As a newly minted member of the no-longer-single club, Qi Xi still felt a kind of shy uncertainty, like someone returning home after a long absence. She hugged Gu Yan and acted coy with him for a while longer, repeatedly confirming in her heart that all of this was real, before finally, drowsily, letting go of him like a koala reluctantly leaving its tree branch.

Her face was still flushed, and she was still a little tense all over. To ease this strange feeling and to distract herself, Qi Xi cleared her throat and decided to focus her energy on something more professional: “So how is Lin Lin doing? Your neighbor—the one being threatened by her ex-boyfriend. Has that been resolved?”

Earlier, she’d been too preoccupied with her own romantic troubles to think much about it, but now that her emotions had settled, she found herself worried about the neighbor again. She felt ashamed of the baseless jealousy she’d harbored before—it was hard to imagine that someone so gentle was being threatened by an ex. She could only hope Lin Lin’s troubles had already been resolved.

Gu Yan considered this for a moment. “The evidence gathering is basically complete. Honestly, this ex-boyfriend of hers doesn’t know when to quit. At first, he just used chat logs from when they were together to threaten her into getting back together with him. You know how it is—between friends or couples, complaining about a boss or an eccentric coworker is completely normal. But after they broke up, he took screenshots of those chat logs and threatened to send them to everyone she’d complained about, to socially destroy her. He’s been exploiting her fear, constantly manipulating her emotions, repeatedly demanding she go out on dates with him, go shopping, watch movies, all while scheming to get back together. And now it’s escalated to the point where he’s asking her for money.”

Money?

The moment money came up, Qi Xi’s interest sharpened. “How much? Enough to count as extortion?”

For a man like this, holding a woman’s private information over her head as leverage—if she kept backing down every time instead of fighting back decisively once and for all, he’d cling to her like a leech, forever sucking her dry.

If it were just ordinary threats about getting back together, even reporting it to the police would likely only result in a minor penalty—one that might not stop his behavior and could even provoke him into more aggressive harassment. But if it rose to the level of a criminal offense like extortion, that changed everything entirely. It would be possible to bring in the prosecutorial authority of the state, and make sure he paid dearly for it.

Gu Yan nodded. “The amount he’s already extorted far exceeds the threshold for a serious offense. He’s extorted her five times so far. As of Lin Lin’s last count, he’s taken roughly one hundred forty thousand yuan from her in total.”

Even though Qi Xi had once secretly harbored some jealousy toward Lin Lin, imagining her as Gu Yan’s untouchable ideal and treating her as a rival, silently grumbling to herself about how unreasonable it was for Lin Lin to keep Gu Yan on a string—now, hearing what had happened to her, Qi Xi immediately put herself in Lin Lin’s shoes as a fellow woman, and the empathy hit her instantly, filling her with fury. “This can’t go on. She can’t just sit there and take it. Since the evidence has all been gathered, let’s go with her to report it to the police!”

But at this, Gu Yan shook his head, looking helpless, even a little pained. “That’s exactly the problem. Lin Lin won’t agree to file a police report. She’s warned her ex several times that she’d report him if he kept it up, and told him that what he’s doing already qualifies as a serious crime, and asked him to stop. But he’s completely brazen about it—as if he’s certain she’ll never actually go to the police. Not only has he not backed off, he’s only gotten worse. I’ve tried to persuade her too, laid out the pros and cons for her, but she still hasn’t taken action.”

How could that be? Going to the police here was a guaranteed win!

Qi Xi couldn’t understand Lin Lin’s decision. But since she happened to be at Gu Yan’s apartment right now, why not invite Lin Lin up from downstairs and talk to her face to face?

Gu Yan considered Qi Xi’s plan, blinked, then nodded in understanding. “All right. Maybe since you’re both women, you’ll be able to connect with how she’s feeling better than I could.”

Qi Xi nodded, then couldn’t help adding, “But I want to make it clear—I’m not offering to help just because I found out Lin Lin isn’t your girlfriend.” Her tone was serious. “Even if Lin Lin were your girlfriend—even your wife—if I found out she was going through something like this, I’d still help her no matter what.”

Gu Yan blinked, then wore an expression that was both helpless and resigned. “You don’t need to explain any of that. I already know exactly what kind of person you are. But there’s one thing I need to make clear too—no one else is ever going to be my girlfriend or my wife.”

Having said that, he lowered his head and picked up his phone to start texting Lin Lin.

He’d stopped short just now, leaving the second half of his sentence unsaid. But the way Gu Yan looked at Qi Xi had already conveyed everything he meant to say.

No one else would ever be his girlfriend or future wife. Only Qi Xi.

Qi Xi felt a little dizzy. Not dating through college really had been the right call—men truly were obstacles to work and study. She’d been fully focused just moments ago on thinking through how to help Lin Lin, and yet the instant she made eye contact with Gu Yan, she felt an almost dizzying, lovestruck haze descend over her.

How did this man always manage to slip in something so outrageous with such a straight face!

Flustered but pretending otherwise, Qi Xi swatted him lightly. Just as the two of them were playfully bickering, a knock came at the door—Lin Lin happened to be home, and the moment Gu Yan reached out to her, she’d come straight upstairs.

Qi Xi smoothed herself down, adopting the composed bearing of a proper professional woman, before having Gu Yan open the door.

It had only been a few days, but Lin Lin, who Qi Xi remembered as gentle and fair-skinned, now looked haggard, her complexion sallow, her eyes dull and lifeless, her lips cracked from having gone without water for far too long.

The moment Qi Xi saw her like this, her heart ached.

To be threatened with exposure of private matters by someone who was once so intimate with you—how much psychological pressure did it take to end up looking this worn down?

In that moment, Qi Xi found she didn’t know how to begin saying any of the things she’d meant to say. Instead, she instinctively did what felt right—she gently wrapped Lin Lin in a hug and patted her on the back.

“It’s okay. Don’t be afraid.”

There were no elaborate words, no promises—but that single hug and gesture of comfort was enough to crack the tension that had been holding Lin Lin’s face together, and she buried her face in Qi Xi’s shoulder and began to cry.

Perhaps because her emotions had never had an outlet before, once she started, Lin Lin cried for nearly half an hour.

The whole time, Qi Xi didn’t rush her, simply patting her back patiently, waiting for her emotions to settle.

After she’d finished crying, Lin Lin did seem somewhat more at ease. She looked at Qi Xi with red, swollen eyes. “I’m sorry. I’ve caused you both so much trouble.”

Qi Xi handed her a few tissues. “It’s okay. What you’re going through—a lot of other women go through this too. But trust us, we can get this sorted out.”

At the mention of it, Lin Lin’s expression darkened again. “It’s not that simple…” she said, her voice catching. “He has a lot on me.”

Something on her? Did that just mean the chat logs of Lin Lin complaining about coworkers and her boss?

Qi Xi glanced at Gu Yan, about to ask if he could give her and Lin Lin some time alone, when Gu Yan, seeming to sense it, smiled at her, reading her unspoken words perfectly, and said naturally, “I’ll go get you two some fruit.”

Once Gu Yan had left, Qi Xi didn’t hold back. “Lin Lin, what exactly happened to you? Does your ex-boyfriend really only have your chat logs?”

Plenty of ordinary people complained about their coworkers and bosses. Even if such complaints were maliciously made public by a vindictive ex, it wouldn’t be enough to truly destroy someone—jobs could always be changed. Worst case, you quit and started fresh somewhere else.

If someone truly loved their job and didn’t want to leave, they could take the opportunity to have an honest conversation with the coworkers or boss they’d complained about, and clear the air. And if those people were genuinely upset about it, Lin Lin could simply brazen it out and stay at the company—no one could really force her out. Besides, if someone was the subject of complaints behind their back, it usually meant there was some truth to it in how they treated people, and Lin Lin might even end up earning the respect of her other coworkers for speaking up.

Whatever the outcome, it would still be far better than being endlessly squeezed and manipulated by a disgusting ex-boyfriend.

And the fact that Lin Lin still refused to report it to the police made Qi Xi wonder—was there more that this ex had on her, something beyond what she’d already mentioned? Something else?

Qi Xi looked into Lin Lin’s eyes. “Lin Lin, don’t worry about how I’ll judge you once I know everything. Right now, I’m speaking to you as a lawyer. Whatever you’ve done, I won’t judge you by outside moral standards—I’ll only evaluate your actions from a legal standpoint and analyze the risks involved. If you want to break free from your ex, you need to tell us everything, honestly, or we won’t really be able to help you.”

Sensing the sincerity in Qi Xi’s expression, Lin Lin bit her lip in obvious distress, hesitating, ashamed—but finally, after a long struggle, she spoke. “He was my first boyfriend. I didn’t know any better back then, and since it was my first relationship, I gave too much of myself. I gave him so many firsts that I always assumed we’d date until marriage. But… not long after we got together, I found out he was flirting with other women.”

Qi Xi already had a rough idea forming in her mind. She frowned slightly and looked at Lin Lin. “So you…”

“So to try to win him back, I confronted him, argued with him. He told me that because his work was in finance, he often had to travel for business, and so he often didn’t see me. He said he was a normal man, and when he had those kinds of needs and I wasn’t around, he couldn’t help himself…”

Lin Lin’s face filled with regret as she continued. “So I listened to him. Whenever he went on a business trip, I’d send him private videos. Whatever pose, whatever he wanted me to do, I did it, just thinking it would keep him tied to me.”

By the time Lin Lin got this far, Qi Xi understood completely why she still couldn’t bring herself to report it to the police despite being so threatened—it wasn’t just chat logs about complaining about her boss and coworkers, not by a long shot.

Qi Xi’s tone turned grave. “So he’s using those videos to threaten you now?”

Lin Lin’s eyes reddened, and she nodded. “Yes. We met and started dating when I was a freshman. He was already working by then, five years older than me, much more mature. I was so foolishly in love back then. Later, after I entered the workforce and met more people, saw more of the world, I gradually came to my senses and realized someone like him wasn’t right for me. He worked in finance, but his values around how he did his job were completely incompatible with mine—he’d use business trips as opportunities to file fraudulent expense reports, and to land projects and investors, he’d constantly take his business partners to karaoke lounges or high-end clubs, places that skirted the line of impropriety. And he genuinely loved flirting—it seemed baked into his nature, something he couldn’t shake.”

Qi Xi guessed the rest. “So you asked for a breakup?”

“Yes. At first he agreed readily enough, because he worked in finance and was high-income—there was no shortage of women to fill the gap he’d leave behind. But not long after we broke up, his fraudulent expense reports got reported by a coworker. Around the same time, a project he’d been leading ran into trouble, his performance numbers were bad, and his contract happened to be up for renewal right around then. HR decided not to renew it, and he got fired. Suddenly he had no job and had to repay the company for the money he’d embezzled through fake expenses. The women he’d been flirting with all scattered too, and that’s when he thought of me again.”

At this point, Lin Lin could no longer hold back her emotions, tears falling steadily. “After we broke up, I was in pain for a while, but by the time he came back around to contact me, I’d already moved on. Because of work, I’d met a new guy who treated me really well—respectful, devoted, gentle. He’d just confessed his feelings to me, and we’d just started dating, but that’s exactly when my ex showed up.”

Hearing this, Qi Xi felt not just sympathy for Lin Lin but fury at her worthless ex. “He used the private photos and videos you’d taken before to threaten you?”

Lin Lin nodded. “Yes. He said he saw on my Weibo that I’d started a new relationship, said he couldn’t let me go, wanted to get back together. I refused. After that, he started using those private photos and videos, along with our old chat logs, to threaten me—if I didn’t agree to get back together, he’d send everything to my current boyfriend and see if he’d still want me.”

What kind of scum was this!

By this point Lin Lin was in tears. “My boyfriend at the time was genuinely, genuinely a good person. His family wasn’t wealthy, but they were an educated, cultured family, and his parents were both very gentle people. I really didn’t want my past mistakes exposed in front of them. I couldn’t bear the thought of him looking at me with disgust once he found out. With my ex holding those things over me and using them to sabotage things, my current boyfriend and I had no future together anymore. So I thought, if that’s how it is, I might as well leave his life with some dignity intact. I refused to listen to him trying to talk me out of it and insisted on breaking up.”

“I thought my ex was just bitter because he’d lost his job and everything was going wrong for him, and seeing my career and relationship both going well made him resentful—I figured if I broke up with my current boyfriend, that would be the end of it. But instead his threats only escalated. He said it was fine that I refused to get back together, but I had to sleep with him one last time—just once, and then we’d be even, no debts between us.”

How could it possibly be just once?

Caught in the middle of it all, Lin Lin might have believed his words out of panic, but as an outside observer, the moment Qi Xi heard this, she was almost certain: once was never really once. The moment you gave in one time, the other person would only push further.

Sure enough, Lin Lin’s account grew more and more choked with sobs. “But I never expected he’d be a bottomless pit. Once wasn’t enough—he wanted a second time. Whenever he wanted it, he’d threaten me with my private information all over again. If I refused to go to a hotel with him, he said he’d send everything to my parents, my coworkers, my relatives. So it kept happening, again and again. At first it was just the hotel room, but later he even made me pay for the room myself, and after that, he’d demand money from me for eating and entertainment too. He treated me like a free sex worker and an ATM.”

“Because of all this, I couldn’t sleep every night, I was constantly in a daze, and I developed severe depression. Telling Gu Yan about it was actually an accident too. Aside from once asking for help in the building’s group chat when my ex was harassing me, and Gu Yan happening to walk me home that day, there was also a time when I stood on the rooftop of our building, on a sudden reckless impulse, wanting to jump. Gu Yan happened to be up there too, clearing his head, and he stopped me and saved me. That’s when I told him the outline of what had been happening, leaving out the details.”

So that explained how Lin Lin had come to ask Gu Yan for help. But since Gu Yan was, after all, a man, Lin Lin had probably been too embarrassed to tell him the full truth about the private videos and explicit photos she’d taken for her ex. That’s why Gu Yan had only assumed her ex was holding some private chat logs over her.

Lin Lin wiped her eyes. “I know rationally that I should go to the police. But he’s got those things on me. I’m afraid that if it comes to a final confrontation, he’ll expose everything, and if that happens, I really won’t want to live anymore.”

If Qi Xi hadn’t been able to understand why Lin Lin wouldn’t report it before, she understood completely now.

In this society, women were so often held to a far harsher, stricter standard of moral obligation and chastity than men. In every scandal involving explicit photos, every affair, the man always seemed to walk away far more easily than the woman—sometimes people even spoke of the man involved with a kind of envy—while the woman was left facing endless mockery and humiliation that never seemed to end.

Qi Xi understood Lin Lin’s fears completely.

But still—

“If you don’t take the initiative to fight back, your ex will just see you as weak and easy to exploit. Bad character has its own momentum—by now, he probably thinks it’s only natural for you to give him whatever he wants. Do you want to spend your whole life bound and hobbled by a piece of garbage like him? Do you want it to be that every time you meet a good man, you have to break things off because of this terrifying ex looming over you—until your entire life is destroyed?”

Qi Xi’s tone was unusually stern. “And you need to trust the police’s ability to handle this now. What your ex is doing already amounts to serious extortion, and using your private information to coerce you into sex—that’s rape. Forcing a sexual act against a woman’s will is rape, whether the perpetrator is a stranger, your current boyfriend, or your ex—it’s rape regardless. Once you report it and the police investigate and step in, this becomes a criminal case, multiple charges combined, and it goes to the prosecutor’s office for public prosecution. However much he throws his weight around in front of you, he’s no match for the power of the state.”

Qi Xi spoke from the heart, laying out for Lin Lin exactly what was at stake. “You might be thinking the safest path is to just let it go quietly, but his appetite has already grown too large—there will never be a day when he’s satisfied. Think about it: every time he’s pushed you for something you didn’t want to give, hasn’t he always sworn it would be the last time? And hasn’t there always been another ‘last time’ after that?”

These words seemed to strike right at the heart of what Lin Lin had been feeling. She had lived through so many of those “last times.” Just when she thought she’d finally found a way out, she’d reach the end of the road only to discover it was a dead end all over again. The things forced on her against her will seemed endless—and that was exactly why she had fallen into severe depression.

Even though Lin Lin’s resolve was now just one step away from taking action, she still had many worries. “But if this becomes a criminal case, my family… and him… they might all find out about this… I’m scared. I’m scared this won’t end well.”

Hearing this, Qi Xi understood.

What Lin Lin truly wanted, deep down, was to go to the police and settle things with her ex once and for all. What was holding her back wasn’t fear of confronting her ex directly—it was fear of confronting her own past mistakes, made out of carelessness and naivety.

“Rather than living forever in fear of when your ex might decide to expose your past, why not face it yourself first? Back when you were younger and didn’t know better, you made a mistake, trusted someone you shouldn’t have, took some private videos, and gave him leverage over you. Rather than being threatened by him again and again, why not just go to the police directly?”

“Whatever we do, there are consequences to face.” Qi Xi handed Lin Lin another tissue. “Lin Lin, making a mistake in the past is fine—what’s not fine is letting that mistake keep growing bigger. In the past, trying to save the relationship, you made yourself small, didn’t love yourself the way you should have, and did something foolish—handed him, with your own hands, the very videos that could hurt you. Now let’s fix it together.”

Qi Xi continued gently guiding her. “Even if you keep satisfying every demand your ex makes right now just to cover this up, there will come a day when you simply can’t keep up anymore. He’s asking for over a hundred thousand now—what about the future? It could be a million, several million, even tens of millions someday. There will always come a point you can’t meet, and when that happens, he’ll still choose to expose your past anyway. By then, the damage will have accumulated like a snowball rolling downhill, and it’ll be even harder to withstand.”

Lin Lin still hesitated. “But once it goes through legal channels and everyone finds out…”

Qi Xi looked directly into her eyes. “I know what you’re afraid of. But your parents—even if they find out about all this—will only feel heartbroken for you, not blame you. And that man you liked, the one you were forced to break up with…”

Qi Xi called out for Gu Yan.

Almost immediately, the door opened, and Gu Yan walked in carrying the fruit, clearly having been waiting outside for Qi Xi’s cue for some time.

Qi Xi glanced at Lin Lin, then looked at Gu Yan. “Gu Yan, hypothetically—let me give an admittedly imperfect example—suppose that before I met you, I did something really terrible. If you found out, would you leave me? Would you blame me?”

Gu Yan blinked, clearly not quite keeping up with where Qi Xi was going with this. “What did you do? Did you break the law?”

“No, nothing like that. Just something that wouldn’t be quite right, morally speaking. Like…” Qi Xi struggled to come up with a fitting example. “Like, hypothetically, unknowingly being the other woman in someone’s relationship?”

Even though it was only hypothetical, Gu Yan’s expression turned serious, which made even Qi Xi start to feel a little uneasy.

“Qi Xi, I wouldn’t blame you.” But then Gu Yan’s calm, gentle voice quickly dispelled the unease and tension in her heart. He said solemnly, “I’d only blame myself—for not meeting you sooner, for not being able to protect you earlier so that something like that never happened to you in the first place. None of it would be your fault.”

Though he still didn’t understand the real reason behind Qi Xi’s sudden question, once Lin Lin began sobbing openly, Gu Yan finally began to grasp a little of what was going on. He looked at Qi Xi, and she nodded at him. Though no words passed between them, Qi Xi was certain Gu Yan had already guessed the gist of it from her eyes.

Throughout Lin Lin’s long crying, Qi Xi stayed by her side, comforting her. “You see, Lin Lin, not every man believes certain things are automatically the woman’s fault. You’re so afraid of the man you like finding out—so afraid, in fact, that you ended things with him outright. But isn’t that unfair to him? You assumed his reaction in advance, assumed he’d look down on you and despise you for it. But maybe his reaction would be exactly like Gu Yan’s just now—not blaming you at all, but instead feeling for you, standing firmly by your side, walking with you through the darkest stretch of the road.”

“If he’s really as gentle and kind as you say, then once he learns the truth, he won’t blame you for it. He’ll only feel that he failed to protect you, and it will make him want to treat you even better.”

Qi Xi smiled gently. “And if he pulls away from you just because he found out about this, then how could he ever walk with you through the rest of your life? True love isn’t just about sharing the good times—it has to be able to weather the hard times too. Life is never smooth sailing all the way through. If he can’t accept it, then when you part ways, you won’t have any regrets either—you’ll have given the relationship, and yourself, a proper reckoning. So do what you need to do. Go to the police. Leave the rest to time. Time always brings its own answers.”

Qi Xi went on, giving Lin Lin a small wink. “Besides, the professionalism of police, prosecutors, and courts these days is very high. Cases like yours are handled with a great deal of humane care. Once it enters the legal process, it doesn’t necessarily mean this incident will spread further or become more widely known. There are plenty of excellent female staff on these teams now, and for a case involving a woman’s privacy like yours, you can absolutely request to work with female personnel who’ll be able to empathize with you more easily.”

Everything she’d said so far was true, but Qi Xi didn’t want to deceive Lin Lin either. Having laid out the positives, she wanted Lin Lin to be prepared for the harder parts too.

So Qi Xi spoke honestly. “That said, once this enters the legal process—especially once it becomes a public prosecution—there is a real chance that, later on, your closest family members may end up learning about it to some degree. I want you to be mentally prepared for that possibility before you go to the police. But I also want you to know this: the people who love you most, your closest family, will never stand on the side of the person who hurt you. They will always, firmly, stand behind you.”

Amid Qi Xi and Gu Yan’s compassionate, gentle persuasion, Lin Lin’s crying finally subsided.

The hesitation and inner conflict that had marked her face before finally gave way to something resolute. She looked at Qi Xi.

“Thank you, both of you.”

“I’m going to report it to the police.”