The “hubby incident” — Jiang Ruoqiao didn’t bring it up, and Lu Yicheng didn’t ask about it.

Yet it left its aftereffects.

When watching TV or films with scenes where a character called out “hubby,” Jiang Ruoqiao would go on high alert, while Lu Yicheng would smile to himself, remembering something. Jiang Ruoqiao launched a spiritual indictment and moral condemnation of her three roommates. “You’ve made my life difficult, do you know that?”

The three roommates said in unison: “Once he really becomes your husband, this reaction of yours will disappear.”

Jiang Ruoqiao: “?”

Spring arrived. All things were coming back to life, and it was time for Jiang Ruoqiao to consider a new hairstyle.

That day, Jiang Ruoqiao went to a hair salon to get a trim and a smoothing treatment. Lu Yicheng and Lu Siyan were obliged to sit in the salon and wait for her. The stylist, Tony, was as dedicated as ever — not only did he pitch products and services to Jiang Ruoqiao, he also tried to sell Lu Yicheng on trendy and eye-catching hairstyles:

“Handsome, you could totally get a perm like this, then add some color — you’d look better than any celebrity!”

Lu Yicheng politely declined.

He would never have set foot in a salon like this before.

Before he moved to the city, there was a barbershop near his home that had been open for many years. The owner had been a young man in his early twenties when he first opened it; now his kids were in middle school. The craftsmanship got better every year. Lu Yicheng always went there for haircuts, and as a regular customer, the owner only charged him twenty yuan.

After moving to the city, he’d started going to the quick-cut place in the mall by the supermarket.

These quick-cut counters were set up in supermarkets — no washing, just cutting, only fifteen yuan. Even cheaper. But Lu Yicheng felt the cuts weren’t as good as the old place.

In any case, perming and dyeing his hair were things Lu Yicheng had never even considered. He shook his head quickly. “No, no, no.”

Jiang Ruoqiao, sitting nearby and keeping half an eye on this exchange, laughed. “Don’t try to sell him on it — I don’t like my boyfriend perming or dyeing his hair.”

Tony didn’t give up, his attention landing on Lu Siyan with his little curls. “Little one, are those curls permed?”

Jiang Ruoqiao smiled, feeling an odd sense of pride. “No, it’s natural. He was born with it.”

Lu Yicheng also looked over at his own child.

As he looked, something suddenly occurred to him — a rather serious concern.

Siyan hadn’t had a haircut in quite a while, had he?

He’d had one once before — it was summer and the heat had gotten to him, so he’d taken the child in for a cut. That was now about half a year ago.

Siyan’s hair had barely grown at all.

Lu Yicheng had noticed this detail before, but he’d heard something from Mrs. Wang upstairs — she had mentioned that some children’s hair grows very slowly, just like her little granddaughter whose hair had barely grown in over a year. He’d also asked a few other people, and they’d said the same thing, that some children’s hair just grows slowly. Over the past two or three months, most of his attention had been on Jiang Ruoqiao. Looking at Siyan now, he was struck by a sudden and unpleasant feeling.

Even if it grew slowly, surely it should have grown at least a little in half a year?

Lu Yicheng felt uneasy, but didn’t let it show.

When they got home, he measured Lu Siyan’s height and weight again, recording all the numbers — including how long his hair was. At twenty years old, Lu Yicheng had a five-year-old child. He had tried his best in so many ways, but he inevitably wasn’t as attentive as more experienced parents. He sat in the study, forcing himself not to spiral into anxious thoughts, when he heard Lu Siyan shuffling over in his slippers with that little pattering sound, looking curious. “Didn’t Mom call me?”

Lu Yicheng asked: “What?”

Lu Siyan tilted his head. “I just heard Mom calling me, and I called back.”

Lu Yicheng went quiet.

Jiang Ruoqiao wasn’t here. Jiang Ruoqiao was in the dormitory right now.

In the days that followed, this kind of thing happened more and more. Jiang Ruoqiao clearly wasn’t there, or she hadn’t called him at all — yet he’d say he’d heard Mom calling him. There were times when Lu Yicheng hadn’t called him either, and he’d come to ask what Dad wanted. After this happened several times, even Jiang Ruoqiao had noticed something was off. Lu Yicheng had never had any intention of hiding it from her, and told her everything he’d observed. “I don’t know if I’m overthinking this, but I keep feeling… Siyan might be stopping to grow.”

Jiang Ruoqiao stared at him, shocked. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know if my thinking is right,” Lu Yicheng said, his thoughts also a tangle. Siyan had come to them last August, and had now been with them for eight months. That was too short a time — it was genuinely hard for parents to notice whether a child had grown taller or heavier. He didn’t even know if his suspicion was correct.

The two of them spent a great deal of time searching through information.

The thing was — they had no knowledge of what Lu Siyan’s growth curve had been before, making it impossible to judge whether the current situation was normal or not.

They took Lu Siyan to the hospital for a checkup. All the results came back normal and healthy.

But Lu Siyan was hearing his dad or mom call him when they hadn’t, and this kind of “mix-up” had happened many times. The doctor said: “All indicators are within normal ranges. The child’s hearing is also fine. As for the situation you’re describing… I’m not entirely sure about that one. You could consider taking the child to see a different kind of specialist.”

After that day, it seemed like both Lu Yicheng and Jiang Ruoqiao fell into a certain state of mind.

Lu Yicheng installed a security camera in the home. He didn’t voice the other fear in his heart to Jiang Ruoqiao — he was afraid that one day Siyan might simply disappear without a trace.

Jiang Ruoqiao, in her spare time away from studying and work, immersed herself in watching dramas and films and reading novels — almost all of the time-travel variety.

Beyond that, both of them made every effort to personally take turns picking up and dropping off Lu Siyan each day.

Even Lu Siyan could sense something was different, and asked with growing unease: “What’s wrong? Did something happen?” He looked around them. “Is there a bad person?”

Jiang Ruoqiao’s throat felt tight.

Lu Siyan was still hearing his dad or mom calling him.

And the frequency was increasing.

One evening, after Lu Siyan had fallen asleep, Jiang Ruoqiao and Lu Yicheng sat together in the living room. Lu Yicheng had his notebook open, recording things, and said in a low voice: “I asked Siyan — today he heard it five more times than yesterday.”

Jiang Ruoqiao hugged a throw pillow and gave a dazed nod.

Lu Yicheng said: “I suspect…”

Jiang Ruoqiao cut him off. “No. Don’t say it.”

She looked at him with reddened eyes. “He’s not going to leave me. And I’m not going to leave him. Do you understand that, Lu Yicheng? I won’t accept it.”

Lu Yicheng was silent for a long time, then reached out and pulled her into his arms, patting her gently, over and over, soothing her.

This moment seemed to form a stark contrast with where they had begun.

Back in August of last year, both of them — him and her — had been emotionally resistant to Siyan’s arrival. Back then, they had probably been silently praying every day, wishing that when they woke up the next morning, it would all turn out to have been a dream.

And yet now, the mere thought of possibly losing Siyan made them hurt so deeply it felt as though someone were carving out a piece of their heart.

Lu Yicheng said quietly: “He is our child. But also, he is not our child.”

Jiang Ruoqiao: “He is, clearly. The paternity test report says so plainly.”

She understood what Lu Yicheng meant, she just… wasn’t willing to accept it.

“The future version of you went through what was probably a difficult but joyful ten months of pregnancy — from the moment you found out you were pregnant, through every prenatal checkup, to the belly growing larger day by day,” Lu Yicheng’s voice seemed to carry a strange and quiet power, and Jiang Ruoqiao found herself almost picturing herself with a growing belly. “You would have loved Siyan before anyone else in the world. And then the future me — I must have watched your belly growing bigger a little at a time too. They say you can feel the baby move. You can even listen to the heartbeat. And then Siyan was born, and five years passed — five years is so much longer than eight months, isn’t it?”

He said: “We can’t bear to be separated from him. But I feel that the future versions of us — they would be even more unable to bear it. I’ve found myself thinking about this sometimes — if in the future we discovered the child was missing, how frantic would we be? But I can’t let myself think too deeply about it, because there’s nothing I can do.”

“Right now, though I’m sick with worry — I genuinely feel a kind of relief too.”

Jiang Ruoqiao asked quietly, “Are you willing to let him go?”

“Not willing,” he said. “But there is nothing we can do. He came to us, and we had no say in that. He will leave, and we have no say in that either.”

There was truly nothing they could do.

Jiang Ruoqiao knew this in her heart, and she understood all of Lu Yicheng’s fears.

In the face of something supernatural, ordinary people had no power.

Siyan’s arrival had been a miracle. She had simply, selfishly, assumed that this miracle would last for a very long, very long time.

She had even come to believe that Siyan’s arrival had been meant to help her escape some great misfortune.

Most of the time, both Lu Yicheng and Jiang Ruoqiao kept a clear head and a composed demeanor. They made a decision together: for as long as Siyan was still here, they would spend real, meaningful time with him. The three of them would make as many memories as possible. So whether it was Lu Yicheng or Jiang Ruoqiao, for a period of time they were at Lu Siyan’s complete beck and call, caring for him with total devotion.

The treatment fit for a prince couldn’t have been more generous.

Lu Siyan wanted Lego — bought! Bought!!

Lu Siyan wanted chicken wings — eat up!

Lu Siyan wanted a hamburger — bought!

Lu Siyan wanted milk tea… fine, let’s buy it.

For a time, Lu Siyan was extraordinarily happy. He even bragged about it at kindergarten: “My dad and mom treat me so well — just yesterday they took me strawberry picking! I played in the mud and got my clothes and shoes all dirty, and Mom didn’t say a single word, she even helped wipe off my sweat.”

“I scribbled all over the wall, and Dad didn’t say anything — he even said I drew it well!”

“Dad gave me so much pocket money — red ones, you know what red ones are worth, right?”

……

Small children are far too perceptive — they’re all remarkably good at reading the room. Lu Siyan could feel his parents’ indulgence and doting.

Of course that meant he was going to —

Push his luck to the absolute limit!!

After all, he was the type who, given an inch, would take a mile — and then some.

So one morning, he announced with complete entitlement: “I don’t want to go to school today. I want a day off to stay home and watch TV!”

Lu Yicheng: “?”

Jiang Ruoqiao: “??”

For academically serious parents, school was non-negotiable. Even if he was going back tomorrow, today he was still going to school like a good boy!

This particular demand from Lu Siyan had struck directly at their bottom line.

Lu Yicheng said: “We can’t be encouraging bad habits.”

Jiang Ruoqiao nodded firmly. “I can’t let the future version of me deal with even one bit of trouble I’ve created.”

She had always lived by that principle.

Was she really going to send back a child riddled with bad habits to the future her?

No!

“Get up!” Lu Yicheng commanded Lu Siyan.

Jiang Ruoqiao was equally unyielding: “Are you sick? No. Is there a hailstorm outside? Also no. Then you’re going to school. That point is non-negotiable.”

And so…

Lu Siyan’s status as a royal prince and all the privileges that came with it were promptly revoked.

Lu Siyan: Why does happiness always pass by so quickly?

—