The weather had turned cold. The night wind was quiet — only the leaves rustling faintly in the treetops.

Lin Luxiao sat in the car without a word, watching her through the glass faintly misted with vapor. It had only been a few days, yet somehow Nan Chu seemed to have gotten more beautiful.

He didn’t have a particularly defined idea of beauty in women.

Big eyes, small lips, a straight nose — none of it amounted to a meaningful standard for him.

When the brothers were out drinking together, Da Liu would always point to this one and say she was gorgeous, that one had long legs and a narrow waist — and Lin Luxiao would look over and think, she’s fine, I suppose.

He used to think this girl was fine-looking. The longer he looked, the better she looked. And lately—

Every time he saw her, she seemed to have gotten more beautiful — though he had never once admitted it to Nan Chu’s face, and never would.

Coming back from the martyrs’ cemetery, he still hadn’t fully settled his feelings. Since Lin Qi’s situation had come to light, he’d been noticeably quieter these past few days — rarely smiling. Da Liu and the others all knew he was having a rough stretch, and no one dared disturb him.

Even at the station he’d lost his temper a few times. That kind of suppressed grief had nowhere to go.

He lowered his head and drew two long breaths, doing his best to push the emotion down and process it himself.

Nan Chu already blamed herself for what had happened to Lin Qi. If he showed even the slightest wrong note, the girl was perceptive enough that she’d end up blaming herself all over again.

The girl outside, seeing no response, stepped quietly to the side and waited.

Lin Luxiao sat where he was, pressed his lips together, drew a breath through his nose, let it out, gathered himself, glanced out the window, picked up his keys, and pushed open the door.

Nan Chu was standing beside the car. Her coat reached her knees; the short stretch of leg below was bare, nothing on it, and she was hunched into herself, shivering.

Lin Luxiao stood with his arms folded, leaning against the car door, and stared at her for a long moment. Then he lowered his head and laughed — just once — and the darkness in his face began to lift.

· · ·

Lin Luxiao brought Nan Chu upstairs, nearly pushing her into the apartment.

A draft of wind seeped in through the window gap, pressing in bit by bit. The room too had a chill to it. Nan Chu stood at the door, stamped her feet, rubbing her arms, and started to grumble: “How is it so—”

Her lips were sealed shut.

The lights were still off. Just a faint pale wash of moonlight.

Two figures tangled in the entryway — Lin Luxiao pressing her against the door, kissing her. He caught her earlobe between his teeth. She naturally slipped her arms around his neck and leaned into him.

Her willingness made Lin Luxiao even less able to control himself; the force behind his hands grew, and through the layers of fabric — a hard, possessive grip.

Nan Chu winced. Her hands hung from his neck. The man pressing against her was blazing hot, like iron.

She grew a little worried and pressed her forehead to his. “You’re burning up.”

Lin Luxiao was beyond paying attention to anything else. He simply scooped her up and set her on the nearby cabinet, lowering his head to press light, slow kisses along her neck. His voice had gone husky with desire. “I’ve been thinking about you.”

Nan Chu’s heart trembled. She tilted her head back and let him kiss her, both hands cradling his head where it was buried in the curve of her neck.

The room was perfectly still. Outside was nearly silent too — an occasional engine noise drifting past, then quiet returning. Inside, a current of warmth rose between them, every small sensation perfectly timed.

Nan Chu strongly disliked the smell of a man’s sweat and breath.

Sometimes after long days on set with mixed smells pressing in from all sides, she wanted to gag.

But strangely—

Lin Luxiao’s sweat and scent she found entirely comfortable, especially at moments like this.

She savored it, fingers threading into his hair, running through the damp close-cut strands — she couldn’t get enough.

“To the bedroom?” he murmured close to her ear.

Nan Chu nodded with a quiet sound of assent.

Lin Luxiao suddenly hoisted her off the cabinet with one arm, slung her over his shoulder, and carried her into the room.

He dropped her onto the bed.

He bent down, wrapped his hand around her foot, dragged her toward him, pinned her beneath him, kissed her — and as he kissed her, began working open his own buttons, one by one, slowly and deliberately—

The clothes fell to the floor.

His chest, hard as stone, pressed firmly against her. Lin Luxiao looked down at her, and slowly lowered himself—

Nan Chu shuddered as if a current had run through her, her whole body going soft and tingly. She stretched up on her toes, eyelashes trembling. Last time could only be called half-done — that first time, he’d discovered that Nan Chu’s sensitive spot was her neck. Now he seemed to have found a new one: the shoulder and neck together.

He watched the girl’s reaction with wicked delight and gradually increased the pressure.

Nan Chu begged. “Stop, stop—”

In the intimate arts, men learn without instruction — everyone’s seen enough to pick up a thing or two, and variations come naturally.

That first time had truly been a case of the girl being too overwhelming for him, and he’d lost control before he could stop it.

But having explored that territory once, he’d at least gained some footing — enough to recover a measure of masculine dignity.

Nan Chu, new to all of this, was nonetheless surprisingly open about it — the trailing sounds she made in the heat of it were enough to make Lin Luxiao lower his head and press his lips to hers to contain them, afraid someone would hear. “Keep it down.”

Nan Chu seemed to make a game of defying him — each time louder than the last, as though performing.

Lin Luxiao held himself up on his arms and looked at her with something between exasperation and helpless laughter. “Does it really feel that good?”

The girl lay flat on her back, hair fanned out around her, skin luminously pale, brows and eyes all soft warmth, smiling. “It really does!”

He braced both hands on either side of her.

Hearing her answer so composedly, so matter-of-factly, he suddenly lowered his head and laughed — then got up from the bed in his bare skin, turned on the TV, brought the volume up to eighty, and shut all the doors and windows.

He climbed back onto the bed, knelt over her, grinning wickedly. “Right then. Your wish.”

Now that there was nothing left to provoke him, Nan Chu only managed a few muffled whimpers — which made him all the more determined.

That wicked grin of his, eyes full of trouble.

Nan Chu instinctively tried to inch backward — he pinned her shoulders and pulled her back.

· · ·

He held himself above her, watching her, his voice low as he murmured into her ear.

Nan Chu winced, brow creasing, a sharp gasp — she reached up and bit down on his shoulder. “You’re terrible.”

He held himself up with one arm, looking down at her, smoothing the sweat-damp hair back from her ear and tucking it behind it, then lowered his lips to her brow, and acknowledged it unhurriedly: “Mm. I’m terrible.”

Nan Chu made a point of doing the opposite of whatever he wanted.

If he told her to be quiet, she made noise. If he wanted her to make noise, she was silent.

The two of them fell into a kind of drawn-out contest, neither willing to yield.

The room was dark, curtains drawn, an air of drowsy heat drifting through it — and the television, screen glowing blue, played one song on repeat.

The man’s low, husky voice filled the room where they lay entwined:

“It’s all your fault for falling for me so easily — letting me, without even noticing, revel in the vanity of being loved. It’s all your fault, the way you indulge people — it’s a kind of temptation…”

Every sensation heightened — it was as though a wave had passed through her, and he moved against the current.

Lin Luxiao looked down at her, a tremor running through him, and tilted his head back with a low, muffled sound.

The way a man voices his pleasure — quiet and deep — is truly something else. Nan Chu half-closed her eyes, offering the compliment without hesitation: “That’s a very good sound.”

He ignored her and reached to the head of the bed for an alarm clock, set the time, and placed it on the pillow beside her.

“Timer.”

Nan Chu couldn’t help but laugh. She waved a hand dismissively. “I honestly don’t care — you don’t have to deliberately drag it out—”

Lin Luxiao flipped her over, one hand pressing on the small of her back, voice low: “I care.”

It wasn’t just him — every man cared about this.

Nan Chu was nearly driven to the brink.

· · ·

The room was filled with the sound of shattered sighs.

The music behind them played on without end, the beat deep and heavy.

“It’s all your fault — your devoted dream like a spell, and having been loved by you, who could I ever burn for again…”

Lin Luxiao tucked a pillow beneath her. The girl’s eyes were already clouded with haze. He bent close and pressed a kiss to her damp, sweat-beaded brow.

Nan Chu called his name softly. “Lin Luxiao.”

“Mm?”

“Listen to the song.”

He kissed the girl in his arms. “I’m listening.”

This song really was fitting.

It was Zhang Yu’s song — All the Moon’s Fault.

It was the only pop song he knew by heart besides military anthems.

She didn’t know that once, when he had been providing support in an outlying county and couldn’t get back home for the New Year, a group of the boys had sat with the director around a small coal stove, huddled in a circle, and this was the very song they’d sung. At the time he hadn’t felt much — but a few of the soldiers around him had burst into tears, saying they missed their wives.

The director had asked him: do you miss your wife?

He’d tilted his head and laughed, answering without thinking: “My wife? My wife is probably still being breastfed.”

The director had glared at him: “What nonsense are you talking!”

Lin Luxiao had stopped laughing, straightened his expression, and said, off the cuff: “My wife is this uniform I’m wearing.”

That one line had instantly reduced a few newly enlisted soldiers to tears. The director, rather moved himself, had patted him on the shoulder: “You’ll go far, kid.”

Back then he’d truly known nothing of love between a man and a woman.

But now, hearing this song again — in these circumstances of all things — he at last understood something of what those soldiers had been feeling. Yet knowing himself, even if he were moved, he’d never crumple sobbing against another person the way those new recruits had.

“I confess it’s all the fault of those vows — sweet as honey and sugar, the most moving words ever spoken; even a heart of iron bends soft as silk…”

A man’s tenderness, when it catches you unguarded, is truly what moves the heart most.

The music wove around them—

“What kind of feeling — what stirring of the heart — would make two people pledge their very lives to each other…”

This was an act of love brought to its fullest.

· · ·

Afterward, the music still hadn’t stopped — it had been on repeat for two hours.

The sky had gone dark, the night outside deepening like a heavy curtain drawn across everything, and at the horizon a curved sliver of moon traced a line of faint pale light that fell into the room in scattered patches on the floor.

Lin Luxiao turned on the lamp, its sound turned low. Nan Chu glanced at the alarm clock.

The hands pointed to eight o’clock.

Two hours — a full two hours. The second time had been shorter, because the girl in his arms had been crying so hard he couldn’t bring himself to go on.

Lin Luxiao lit a cigarette, leaned against the headboard smoking, and pulled her toward him, wrapping her inside his arm, fingers playing idly with her hair, and delivered his verdict like a judge: “The girl’s got decent stamina.”

Nan Chu immediately pinched him in the chest. “Got what you wanted, now you’re gloating?”

Lin Luxiao laughed softly. “But you still need more exercise — a few rounds and the tears were already coming.”

“They were not.”

Lin Luxiao reached over and squeezed her cheek, grinning wickedly. “Never mind, train more — once you’re up to standard, I’ll aim to bring you home before the end of the year.”

Nan Chu blinked. “As if I’d want that.”

“Mm, you wouldn’t want that.” The man turned away to flick his ash, giving her a sidelong look.

Nan Chu looped her arms around his neck and pressed upward. “Even with Commander Meng’s attitude, you’d still manage to bring me home? Aren’t you afraid your dad will beat you?”

Lin Luxiao considered that for a moment and grinned wickedly. “What if we do it first and sort out the paperwork later?”

Nan Chu went quiet. “Do you like children?”

Lin Luxiao thought about it carefully. “Yes.”

He genuinely did. Before he’d joined the army, when he was still a kid himself, he’d found children annoying. In high school, every New Year’s his house would fill up with a noisy crowd of little ones — squealing, pushing, rearranging his tank and airplane models into a complete mess — and he’d genuinely wanted to pick them up and throw them all into the lake outside the front door.

Then he joined the military and his perspective shifted. His patience grew. So did his capacity for care.

Sometimes the thought of a tiny life babbling away at you in its own incomprehensible language, perfectly content in spite of not being understood — he found that genuinely lovely. Children: pure joy and grief and temper, all from the heart.

He reached over and ruffled her hair, then said, unbothered: “If you don’t want one, it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to push you.”

And with that, Lin Luxiao got up from the bed in his bare skin, went to shower, pulled on a T-shirt, and came out to cook.

Nan Chu, feeling as though both her legs had been rendered useless, lay sprawled on the bed for a while before she finally managed to get up and rinse off. She fished a button-up shirt from his wardrobe and put it on loosely — the chest left noticeably open, two long legs straight and pale beneath it.

She stood in front of the mirror and studied herself carefully, decided she was satisfied, then went trotting to the kitchen doorway and called out to Lin Luxiao: “Come look!”

The man at the stove glanced back without much interest, gave a faint curve of his lips, turned back to the pan, and said while he cooked: “Don’t cause trouble.”

Nan Chu closed her mouth, mildly disappointed. She walked up behind him and peeked into the pot. “You know how to cook?”

Lin Luxiao gave a modest hum. “Well enough.”

Back in school, his parents were rarely home; it was just him and his brother. So he’d picked up a few skills from Uncle Meng.

Nan Chu leaned against the counter, arms crossed, watching him with contentment. “Squad Leader Lin, I have a question.”

“Go ahead.” He didn’t turn around.

“When did you start liking me?”