street—it’s basically like an unclaimed treasure flaunting itself right in front of a thief. In this day and age, good-looking men are seriously at risk too! Everything I said was completely correct!”

Qi Xi glared at Gu Yan. “Anyway, stop struggling. Improvise all you want, but stay in character—you can cry for help or act weak, don’t be so confident about it, or it’ll throw off the whole scene. I finally got into character as the female delinquent!”

After repeatedly lecturing Gu Yan, Qi Xi cleared her throat and continued, repeating her earlier lines with a few embellishments about wanting to be his protector, moving things along quickly, suggesting they get their marriage certificate that afternoon and consummate things that very night.

This time Gu Yan finally played along properly, showing a not-entirely-convincing display of fear, clearly trying to suppress the urge to laugh, forcing himself to stay composed before looking at Qi Xi and delivering his line: “Can I refuse?”

Qi Xi ruthlessly rejected this: “No! In my—Xiaoya’s—dictionary, there’s no such thing as ‘no.'”

Gu Yan pressed his lips together. According to the script, his character should have already drunk the spiked beverage by this point, losing all ability to resist, growing dizzy and slow to react, realizing there was no escaping what was coming that night.

Gu Yan clearly had a hard time psychologically committing to this part of the scene. When the moment came to actually perform it, he still showed visible reluctance, glancing at Qi Xi. “Can I skip this part… can we just cut this section? I’ve noticed TV dramas these days always do it that way—whenever the female lead is about to face something bad, they cut away out of decency, and even for a normal wedding night scene, they just pull the curtain closed and open it again the next morning, scene done. Let’s just handle our scene the same way.”

“That won’t work. TV dramas are artistic creations, but ours is a legal-awareness PSA video. The instructor specifically said that since we flipped the genders in this version, we need to emphasize personal safety awareness, making sure everyone knows to watch their drinks carefully, or there could be serious consequences. To drive home how serious those consequences are, we need to show at least a little of what losing the ability to resist after drinking a spiked beverage actually looks like.”

In an earlier version of the script, Qi Xi’s character had dragged Gu Yan’s character into a grove of trees for the scene, but that plan had two problems: first, Gu Yan hadn’t been very cooperative, constantly worried about being spotted outdoors and how awkward that would be to explain; second, after being pushed down onto the grass a few times during rehearsal, Gu Yan had strongly protested that the grass was too prickly, and this logically rigorous man had decided it made no sense for anyone to commit a crime on such prickly grass.

In any case, under the lead actor’s protest, Qi Xi had once again had to request a script revision.

So now, per the updated script, the crime scene had moved from outdoors to indoors: after Xiaoya got Xiaogang to drink the spiked beverage, she would push him down right there and have her way with him.

The café’s private room had a long, cushioned sofa. Qi Xi patted it. “Just act a little weak, a little dazed, like you’re clearly about to lose consciousness, and then I’ll just…”

As she spoke, she gave Gu Yan a push.

Qi Xi had only meant it as a casual gesture, never expecting Gu Yan to actually topple over from it. And since she’d originally been leaning against him while sitting, the sudden shift caught her off guard too, her own balance thrown off as she pitched forward toward him.

By the time she registered what had happened, Gu Yan had been pushed down onto the sofa, and Qi Xi was rather deftly pinning him beneath her.

This position… was genuinely a bit too much like actual bullying.

Qi Xi burned from head to toe, her face turning red enough to practically smoke, unable to meet Gu Yan’s eyes, scrambling to sit up and put some distance between them.

She looked at Gu Yan. “What is wrong with you! How did one push knock you over!”

Gu Yan looked equally flustered, his face uncharacteristically flushed, his low voice turning a bit hoarse. He sat up too, putting considerable distance between himself and Qi Xi, looking every bit like a poor, delicate flower that had just been mistreated by a bully, watching her warily as if bracing for another ambush.

Then, putting up a front despite clearly feeling awkward, he glared at her. “Didn’t you tell me to act weak? Didn’t you already ‘drug’ me?”

Fine, fine, fine!

Too flustered at that moment to keep sparring with him, Qi Xi looked away, genuinely wanting to flee the scene. “Let’s just get through this part quickly. Actually, thinking about it, we shouldn’t film the crime in explicit detail anyway—that would be encouraging crime! Never mind me pushing you down, we won’t film that. For the actual shoot, once the camera cuts, you’ll just be lying on the sofa, and I’ll hover over you in an intimidating delinquent pose to deliver a warning, that’s it.”

Except saying it was easier than doing it.

Qi Xi found it wasn’t actually that simple.

Following her direction, Gu Yan lay steadily on the sofa, and just as Qi Xi propped herself above his head to deliver a menacing line, Gu Yan spoke first—

“That tickles.”

He looked away, as if enduring something. “Qi Xi, your hair keeps brushing against my face. It really tickles.”

“…” Qi Xi, expressionless, tied her hair up.

…

**

After stumbling through all these various embarrassing mishaps, they finally made it through most of the earlier scenes without major incident, and Qi Xi finally found a pose that worked for filming without being too mortifying for her lead actor.

She declared forcefully, “Xiaogang, you can run, but I’ll chase you down. There’s no escape for you—tonight you belong to me!”

According to the script, Gu Yan’s character was supposed to shed two lines of tears at this point, clutching his own collar, resigned to his fate, sobbing as he begged Xiaoya for mercy.

Since Gu Yan couldn’t cry on command, to make the rehearsal more effective, Qi Xi applied a couple drops of eye drops to his eyes.

And so, with “tears” streaming down his face, Gu Yan turned his face to the side, gripping his own collar, and delivered that mortifying line with surprising conviction—

His line was meant to remind the public that when facing violence they couldn’t resist, they should prioritize protecting themselves rather than fighting back recklessly; and when facing unavoidable sexual assault, they should also try to protect themselves as much as possible from sexually transmitted infections. But for some reason, watching Gu Yan deliver it, Qi Xi’s heart started pounding wildly.

Gu Yan’s tone wasn’t pitiful at all—if anything, it was rather cold and hard—but that contrast somehow made it strangely compelling. Especially with the eye drops on his face; even knowing it was fake, the visual effect genuinely made it look like Gu Yan was crying silently, and, well, it was oddly appealing.

A man as good-looking as Gu Yan, crying—it was almost pitiable, it made you…

It made you want to make him cry even harder!

Qi Xi found herself fully slipping into the bully mindset. No wonder so many bullies liked being rough! Watching Gu Yan deliver his lines like some meek little wife, it only filled her head with all sorts of unhealthy, wicked thoughts.

Stop, stop!