When they were done, Lin Luxiao carried her to the bathroom to clean up. Nan Chu’s whole body ached and felt as if it had been taken apart, so she clung to Lin Luxiao like an octopus. He looked down at her, kissed her on the forehead, and she held him tighter — arms hooked around his neck, her long, slender legs wrapped around his waist. Lin Luxiao looked down again and gave her rear a firm pinch.

Nan Chu gasped.

He looked at her with a smirk. “What are you making sounds for?”

Nan Chu lunged forward and bit his lip. He caught her hands, pushed her back against the bathroom counter, and bit her in return.

On and on and on.

On and on and on.

On and on and on.

…

The mirror was fogged with steam, two entangled silhouettes reflected in it, hazy and indistinct.

She called to him, her voice soft: “Lin Luxiao.”

Lin Luxiao’s low voice answered in a single syllable: “Yeah?”

“Haven’t you been without for too long?”

“Yeah.” Offhand and unbothered.

Nan Chu reached back to hook his neck, slowly stroking his nape, murmuring, “I just learned something — look at the mirror.”

…

“…”

Lin Luxiao lifted his head. The woman in the mirror was all seduction and allure, her movements scandalously sensual.

“Call out — I want to hear you.” Nan Chu watched him and said slowly.

Lin Luxiao gave a low laugh. “Are you one of those people who’s aroused by voices?”

“Yeah. A voice like yours and you’re not doing audio production work — what a waste.”

Lin Luxiao: “What’s audio production work?”

“…Never mind, let’s just go.” Helpless.

…

Again finished.

Outside, the sky had gone completely dark. Lin Luxiao carried her to the shower, his strong forearms holding her firmly, and Nan Chu lay against him, lazily combing her fingers through his thick, wet black hair. “You seem to last even longer than before.”

The shower was running loudly.

Lin Luxiao was testing the water temperature with his hand. At those words he glanced at her, and laughed. “What’s wrong?”

Nan Chu did the mental count — including what happened at the bathroom counter, five times in total. Aside from the first two, which had taken well over an hour each, the remaining three had all wrapped up in thirty to forty minutes. Impressive, really.

“The women in the production were saying men usually last about twenty minutes…”

The water had warmed up. Lin Luxiao carried her in and set her under the showerhead. “Twenty minutes isn’t short for a man. An hour isn’t long. You wash first — I’ll step out and have a smoke.”

Nan Chu immediately grabbed him from behind. “Let’s wash together.”

“You sure you want to?”

“Yeah.”

She was growing more clingy by the day. He turned around, cupped her forehead in his palm, and the bandage strip had come loose in the water, leaving behind a small scar. He pressed his hand against her forehead, thumb gently tracing that mark.

“From the ashtray?”

You could tell just by looking — there was even a slight dent.

Nan Chu said, aggrieved: “There’s still a bump right next to it, which finally went down — and then you showed up and yelled at me the moment you arrived.”

He pulled her into his arms. “I was furious that my seven days of marriage leave were going to be wasted, and that set me off. It might be a long time before I get the next one.”

“Excuses.”

Lin Luxiao bowed his head, looked at the person in his arms — the young woman lying against him, worked up with righteous indignation — and gave a low laugh. “Next time your mom hits you, I’ll be the one to take it. I was the one who pushed you to get the certificate — whatever punishment comes is mine to bear. Or you could hit me right now and let it out. Yeah?”

Nan Chu looked up at him, her eyes bright and glistening. “Don’t be ridiculous. I was willing. You don’t know — I wanted to marry you ever since I was sixteen. To give you children.” Back then she had truly believed no man in the world could compare to him. And now, even more so — Lin Luxiao at thirty captivated her even more.

That hit him right in the chest. Those pitch-dark eyes looked long and deep at the young woman in his arms. Then, after a long pause, he bowed his head and sealed her lips with his.

A tangled exchange of lips and tongue.

Lin Luxiao bent down close to her ear and bit softly: “I should never have let you go that year when you were sixteen.”

Nan Chu: “Mm? What would you have done if you hadn’t let me go?”

Lin Luxiao said, with roguish levity, right at her ear: “Kept you until you were eighteen.”

Nan Chu hooked her arms around his neck and her feet around his waist, tilting her head back to kiss his jaw.

“And then?”

“Just that.”

“Ah…”

…

At eight that evening, Lin Luxiao leaned against the headboard and lit a cigarette.

Nan Chu was completely spent — barely out of the shower and dried off before she was scooped up and set on the bed, and the moment she lay down her eyelids had given in. She was out before anything more could happen.

Lin Luxiao smoked and waited for her to wake.

Neither of them had eaten dinner. Worried she would be hungry when she woke up, he went out and bought some food — only to come back and find her still asleep. He tapped his head and called her name twice. She wouldn’t stir. He really couldn’t bring himself to wake her.

So he ate everything he’d bought by himself.

And then the young woman woke up at three in the morning.

Lin Luxiao had only just lain down a few minutes ago. Military training had trained him out of deep sleep — sometimes at night the alert would sound, and particularly in the early hours when emergency calls came in, deep sleep was essentially impossible.

He slept lightly. The moment Nan Chu stirred and turned over, Lin Luxiao was awake too.

The young woman lay on her side, gazing at him through half-dazed eyes, as though not quite sure this was real. She stayed like that for a moment, then suddenly reached out and touched the tip of his nose. “Wow — I just dreamed of you, and when I woke up, you’re actually here.”

Lin Luxiao was caught off guard by this. He reached out and drew her close. “You dream of me often?”

Nan Chu nestled into a comfortable position against him. “Yeah — in my dreams you mostly ignore me.”

Especially during those years in America. Sometimes the scenes in her dreams had been so vivid and devastating that she’d almost believed them — she’d wake up crying, unable to fall back asleep. She’d spend the rest of the night copying out scripture.

Praying to the Bodhisattva to keep him safe and let him make it to retirement.

“What about you — have you ever dreamed of me?” she asked, idly tracing his brow with one finger.

Lin Luxiao frowned slightly, closed his eyes to try to recall. From childhood on, he rarely dreamed — and when he did, it was usually floods or fires. He rarely dreamed of real people from his life. After they had separated and he’d gone to Lushan, he had of course dreamed of her.

He dreamed of her laughing and teasing, her playful, coy expressions.

Sometimes he’d wake in the middle of the night, listening to his bunkmates’ thundering snores, lying in a barracks full of the smell of men — and she filled his mind entirely. The morning after dreaming of her, he’d feel dazed the whole day — couldn’t summon the drive to train. He’d feel limp all over, like he’d collapsed into himself.

Once on the fire line he’d nearly made a mistake — dismantled the wrong steel reinforcing slab, and an entire roof beam had come crashing down.

He’d nearly died inside it.

After that, he hadn’t allowed himself to think of her anymore. He threw himself into training to numb the feeling — whenever there was free time, he’d go alone into the hills at the back carrying a full load pack and run five kilometers of cross-country. Only when his body was at the edge of total exhaustion would his heart finally settle.

And yet he’d still hear Zhao Guo bring her up. Zhao Guo was direct — always said what was on his mind — “those big…” — and that had been enough to make his temper flare. Sometimes the anger got so bad he’d slam a thick book on Zhao Guo’s head.

In hindsight, Zhao Guo had probably figured out by now why he’d been hit back then.

But all of this, Lin Luxiao skimmed over lightly.

No need for her to know too much. A man whose feelings are too much on the surface looks excessive — overdone.

At three in the morning, Nan Chu was wrapped around him and murmured softly that she was hungry.

Lin Luxiao rolled out of bed, threw on his fleece jacket, pulled the zip all the way up, slipped on his trousers. “What do you want to eat?”

Nan Chu pressed her hand down on the covers. “It’s fine — I’ll have someone send something over.”

Lin Luxiao had his shoes on, and gave her head a firm press of his palm. “It’s the middle of the night — other people need to sleep too.”

Nan Chu threw off the covers and got up. “Then I’ll come with you. We can eat and come back.”

She really couldn’t let him out of her sight — the young woman was growing clingier by the day. Lin Luxiao ran his hand over her hair with a slight smile: “Alright then.”

The night wind was gentle and warm. They ate and came back.

The two of them tangled again for over an hour in bed, until Nan Chu was crying for mercy. Only then did Lin Luxiao drop a kiss on her lips as a signal that the battle was over.

By the time they came out of the shower, it was already six in the morning.

Nan Chu dug her fingers fiercely into his chest. “If I get rejected a bunch of times today because I keep messing up my lines, and the director yells at me, I’m coming back here to do you in.”

He leaned against the headboard and smoked, utterly untroubled. “Go ahead — if you can manage it.”

At six thirty, the assistant knocked at the door.

Nan Chu pressed a deep, slow kiss to his mouth before she would agree to leave. Lin Luxiao patted her on the rear. “Go on — don’t keep people waiting.”

Nan Chu teased him: “Let’s do it once more — five minutes. It’s not like you haven’t done that before.”

“…” Lin Luxiao stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray, pulled her back over, and pressed her down beneath him. “Looking for trouble?”

Nan Chu burst into giggles and pleaded for mercy. “Alright — I was wrong. Not teasing anymore. Really going now.”

Another knock from outside. “Nan Chu? We’re running late.”

Nan Chu was urgent now, pushing against him. “I was wrong, I was wrong — Lin Luxiao, I really was wrong.”

“Where were you wrong?”

“I shouldn’t have teased you.”

Truth be told, he preferred Nan Chu calling him by his full name over “Captain” — only she could make that name sound the way it did.

Lin Luxiao took his time releasing her, and settled back against the headboard.

After Nan Chu had gone, Lin Luxiao dozed for a bit, then got up and dressed. He’d just pulled on his trousers — belt not yet buckled, hanging loose around his waistband — when the hotel room door was pushed open.

Lin Luxiao thought it was Nan Chu and looked up casually. The young woman standing in the doorway was equally stunned.

They both froze for a long moment before she pointed at him: “Who are you?”

Lin Luxiao pressed his tongue against the back of his upper teeth, working out how to answer that question.

The assistant had just gotten a call from Nan Yueru asking her to go to Nan Chu’s room and photograph her ID card.

The result: as soon as the front desk opened the door for her, she saw this unfamiliar — and unmistakably handsome — man standing in the room.

She’d stood there for quite a while before reacting. The curtains were wide open; light poured in from behind, and the man was shirtless with clean, easy muscle lines visible across his frame — his trousers also not fully pulled up yet, belt hanging loose. And his face was devastatingly good-looking.

Clothes scattered all over the floor. On the sofa was a black lace bra and underwear that Nan Chu had changed out of.

The young assistant turned red. She didn’t need to think too hard about what had happened in this room the night before.

Lin Luxiao was just like that — naturally unbothered even having been caught in an awkward situation. He calmly buckled his belt, fixed his trousers, grabbed the t-shirt off the bed and pulled it on. “Nan Chu’s not here.”

With a face like that, he was probably one of Nan Chu’s lovers — or something along those lines, the assistant reasoned. She mumbled an acknowledgment, red-faced, and backed out of the room.

She leaned against the wall outside, heart hammering.

So handsome.

…

At noon the production broke for lunch, and the young assistant came to Nan Chu nervously and finally told her what she’d seen.

“So, um.”

Nan Chu was picking at her rice. “Yeah?”

“Who was that man in your room?”

Nan Chu looked up, startled. “You went into my room?”

The assistant nodded. “Your mom called and asked me to go photograph your ID card — I saw that man in there.”

Nan Chu: “Why would my mom need my ID card photographed?”

The assistant was immediately sidetracked. “No idea — she just asked me to go do it. Maybe she has a role for you? Anyway, that’s not the point — who was that man?”

Nan Chu made a small sound. “That’s my husband.”

The assistant exploded. “Say that again?”

Nan Chu smiled. “We’ll be going public soon anyway — might as well tell you now. We’re registered.”

The assistant was both stunned and devastated. “You two got married?”

“Yeah — just recently. Oh, and next time my mom asks you to do something, come tell me first — don’t go off and do it on your own.”

The assistant still hadn’t recovered from the news about the marriage, and nodded absently.

She’s going public?

That would be the biggest news story of the year.

That afternoon, after filming wrapped.

Nan Chu went back to the room and found Lin Luxiao gone. The bed had been neatly made, and even her suitcase had been packed — her clothes folded back inside — and the underwear and bra she’d left hanging on the sofa had been washed and hung out to dry.

When those black lace underwear swayed at the window, Nan Chu’s face actually went red.

So mortifying…