All loving unions, impermanent, cannot last long. Life is filled with fear; a life more fragile than morning dew.

From love arises sorrow; from love arises fear. For one who is free from love, there is neither sorrow nor fear.

— The Diamond Sutra

Just before dawn, Nan Chu jolted awake from a dream, her body drenched in cold sweat.

The room was unlit, the curtains drawn tight, everything pitch black. She pushed herself up and leaned against the headboard, reaching out to feel for the cigarettes and lighter on the nightstand.

Scritch — a flame flickered to life in the darkness, then quickly died. Smoke drifted and spread; the ember at her fingertip pulsed between bright and dim.

Nan Chu smoked, her eyes half-closed, thinking.

After a moment, she grabbed her phone from the nightstand and tapped out a few quick words.

“I dreamed about him again.”

It was four-thirty in the morning. The reply came fast: “What were you dreaming about him doing?”

“Making love.”

“Stop overthinking. You’re just pent up — you need a man.”

Nan Chu read it calmly, cursed at the phone under her breath, tossed it aside, leaned back against the headboard, and closed her eyes. She began replaying the dream.

A man, bare-bodied. Bronze skin. Muscles taut, lines clean and fluid. A buzz cut — short, jet-black hair. And those eyes: seemingly effortless, yet deep and fathomless.

……

At six-ten, her manager Shen Guanzong arrived with an assistant. “Get up, time for makeup.”

Nan Chu climbed out of bed and bent down to find her slippers. Shen Guanzong kicked one over to her. “You’re joining the crew today. Have Xi Gu help you pack up.”

As he said it, he nudged a young girl forward.

Nan Chu squinted at her while slipping on her shoes. An unfamiliar face. She said lazily, “New?”

Nan Chu had originally worked as a model. Earlier that year, she’d been signed by Jiahe. She wasn’t particularly famous, and she’d already gone through three or four assistants — it was unclear whether the previous ones simply hadn’t gotten along with her, or whether Nan Chu herself was just difficult to work with.

“Intern assistant and makeup artist.”

Shen Guanzong had done nothing for the past three months except hunt for assistants on her behalf. Just thinking about it made his blood boil. He rolled his eyes and warned her: “Could you please try to get along with people? Is that too much to ask?”

An assistant who was also a makeup artist — after all, you couldn’t find a deal that good anywhere else.

Nan Chu shrugged and studied the young girl for a moment. Straight-cut bangs, a baby-doll top and short skirt. She asked pleasantly, “How old are you?”

“Twenty-one.”

“What’s your name?”

“Xi Gu.” The girl answered each question honestly and directly.

Nan Chu raised an eyebrow. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

Xi Gu blinked, caught off guard by such directness. “Not… yet.”

“You look so little.” The girl was still quite shy — a single compliment and her face went red. Nan Chu pinched her cheek. “Off you go.”

Xi Gu, unable to handle the teasing, fled with a flushed face.

Shen Guanzong finished his phone call and turned around. Seeing this, he assumed Nan Chu had pulled some mischief again. He puffed up and shouted, “Director Han personally found her for you — if you scare her off, I really won’t be responsible for you anymore!”

Nan Chu spread her hands. “What are you getting worked up about? I’m not going to eat her.”

Xi Gu, still packing Nan Chu’s bag, quickly looked back. “Guanzong-ge, Nan Chu-jiejie is really very nice.”

Nan Chu winked at her.

The girl truly couldn’t handle being teased and didn’t dare look at Nan Chu again.

“I don’t care about the rest of it — I just ask one thing: stop picking fights with Director Han. If you really push him too far and he blacklists you, can you even survive in this industry?”

Nan Chu tossed her lipstick into her makeup bag, checked herself in the mirror, pressed her lips together a couple of times, and said, “Sure.”

Two clean, crisp syllables — yet somehow they made Shen Guanzong’s skin crawl.

Just before heading out the door, Xi Gu was pulling the suitcase when Nan Chu suddenly said, “Hold on.” She turned back into the room, pulled something from the nightstand drawer, and told Xi Gu to open the suitcase.

Xi Gu held the pack of condoms, unsure where to put them, until she heard from above: “Tuck them in the side pocket.”

Xi Gu did as she was told, blushing furiously, then quickly zipped the suitcase shut.

Only then did Nan Chu say with satisfaction: “Let’s go.”

Later, in the car, Nan Chu explained to Xi Gu: “If someone drags you into the bushes and assaults you, and you can’t escape — what do you do?”

“……”

“Hand him a condom. Safer than anything else.”

Xi Gu: “……”

Three days into joining the crew, and even Xi Gu could see it — the cast still hadn’t fully assembled, and this was a thoroughly unprofessional production.

The set crew was always grabbing the wrong props. The cinematographer’s hands were always shaking. The actors could never remember their lines. The director was always calling cut. Except for the director, everyone else in the cast was a newcomer, so the adjustment period was inevitably longer than on other sets.

By the third day, the director was sitting in the studio smoking a gloomy cigarette, utterly drained of the will to go on.

Nan Chu was playing the second female lead — not many lines. When she wasn’t needed on set, she sat to the side and read. Xi Gu quickly came to realize that Nan Chu wasn’t actually difficult to get along with; she simply couldn’t be bothered to manage the social dynamics.

Nearly everyone on set was a newcomer, all busy greeting each other, trading WeChat contacts, following each other on social media. Nan Chu was the most unbothered of all — reading her book, playing on her phone.

The director looked her over more than once and decided she was the most soothing presence on set. She didn’t drag her feet during filming, got into character quickly, and in her downtime she read books and cultivated her mind. Girls with such a calm, even temperament were rare these days.

Nan Chu read widely — all sorts of things.

One day, the director saw Nan Chu with a copy of The Decameron, and sat down beside her in the shade of a tree. “You enjoy Boccaccio’s novels?”

The director was a proper, composed man.

Nan Chu glanced at him, pressed a corner of the page with her index finger, and turned to the next one. “It’s quite good.”

“Yes, Boccaccio portrays human nature very well — take the ninth story, for instance…”

The director spoke at length, and revealed himself to be a man of real ideas, his analysis thorough and perceptive.

Nan Chu listened to the end. “I read it at a shallow level.”

“Oh?”

“Mainly for the sex scenes.”

“……”

The director quietly stood up.

His expression was that of a man who had just watched a Thomas the Tank Engine roll past.

Xi Gu occasionally overheard gossip about Nan Chu.

“She has no father.”

“She had scandal after scandal with men starting at eighteen. Such a loose woman.”

“I saw her just the other day discussing erotic literature with the director.”

And the same people who said these things would turn around and smile at Nan Chu — just like acting. The moment the director called cut, the expression would vanish instantly. Xi Gu hadn’t expected people to deploy their performances with such ease in everyday life.

Nan Chu, by contrast, seemed like she didn’t quite belong.

She never gossiped about anyone, never discussed rumors, and was indifferent to the world.

Just as the world was indifferent to her.

That day, Nan Chu and Xi Gu were chatting in the shade when Shen Guanzong came looking for them: “Xiao Xi, go touch up the makeup for those actresses over there.”

Xi Gu flinched as if by instinct. “No.”

Shen Guanzong hissed and crossed his arms, frowning. “Rebelling, are we?”

Xi Gu glanced at the actresses in the distance, then bowed her head and said nothing.

Nan Chu touched the top of her head gently. “What happened? Did they say something to you?”

“No.”

“Then don’t be petty about it. Go help them with their touch-ups.”

“But there’s already a makeup artist on set,” Xi Gu said stubbornly.

“Do it as a favor,” Nan Chu said.

Xi Gu stood up reluctantly. Nan Chu ruffled her hair again: “Be good.”

Ten minutes later, Xi Gu came back from doing the touch-ups.

“Tell me then — what did they do to upset you?” Nan Chu said, drinking her coffee.

Xi Gu sat down beside her. “They were talking badly about you behind your back.”

Nan Chu nearly spat out her coffee. She reached out and patted the back of Xi Gu’s head, laughing softly. “Little girl, you’re quite the loyal one.”

“Doesn’t it bother you?”

She was unconcerned. “Why should it?”

People’s hearts differ just as their faces do.

Nan Chu truly didn’t care — even her gaze was indifferent.

Xi Gu felt as though even the sunlight at their backs had turned cold.

“In this world, apart from life and death — what isn’t someone else’s business to meddle in?”

“Xi Gu — you can’t shut other people’s mouths. So cover your own ears instead.”

That evening, Yan Dai — a fellow actress at Nan Chu’s agency, playing the third female lead — had an allergic reaction. Her face broke out in red, swollen blotches, and she went sobbing to the director. The director had already been on edge about the filming schedule, and now faced with yet another holdout, he was in no mood to be kind: “What on earth did you eat to cause an allergy? If you want to be an actress, have some self-discipline.”

Yan Dai wept. “I didn’t eat anything!”

The director snapped impatiently: “Then what did you do? How is it only you? No one else is like this?”

Yan Dai pouted, deeply aggrieved: “All I did this afternoon was have Nan Chu’s assistant touch up my makeup! I didn’t do anything else!”

Nan Chu looked at Xi Gu. The latter spread her hands, the picture of innocence.

That night, Yan Dai’s face swelled worse and worse. Nan Chu and Shen Guanzong rushed her to the hospital in the middle of the night.

After the doctor examined her, the diagnosis was a dust allergy. “What did you put on your face?”

Yan Dai burst into tears with a loud wail.

The doctor frowned. “A few days of medication and you’ll be fine. What’s there to cry about?”

Yan Dai stopped crying. She sniffled twice. “Really?”

“Obviously.” The doctor rolled his eyes.

Shen Guanzong grabbed Xi Gu and dragged her out to the hallway. “What did you put on her?”

“I really didn’t put anything on her.”

“Nonsense!” Shen Guanzong crossed his arms, eyes wide, stabbing a finger at her hard twice. “Do you want to lose your job?!”

Xi Gu was frantic now, eyes swimming with tears: “I really didn’t do anything to her. You told me to touch up her makeup, and I did. How was I supposed to know she had a cosmetics allergy?”

Before she’d finished speaking, someone pulled her to the side. Nan Chu leaned against the wall, her clear, calm eyes looking at Xi Gu, but her words were aimed at Shen Guanzong: “Stop trying to pin the blame on someone every time something goes wrong. I believe her.”

With Nan Chu pulling her aside, Xi Gu’s field of vision opened up, and at the far end of the corridor stood a figure.

The person was in civilian clothes — tall and solidly built, like a pine tree standing straight and proud. He was half-hidden in the darkness, wreathed in cigarette smoke, leaning against the wall and smoking.

A draft swept through the corridor, and the smoke scattered, drifting this way.

Nearby, Shen Guanzong was losing his mind: “One after another — are you all trying to mutiny?!”

Xi Gu was still quietly explaining: “Guanzong-ge, it really wasn’t me. If you don’t believe me, you can have someone check my makeup bag.”

Nan Chu’s gaze locked into place.

At the far end of the corridor, one cigarette died out. The man reached into his pocket, pulled out another, bent his head to light it. In the darkness, the light flared for an instant and went out, leaving only a single ember glowing in the shadows.

He leaned against the wall, exhaling smoke, his head bowed as he turned the lighter over in his fingers.

As if waiting for someone.

Shen Guanzong couldn’t make heads or tails of things with Xi Gu either. He figured the girl probably hadn’t had the nerve to do anything, but still felt she ought to apologize to Yan Dai, so he dragged Xi Gu back inside.

Nan Chu waited by the door for a moment.

The figure seemed frozen in place.

Out of patience, she’d just turned to leave when a voice came from behind her: “Commander Lin!”

Nan Chu turned back.

The sound of high heels clicking against the floor rang through the empty corridor.

A female doctor in a white coat jogged in small steps toward that figure. The man stood a full head taller than her. She tilted her head back, her voice gentle: “Have you been waiting long?”

The figure finally straightened up and stepped out of the darkness — and a clean-cut, spirited face emerged.

His shadow stretched long across the floor.

He had a lean face, a sharp and neat short hairstyle, deeply set brows and eyes, eye corners that curved slightly upward, a strong nose, and a tight jaw that looked even more rigid beneath a military uniform. When he joked around with you in an offhand way, the corners of his eyes would lift slightly, carrying a kind of unruly ease — and you could never quite tell what was going on in his mind.

There was something roguish about him, and something upright. Yet the two qualities didn’t contradict each other in the slightest.

Lin Luxiao stubbed out his cigarette, dropped it into the nearby trash can, shoved his hands in his pockets, and said, “Just got here a little while ago.”

The dim corridor wrapped around his voice, making it sound even more rough and cool.

“Why are you wearing this uniform?”

“Just came from a meeting.”

The female doctor smiled. “You still look better in this. Come on, I’ll take you.”

The two sets of footsteps gradually faded into the distance.

Nan Chu crouched on the floor, lit a cigarette, took a drag, tilted her head back, and slowly exhaled a ring of smoke, watching it diffuse into pale, bluish wisps, thinking: Time really does pass fast. Five years already.