Lin Qi came back in after washing his face, shaking his hands dry, to find the two of them locked in a staring match. He said: “What’s with you two — are you at it again?”

Lin Luxiao: “……”

Nan Chu: “……”

At it, my foot.

Lin Luxiao was the first to stand up and walk out. Nan Chu’s expression returned to its cool composure as she unhurriedly followed behind.

The three of them got in the car.

Lin the Clueless Sweet-Type had already climbed into the front passenger seat first. Nan Chu glanced at Lin Luxiao, and just at that moment, he happened to look over at her too. He was tall, looking down at her with a slight squint. He tilted his chin toward the car door. Nan Chu rolled her eyes at him, pulled open the rear door, and sat down inside.

Lin Luxiao gave a low chuckle and climbed in after her.

The two of them did not speak during the ride. Nan Chu looked out the window the whole time, as if entranced by the neon-lit night scenery outside, while Lin Luxiao chatted sporadically with Lin Qi, who chattered on like a little sparrow that couldn’t stop. Lin Qi seemed to have a certain sense of dependence on Lin Luxiao.

Nan Chu rolled down the window. Wind came rushing in powerfully, the trees outside tossing and swaying. She turned her head, and caught Lin Luxiao looking at her — the depth of meaning in his gaze was too much to be read into quickly.

She looked away, and suddenly thought of the time five years ago when she had moved into his home.

When Nan Chu was sixteen, she had lived at Lin Luxiao’s place for a month. He had come back two or three times during that period, each time staying for about a day and a half before spending the rest of the time at the barracks. By that count, the two of them were indeed not very well acquainted.

The flat at the time was a bachelor apartment Lin Luxiao was renting — three bedrooms, one living area. Aside from one bedroom, he had converted the other two into a study and a storage room, crammed with a pile of training and fitness equipment in no particular order.

Nan Chu could not cook. She ordered takeaway every day. One time, when she went downstairs to collect her order, she happened to see him walking back. She waited for the delivery rider to find the change, then stuffed the bag inside her coat and hurried along behind him up the stairs.

Upstairs, Lin Luxiao changed his shoes. Nan Chu was holding the takeaway in her hand — a curry rice dish — and hesitated a moment before holding it out to him: “I didn’t know you were coming back today. Why don’t you eat this first, and I’ll order another.”

Lin Luxiao tossed his keys onto the cabinet, didn’t turn around, and walked inside. “I already ate at the barracks.”

“Oh.”

Nan Chu sat at the dining table and ate her dinner.

Lin Luxiao went in to change out of his uniform, his gaze wandering idly over the apartment. Though this girl’s cooking ability was zero, the place was at least clean — she hadn’t made too much of a mess. He could let most things go, but when he saw the bed, his eyes sharpened.

He had a compulsive streak: no matter when, the duvet absolutely had to be folded into a perfect square block.

The kind that wasn’t even folded, just tossed in a crumpled heap on the bed — that was the kind of thing that made him want to pick someone up and give them a thrashing on the spot.

The room had the heating on.

Lin Luxiao came out of the bedroom wearing a loose grey knit top and black trousers, went over to the girl who was eating, pulled her into the bedroom, and sat her down on the chair by the bed. “Watch,” he said.

Nan Chu still had a few grains of rice at the corner of her mouth.

Then Lin Luxiao smoothed the duvet out flat, and as he did so, he asked her: “Didn’t your mother teach you how to fold a duvet?”

“……”

Lin Luxiao’s build back then was not yet as muscular as it was now. He had the figure of a young man — straight and lean, his features less sharp than they were today, more rounded and fine, his skin lighter. His brows and eyes had an upward tilt that gave him a slightly reckless, wicked quality, and his personality had not yet settled into its current composure. Back then he was more rough-edged and bold.

But his tone when he spoke was at least even.

He bent over the bed, bowing his back, and with rare patience: “First smooth the duvet out flat. Leave a third of the space on one side, fold it over.”

He gave methodical, unhurried instructions.

“Same as just now — fold the other side over to meet it, then a third of the width across. Use your fingers to pinch a ten-centimetre wide strip along the edge.”

Back then his hair seemed longer than it was now, and in the lamplight it was black and softly loose, making one want to reach out and touch it.

He deliberately slowed his movements, pointing to the corner of the duvet. “Here — work out a straight right angle.”

His voice also carried that particular clarity of youth — far less cool and restrained than it was now.

When he bent forward, the collar of his knit top fell open, revealing a slightly prominent collarbone leading down to a clean line of chest muscle — not overbearing, but perfectly defined. The young man’s flat stomach led downward, and faintly visible were the lines of an adonis belt.

It made one’s heart pound, pulse quickening.

Nan Chu was more mature than most children her age. She knew what this feeling was, and she knew what physiological response this was.

She did not find it strange, even though she was only sixteen at the time.

In the quiet of the night, a man’s voice becomes smooth, deeply alluring.

“This side — use the same method, fold the inner edge into a right angle.”

As he spoke, Lin Luxiao glanced up slightly and looked at Nan Chu. But the girl’s gaze was firmly fixed on him. A moment later she swallowed, her throat moving — clearly not listening at all.

He furrowed his brows, stood up straight, hands on hips. “Do I look good?”

“……”

Nod, nod.

He curved the corner of his mouth. “Do you know how to fold it?”

“……”

Shake, shake.

“If you can’t fold it properly, no dinner tonight.”

He looked at her and dropped the words.

“……”

Faced with a choice between eating dinner and folding the duvet.

Nan Chu chose Lin Luxiao without a second thought.

Perhaps once Nan Yueru came back, she might not even have the chance to see him anymore. Thinking of it that way, this particular evening felt like a gift that Heaven had bestowed upon “the sixteen-year-old Nan Chu at the first awakening of love.”

That night.

Lin Luxiao leaned by the window, smoking.

Nan Chu stood at the bedside with a heart full of secret feelings, folding and refolding the so-called “perfect square block” over and over again.

The girl was a fast learner. Each fold was better than the last, and sometimes when she got it right, she was genuinely pleased with herself — she would turn around, expression bright, seeking praise.

Lin Luxiao leaned against the wall, flicked his ash, glanced over: “It’s crooked.”

The girl’s face fell, and she turned back to adjust it — until the duvet was folded into a neat, perfectly squared block.

Only then did Lin Luxiao give a satisfied nod. He stubbed out his cigarette and walked out.

The curry rice on the table was no longer edible. Nan Chu wasn’t hungry anyway, so she threw it out, sat on the sofa, and took out her script to study. It was for the first film she was going to act in.

Halfway through, a white plastic bag appeared on the coffee table.

Nan Chu looked up.

A takeaway order, still steaming.

She instinctively turned her head. Lin Luxiao tossed his keys onto the coffee table and dropped down onto the sofa beside her.

“What is this?” Nan Chu asked.

Lin Luxiao: “Didn’t you not eat your fill?”

“You went out specially to buy this?”

He raised an eyebrow, leaned into the sofa, and said with lazy ease: “Well, what else — did it fall from the sky?”

“Thank you,” Nan Chu said.

He gave little reaction, gesturing for her to hurry and eat. He picked up the remote and started flipping for something to watch on TV. Nan Chu placed the noodles on the coffee table and sat on the floor to eat.

Lin Luxiao glanced at her, grabbed a cushion from the sofa, and tossed it to her. “Don’t just sit on the bare floor.”

“……”

She was wearing trousers, after all.

He had always spoken directly, and was no gentleman, but to Nan Chu’s ears, it was actually very comfortable.

The TV screen kept switching at random. Lin Luxiao couldn’t find anything he wanted to watch, so he casually asked Nan Chu: “What do you want to watch?”

Nan Chu looked up, and the screen had just stopped on a foreign classic, The Decameron. She slurped a mouthful of noodles and said: “This, I suppose. I haven’t seen it.”

Lin Luxiao raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”

Nan Chu slurped another mouthful of noodles, holding it in her mouth without biting through, and nodded. “Have you seen it?”

Lin Luxiao shook his head, lit a cigarette, tilted his chin toward the TV. “No. Let’s watch.”

The film was a Hong Kong re-adaptation. Many of the explicit scenes had been cut. What remained was more or less suitable to watch, but the whole atmosphere of the film still revolved around the work of women of a particular trade, and certain scenes were still enough to make one’s face flush red.

Nan Chu pretended to keep her head down eating her noodles, all the while secretly watching Lin Luxiao out of the corner of her eye.

He was lounging lazily on the sofa, elbow propped on the armrest, a cigarette pinched between his fingertips, long legs loosely stretched apart, smoke drifting around him. When he smoked, he would half-squint his eyes, then part his lips slightly and exhale a ring of smoke.

Truly the very image of youthful recklessness.

Men and boys were really different things.

Nan Chu thought of how the boys in her class would sometimes exchange resources of that sort of material with a strange, greasy energy about them.

Lin Luxiao had none of that.

Back then he existed somewhere between youth and maturity — still carrying that raw, untempered edge of a young man, yet already with the steadiness of a man.

That day’s film was never finished.

Halfway through, Lin Luxiao stubbed out his cigarette, stood up, and left.

Nan Chu sat on the floor, cradling her bowl of noodles, her eyes clear and bright as she stared at the screen, which had just landed on a classic line: “Though one may drink wine, one does not drown in it; though one may be immersed in desire, one knows when to stop.”

……

The car came to a stop outside the entrance of a residential compound. Nan Chu’s thoughts were pulled back to the present. Lin Luxiao pushed open the door and got out. She looked around and was astonished to discover that this was actually near the campus drama she was currently filming.

No wonder Lin Qi had asked him to bring the ticket over that day.

Nan Chu lowered the window and watched Lin Luxiao’s straight-backed silhouette. She told Lin Qi: “Wait a moment. I’m going to smoke a cigarette.” Lin Qi turned around to look at her, and was about to say something, but seeing Nan Chu’s cool, flat expression, he in the end said nothing.

One cigarette later.

Nan Chu watched Lin Luxiao enter a building, and then, a few minutes later, a window on the fourth floor lit up.

She casually stubbed out her cigarette and told Lin Qi: “Let’s go.”

A month later, the campus drama finally wrapped filming.

There had originally been a few more crying scenes that hadn’t been filmed. The director waved his hand grandly: “Wrap it, wrap it.”

He had no confidence he could keep going. Those female actresses’ crying scenes were the stuff of shrieks and wails; if he kept filming, he was going to lose his mind.

Nan Chu had originally been scheduled for a month-long gap in her schedule.

But unexpectedly, Shen Guanzong had taken on a clothing advertisement for her in the meantime — a major Italian luxury brand, who had specifically requested Nan Chu. The call had come down very quickly, too: she needed to fly out the next evening.

Nan Chu counted the days. Tomorrow would be the ninth.

Xi Gu was packing her luggage. Nan Chu hung up the phone and started putting on her makeup, rummaging through the wardrobe. After half an hour of fussing, she put on a black low-cut spaghetti-strap long dress and stood in front of the mirror applying lipstick. Only then did Xi Gu sense something was off. “Are you going out?”

Nan Chu pressed her lips together. “Mm.”

“Shen-ge told me to keep an eye on you. You can’t go running off.”

Nan Chu, still facing the mirror, applying mascara, didn’t turn around. “If he told you to die, would you do that too?”

“……”

Nan Chu finished her makeup. The black low-cut dress showed off her figure beautifully. The woman in the mirror had bright, luminous eyes. She felt like it had been a long time since she had seen herself look like this.

As she was leaving, she pinched Xi Gu’s little face. “I’m off. Be good and don’t cause me trouble, understood?”

Xi Gu called after her back: “Where on earth are you going?!”

“To redeem myself.”

Nan Chu swung the Princess Di clutch bag in her hand.