Blood, gunpowder smoke, and the faint lingering scent of cigarettes — that was the smell of Jiang Cheng now, utterly foreign to her.

Zhou Jin couldn’t muster the strength in her arms, so she sank her teeth into his shoulder instead, biting down with everything she had.

Jiang Cheng’s brow furrowed. He didn’t let go. If anything, he pulled her closer.

Hot tears spilled from the corners of Zhou Jin’s eyes. She released her bite and asked him, “How do you do it?”

Her voice sounded calm — a calm that bordered on despair.

“How do you manage it — to hurt me, to hurt my family, and then turn around and carry on as though nothing happened, without a single trace of guilt? What gives you that right?”

“…”

Jiang Cheng had so many things he wanted to tell her. He wanted to be like before — to coax her into kisses, her admiration, her praise…

But right now, every word was lodged in his throat, and none of it would come out.

Zhou Jin, however, needed so desperately to ask him everything clearly.

“Back then, my brother had only just died. I’ll admit it — I wasn’t mature enough. I took all of my grief and anger out on you. I wasn’t good to you. So you went and found another woman…”

“That day, when my colleague was about to take you away, you were so frantic. You explained to me that it wasn’t what it looked like, and told me to wait for you. I wanted to say ‘alright.’ I couldn’t believe that someone I had loved for so many years could do something like that — so no matter how heartbroken I was, no matter how much I was hurting, I still held onto a small thread of hope in my heart. Maybe there was a misunderstanding, I thought.”

She pushed Jiang Cheng away and met his confused, trembling gaze.

Zhou Jin asked, word by deliberate word: “But what did I wait for? I waited for the prosecution to charge you with solicitation and illegal possession of narcotics. I waited for you to plead guilty without a single word of denial — and be sentenced to three years in prison!”

No. No. No.

Jiang Cheng screamed inwardly and without a sound, his complexion turning dreadful.

Zhou Jin continued: “Your parents passed away when you were young. You grew up eating at the tables of every family in Gardenia Lane. My father was the one who cared for you most — there were times he’d let my brother take the short end just so you wouldn’t feel the slightest bit wronged, afraid you’d feel like you were living under someone else’s roof with no one to rely on.”

“After everything that happened, my father still believed you’d only made a mistake on a moment of foolishness. The day you were released, he insisted on going to pick you up himself.”

“It’s not as though you didn’t know — after my brother died, the blow was more than he could bear. He fell ill in the hospital and couldn’t get back up. His health recovered eventually, but his legs never fully came right again. Even so, when he learned you were being released, he insisted on driving himself to bring you home in person.”

“And then?” Zhou Jin let out a short, scornful laugh. “You really are something — you can make a name for yourself even inside prison. The moment you walked out, everyone was calling you ‘Brother Cheng,’ and a whole row of luxury cars had come to welcome you.”

…

It had been autumn. The wind was desolate, the rain bleak, fallen leaves carpeting the ground.

Zhou Jin had stood there with an umbrella, stepping across the soft, golden carpet of leaves — her shoes soaked through with mud and rainwater, but she hadn’t cared in the least. She was waiting for Jiang Cheng to come out, turning over in her mind whether it would be better to slap him first, or bite him first.

In the middle of plotting her revenge, she realized her hatred had grown thin, and what had swelled in its place was longing.

Her parents were waiting in the car not far away. On the window, the windshield wipers swept back and forth through the rain.

When Jiang Cheng came out, he didn’t see her at first. A crowd of people swarmed around him — some holding umbrellas over his head, others bowing in greeting.

It wasn’t until Zhou Jin drew a little closer that Jiang Cheng finally spotted her. The easy smile on his face vanished at once. He pushed through the crowd and came toward her in quick strides, and said in a low voice, “What are you doing here?”

She rose up on her toes and tilted her head, trying to get a clearer look at Jiang Cheng’s crowd of “friends.”

Jiang Cheng shifted his body to block her view. “Go back,” he said.

Zhou Jin had a fair idea of who those people were. She pressed her lips together and said firmly, “Mom and Dad are waiting for you.”

Jiang Cheng looked thoroughly impatient. “I still have things to take care of. Get out of here.”

Zhou Jin tightened her hand into a fist, and asked again: “Jiang Cheng — I’m giving you one last chance. Are you going with them, or are you coming home with me?”

From behind him, someone called out, “Brother Cheng, who’s that?”

Jiang Cheng answered without so much as glancing back: “Nobody I know.”

Zhou Jin’s heart dropped. She held herself together with effort, keeping her expression steady, and didn’t press him further. Instead, she caught hold of Jiang Cheng’s arm and repeated, “Are you coming back with me or not?”

Jiang Cheng was nearly grinding his teeth. “I told you to go. Did you hear me?”

Looking at the near-savage look in his eyes, Zhou Jin did not linger for another second.

The golden autumn light of that memory slowly faded — darkening, darkening further —

His face and eyes overlapped with the face before her now. Zhou Jin stared at Jiang Cheng as though looking at a stranger.

“Mom and Dad have already lost one child. They treated you like their own son, Jiang Cheng.”

After Zhou Songyue had gone home that day, he hadn’t said a word about it — but in the night, he would sit looking at the photographs of a young Jiang Cheng taken alongside Zhou Jin and Zhou Chuan, tossing and turning without sleep, sighing through the entire night.

Zhou Jin hated him for the betrayal of their relationship. She hated him even more for the betrayal of his character, his faith, everything he had stood for.

“You said you’d come back once you’d finished one last job. Is this your job?”

Jiang Cheng had no words to defend himself.

Zhou Jin suddenly grabbed Jiang Cheng’s wrist. Tears blazed in her eyes, and she pressed him relentlessly: “Do you know that the person you just helped escape opened fire on police officers? Do you know they’re trafficking drugs? Do you know that He Wu is connected to the people who killed my brother?”

“I know!”

Jiang Cheng let out a low roar, throwing all caution aside.

Those two words stopped Zhou Jin cold. It was as though she suddenly understood something — and yet the suspicions and thoughts came flooding in all at once, tangling into a snarled mess, and the more she tried to think, the less she could make sense of it.

She stared at him blankly: “What?”

Jiang Cheng couldn’t begin to explain all of it. He rubbed the heel of his palm against his brow, as though trying to sort through his thoughts.

He always found a way to suppress the pain, the injustice, the unwillingness — and pulled himself back to calm with remarkable speed.

In the darkness, Jiang Cheng put his gun away and cupped Zhou Jin’s face in his hands.

His fingers were rough. He brushed the tears from her face.

“Xiao Wu — this is on me.” Jiang Cheng pressed his forehead against hers, his voice dropped very low. “Don’t cry anymore. Not after this.”

“Jiang Cheng?”

Jiang Cheng patted her on the back, and then, as though unwilling to leave it at that, turned his head and pressed a kiss to her hair. He said, without any apparent reason: “…Long hair suits you better.”

He left those words hanging in the air and stood up. Zhou Jin reached out instinctively to grab him — and closed her hand around nothing.

“Jiang Cheng!”

She watched his figure disappear from view. Pushing herself to her feet, she went after him — and within two steps, her vision went black and she pitched forward onto her knees!

She had no choice but to lie down, breathing slowly and carefully, and after a long while the dizziness gradually began to clear.

She was afraid of alerting the enemy, so she had cut off her communication device earlier — and now when she reached for it, it was gone from her person.

Perhaps it had fallen somewhere during the struggle with that man?

Zhou Jin thought this through with the last of her exhausted mind, and then lost consciousness.

She didn’t know how much time passed before approaching footsteps jolted her awake. All around her was thick, impenetrable darkness — she couldn’t tell friend from foe.

She raised her gun. Her scattered vision slowly gathered light. She held her breath and warned, “Don’t move.”

“Zhou Jin?”

His steps quickened — nearly stumbling as he rushed toward her, and lifted her upper body from the ground.

A familiar voice. A familiar scent. Zhou Jin was submerged in the surging darkness, and even before she could make out his face, she already knew who he was.

“Jiang Hansheng.”