Feng Ning fell silent, said nothing, smiled faintly, as if to let it pass.

Min Yueyue sensed an extra layer of ambiguity in that exchange, her gaze flicking back and forth between the two of them.

Suddenly curious, she said, “Hot guy Jiang.”

Jiang Wen said, “Just call me Jiang Wen.”

Min Yueyue made a sound of acknowledgment. “I heard from Ning Ning you two were high school classmates—did you go abroad right after graduating high school?”

Jiang Wen didn’t answer right away. After a moment, he said, “No.”

Min Yueyue looked a bit uncertain. “So you went to college here first?”

“I did my undergrad in America,” Jiang Wen answered.

Min Yueyue paused, voicing the question on her mind. “So you started college here and transferred abroad partway through?”

“Mm.”

Just as she was about to keep asking, Feng Ning cut her off. “Alright, are you conducting a background check?”

“I’m just showing some interest.”

Jiang Wen’s phone rang, and he picked up.

Bai Hongyi: “I’m here.”

“Where?”

“At the entrance, where are you guys?”

“Zone C, 47.”

A few minutes later, Bai Hongyi arrived at the scene. Min Yueyue went over to negotiate with him, leaving Feng Ning and Jiang Wen alone.

Maybe it was psychological, but once Min Yueyue left and the two of them were alone, the atmosphere turned somewhat strange. Feng Ning felt a bit uneasy. She took out her phone and started looking at work materials. After a while, she sent a voice message to Xiao Zhu. “Send me the interpretation notes from the business visit with Tina, to my email.”

Xiao Zhu: Ning Ning jie, go check on Guan Tongfu’s progress first, I want a good weekend, please.

So Feng Ning sent a message to Guan Tongfu instead:

That hotel project you mentioned, is the PPT done? I need to see the finished product Monday morning.

She thought about it, then called him directly.

The moment he picked up, he wailed: “Jie, are you a demon? Why are you pushing for work at this hour?”

Feng Ning said, “Worried you’re slacking off.”

“The boss just asked me the same thing half an hour ago. You should go discuss life philosophy with the boss instead, you two workaholics are a perfect match!”

“Is shixiong back?”

“Landed at noon.”

Feng Ning made a sound of acknowledgment.

Guan Tongfu suddenly sensed something off. “Ning jie, why do you seem kind of strange right now?”

“What.”

“Are you on a blind date?”

Guan Tongfu’s words were absurd. She said, exasperated, “It’s already ten, who goes on blind dates this late.”

“Then why do you have the spare energy to call me and chat aimlessly?” Guan Tongfu analyzed with a flourish. “This is straight up looking for trouble to do—it’s exactly how I was when I went on a blind date a few days ago.”

Without another word, Feng Ning hung up.

Jiang Wen glanced over. “Work’s been busy for you?”

Feng Ning was significantly shorter than Jiang Wen, and with her baseball cap still on, she didn’t have to worry about meeting his eyes. She replied politely, deflecting, “So-so. What about you—must be busy too, just getting back.”

“Not as busy as you.”

Feng Ning: “……”

It was pitch dark here, only the phone giving off a faint glow, lighting her face. “You’ve picked up quite the way with words, marinating in America all these years.”

“Is that so?”

Feng Ning’s heart was far from as calm as she appeared on the surface. Her tone carried an unconscious edge of mockery. “Isn’t that right—I say one thing, and you fire back ten.”

Sensing her small display of temper, Jiang Wen gave a faint, ambiguous smile, saying flatly, “I just want to see how long you can keep up this pretense of being cordial old classmates.”

Feng Ning turned her gaze away, toward Min Yueyue and the others. “I just don’t want things to be awkward for either of us.”

“Awkward?”

Just then, Bai Hongyi turned and called out, “Ryan, come here for a sec!”

Jiang Wen’s words stopped short. He glanced at Feng Ning, said nothing.

Walking over, he asked, “What is it?”

His tone had a bit of an edge. Bai Hongyi was puzzled, unsure who had set Jiang Wen off. He said, “I’m flying out tomorrow morning. Add this young lady on WeChat—the car repair’s on you two now.”

After Min Yueyue and Bai Hongyi had added each other, Bai Hongyi said, “Well, let’s leave it here for tonight then. My car’s still parked outside.”

Standing off to the side, Min Yueyue’s eyes lit up—with no hesitation whatsoever about inconveniencing others, she quickly said, “We’ve both been drinking. Are you headed our way? Could you give us a ride?”

Bai Hongyi agreed readily. “Sure, totally on the way.”

The two of them walked ahead, with Feng Ning trailing two steps behind.

Min Yueyue kept a keen curiosity about Jiang Wen and Feng Ning’s history. “Why are you two so calm about all this? Not at all like reuniting after a long separation.” She added, “Even though you broke up.”

After a silence, Feng Ning said, “What else would you have us do, hold hands and weep at each other?”

“That’s not what I meant either.”

Min Yueyue made a sound of exasperation. “I just mean, at least, at the very least there’d be some awkwardness, right? Don’t breakups usually turn into enemies? Or strangers? But you two were chatting pretty naturally just now.”

Feng Ning steadied her breath, keeping her voice low, each word deliberate. “If it weren’t for you blocking someone else’s car, then crashing into it, would I be standing here right now, making stilted small talk with my ex?”

“Don’t be so fierce with me.”

Min Yueyue rarely saw Feng Ning like this. She said, “Look at you, clearly you haven’t gotten over it.”

They got in the car, buckled seatbelts. Bai Hongyi casually picked up the xylitol gum on the center console, popped two pieces into his mouth, and turned to ask, “Want some?”

Min Yueyue took it. “Sure, thanks.”

He poured some into his palm, offered a piece to Feng Ning too.

Mint flavor; bitten and chewed, a cool freshness spread across her tongue.

Bai Hongyi adjusted the rearview mirror. “Where do you two live?”

Min Yueyue gave an address.

“What about you, miss?”

Nudged, Feng Ning snapped back. “What?”

“Where do you live?”

“Near Yunan City.”

“Okay, got it.”

The night wasn’t too warm; the car windows were rolled down, the breeze pleasant. Past ten, Shanghai’s streets grew quiet. Bai Hongyi asked, “Are you Ryan’s high school classmate?”

Feng Ning leaned against the window. “Mm.”

“I’m Bai Hongyi, you can call me Andrew. Ryan and I went to college together.”

Min Yueyue, quite the chatterbox herself, asked, “Oh… what school did you two go to?”

Bai Hongyi answered, “Yale, I did an accelerated bachelor’s-master’s. Ryan went straight to MIT after graduating.”

“Huh? Yale!!” This was somewhat unexpected to Min Yueyue. “Wow… MIT!! A master’s!! You’re actually intellectuals?! I never would’ve guessed!!”

Min Yueyue’s social circle was fairly wide, though she didn’t have many close friends—plenty of fair-weather friends though. Back home, her circle was mostly people just like her, aimless second-generation wealthy kids wasting their days; the genuinely accomplished ones were out of her league.

So learning about their academic backgrounds left her fairly stunned. “You two don’t look like bookworms at all.”

“Oh? What do we look like then?”

Min Yueyue answered honestly, “Playboys.”

Bai Hongyi laughed. “Well, I can’t help it if I’m too good-looking.”

The car filled with their chatter, and the mood warmed up. Min Yueyue sighed. “I originally planned to study in Melbourne, but my dad thought the school was low-tier, so he threw money around to get me a self-recommendation spot, and I ended up staying here instead.”

“Studying abroad’s actually pretty nice too, suits someone like me, a party animal.”

Min Yueyue asked idly, “Given the culture over in America, you two must’ve dated a lot of girlfriends in college, right?”

Bai Hongyi said, “Honestly, everyone around me was single. A bunch of us stayed single for like four years straight, take this guy next to me for example.”

Min Yueyue was shocked a second time. “Seriously?” She pointed at Jiang Wen. “Him? Single for four years?!”

“Yeah.” Bai Hongyi laughed. “Though our school’s academic workload was pretty heavy too, that’s part of it.”

“That… I really wouldn’t have guessed, not a single girlfriend?” Min Yueyue was practically stammering now. “I was just thinking a guy this handsome would definitely be a total player when it comes to dating, turns out he doesn’t even date at all.”

Bai Hongyi seemed to recall something. “Actually, I’m not totally sure—I only know Ryan had a girlfriend in high school, and even that was something he mentioned once when he was drunk.”

Min Yueyue shot a meaningful glance at Feng Ning. Her curiosity piqued, she begged, “What did he say, tell me, tell me.”

Feng Ning, hearing this, couldn’t help but turn and glare at Min Yueyue, mouthing silently, are you done or not.

Bai Hongyi, not knowing the relationship between Feng Ning and Jiang Wen, said without much thought, “It was just, Ryan got really drunk once and talked a bit about his ex.”

“Mm-hm?”

Jiang Wen sat with his head propped up, watching the road ahead, not interrupting them. He seemed entirely unbothered by his friend “exposing his old secrets.”

Bai Hongyi said, “Didn’t you say he seemed like a player?”

Min Yueyue said, “No, no, no, I just meant he looked like one.”

“Well, you’d be wrong there.” Bai Hongyi found it a little funny every time he brought this up. “His high school ex-girlfriend, I think she had some kind of night job?”

“Mm, and then?”

Bai Hongyi glanced sideways at Jiang Wen. “So Ryan didn’t dare call her every day, didn’t even dare ask if she’d gotten home safe after work, afraid she’d find him annoying. You know what he did instead?”

Min Yueyue said, “What’d he do?”

“He’d stare at her QQ status, checking whether she was online via 4G or WiFi, to figure out if she’d made it home.”

Min Yueyue was in disbelief. “Hahahahaha, oh my god, that’s so pathetic!”

“Right, you wouldn’t have guessed it, huh.”

The two of them were both laughing.

Jiang Wen had his elbow resting on the window ledge, gazing flatly at the night outside, looking like he couldn’t be bothered to say more.

Something in Feng Ning’s chest tugged, a mix of pain and a sour ache surfacing belatedly.

After passing through a light, Bai Hongyi said, “Yunan City’s coming up, where do you want to get off?”

Feng Ning said, “Anywhere’s fine, just drop me at an intersection, thanks for the trouble.”

“I’ll get off with Ning Ning too then,” Min Yueyue said. “This was such a fun chat, since we met by chance, let’s exchange WeChat.”

Bai Hongyi said, “Sure, have Jiang Wen forward you my card, we should hang out sometime.”

“Deal.” Min Yueyue said enthusiastically, turning to Feng Ning. “Ning Ning, give me your phone too.”

Feng Ning stayed put. “What are you doing?”

Min Yueyue grabbed it straight out of her hand, fiddled with it for a bit, then looked up at Jiang Wen. “Hot guy, accept Ning Ning’s friend request, will you?”

Once the figure had disappeared completely from view, Jiang Wen looked away. He picked up his phone, opened WeChat, tapped the friend request, and stared at it for a long moment.

He suddenly thought of something. “Bai Hongyi.”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“Question for you.”

“What is it?”

“What’s…”

Jiang Wen paused, thought for a second, turned his head. “‘The hardest high schooler in the world’—what does that mean?”

In the years Jiang Wen had been abroad, he’d been too busy with schoolwork, and then with starting his business afterward, to spend much time online, so he wasn’t very familiar with internet slang trending back home.

Bai Hongyi, though, was different—he’d always had a taste for the innocent type, his last ex, who he’d just broken up with, was a sophomore. Determined to keep up with the times and catch every reference in conversation, Bai Hongyi spent plenty of time on Weibo.

“Hardest… high schooler?”

Bai Hongyi repeated it, thought for a moment. “Oh, I know that one.”

“What is it.”

“It’s—” He grinned, a bit crudely. “Look down.”

“Look down where?” Jiang Wen looked down.

“See it?”

“See what.” “The hardest thing a high schooler has.”

Jiang Wen caught on, made a sound of realization. He gave a short laugh, lit another cigarette.

Bai Hongyi asked, “So, who told you that?”

“No one.”

“These days the girls all go for wolf pups, puppy types—us old guys don’t have a market anymore.” Bai Hongyi kept his eyes on the road. “Though honestly, about this ‘hardest’ business, I’m not totally convinced. Hard or not, that’s something you find out in bed, don’t you think.”

“Go find a high schooler and compare, then.”

“You’re so mean.”

Bai Hongyi said, “By the way, did you look up your ex since you got back?”

He played with his lighter, his expression unchanging. “No.”

Just the two of them now, Bai Hongyi didn’t hold back. “Why not, finally over her?”

Jiang Wen turned his head away. After a long while, he said, “Don’t want to keep bothering her.”

Feng Ning, reeking of hotpot, went straight to the bathroom to shower the moment she got home.

Her mind kept circling back to everything that had happened that day; whatever she did, her movements were sluggish. Absentmindedly blow-drying her hair, she went to the living room to get a glass of water, only realizing after taking a sip that it was boiling hot.

She spat it right back out, scalded.

She went back to her room, picked up her charging phone, and found that Jiang Wen had accepted her friend request ten minutes earlier. He’d also sent a chat screenshot.

She enlarged the screenshot—he hadn’t set a note name, but she recognized Min Yueyue’s profile picture.

My: I have something come up tomorrow, was hoping to have Ning Ning keep an eye on the car repair for me, want to go with her?

Feng Ning set down her water glass, thinking about how to reply, when her phone buzzed again.

Another message from Jiang Wen:

Three cigarettes in, and you still haven’t replied, guess you fell asleep.