From the moment all of this had started, only his embrace had brought her peace.

Nan Chu had always felt there was some strange power in this man — when her heart was racing, when she was upset, she only had to find him and let him hold her, let him smooth her down, and everything became all right again.

She’d told herself she wasn’t frightened — but she was. She had a habit: in moments of panic she forced herself to appear calm. The instant she’d seen Lin Luxiao in the private room, her entire spine had gone rigid, cold sweat breaking through in waves, the white T-shirt beneath her leather jacket damp and clinging. She was afraid Lin Luxiao would misunderstand her.

He was such a principled man — how could he possibly accept this kind of history on her part?

And of course she was even more afraid that, because of her, he might be misunderstood by others.

Lin Luxiao held her, one hand resting reassuringly against the back of her head, his chin pressed gently down onto the crown of her hair. He pressed a little further down, pulling her tighter against him. Nan Chu understood — he was anxious too. So she held him tighter as well.

Feeling her respond, Lin Luxiao tilted his head and kissed the top of her hair. “The blood test results won’t be ready until tomorrow morning. Tonight I’ll wait in the car — we’ll go home together.” His chest rumbled as he spoke, steady and reassuring.

Nan Chu said quietly against him, “Mm.”

Silence settled around them. The two leaned into each other, both greedy for the warmth of the other’s arms.

After a long while, Nan Chu asked, “Where’s Lin Qi?”

He was quiet for a moment, said nothing, and only after a good while did he speak: “He’ll be held for a few days.”

“A few days?”

“Not sure. My friend said it depends on the dosage.”

A draft of wind came through the small window of the room. Nan Chu felt the chill of it, thought for a long time, and finally decided to tell him what she knew about Lin Qi.

She had met Lin Qi in Milan, and back then, he had already been smoking marijuana.

But at the time the two weren’t especially close — they were drinking companions of a sort, running into each other at bars occasionally and sharing a drink. They were both people down on their luck, and Lin Qi had taken to treating her as a nameless tree to lean on, telling her everything. He didn’t actually like the violin; he had no real talent for it, yet an agency had fashioned him into the image of a prodigious musical genius. It was a label he couldn’t carry and couldn’t sustain. He felt the world was impossibly hollow.

Everyone smiled at him to his face, then the moment he turned around, they’d stick a knife in his back. Or mock him for his image crumbling — proof that he was no genius at all.

Sometimes when he was walking down the street and saw people picking through garbage, he would stop and think to himself — how fortunate they are. At least they live without pretense.

He despised the mother who had pushed him onto this path, despised the father who had abandoned him. The only one he didn’t hate was his older brother.

He said his brother was a soldier. At the time Nan Chu never imagined that Lin Qi’s brother was Lin Luxiao. She had simply listened quietly as he spoke — saying he had always idolized his brother, worshipped him since childhood, followed him around like a shadow. Then their parents divorced, the custody was decided, and their mother said: your father doesn’t want you, so come with me.

He’d always known, really, that their father probably loved his brother a little more.

Nan Chu told all of this to Lin Luxiao, then added at the end: “According to him, he picked it up in England. It was his female landlord there — after your mother passed away, he and the landlord got together, and she was the one who got him started. Later I met him at a bar in Milan, and by then he was already planning to quit. I’m sorry. I should have told you sooner. Or I should have tried harder to talk him out of it.”

She apologized to him.

Lin Qi had once promised her that once he returned to China, he would never touch it again. In the beginning their relationship wasn’t all that close — mostly it was Lin Qi who liked to use her as a tree to lean on, and Nan Chu just listened. By nature she wasn’t the type to actively look after people. None of it had been her responsibility, she couldn’t even manage herself — she would never presume to manage someone else. So at the time, she hadn’t pushed the matter.

And then tonight, Jiang Ge had had someone call her, saying he’d spotted the kid alone at a bar, not in a good state, and worried he’d cause trouble.

Since the party that day, the two of them hadn’t seen each other for a long time. That phone call was just a pretext — Jiang Ge simply wanted to see her. Just one glimpse would do. A surge of impulse had rushed into his brain, so he’d had his assistant call Nan Chu.

Then after the assistant hung up—

Jiang Ge suddenly realized he hadn’t washed his hair in a while—

Was this blue suit the same one he’d worn last time?

So, before Nan Chu even arrived, Jiang Ge had already rushed out of the bar and fled back home.

All of this Nan Chu didn’t know. At this moment, Jiang Ge — under the influence of alcohol — was sound asleep, oblivious to the fact that by the next day, the world he’d wake up to would be turned completely upside down.

Lin Qi’s character had its flaws, yes — but that was not nearly enough of a reason for him to be using drugs.

Nine out of ten things in life go wrong. Others live hard lives too, and yet you don’t see them turning to drugs to relieve the pressure. The pleasure drugs give is dozens of times more powerful than anything the heart naturally provides. Some people can’t even give up sex — far less a chemical addiction. No matter how strong a person’s self-control, the moment they touch something like this, their life is destroyed.

That was more or less what Lin Luxiao had said at the time.

Afterward, Nan Chu sat alone in a chair against the wall for a long while, thinking. If she had tried harder back then, maybe Lin Qi wouldn’t be in this situation today. She had always lived too selfishly — no sense of responsibility toward society, toward family.

The room was empty, with a single incandescent bulb hanging down from mid-air.

The light and shadow cast a ring on the floor, a mottled glow that built this place into an abandoned city.

She had always felt that there were not so many upright people in this world — that it was self-interest that forged social bonds, and that people lived inside those bonds. The moment anything of real value was at stake, the chains of those bonds snapped immediately.

That was the value system that nearly twenty years of her mother and her surroundings had instilled in her.

Unless she liked it, cared about it, wanted it — everything else she shut out entirely.

Suddenly a sadness came over her. She curled herself against the wall, pressing her body in, like a silkworm cocoon that had just broken open.

She was so unlike Lin Luxiao —

He was principled, righteous, sharp-tongued — but his heart was good.

She suddenly understood, too, why he attracted her: everything she was drawn to in him was exactly what she lacked in herself.

· · ·

Early the next morning, as soon as Nan Chu’s blood test results came back, Da Hua called Lin Luxiao to come and collect her.

Lin Luxiao still hadn’t changed his clothes — still in the black windbreaker from the night before, zipper hanging open. He’d spent the night in the car and his eyelids had gone heavy with fatigue, dark circles forming in layers below. Stubble had sprouted along his jaw. The whole night’s ordeal had left his face looking oddly gaunt.

He’d barely slept at all.

Da Hua handed him the blood test report. “This time it’s real — your wife’s clean.”

Lin Luxiao took it and looked down. “Thanks. Where is she — I’m taking her.”

Da Hua reached to the side and pulled out another sheet. “Lin Qi’s came back too. Low dosage — he’ll get a fine and a week’s detention.”

Lin Luxiao gave a quiet sound of acknowledgment.

Just then, Nan Chu came out of the holding room. The girl looked a little worn out. She walked slowly toward him.

Lin Luxiao still had his head down, reading the report.

The hand hanging at his side was suddenly tugged, then taken up softly — someone’s palm pressing into his.

Lin Luxiao closed his hand around hers without looking up, eyes still on the document. “What is it?”

Da Hua felt like gouging his own eyes out.

So this was how the tyrant of the precinct behaved when he fell in love. Absolutely insufferable.

Nan Chu gave his hand a little squeeze, then gently pulled hers away. Lin Luxiao paused, and finally turned to look at her.

Nan Chu said: “My agency sent a car for me. I need to go.”

Lin Luxiao’s brow furrowed slightly; he instinctively glanced toward the entrance. “The car’s already here?”

Nan Chu nodded, looking at him. “It’s almost at the door. I have some things to deal with. Once this blows over, I’ll come find you.”

“All right.”

An unusually soft tone from him.

Nan Chu finished the formalities and left. Da Hua was still staring after her retreating figure when Lin Luxiao rolled up the report and gave him a sharp whack on the forehead. “What are you looking at?”

Da Hua muttered a curse. “I can’t even look?”

“What’s worth looking at.” Lin Luxiao gave a dismissive hum.

“She’s your wife — I’m not allowed to take stock? Come on. I heard from a colleague yesterday — an actress?”

Lin Luxiao put the report back on the desk. “I’d actually prefer she weren’t.” He said nothing more after that.

Da Hua knew his mood was off and thought better of teasing him further, closing his mouth with an awkward smile.

· · ·

Online, the persona of the genius pianist had already been blown to pieces some time ago.

News of Lin Qi’s drug arrest spread instantly through the entire entertainment industry’s gossip accounts — yet another actress, the one with the surname beginning with N, remained conspicuously unreported. The public’s fury concentrated itself onto Lin Qi, this slight young man.

Jiang Ge saw the news online the next morning, after sleeping off the alcohol. He nearly beat himself to death on the spot.

His two assistants stood calmly at the bedside watching their young master go berserk — throwing pillows, throwing blankets, punching and kicking the bed like a caged wild animal. It was only when he reached for an antique porcelain vase on the nightstand that the two finally stepped in to warn him: “One swing of that hand, sir, and you’re down two million. Grandfather will have your hand chopped off.”

Jiang Ge set it down with a muffled sound, then threw back his head and bellowed: “Call every gossip magazine and every tabloid account! Whoever keeps dragging Nan Chu’s name through the mud is picking a fight with the F&D Group!!!”

The two assistants exchanged a glance.

Jiang Ge bounced three feet off the bed: “Move it! And anyone who doesn’t listen — buy them out!”

Both assistants sighed in unison.

The young master had finally lost his mind—

· · ·

A week later, Lin Luxiao drove out to the detention center on the outskirts of the city.

Desolate suburb, the area around the center flanked by two abandoned factories, barely a soul in sight. Lin Luxiao leaned against the car door, smoking, every so often glancing over at the weathered green iron gate.

A wide, lonely sky. Ashen gray clouds — parted by a thin line of pale light.

A creak.

The green iron gate opened a crack.

A buzz-cut young man came out, one hand holding a black plastic bag, dressed head to toe in black.

The shaved head made his features a little clearer — the youthfulness still there, hard to fully conceal — but his eyes had gone darker than before.

Lin Qi came up to him and called out quietly, “Brother.”

Lin Luxiao didn’t look at him. Cigarette between his fingers, gaze fixed elsewhere, his voice very flat: “Don’t call me that—”

Lin Qi bit his lip, holding it in, and stayed silent.

Lin Luxiao put him in the car, started up, and pulled away — but took a turn in the wrong direction; away from the city center.

Lin Qi clutched the bag in his lap, a tremor of alarm going through him. “Where are we going?”

Lin Luxiao’s face was still, jaw set, not a trace of emotion on it.

When Lin Qi was young he’d loved trailing after Lin Luxiao — but even back then, when he’d occasionally misbehaved and gotten Lin Luxiao riled up, the stern face, the sharp brow — that expression had frightened him.

He’d always thought: if Lin Luxiao ever had a child, that child would be absolutely terrified of his father.

Lin Luxiao had both hands on the steering wheel. He gave Lin Qi a sideways look, then turned his gaze back to the road, steering slowly. Nothing.

The car moved along a mountain ring road.

On one side, a cliff; on the other, rock face. The road had seen little traffic in a long time. Boulders had rolled down across the path ahead, and Lin Luxiao steered around each one.

Lin Qi’s heart hung suspended.

Until the car pulled to a stop outside the Yanzizhang Martyrs’ Cemetery.

Lin Luxiao braked hard, pushed open his door, got out, and hauled Lin Qi out of the car without ceremony — dragging him inside.

Lin Qi had probably guessed by now what he intended to do.

His heart hammered with dread. His collar was gripped so tight he could barely breathe, the last air in his chest wrung out; the hand holding his collar never loosened — not until they arrived in front of a gravestone.

Lin Luxiao let him go.

Lin Qi was free — the taut wire strung through his chest finally snapping. He staggered back, found his footing, and doubled over, hands braced on his knees, gasping in great lungfuls of air.

There was no one else here. Except for the unit’s yearly memorial visit, few ever came.

The wind howled across the mountain.

Every breath was cold. Lin Qi was choked by several gulps of it, covered his mouth, and looked up.

On the gravestone, a kind face smiled gently back at him. It was their grandfather.

Lin Hengzhi had been a soldier in the Korean War. The era when men shed blood for their country had long since faded from common memory; the surviving veterans were growing fewer and fewer, and when a handful of old soldiers occasionally gathered, they would sigh together — each meeting was a farewell of sorts, and each year the group photos seemed to be missing one or two more faces.

Now the world was at peace, and many had long forgotten that history. When Lin Hengzhi was alive, he had loved telling his two grandsons stories from the resistance war — including the story of the platoon leader who had died saving his life.

The line Lin Hengzhi always repeated was: “We weren’t afraid of hardship, or exhaustion, or even death — we were only afraid of dying before we could keep the flag flying straight.”

Lin Qi broke down at once.

He couldn’t hold it in. He crumpled down onto his haunches, covering his face, and sobbed in heaving, wrenching cries.

Lin Luxiao steadied himself and his voice went heavy. “Do you have any idea how many anti-narcotics police are killed every year?”

Lin Qi wept harder, tears streaming down his face.

The mountain wind surged in, and Lin Luxiao’s voice grew heavier still — as though it came from somewhere beyond the light.

“Do you know why fallen anti-narcotics police can’t have marked graves?”

Lin Qi wept on, face buried in his hands.

“Because they’re afraid drug traffickers will track down the grieving families who come to pay their respects — and take revenge on them!”

“Do you know how much of those officers’ blood is in every puff of marijuana you smoke?!”

“Do you know how many families you’re destroying, every single time you take a hit?!”

By the end, Lin Luxiao’s face had gone dark and still — as though he had given up. He glanced down at Lin Qi, and the cold in his eyes went all the way through.

“People call this a time of peace — do you have any idea how many places in this world are still ravaged by war? You’ve traveled to so many countries. You’ve seen the prosperity of the peaceful world, and you’ve seen firsthand how capitalism operates. You could’ve at least taken a detour to visit the frontier! Go and look — go see the soldiers who stand guard in wind and snow on border posts year after year! Do they not have families?!”

The things they guard with their lives —

You trample on them like this.

Lin Qi. You have truly disappointed me.

At the end of it, Lin Luxiao rubbed a hand over his face, drew a slow breath, and laughed at himself bitterly: “Ten years of drinking ice water — yet the blood stays warm. And then you go and cool me clean through.”

That last part — he really did mean it.

“What was it Grandfather always used to say.”

Lin Qi was truly broken — weeping so hard he’d collapsed to the ground, prostrate. He knew he had done wrong. He knew Lin Luxiao would not forgive him. And he realized, kneeling there, just how cowardly he was — he couldn’t even say the words “I’m sorry.”

Without waiting for an answer, Lin Luxiao spoke again: “Every inch of the rivers and mountains is soaked in blood; ten thousand young men become ten thousand soldiers.”

That was the old rallying cry of the resistance war soldiers.

Lin Hengzhi had even had it written as a couplet and hung it on the door of his study, so he could see it every single day before he was at peace.

“This is not how a man lives.”

· · ·

Lin Luxiao was driving home when, before the car had even come to a full stop, he spotted a girl standing downstairs.

Nan Chu — long skirt under a coat, her bare legs exposed — was shivering in the cold wind, arms drawn in tight. When she saw his headlights sweep across the entrance, she came running over, tap-tap-tap, and knocked on his car window.

She said, bright and clear: “I’m here!”