Yao Qiyun helped his aunt clean up after the party until late into the night, so Situ Jue had no chance to seek him out for an honest talk. Once she’d listened for the sounds downstairs to fall silent, she sent him a text: “Don’t listen to whatever nonsense my mom and them were saying.”

She waited a long time before he finally replied with a single line: “It’s fine. I’m tired, get some sleep. Good night.”

Staring at that terse, businesslike message, Situ Jue felt uneasy, and even more, deeply disappointed.

Honestly, she would have preferred it if Yao Qiyun had shown displeasure, even picked a fight with her. If he’d questioned her, she’d have been willing to explain, willing even to lay her heart bare for him to see. Or if he’d been upset, that would have been fine too — it would at least mean he cared. But instead, he chose this, and his calm, unruffled retreat extinguished every urge she had to explain herself.

Over the following days, Yao Qiyun stayed exactly the same — nothing off in word or action, not the faintest trace of anger. Whether at home or when they were alone together, he treated Situ Jue with the same careful attentiveness as always, even remembering to bring her an extra portion of breakfast, as if that “ordinary gathering” that night had nothing to do with him at all.

But even if his mask could fool the whole world, how could it possibly fool Situ Jue? She knew Yao Qiyun too well — like some small creature that had lived under his skin for years, she could see straight through his composure to the anxiety and contradiction underneath. The more perfectly at peace he pretended to be, the more certain she was that something was eating at him.

During those days, she deliberately picked fights with him over little everyday things, setting small traps to provoke him. In the past, he would have bickered back, or given her some small “punishment” in private, or simply indulged her, and they’d laugh it off. But now he just kept enduring, kept retreating — no matter how unreasonable or annoying she got, he maintained the utmost friendliness and deference toward her, and it left Situ Jue feeling an indescribable distance and estrangement.

His reasons for being “busy” multiplied — more and more valid excuses for why he couldn’t be with her: exams, lab work, papers… reasons no one could argue with, reasons that always seemed to matter more than being by her side. By then Wu Jiang had already paid off his debt to Situ Jue, but she lied to Yao Qiyun, telling him her meal card was empty and she’d wait to eat lunch with him. When he heard this, he quietly left his own meal card, along with enough cash for a week’s expenses, on the dresser in her room.

The moment Situ Jue saw that meal card, she’d had enough — driven past the point of enduring it any further, she grabbed the card and marched straight to the clinical medicine building, dragging Yao Qiyun out of the lab where he was in the middle of a pathology experiment. He knew her temper well enough to know that if he didn’t come out obediently and settle things privately, she was fully capable of saying everything she meant to say in front of the entire lab.

They walked to the rockery by the back entrance of the lab building and stopped there.

Yao Qiyun shook his head. “You and your temper. Couldn’t this have waited until we got home?”

Situ Jue wasn’t in the mood for evasion. “Cut it out, Yao Qiyun. You hypocrite — if something’s bothering you, say it. Why are you putting on an act in front of me?”

He sat down on the stone railing of the rockery with a bitter smile. “A’Jue, what is this about? Nothing’s bothering me — where’s this even coming from?”

“You’re lying!”

“Well, this is new. Are you saying you’d actually be happier if something WAS bothering me? What kind of logic is that?”

Situ Jue’s eyes blazed. “Fine. Then swear to me, right to my face, that you don’t mind at all what happened that day.”

“Swearing costs nothing — what’s hard about that? You’d actually believe me just because I said it?” Yao Qiyun said dismissively.

“Yes, I’d believe you. And if you’d lie even about a vow, then I really have misjudged you completely — shame on me for being so blind.”

She waited for him to speak, but in the end he didn’t. After a long pause, he only said quietly, head down: “Why are you saying these things to corner me? Even if something is bothering me, what would be the point?”

Situ Jue said, unable to believe it: “Wu Jiang and I are just good friends. He has no feelings like that for me, and I certainly don’t for him. Other people might misunderstand — but you, of all people, don’t you know better?”

“Of course I know,” Yao Qiyun said, his tone still perfectly flat. “Not just me — probably even your mom knows. The only ones who might actually be confused are Wu Jiang’s parents… A’Jue, I’m not angry at you. You didn’t do anything wrong, and it would be despicable of me to take it out on you. But think about how careful your mother is with everything she does. She could have said what she said that day behind closed doors, privately, just to you. Why did she choose to say it in front of everyone instead? Don’t you understand — she was saying it for my benefit. She’s worried I’m not vigilant enough, so she gave me another warning. She wants me to completely give up any idea that there could ever be anything between you and me — not even the faintest possibility.”

Situ Jue fell silent for a moment at this. She knew how her mother operated, how she handled things — and if she thought about it deeply enough, she’d realize what Qiyun said was very likely true. That he’d recognized this more clearly than she had wasn’t because she was foolish, but because his situation forced him to be far more sensitive to such things.

“My mom is my mom. Let’s leave her out of this.” Situ Jue sat down beside Yao Qiyun, looking at him urgently.

“I wish I could leave her out of it too. You don’t know this, but sometimes I comfort myself by imagining your mother as some kind of villain, deliberately standing in our way — it makes me feel a little better for a few seconds. But the truth is, your mother isn’t a bad person at all. I can see that. At first she didn’t approve of me coming to live with your family, and the only reason she never said anything after that was out of consideration for your father’s feelings. Over the years she’s been quite courteous and generous toward me, and I’m grateful to her for that. And what she said that day was true, A’Jue — if I had a daughter like you, I’d make the exact same choice your mother did. I’d sincerely hope she’d find a stable, well-matched family, marry a husband suited to her like Wu Jiang, and live a secure, peaceful life — not end up with some penniless boy living off someone else’s charity, dependent on your family for every cent, every meal.”

“But I want to be with you. I think this is good, just as it is,” Situ Jue said, her voice thick with tears.

“The problem is, I don’t think it’s good!” Yao Qiyun cut her off without hesitation, his tone sharper than she’d ever heard from him, and it startled her. “A’Jue, you’re like a priceless piece of jade — flawless, beautiful, impossible not to love. Yes, I’m drawn to you. I’m an ordinary, vulgar person — when I see something wonderful, I can’t help wanting to possess it. But I don’t dare hold it in my hands, because I’m afraid it will shatter, afraid I’ll never find a place worthy enough to keep it safe, and even more afraid that everyone — including myself — will believe I don’t deserve to have it. Even if I fought through every obstacle to keep it by my side, I’d live every day in terror. I’d feel like a thief.”

“What have you stolen? Can’t I make my own decisions?”

Behind Situ Jue’s glistening tears was nothing but hope. The girl he longed for had the most open, unguarded heart — Qiyun had no doubt that if he simply nodded now, she would follow him to the ends of the earth. But where was the end of the earth? Could it possibly be any less boundless than the grey tide of reality?

“You can make your own decisions. But can I? I could never repay your parents for what they’ve done for me in a lifetime. Don’t you think that after they raised me, if I go against their wishes and steal away the thing they treasure most, that makes me worse than a thief? It’s not the jade’s fault that it’s too fine, and it’s not the poor man’s fault that he’s anxious about what he can’t have — the fault is only that the two were never meant to be together. Everything before this was my fault. Let’s just take this chance, while…”

He tried several times but couldn’t finish the sentence. Situ Jue finished it for him.

“While you don’t love me quite that much yet. While you haven’t said those words out loud yet. While you haven’t done anything you’d have to take responsibility for. Let’s just end it here, is that it?”

Yao Qiyun forced himself to look away, unable to face her despair and her tears. She’d said the words he’d gritted his teeth a thousand times and still couldn’t bring himself to say — words that were, in truth, exactly what he meant. So why did hearing them out loud feel so terrifying?

He kept telling himself, over and over: there’s no painless way to let go. You’re right. You’re doing the right thing. She’ll be fine!

“Yao Qiyun, don’t hide behind noble-sounding words to disguise the fact that you’re a coward. You don’t deserve me — not because you can’t afford to keep a piece of jade, but because you don’t even have the courage to fight for it. All you can do is hide in your shell and feel sorry for yourself. If you keep on like this, you’ll never deserve anything good, and you’ll be poor your whole life — poor to the bone, inside and out. I hope you end up with nothing and stay pathetic forever!”

Situ Jue wiped her tears and stormed off. Only after her figure had completely disappeared did Yao Qiyun notice how tightly he’d clenched his own hands together — as if the moment he let go, they’d break free of his control and reach out to grab her, to hold her back. He pulled off his rubber gloves and hurled them furiously against the rockery, then, after a moment, slowly picked them back up, took a deep breath, and returned to the lab to finish his work with meticulous care.

Yao Qiyun wasn’t wrong — Situ Jue would, of course, “be fine.” She had never been the type to shut herself in her room and cry over something upsetting. She had countless friends, endless activities, more invitations than she could keep up with. Whatever tears she shed evaporated almost instantly, burned off by her naturally sunny disposition.

She went out cheerfully, came home and told jokes at the dinner table as usual, teased and bickered with her parents, chatted on the phone with classmates late into the night whenever she had free time, and on weekends, before she’d even gotten out of bed, some girlfriend would already be calling to invite her out shopping. Her schedule barely overlapped with Yao Qiyun’s at all — technically they were both still often at the library, but in a building that large, chance encounters were far from guaranteed. Qiyun suddenly realized that Situ Jue hadn’t actually changed anything deliberately — it seemed she’d always lived exactly like this; it was only that, before, she’d always found ways to carve out time, to arrange chances to be near him, which had made it feel like she was everywhere.

He was the lonely one, not Situ Jue — her “clinginess” before had simply been her accommodating his solitude.

At night before bed, no one sent him a string of texts anymore, just to say something pointless. He used to find it annoying, mildly amusing. Now, lying awake, he’d fiddle endlessly with his phone, half-suspecting it had died of the silence before he had.

At mealtimes, he no longer had to brace himself for her strange, exaggerated winking and eyebrow-waggling, and no one ever sneakily kicked his foot under the table anymore. Once, he felt a toe brush lightly against his shin — like a pebble dropped into still water, sending an involuntary ripple through him — but when his heart leapt and he glanced at Situ Jue, her expression perfectly unchanged, he quickly heard an “excuse me” — it had only been Uncle Situ crossing his legs too high.

Whenever her parents weren’t eating at home, Situ Jue simply ate out, no longer needing to worry about anyone’s mood — what did it matter if Auntie cooked something she didn’t like? As for being short on cash, needing sponsorship was a joke — no matter how much Wu Jiang might lend her, all she had to do was pout in front of her parents about some pretty dress she’d seen, and however much Uncle Situ and Auntie Xue might scold her, they’d never actually refuse to give her the money.

And then… the light, dragonfly-quick kisses she used to drop on him while he was absorbed in reading, the sweaty, mischievous hugs when the air conditioner broke, the endless sweet bickering — none of that would ever happen again, and even if it did happen again someday, he would no longer be the one on the receiving end.

The summer at the end of their sophomore year arrived quickly. Under Situ Jiu’an’s arrangement, Yao Qiyun went to intern at Jiu’antang. Situ Jue refused to put herself through that kind of suffering — she said a person had to work for at least thirty years of their life, so there’d be plenty of time to toil away later; no need to rush into it now.

At first, getting a handle on the company’s affairs left him completely at sea. But once Yao Qiyun settled in, he found he could no longer resist the urge to have a real, honest talk with A’Jue — though he had no idea what exactly he’d even say. It was simply a reckless, desperate impulse. Like a man dying of thirst imagining a glass of water — even if you told him the water was poisoned, he’d still shout for it, still want to drain it dry, the moment it appeared before him.

By the time he’d worked up the resolve to knock on her door, he learned she’d accepted an invitation from Xiao Gen and gone off with a big group of classmates to Xiao Gen’s home in the mountains — and this trip lasted eight days.

When Situ Jue came back, she brought a backpack full of trinkets from the mountains — none of which interested Yao Qiyun, and she had no intention of sharing them with him either; if she wanted to share, she’d find someone who actually cared about that kind of thing. Wu Jiang started coming by the Situ house more and more often. Several times, when Yao Qiyun came home from work, he’d find the two of them huddled together studying some elegant bamboo cage for crickets, heads nearly touching. He’d retreat to his own room to avoid the sight, sitting alone reading for a long while, until he couldn’t help but open the door again — only to discover, with a jolt, that they’d relocated to her room upstairs, and once or twice, the door had even been closed.

His aunt would sometimes remark privately that young people these days had no shame. Yao Qiyun hated hearing this and would walk off in silence, refusing to respond — yet even Uncle Situ, who witnessed all this at home, could sit calmly in the living room reading the newspaper as if nothing remotely “inappropriate” were happening right under his nose.

Qiyun had no choice but to think up excuses to knock on her door.

“A’Jue, dinner’s ready.”

“A’Jue, your mom’s asking if you want to come down for soup.”

“A’Jue, do you still have last night’s newspaper?”

“A’Jue, can I borrow your electronic dictionary?”

At first she brushed him off coolly; eventually, she didn’t even bother opening the door at all, treating him as if he were invisible. He’d stand outside her door like a statue, occasionally catching the sound of muffled laughter from inside.

Who doesn’t cherish their own dignity? Yao Qiyun especially so — like a bird guarding the only feathers that cover it. But if the body underneath had already been hollowed out, what use were the feathers to him?

He tried to tell himself that Wu Jiang and Situ Jue were just “buddies,” good friends, and could never develop feelings for each other. But what right did he have to draw that conclusion? Two young people, in the prime of their lives, well-matched in looks and talent — why couldn’t they suddenly fall for each other? Even if each of them had once cared for someone else, who was to say those past feelings hadn’t just been a temporary lapse of judgment, a passing infatuation?

Qiyun had once, back when he’d tried to draw a clear line between himself and Situ Jue to protect them both, used the word “infatuation” to describe what he felt. Now that word terrified him — because now that her passion had cooled and she’d come to her senses, he was still trapped inside it, unable to climb out. The realization left his hands and feet cold. He knew he must look pathetic right now, no wonder she looked down on him — but wasn’t that humanity’s greatest flaw, believing so stubbornly and pursuing so relentlessly some outcome you were convinced was right, only to find, once achieved, that it was far more than you could actually bear?

Aunt Yao had also noticed the shift in her nephew’s relationship with Situ Jue, and the low point he’d sunk to. Qiyun and Situ Jue had never admitted their relationship to anyone, and Aunt Yao was no exception — but she wasn’t a fool. Whatever act they put on to fool the sharp but perpetually busy Xue Shaoping, they hardly bothered to conceal anything in front of her, a mere aging housekeeper. In Aunt Yao’s eyes, Situ Jue was nothing more than an unsteady, spoiled rich girl, perhaps even a little frivolous — and Qiyun, foolishly diving headfirst into her spell, was exactly what broke his aunt’s heart, both with pity and exasperation.

Once Situ Jiu’an had also gone out, only Aunt Yao and a despondent Yao Qiyun, struggling to hide it, remained downstairs. Aunt Yao went into her nephew’s room to mop the floor, and found him sitting there expressionless, flipping a dictionary back and forth in his hands without reading it. She stopped, leaned on her mop, and turned to close the door behind her.

“Look at you, completely lost in the clouds. Aside from a pretty face, what does that Situ Jue girl even have going for her, to make you like this?”

“Auntie, why are you bringing this up?” Yao Qiyun frowned. He didn’t even bother denying or arguing anymore.

Aunt Yao sat down on the edge of his bed. “Qiyun, you’ve suffered so much to get where you are today — you should treasure it all the more, not let your mind run wild like this. I’m no good at big lectures, but let me tell you — those stories in operas about a wealthy young lady sneaking off in the dead of night to meet some poor scholar are just made up to fool people. Don’t go dreaming a dream like that. A truly decent, proper young woman would never do such a thing. And even if you really did meet a girl like that once, don’t forget — if she comes to you tonight, she might be sleeping beside someone else tomorrow.”

Blood rushed through Yao Qiyun’s whole body; he dropped what he was holding and stood up. He glanced toward the door, worried about disturbing the people upstairs, and lowered his voice, biting off each word: “Auntie, say whatever you want about me, but she isn’t like that. Some things shouldn’t be said carelessly.”

“Fine, I won’t say it carelessly then — let’s just call her a good girl. Even a country woman like me understands the saying about marrying within one’s own class — how could you, with all your education, not know it? You heard what her mother said that day yourself, Qiyun. You’re a smart boy, surely you caught the meaning behind her words. If you two really get tangled up together, it won’t stay hidden for long. Have you thought about what her mother will do to you once she finds out? Situ Jue is their own flesh and blood — no matter what she does wrong, she’s still their daughter. And you? What are you in this family? If they decide to be ruthless about it, you’ll lose everything in the blink of an eye, become nothing at all. You’ve only had two years of college — you haven’t even built a foundation yet. Do you really want to go back to the way things used to be?” Worry was written plainly across his aunt’s face.

Yao Qiyun said coldly, “I understand better than anyone how Uncle Situ and his wife have treated me. I’ll repay the Situ family — I’d work myself to the bone for them if I had to. Once I graduate, I’ll do everything within my power to make sure they live out their old age in comfort and security. And I’ll treat A’Jue well too.”

His aunt gave a cold laugh in return — being family, sharing the same blood, her mocking expression looked eerily like Yao Qiyun’s own. “So it’s just as her mother said, then — you really do have your heart set on marrying into someone else’s family, becoming their kept son-in-law? Our Yao family is poor, I know, we haven’t given you much — but don’t forget, your father was a proud man his whole life, and he never lost his dignity, not even on his deathbed. And you? Marry some rich family’s daughter, and sure, you’ll live a comfortable life — but her whole family will step on you for the rest of your days, and you won’t be able to say a word about it, because everything you have will have been given to you out of charity. You could work yourself to death for that family and the credit still won’t be yours. And with that temper of Situ Jue’s — do you really want to spend your life as some henpecked husband, a docile little lapdog trotting after her heels?”

“Enough. Stop.”

“You don’t want to hear it, but right now you need some strong medicine. Qiyun, once you finish your studies, a bright future awaits you — you’ll be a good doctor, fully capable of supporting yourself, building your own household. There are plenty of ways to repay this family. Why sacrifice your whole life to it, living every day at someone else’s mercy?”

“I said I’ve heard enough.” Qiyun was trembling all over. He suddenly realized that what A’Jue had said wasn’t wrong at all — believing that no one would ever respect him was exactly what would keep him poor forever. Truly dignified people never went around constantly invoking the word “dignity.” They didn’t need to wrap themselves in grand phrases like “rising above your station” or “proving yourself” to disguise their insecurities, because they never felt they lacked it in the first place.

“Qiyun, everything Auntie’s saying is for your own—”

“I know you mean well. I understand.” He hardened his heart, refusing to look at his aunt as she pleaded with him earnestly, until she sighed and left.

Neither of them knew there had been another listener to this entire exchange — Situ Jue, who, though she’d been deliberately ignoring Yao Qiyun, couldn’t resist Wu Jiang’s egging on and had crept down to secretly watch him squirm. She’d darted into the kitchen just before Aunt Yao emerged, pretending to be rummaging in the fridge for fruit, then grabbed two frozen persimmons and headed back upstairs. Passing through the living room, she glanced back once at the figure diligently scrubbing the window glass.