Shan Chong left after only saying, “Hello, Auntie. I’m Shan Chong.” Wei Zhi watched in disbelief as he walked away without looking back. Even the uncle they encountered coming downstairs to throw out trash probably said more than him.

This was Wei Zhi’s first bitter taste of the saying, “Husband and wife are like birds of the same forest; when disaster strikes, they fly away separately.” Ah, the cold realities of the world.

[Girl Chirp: You left so decisively. I should’ve put skis under your feet.]

[Chong: Didn’t want to keep the driver waiting.]

[Girl Chirp: But when you were being sarcastic to Dr. Han, the driver could wait forever?]

[Chong: That’s different.]

[Chong: That was your mom.]

[Chong: …]

[Chong: Maybe my future mom too.]

[Chong: How was I being sarcastic?]

“…”

Forget it. Damn, she could never win an argument with him.

Staring at the phrase “Maybe my future mom too,” Wei Zhi’s face reddened even more. The young girl followed Ms. Yang upstairs with her head lowered like a quail, her face so red it could fry a pancake.

Entering the apartment, she noticed how clean everything was despite her long absence. The bed sheets were changed, the clothes she had hurriedly thrown around while packing were gone, and the sofa cushions were neatly arranged. The water in the hydroponic plants was clear, obviously changed recently.

While changing into slippers, her head almost buried in her chest, she asked without looking up, “Why did you come?”

Ms. Yang tossed the vegetables she was carrying into the sink. “I originally thought about improving the dog’s diet, but now it seems unnecessary.”

Dog: “…”

Dog: “Don’t be like that. You’re even insulting yourself. I’m your flesh and blood after all—”

Dog: “…”

The current atmosphere was so awkward it could drip water. Indeed, some people can treat their mothers like sisters, sharing their girlish thoughts…

But Wei Zhi really couldn’t.

She had been so secretive that even announcing her boyfriend was done through a vague social media post: “Look if you want, fate will decide who sees it.”

Now she was truly panicking.

“I’m already 22 years old! Oh, Ms. Yang, please don’t make this so awkward. I feel like I’ve been caught in puppy love!” Wei Zhi collapsed onto the sofa, grabbing a pillow to cover her face. “How was I supposed to know you’d come!”

“You think I wanted to see that?” Ms. Yang snatched the pillow away from Wei Zhi’s face. Wei Zhi’s hair was a bit messy, and she looked up with pink cheeks at her mother, who had her hands on her hips. “You have the nerve! Right at the front door! On the stairs! Where neighbors are coming and going!”

“I thought it was work and school time, so no one would be there—”

“And then I saw it.”

“Who knew you were coming.”

“Oh, Wei Zhi, don’t give me that wronged look. How do you think I feel? I want to find a doctor to crack open my skull and rinse my brain! Your father, if he knew, wouldn’t know what to say. He might end up in the hospital with a brain hemorrhage from the shame…”

“You’re going to share this with Dad?!” Wei Zhi sat up, leaning on the sofa backrest, staring at the woman standing by the sink with her back turned. She cried out in despair, “Couples can have some secrets between them!”

“So you do know shame!”

“Of course, I know shame! Please stop talking about it!”

Ms. Yang suddenly turned around, “So who is that guy?”

Wei Zhi paused, then asked, “Doesn’t he look like the one in the video?”

Ms. Yang raised the half-cut lotus root in her hand as if to throw it, but thought better of it. She turned back, resuming her peeling while complaining, “I heard Dr. Han went to pick you up, but only brought back Nan Feng. Oh boy, Old Jiang was so happy, calling to ask me what happened, if the Han son-in-law was available for his family now… My head was hurting. Then I come back and see you at the bottom of the stairs—”

“Kissing,” Wei Zhi said numbly. “It was just kissing.”

Ms. Yang paused her peeling: “You met him while skiing?”

Wei Zhi: “Yeah.”

At least it wasn’t through some questionable means.

Ms. Yang continued peeling: “He’s so good-looking, how many girlfriends has he had before you?”

Wei Zhi: “Seems like I’m his first love.”

Ms. Yang let out a loud, scornful laugh to express how absurd she found this answer. She tossed the peeled lotus root into a bowl of clean water: “Be careful not to get tricked! These days, even good-looking men aren’t necessarily trustworthy—”

“I’m going to tell Dad you said he’s ugly.” Wei Zhi picked up her phone. “Besides, what do I have that someone could trick me out of? He’s better-looking than me, earns more than me, has better habits and conduct than me, and doesn’t like to waste money…”

“How long have you known him to know all this!”

“By observing with my eyes,” Wei Zhi said. “Unlike Han Yiming, whom I don’t want to observe at all.”

“We’ve observed him for twenty or thirty years, no need for you to observe.”

“Then did you observe that when he’s not working, he goes to clubs with Jiang Chao and others, letting princesses sit on his lap—”

“Wei Zhi, men always—”

“Shan Chong wouldn’t.”

In the ensuing silence, the young girl pouted and repeated with certainty, “Shan Chong wouldn’t.”

First, he wouldn’t waste that money.

Second, going to clubs is just about touching princesses’ hands, and hugging their waists…

These things, from fifty-year-old men to fifteen or sixteen-year-old girls, he gets in his classes. And when he touches them, they even pay him for it.

What a simple and honest person.

Hearing this, Ms. Yang fell silent. She tossed the peeled lotus root onto the cutting board and chopped it into small pieces with a few quick “thunks.” The clean and sharp cuts seemed less like chopping lotus root and more like chopping off her own daughter’s head.

“I give up on you. Just don’t come crying to me if you get tricked,” she said, but couldn’t help adding, “What does he do for a living?”

“He’s a retired national team athlete, now a ski instructor earning 6000 yuan per hour, the principal of a major domestic ski club, and a sponsored rider for various Chinese and foreign ski brands—”

Wei Zhi was still thinking of what else she could brag about.

“Has he won an Olympic gold medal?”

“… I beg you, before asking that, please Google whether China has ever won an Olympic gold medal in snowboarding. Asking that is embarrassing.”

“I don’t watch the Winter Olympics.”

“Oh, well, remember to watch next year. How can you not watch the Beijing Winter Olympics? Learn a bit so you can be ahead of the trend when talking to your old friends.”

Ms. Yang was chopping the lotus root when she suddenly realized that her daughter was so fluent and knowledgeable when talking about this man, even arguing with her—

In the past, when talking about these things, she would always stay quiet and let her mother talk. There was no interaction.

Holding the knife, she turned around to see Wei Zhi lying on the sofa with her phone, obviously on WeChat chatting with someone. Her typing speed was so fast her fingers were almost blurring…

Who knows what they were talking about that made her so happy?

When Han Yiming was mentioned, she always looked lifeless, never like this, like a girl with spring in her heart.

Ms. Yang was silent for a few seconds but ultimately said nothing.

Until Wei Zhi heard her stop chopping and looked up in confusion: “What’s wrong now?”

Ms. Yang: “He looks very young. Why did he retire already?”

Wei Zhi was stunned, not expecting this question… In that brief moment of intense sunlight, she had noticed he “looked very young,” but given Ms. Yang’s tone wasn’t very aggressive, she cautiously answered, “He fell once during training, and his family wouldn’t let him continue.”

Ms. Yang slightly narrowed her eyes, grasping the key point: “So his health is poor?”

Wei Zhi: “Think back to his skiing video and how he just picked me up and put me down wherever. Does that look like poor health to you?”

Ms. Yang didn’t want to recall either of those scenes, so she turned back to continue chopping her vegetables.

Amidst the chopping sounds, Wei Zhi continued sending her WeChat messages.

[Girl Chirp: My mom asked if you’ve won an Olympic gold medal. I almost cried from shock. Good thing you’re not in table tennis or diving, or we’d both be in trouble today.]

[Chong: …]

[Girl Chirp: …]

[Chong: You make me feel like I should come out of retirement and win a gold medal to melt down for your engagement ring.]

[Girl Chirp: Fun fact: Olympic gold medals aren’t pure gold.]

[Girl Chirp: Another fun fact: Engagement rings usually have diamonds.]

[Girl Chirp: You’re planning to propose with a ring that’s less than 1% gold?]

[Girl Chirp: Is it too late to break up?]

[Chong: It’s fine.]

[Chong: If I had one, I probably wouldn’t want to melt it down for you anyway.]

[Girl Chirp: …]

[Girl Chirp: I’m fighting tooth and nail with my mom for you, can’t you say something sweet?]

[Chong: Okay.]

And then there was nothing more.

Damn.

Jerk.

…

Wei Zhi stayed put in Nancheng for a few days.

She had a lot of free time.

The day after Shan Chong left, he video called to show her what the Guangzhou Sunac Snow World looked like—

The three Sunac Indoor Snow Worlds in Guangzhou, Chengdu, and Harbin are among the top indoor ski resorts in China and globally. Snow enthusiasts affectionately call them “big refrigerators.”

Among them, during the non-snow season in summer, the Guangzhou Sunac “big refrigerator” is undoubtedly the busiest and attracts the top skiers in the country.

Now that it’s snow season, everyone has scattered to natural outdoor ski resorts across the country, leaving the “refrigerator” unusually quiet.

Shan Chong gave her a tour, casually asking if she’d come to visit.

Wei Zhi gave an affirmative answer but couldn’t specify when. Her family seemed to be keeping her under observation, and running off now might lead to another scolding.

Having just passed New Year’s, she didn’t want to start the year with a lecture.

Seeing her hesitation, Shan Chong didn’t push. After all, once he finished his three-day course, he could go anywhere. It didn’t have to be her coming to Guangzhou… It’s just that being suddenly separated, facing only Bei Ci and Lao Yan, those rough guys, was a bit hard to bear.

When they were together, it was Wei Zhi who clung to Shan Chong. But now, separated briefly, she seemed carefree, eating and drinking as usual, updating her two unfinished works in her spare time, and living quite a fulfilling life.

Except that her new work wasn’t very popular yet, with fewer comments. Sometimes, a reader’s comment would stand out particularly—

Chapter One.

Fan: Oh, the author seems very familiar with pushing slopes. Must have pushed quite a few?

Chapter Two.

Fan: This male lead is reborn as a professional athlete. How about some technical content? A mid-jump fscord 540 shouldn’t be difficult. The author should understand what I’m saying, right?

Chapter Three.

Fan: Well well, insider here, vested interest, staying anonymous. So where did the artist get these power distribution analyses that are even more standard than snowboarding instructional videos… huh?

As we all know, a sentence doesn’t lose its aggressiveness just because it ends with a cute “huh?”

Wei Zhi felt like she had a sword of Damocles hanging over her head, thinking Shan Chong might laugh at her if he found out about this—

That would be bad enough, but if her drawings weren’t professional, wouldn’t that invite more mockery?

She regretted impulsively starting this project. As a beginner who had just learned backside box, how could she know about jump techniques? She had only recorded a few sentences when Shan Chong was teaching. Now that he wasn’t around, and Bei Ci, the main troublemaker who enjoyed the show, certainly wouldn’t tell her, she could only search for tutorials online…

How pitiful, her boyfriend was a god of snowboarding big air jumps, yet she had to go to Baidu for professional knowledge.

And she still couldn’t understand it.

Those online tutorials couldn’t explain the key points of power distribution clearly. She didn’t understand and couldn’t ask. Leaving a comment and waiting for the uploader to reply would take forever.

Stuck on professional knowledge, and not knowing how to proceed, the body structure seemed odd no matter how she drew it without knowing the power points…

She never imagined that the day she would miss her boyfriend most would be because she wanted to freeload his professional knowledge.

Of course, she wouldn’t tell him this.

On this day.

After sitting anxiously in front of the computer for at least twenty minutes, she got stuck on a technical line where the male lead needed to show off. In the plot, the male lead got into an argument with a teammate who had long looked down on him, and the male lead was preparing to perform a double cork, one of the more difficult techniques in snowboard jumping…

But how does one jump that?

Wei Zhi, of course, had no idea.

With a strawberry-flavored hard candy in her mouth, its sweetness numbing her cheeks, Wei Zhi drew and erased, erased, and drew, nearly pulling out all her hair. Finally, she took a deep breath…

What makes humans human is the precious quality of knowing when to retreat and bow one’s head in the face of difficulty.

She stared at her boyfriend’s WeChat for a minute, still comforting herself—

The comic only needs a double cork 900. I’ll just ask him about a 1080, and pad the data a bit. If asked later, I’ll say I inquired about 1080, this 900 is nobody’s business.

Having prepared herself mentally, Wei Zhi dialed Shan Chong’s WeChat voice call. She and Shan Chong followed the general rule for long-distance couples: if they could video chat, they would.

While Wei Zhi was still thinking of an excuse to ask her question, the video call was answered.

It was afternoon, and Shan Chong was indoors, but it didn’t look like Sunac. The background had some metal frames, and different muscular men were grunting and shouting…

Wei Zhi was stunned for three seconds before realizing the man was in a gym.

His hands were wrapped in bandages, and he was holding two resistance bands, weighing them: “What’s up?”

“…”

Look how cold he is, just because she hadn’t immediately gone to Guangzhou after hinting at it. What does he mean, “What’s up?” Making it sound like she only calls when she needs something.

Wei Zhi felt guilty for three seconds, then said sweetly, “Nothing, just missed you… You’re at the gym?”

“Mm.”

The man casually responded and started moving. Wei Zhi felt like a small pet he was carrying, getting a first-person view of various muscular men in the gym. Then the camera shook, and she was placed on some equipment rack—

But that wasn’t the main point.

The main point was when the camera turned to face the man, Wei Zhi lost her voice because she realized that he was only wearing a pair of black sweatpants on his lower half and his upper half…

Was very generously bare.

He must have been working out for a while before answering the call, as his arm muscles were in a blood-engorged, swollen state, with perfectly distributed muscle lines—

Thanks to the not-so-cold January weather in Guangdong and the hot, stuffy environment of the gym, the man’s sweat was flowing along the contours of his muscles…

Dripping into the waistband of his sweatpants.

When his lower back moved, there was a natural spinal depression below the fierce surgical scar, forming a new mysterious black Bermuda triangle with the waistband of his sweatpants—

Sweat slid down his spine, dripping into that area, then disappearing.

“…”

Wei Zhi had forgotten why she called in the first place.

“Gym Diary”?

Maybe.

She stared intently at the man as he tossed the resistance bands onto some equipment, turned to pick up a single dumbbell from the metal rack, and leaned forward with his other hand supporting him on the equipment seat.

His eyes calmly gazed ahead as he lowered his back. The taut lines of his back were like those of the world’s most beautiful leopard. At the same time, his pants also tightened due to this bending motion…

Wei Zhi had never touched.

Wei Zhi didn’t know.

It turned out her boyfriend had a Captain America-grade butt.

The taut thigh muscles and buttock lines were quite clear even through the sweatpants. When the man tightened his abs and core, his dumbbell-holding hand made a pulling motion. Along with the tightening of his biceps and triceps, his back and buttocks produced a subtle change in curvature…

Wei Zhi made a “crack” sound as the candy ball in her mouth rolled to the right side.

This tiny sound somehow reached someone’s ears. The man doing the pulling motion suddenly paused. Maintaining his position with one hand on the equipment, he turned his head.

Through the screen, he locked eyes with his girlfriend for a few seconds.

In the man’s impassive expression, Wei Zhi sensed his ill intentions. Biting on the candy ball, she spoke first with a blank face: “What are you looking at? I solemnly warn you, if you dare to end this video call, we’ll—”

Break up or whatever, as long as he ended the call quickly enough, she couldn’t threaten him.

Wei Zhi was silent for three seconds, looking at the phone in her hand that had returned to WeChat’s cold green interface. For a moment, she wanted to stuff her boyfriend into the phone and throw both out the window.

As if not content with infuriating her, he had to type more to twist the knife—

[Chong: If you want to look, come to Guangzhou.]

[Chong: Look all you want, touching is fine too.]

Wei Zhi: “…”

Wei Zhi: “?”

My pure boyfriend has gone bad, what should I do? Urgent, waiting online for answers.