Jiang Ruoqiao’s impression of Lu Yicheng had not been particularly deep.

It was only recently that it had gradually come into focus. After handling her grandmother’s funeral arrangements, she returned to Jing Shi and also returned the wheelchair to Lu Yicheng — it was the one her grandfather had rented from him. Before she left for Jing Shi, her grandfather had especially reminded her to remember to return the wheelchair to Lu Yicheng. During this period, her nerves had been strung to the absolute limit, and beyond that, she had been enduring immense grief — it was only natural that her body couldn’t hold up. After taking her medicine, she fell asleep. She never could have imagined that when she woke and stepped out the door, she would find Lu Yicheng there, keeping watch in the stairwell.

She was a little surprised. A little confused.

But he looked at her, and asked quietly, “Has the fever broken?”

What was this person thinking?

Had he been keeping watch here for her the entire night?

That question gave Jiang Ruoqiao a crack of breathing room amid the exhaustion and grief — a small space that kept her from being wholly consumed by the pain. The next time she ran into Lu Yicheng was more than a month later. She was coming home from work when she spotted him near the residential complex. Their eyes met, and before she could say a word, he rushed to explain: “This time I really am just passing by. Really.”

As if afraid she wouldn’t believe him, he took out his phone. “Honestly — one of my students lives right here. If you don’t believe me, look…”

He explained that his student was preparing for an important exam, and the student’s parents had asked him to come by and give the child a boost.

He had just come out of the student’s home.

He really was just passing by.

For some reason, watching him painstakingly explain why he happened to be here, Jiang Ruoqiao felt the urge to laugh — and she did.

It was probably the first time, in these long, heavy months, that she had genuinely laughed.

Lu Yicheng was taken aback.

Jiang Ruoqiao said, “Mm.”

Lu Yicheng let out a sigh of relief. “I really was just passing by.”

He hadn’t expected such a coincidence either — running into her right there. His student’s home was close by, and he usually took the subway back to campus. The road leading to the subway station had been temporarily closed, so he’d taken a different route, which happened to pass right by the residential complex where Jiang Ruoqiao was renting.

The two of them fell into a brief silence.

Lu Yicheng was the one to speak first: “Well then. I’m heading out. See you.”

The two of them had no real relationship to speak of — forcing it would have yielded nothing more than the label of “fellow alumni.”

He adjusted the black backpack on his shoulders and made to leave. He had walked several steps when she called after him.

Her voice wasn’t loud — in the wind, it sounded very light, very soft. “Lu Yicheng.”

She called his name.

Lu Yicheng stopped in his tracks as if someone had pressed the pause button. Naturally, a very peculiar feeling stirred inside him.

Many people called him by his name — teachers, classmates, friends. But when she called it, it felt like that.

He turned around. Jiang Ruoqiao stood in the wind, wearing a black trench coat that made her fair complexion seem like snow; her slightly wavy long hair was blown into mild disarray by the wind, but she didn’t mind. She looked at him and said, “If you’re free, let’s get a meal together. My treat — as a thank-you.”

During her grandmother’s final hospitalization, he had actually helped her quite a bit.

By any measure, she owed him a meal.

Lu Yicheng clearly meant to decline, but his body was more forthright — he nodded and agreed. The two of them walked into the wind, heading toward a nearby hot pot restaurant. Since they weren’t exactly close, and weren’t friends, they didn’t walk side by side; instead there was roughly a meter of distance between them. She was subdued these days — quiet, prone to silence. He too wasn’t particularly good at engaging with women in conversation. They arrived at the restaurant without a word exchanged. The place was lively and full.

This was their first time eating alone together.

There was still not much to say.

In contrast to the hot pot restaurant’s bustle, the two of them probably looked to other people like strangers who had ended up sharing a table.

Lu Yicheng noticed that Jiang Ruoqiao didn’t like vegetables — more precisely, she didn’t like leafy greens.

He quietly finished all the leafy greens he had ordered.

When the bill came, he wanted to pay, but Jiang Ruoqiao was faster.

The two of them walked out of the hot pot restaurant. Jiang Ruoqiao said goodbye and waved, and he hesitated a moment before saying, “Let me walk you back — it’s not far.”

Jiang Ruoqiao was quietly amused.

It really was rather strange. She clearly wasn’t close with him at all, and yet he always seemed to be worried that something might happen to her. It had been the same the last time — she’d had a fever, and she’d assumed he had left, only to find he’d been keeping watch outside her door the entire night. If anyone else had done something like that, she would have found it at least a little off, even alarming — she’d definitely have kept her distance, let alone invited that person to dinner. But the person who had done it was him, and she didn’t feel that way at all.

Maybe it was because his reputation at school was so good, and his character so upstanding?

She couldn’t quite work it out.

But he really was a genuinely decent person.

In the end, Lu Yicheng followed a few steps behind her, watched her enter the residential building, and even then didn’t leave right away — he stood downstairs, tilting his head back to look up at her window, telling himself he could leave once the lights came on. But who knew — he waited a long time, and the lights never turned on. He checked the time on his phone: nearly twenty minutes had passed. Something wasn’t wrong, was it? Turning this possibility over in his mind, he hesitated for a while, then still walked back into the residential building.

He arrived at her floor and found her sitting on the staircase steps, staring blankly into space.

His arrival had triggered the motion-sensor hallway light.

The light in the corridor was a little dim, falling over her. She looked up at him — and that was when he saw her reddened eyes.

He didn’t explain why he’d come up.

She didn’t ask.

Several seconds passed — or perhaps more than ten — and the light went out. She sat with her knees pulled to her chest, silent. He stood to the side; standing grew tiring, so he leaned against the wall and kept her company.

He didn’t actually know why he was doing this.

They were nothing to each other. Even as alumni, what he had done — buying a wheelchair and renting it to her grandmother — was already the outer limit. To do more would be overstepping. He wasn’t some great selfless saint himself. He had his own life, his own affairs. Yet sometimes, without knowing why something had to be done, he found himself doing it anyway.

Isn’t that just how life is?

Everything can be sorted into a few kinds: things you know you should do, things you know you must not do, and things you don’t know why you must do — but feel compelled to do regardless.

No one knew how much time had passed before she suddenly said, “I actually forgot my key.”

The forgotten key was just a starting point.

She was just… exhausted, feeling darkness swallowing her whole, with no will to struggle.

She was just… finding life completely without meaning.

She was just… becoming more and more like a hollow shell walking through the motions. She knew she would eventually pull herself together — no reason needed; she was Jiang Ruoqiao, and she would pull through. But before she got there, she had genuinely lost interest in living.

From the darkness, Lu Yicheng said, “Should I call a locksmith for you?”

Jiang Ruoqiao laughed despite herself. “Oh, I completely forgot there was such a thing as a locksmith…”

Those words made Lu Yicheng involuntarily furrow his brow.

He understood. She was not doing well.

He found a locksmith’s number on a small advertisement stuck to the wall. Before calling, he specifically explained to Jiang Ruoqiao, “I’ll tell the locksmith it’s our rental unit — that’ll be better for you.”

A woman living alone — not entirely safe to have a stranger know otherwise.

Whether or not Jiang Ruoqiao actually heard him, she made no sound.

Silence was consent. Lu Yicheng called the locksmith. The locksmith arrived half an hour later. During that half hour, Jiang Ruoqiao sat there in a daze, and Lu Yicheng leaned against the wall — neither of them spoke. She didn’t pour out her feelings, and he didn’t offer comfort.

After the locksmith left, Lu Yicheng prepared to leave as well.

He said goodbye.

Jiang Ruoqiao leaned against the doorframe. Her reactions had been a little slow lately. After they’d said their goodbyes, she seemed to think of something, went back inside, and brought him a bottle of yogurt. “Sorry for the trouble today.”

He gripped the bottle of yogurt and walked downstairs and out of the building.

Things you don’t know why you must do, but are compelled to do anyway.

Like calling out to her in the hospital.

Like, upon learning the state of her grandmother’s illness, going out to buy a wheelchair and renting it to her grandfather.

Like… today.

The her of today reminded him of himself, several years ago — there had been a stretch of time when he had been in this same state. He wasn’t trying to save anyone; he knew he was just an ordinary person himself, one who needed to use every ounce of his strength just to keep going in this world. And yet a voice deep inside told him: never mind the reasons — if you want to do it, go do it. He tightened his grip on the yogurt bottle, standing at the foot of the building, hesitating for a very, very long time — so long that the people around the complex thinned out and disappeared — before at last turning back and going into the building. He found the rental listing posted on the wall of the apartment next to hers and dialed the number.

Jiang Ruoqiao discovered she had a new neighbor more than a week later.

The new neighbor was Lu Yicheng.

She leaned in her doorway and watched him looking slightly sheepish as he hauled his things inside.

Lu Yicheng didn’t have much — a deep blue old-fashioned suitcase, along with pots and pans, dishes and bowls, and bedding.

He went in and out, busy with it all.

Jiang Ruoqiao simply leaned in the doorway and watched him go back and forth.

In the end, she didn’t ask him why he had moved here, and he didn’t explain why he had relocated from the campus dormitory. But any fool could tell he must have had his reasons — after all, from here to University A was quite a distance.

Sympathy? Pity?

Jiang Ruoqiao never would have imagined she could still run into a living bodhisattva like this.

After they became neighbors, their relationship didn’t take off rapidly the way it might in a TV drama. They remained at a mild, understated distance — occasionally running into each other and exchanging greetings. But from the time Lu Yicheng moved in next door, the fruit knife Jiang Ruoqiao had kept by the side of her bed went back to the kitchen. She wasn’t used to sharing a place with strangers, so she had always lived alone. Even though the security situation in the area was good, she didn’t let her guard down — she had a camera installed at the entrance, bought a home door-stop alarm, covered every precaution she could think of, and kept a fruit knife by the bed.

Now that Lu Yicheng had moved in next door, the fruit knife seemed no longer necessary there.

She was also surprised by how much she trusted Lu Yicheng’s character.

To anyone on the outside, he was precisely the sort who should have felt like a threatening presence to her… after all, deliberately moving in next door was a pretty abnormal thing to do.

In the second year of being neighbors, they finally added each other on messaging apps and became, in others’ eyes, friends.

Their relationship was still neither warm nor cold. Occasionally he would make a slow-simmered soup and bring her a bowl. When she passed the entrance exam for the part-time graduate program, she took him out for a proper meal to celebrate. When he received a scholarship, he would also take her out for a meal. Perhaps in others’ eyes, they were more like… dining companions. She didn’t know what he was trying to do, or what he wanted. But she had to acknowledge that Lu Yicheng had become a person of some significance in her life, at this stage of it.

The turning point came on the day Jiang Ruoqiao attended a banquet.

She hadn’t expected to run into both Jiang Yan and Lin Kexing.

The two of them looked very much in love and very well-matched. She didn’t dwell on it. On the way home, struggling through the biting cold, she thought to herself: when I get back, I’ll ask Lu Yicheng to lend me some ginger — I’ll make a ginger tea… Actually, he’d probably just brew it for her without being asked. Thinking of that, she quickened her steps — but then found herself troubled: a car had been following her for a while. She was genuinely unsettled and perplexed. She stopped walking, and the car stopped too.

The window rolled down. It was Jiang Yan.

Truthfully, looking at Jiang Yan again now, she felt neither lingering affection nor hatred — at most, regret. Regret that she had ever gotten together with him. If she could do it over, she absolutely would not let his family have any chance to hurt her grandparents.

Jiang Yan looked at her with eyes full of resentment. “Beg me. Beg me and I’ll let you off.”

In an instant, Jiang Ruoqiao had a flash of sudden clarity.

She thought of the meaningful look her boss had given her earlier.

Fine. It didn’t matter anymore.

She said softly, with a kind of quiet pity, “Jiang Yan, are you still in love with me?”

The man in the car, who should have been cold and unmoved, had a flicker of panic in his eyes. He seemed about to argue — she gave a light laugh. “If so, then I’m sorry. I’ve already fallen in love with someone else.”

Jiang Yan drove away.

To Jiang Ruoqiao, the whole thing was absurd beyond words.

To think — how blind had she been back then, to have been with someone like this? One moment he was in his fiancée’s arms, sweet as anything, and the next he could turn around and say something so loaded and ambiguous to her.

As the saying goes: to wound the enemy a thousand, you lose eight hundred yourself.

Jiang Ruoqiao too found herself thinking about her grandmother and grandfather because of this episode. She walked without direction, eventually drifting into a café — but they were about to close, and she had no choice but to stand under the eaves. Many things came to mind, one after another. Her phone kept ringing and ringing; she very much wanted to ignore it, but when she saw the incoming call was from Lu Yicheng, she answered.

“Aren’t you back yet?” His voice on the other end was as gentle as ever. “I’ve been knocking on your door and no one answers.”

He added by way of explanation, “A student’s parent gave me some local specialties from Xi Shi. I thought you’d probably like them.”

The moment Jiang Ruoqiao spoke, her throat felt raw and constricted. The words that came out carried the edge of tears. “I don’t want them.”

She was from Xi Shi.

Was she supposed to eat imported specialties from Xi Shi? Did he have any idea that locals never ate the stuff sold outside their own city?

Such a foolish person.

The moment she spoke, Lu Yicheng was startled. He asked insistently, “Where are you?”

She was too exhausted to deal with it. She gave him the address.

Even she herself hadn’t noticed — over all this time of living side by side, in front of Lu Yicheng, she had retained so much of the temperament and spirit that had belonged to the Jiang Ruoqiao of before.

Lu Yicheng came as fast as he possibly could.

He was holding an umbrella, walking toward her.

He said quietly, “It doesn’t matter how heavy the rain is. I’ll walk you home.”

A tear slipped from the corner of her eye. In the end she stepped under his umbrella, and together they plunged into the curtain of rain.

He said, “The weather forecast says tomorrow will be a clear, sunny day. Exceptionally good weather.”

She had his jacket draped over her shoulders — thick and warm. When she spoke, her voice was no longer trembling or helpless. “Will it really be sunny?”

She asked him that.

“It will.”

The clear day will always come, Jiang Ruoqiao.

—