Ban Sheng stopped himself in the end. First, Lin Weixia was ill with a fever. More importantly, he knew the two of them hadn’t fully opened their hearts to each other yet — so he held back. He couldn’t behave so recklessly.

In the end, Ban Sheng went and took a cold shower. When he came out, his dark hair was slightly damp at the forehead. He dried it casually with a towel, then got into bed, lifted the covers, and instinctively turned to hold the sleeping Lin Weixia — then stopped, remembering how cold his skin still was. He waited until the chill had completely left his body before pulling her close.

In the end, nothing happened between them. They slept soundly.

The next morning, Lin Weixia woke up against Ban Sheng’s firm, solid chest. His chin rested against the top of her head, and his long arms were looped around her waist.

She had been half-delirious with fever the night before. Recalling certain fragments of it now, she felt she must have been out of her mind — absolutely lost it.

Carefully, Lin Weixia lifted the arm draped over her waist and got up. She padded over to the couch, where her clothes were pinned beneath his black athletic jacket. She eased them out with slow, unhurried movements, hugged them to her chest, bent down, and crept on tiptoe toward the door.

A low, faint, slightly hoarse voice came from behind her, asking slowly:

“Where are you going?”

Lin Weixia straightened up and turned to look at him, guilt flickering in her eyes. “You’re awake?”

“Barely slept at all,” he said, a faint dark shadow beneath his eyes, his voice rough and husky. There was a clear insinuation in his tone. “You were tugging at my clothes all night.”

Lin Weixia’s pale cheeks flared a soft pink. She was about to argue, but the moment she met Ban Sheng’s gaze, she found herself doubting herself instead. She really wasn’t a quiet sleeper — when she shared a bed with Menzi, she was forever stealing blankets, and she’d once woken up with her arms wrapped around Menzi’s waist.

Menzi always complained about it: “Babe, you look so cool and composed during the day, but the moment it’s nighttime you turn into a koala bear, clinging to me for dear life. And the worst part is you always go for my waist. It’s so ticklish.”

“I’m sorry — I’m a restless sleeper. I’ll go back to my room now.” Lin Weixia offered a sincere apology, then waited to leave.

She really should go back first. It would be awkward if anyone spotted her coming out of his room — they hadn’t confirmed their relationship yet.

Lin Weixia was just about to leave when Ban Sheng called after her and wouldn’t let her go.

She stood there, a little confused, and looked up to see Ban Sheng rubbing his face roughly with one hand. His broad shoulders rose slowly from the headboard as he threw back the covers and got out of bed.

Ban Sheng was wearing only a pair of trousers. Sunlight filtered through the gap in the curtains and fell across his upper body — lean, well-defined muscles with a light golden-honey tone to his skin, lending him a roguish, magnetic appeal.

He had an unlit cigarette between his lips, and as he bent to pick up his clothes from the floor, his spine stretched long and taut, tracing a beautiful line down his back to where his trousers sat loose at the hip.

It was the kind of sight that made a person’s face heat up. The moment Ban Sheng turned around, Lin Weixia snapped her gaze away.

Ban Sheng let out a low, amused sound but didn’t call her out. He was already dressed — jacket zipped up to the sharp line of his jaw, posture straight-spined and upright, every inch of him composed and put-together once again.

He walked over to her. The young man tilted down slightly, picked up the clothes draped over Lin Weixia’s arm, leaned forward, and began helping her into her outer coat, carefully and methodically doing up the buttons for her. Lin Weixia was enveloped in the faint, clean scent of his body wash, and her heart beat entirely beyond her control.

The two of them stepped out together. Lin Weixia glanced left and right — the corridor was empty. She let out a quiet breath of relief. And then, in the very next second, fate seemed determined to work against her: the doors on both sides of the hallway swung open simultaneously, and their companions began filing out.

Her heart clenched involuntarily. Lin Weixia took two steps forward, trying to put some distance between herself and Ban Sheng. Her fingertips curled anxiously. Then, all at once, a long, slender hand closed around them — warm palm pressed to hers, and her heart leapt — long fingers, the knuckles prominent and defined, slid one by one through the gaps between her pale fingers and held on, firmly.

Their fingers interlaced.

Several people came out bleary-eyed, then perked up instantly at the sight of the two of them hand in hand. Whistles and catcalls broke out.

“Something going on here,” someone called.

“Ban-ge, should I be calling her sister-in-law now?” Qiu Minghua whooped.

Ban Sheng took the cigarette from his mouth, met the question head-on, and answered: “Ask her if she’s willing.”

Lin Weixia felt her face go warm. She tugged at her hand without success and asked quietly, “What are you doing?”

“You walked out of my room,” Ban Sheng said, tilting his head down to look at her, his tone perfectly matter-of-fact. “You have to take responsibility for that.”

Because Lin Weixia had only just recovered from her fever, Ban Sheng didn’t want to put her through anything more tiring, so he drove her back early.

After returning, Lin Weixia took a day off to rest at home. With two additional days where she had no classes, she didn’t go back to school until Thursday. The moment she arrived, her psychology department classmates looked over at her with knowing smiles — some admiring, some simply curious.

No matter where she went, Lin Weixia attracted a certain amount of attention.

After class, Lin Weixia walked out of the lecture building and happened to run into Menzi. She told her about the strange thing she’d been noticing. Menzi draped an arm over her shoulder, laughing.

“You don’t know? The school forum completely blew up. Apparently people kept inviting Ban Sheng out — to bars, to late-night street racing — and he turned all of them down.”

“Do you know what he said?”

Lin Weixia asked, “What?”

“He said his girlfriend wouldn’t let him, so he wasn’t going. And the girlfriend’s name — Ban Sheng said it himself — is Lin Weixia.” Menzi made a click with her tongue and sighed. “And apparently he’s been spending all his time in the lab working on a project with his supervisor. Is this what it looks like when a wayward man turns over a new leaf for love?”

Beyond that, Menzi also caught Lin Weixia up on everything else that had happened during the trip to Yun Chong — including the situation with Shi Li, and various other things.

A wave of relief washed over Lin Weixia — less about the gradual clearing of the fog between the two of them, and more a genuine happiness on Ban Sheng’s behalf. He was finally trying to move forward.

Was Ban Sheng coming back?

When she got home, her phone buzzed. She opened a group message — there was a gathering planned for Sunday, and people were doing a headcount, someone tagging her to ask if she was going. She typed a “sure” into the chat, but then her screen flashed with a calendar reminder:

December 22nd. Winter Solstice. Ban Sheng’s birthday.

Three days from now.

She deleted the “sure” and replaced it with: “Sorry, I have something on Sunday.”

Sunday. Heavy snow.

Lin Weixia was up at first light. She found the windowsill glazed with the soft blur of winter cold and heard the wind howling through. She quickly washed up, changed, and headed to the market, where she bought a pile of ingredients — pastry skins, ground beef filling. She transferred twice on the bus before finally reaching Ban Sheng’s building.

Today was Ban Sheng’s birthday. And the Winter Solstice. She knew he didn’t celebrate his birthday, but Lin Weixia wanted to make him a pot of dumplings.

At the security desk of Ban Sheng’s building, Lin Weixia signed in, then slipped in behind a resident using their key card, and made her way smoothly up to the thirty-third floor.

Standing before the black door, she felt a little nervous. Lin Weixia held the paper bag against her chest and pressed the doorbell. While she waited, she tidied her hair. No answer came.

It was still early. He was probably still asleep.

Wind swept through the corridor. Lin Weixia instinctively hunched her shoulders, freed one hand, and pressed the bell again. She waited a good while, and then — a soft beep, and the sound of the door handle turning.

The door opened. Lin Weixia’s lips curved into a gentle smile, and she said, “Ban——”

Then she saw who was standing on the other side, and the smile vanished. Li Shengran was wearing a loose white knit sweater and a long skirt, and at her neck was a vivid red mark.

Li Shengran also went still for a moment when she saw Lin Weixia.

Warm air drifted from inside the apartment, but Lin Weixia, standing in the doorway, felt strangely frozen. She stood there for a long moment before coming back to herself, then looked at her:

“Where’s Ban Sheng?”

Li Shengran raised an eyebrow. Her hand rested on the door handle. She showed no intention of answering, and made a move as if to close the door.

Lin Weixia stood there, her legs beginning to ache. Her mind turned over many things. Back at the bar, when Shi Li had said she wanted to get couples’ tattoos with him, Ban Sheng had brushed her off, saying she wasn’t the right person — maybe because of Li Shengran.

And Li Shengran had told Lin Weixia that Ban Sheng had gotten the swallowtail butterfly tattoo because of her.

Looking at it now, that wasn’t impossible.

The more she thought about it, the colder she felt all over. Lin Weixia tightened her grip on the paper bag, but she didn’t move to leave. She took out her phone and called his number — it went straight to voicemail.

Li Shengran stood with her arms crossed, unmoved. Then — a chime — the elevator doors opened, and at the sight of what was behind Lin Weixia, her expression froze.

Lin Weixia followed her gaze and looked back. Ban Sheng was wearing a black hoodie underneath a blue denim jacket, hood pulled up over his head, exposing a cold, sharp-featured face.

Ban Sheng’s complexion was slightly off — he had clearly been up all night. He raised a hand and kneaded the back of his neck, and his eyes swept over carelessly.

He saw the whole scene at once.

To keep her from bolting, Ban Sheng strode over in a few quick steps, caught Lin Weixia’s hand, and said quietly:

“Come inside first.”

When Li Shengran met Ban Sheng’s eyes, her hand gave an involuntary tremor. He couldn’t get Lin Weixia to move — she stood her ground stubbornly, her expression remote, keeping him at arm’s length.

“Weixia, I need to explain.” Ban Sheng looked at her, his eyes uncharacteristically anxious.

Lin Weixia had never been able to predict what Ban Sheng was thinking. The Shi Li situation had been a misunderstanding — she found that out later; Shi Li had shown up uninvited and Ban Sheng had made her leave.

But Li Shengran? She seemed to have a kind of standing with Ban Sheng that no one else had — she knew everything that happened in his life, she went along with him wherever he wanted to go, she came and went freely from his home.

Who could stand that? The boy you love tells the outside world that his girlfriend is you — and then there’s another girl who can live at his place.

That was what Lin Weixia was feeling now. Alone, she could face Li Shengran calmly, keeping her emotions from showing. But the moment Ban Sheng was there, something in her suddenly broke open, and all the grievance and hurt she’d been quietly holding collapsed without warning.

Lin Weixia’s eyes went red immediately, and then she lost all control:

“What’s there to explain? You have Li Shengran — what am I even to you?”

“You’re my life.” Ban Sheng’s gaze was deep and steady as he said it slowly.

He was tall and dressed in black, standing in the corridor in his usual way — positioning himself in front of Lin Weixia to block the draft — and he said those words in front of Li Shengran without any hesitation.

He had never cared what anyone else thought.

“Li Shengran, what are you doing here? Tell your boyfriend to get down here. Now. And get out of my home.” Ban Sheng’s eyes were cold.

“Oh. Sure.”

Lin Weixia stood there in a daze, completely disoriented, and was pulled inside by Ban Sheng and guided to the couch.

Before long, footsteps came down from upstairs. A young man descended, shirtless and yawning. He had the kind of open, sunny, good-natured look about him.

Ban Sheng took one look at him and the vein in his neck twitched. He was just about to say something cutting when Li Shengran got there first, throwing a pillow at the guy:

“Who the hell are you walking around like that for?”

The young man immediately went back downstairs to put on a shirt. Li Shengran followed him up, and the two of them spent a few minutes doing whatever it is couples do before coming back downstairs together, dragging their luggage.

When they reappeared, the young man had a new red mark on his neck. These two could start kissing anywhere, at any moment.

Pulling his suitcase, the young man kept apologizing to Lin Weixia, scratching his head: “Honestly, I’m so sorry for causing all this trouble for you two. A while back we nearly broke up — long-distance, you know, it’s hard on her. All these years she’s been the one flying back and forth to see me every time. Ban-ge was there for us through all of it; he’s witnessed our whole relationship. Then I finally came to my senses — realized nothing matters more to me than Xiao Ran — so I decided to come back home. I just flew in from America last night, late, and I had nowhere to go. Ban-ge was at the lab all night, and I just turned up here. Then at the crack of dawn Xiao Ran came running from school to find me — I opened the door for her at five in the morning.”

Li Shengran had been with someone the entire time. Lin Weixia’s head was spinning from the barrage of information.

“And there’s never been anything between Xiao Ran and Ban-ge — she’s watched Ban-ge all these years, unable to let you go, struggling so hard——” The young man seemed to remember something and sighed.

Ban Sheng stepped in smoothly to cut him off, his tone sharp: “Li Heng, it’s time for you to go.”

If it weren’t for the fact that he owed Li Heng a favor from their time abroad, and if he’d known this was going to happen, he would have made Li Heng sleep under a bridge.

“Right, right, okay.” Li Heng held Li Shengran’s hand and tapped his head. “Say sorry.”

Called out by name, Li Shengran looked at Lin Weixia and sighed. None of the reluctance from that time in high school when Ban Sheng had forced her to apologize — and none of the arrogance she’d carried recently. She listened attentively to her boyfriend, composed herself immediately, and her apology came with genuine sincerity:

“I’m sorry. You can dislike me all you want, but please — take good care of my brother.”

“Li Shengran,” Ban Sheng said, looking at her slowly, “I haven’t settled accounts with you yet.”

Li Shengran recoiled instinctively, ducked behind her boyfriend, and pulled him along as she hurried out.

As he was leaving, the young man thought of something and turned back to Ban Sheng, looking a little sheepish: “Oh, by the way, bro — nothing happened in your place. Nothing at all.”

After the two of them left, the apartment fell quiet. From outside came the sound of snow-laden branches snapping.

Lin Weixia stood there in a daze, bright tears still hovering at the edge of her eyes. So it had all been one enormous misunderstanding. She felt embarrassed and sheepish, and yet also strangely giddy — like someone who had walked through fire and come out the other side unscathed.

Lin Weixia was just about to raise her hand to wipe her eyes when Ban Sheng turned, pulled out a tissue, and dried her face with a gentle touch, his tone carrying the faintest undercurrent of fond indulgence.

“My little butterfly is crying more and more these days.”

Something came back to him — she must have been jealous just now — and, as if needing to confirm it, he arched an eyebrow:

“You care about me, don’t you?”

The tears Lin Weixia had barely managed to hold back came rushing out again. She was flustered and furious at his nonchalant tone, and shot back:

“I don’t care — if I didn’t like you, why would I drag myself out here? I was at the market at the crack of dawn buying pastry skins and dumpling filling. My hands are red from the cold. You’re honestly getting more and more——”

The more she said, the more aggrieved she felt. She was just about to reach up and wipe her tears when Ban Sheng caught her hand. His throat moved. He stared at her.

“What did you just say?”

As far as he could remember, from high school all the way to now, this was the first time Lin Weixia had ever said — clearly and sincerely — that she liked him.

She had never said it before. Not once.

“I’m not talking to you anymore. I’m going to make dumplings.” Lin Weixia wiped her tears, pushed his hand away.

She stood up and carried her ingredients into the kitchen. She washed the celery, soaked the beef in cold water to draw out the blood, and began preparing the filling.

Although nothing had happened between them, Ban Sheng still called a cleaning service and had someone come to tidy the guest room. He specifically asked them to throw out all the bedding — sheets, duvet cover, everything — and to do a thorough disinfection of the entire space.

After making the call, Ban Sheng came in and washed some fruit, then reached past her to get a kitchen utensil from the cabinet — leaning in close, arms around her, making her heart race and her entire head go blank.

“Stop distracting me,” Lin Weixia couldn’t help saying.

“Mm.” Ban Sheng let out a low laugh, then, duly expelled, wandered leisurely back out of the kitchen.

The dumplings came together quickly. Lin Weixia set the first pot to boil. The dumplings tumbled and rolled in the churning water, and she busied herself in the kitchen, pulling out two clear salad bowls to mix the dipping sauce.

Once the dumplings were cooked and steaming, the two of them sat across from each other at the dining table. The warm amber light overhead cast a soft, golden glow over everything, and the whole scene felt quietly, genuinely cozy.

Ban Sheng ate at his usual pace. He took a sip of the broth — scorching hot, but wonderful. After several dumplings, his chopsticks happened to dip lower — and something appeared at the bottom of the bowl.

A soft-boiled egg.

He hadn’t had a soft-boiled egg on the Winter Solstice in a very long time.

Ban Sheng’s chopsticks stilled. Something welled up in his eyes. He looked up — into a pair of clear, cool eyes, and she was smiling:

“Ah Sheng, happy Winter Solstice.”

Neither of them said another word, but both of them knew — when Lin Weixia said “happy Winter Solstice,” what she meant was: happy birthday, Ban Sheng.

“Mm.” Ban Sheng lowered his head and took a bite of the soft-boiled egg, savoring it carefully. It tasted different from everything else.

After the meal, he pushed open the window. Snowflakes drifted and tumbled down outside. Lin Weixia glanced out and sighed softly: “It’s snowing again on the Winter Solstice this year.”

“Silly.” Ban Sheng gave her one word.

The two of them curled up on the couch together to watch television — they’d decided to rewatch Game of Thrones from the start. They were sitting at a slight distance from each other, not too close. Midway through, Lin Weixia leaned over to the other side of the coffee table to reach her water, and once she’d moved, she just didn’t come back.

Now the gap between them was even wider.

Ban Sheng lifted his eyelids to glance over. His expression was flat. He tilted forward, stretched out one long arm — and before Lin Weixia had even registered what was happening, a broad palm pressed beneath her and gave a push, depositing her firmly and entirely onto his lap.

“Say that again,” Ban Sheng said, one arm around her, his voice low and cool.

“Which part?” Lin Weixia glanced away, feigning innocence. “You’re getting more and more——?”

“My hands are red from the cold.” Lin Weixia noticed Ban Sheng’s expression shifting and quickly switched to a different line.

She knew exactly which part he wanted to hear — and she was deliberately withholding it. Ban Sheng’s expression grew darker by the second. Lin Weixia showed no fear of poking the lion, continuing to tease him without giving him the one sentence he wanted:

“I don’t care. I dragged myself here for nothing.”

Ban Sheng let out a laugh born of pure exasperation. His chest vibrated with it. He moved to undo her jacket, and Lin Weixia didn’t dare push her luck any further — hands flying to his neck, she leaned in and kissed him on the lips. His lips instantly caught a shine of moisture, along with the faint imprint of her lipstick.

Lin Weixia’s heart clenched. Embarrassed but resolute, she met Ban Sheng’s eyes and said, steadily and earnestly:

“I like Ban Sheng.”

Ban Sheng’s throat felt tight. The emotions he’d been holding down surged like a tide, ready to break. His voice came slowly:

“I only like Lin Weixia.”