On the twenty-eighth of the twelfth lunar month, Xia Li and Yan Sishi returned to Chucheng together.

They flew. The plane landed in Jiangcheng, where Huo Jizhong had arranged for a car to meet them.

The car dropped Xia Li home first. She directed the driver to a residential complex.

“Right. My mom couldn’t wait — she moved in the moment the transfer was finalized.”

Jiang Hong and Xia Jianyang had made a point of moving into their new home before the new year.

They had been looking at properties for some time. Initially they had planned to buy an off-plan unit, but after viewing a few resale apartments in a development completed three years prior, Jiang Hong gradually warmed to the idea of buying something already built — with a new development, you had to wait for completion, then spend at least three months airing it out after renovations before you could move in. By the time you settled in, who knew how long it would have been.

The unit they ended up buying came furnished, and the previous owner had needed to sell urgently — a family member had fallen seriously ill and they needed the money for medical bills.

Jiang Hong had visited multiple times and was pleased with the orientation and the floor plan. The minimalist décor was also to her taste.

The only issue was that the apartment was 120 square meters with three bedrooms and two living areas — twenty square meters more than what they had originally planned.

Xia Li had come back to Chucheng for a weekend at some point, toured the apartment, agreed that it was a good find, and told them to go ahead and commit.

She would contribute part of the down payment; her parents would handle the rest. The monthly mortgage repayments would be slightly more demanding, but without rent to pay, those savings would cover the gap.

The loan process and the transfer at the housing authority had taken about a month. Around the beginning of January, the title deed arrived.

Jiang Hong couldn’t wait another day. She moved with swift efficiency, determined to have everything settled before the new year — so they could spend it in their new home.

And if Xia Li were to bring her boyfriend home for a meal, they would at least have something decent to offer.

Yan Sishi stepped out of the car and went to help lift the luggage from the back.

Xia Li pulled out the handle of her suitcase and asked Yan Sishi, “Come to our house for dinner on the fourth?”

The lunar new year fell late that year — the fifteenth of February was New Year’s Eve. The fourth was the nineteenth of February: Yan Sishi’s birthday.

“Tomorrow…” Xia Li seemed to only just realize something. “Oh no — I’ve been so busy I forgot. I haven’t prepared a gift for you.”

“A gift isn’t important.” Yan Sishi reached over and ruffled her hair. “I’ll come pick you up tomorrow morning. Nine o’clock? Ten?”

“Wang Chen is back in Chucheng too. Lunch with him tomorrow?”

“Is he alone?”

In the car, the driver had twice started to speak and twice held back. Finally he cracked the window and mentioned, not unkindly, that there was a camera here and he couldn’t park for too long.

Yan Sishi put his arm around Xia Li, leaned down, and said, “See you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow.”

She always had the feeling that every embrace at parting carried something quietly reluctant — a lingering that neither of them quite wanted to release.

The new home was already in excellent order, exactly as Jiang Hong would have it.

Fresh spring couplets hung at the entrance. A potted mandarin orange tree sat beside the television cabinet in the living room, its fruit a vivid orange. The fruit bowl on the coffee table overflowed with a colorful array of snacks and fresh fruit.

Jiang Hong happily led Xia Li on a tour of each room, and finally stopped at a south-facing secondary bedroom. “This is your room. I had your father buy a bookcase and a desk, and all your books have been moved here.”

The room wasn’t large, but it was tidy and bright. The wardrobe, bookcase, and desk were all in white.

“We also got you a new set of bed linen. I hope you like it.”

“I barely come back more than a few times a year — why bother with something new?”

Jiang Hong smiled. “We finally have a home that’s truly ours.”

Xia Li felt an unexpected prickle of warmth behind her eyes.

Primary school in her grandparents’ home. A rented flat in Chucheng through middle school. High school in the dormitory, and then a tiny single-room apartment of barely a few square meters…

A room of her own — her very own — had been the thing she’d wanted most in all her years as a student.

Jiang Hong gave a small sound of recollection and walked over to the bookcase. She opened the cabinet at the bottom and pulled out a tin box. “It’s locked, and I didn’t know what was inside, so I didn’t dare throw it away.”

Xia Li stared at it.

Jiang Hong said she’d let her rest for now, and went off to start dinner.

Xia Li shook the tin gently. Things inside shifted and knocked against the walls.

She was almost certain she hadn’t opened it since her second year of university. She had long since forgotten where she’d put the key.

She rummaged through everything — all her belongings had been moved and nothing was where it used to be — and found no key.

Xia Li gave up and went to find Xia Jianyang for help.

Xia Jianyang found a screwdriver and simply removed the screws from the lock plate, taking the whole mechanism off.

Xia Li opened the tin.

The contents smelled of something sealed away for a long time — a dusty, faintly papery smell.

Memories rushed toward her all at once.

The next morning, Xia Li washed up and put on a light face of makeup. A message arrived from Yan Sishi on her phone. Before heading downstairs, she let Jiang Hong know she was going out and would be eating lunch and dinner away from home.

Jiang Hong was slightly anxious and pressed her firmly: “You absolutely have to come back tonight.”

“…Yes, I know.”

When she reached the gate of the complex, Yan Sishi’s car was pulling up at that exact moment.

After it came to a stop, Xia Li pulled open the door — and though she had half-expected it, the sight of a bunch of flowers wrapped in black paper in the passenger seat still made her heart catch.

She picked up the bouquet, sat down, fastened her seatbelt, and only then brought it close to breathe in its fragrance.

The flowers went from deep red on the outer petals to pale pink toward the center — an antique quality to the blooms, each one large and full, with a texture that recalled oil paintings.

She couldn’t help asking, “What variety is this?”

Yan Sishi said it was likely an Ecuadorian Dirty Rose — sometimes translated as grey rose or dusty rose.

In a small city like Chucheng, tracking down imported roses of this kind must have taken no small effort.

His care and intention behind it was worth more than any flower.

Xia Li turned to look at him and smiled. “That time you came to pick me up at the airport, you brought a bunch of pink roses. You said sending flowers to Teacher Dai was only part of the reason. What was the other part?”

The car had already pulled out. Yan Sishi lightly turned the wheel to take a corner. “You should already know.”

“I want to hear you say it.”

“I was afraid that if I gave you anything else, you would misunderstand — you might think I had no feelings for you beyond friendship.”

Isn’t it usually roses that cause the misunderstanding?

Xia Li couldn’t help laughing.

And then she thought: his logic was actually completely sound.

Much had changed in the old city center since their high school years, though the streets of the older quarter were largely the same. The new development district had gained a shopping center.

They had arranged to meet Wang Chen at a restaurant there.

They arrived a little early, and after wandering for a while, a message came from Wang Chen as it neared eleven: he was here.

They went to the restaurant and found a table.

Their seats gave them a clear view of the entrance. At eleven o’clock on the dot — not a moment early or late — Wang Chen appeared.

Xia Li smiled and waved from across the room. “Wang Chen!”

Wang Chen looked up at the sound, waved back, and walked over to take the seat across from them.

Compared to her memory of him, he seemed largely unchanged. And if anything, the years had only made that particular quality of his — something of the earnest, bookish type — more pronounced.

Xia Li said with a smile, “Do you need me to remind you who I am?”

Wang Chen pushed his glasses up and looked her over carefully. “Xia Li?”

Xia Li turned to Yan Sishi with an amused complaint: “…He said it like a question.”

Wang Chen said, “You’ve gotten better-looking. It threw me off a little from what I remembered.”

Xia Li said, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Wang Chen looked at Yan Sishi. “Didn’t you say you were bringing your girlfriend? Where is she?”

A brief silence fell.

Wang Chen’s eyes went wide. Something slowly dawned. He smacked himself on the forehead. “…Of course. Now it all makes sense.”

Xia Li burst out laughing.

Wang Chen gave a few thoughtful nods to himself, as though something were clicking into place in his mind. “Makes complete sense in hindsight. Surprising in the moment.”

The waiter brought menus. As they ordered, Xia Li asked Wang Chen how things had been going.

“Nothing special,” he said. “Lab, apartment, back and forth.”

Yan Sishi said, “Can you finish in three years?”

Wang Chen: “…Do you think everyone’s like you? It’s a PhD, not some casual degree you can just knock out. The research keeps hitting walls. At this rate, finishing in five years would be doing well — by the way, why did you stop after your master’s? Why not keep going?”

Xia Li noticed he was remarkably persistent on this point.

Yan Sishi said, “It got boring. I didn’t want to continue.”

Wang Chen didn’t quite believe this explanation. “You, academically unmotivated? You?”

But Xia Li believed it. She suspected it was exactly what Yan Sishi meant.

When studying is the only thing left in a person’s life, it probably does become a very dull thing indeed.

Yan Sishi said, “Finish early and come back. I have a place for you.”

Wang Chen said, “What do you mean?”

Xia Li said, “He’s starting a company with a friend — in artificial intelligence.”

Wang Chen said, “I don’t study artificial intelligence. My field is—”

Yan Sishi finished his sentence for him: “Neuroscience. Which is exactly what we need.”

Wang Chen seemed to find unexpected motivation in this. “Alright. I’ll do my best to finish in three years.”

For much of the meal, Wang Chen was absorbed in talking with the two of them about artificial intelligence, about the high-tech industry in China.

Xia Li could only marvel: he was, as ever, wonderfully single-minded. He had not the faintest trace of curiosity or gossip instinct regarding her and Yan Sishi’s relationship.

After lunch, Wang Chen left first, saying he had to take his mother hiking in the afternoon.

As he left, he specifically told Yan Sishi: stay in touch. We can’t let it be this many years between meals again.

Xia Li was laughing too hard to speak.

That afternoon, Xia Li and Yan Sishi saw a film.

A Japanese drama — a gentle, meandering kind of story, not particularly well-made. But because it was Valentine’s Day, and because it carried a well-known author’s name, the theater was well-attended.

Light and shadow shifted across the screen. They drifted in and out of attention, kissing in the dark, sharing the sweet taste of popcorn.

After the film, Xia Li suggested they stop by Shangzhi Bookstore.

After a slow, traffic-bound drive to the old city center, they arrived to find the bookstore already closed for the holiday — it wouldn’t reopen until the sixth.

Xia Li smiled. “What bad timing.”

She didn’t feel particularly disappointed. As long as she was with Yan Sishi, even wasting time felt worthwhile.

Xia Li slipped both hands into her coat pockets and leaned back into him, pressing her forehead to his chest. “So where do we go now?”

She was wearing a white down jacket, with a cashmere skirt and boots underneath — warm and soft, carrying a faint sweet fragrance.

Yan Sishi put his arm partly around her and asked if she wanted to wander through the night market.

She shook her head. “…Let’s go to your place.”

Yan Sishi paused for just a moment, then said “alright.”

Driving to Yan Sishi’s apartment, the atmosphere inside the car took on an indescribable undercurrent that Xia Li could feel without naming, and her breathing became subtly unsteady, her words faintly distracted.

It was perhaps fifteen minutes before they arrived.

The car stopped. Yan Sishi reminded Xia Li that there was a gift in the compartment up front.

Xia Li pressed it open. Inside was a black gift bag.

After getting out of the car, she opened the back door, picked up the flowers, took the gift bag, and followed Yan Sishi inside.

The apartment’s vintage-style décor, lit up at night, had a quiet warmth about it — like a café after hours.

Xia Li had always liked the glass floor lamp beside the chestnut-brown leather sofa — its shade shaped like drooping lily-of-the-valley flowers.

Yan Sishi asked her to sit while he stepped into the kitchen, then came back with a bottle of water.

They had hung their coats on the rack by the entryway. Now Yan Sishi was wearing a black knit sweater, his sleeves slightly pushed up, his forearms visible.

She followed the line from his wrist bone down to the fingers that loosely held the water bottle, and after a moment, she took the bottle, set it on the coffee table, and reached for his hand. “Want to see the gift I prepared?”

“You said you’d forgotten.”

“I was teasing.” Xia Li laughed, and for a moment she let go of his hand and turned to reach into her bag.

Yan Sishi settled into the seat beside her, watching as she — unusually — showed a kind of fidgety hesitation. Then, as if she had made up her mind, she drew out what was inside.

A small black velvet pouch. She loosened the drawstring and poured the contents into her palm: two silver rings, a matching pair.

She glanced at him — looking a little abashed — and hurriedly closed her fingers around them.

Yan Sishi prised her fingers open, picked up the one meant for him, and slipped it onto his middle finger with easy decisiveness.

Xia Li watched his hands.

These hands really were exceptionally suited to silver rings. Against the band, his knuckles became even more defined — something refined and restrained about the image.

She put on her own ring and said, a little quietly, “…Is this too clichéd?”

“Not at all.”

Yan Sishi took her hand in his. She tilted her wrist in the lamplight to look — both rings catching the same light.

She looked up, and found Yan Sishi looking at her. She fell straight into those beautiful, perpetually cool-edged eyes of his.

It wasn’t the first time they’d looked at each other like this — yet her heart still lurched. She thought of that Christmas from their school years, when their English teacher had let them out to see the snow, and in the corridor she had turned and met his gaze by accident.

That feeling of the ground falling away — she would carry it for the rest of her life.

Yan Sishi reached up and gave her earlobe a light pinch. Then his palm settled at the side of her neck, tilting her face slightly upward, and he bent to kiss her. She looped her arms around the back of his neck, and without thinking, gave herself over entirely in her response.

Something slid beneath the hem of her sweater — a slightly cool touch at her waist — and she instinctively drew her body closer to his.

Yan Sishi couldn’t quite manage the clasp with one hand; two attempts both failed. He heard her suppress a quiet laugh, and as a warning, he caught her lower lip gently between his teeth.

On the third try it gave way.

When it settled into place, Xia Li’s breath caught entirely.

His kiss was gentle without being without force, and matched what his hands were doing.

The air seemed to be quietly burning.

At this moment, Xia Li’s phone rang from inside her bag.

“…”

She wanted to ignore it. But the vibration was persistent and unyielding. With no other choice, she gently pushed back, reached for the bag, pulled out her phone — Jiang Hong calling. She put it on speaker and set it down beside her.

Jiang Hong: “Li Li, aren’t you coming home yet?”

“…Soon.”

“Come back soon. The forecast says it might snow later.”

“…Okay.”

“You have to come back, all right. After all,” Jiang Hong said, slightly awkward now, “you’re only dating — you’re not engaged. Staying out overnight doesn’t look right. If his family heard, they’d have things to say…”

“…” Xia Li snatched up the phone and switched off the speaker as fast as she could. Her ears flushed crimson in an instant. “I know, I know. I’ll be back soon.”

“I’ll wait up for you…”

“Don’t wait! I have my key with me…”

“Alright, alright, I won’t wait.”

After the call ended, Xia Li sat in a state of mild desolation — especially because Yan Sishi had failed to suppress a laugh at her expense.

Yan Sishi said, “I’ll take you home.”

“…Are you serious?”

“Of course.”

Xia Li studied his face and found not a trace of anything playful.

She also knew he was not someone who often made jokes.

She felt, faintly, a stubborn refusal to accept this. She pushed herself off the sofa, swung a leg over, and sat directly in his lap, facing sideways and leaning into him. She leaned close and kissed him. “Really?”

He said, still: “Of course.”

The black sweater made his complexion look cool and pale — like clear frost, like thin snow. His eyes were the same.

He always seemed composed. He always seemed in control.

Xia Li leaned close again and held his gaze — then, feinting, dropped her head slightly and kissed him on the throat, right where his Adam’s apple was.

She heard a quiet, brief sound escape him.

Xia Li said nothing more. Borrowing a rush of courage while it lasted, she pressed her face into the side of his neck, and her hand moved lower.

He reached out instantly and caught her hand. A refusal.

“…I’m going to be upset,” she said softly.

He let go.

When she reached him, Xia Li startled and looked up quickly — and Yan Sishi had already turned his face away.

His skin, usually so pale, was flushed red behind his ear.

Xia Li laughed. “…You should have been an actor.”

Yan Sishi said nothing.

Xia Li tested a little further. He still tried to stop her — but he was apparently genuinely worried about her getting upset, so when she pulled against him, she broke free.

The lamplight was a warm yellow glow, as though it had lent the air two degrees of heat. The soft click of a metal clasp being pressed open rang out, crisp, like a violent spark dropped into kindling.

Xia Li watched as Yan Sishi tilted his head back against the sofa, his arm coming up to rest across his brow, lips pressed lightly together.

She rested her forehead against his shoulder.

She didn’t dare look. Didn’t dare open her eyes.

The heat had made her entirely at a loss — as though she had taken on a challenge that exceeded her abilities.

She simply improvised as best she could.

Until she heard Yan Sishi let out a soft sigh — the kind that sounded almost like resignation.

Then his hand closed around hers, and he began to guide her.

Xia Li caught a trace of fragrance at the collar of Yan Sishi’s sweater. She glanced up and saw the flush still lingering on his ear. Unable to help herself, she leaned close and pressed her face against it.

“…”

Yan Sishi had no choice but to turn her head with his hand and kiss her.

No one spoke.

Yan Sishi rested his chin on her shoulder, breathing rapid and uneven, a long time passing before it quieted.

Xia Li didn’t move. She wasn’t certain how much time had gone by.

Only that she had felt breathless enough that her lungs and chest seemed on the verge of bursting.

When Yan Sishi’s breathing had settled somewhat, he held her with one arm, straightened slightly, and reached for the wooden tissue box on the coffee table.

While he cleaned her hands, she kept her gaze averted.

Yan Sishi said, with something close to resigned patience: “Satisfied?”

She let out a quiet laugh and only then looked at him.

Afterward, Yan Sishi held her in his arms and said nothing more.

The air settled into a silence like still water.

After some time, Yan Sishi pressed a kiss to her cheek and said, “I’ll take you home.”

“…”

He laughed softly, and explained in a tone of genuine sincerity: “I can’t make a bad impression on your mother before I’ve even come to dinner at your house.”

The weight behind that sentence was real. It was the same seriousness he applied to any principle he had decided to uphold.

Xia Li finally nodded.

They lingered for another half hour before leaving.

Xia Li cursed how small Chucheng was. Drive however slowly they liked, and still, in what felt like no time, they had reached the entrance of the complex.

Right at the wire of the no-parking limit, Yan Sishi leaned across and kissed her. Perhaps because it felt like a countdown, this kiss had a quality of both abandon and incompleteness — everything and not quite enough.

Xia Li stepped out of the car, holding her bouquet. She backed up two steps, lifted her hand to Yan Sishi in a wave, and walked toward the entrance.

She went a few steps and looked back, then at the gate, raised her arm high one last time and waved. “Go home now!”

Upstairs, Jiang Hong was still up, sitting alone on the sofa watching television.

Xia Li was a little sheepish coming through the door.

Jiang Hong said, “…You’re back. I’m just going to trim my nails and then sleep.”

“Mm…”

Xia Li set her things down and went to shower first.

The bathroom filled with steam. She had already washed her hands — more than once — yet even now she felt as though the sensation of touch was still faintly present, refusing to fade, and she couldn’t stop herself from thinking too much, from worrying on behalf of her future self — would that really be all right?

After the shower, Xia Li poured herself a glass of water and went to lie down in her room.

She remembered the gift — she hadn’t opened it yet — and got up again to bring the bag back over.

Yan Sishi’s gifts always seemed to come in two parts.

One that was precious. One that was heartfelt.

The precious one was a pair of gemstone earrings — two cats, each in a slightly different pose, with green gemstones for their eyes.

The heartfelt one was a palm-sized flip book, which appeared to be hand-drawn by Yan Sishi himself.

Flipped quickly, it animated: a simple scene of a little cat playing with a ball of yarn.

On the last page, he had written a line:

Sometimes I think you’re like a fish. Other times, more like a cat.

The signature, as always: Yan.

Xia Li lay on her stomach on the bed and flipped through it again and again, delighted.

The “goodnight” she had sent to Yan Sishi had already been replied to:

Goodnight.