At this moment, Jiang Yan had no thoughts left to spare for Lin Kexing.

When it truly came down to it, Jiang Ruoqiao alone was enough to consume his every thought. He couldn’t attend to Lin Kexing — partly because he didn’t know how to face her, and partly because of a tangle of complicated feelings he couldn’t quite sort through. Jiang Yan sat in the courtyard, staring blankly at some fixed point. In that moment, he thought of everything and nothing at all. Du Yu and Wang Jiangfeng had gone back upstairs to their rooms. Lu Siyan was a young child, and Lu Yicheng couldn’t possibly leave him alone in the room, so he had gone back inside as well. The moon grew fuller and heavier overhead, and in the courtyard only Jiang Yan’s solitary silhouette remained.

A long while passed. Then a taxi arrived, its high-beam headlights sweeping across the courtyard in a sharp blaze of light.

Jiang Yan instinctively raised a hand to shield his eyes.

The driver switched to low beams.

Jiang Yan squinted.

The next second, Jiang Yan’s mother stepped out of the car. She glanced around the courtyard, and when she spotted her son sitting out there alone, a flash of surprise crossed her face. She exchanged a few words with the driver, then walked quickly toward him, looking him up and down. “What on earth happened to you? You look absolutely wretched.”

Jiang Yan didn’t respond. He simply looked at his mother.

His thoughts slowly began to reorder themselves. He had a fairly good guess as to why she’d come — Lin Kexing must have called her.

Only now did he recall — why had he brought Lin Kexing along in the first place?

It hadn’t been his plan or his idea at all. It was because of his mother’s repeated insistence that he had finally agreed. He knew he couldn’t blame anyone — not his mother, not Lin Kexing. If there was blame to be had, it lay entirely with himself for drinking too much and mistaking her for someone else. Yet he couldn’t help the thought from creeping in: if Lin Kexing hadn’t come along, wouldn’t none of this have happened? Right now, he and Ruoqiao would probably be sitting in the courtyard together, looking up at the stars and talking.

Jiang Yan simply stared at his mother.

His mother grew more uneasy by the second. “Ah Yan, what is it? What’s wrong?”

Jiang Yan’s voice was rough and hoarse. “Take Lin Kexing back with you. She’s in room 203 on the second floor.”

“Ah Yan…”

Only in this moment did his mother truly realize — perhaps because these past several months Ah Yan’s spirits had been lifting and his temperament growing more cheerful, she had forgotten: for a very long time, her son had been silent, had been shadowed. Facing him now, like this, she trod carefully and did not dare ask anything more.

The most pressing matter was to find out what had happened.

She nodded briefly and turned to go upstairs. But before she had even reached the corridor, Jiang Yan’s voice drifted to her from behind.

In the moonlight, Jiang Yan stood with his tall frame slightly bowed. He said: “I shouldn’t have listened to you and brought her here.”

His mother turned around in surprise.

His eyes and face were filled with nothing but regret. “I shouldn’t have agreed,” he said. “I shouldn’t have agreed.”

When he finished speaking, he turned and walked out of the courtyard.

His mother stood frozen for a long moment. Thinking of Lin Kexing, she gathered her unsettled heart and climbed the stairs, making her way to the door of room 203. She knocked. No answer came from inside. She tried the handle tentatively, and the door opened. She stepped in as quietly as she could, and found Lin Kexing curled up on the bed, weeping in silence.

Jiang Yan’s mother hurried over with concern, sat on the edge of the bed, and reached out carefully to touch Lin Kexing’s arm. “Kexing, what’s happened? What’s all this?”

Lin Kexing’s tears broke free and streamed down her face as she shook her head frantically.

How could she say it? How could she bring herself to say it?

She couldn’t get the words out!

The shame was too great!

She finally managed to speak, but only in a torrent of self-recrimination: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

She was sorry to Jiang Yan’s mother’s son. Now that Jiang Ruoqiao had broken up with him, he must be heartbroken and devastated.

She was sorry to Jiang Yan’s mother. Auntie had held such hopes that Jiang Yan would one day settle down and start a family — she’d never said it outright, but Lin Kexing could sense it: Auntie liked Jiang Ruoqiao.

And now she had gone and ruined everything.

She had been too greedy. She had wanted to let go so long ago — how had it come to this?

Something stirred in Jiang Yan’s mother’s heart.

This was all very strange. Something had obviously happened. If she was being honest with herself, she was not entirely displeased with the current state of things — but what had Ah Yan meant by those words just now? What was he regretting? Did he know about Kexing’s feelings? No, that couldn’t be it. She knew her son. Ah Yan was stubborn and steadfast in his attachments — right now he loved Jiang Ruoqiao, his heart and eyes were full of Jiang Ruoqiao, and if he ever discovered that Kexing’s feelings for him were not those of a sister but of a woman in love, he would distance himself immediately, and would never be with Kexing for the rest of his life. Unless… unless he and Jiang Ruoqiao broke up first. Unless Jiang Ruoqiao wounded him deeply. In any case, they absolutely had to break up — but it must not be because of Kexing.

Jiang Yan’s mother wrapped Lin Kexing gently in her arms, smoothing her hair. “Now, now. Did someone hurt you? Kexing, tell Auntie — was it Ah Yan? If it was him, don’t you worry. Auntie is on your side, and even if it was Ah Yan who wronged you, Auntie won’t let him get away with it!”

Lin Kexing kept shaking her head. “No, no, it wasn’t him.”

Jiang Yan’s mother probed gently: “Then was it Ah Yan’s girlfriend?”

Lin Kexing cried even harder. “No! It’s me who wronged her!”

At those words, Jiang Yan’s mother felt her heart plummet.

Word of Jiang Yan’s mother’s arrival had reached Yun Jia and the others, and they were absolutely furious.

Yun Jia, with her fiery temper, ignored Luo Wen’s attempts to hold her back and tagged Jiang Ruoqiao in the dormitory group chat: [Ruoqiao, that scumbag Jiang’s mother just showed up and went straight to Lin Kexing’s room — she’s probably there to comfort her and bring her home. Unbelievable!!]

Yun Jia typed on in a rapid-fire flurry: [Ruoqiao, I’m only saying this because I’m a true friend — don’t you dare let Scumbag Jiang talk you into making up with him. This breakup has to stick. As for that so-called ‘little sister’ of his, I won’t even get started. The two of them together is enough to make anyone’s stomach turn. And that’s nothing compared to his mother — it’s obvious she has a soft spot for Lin Kexing, and in her heart she’s probably already thinking of her as a future daughter-in-law, which means she has issues with you. If you two hadn’t broken up and stayed together, that woman would have made your life absolutely miserable in every possible way. Never underestimate the mother-in-law problem. Honestly, just based on his mother alone, don’t you dare get back together with him!]

Jiang Ruoqiao had just arrived back at her apartment when she saw this string of messages.

Well. Not remotely surprising.

There it was — Jiang Yan’s mother shows up, and Yun Jia and the others, with their unfailing instincts, had immediately picked up on just how much Jiang Yan’s mother cared for Lin Kexing.

Whether Jiang Yan’s mother’s fondness for Lin Kexing was genuine or partly calculated, who could say — but the attachment was certainly real.

Now with Jiang Yan’s mother rushing over like this, it only confirmed what Jiang Ruoqiao had already suspected.

Jiang Ruoqiao replied with breezy composure: [Don’t worry.]

To reassure her friends, she deliberately kept her tone light and joking: [If I get back together with him, I’m no better than a dog.]

Wasn’t that the truth?

How utterly pathetic and spineless would she have to be to get back together with Jiang Yan? It wasn’t going to happen — not in this lifetime. She and Jiang Yan had only been together a few months. In the beginning, yes, there had been genuine feeling between them. But that had long since worn away. The attachment had never run very deep to begin with — just a few months of spending time together. Could a few months really produce some kind of unshakeable, ocean-deep bond? If going back were really worth it, why would she have left in the first place?

Jiang Ruoqiao stretched with a lazy yawn.

She was a cautious person by nature.

Not just because of the narrative pull of being a main character, but because realistically, the people involved here were genuinely not ones she could afford to tangle with.

As long as they didn’t come to provoke her, she was perfectly willing to part ways cleanly from this day forward — if she passed any of them on the street or at school, she could treat them as though they didn’t exist and not spare them a single glance.

But whoever struck first would have no right to complain when she struck back.

Today had been truly exhausting.

Exhausting in body, exhausting in spirit. After a shower, she found herself unable to fall asleep. She sat on the sofa, lost in thought.

Back at the rural retreat, Jiang Yan had disappeared — no one knew where he’d gone, and he hadn’t returned to his room.

The room held only Lu Yicheng and Lu Siyan, father and son.

Lu Siyan was still worrying about Jiang Ruoqiao. After his bath, wrapped entirely in a towel, he shook the water droplets from his hair and muttered: “I wonder how Mama is doing.”

He was still very small — only five years old — and didn’t understand the love and hate and complications of grown-up relationships.

Even so, he could tell clearly enough that his mama had been wronged. That person called Jiang Yan had wronged her.

The reason he wasn’t currently making a fuss demanding to know exactly what had happened was largely because…his father had been a little frightening today.

Lu Siyan’s greatest fear was, without question, his mama — but he genuinely hadn’t expected that when his father got angry, it would be this terrifying.

So that evening, he was on his very best behavior. Even the curls on his head seemed to behave themselves.

Lu Yicheng glanced at him and continued dusting his neck with powder, his voice perfectly calm. “If you’re worried, you can call her.”

Lu Siyan: “Can I?”

“When have I ever stopped you from calling her?” Lu Yicheng finished covering his neck and all the soft folds with powder. “At this hour, she should still be awake.”

From here to the city, even without traffic, it would take about two hours to drive.

By now, she probably hadn’t been back in the apartment for long.

Something as significant as what had just happened — she wasn’t likely to have walked in the door and immediately fallen asleep, was she?

Lu Siyan let out a bright sound of delight, then looked at Lu Yicheng still standing in the room. “Daddy, when I’m comforting Mama, I don’t want anyone else around.”

“?”

Was this his son’s way of telling him to leave?

—