He was genuinely angry.

With every breath, the force of his unguarded fury was unmistakable.

In all the time she had known him, his default manner was detached and cool — occasionally he would let slip a careless joke, and she had seen his temper flare during training at the station. None of that came close to the rage currently rolling through his eyes.

He stood there, depleted, like the bare trunk of a dead tree.

Nan Chu, watching from a distance, felt the wrongness of it. He seemed too unfamiliar like this.

He suddenly crossed the room and came to stand directly in front of her, both hands sunk in his pockets, eyes lowered, looking at her with cold contempt.

Outside, wind and snow hammered the windows. The old wooden window frame had been left open a crack; the gusts sent it slamming repeatedly. Then a surge of wind tore through with sudden force, adding several sharp degrees of tension to an atmosphere that was already coiled like a blade.

Lin Luxiao bent slightly at the waist — hands still pocketed — meeting her eyes levelly, the corner of his mouth pulling into a humorless sound. “Go on then. What is it you want? Hmm?”

Nan Chu looked back at him without flinching — with the calm, patient look one reserves for a three-year-old in the middle of a tantrum.

Perfectly steady.

As though those eyes were saying plainly — Go on, throw your fit. When you’ve had enough, you’ll come home on your own.

……

Lin Luxiao’s anger couldn’t touch Nan Chu at all.

She watched him the entire time with the same composed steadiness. He fixed his eyes on hers — her gaze was clear and dark, his own face reflected back at him in those still, deep pupils. Her expression infuriated him completely.

He bent toward her face and shouted, “Say something!”

The more he did this, the more Nan Chu felt the odds tilting in her favor.

Like watching a play unfold.

“You—” The second half of the sentence never made it out.

Something soft and cool pressed against his lips.

He had been leaning down toward her level already, and Nan Chu had tipped forward just enough to brush her lips against his — the lightest, most fleeting touch.

Before he could push her off, Nan Chu had already stepped back, standing straight, her bright eyes level on his. “There are many things I want. You are the thing I want most. Is that clear enough?”

Lin Luxiao instinctively pressed his tongue to the corner of his mouth. A trace of something fruity. What ridiculous lip product was she wearing?

The next second, he had her — seized by the waist and moved firmly to the wall, his hand pressing at her side, not gently, and he released a long breath: “Say it again. What is it you want?”

Nan Chu stood obediently against the wall, looking straight at him, the outer corner of her eye curving upward. “You.”

“Speak properly!” he snapped.

Nan Chu lowered her eyes. The provocative expression dropped away; she became still and genuine. “Let’s make up.”

Lin Luxiao pulled a box of cigarettes from his pocket, slid one out, placed it between his lips, and bent his head to light it — all while saying, conversationally and without much investment, “I don’t trust you anymore.”

Nan Chu was quiet. She leaned back against the wall, watching him smoke. The collar of his military shirt, his jaw, the slight movement of his throat as the smoke left his lips.

He tapped off the ash and said, without affect, “That night in the hospital, you said you were breaking up with me. I didn’t agree. And you left anyway, without even telling me. I climbed in through the window that night and the door was open and the nurse told me you had gone to America. I sat on that hospital bed thinking — did you ever actually care about me?”

Ninety-seven percent of people who go back to an ex break up again for the same reason.

A broken mirror, as the saying goes — you can spend all the time you want fitting the pieces back together, but the cracks will always remain.

Being misunderstood, being dismissed — none of that had mattered.

He had been through storms far worse than this.

What he could not forgive was how easily she had walked away.

He let the cigarette hang from his lip and gave a sardonic laugh. “Da Liu said you were young, not settled enough — that when things got hard, you’d run. You know what I told him?”

Looking back now, the words had come back to slap him.

A quiet, humorless exhale. The cigarette had barely been smoked — less than halfway down — and he pressed it out in the ashtray beside him.

Hands back in his pockets. A face made of indifference. “Go home. Stop wasting time on me. And stop coming. I don’t trust you anymore.”

Outside, the snow fell and fell, endless, into the quiet. Not a trace of it left behind indoors.

Nan Chu watched him turn away, watched the door swing shut behind him with a definitive thud. That retreating figure — absolute, complete — as though he truly had no intention of ever coming back.

The cold moved in.

Her temples pressed with a dull, rhythmic ache. Nan Chu thought, for the first time, that she might have miscalculated.

……

Lin Luxiao came downstairs.

The woman at the front desk looked up from her knitting, surprised to see him back so quickly. In all the times a family member had come to stay, no one had ever left the room in less than an hour or two.

Lin Luxiao didn’t rush off. He stood outside the building, smoked two cigarettes, and crouched down to pet the little golden retriever lounging on the steps. The dog belonged to the woman’s son, who was away at university — the dog had been left in his mother’s care.

He smoked and scratched under the golden’s chin, asking idly, “School break’s almost here?”

The woman called back in answer, “It is! My son’s coming home soon. The dog must sense it — he’s been so excited these last few days.”

The golden retriever was leaping and bounding, thoroughly delighted with Lin Luxiao.

The woman remarked, “You’re quite good with dogs.”

Lin Luxiao smiled. “The station has working dogs — I used to train them back in the day. These animals are more loyal than most people.”

The woman nodded in emphatic agreement.

Lin Luxiao finished his cigarette, and when he glanced up, he saw Nan Chu leaning over the railing above, watching him.

He collected his gaze, said a casual farewell to the retriever, “Off I go,” and started walking.

Just in those few minutes, the golden seemed to have already formed an attachment. It sent a round of furious barking after Lin Luxiao’s retreating back.

Lin Luxiao didn’t turn. He walked away in long, even strides, like a slow-motion shot of a snow-covered scene, stretched and extended, until that patch of military green disappeared into the white distance.

How can a dog be more loyal than a person?

The man was long gone, and Nan Chu was still turning the words over in her head.

……

Word spread quickly in the family quarters: a stunning woman had moved in. Within two days it was all over the station.

And when it became known she had come to see Zhao-ye, the admirers were practically vibrating with excitement.

Yet, apart from that first day, no one ever saw Lin Luxiao go near the family quarters again. Some of the men began to doubt the story and asked Zhao Guo, “She’s really here for Lin Luxiao?”

“Absolutely,” Zhao Guo confirmed. He had his finger on every piece of gossip, and everybody was intensely curious about the beautiful mystery woman — but none of them had managed to see her face properly. She had been spotted once from a distance, leaning on the balcony railing — doing leg stretches.

Very precise leg stretches. Her posture and bearing had a quality that reminded people of the female performers in a military cultural troupe.

The theory circulating was that she must be a female soldier from up north, someone Lin Luxiao had known when he was stationed there. Word was the northern stations had more than a few striking women who, in uniform, were more impressive than the men.

The subject of all this curiosity, however — Lin Luxiao himself — went about his days as though none of it concerned him. He continued his calls, his runs, his cross-country marches with weighted packs, his building-climb drills. The idea that he might be keeping a very beautiful woman in quiet residence might as well have had nothing to do with him at all.

The others sulked.

Meanwhile, Nan Chu was on the balcony doing her stretches, talking to Yan Dai by voice call.

Her flexibility was extraordinary — the arc of her spine bent to its absolute limit — alarming the woman downstairs, who watched and thought: this young woman had exceptional waist control.

“If he refuses to see you, staying there isn’t going to help. You might as well come home, and we’ll think of another plan.”

Nan Chu moved unhurriedly through her positions, her gaze settling on the view ahead. Across the way, a group of solid men in camouflage were doing building-climb drills. She glanced in that direction — no need to search. She found Lin Luxiao immediately.

That head of his — the most unyielding one of the lot.

His movements were clean and fast. He hooked the folding ladder against the window ledge, and then climbed the way a wound mechanism unspools — swift and mechanical, floor after floor, ascending six stories in what seemed like ten seconds flat.

At the sixth-floor window, he shouldered a fifty-kilogram load, hooked himself to the line secured at the bedframe above, planted both feet against the wall, and ran himself back down to the ground.

She had been watching for several days now. The training regimen was largely the same from one day to the next — demanding, repetitive, and relentless.

And yet, in this world full of the unmistakable masculine energy that permeated everything, Nan Chu found herself unexpectedly at ease.

“I’ll wait a little longer.” Her gaze drifted back out over the distance. “The mountain roads are sealed by the snow. There’s no way out.”

Yan Dai teased, “The way I see it, it’s your heart that’s sealed. You might as well stay there indefinitely. And while you’re at it, you might as well bring a baby home with you.”

“That’s actually a good idea.” Nan Chu’s eyes brightened, and she turned it over seriously. Not an entirely impractical strategy.

After all, Lin Luxiao liked children.

The voice on the other end of the line was ruthlessly direct: “Forgive me for being blunt — but right now you’re about as welcome as a royal consort in the cold palace. You don’t even have an audience with the emperor—”

Nan Chu turned and looked at the suitcase of carefully chosen clothes inside the room. If there was no opportunity, she would have to create one.

……

That day, Nan Chu made her way downstairs with a face drained of color and lips that had gone pale. The woman at the front desk looked up and was immediately alarmed. “What’s wrong with you? Are you sick?”

Nan Chu broke into a dramatically convincing series of coughs, her whole posture collapsing into helplessness. “I think I caught a cold. Auntie, is there a pharmacy anywhere near here?”

The woman, warm-hearted as she was, took one look at Nan Chu in that state and absolutely refused to let her go out. She got hold of the girl’s arm — the girl was so slender, against the woman’s own stout frame she was practically weightless — felt her forehead, and said, “You’re a little feverish too! You go right back upstairs and lie down. I’ll go buy the medicine.”

Nan Chu insisted, “Just tell me where it is — I’ll go out and get some air while I’m at it.”

The woman was not having it. “In that condition you’re going out for a stroll? Upstairs, now. I’ll go.”

Nan Chu was effectively herded back upstairs by the woman.

As she went, the woman turned the matter over in her mind — she ought to let young Lin know. Otherwise the poor girl was just up there alone.

So after buying the medicine she went to the training ground to find him.

The soldiers were on a break, sitting together in a loose heap. Lin Luxiao was standing to one side, arms crossed, leaning against a tree trunk, half-listening while they talked amongst themselves. Men’s conversation topics tended to circulate through roughly three categories: military matters, gaming, women. He didn’t contribute much — occasionally a smile he allowed to be coaxed out, but mostly he was quiet.

Zhao Guo came jogging over. “Luxiao, Auntie’s looking for you.”

Lin Luxiao looked up. He followed the direction and spotted the woman making her way toward him, something in a bag in her hand, beckoning with some urgency.

His stomach dropped. He was on his feet and moving before he had consciously decided.

“That young woman upstairs is sick — seems serious. The way she looked, she could barely walk straight. You might want to go check on her, maybe take her to the hospital, or—” The woman, noticing he hadn’t come by in several days, had concluded the two of them must have had a fight, and added a few extra strokes of color in the interest of sympathy.

Leaving someone to just sit there alone was too sad, after all.

She hadn’t even finished before Lin Luxiao broke into a run toward the family quarters, moving so fast the woman couldn’t keep up with him no matter how she tried.

His heart was genuinely in his throat.

The more he thought about it, the more he felt like a complete idiot — she had come all this way from thousands of miles to find him, and he hadn’t even given her a decent look, let alone managed not to make her sick. He ran the whole way and blamed himself the whole way.

But when he pushed open the door, he felt like a fool.

The little woman had apparently developed considerable skills in the year they’d been apart. She’d learned to fake illness.

It was as if a length of wire that had been pulled taut inside him snapped clean in the same instant he pushed that door open. Everything he’d felt a moment ago — all that frantic worry — suddenly looked absurd. Lin Luxiao reined in the surge of anger with iron control and turned to go.

Nan Chu threw her arms around him from behind, tilted her head back, and pressed her lips to his. “I was wrong.”

A low, quiet admission.

Lin Luxiao looked down at her, unmoved, his gaze sharper than a blade. “Let go.”

Nan Chu tightened her hold, tipped her head up and bit lightly at his jaw, the tip of her tongue curling soft against it. “If I let go, you’ll run.”

Her skills in this department had grown.

Lin Luxiao remained entirely unmoved.

Nan Chu stood on her toes and aimed for his lips. But he was tall — chin lifted the barest fraction — and no matter how high she stretched, she could only reach his jaw.

So she settled for his jaw.

“Your stubble isn’t fully shaved.”

In the past, whenever he was about to see her, Lin Luxiao had always shaved very close, not wanting to scratch her during any closeness. Now, with no woman, no closeness, surrounded by nothing but rough-edged men — the shave was functional and nothing more. He didn’t stand in front of mirrors for careful grooming.

“But I like it. This is good. Rougher is better.”

Lin Luxiao turned his head to the side, pressed his palm against her skull, and pushed her away — moving her attentive mouth off him with a cold sound of derision. “Enjoying yourself?”

“After all this time — you’ve been out there, and you still haven’t grown up. And now you’ve added lying to your skill set? Hmm?”