Ling Xingyan felt like this was simply no way to live.

As a business partner, he was here to collect his share of the profits — not to choke down secondhand romance fumes.

Choking down the romance fumes he could live with.

Ever since Ling Chen’s phone had broken last night, everyone who had business with Ling Chen had started calling him instead, as if determined to make sure his “easy profit-sharing” lifestyle wouldn’t stay easy for long, setting the tone for a hectic year right from day one.

Meanwhile, the man who’d lost his phone was perfectly content, having bolted off the plane straight into a date the moment he landed.

Originally, Ling Xingyan had held a live-and-let-live attitude toward his newly signed artist’s love life.

Now, his convictions were starting to waver.

Screw this whole “falling in love” business — anyone with a partner should just quit the industry entirely!

He stared at the text for a while, took a deep breath, and called Ling Chen.

Before the other end could even say hello, he asked point-blank, “When are you moving out of my place?”

Ling Chen’s voice sounded lazy, as leisurely as if he’d just gotten out of a hot spring.

“What’s the rush?”

Ling Xingyan: “Can I just say you’re an eyesore, is that allowed?”

Ling Chen thought it over, then said with sudden understanding, “Oh.” “You’re in a hurry to date someone too?”

Ling Xingyan: “…Pretty much, yeah, seriously, the place is already furnished, just move out, I’m begging you, alright?”

“No can do.”

“There’s formaldehyde,” Ling Chen said.

Ling Xingyan took a deep breath. “I’ll go breathe it in for you, how about that?”

“How about I bring my son along to help me breathe it in too?”

“Should I get Auntie Xiao, Lu Manman, A-Zhe, and everyone else to go breathe it in with you?”

Ling Chen laughed. “Hanging up now.”

“Wait.”

Ling Xingyan asked, “Where are you right now?”

“Hotel.”

“…Then why do you have so much time to waste chatting nonsense with me? Not busy with anything important?”

The line went dead with a beep.

Ling Xingyan hadn’t even finished what he was saying, and stood there yanking at his own hair against the empty screen.

A couple of years back, Ling Chen’s phone number had leaked, and along with it his flight and hotel information had been dug up too. Ever since, Ling Xingyan had made a habit of switching Ling Chen’s number every so often. He’d just been about to ask if Ling Chen had gotten a new one himself — or well, maybe his girlfriend had set it up for him — and take the chance to deactivate the old number for good.

But it seemed Ling Chen had no interest right now in worrying about any of that; his contact list was sparse to begin with, and virtually all of his work relationships were maintained by Ling Xingyan.

So Ling Xingyan dug through his study and found an old, unused phone, charged it up for a while, put in Ling Chen’s old SIM card, and figured he’d check for anything important before instructing Lu Manman to sever every last connection to it.

Just a few minutes after turning it on, an unfamiliar call came in.

Ling Xingyan wasn’t great with numbers and answered irritably: “What now?”

Instead of the voice he’d been expecting, a cautious, elderly woman’s voice came through.

“A-Chen… are you asleep yet? It’s Grandma.”

Ling Xingyan’s gaze went still, his lips pressing tight.

After a long pause, he said coldly, “Wrong number.”

—

The sound of running water in the bathroom finally stopped, and after a while, Zhu Wenshu emerged.

The newly bought phone sat on the table nearby, while Ling Chen sat quietly on the couch, his jacket already off, wearing a thin sweatshirt, leaning back against a cushion, eyes lowered, lost in thought — his expression looked somehow unnatural.

“Done with the call?”

Zhu Wenshu had just heard talking from inside the bathroom.

A few seconds passed before Ling Chen seemed to snap back to himself and turned to look at her.

The hotel room was decorated in warm yellow tones, the lighting not too bright, making Ling Chen’s complexion look paler than usual, the light reflected in his eyes seeming to waver.

But seeing Zhu Wenshu watching him, Ling Chen turned his face away.

“Done.”

“Nothing urgent, I hope?”

When they’d first come up, Ling Chen had unboxed the new phone, turning it over in his hands with no particular expression, only mentioning that since he had a phone now, and worried Ling Xingyan might have urgent business he couldn’t reach him about, he’d had the driver go downstairs to help him buy a SIM card.

“No.”

Ling Chen said, “Just letting them know I’m safe.”

The moment he finished speaking, Zhu Wenshu’s phone rang.

She took it out, glanced at it, and hung up immediately.

Ling Chen raised an eyebrow at her, then picked up his own phone and started scrolling.

“You should answer that.”

Zhu Wenshu: “Huh?”

Ling Chen said nothing. Zhu Wenshu thought about it for a moment, then suddenly laughed. “That’s not a call, it’s my alarm reminding me to sleep.”

“Oh…”

Ling Chen paused, then set his phone down carelessly, tilting his head back against the couch. “I thought it was your parents calling you home.”

Zhu Wenshu tilted her head to look at him, not responding.

Ling Chen’s gaze flickered, and he turned to look back at her.

“What?”

“Teacher Zhu’s going to give you a lesson today.”

Zhu Wenshu sat down beside him, posture upright and serious, “You can’t have double standards.”

She raised both hands to press down on Ling Chen’s shoulders, but being so much shorter than him, she felt her presence lacked authority, so she lifted her chin and said, “Look, so many people like you — thousands and thousands of them—”

Ling Chen suddenly tilted his head, rubbing his cheek against Zhu Wenshu’s hand.

“But I only like one person. You.”

Whatever Zhu Wenshu had been about to say next got stuck entirely in her throat.

She pressed her lips together, the back of her hand tickled by Ling Chen’s chin.

“You should shave.”

Zhu Wenshu withdrew her hand, fingers curling in. “It’s so itchy.”

Ling Chen slowly lifted his head, running a hand carefully over his chin. “I shaved this morning.”

After a moment, he glanced sideways at Zhu Wenshu. “Where’s it itchy for you?”

As everyone knew, Ling Chen’s voice was a gift from heaven, one in a million.

But few people had ever heard the way he spoke in a low murmur, carrying a faint breathiness, rubbing gently against the eardrum.

“…”

It hadn’t actually been itchy before. Now it felt like everywhere itched.

Zhu Wenshu coughed twice to cover up her wandering thoughts. “I should head home.”

She said this and got up to leave, but Ling Chen suddenly caught her hand again.

“So soon?”

He said this still with his head tilted, and from Zhu Wenshu’s angle, it looked especially like…

“Can you not—” Zhu Wenshu blurted without thinking, “—act all clingy?”

“…”

Ling Chen’s expression suddenly went rigid; he stared at Zhu Wenshu for a long moment, then, a bit stiffly, turned his face away.

Zhu Wenshu smiled, lips curving. “I’m off.”

She turned to go, only to find Ling Chen gripping her hand even tighter, his jaw set, lips pressed together, saying nothing, head down.

She stared at him for a while, then sat back down anyway.

“Guess I’ll sit with you a bit longer, then.”

The room fell suddenly quiet, save for the sound of their breathing.

Ling Chen lowered his head, his hand wrapped around Zhu Wenshu’s, thumb tracing slowly over her fingertips.

Her fingers were slender and even, her nails trimmed neatly clean; there was a thin callus on the side of her index finger — a mark from years of holding a pen.

Zhu Wenshu had always had nice chalk handwriting; back in the day, the blackboard bulletins for her class had all been her responsibility, so every semester there’d be a stretch of days where she’d have to run to the back of the classroom after class, standing on a desk, arm raised, writing out the board display.

Which meant Ling Chen had seen this hand of hers many times before.

He’d just never imagined that one day he’d be able to hold it, openly, in the light.

—

After a while, Zhu Wenshu got a message from her parents asking if she was home yet.

“I really do have to get going,” Zhu Wenshu said, her voice a little muffled.

Really, the two of them hadn’t done anything at all here, but she just wanted to keep sitting like this — the thought that Ling Chen would have to go work in Jiangcheng again tomorrow morning made her want to just sit here all night.

But she couldn’t. Tomorrow morning she still had to go with her family to visit the ancestral graves.

She slowly pulled her hand free, and at the last moment, let her fingertips rest against the back of Ling Chen’s hand. “My parents are pushing me.”

Seeing that Ling Chen still said nothing, Zhu Wenshu picked up her bag and stood.

“You should get some rest too.”

The man in front of her still had his head down. Zhu Wenshu couldn’t help herself and reached out to touch his hair.

Ling Chen suddenly looked up, and Zhu Wenshu quickly pulled her hand back.

“Alright, going now.”

Zhu Wenshu turned and walked toward the door before Ling Chen could say anything. As she opened it, she saw him get up too, and quickly said, “Don’t come over here.”

“?”

Ling Chen did stop, but he didn’t understand why Zhu Wenshu suddenly looked so wary. “What are you doing?”

“Please remember at all times that you’re a huge celebrity,” Zhu Wenshu said very seriously. “Don’t just go acting clingy whenever you feel like it.”

Or else she might not be able to control herself.

Ling Chen: “…”

He rolled his neck helplessly, tongue pressed against his cheek.

Zhu Wenshu had been going on and on about clinginess all night, to the point where he was starting to have delusions himself — had he actually been acting clingy?

Impossible.

Ling Chen hadn’t had that word in his vocabulary since he was ten years old.

But he had, in fact, just been planning to keep her a little longer, had even prepared what to say — stay with me a little longer.

Did that sound clingy?

He looked up, meeting Zhu Wenshu’s eyes.

Fine.

Let her think whatever she wanted.

“I just wanted to remind you.”

He glanced at the couch. “Whether you forgot something.”

Zhu Wenshu blinked, unable to think for a long moment what she could have forgotten.

Then, looking again at the face hovering in front of her, something seemed to dawn on her.

Ugh.

This was genuinely troubling.

Even though Zhu Wenshu felt a little embarrassed herself, this was, after all, the man who’d rushed straight to Huiyang to see her the very first chance he’d had, after being run ragged nonstop.

“Come here.”

Ling Chen’s eyes widened slightly, his brow lifting.

Zhu Wenshu curled her finger at him again.

Ling Chen, still confused, walked over anyway.

With only a step of distance left between them, Zhu Wenshu suddenly rose onto her toes and pressed the lightest kiss to the side of his face.

“Good night.”

“…”

By the time Ling Chen came back to his senses, the door in front of him had already closed.

A long while later, he was still frozen in place, his expression otherwise unchanged from usual. In two or three strides, he crossed back to the living room and dropped heavily onto the couch.

Then he picked up the scarf Zhu Wenshu had forgotten to take with her and buried his face in it.

—

The next morning, Zhu Wenshu was woken up at seven, had a simple breakfast, and went to pick up her grandparents.

Today was the anniversary of her great-grandfather’s death, and the whole family had to go up the mountain to pay respects.

Her dad drove to pick up her grandparents, and hadn’t gone far before pulling over near Baihua Alley, where he and Grandpa got out to buy offerings.

Only Zhu Wenshu, her mom, and her grandma remained in the car. She leaned against the window, drowsy, everything in her field of vision blurring.

The two older women beside her chatted back and forth.

“Isn’t this street supposed to be torn down?”

“No idea, that’s been the rumor for years now.”

“Good riddance if it is — this place is falling apart, the ground’s all broken too, you get your shoes soaked in muddy water every time you walk through here.”

“It’s not like they can just tear it down whenever. All sorts of people live around here, not the easiest folks to deal with — crazy ones, simple ones, all sorts of unwell people.”

Zhu Wenshu, who hadn’t said a word this whole time, suddenly caught on a certain phrase and spoke up. “Crazy and simple people — are there some around here?”

Grandma, busy knitting something, didn’t even look up.

Zhu Wenshu waited a good while before Grandma adjusted her reading glasses and said, “You don’t remember? I even said something to you about it back then.”

Zhu Wenshu: “Huh?”

Grandma glanced at her. “I always said you never learn your lesson — told you not to talk to strangers casually, and not to lend things to people you don’t know, what if you got tricked and sold off somewhere?”

With that reminder, Zhu Wenshu started to recall something.

It seemed to be the summer after her first year of high school. She’d been staying at her grandma’s, caught a cold from sleeping with the AC on too much — nothing serious, so she’d just gone to the nearby clinic on her own to get some medicine.

Coming out after seeing the doctor, it was raining outside, so Zhu Wenshu pulled an umbrella out of her bag.

Just as she was about to leave, she heard someone sobbing nearby.

She turned and saw a middle-aged man crouched on the ground, crying.

Seeing a grown man cry at a place like a clinic, Zhu Wenshu naturally assumed some kind of personal tragedy.

After a while, the man stood up, wiped his face, and started to walk out into the rain.

Zhu Wenshu, without thinking much of it, called out to stop him.

The man turned around and just stared at her blankly, his face streaked with rain and tears, saying nothing.

Zhu Wenshu offered him her umbrella; he only paused for a second, then took it without a word, without even a thank-you.

At the time, Zhu Wenshu had actually regretted it a little, thinking how rude the man was. And that umbrella — she’d used it for years, had grown attached to it — it seemed there’d be no getting it back now.

Afterward, Zhu Wenshu had walked home in the rain by herself, drenched like a half-drowned cat. When Grandma asked what had happened, and she explained, Grandma had scolded her furiously for talking to strangers, and brought up how, just the year before, a young woman in the area had lent her phone to a stranger, only to get lured somewhere remote and robbed — and in the struggle, accidentally killed.

The whole incident had left the neighborhood on edge for a while, and Zhu Wenshu had felt a lingering chill about it herself afterward.

Because of that soaking in the rain, her cold had gotten worse, and she’d gone back to the clinic the next day to see the doctor again.

When she got there, the nurse told her a man had stopped by that morning and left something for her.

Zhu Wenshu followed the nurse to retrieve it, and saw her umbrella, neatly folded, placed inside a plastic bag.

A few days later, when the sun finally came out in Huiyang, she opened the umbrella, and a note tucked inside the canopy fluttered down. Zhu Wenshu caught it in her hand and saw three neatly written characters on it — thank you.

Because of that note, Zhu Wenshu had never once thought at the time that the man might have had a mental illness.

“So it was him…” In the car, Zhu Wenshu murmured, “He seemed pretty normal to me at the time.”

“People don’t exactly walk around with ‘mentally ill’ written on their foreheads.” Grandma was still clearly bothered by the whole thing, even now. “You were just lucky — if you’d run into that murderer instead, you… forget it, not even worth talking to you about it.”

Zhu Wenshu was still staring out the window, lost in thought, and didn’t respond.

After a moment, Grandma added, “That man’s luck was rotten too, though. Heard his son made something of himself, became a big celebrity, but he never got to enjoy any of it.”

“Huh?” Zhu Wenshu asked suddenly. “Why not?”

“He passed away.”

A ringing filled Zhu Wenshu’s ears; she stared blankly at the ball of yarn in Grandma’s hands, expression frozen.

“Hey, a celebrity — isn’t that the one from your class?” Her mom, who’d been quiet this whole time, suddenly spoke up. “There’s only ever been the one celebrity to come out of Huiyang, right?”

“Is it?”

Seeing Zhu Wenshu not respond, her mom patted her shoulder. “I’m talking to you.”

Distracted, Zhu Wenshu said, “I guess so.”

Her mom asked, “You still in touch with that celebrity classmate of yours? How are things between you two?”

“Huh? Oh.” Zhu Wenshu lowered her head, murmuring, “So-so, I guess.”

“Did something happen between you two?”

Her mom lowered her head to look at Zhu Wenshu.

“Huh?”

Zhu Wenshu blinked. “No.”

“Please. I gave birth to you, you think I can’t tell when you’re lying?”

Zhu Wenshu: “…”

Right then, Zhu Wenshu’s phone buzzed with a new message.

[c]: I’m on the plane.

Zhu Wenshu turned away from her mom to reply.

[Zhu Wenshu]: Got it.

She thought about it, then sent another message.

[Zhu Wenshu]: Want to hug you.

[c]: ?

[Zhu Wenshu]: ?

He sent a voice message.

Zhu Wenshu glanced around and, without playing it, switched it to text.

“Zhu Wenshu, don’t copy me.”

[Zhu Wenshu]: Copy you how?

Another voice message came through.

Her mom and grandma were both busy with their own things right now, so they probably wouldn’t notice her.

So Zhu Wenshu held the phone up to her ear.

“Copying me…” His voice was very quiet, as if he could barely bring himself to say it, “…acting clingy.”