“A’Qian!”

Shen Yi shoved the door open and burst inside, his very first priority being to find Rong Qian.

“What’s going on?” Rong Qian was gnawing on a French baguette and strolled out of the kitchen without a care in the world. Shen Yi immediately stepped forward and looked her up and down, asking anxiously, “Are you all right?”

“What could possibly have happened to me?” Rong Qian found it a little funny. Did she look like something had happened to her?

Shen Yi couldn’t find it funny. He had been on edge the entire way home — hadn’t even had time to park his bike properly, just set it down in a rush and taken the stairs two at a time.

“You were that worried? You’re sweating on your forehead.” Rong Qian only noticed now that beads of sweat had broken out on his brow, which told her just how anxious he had been.

Shen Yi shook his head, indicating he was fine.

Rong Qian reassured him, “To be perfectly honest, you really don’t need to worry about me. My skills are far stronger than you imagine. Compared to the kind of cold-blooded killers I’ve dealt with, these delinquent kids are nothing but small fry in my eyes.”

And then she patted him on the shoulder and said with a smile, “You can always count on me.”

“Killers? I thought you were a time traveler?” That, however, was what Shen Yi actually focused on.

Realizing she had said too much, Rong Qian scrambled to cover it up. “Time travelers can run into dangerous people too, you know. For every hero there’s a villain. ‘Killers’ was just a figure of speech — I didn’t mean actual murderers.”

Rong Qian felt a twinge of guilt. Once you tell one lie, you really do have to spin a hundred smaller lies to patch it up.

Not that she wanted to lie to him — but she couldn’t very well tell him right now that he would only live to thirty-two before dying, and that she wasn’t a time traveler at all but a criminal detective who had stumbled through a rift in time and space, could she?

That would be far too irresponsible.

Rong Qian would tell him the truth eventually. When the time was right, she would naturally come clean with him.

It was partly thanks to Shen Yi being so completely unguarded with her — whatever she said, he believed.

“Speaking of which, how did you know something had happened at home?” Rong Qian only then thought to ask him.

Shen Yi replied, “Someone told me.”

Rong Qian didn’t ask yet who this “someone” was, and instead put a different question to him: “Who is Thomas?”

It didn’t surprise Shen Yi that Rong Qian would ask. He answered, “Someone from school.”

“You offended him, and now he’s making trouble for you?” Rong Qian wore the expression of someone who had fully anticipated this, and Shen Yi nodded, admitting it.

Rong Qian looked at him and said, “If you’re in trouble, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I can handle it on my own.” Shen Yi didn’t mean this as bravado. His eyes were perfectly calm when he said it.

Rong Qian held his gaze for a long moment, then shifted direction and asked a different question. “Just now you said someone told you — who was that?”

“Lin Feng.”

“Lin Feng?” Hearing an unfamiliar name, Rong Qian asked curiously, “Who is Lin Feng?”

Shen Yi turned the question around on her. “Didn’t you notice him? He was by the roadside. He saw you through the window.”

“Is he the one with the arm tattoo, with that roguish look about him?” Rong Qian suddenly recalled, and Shen Yi nodded. Rong Qian asked again, “And there was also a Black man?”

“Lin Feng does have a Black friend with him — named Jessie.”

Rong Qian nodded thoughtfully. Together with Chen Shiyi and Lu Xuan, that accounted for everyone in the photo frame — all present and accounted for.

“How did you end up offending this Thomas?” Rong Qian asked him. Shen Yi didn’t hold anything back. “Do you remember asking me before about whether I knew Chen Shiyi and Lu Xuan?”

Rong Qian could hear the implication — his falling out with Thomas was connected to them. That day in the restaurant, he had accidentally bumped into Thomas, and the Chinese girl being bullied at the time was Chen Shiyi.

Afterward, Chen Shiyi and Lu Xuan, wanting to thank him, had approached him repeatedly to show their gratitude, but Shen Yi had never accepted any of it. He had been cold and drawn a clear line between himself and them.

Even so, Chen Shiyi and Lu Xuan refused to give up and kept trying to get close to him, hoping to become his friends.

After hearing all of this, Rong Qian suddenly had a suspicion. “You deliberately kept them at a cold distance and drew that line between you, because you were afraid that if they got too close to you, they’d get caught up in your trouble, weren’t you?”

“On my own, I don’t have much to worry about. With my current abilities, all I can do is protect myself — I can’t protect them.” Shen Yi was clear-eyed about his own limitations. Right now he was entangled in trouble, and anyone who got too close to him would be watched.

The best approach was to keep them at a distance.

As luck would have it, things hadn’t gone according to plan. The more he tried to keep his distance, the more those few people insisted on clinging to him.

“Are you certain that by keeping them at a cold arm’s length like this, you’ve cut ties with them?” Rong Qian felt it necessary to point something out to him. Shen Yi didn’t understand what she meant, so Rong Qian told him, “Unless you’ve reached the point of treating each other as strangers — not saying a single word when you cross paths — you can’t sever those ties completely. Do you think you’ve actually managed that?”

Shen Yi imagined it and had to admit that he had not.

“Shen Yi, in the places you can’t see, they may have done a great deal for you. But because of the deliberate distance you’ve kept, even if they’ve already run into trouble on your account, they won’t tell you.” Rong Qian was simply being honest and had no intention of pressuring him. In the end, however he chose to handle it was up to him.

Shen Yi’s brow furrowed. Rong Qian smiled and said, “Is it giving you a headache? But that’s the nature of human relationships — impossible to fully explain, complicated and troublesome. Makes being alone seem so much cleaner and simpler.”

“But Shen Yi, I hope you understand — if you want to accomplish anything in this world, you can’t avoid dealing with all manner of different people. You need to learn how to navigate the relationships around you.”

As a twenty-seven-year-old adult who had already made her share of mistakes and learned her share of lessons, Rong Qian understood these things. She wanted what was best for him, and so she was willing to teach him a thing or two.

Shen Yi took her words to heart. And he was only ever willing to listen to her.

At this moment, Rong Qian still had no idea how great an impact her presence had on Shen Yi — so much so that one could say she influenced the entire course of his life.

Shen Yi genuinely thought about what Rong Qian had said, and he also felt it was necessary to have a conversation with Lin Feng and the others. The only problem was that over the following two days, Lin Feng was nowhere to be found.

Shen Yi’s sharp instincts told him something was off, but he didn’t know where Lin Feng lived or have any way to contact him.

Just when Shen Yi was trying to figure out how to track him down, he returned home one evening to find the landline ringing — an unknown caller. He picked up and found it was Jessie on the other end.

Jessie said with some difficulty, “Shen Yi, even though Lin Feng told me not to tell you, I feel bad about that. I’ve thought it over for a long time, and I still think I should tell you.”

“Whatever you have to say, just say it,” Shen Yi said. He had already guessed what was coming.

Jessie told him that for the past two days, Lin Feng had been scrambling all over the place to borrow money for the gang’s medical bills. He was at the end of his rope. Jessie wondered whether, if Shen Yi had any funds available at the moment, he could possibly lend them some.

Shen Yi asked, “Which hospital?”

Jessie answered, “Yafeilun.”

“Understood.” Shen Yi said and hung up the phone. He picked up a jacket and put it on. He was just about to tell Rong Qian to go to sleep ahead of him while he stepped out — when he found she had already dressed herself and was standing at the door saying to him, “Why are you still standing there? Let’s go.”

Yafeilun Hospital was some distance away. Shen Yi mounted his bicycle with Rong Qian on the back.

For someone who had been commuting by car for years, sitting on the back of a bicycle gave Rong Qian the strange feeling of having traveled back to her student days.

The one difference was that Rong Qian had always been the one pedaling with others on the back, and had never been on the back herself. So she had actually wanted Shen Yi to sit behind her and let her do the cycling.

Shen Yi responded with a single look, as if to say: Do you really think that’s going to happen?

This little kid — quite the bossy one.

When they arrived at Yafeilun Hospital, Shen Yi only watched from a distance, paid the medical bills, and left. It was not a small sum. Rong Qian asked him where the money came from, and Shen Yi answered with three words: “My scholarship.”

He had paid the medical bills with his scholarship. So what about his tuition fees? Shen Yi’s answer to that was simple — find more part-time work.

Rong Qian was floored by him. “Fine! Starting tomorrow, I’ll work part-time with you.”

Shen Yi initially refused, but under Rong Qian’s persistent coaxing and pestering, he had no choice but to relent. Rong Qian slung an arm around his shoulder like a good buddy and teased him all the way, making him laugh.

What neither of them noticed was that a man was standing in the shadows, watching their retreating figures until they were gone, before finally pulling his gaze away.

When he turned, a prominent scar was visible along the side of his face…

When Lin Feng dragged his exhausted body to the hospital first thing the next morning, he was told that the medical bills had already been cleared. He was stunned. After tracking down Jessie and asking him about it, he learned that Jessie had called Shen Yi the previous night.

When Lin Feng found this out, he was furious.

“It’s not like you don’t know his situation. Where would he get that kind of money? Think about it for a second and you’d realize he must have used his scholarship to pay. What right do I have to let him foot this bill for me? This has absolutely nothing to do with him!”

Jessie was at a loss. He hadn’t expected that Shen Yi would quietly go ahead and pay the bills without saying a word to anyone.

Originally he’d thought that if Shen Yi could lend him a little money, that would already be something to be grateful for. Who could have seen this coming?

“I’m going to find him!”

Lin Feng ended the call in a fit of exasperation, stepped out of the phone booth, and headed straight to Saint Roe Street. He arrived at seven o’clock in the morning and hammered on the door, shouting, “Shen Yi! Open this door!”

The door opened quickly — but the one who came to answer it was a woman. A woman who had just been woken up, wearing pajamas, blinking with sleepy eyes.

Rong Qian yawned and said, “I have to ask — what on earth are you trying to do at this hour of the morning?”