At the brigade station.

Lin Luxiao had been confined to quarters for four days. It was only after Lin Qingyuan’s hospitalization that Meng Guohong finally released him.

When he emerged, he was still wearing the same uniform he had gone in with. The confident bearing that usually defined him was now distinctly subdued — he seemed to have grown slightly thinner, a faint shadow of stubble at his jaw, exhaustion in the set of his brow.

He was in poor shape.

Meng Guohong sat in his chair and looked at Lin Luxiao’s haggard state. His heart was a tangle of anger and aching tenderness. He gritted his teeth. “Look at what you’ve made of this!”

Lin Luxiao stood with his head low, his spine perfectly straight, his back cold and still. He said nothing.

Meng Guohong was like a man who wanted to pound iron that refused to harden — the frustration in him curdled into something softer, until he could say no more. He only let out a long, resigned breath. “You — you, you!”

He continued to stand at ramrod attention — the most correct military posture, like a green pine planted beside a road, holding its ground through every season.

Meng Guohong dropped a file in front of him. “The organization has issued orders. Next week you’re being sent to Lushan to provide support.”

For the first time in four days, the man reacted — his eyelids moved, and he spoke. “How long?”

His voice had the quality of something that had been scraped rough, settling low at the bottom of a well.

Meng Guohong rested his hand on the desk, silent for a moment, and then said with deliberate care: “One year.”

Lin Luxiao’s expression held nothing — no response, no resistance. He accepted the posting with immediate ease. “Alright.”

He lowered his head again. His mind had already begun to plan. Lushan was in Anjiang — the most remote mountain region in the south. Anjiang had no airport; you had to take the train to get there, then another bus up to Lushan. He was due to report next week, accounting for travel time, he had perhaps three days.

He needed to find Nan Chu.

Once he was stationed out there, coming back wouldn’t be easy. He also needed to reach out to Shen Mu and Da Liu, ask them to keep an eye on things for him.

He needed to see Lin Qi. Let him out and have him look in on their father.

He also needed to see his father. The old man seemed to have been genuinely shaken this time.

In his chair, Meng Guohong lit a cigarette, then said with a sardonic laugh: “You fool. Say something! You were so defiant up on that rooftop, weren’t you — said you’d throw your life away for her. And now you’re suddenly compliant?”

Lin Luxiao’s expression didn’t shift. His voice was level. “You’re reading too much into it, sir. That night, I would have made the same call for anyone. If you can’t hold your own life precious in this line of work, you’d be better off resigning.”

Meng Guohong stared at him, then gave a slow, dawning nod. He had to smile. The boy had always been exactly this way, hadn’t he.

“Fine. Get out of my sight. Lushan is a good place for tempering a man. Some things that are meant for you will find their way to you. The organization thinks you need seasoning — they’re sending you somewhere that’ll wear the rough edges off. Just don’t go blowing up the mountain for me.”

……

He drove directly from the office to the hospital.

Lin Qingyuan was just walking back from the balcony with his hands clasped behind his back. He turned and found a tall young man standing at the door — tired eyes, unshaved chin — and stared for a moment before looking away, hearing the man call out: “Dad—”

The ward held only him. The winter sun was warm and generous as it came through the window, though the air it carried in felt cold.

Lin Qingyuan waved a hand impatiently. “Look at you — don’t you know how to shave?”

There had been many years of this — many years when the two of them had never truly stood in the same room and spoken to each other. Lin Luxiao had always misread Lin Qingyuan’s pride, believing that his parents’ divorce was somehow Lin Qingyuan’s fault — not understanding that all those years, the most sensitive, raw place inside his father’s heart was where he kept his mother.

And Lin Qingyuan, for his part, had never understood the nature of Lin Luxiao’s pride — that what his son had always needed most was to hear his father say he’d done well.

Yet this offhand, mild remark, so effortlessly given, was enough to undo something in Lin Luxiao entirely.

Standing at the door before entering, Lin Luxiao had thought of many things. His father’s praise had always been withheld from him, and perhaps that was fair — perhaps he had never truly earned it. Maybe he really wasn’t that good.

He had dressed himself up in noble purpose to paper over the more selfish parts of himself.

He was flawed, if he was honest. As a boy he had leaned on his natural gift for troublemaking to push Da Liu and the others around.

In matters of feeling, he had been willful and overbearing, never pausing to think about the cost to others.

And did Lin Qi’s situation bear no trace of his responsibility? It did.

Just as Meng Guohong had said — his character still needed wearing down.

“I’m being sent to Lushan next week.” This was his way of saying goodbye.

Lin Qingyuan let his gaze drift to some middle distance, settled slowly, and then gave a measured nod — brief, to the point. “Go then. A man needs tempering. And that girl of yours?”

At the mention of Nan Chu, something in his eyes softened. “I haven’t seen her yet.”

Lin Qingyuan nodded. “Go see her. She’s had it hard too.”

Lin Luxiao bowed his head and made a quiet sound of acknowledgment.

Outside, the winter light was long and unhurried, reaching as far as the eye could see, like both a gentle spring and a severe winter.

“A couple nights ago I dreamed of your grandfather. The old man looked well. He said, you know — a person’s life is made mostly of regret. Take him — until his dying day, he never found his platoon leader again, and he asked me to keep looking. Said the man might still be alive.”

Lin Qingyuan spoke about it easily, his expression lighter than usual, the faint warmth of a genuine smile crossing his face — so unlike his ordinary, unsmiling self. “Your grandfather left me a message for you in the dream, too. He said: you’ve had it smooth all your thirty years, boy. Growing up, whether it was Da Liu or Old Meng and the rest — everyone around you was always holding you up. You’ve almost never had to fall. This business now — it’s a good thing to go to Lushan and let life give you a few knocks. A man has to eat some bitterness. Not everyone will indulge you. But as a soldier, you must never forget your duty. Don’t go out there and bring shame on your old man!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you remember the old master’s words?”

“I remember.”

“Recite them.”

He drew himself up, and said each word with deliberate weight: “Every inch of this land is stained with blood; ten thousand young men, ten thousand soldiers.”

“I’ll give you one more.” Lin Qingyuan paused. “A man should raise his ambition high like clouds, but hold fast, in all things, to the honest heart of a child. No matter what people say behind your back — do what must be done. Time will prove everything.”

……

Probably because Nan Chu had agreed to go to America, Nan Yueru had loosened the restrictions on her somewhat. The two stocky men in suits remained at the door, checking the identity of anyone who came or went.

That day, Xi Gu came in — but was held up at the door by the two guards for quite a long time, until Nan Chu finally called out: “That’s my assistant. Are you two going to question her all day?”

The two men exchanged a look and stepped aside.

Xi Gu came in carrying a whole box of cherries, set them by the bed, and pulled up a chair to sit beside her. “Who are they screening for?”

Nan Chu: “My man.”

Xi Gu blinked. “And if they find him, then what? Throw him out? Or bring him up to meet your mother?”

Nan Chu thought about it. “Either throw him out — or bring him up, I suppose.”

Xi Gu stared at her, at a loss for words, convinced the world had gone entirely sideways. “Do you want me to go warn him?”

Nan Chu shook her head. “No need. Unless he shows up himself, you won’t be able to find him.”

Xi Gu inhaled sharply. “Is he a spy or something?”

Nan Chu gave a slight, relaxed smile. “Maybe.”

Why else would he still not have appeared?

After that brief moment of lightness, the quiet between them grew heavy again. Xi Gu knew Nan Chu’s mood was dark, and did her best to fill the silence with small, amusing stories — anything to make her smile.

Nan Chu listened without much feeling.

Until—

Xi Gu mentioned someone, and a flush crept across her face — one that was unmistakably different from the rest. Nan Chu caught it immediately. One eyebrow rose. “Are you two together?”

Oh.

Xi Gu went pink with shyness, fiddled with her hair, and slowly dropped her gaze.

Nan Chu laughed — she had already understood. Without any particular delicacy, she said: “Looks like things have gone beyond talking about it.”

Xi Gu went pinker still, ducked her head lower, and didn’t know what to say. She was afraid that saying too much would hurt Nan Chu.

Nan Chu didn’t seem troubled at all. She smiled. “That’s wonderful. I’m going to America for a while soon — and even though Han Beiyao isn’t the most reliable person sometimes, knowing he’ll be looking after you takes a weight off me.”

Xi Gu’s head snapped up. Pure shock flooded her face. She thought she must have misheard it. She asked again and again to be sure: “You’re going to America? How come I didn’t know?”

Nan Chu ruffled her hair gently. “Because I didn’t tell anyone.”

Xi Gu suddenly sniffled. “When are you leaving?”

“Next week.”

It landed like a bolt of lightning. Xi Gu went blank — the thought of Nan Chu leaving suddenly made her chest ache. “What about your dramas? And does your boyfriend know?”

Nan Chu shook her head. Her voice was light. “Not yet.”

Something about that tone made Xi Gu nearly cry right there. She had spent enough time with Nan Chu by now to know: the harder the thing, the lighter Nan Chu made it sound.

It took Nan Chu a long while that evening to coax Xi Gu out of the room.

For a long time afterward, Xi Gu would still be able to call back the words Nan Chu had said that night.

“I used to tell you — you can’t silence other people’s mouths, so cover your own ears. But honestly, that was just an ostrich burying its head. When people said things about me, I stopped looking, stopped thinking, shut it all outside, and lived inside my own world. I protected myself — but I couldn’t protect the people I wanted to protect. That’s something my mother taught me, in her way. Twenty-some years, and the only lesson I managed to learn was two words: run away.”

On the surface — at ease. Underneath — tucked safely inside a shell of her own making, letting the world knock at it all it wanted, while she kept her own quiet inner space.

Nan Chu smiled. And then something appeared in her eyes — a brightness, clearer than the moonlight outside.

“Then I met Lin Luxiao. What he taught me: be open. Be hopeful. Keep a good heart. Hold faith in this country.”

Xi Gu had never seen Lin Luxiao, but listening to Nan Chu describe him, her curiosity about this man grew with every word.

Nan Chu shook her head again. “But that isn’t enough. I’ve found that I can be good — and the world still won’t be good back. Only when I’m strong enough can I protect the people I want to protect.”

Xi Gu left in tears.

She truly felt Nan Chu had changed, somehow. The old Nan Chu had been cold — distant and composed, deliberately so — not because she didn’t feel things, but because coldness was the costume she wore to pretend she didn’t. Now there was something different. Nan Chu seemed lighter. Once a person has found their direction, something in the whole body comes alive.

The moon was growing fuller and brighter.

When Nan Chu stepped out onto the balcony to smoke a cigarette, she saw Lin Luxiao. He was leaning against his car, looking up in the direction of her floor.

It had been a while since they’d seen each other.

The dark had taken him in, and the moonlight stretched his shadow out long. He was in a black windbreaker, zipper pulled all the way up, covering the lower half of his face — only those upward-curling eyes were visible, scanning her floor, finding her, and fixing on her for a moment. Then he unzipped the collar casually, straightened up, and started walking toward the building.

Not toward the stairwell entrance. He walked to the outer wall below the balcony.

He had just run into Yan Dai below, who had helpfully suggested he avoid the front door — he might be intercepted and brought up to meet the future mother-in-law.

It wasn’t that he was afraid of meeting Nan Yueru. He just didn’t want to waste the time right now. He wanted to see Nan Chu first.

Eleven-thirty at night.

Most of the lights in the inpatient wing had gone dark.

A dark figure moved against the outer wall — using the window ledges, the external air conditioning units, and a few drainage deflection boards for footholds, scaling upward in a series of fluid, practiced movements.

Nan Chu watched him climb up with her bare hands, using pure upper body strength and controlled momentum — the drainage board tilted alarmingly — she wanted to scream and swallowed it, pressing both hands over her own mouth.

But Lin Luxiao placed his foot on the wall with complete calm, pushed off, and in one smooth motion caught the next window ledge.

His last move: both hands gripped the balcony railing. He swung himself up and over, landing lightly on the other side.

There he was, standing in front of Nan Chu, alive and solid.

“Are you insane? What if you’d fallen?”

Lin Luxiao cupped her face in both hands and examined it closely, then smiled. “Did you miss me?”

Nan Chu was furious. “Can you please stop doing things that dangerous? Would it hurt you?”

“Really angry?” Lin Luxiao pulled her into his arms and rubbed his chin against the top of her head. “Next time I’ll be more careful. I really missed you.”

Nan Chu reached up and held him.

That single gesture made Lin Luxiao want to push her back inside and throw her on the bed — but he thought of how fragile she still was, and no matter how much the impulse gripped him, he wasn’t going to do anything like that to someone still recovering in a hospital, so he reined himself in and pressed two kisses to her lips.

Then Nan Chu pushed him toward the bed herself, swung up to straddle him, and with one swift sound pulled his windbreaker zipper all the way down.

Lin Luxiao caught her hands and turned her over, pinning her beneath him, his eyes dark with restrained urgency. “We’re still in a hospital!”

“It’s fine.”

Nan Chu was pinned under him, hair fanning out across the pillow. Her eyes were full of a certain brightness — liquid and clear. She tilted her chin up and reached for his lips directly, the force a little too strong — the first attempt missed and landed at the corner of his mouth, the second found its mark, and she held it, the tip of her tongue slowly working its way in.

Just like the way he always kissed her — patient, unhurried, deliberately coaxing.

That one movement lit the whole thing on fire.

The directness of her, the heat of her — it nearly broke Lin Luxiao apart. Every drop of blood in him surged to the same place. His eyes went red. He turned her over and pressed her beneath him, then sat up.

No lights on in the room.

Only the thin light of the moon. Nan Chu listened to the sound of him undoing his belt.

……

The narrow single bed was not built for what they were doing — it sounded as though it might fall apart at any moment. And Lin Luxiao at his full height made matters considerably worse — even the smallest shift of weight set the whole frame creaking.

The moment the bed creaked, a voice came from outside the door. “Miss Nan, what’s going on in there?”

Nan Chu, in a mischievous mood now, looked up at the man above her and said, deliberately slow and drawn-out: “Doing… bedtime exercises.”

……

When they were done, Nan Chu leaned against the headboard and got dressed again. Lin Luxiao came out of the bathroom dripping from the shower, still undressed. She glanced briefly at what had gone quiet and still between his legs, then looked away. Lin Luxiao pulled on his trousers, left his shirt off, his chest bare and solid, and walked to her bedside as he fastened his belt, reaching out to smooth her hair. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

Nan Chu nodded. “Go ahead.”

Lin Luxiao tucked a loose strand behind her ear. “I’m being sent to Lushan next week. I’ll be gone a year. Coming back won’t be easy. While you’re here—”

“Squad Leader. Let’s break up.”

Those words hit him so coldly that Lin Luxiao felt everything before them — every single thing that had just happened between them — might have been a dream.

“Stop joking.” Lin Luxiao caught her ear between his fingers, a quiet warning in the gesture.

Nan Chu turned her head slightly to one side, pulling away from his hand. “I’m serious.”

The human brain, when it receives a piece of very bad news, will produce a kind of neurological defense — a buffer that resists it, holds it at arm’s length, until—

It can no longer hold it back. And it reaches the center of the brain, and becomes real.

That process took Lin Luxiao somewhat longer than it should have.

After Nan Chu spoke, he was silent for a long time. He sat with his back to her on the edge of the bed, and finally asked, quietly: “Why?”

Nan Chu exhaled. “I’m tired.”

She was. Tired, and grateful for every moment of it.

Lin Luxiao’s face was dark. He tilted his head, glanced aside. “I don’t agree.”

Nan Chu: “I’m going to America next week.”

If the breakup had left him with a hollow kind of disbelief, those words detonated him entirely. She had already chosen — had already decided she was leaving — and she hadn’t told him.

He pressed down on his anger. Slowly, with deliberate care, he asked: “Going to America for what?”

“School. My mother found a program — I need to finish the education I put off.”

The warmth had gone from Lin Luxiao’s voice entirely. But his patience, which had grown so much since knowing Nan Chu, was still holding. “Go to your America. Finish your degree, then come back.”

Lushan only needed a year. And she couldn’t possibly need more than two years to complete her coursework, at most.

“The truth is, we both know — waiting with no fixed horizon is its own kind of slow erosion. There’s more I need to finish than just school—”

That process was long. A year wasn’t short. Ten years wasn’t long, either.

He suddenly bent forward over himself, spine curving, hands braced on his thighs — furious and frantic. He cut her off. “Then what do you want?!”

She said nothing. Her hand reached up and touched his dark hair. The look in her eyes was full of longing and something like grief.

“Tell me honestly — when the coverage broke, did you feel even one second of regret? Your father collapsed into the hospital and you blamed yourself for it. And in the same way — I blame myself for this.”

Lin Luxiao stood, snatched his shirt from the side, pulled it over his head in one motion, and said with cold, precise fury: “I won’t agree to anything except the breakup. Everything else — do as you like.”

Then the jacket, zipped up. Lin Luxiao turned and fixed his gaze on her, and said with no warmth at all: “I’m leaving. Is there anything else?”

“I’m sorry.”

Nan Chu said it with her head down.

Like striking a match to a firecracker — that single sentence finally blew everything open. Whatever restraint he had been holding himself to crumbled entirely.

He had never had much restraint, really.

He said something under his breath — a profanity, the kind he had never let out before, even at his angriest.

Lin Luxiao stood at the doorway with one hand on his hip, tongue running over the corner of his mouth. The smile that crossed his face was wholly derisive. “What, are you playing games with me?”

Nan Chu shook her head. “Being together was sincere. Letting go is sincere too.”

They both needed time to deal with what was real.

Before that time came, Nan Chu felt she had no right to bind a man with promises. And not just any man — a man like this. A brave, extraordinary man.

Love — in the end, should be allowed to follow its own course.

Lin Luxiao stood at the door. His expression had gone cold. The lines that were usually sharply defined by his composure were twisted now by anger into something harder, uglier. The ferocity beneath the surface — rarely seen — was fully visible.

She had never seen him this angry.

His hands, buried in his pockets, clenched into fists that were shaking. Even his voice carried something that sounded almost like blood — she was afraid for a moment that he might reach out and hurl the chair beside him straight at her.

“You think you’re sitting pretty, don’t you? You think everyone is supposed to stand in place and wait for you? Some kind of sincere. What a load of rubbish. I was the fool for believing you.”

He turned and walked out.

The room returned to stillness, as though no one had ever been here. As though nothing had changed at all.

The figure on the bed remained in the same position, perfectly motionless.

After a long while, she lifted her hand and wiped her eyes, then turned her face to the side.

Outside, the night was quiet. The bare branches of winter trees rose above the ground, and yellowed leaves had settled across the earth — while from those same branches, fresh, tender new growth had already pushed through.

Those were signs of hope —

And yet beside her was the one she loved, who was about to go far away.

The road ahead — she would walk it alone.

No companion. But that was alright. Somewhere far away, there was still someone who loved her —

……

The night before he left for Lushan, Lin Luxiao came out from Lin Qingyuan’s ward and stopped in the corridor to smoke. He glanced toward Nan Chu’s window. Then, without deciding to, he stubbed the cigarette under his boot, reached for the window ledge, and — with the ease of someone who had done this before — climbed again to Nan Chu’s balcony.

He gripped the railing, swung himself up, and landed.

The balcony door was open. Through the window, the room was unusually dark. The curtains drifted in the cold air. The bed was empty. A hollow, quiet room, the cold wind moving through it.

His palm had started to ache.

He looked down at it. When he had climbed up, a sharp edge on the window frame had cut him — blood was welling up steadily. He hadn’t noticed.

He had ignored it.

Outside, a nurse was doing her rounds. Something about the door — left slightly ajar — struck her as strange. She pushed it open to check, and found the darkened room with the dim shape of a tall man’s back, sitting upright on the empty bed. She caught her breath in alarm, slapped the light switch on, and gathered her courage to shout: “Who are you?!”

The room flooded with light.

The man was not prepared for it — he narrowed his eyes against the sudden brightness, then slowly turned to look at her.

Lin Luxiao, still in his black windbreaker, the hood up, the zipper pulled high — the nurse found herself looking at just the eyes above the collar. Instinctively she felt he was handsome, and her alarm eased a fraction. She asked again, gentler this time: “Sir, who are you looking for?”

“Where is the person who was in this ward?”

His voice was low and slightly rough, with a distinctly cool quality to it.

The nurse remembered. “She was discharged. I heard she went to the airport — apparently she was catching a flight to America.”

The girl who had come to help gather her things had mentioned it — said they were in a hurry for the flight.

As she said this, the nurse suddenly recalled the scene when she had come to collect the linens. The patient had been alone in the room, and had been folding the bedclothes — folding and refolding them, folding and smoothing them, over and over. Military-style, the corners pulled precise and flat, folded into a perfect, sharp-edged square — neat, even, and exact.

He suddenly lowered his head and let out a quiet laugh — the sound of a man laughing at himself.

He had taught her that, once — how to fold a military bunk square —

“If you can’t fold it right, you don’t eat!”

And she had really bent over that bed, laughing to herself, folding and unfolding, unfolding and folding again. When she finally got it right, she would tilt her head back and look at him, waiting for him to say she’d done well. When she couldn’t get it right, she would sit there, perfectly content on her own, quietly amused.

Through those weeks of training.

Her bunk had become the neatest, most precise in the entire women’s regiment.

Lin Luxiao looked at that clean, perfectly squared block on the bed.

It wasn’t hard to imagine what she must have been feeling as she folded it — this was her way of saying goodbye to him.

That was actually something.

Go, then.

Go, and don’t come back.

……

The next day, Lin Luxiao boarded the train bound for Anjiang.

He told no one. He picked up a hiking backpack and left, just as he had the day he departed for the military academy — without looking back.

And yet Da Liu and Shen Mu and the rest had gone and planted themselves at the train station, waiting for him at the exact right time.

When that tall, all-black figure — black jacket, black trousers, black bag, black cap — appeared at the entrance of the station, Da Liu spat out the toothpick he’d been chewing and launched himself three feet into the air, grabbing Shen Mu on the way, and the two of them planted themselves squarely in Lin Luxiao’s path. “I knew it, I knew you’d try to sneak off!”

Lin Luxiao’s hands were buried in his pockets. He stared at them for a moment. “What are you two doing here?”

Da Liu: “You’re going somewhere harsh and difficult, man. The least we can do is see you off.”

Lin Luxiao immediately aimed a kick at his midsection.

Da Liu grinned like an idiot.

The news of Nan Chu’s departure for America had only reached Da Liu today, through Xu Zhiyi — the director had contacted Xu Zhiyi to return to set because Nan Chu had vacated the role.

And through that, he had indirectly learned that Lin Luxiao had been broken up with.

You could see plainly that Lin Luxiao’s mood was not good. Given the circumstances, Da Liu had enough sense not to poke at a wound. He simply clapped Lin Luxiao on the shoulder and said with genuine warmth: “The brother’s always here, whatever you need. If it’s convenient, come find me and Shen Mu whenever.”

Shen Mu nodded. “Alright. Get in there. I hear the south doesn’t have heating — if you really can’t take it, call and tell us. We’ll come bring warmth to you in the dead of winter. Don’t be too proud to say so.”

Lin Luxiao replied with a rough, fond obscenity.

It made Da Liu cry. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “I don’t know why — even getting sworn at by you feels right! Back there when you went all soft and gentle, I almost didn’t recognize you!”

Lin Luxiao couldn’t be bothered to answer. He gave Da Liu’s head one rough, affectionate ruffle, then turned and walked away, easy and free. “Alright. I’m off.”

The station was loud and crowded, full of noise and motion.

Lovers clung to each other in farewell; families reunited in bursts of joy — the air itself was full of feeling.

Da Liu cried harder, the way he always had — two young men parting in the world, with all its vastness still ahead of them.

……

And behind the young man’s back, as always, stood the elders who watched him go.

Secretary Zhang looked at Lin Luxiao’s straight, upright back for a long moment, then turned to Lin Qingyuan beside him. “Sir — let me spend New Year’s with you this year.”

Lin Qingyuan gave a dry cough. “Don’t be ridiculous. Your wife would come knocking on my door.”

Secretary Zhang: “Then should I arrange for them to give Luxiao leave for New Year’s Eve?”

“Leave it.”

At last, the man standing in the winter wind let his gaze drift far away — into something distant and weathered. He felt, with sudden weight, the indifference of fate. “Two sons. One heading south. One in detox. His mother’s father was right about me — I was never good enough. His mother was alive and I couldn’t protect her. Now these two boys — I can’t protect either of them.”

……

And far away — a plane cut a white line across the sky, and was gone.

White doves in flight, a lake singing beneath.

After this.

You go south, and I go north.

We both begin again.

In the years ahead, all your tenderness and warmth — I leave it all behind.

Goodbye, my Squad Leader.