At that moment, Xia Li was brimming with curiosity — so much so that she very nearly asked Yan Sishi: if she had said she wanted to take a stroll on the moon, would he have said “all right” without a second thought?

Yan Sishi asked: “Do you need to be at work tomorrow as usual? Can you take the day off?”

“I do. I don’t have much annual leave left, so I can’t just use it casually — and there’s a very important meeting tomorrow morning.”

The car drove on for a stretch. The buildings along the route gradually became those familiar to Xia Li from her daily life.

Sure enough, at the next intersection they turned, and there was the street where she lived.

The car stopped at the entrance to the complex. Yan Sishi glanced at his watch. “Twenty minutes to change — will that be enough?”

Xia Li hadn’t expected Yan Sishi to drop her off at home first so she could change her clothes.

She blinked, then said, deliberately: “I also want to shower, take off my makeup, and think about what to wear. You know how it is — girls are just slower when it comes to getting ready.”

Yan Sishi considered briefly, then did not grant her wish — he simply doubled the time limit: “An hour, then?”

Xia Li laughed and reached for the car door. “Twenty minutes. I’ll be back down quickly.”

“Text me before you come out. I’ll pull the car around.”

Xia Li picked up the transparent umbrella she had bought on a whim at the convenience store at midday and stood it beside her.

She opened the door. Xu Ning, who was sitting on the sofa typing away, looked up. “You’re back already? Isn’t this early?”

“Just changing, going back out…” Her voice broke off abruptly, because she had spotted what was on the dining table — an enormous bundle of flowers.

White roses, not a single other color among them. Even the wrapping paper and ribbon were pure white.

Like the most untouched, flawless white moonlight in the middle of a snowy day.

“Ningning, did you buy these?” Xia Li asked, astonished.

“You might as well count the stems first. A bundle this size — I’d rather take you out for a proper meal instead. Yan Sishi contacted me this afternoon and asked me to receive them for him. He said that after a full day like this, when you finally got home, seeing fresh flowers waiting for you would probably make you happy…”

As Xu Ning spoke, something seemed to come to her. “I could use this scene in a script.”

Xia Li immediately said: “Don’t you dare! I’m copyrighting this!”

“…”

Xia Li didn’t have time to linger over the sentiment. She darted to the bathroom and took a quick hot shower.

She rarely spent time agonizing over what to wear — her wardrobe wasn’t large.

One sweep of her closet and she pulled out a dress.

Pearl white, with a lightweight fabric for the skirt portion. The shoulder straps were two fine bead-chains, and she had been worried they might snap — so after buying it, she had specifically found a tailor to replace the cotton threading on the beads with transparent fishing line, then reinforce the joins for extra strength.

This dress had no occasion for regular wear on workdays. On her birthday, though, it was exactly right.

After slipping on the dress, Xia Li sent Yan Sishi a message.

She still didn’t quite believe there could be anywhere to see snow in the middle of summer, but she thought to ask: Do I need to bring winter clothes? Yan Sishi replied that she didn’t.

Twenty minutes to spare, Xia Li swapped to a small purse that matched the dress, touched up her makeup lightly, and changed the color of her lipstick.

Just before heading out, she sent another message to Yan Sishi.

The rain had lightened considerably, but Xia Li still put up her umbrella, unwilling to risk getting this delicate dress wet.

The shoes she was wearing had only a shallow heel, and she stepped with extra care around the puddles on the ground.

The car was waiting at the entrance.

Xia Li got in, wrapped in dry air conditioned warmth that carried a faint fragrance, and finally — in this moment — felt something like a proper birthday mood.

Before Yan Sishi started the car, he passed her a paper bag from beside the gear shift. “We don’t have time for a proper dinner. If you’re hungry, you can eat something first.”

Inside the bag were bacon rolls, sandwiches, bread, and other easy-to-eat light snacks, still warm.

In the cup holder sat two hot drinks — one coffee, the other warm fruit juice.

“Did you just go and buy these?” Xia Li asked.

“Yes.”

He truly didn’t waste a single moment.

Xia Li had said she wasn’t hungry earlier, but now the smell of the food stirred her appetite. She had two pieces of sandwich, washing them down with the warm fruit juice.

She was careful not to let any crumbs fall in the car.

Yan Sishi glanced over at her from time to time.

He rarely saw her dressed like this — slightly more formal than usual. The pearl-white tone suited her beautifully: a soft, subtle luminosity, lovely without being striking.

Once she had eaten, Yan Sishi said: “We still have some time before we arrive. You can rest for a bit.”

“Can I put on some music?” Xia Li had ridden in Yan Sishi’s car many times by now and had noticed he didn’t seem to have the habit of playing music.

Yan Sishi nodded and told her to connect via Bluetooth herself.

“But you’re using the phone for navigation.”

Yan Sishi picked up his phone, unlocked it, and handed it to her directly, telling her to log into her own music account.

The phone had no protective case. The thinness of it in her hand felt slightly precarious.

English interface — the same as hers.

The wallpaper was a deep-blue ocean, the same as hers too.

Just one page of apps, organized into eight folders — impressively minimal.

Xia Li tapped open the folder labeled “E.”

The music app Yan Sishi used most often was probably Spotify.

Xia Li still preferred a certain Chinese music platform — her taste in music was eclectic, and she found the playlist ecosystem there better suited to her.

He had downloaded this app too. She opened it to find his account already logged in, the username “YAN0219.”

She made a note of the username, then searched “Sherry’s Wine Lab,” found her own account, and tapped into her favorite playlist.

She scrolled through it — and several songs in a row were by the same artist she’d been obsessed with.

Xia Li very nearly broke into a cold sweat. She backed out immediately, cleared the search history as well, and then asked Yan Sishi: “…Can I play your playlist instead? I’d like to hear what you usually listen to.”

Yan Sishi said that was fine.

Xia Li opened Spotify.

The most recently added song was Get You the Moon.

‘Cause you are, you are / The reason why the head is still above water / And I’d get you the moon if I could for you

(Because you are, you are the reason I haven’t drowned / I wish I could give you the moon / Give you everything)

By now the car had merged onto the highway.

The car windows shut out the rushing sound of the wind outside. Inside the cabin, there was a stillness like being underwater.

That low, quiet voice on the song made something inside her slowly rise like a tide.

Xia Li did eventually fall asleep in the car.

The seat was too comfortable — it swallowed her completely — and the gentle vibrations and the muffled sound of the wind outside made for perfect conditions for a light nap.

When she woke, it was past eleven. The car was still moving. Outside was pitch dark, nothing visible but the pale pool of light cast by the headlights ahead, the small red pinpoints of taillights in the distance, and the dark mass of mountains on either side sweeping past.

“…Are we still in Beicheng?” She let out a long, deep yawn.

“No.”

“How much longer until we arrive?”

“Almost at the exit.”

Twenty minutes later, the car turned off the highway. The road ahead was even more desolate and unpopulated than the highway had been.

Following the navigation, they drove another twenty minutes along a provincial road before a brightly lit, enormous building came into view — from a distance it looked like an arena or a vast warehouse.

The car didn’t enter from the main gate but drove straight into an underground parking area.

After getting out, Xia Li followed Yan Sishi through a door and into what looked like a fire escape corridor — a long, narrow passageway.

At the far end was another door, standing open, where a staff member in a black windbreaker was waiting, visibly anxious. “Mr. Yan, we really need to hurry!”

They quickened their steps.

Through that door, the staff member led them down another hallway.

At the end of it, the staff member pushed open a door, and the two of them stepped through.

It was a room. Two more staff members appeared to have been waiting for some time, holding two long, down-filled coats and two pairs of boots in their hands.

One coat was longer, one shorter. One was black, one white, both the same brand. The white one was the women’s style.

Before Xia Li had time to react, the white down coat was pressed into her arms.

She instinctively pulled it on.

Across from her, Yan Sishi was already putting on his.

The two staff members said something to Yan Sishi about everything being ready, then stepped out, pulling the door shut behind them.

As Xia Li zipped up, Yan Sishi said: “We prepared these based on a height of 165 and a shoe size of 37. I hope they fit well enough.”

“About right.” Xia Li looked up. “How tall are you now?”

“My last check-up put it at 187.”

“That’s quite a bit taller than me.”

Zipper fastened all the way to the top, she stepped forward, stood up straight, placed her palm flat on top of her own head, then slid it horizontally toward him, as if to compare heights.

Yan Sishi looked down at the person standing across from him.

Her long hair was still bundled at her neck, not yet pulled free from the coat’s collar — it framed a face that seemed no larger than a palm. Fair skin without a blemish. A trace of soft pink fading at her lips.

He kept both hands in his coat pockets without taking them out — worried he might not be able to resist reaching out to hold her. Besides, comparing heights didn’t require anything as elaborate as she was making it.

A moment later, Yan Sishi glanced at his watch. Five minutes to midnight.

No time to linger. Yan Sishi told her to change into the boots, then reached out and, over the coat, took hold of her arm.

He guided her to one side of the room, paused — glanced back at her — and then pushed open the door —

Snowflakes, drifting and swirling, filled a world of white.

Xia Li’s eyes lit up, and an involuntary sound of wonder escaped her.

A sharp, cold air swept into her face and made her skin contract, and she forgot entirely what season it really was.

She couldn’t help but run forward.

Her boots sank into the thick snow — soft as cotton — and she was certain now that this was real.

“How did you even do this?!”

Yan Sishi said: “It’s man-made.”

“That makes it even more amazing!”

The space itself was actually quite small — perhaps less than a hundred square meters on the ground, like a set constructed inside a large photography studio.

But both the depth of the scene in the distance and the details in the foreground were strikingly convincing, and at the foot of the “snowy mountain” there was even a small wooden cabin.

Xia Li stepped through the snow with delight, stretching out her hand to catch the falling flakes.

She moved with uneven strides, plunging deep with one foot and shallow with the next, and the long down coat nearly tripped her — so she simply let herself fall, dropping straight down onto the soft, yielding snow.

She breathed in deeply, luxuriating in it.

There came a crunching sound of footsteps drawing near. Xia Li breathed out a small puff of white mist and looked up to see Yan Sishi appear in her field of vision above.

He reached down to help her up.

She stretched her arms toward his hand, touched fingers cool to the touch, and seized hold — then yanked hard.

Yan Sishi’s body tilted slightly off balance.

Her strength was nowhere near enough to actually pull him down.

But he went with it, and fell beside her.

Xia Li turned her head to look at him. The cold air — no different from winter — and the running she had done had flushed color into her face, especially the tip of her nose. A smile was still on her lips, her eyes bright and glittering.

Yan Sishi looked at his watch.

Five seconds left.

“Happy birthday.”

Xia Li forgot to say “thank you” — because her heart had all but sunk into the depths of his gaze in that moment.

He was a snowfall that had wandered into the summer solstice.

A presence that, by all accounts, should never have existed in her world.

Yan Sishi was quiet too, looking at her without looking away.

A snowflake drifted down and caught on her long, dense lashes. She blinked, and it clung there, half-melted, half-not. She reached up a hand to brush it away.

The moment her hand came down, Yan Sishi caught it.

His fingers were slightly cool; she felt as though she had been scorched, and instinctively pulled back — but couldn’t free herself. He held onto half her fingers, and his fingertips traced over the trace of moisture her touch had left behind, a tenderness like pure reflex.

Her heart felt as though it had been wrung out. She went still.

“Xia Li…” Yan Sishi spoke.

At that exact moment, her nose began to twitch, and on instinct she let out a loud, undisguised sneeze.

Xia Li: “…”

The air went still for a beat.

“Are you cold?”

Xia Li answered, slightly embarrassed: “…A little, I think.”

Yan Sishi pressed one hand to the ground and pushed himself up, then pulled her to her feet. “Then let’s go have cake first. You can’t catch a cold.”

“…There’s also cake?”

“Of course.”

The cake was inside the little wooden cabin.

A proper wooden cabin — the air carried the clean, dry scent of timber.

Inside was a small fireplace. Angled before it was a leather sofa. Once seated, you could look directly through the two glass walls opposite and watch the snow falling outside.

The room was pleasantly warm. They took off their down coats.

The cake sat on a small coffee table in front of the sofa.

It was, perhaps due to the remote location and the last-minute arrangement, not a particularly impressive cake — an entirely ordinary fruit cake, its cream rosettes piped in an offhanded, imprecise manner, and the strawberries and pineapple looked somewhat past their prime.

Xia Li couldn’t have cared less.

Yan Sishi pressed candles into the cake and asked: “Five candles?”

“Sure.”

Five slender, colored candles, spaced evenly upright.

Yan Sishi took a lighter from his trouser pocket — the one she had given him — and lit each candle in turn.

Xia Li pressed her palms together. “Can I make three wishes?”

Yan Sishi curved his mouth slightly. “You can.”

To be healthy. To be happy.

And for Yan Sishi to be happy too.

Xia Li blew out the candles in one breath.

The cake was sliced into two portions and placed on paper plates. Xia Li pressed her fork into a piece and brought it to her mouth.

The cream was mediocre — sweet enough to be cloying.

She glanced at Yan Sishi. His expression suggested he was making an effort.

Xia Li smiled. “Symbolic is enough.”

Once that small ritual was done, the two staff members arrived shortly after with dinner — or perhaps more accurately, a very late-night meal.

Western-style light fare: a roast chicken, two portions of pasta, two bowls of cream soup.

Everything had probably sat out for too long and the textures had gone soft. Xia Li was genuinely hungry, though, and was not particularly fussy.

She had this snow. The rest hardly mattered.

After eating, Xia Li pulled her down coat back on and went back outside to play freely in the snow for another round, building a small snowman.

Underneath the coat she was only wearing a single dress — not very warm — and she stayed until the cold became truly unbearable before retreating back into the cabin.

Fresh coals had been added to the fireplace, the flame pulsing gently with the rhythm of breathing.

Xia Li sat on the sofa, cradling a mug of hot black tea in both hands to warm herself, feeling the slow thaw of her slightly-stiffened body.

Beside her, Yan Sishi had one arm braced on the sofa’s armrest and held a mug of tea in his other hand, drinking from it now and then.

The air was laced with a sweet, layered fragrance that made the mind grow pleasantly sluggish.

Xia Li breathed over the curling mist rising from her mug. “The first time I saw heavy snow in Beicheng was the first year I came here — I was so excited. I’d never seen snow like that in the south.”

Yan Sishi turned to look at her. “Which year was that?”

“2014. I think it was December 6th — the season’s first snowfall.”

“You remember the exact date?”

“…Yes. Because that day I almost left my phone in a taxi.”

That first year of university, she had switched to a new phone. Through her SIM card, she had spent a very long time transferring every single text message from her old phone to the new one.

When she changed to a smartphone in her third year of university, she had done the same again using a syncing application.

If that phone had been lost, every trace of those messages would have ceased to exist.

So the panic of that evening had stayed with her, vivid and clear to this day.

“Do you like Beicheng?” Yan Sishi asked.

“Honestly — not particularly.”

Many things she had once chased after, she realized in retrospect, were only because of what they were connected to.

“I remember you once wanted to attend university in Beicheng.”

Xia Li paused for a moment, surprised that he still remembered.

Her lips were still touching the rim of the ceramic mug. “The day you saw my university preferences was after the Mingzhong pledge ceremony…”

Yan Sishi suddenly pressed his lips together, his gaze dropping slightly, and he said nothing.

He remembered.

That day was February 27th.

“That was the last time I saw you in high school.” Xia Li looked up and turned toward Yan Sishi. This question had turned itself over in her mind more times than she could count. “…I always wondered — why did you suddenly leave school back then?”

She didn’t say “disappear.”

Yan Sishi didn’t answer immediately.

A moment later, he lowered his eyes and took a sip of his tea, then said in a measured voice: “Something happened at home that day.”

His tone was flat — not quite cold, but not warm either.

Anyone paying attention could tell that this answer was a closed door, with no invitation to step further inside.

Again, deliberately vague.

Xia Li heard something inside her go quietly, softly — ah.

It wasn’t as disappointing as she had expected.

It seemed, when it came to Yan Sishi, this was simply what was normal.

Still, she couldn’t quite prevent herself from feeling two degrees of weariness.

It reminded her of the feeling she’d had when her fever had just broken — curled up in bed with her laptop, writing that piece without stopping to sleep, writing it through the night.

A calm, grey-tinged exhaustion.

She had never actually held excessive expectations.

But the weariness she felt now was probably because the embrace from a few days ago had made her misjudge things somewhat.

What she believed and what Yan Sishi believed — there were possibly some points where they were not in sync.

And the atmosphere around them right now was so good, it felt as though anything she said could be received openly — with tolerance, with understanding, with grace.

If their positions were reversed, if he had wanted to know anything about her, she would have laid it all out without holding a single thing back.

She would have told him everything. Even the feelings that had long since expired.

But with Yan Sishi, it seemed, it was not the same.

Xia Li set down her mug of tea, and for a moment stared absently out the window at the snow.

Two degrees of regret: because if she hadn’t sneezed that absurd sneeze just now, would things be different right now?

She pulled her gaze back and smiled. “…I think I’m a bit sleepy. When are we leaving? Would I be able to sleep for a little while?”

Yan Sishi checked his watch. “You can sleep for two hours.”

“Then I’ll take a short nap. Remember to wake me.”

“Yes.”

Xia Li reached over and pulled the down coat toward her, draping it over herself. She tilted her head slightly, leaned it against the sofa’s backrest, and closed her eyes.

The quiet settled over them. The only sound was the occasional soft pop from the coals in the fireplace.

It was impossible to judge how much time passed.

She only felt Yan Sishi reach over, cup her head gently with his hand, and guide it with a soft, careful press.

It tilted over and came to rest against his shoulder.

She had been feigning sleep at first — because she had suddenly not wanted to continue talking, and didn’t want the atmosphere to shatter too visibly.

But the warmth of the room, the slight sense of closeness that comes when oxygen is low, and having her head resting against his shoulder — breathing in the clean, cool scent of him — the drowsiness that came from keeping her eyes shut too long became real.

Before she surrendered entirely to exhaustion, the last question drifting through her mind was: they say the people who are clearheaded and self-aware suffer more — that seems to be true.

Why was she so set on probing at the edges of his guarded space?

Why couldn’t she be content with the ninety-nine points of everything as it already was?

She had endured that long, one-sided journey all along. Was it truly impossible to live without the hundredth point?

After all — had anything in her life ever really been a perfect score?

And yet — it wasn’t.

Perhaps precisely because this was Yan Sishi, she could not tolerate a single point of incompleteness.