Nan Chu quickly replied: What’s the benefit of quitting smoking?

Lin Luxiao leaned back in his seat, one hand holding the phone, the other propped on the window frame, the back of his hand pressed against his lips — a habitual gesture of his when thinking. After a long moment, he typed back quickly: It’s good for your health.

【Little Miss Troublemaker: …Quitting smoking kills my motivation. My reason to keep living. You have to give me a reason.】

Lin Luxiao frowned, just about to reply — and then immediately another message came in.

【Little Miss Troublemaker: Like — quit for one week and you have dinner with me. Quit for two weeks and we hold hands. Quit for a month… hmm…】

Lin Luxiao gave a scoff and almost laughed out loud. He tossed his phone onto the dashboard and couldn’t be bothered to reply.

The phone buzzed again.

He leaned on the window frame, back of his hand resting at his lips, and flicked a glance at it. Didn’t respond.

A moment later, it buzzed again.

He glanced back, furrowed his brow, and — a little irritably — reached out to grab the phone. He unlocked it, and the last message that jumped to the screen was a photograph: an iron basin with several premium cigarettes burning inside, half already turned to ash.

The teammate in the seat beside him caught sight of the photo and was genuinely stunned, craning his neck to look. “What the — who is that? Those cigarettes are worth several months of our pay combined.”

“A lunatic,” Lin Luxiao said, and shoved the phone back in his pocket.

……

After that day, Nan Chu genuinely quit smoking.

Over the following days, even on the busiest shoots, she would sit quietly to the side reading, and always kept a box of candy in her pocket — whenever the craving became unbearable, she’d pop a piece in her mouth. Even Shen Guanzong started to feel like this girl had hit her head and had a personality transplant.

Even when he held a cigarette out to her, Nan Chu ignored it.

Shen Guanzong had been puzzling over this for a while, thinking it was all quite strange. He took advantage of a pause in filming to sit down next to Nan Chu and interrogate her — only for the girl to shut him down with a single sentence: “Move further away — the smoke on you is triggering my cravings.”

“What the — how did you suddenly turn over a new leaf?”

“Cherishing my life.”

“Holy crap, you haven’t been diagnosed with lung cancer, have you? If you’re actually sick you need to tell the company! No matter what, we can’t give up on treatment!”

Nan Chu kept her head down, leafing through a Buddhist scripture. She waved her hand at him: “Go away.”

A few days later, Han Beiyao heard about this and paid a personal visit to the set. He sat under a canopy and observed for the entire day. Once satisfied that Nan Chu hadn’t touched a single cigarette, he shook his head in disbelief and gestured for Xi Gu, who was standing nearby, to come over. He kicked his feet up with an air of ease, leaning back in his chair, and studied the young woman standing before him — barely five feet tall.

The blazing sun at his back, the light coming from behind him, Han Beiyao actually noticed that this little woman was shaking.

Xi Gu had met the big boss for the third time. She honestly didn’t know why she was shaking — but looking at Han Beiyao’s handsome face, she really was a little scared. Probably because she’d been conditioned by Shen Guanzong’s constant threats.

Whenever anything happened with Nan Chu, Shen Guanzong would come screaming at Xi Gu at the top of his register:

“Do you know what the big boss used to do?! Do you?!”

“Do you know that doing this could cause trouble for the big boss?! Do you know how frightening the big boss gets when he’s angry?! I’ve worked under the big boss for years, and I’ve only ever seen him lose his temper once — and it left me too scared to set foot in his office for six months!”

“Nan Chu is the big boss’s last trump card! If anything happens to her — do you know the big boss will throw you into the sea to feed the fish?!”

Xi Gu had shrunk back: “K-killing someone is… illegal…”

Shen Guanzong gave a cold laugh: “In this company, the big boss IS the law!”

“……”

So now, seeing Han Beiyao in person, Xi Gu genuinely couldn’t stop her legs from shaking.

Han Beiyao took off his sunglasses. “Are you cold?”

Xi Gu drew in her neck: “No… not at all.”

Han Beiyao smiled, brows lifting. “Should I have someone bring you a padded coat?”

He wanted to smother her?!

Xi Gu shook her head frantically: “No no no, I’m very warm.”

Han Beiyao looked at her and smiled.

Xi Gu’s heart lurched. That smile was unsettling!

She said in a trembling voice: “B-big… Boss, I… I need to go… go touch up… Nan Chu’s… makeup.”

Han Beiyao: “……”

She stammers?!

Han Beiyao crooked a finger at Xi Gu. “Come closer.”

Xi Gu inched forward one step.

Han Beiyao frowned. “Closer.”

Xi Gu shuffled forward another tiny step.

Running out of patience: “Why do you act like I’m going to eat you?”

Forward, forward.

“Has Nan Chu been acting unusual lately?”

Xi Gu shook her head. “R-re-really not.”

“Can you straighten your neck out for me?”

“Okay.”

“I’ll ask you once more — has she shown any unusual behavior recently?”

Xi Gu was nearly in tears. “She r-really… hasn’t.”

Xi Gu was kept there by Han Beiyao, getting grilled for over an hour, until Nan Chu came looking for her and rescued her from his clutches.

Once Xi Gu had retreated, she asked the man lounging in the chair, “You’ve been very free lately?”

Han Beiyao watched Xi Gu’s fleeing figure with a thoughtful expression and answered obliquely, “I’ve just discovered your little stammerer is quite amusing.”

“Xi Gu?”

“Mm.”

“Stay away from her.”

“……”

Han Beiyao put his sunglasses back on, feigning surprise. “What’s this? You’re interested in that little girl?”

Nan Chu: “……She’s too pure for you.”

Han Beiyao dismissed it with ease. “Whether she’s suited or not is something you find out by trying — but don’t worry yourself over my affairs. You focus on filming well. I heard you quit smoking recently. Good — very wholesome. I hope you stay this wholesome. Girls are cuter when they’re wholesome.”

After Han Beiyao left, Nan Chu got a call from Lin Qi, inviting her out to a bar that evening.

Nan Chu declined; Lin Qi wouldn’t give up and kept coaxing her. “I just found a new place — incredible vibe, amazing décor, amazing drinks! Come on, come with me!”

Nan Chu firmly refused.

Lin Qi was utterly stunned. His friendship with Nan Chu was built entirely on a foundation of cigarettes and alcohol — the very definition of a drinking buddy. Nan Chu had an incredible palate for liquor; she was extraordinarily knowledgeable about it and had been since she was young. The bar owner in Milan had told him, when he first met her, that Nan Chu was the most gifted woman he’d ever seen when it came to tasting alcohol. Lin Qi’s curiosity had been piqued, and he’d struck up a conversation with her on a whim. It turned out she could really hold her liquor — and on top of that, she could identify six or seven spirits that had been blended together in one pour.

For her to say she was quitting drinking was like a prodigiously talented pianist announcing a career change to become a cook. Lin Qi simply couldn’t comprehend it. “Why?!”

“Cherishing my life. Staying away from cigarettes and alcohol.”

Lin Qi: “You suddenly wanting to live like this is scaring me.”

Nan Chu: “Lin Qi.”

“What?!”

“Let’s both be more wholesome.”

“……”

Nan Chu hung up. She was quiet for a moment, then composed a text message and sent it off.

……

At that moment, Lin Luxiao was away training new recruits. The fresh enlistees had charged in full of fire at the start, but one week of training later, every one of them looked like an eggplant that had been left out in the frost — wilted. That evening, Lin Luxiao gave them a lecture on military theory and firefighting knowledge. The recruits peppered him with questions: “Was it this bad when you first enlisted? Your first week must have been rough too, right? I feel like we’re actually pretty impressive — we’ve held on through so many drills.”

Lin Luxiao glanced down with a quiet laugh. He closed his book, dropped it on the lectern, and before he could even say a word, the drill instructor beside him jumped in: “You little turnips — if we threw you into Instructor Lin’s unit, not one of you would last a week before getting kicked out.”

The drill instructor pointed at the group and rattled off each of them in turn: “How many of you passed the weighted run this afternoon? You’re firefighters — the water hose you’ll carry in the field is heavier than the sandbag you ran with this afternoon!! When Instructor Lin’s unit first enlisted, do you know how many push-ups they did in a day? More than your whole week’s quota combined! Instructor Lin is going easy on you! You ungrateful lot — trying to haggle with your instructor?!”

Not a peep from the group below. There were still a few stubborn troublemakers who felt they hadn’t quite been convinced.

Lin Luxiao stood at the front of the room. The brim of his military cap shadowed half his face. His jawline was sharply taut, his features clean and precise. When he was serious, he was genuinely intimidating.

“I’m not going easy on you — this is the military. There’s no such thing as going easy here. Whatever rules you follow, everyone follows them. Every drill you complete will one day save your life in the field. You’re here to rescue people — don’t show up at the scene needing to be rescued yourself. As I’ve said before: since you chose this path, whether you can bear it or not, you bear it. A man who can’t carry this on his shoulders — should his wife and children carry it for him instead? When you enter the military, you give your life to the nation. Even if you’re a dragon, you coil yourself. Even if you’re a tiger, you lie down.”

At those last words, it was as if blood rushed to their heads. The recruits erupted in thunderous applause. Men always have a streak of heroism in them — one mention of defending the homeland and protecting their families, and in an instant they felt ten feet tall. That evening when they called their girlfriends, they all made sure to quote what Instructor Lin had said, suddenly feeling like paragons of manliness.

The new recruits all agreed this Instructor Lin was a real man through and through. Handsome on top of it — utterly cool. Even the most insubordinate troublemaker stood at crisp attention when he spotted Lin Luxiao and called out a respectful “Instructor Lin.”

Walking back to the dormitory, the drill instructor clicked his tongue admiringly: “You educated types really are something else — talk like that and you’ve got them eating out of your hand. They don’t even dare break wind!”

Lin Luxiao was scrolling through his texts, saying nothing.

The drill instructor pushed his shoulder: “How did the talk with the leadership go last time?”

“Exam next month.” Lin Luxiao kept his head down, fingers moving rapidly across the phone screen.

“Then it won’t be long before I’ll be calling you ‘commander.’ You’ve finally made it through.” The drill instructor clapped him on the shoulder and headed down a different path. “Alright — you rest up. I’m off to do roll call.”

Lin Luxiao returned to the dormitory, dropped his books on the desk, lay down on the bed with his feet kicked up, brow furrowed, turning over what the drill instructor had just said.

Before long, his phone buzzed again.

He reached over and grabbed it.

【Little Miss Troublemaker: One week no smoking. Requesting my reward.】

Lin Luxiao: Out of town training.

【Little Miss Troublemaker: Then once you’re back — dinner together?】

Lin Luxiao: We’ll see.

【Little Miss Troublemaker: Then it’s settled.】

Lin Luxiao: ……

【Little Miss Troublemaker: Your little brother just invited me out for drinks — I didn’t go. I even gave him a lecture on your behalf.】

Lin Luxiao: I’ll be back next weekend.

【Little Miss Troublemaker: So we’ll have dinner then — just the two of us?】

Lin Luxiao: Mm.

【Little Miss Troublemaker: Then I’ll pick the place.】

Lin Luxiao: One condition.

【Little Miss Troublemaker: ?】

Lin Luxiao set his feet down, sat up straight, dark eyes intent, lips pressed firmly together — and typed back with considerable seriousness:

Don’t dress like last time.