“President Liang, why don’t you go up first — there’s somewhere else I need to go.”

A mildly tipsy Lin Qing said this to Liang Meng at the foot of the apartment building.

Liang Meng looked puzzled: “It’s so late, and you’ve been drinking. Where are you off to?”

Lin Qing pointed to the All Seasons Hotel across the street: “A friend of mine is staying there. I’m going to keep him company for a bit.”

Liang Meng was a little worried: “Should I come with you? You’d be going alone—”

“Oh, what a coincidence! Fancy running into you two here!”

The two of them were mid-conversation when a figure came rushing toward them from a distance, breathless and windswept, trailing large and small bags behind her.

It was Lin Qing’s mother.

“Mom!!”

“Auntie.”

“All the paperwork for selling the house is done! I caught the last afternoon high-speed train to get here. Come on, come on, let’s head up! I brought you both all kinds of goodies to eat!”

Lin Qing’s mother still had beads of sweat on her face as she bustled about, not wasting a moment.

Lin Qing looked awkwardly at her own mother, then cast a glance at Liang Meng.

“Mom, why don’t you and President Liang head up first? I still want to pop over to the hotel across the street to see someone.” Lin Qing held her ground.

Lin Qing’s mother, of course, could guess exactly who was staying at the All Seasons across the road.

“Xiao Meng, let’s go up. Let her go! And when you come back—” she called after Lin Qing, “don’t forget to grab two packs of toilet paper from that convenience store over there! The roll paper upstairs in that bathroom — using it on your face is fine, but for — well, I really just can’t get used to it.”

Lin Qing’s mother was never idle for a single moment — her mouth wasn’t, her hands weren’t, and her mind certainly wasn’t.

“But Auntie, Lin Qing has been drinking…” Liang Meng murmured softly.

Lin Qing’s mother waved it off without a second thought: “Don’t you worry! I know my own girl. This one? Half a jin of baijiu and she wouldn’t even wobble. You were all drinking beer tonight, weren’t you?”

Liang Meng nodded.

“Off you go then. Qing’er, be quick about it.”

With that, Lin Qing’s mother linked her arm through Liang Meng’s and steered her toward the elevator.

Inside the elevator, the two of them stood facing each other.

Liang Meng said, with a meaningful tone: “Auntie, you’re remarkably easygoing — not nearly as protective as most parents.”

Lin Qing’s mother had her hands full with the bags, but laughed openly: “Some things, you simply cannot stop by blocking them. There’s someone across that road that Lin Qing wants to see. Even if I tied her up and dragged her back, she wouldn’t be able to sleep. Better to let her sort it out herself — then we can all rest easy. Besides, in a law-governed society like ours, cameras are everywhere. A little bit of beer? She’ll be perfectly fine.”

“Mmm, mmm.” Liang Meng nodded, and reached to help carry some of the bags.

“No, no, I’ve got it! I’m not that old yet! Xiao Meng, have you ever had barley porridge? I brought some barley flour back this time — and since you’ve had a few drinks tonight, let me cook some up to warm your stomach and help you sober up.”

Lin Qing’s mother was nothing short of the ideal “dream mom.”

“Thank you, Auntie.”

“What’s there to thank? I look at you just like my own child!”

Liang Meng pressed her lips together and lowered her head without a word.

Lin Qing arrived at the hotel room door.

She raised her hand to press the doorbell, then hesitated for a moment.

What was she even going to say when she saw Lu Zhou?

She couldn’t very well tell him she’d already seen the news and knew he hadn’t won the championship, could she?

After wavering for a while, Lin Qing finally pressed the bell, conscience not entirely clear.

Lu Zhou had been on the floor doing exercises. Hearing the doorbell, he came running to the door with his upper body half-bare and glistening with sweat.

The door opened. Their eyes met.

Lin Qing’s jaw dropped.

Lu Zhou’s face lit up with undisguised delight.

Then came the sound of the door swinging naturally shut, as Lu Zhou dove back into the room and went scrambling through the entire place in search of a t-shirt.

“Hi~!”

When the door opened again, both of them were properly dressed and smiling appropriately.

Only Lin Qing, privately, felt she had come out on the losing end.

Those eight-pack abs that had flashed into view and vanished before she’d properly gotten a look —

It felt like a massive red packet that had slipped through her fingers before she could claim it.

A missed fortune of one hundred million.

“What brings you over at this hour?” Lu Zhou asked, toweling off his sweat.

“Nothing much. Just came to see how you’re doing.”

Lin Qing stood with both hands in her pockets, hiding the fact that her hands had nothing to offer.

“What’s there to see in me?” Lu Zhou laughed, then sniffed. “Lin Qing, have you been drinking?”

“Yeah, a bit. Keeping my boss company for a work thing.”

Lin Qing said it casually, while inside her head she was trying to figure out how to steer the conversation toward his competition.

“Your company doesn’t have any of that awful drinking-culture pressure, does it?” Lu Zhou asked with concern.

Lin Qing smiled: “Not yet, at least.”

They chatted in a loose, meandering way for a while, and eventually Lin Qing realized that no matter how she tried to navigate the conversation toward the tournament, it simply wasn’t happening. She gave up and went straight to the point.

“So… Lu Zhou.”

“Yeah?”

“I saw the sports news today.” Lin Qing asked cautiously. “I wanted to know — did you not win the championship this time because you were doing a video call with me, and it threw off your focus and made you rush back?”

Lu Zhou said nothing. Instead, he picked up the ab roller from the floor and did another set.

When he straightened up again, breathless, the face he lifted was still bright and composed.

“What are you talking about? By that logic, why not blame a mosquito that happened to fly past me that day?”

Lin Qing still didn’t believe him. She was convinced he was trying to spare her feelings.

“Victory and defeat are part of every soldier’s experience.”

The way Lu Zhou said those words in that moment — it was entirely unhurried, entirely untroubled.

“But you said this time you’d be resting for a long stretch… Is that because the result of the competition affected you?” Lin Qing pressed, still not quite at ease.

“A little,” Lu Zhou admitted with a nod. “But as you put it yourself — it’s already the ‘result.’ Can’t be changed now. So rest first, and take things one step at a time.”

Lin Qing felt deep, gnawing guilt. She really had done Lu Zhou a terrible wrong this time!

It was all her fault — her own loose-lipped, ungoverned mouth, always treating Lu Zhou as her personal emotional dumping ground whenever she pleased. That must have rattled his state of mind and cost him the competition.

“And those endorsement deals you’d been working on…?” Lin Qing asked, almost in a whisper.

Lu Zhou put the ab roller away, smiling, and turned back to reassure her: “We’ll see how it goes. Like I said — victory and defeat are part of every soldier’s experience. Maybe I’ll win the next one and still get the deals.”

“But—” Lin Qing wanted to press further.

Lu Zhou stepped closer, cutting off the line of questioning: “Why have you suddenly taken such an interest in my professional career? Are you thinking of becoming my manager?”

Lin Qing said nothing, her eyes on Lu Zhou, heavy with something that felt like concern.

“I can’t exactly offer you a salary of one point four million a year,” Lu Zhou added, still teasing.

Right then.

There was nothing more to say.

Lin Qing had come tonight intending to check on Lu Zhou, to ask if there was anything she could do to help — even if it was just listening to him vent.

But his spirit was unshakeable, and he clearly had no need of it.

To say nothing of blaming Lin Qing — from everything Lin Qing could read in his expressions, his words, his eyes, his manner, she couldn’t detect a single trace of disappointment or resentment about the whole affair.

As though this general, who had almost always been victorious, losing a competition was no more significant than the fact that it had rained yesterday. Barely worth a thought.

“Oh, right!”

That thought reminded her — Lin Qing quickly pulled out her phone.

“Let me transfer you the hotel money.”

Lu Zhou laughed and pressed down on her hand: “Put that away! A camel, even when it has starved to death, is still bigger than a horse. I may have lost the competition, but with the savings I’ve accumulated as a former top-tier player, I’m not in need of your charity!”

“That’s not it.” Lin Qing rushed to explain. “This money came from Liang Meng. You lent me your apartment, and I’m subletting it to her — what does that make me? Just think of me as a middleman: Liang Meng pays me five hundred a day, I pass four hundred a day on to you. Let me transfer the first half month upfront — six thousand! Sending it now!”

As the transfer notification sounded, Lu Zhou suddenly gripped Lin Qing’s wrist with unexpected urgency.

Lin Qing noticed that the entire conversation about the competition hadn’t stirred a fraction of this much feeling in him.

“You took money from Liang Meng?!” Lu Zhou asked, his expression very serious.

“Yes.”

Lin Qing didn’t see anything wrong with it.

Her one point four million salary was professional compensation Liang Meng had agreed to pay Lin Qing in the workplace context — and nothing in the contract said Lin Qing was obligated to provide her with accommodation!

Not to mention the fact that the apartment wasn’t even hers to begin with.

“I can’t exactly take what belongs to a friend and use it to play the generous host, can I?” Lin Qing said plainly.

Lu Zhou drew a deep breath, a slight furrow in his brow, and for a long moment said nothing in response.

Lin Qing couldn’t read him — but from where she stood, the logic was clear.

Unless Liang Meng was also Lu Zhou’s friend, and he was willing — then Lin Qing could let her stay for free.

“After going around all this way, you still don’t consider me one of your own.” Lu Zhou leaned against the desk, head bowed, and asked in a low, deflated voice. “If the apartment were yours right now — if you were the one taking Liang Meng in — would you still charge her?”

That question stopped Lin Qing cold.

“I don’t know.”

She thought about it, then answered quietly with what was truly in her heart.

And as she did, she shared a joke with Lu Zhou: “There was once a man who was asked: if you won a hundred million in the lottery, would you donate to charity? He said yes. Then they asked: what about two million? He said yes again. And then: what about twenty thousand? At that, he shook his head without a moment’s hesitation. Because he actually had twenty thousand in his account.”

Lin Qing felt that Lu Zhou’s hypothetical question was the same kind of thing as that joke.

Maybe Lin Qing would be “wealthy enough to grow a conscience.” Or maybe the weight of a mortgage would keep her collecting rent — who could say.

But she had misread his intention. Lu Zhou wasn’t asking to explore human nature.

He just wanted one thing from Lin Qing: confirmation that she considered him one of her own.

Lin Qing answered him with a joke. She didn’t answer hypothetical questions.

Lu Zhou was disappointed — more disappointed than he had been about losing the competition.

But he was also a man who kept things bottled up. He wasn’t the kind to paint pretty pictures with words. He only knew how to act, to do things, to make them real.

And so he naively believed that the reason Lin Qing hadn’t said yes was because he himself hadn’t done enough.

Nearly ten years, and these two were still going around in the same circles.

Then, suddenly, Lin Qing let out a giggle — and with the looseness of the alcohol still in her system, she hooked an arm around Lu Zhou’s neck: “I would! Fine — I would!”

Lu Zhou was tall. Being grabbed like that nearly had him hunching over.

Lin Qing continued, laughing through her words: “If I could afford a place like yours, that means I’d have assets of five million! And if I had five million to my name, then I’d need to think big! Lend it? Absolutely! And not just lend — I’d be bragging about it at every dinner party! ‘The female CEO of Longquan, with assets worth billions, is crashing at my place!’ Wouldn’t that make me the most talked-about lifestyle influencer at any table? Ha ha ha ha ha!”

And with that, Lin Qing dissolved into a fit of completely unhinged laughter.

Lu Zhou’s neck was being jostled so hard his brain was practically rattling loose.

He felt what was inside him very nearly shaken out entirely.

“Lin Qing, oh Lin Qing — did it ever occur to you that a place doesn’t necessarily have to be bought? All you’d have to do is nod your head, and the two of us could take a trip to the civil affairs bureau. Forget just adding your name to the title deed — I’d transfer the whole thing directly into your name as a gift.”

He couldn’t hold it in. Lu Zhou dropped his voice and murmured: “Stop shaking — if you keep it up, something’s going to happen.”

“What’s going to happen?!”

Lin Qing froze, blinking at him with wide, entirely innocent eyes.

Lu Zhou was exasperated beyond words. He stood up and showed her to the door: “Motion sickness! Now get yourself home. I need to wash up and sleep.”

“I’m going, I’m going! Aren’t you walking me out?”

“I never said I wasn’t. I’m walking, aren’t I?”