When Zhou Zheng went downstairs to get water, he ran into Zhou Xue.

Zhou Xue greeted him — “Brother.”

He lowered his head, washing a cup, his brow cold, his tone blunt and direct: “I don’t have time these past couple of days. I’ll find you later. In front of her, I won’t allow you to say a single word.”

Zhou Xue’s face turned unpleasant in an instant, her breath catching, an indescribable ache settling in her chest.

The two siblings had always had a good relationship all these years — she had never once heard Zhou Zheng speak in such a stern tone.

Zhou Zheng walked around her and headed straight upstairs.

Lin Shuang heard the footsteps and turned around, leaning at the window, remarking with feeling: “This is truly untouched countryside scenery, isn’t it — I saw fitness equipment and a kids’ slide by the road just now, and even a courier station, feels pretty good.”

He took the cigarette from her hand and stubbed it out, tossing it into the trash.

“Just the result of economic development these past years, rural image improvements, building a livable countryside,” Zhou Zheng said with a smile. “It wasn’t like this a decade or so ago.”

“What was it like a decade or so ago?” Lin Shuang asked.

“You’d probably have run off if you’d come then,” he laughed. “The roads were still dirt roads, mud up to your ankles when it rained, no running water pipes, everyone used well water, had to go to the nearby township market for anything you wanted to buy — hardly any cars back then either, going anywhere was a real hassle.”

“Life just keeps getting better, doesn’t it. Thanks to the motherland for giving us good days to live.” She sat in the computer chair, spinning on tiptoe. “And thanks to individual hard work too — supporting a family, earning money, building big houses.”

“Keep praising it and I’ll have you nominated as the countryside’s image ambassador.” Zhou Zheng pushed her, chair and all, away from the window and closed it. “Cold? I’ll turn on the AC.”

“Not cold.”

She surveyed the room, asking him earnestly: “Can I look around your room?”

“Of course you can.”

“I remember you saying the house was renovated by you yourself. Did you do all this yourself too?”

“Right, my parents only got the house half-built before the money ran out and construction stopped. Downstairs, that storage room was my childhood bedroom. This whole floor used to be bare red brick, and it leaked too, nearly falling into ruin — after I graduated from college and had some savings, I finished building the house.”

“If you had money early on, why not buy a place in the city? House prices were cheap back then, and if you’d had property, no one would have pushed you into marrying into someone else’s family,” Lin Shuang teased. “Or do you just like that phrase about returning home in glory to your hometown?”

“That’s not it,” he rubbed his nose. “My parents only left me this house — I wanted to keep it standing. If it’s not fixed up, another few years of wind and rain and it would’ve collapsed.”

Lin Shuang gave a faint smile.

The wardrobe looked like a carpenter’s handiwork. Lin Shuang pushed the door open — inside hung some old clothes, plus the school uniform and sportswear issued during his university years, printed with the Linjiang Normal University logo. On the upper shelf sat a few floral-patterned quilts, probably made by Grandma.

“Can you still wear the college clothes? You brought them back?”

“I can wear them, but haven’t since graduation — kept as a keepsake, I guess.”

A sentimental person, then.

The bed was a simple wooden frame, covered with a dust sheet, the nightstand empty too.

The only spot cluttered with stuff was that half-wall of bookshelves and the desk. Lin Shuang glanced over: “So many old books — even middle and high school textbooks are still here?”

“Grandma didn’t want to sell them, and I never threw them out either.” He opened the bookshelf. “Some are books and magazines I read in high school, and the books from my college years were mailed back too. Later on I bought a few more here and there — the ones I use often I keep with me, the ones I don’t get put back here.”

Lin Shuang was particularly sensitive to the word “math” these days, and her eye landed immediately on a math textbook, and she couldn’t help but laugh: “Your handwriting back then was pretty neat, so careful, stroke by stroke — looks a lot like it does now.”

“Is that so.” Zhou Zheng looked at the notebook in her hand. “That’s my physics error-log book.”

“So carefully made, look, there’s even a table of contents, so meticulous.” Lin Shuang flipped through with interest. “What are all these weird symbols, I can’t understand a single one.”

“What kind of student were you back then?” Lin Shuang asked him. “The buried-in-books type, or the naturally gifted type?”

“The quietly-unremarkable type, I’d say,” Zhou Zheng recalled. “I didn’t talk much back then, wasn’t very confident talking to people either.”

“You don’t talk much even now — so how’d you end up an outstanding teacher, giving lessons to so many students?”

“My outlook broadened later on, opened up gradually, I suppose,” Zhou Zheng said. “People change bit by bit over time.”

Lin Shuang put the book back on the shelf, turning to look at the other wall of books: “Wouldn’t have guessed it — you read plenty of miscellaneous stuff back then too. So many magazines here — do you like wuxia novels this much? This whole row, the books are practically worn to shreds.”

“Everyone read those back then, these are all from used book stalls, some are secondhand books my dorm-mates didn’t want… it’s not that I’m the one who wore them out…” Zhou Zheng rubbed his nose. “These are all books I picked up secondhand.”

“You even bought used books back then?” Lin Shuang laughed at him. “That poor, huh?”

“Pretty poor, yeah. No phones back then, didn’t go to internet cafes either, not much entertainment — used to borrow books from a rental shop.”

“Wouldn’t happen to be that place hidden in the alley outside our school, looked like a haunted house? What was it called… Study Without Limits Book Rental?”

Zhou Zheng nodded.

Lin Shuang laughed helplessly: “Sounds like everyone secretly frequented that place.”

“Did you go too?” Zhou Zheng asked her. “You used to go to that shop often too?”

“Of course I never went there, but plenty of my classmates read there back then.” She said, proudly, “I had plenty of pocket money — whatever book I wanted, I’d just buy it outright. I could buy ten romance novels in one go.”

“I bet the ones you bought were exactly the kind of novels that rental shop stocked,” Zhou Zheng teased her. “And those romance magazines too — what were they called, Crystal Boys and Girls, Dream Angel, that sort of thing.”

“How do you know what I used to read?” Lin Shuang raised an eyebrow.

“All the girls in class read those kinds of magazines, and liked getting the boys they had crushes on to take those relationship quizzes.” His brow warmed slightly, his tone a bit sour.

“You observed pretty carefully.” Lin Shuang shot back. “Did anyone ask you to take one of those relationship quizzes back then?”

Zhou Zheng glanced at her, pressed his lips together, lowered his eyes and said nothing.

Lin Shuang gave a “tsk,” her fingers sliding along the book spines — her eyes were sharp, and from among a row of familiar-looking wuxia novels she pulled out a garish, thin volume, her eyes suddenly lighting up: “What’s this book?”

The cover bore several large brush-stroke characters — Wandering Son and Demoness: A Romantic Tale.

Author — wuxia grandmaster Huang Yi.

“Did Huang Yi actually write this? Looks so strange, must be a knockoff.” Lin Shuang flipped through a couple pages carelessly, caught off guard by a barrage of exaggerated ellipses and moaning interjections.

[Mmm… ah… wan…der…ing… bro…ther… you’re… so… good… I… really… love… you…]

Utterly undone, utterly undone, utterly undone — Lin Shuang’s whole day of back-and-forth moods finally gave way in that instant, and clutching this knockoff smut novel disguised as wuxia, she burst out laughing.

What kind of hack author milks royalties off ellipses like that.

Zhou Zheng had no idea what Lin Shuang was laughing at, glanced at the book in her hand, still baffled, then leaned closer to look at those lines and immediately understood, his face flushing red as he reached to snatch the book from her.

“Let me see it.”

“Teacher Zhou, explain this to me.” Lin Shuang was thoroughly delighted. “What is this Wandering Son and Demoness Romance, and why’s it on your bookshelf.”

“I don’t know.” Zhou Zheng, thoroughly embarrassed, reached for it. “These are all books moved out of the dorm back in high school, haven’t been touched in years.”

“You dirty pervert, reading smut is one thing, but hiding it away too.” Lin Shuang leaned against the bookshelf, hiding the book firmly behind her back, dodging him. “Back in the day were you also hiding under the covers with a flashlight… researching the mysteries of the human body… as a student… hahahaha…”

“Tsk tsk, no wonder, Teacher Zhou.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

He was flustered, he was flustered, he was flustered — Teacher Zhou’s face went red.

The book pressed against Lin Shuang’s back as she twisted this way and that to dodge him, Zhou Zheng unable to grab it, standing in front of her now, his breath coming a little quick.

He looked down at her.

The girl in front of him was full of smiles, her cheeks flushed pink, her eyes bright and glittering. He looked at her expression, his own face burning hot, his heart suddenly pounding fiercely.

A book from ten years ago, a person from ten years ago — how had fate brought them together like this.

Zhou Zheng gazed at her steadily, as if drawn by some temptation, and involuntarily planted a kiss on her cheek.

She was always this way — cute, playful, radiant enough to dim everyone around her.

The mood in the room shifted.

She actually didn’t want to kiss him at all, in fact — she’d even meant to say something quite serious to him.

But the flushed man in front of her was genuinely hard to refuse — his eyes were very dark, very bright, glimmering with a light she couldn’t quite read.

Zhou Zheng brushed her lips lightly, like a dragonfly skimming water.

Her lips were sweet and soft, his own lips thin and gentle in just the right measure.

They’d kissed many times before.

She liked his kisses, liked his body, liked it enough that she’d sometimes grow a little intoxicated.

For a moment, she couldn’t even understand how she’d ended up tangled with this man in front of her.

Two people who, by all rights, should never have crossed paths at all.

This soft, gentle kiss touched and then withdrew, the two of them looking at each other, and then… Zhou Zheng, catching her off guard, gently slipped the book from behind her back.

Lin Shuang let out a startled cry and reached to grab it back: “Give it back.”

Zhou Zheng held the book up, scanning it a few times, finally confirming its origin, his face reddening again: “This should be an old dorm-mate’s book… read it once before, a lot of the books got left behind after graduation and I brought them all back together.”

“Is it good?” Lin Shuang was ready to have a read of this masterpiece.

“Not good, don’t read it.” Zhou Zheng shoved the book onto the top shelf, pressing his lips together. “Let me show you something else.”