“……”

“What cake?”

Xie Yichen didn’t immediately follow what she meant. He thought back carefully, and finally remembered — the confession wall thread.

He pressed down his brows, lashes lowering as he looked at Ning Sui.

Those deep eyes of his, in the already dim light, looked even darker than usual. Whether the expression in them was resigned or amused, something was there — some emotion, impossible to name precisely.

“That day was our English teacher’s birthday. The class all chipped in to buy her a cake. I was heading down to the staff room to deliver it, and someone ran into me — the whole thing ended up on the floor. I had to sneak off campus to the mall next door and buy a replacement from a proper counter — at several times the price — but at least I made it in time.”

He paused, then with an air of cheerful arrogance, knocked the rim of his glass — it rang out a clear, bright note: “Also, this is a sparkling tea.”

Xie Yichen said it all plainly, those sharp eyes fixed on her. Something in Ning Sui’s chest quickened without warning.

The sofa seats weren’t exactly spacious — just that European-style cushioned chair. He’d had his legs angled in quietly the whole time, keeping a careful distance from her without any fuss.

Ning Sui noticed this small detail with a slight delay, and thought again about the leaf outside on the street. A beat late: “Is that right.”

“What else did you think it was?” He tugged at the corner of his mouth in that almost-smile. “Was that a question that needed answering?”

Ning Sui drew out a slow oh.

The performer on stage came back with a ukulele, and in the soft night light, sound and light were both the finest frame for the evening. Ning Sui tilted her head and watched the performer lightly pluck the strings to tune: “Then drinking tea at night — you’re not worried about not being able to sleep?”

Xie Yichen hadn’t responded yet when he happened to glance at her phone. There was a long run of messages on the screen — he wasn’t sure what it was.

He paused for just a moment, then heard someone call his name from nearby.

Zou Xiao, one seat over, leaned her whole body across Lin Shuyu, eagerly trying to pull Xie Yichen into conversation: “I’ve been playing League of Legends lately — the LPL Summer Split finals are almost here, right? Do you—”

Xie Yichen looked at her: “Sorry, I haven’t really been following.”

Zou Xiao’s voice caught in her throat.

Lin Shuyu sat there like a sandwich cookie stuffed between them, quietly suppressing laughter.

Of course he’s been following — he’d just watched a whole match before heading out that afternoon. Only this person could say something like that without so much as blinking.

That said, Lin Shuyu had to admit: Xie Yichen was genuinely skilled at rebuffing people. He never made anyone lose face, and he had a real talent for dealing with persistent admirers.

The girls who liked him couldn’t get their letters and gifts into Xie Yichen’s hands, so they’d go to great lengths to intercept Lin Shuyu and Zhang Yuge instead. The two of them had a generous outlook on this and felt no discomfort — they happily reaped the benefits. Those girls would rather hand a gift off to them just for an excuse to glance at Xie Yichen from across the hall; Lin Shuyu was genuinely in awe. He still had a little box of those things sitting at home.

Zhang Yuge and he were each their own kind of character, though neither quite reached “breathtaking heartthrob” level. But what Lin Shuyu found remarkable was that being around someone like Xie Yichen had never made him feel inadequate.

They were still each their own person. Lin Shuyu still found things in himself worth admiring.

In fact, he’d often discovered those things through Xie Yichen.

He thought of a line that would sound terribly sappy if he said it aloud: a good friend is one who helps the path of your life grow wider as you walk. He didn’t know much about anything else, but he knew this: having been friends with Xie Yichen all these years — he was genuinely lucky for it.

——

They didn’t end up staying long at the venue. It was partly that there wasn’t much to do, and partly that the atmosphere had gone too strained and too quiet, so no one was really talking. They wrapped things up and left.

When the bill came, Xu Zhou paid it. Zhao Yingyao said: “Send a request to the group — let’s split it.”

Xu Zhou shrugged: “It’s fine, it wasn’t much.”

Still a few hundred. Zhao Yingyao had caught a glimpse of the receipt. She looked at him a moment longer, then said with a gracious, bright smile: “Well then, thank you so much for treating us, Xu.”

“Of course.”

The group filed out one after another.

Back on the main street near the guesthouse, Hu Ke’er pulled Ning Sui ahead. She said she wanted to keep browsing.

The moment they split from the group, she pressed close to Ning Sui’s ear and muttered, pulling a face: “That Zhao Yingyao — she’s so irritating. I don’t like her.”

Knowing full well that Xu Zhou had a girlfriend and she was still hanging around trying to make herself noticed — even if she hadn’t said anything blatantly out of line, Hu Ke’er was still annoyed: “I’m telling you, my twenty-four-karat titanium-alloy dog eyes are guaranteeing you: she absolutely was batting her lashes at my boyfriend at some point.”

Ning Sui let her shake her arm around freely and maintained her patient, good-natured look: “If you really mind, just tell Xu Zhou to be more careful.”

Then, honestly adding: “Though honestly, I think he genuinely might not have noticed.”

“……”

The truth was, Hu Ke’er thought that was probably the most likely scenario too. Back when she first met Xu Zhou, she’d found him impressive at flirting — but the longer they’d been together, the more she felt it was just confidence born of circumstance.

Or put another way: because his family background gave him a certain ease in the world, everything he did seemed a touch more magnetic. It wasn’t that he was actually that charming.

The men Hu Ke’er had encountered who played the field were all experienced with multiple relationships; the majority of the rest were completely oblivious. Apparently a man’s emotional intelligence genuinely did tend to correlate with the number of girlfriends he’d had. Was there really no one who was naturally intuitive without needing to be trained by experience?

Hu Ke’er turned it over in her mind, and concluded she was definitely not one to plant trees for other people to enjoy.

When they reached the inner courtyard of the guesthouse, Ning Sui felt her phone vibrating repeatedly. Most of the rooms had lights on, but the corridor itself was quiet. Ning Sui stopped and gestured to Hu Ke’er: “Go on up first — I’ll make a call out here.”

“Oh. Okay.”

When she looked at her phone, she already knew she was too late. The screen showed over twenty missed calls from Xia Fanghui. Her phone had somehow been switched to silent mode at some point, and she just hadn’t heard it.

Ning Sui quickly called back and held it to her ear: “Hello, Mom.”

“Where are you? Why don’t you pick up?!”

“I was in the old town just now — the music was kind of loud—”

Before she could finish, Xia Fanghui cut her off: “You know I’ll call you at any time — why do you still keep doing this? Why can’t you pay attention?!”

Her voice had risen. “How many times have I told you — don’t silence the phone. Don’t silence the phone. When I can’t reach you by phone, I have no idea where you are. If this happens again, I won’t let you go out with your friends anymore!”

Ning Sui was quiet for a moment. Her voice came out soft: “……I’m sorry, Mom.”

On the other end, a pause — and then sudden silence.

The summer cicadas were calling. The thick, close air pressed into her lungs. Ning Sui stood in the shadows, her fingertips cool, equally still.

A long time passed. Then she heard a slow, deep exhale from the receiver.

“Little Coco, I’m sorry.”

Ning Sui’s lashes shifted. Something in her chest loosened a little: “Mom?”

Xia Fanghui said quietly, “It’s Mom who got emotional.”

“……”

Her voice came out low, carrying a faint weariness. Ning Sui kept the phone pressed to her ear without speaking.

Xia Fanghui took a moment to calm herself, then her tone smoothed out a little: “……I’ve just been thinking about your grandmother these past few days, so I’ve been a bit on edge. It’s nothing.”

Ning Sui stilled: “What about Grandmother?”

At the mention of it, Xia Fanghui couldn’t help sighing again: “She’s had these spells where she can’t catch her breath. The last few days her blood oxygen has been seriously low — she’s been on an oxygen machine. Today I took her to the hospital, and the doctor said all her indicators are off. She needs to be admitted.”

The doctor had said this before, but the elderly woman was stubborn, refused to go to hospital — insisted there was no need.

“Your grandmother is really too much trouble. She was a nurse herself, so she thinks she doesn’t need to follow the doctor’s orders. But a physician who treats herself is a fool — she just has her own way of doing things too much.”

Xia Fanghui went on and on, and Ning Sui leaned against the wall, her fingers warming slowly in the thick summer air.

“Can I call her right now?”

“She’s probably already asleep. Call tomorrow.”

“Then…… is there anything I can do?”

Xia Fanghui said: “It’s all standard procedure from here. Once a bed opens tomorrow, I’ll tidy up a few things here at home, and your dad and I will take her to check in.”

She paused, then made an effort to keep her voice light: “It’ll be fine. Don’t worry too much — come see her when you get back.”

Ning Sui looked down and pressed her lips together: “Okay.”

Xia Fanghui’s voice softened: “Little Coco — get some rest.”

Ning Sui was quiet for a moment: “You and Dad rest well too.”

—

And just as Ning Sui had half-jokingly predicted — after that sparkling tea, Xie Yichen truly could not sleep.

Zhang Yuge’s snoring in the next bed was thunderous. He lay there, turning one way and then the other.

Eventually he slipped out of bed as carefully as he could and decided to go out to the balcony for some air.

Outside, the trees were shadowed and still. Xie Yichen leaned against the railing for a while, and then, by some unexpected chance, spotted a familiar figure in the courtyard below.

The sunflower-spiral pattern in the Fibonacci sequence was clearly visible from this angle. Ning Sui, wearing a light jacket, stood in the yard, and was walking — with a rather serious air — from the center of the inner path of the pebbled courtyard outward, then looping back to the start, careful and methodical.

Xie Yichen watched for a while. Then he looked at his phone, in utter disbelief.

Two in the morning. She was really something.

Ning Sui had a habit of repeating a small, purposeless action when she was thinking — not so much insomnia as a mind cluttered with loose thoughts that hadn’t untangled themselves yet. So she’d come out to walk for a bit.

She was in the middle of quite an involved circuit when behind her there was the soft sound of a footstep on the ground, and then a low, teasing voice: “Two in the morning and you’re not sleeping — training for the Olympic race-walking team?”

Even at that distance, Ning Sui startled. She turned around to find Xie Yichen standing a few metres away, arms crossed, watching her with that half-amused expression.

Ning Sui’s face returned to normal. She looked at him, then said slowly: “The opening ceremony isn’t for a few more days — who knows, maybe I’ll get picked.”

“……”

Xie Yichen gave a short, dry huff of laughter through his nose, then put his phone away and strolled over at his leisure. Ning Sui curled her fingers slightly, and quietly looked out at the dark, still surface of Erhai Lake.

The tide moved in and out with a soft, low rhythm. Xie Yichen stopped beside her. He slipped his hands in his pockets and followed her gaze.

Ning Sui heard him ask, offhandedly: “Did I scare you just now?”

“Ah, no.” She paused. “Were you not able to sleep either?”

“Yeah, a bit.”

Ning Sui glanced at the long bench nearby: “Then — do you want to sit down for a bit?”

Xie Yichen gave her a sideways look: “Sure.”

The worst of the summer heat had already passed, and the night added its own coolness on top of that. The temperature was comfortable now. Somewhere in the distance, a cicada cried once or twice, then stopped. The two of them sat at either end of the bench, leaning back against it, looking at the lake through a section of artfully styled glass railing.

For a while, neither of them said anything. A breeze drifted past, and the surroundings settled into a stillness that felt oddly steadying.

Ning Sui was staring at some indeterminate point in the middle distance, quietly lost in thought. Xie Yichen rested against the back of the bench for a while, and then said calmly: “Something on your mind?”

He wasn’t looking at her. His knees were slightly apart, and he’d fished a spare shoelace from his trouser pocket — he was turning it over in his hands, idly playing with it.

Ning Sui slowly blinked, then nodded: “Yeah.”

She looked down, chose her words for a moment, then began: “It’s about a friend of mine. She didn’t do well on the college entrance exam — she made an error filling in her answer sheet, and her score came out very bad. Her parents are angry and keep blaming her, and she’s been in a pretty rough state.”

She wasn’t a super close friend, exactly, but they had genuinely gotten along well.

The girl was a little shy, but had a very lovely nature. There had been a stretch of time when Ning Sui would walk with her every day after class, heading for lunch together.

They would stop at the used manga stall by the school gate to check whether a new issue of their current series had come in. They’d stop at the 7-Eleven — you’d get a beef noodle soup, she’d get a curry fishball — and pile on ketchup and chili oil, sharing bites off the sticks.

That evening in the bar, Ning Sui had gotten a text from her.

[Suisui, I wanted to tell you something — I think I’m going to repeat a year in a different province.

My parents said No. 4 High School still wasn’t strict enough — it’s not military-style management the way Hengshui High is, and I wasted too much time in the gaps. People at Hengshui memorize vocabulary even while queueing in the cafeteria, while all I did was laugh around with friends.

Honestly, I’ve always envied you. Envied your talent, how consistently good you’ve been at school. I always believed deep down that the math competition was just a temporary setback for you, and that you’d succeed in the end. And you did. I’m so happy for you — the applause and recognition were always what you deserved.

I just wasn’t so lucky. My state wasn’t good — I’d been having trouble sleeping for a while before the exam, heart pounding, anxious all the time. I knew when I walked into that exam room that I was going to do badly. And sure enough — three physics questions in the science section, all wrong. Eighteen points. If I’d been even a little more careful.

I’ve been talking for so long, but what I really mean is — I’ll miss you. I’ve always treasured our friendship and looked up to you so much. At the graduation ceremony, when you were speaking on stage, I sat there listening and thought — we really are different. I could never do what you do.

And so I know: from here on, we’ll be taking completely different roads. We won’t be walking the same path anymore.

So I think — let’s not keep in touch.

I hope you’ll be well, and that everything goes right for you. And I hope things go right for me too.]

Ning Sui had always been a little slow to process things. During the graduation ceremony, amid all the different scenes of goodbye — teachers’ parting words, everything — she hadn’t felt any particular sadness. But sitting in the bar that night, reading this text, there had been a real pang.

In that moment, she finally understood, a beat too late — they were genuinely graduating.

Leaving Huai’an. Going their own separate ways.

Six years, three years, four years — life divided into different stages, and when the time came, a new chapter had to begin.

Beginning and ending at once. Those days of being absorbed in nothing more than homework and textbooks, those simple, uncomplicated days when buying an ice cream with two good friends on the way home was enough to make you happy — those days were truly, and irreversibly, gone.

“Honestly I feel sad for her. If she hadn’t made that mistake, she could have gotten into a really good school.”

Ning Sui looked up. There was a quiet ache in her chest; she let out a small sigh: “I think seeing her is like looking at a version of my own past — I understand the feeling. The only difference is maybe I was luckier.”

Xie Yichen had been listening the whole time. Now he spoke, quietly and evenly: “Have you heard the story of the old man who lost his horse?”

Ning Sui’s ear felt lightly grazed by the sound of his voice; she paused, then turned to look at him: “Are you saying that luck is conserved — that what seems like loss might turn into fortune?”

“Yes.” Xie Yichen gave an example: “I had a distant relative — I suppose you’d call him a cousin — who also didn’t do well on his college entrance exam. He didn’t make the cutoff for a regular university. His parents were very worried, but he himself was quite optimistic about it.”

The university he got into wasn’t well-known. The coursework was easygoing, a lot of free time. But the cousin didn’t give up — instead, he used his extra hours to watch online videos and teach himself different skills and knowledge.

It was through that process that he started to notice: everyone seemed to love those short, fast, shareable little videos. So he teamed up with a classmate and started a company, building a mobile app along the same lines. And then, in these last two years — it took off.

Xie Yichen said: “Now I think their company’s annual revenue is something in the tens of millions.”

Ning Sui looked at him: “And do you think what made him succeed — was it more down to luck, to finding the right opportunity? Or more down to his mindset?”

“I think both. But there’s no denying that he never gave up.”

His voice was clear and low: “A teacher I admired once said: cherish your lowest points — you’ll see a lot of truth from down there. Time will carry those who are willing to carry themselves.“

Ning Sui felt something in her land squarely with those words. She looked at him, unblinking.

Xie Yichen looked up, gazing out at the lake through the clear glass, and the corner of his mouth curved just slightly.

“There’s still so much road ahead. Infinite possibilities — and you can’t know who’s won or lost until the very end. You could tell your friend that there’s no need to write a verdict on yourself this early.”

And then those dark, sharp eyes came to rest on her: “Also — if you feel lucky, it might just be that you were more persistent than others.”

The sound of the lake, breathing slowly in and out, drifted past her ears. Ning Sui felt something inside her like a small boat, drifting and turning in the silver river of the sky.

That’s really all there was to it.

What she hadn’t been able to work out — the answer might not have been complicated at all.

She didn’t quite know how to describe this sensation of something opening up. All Ning Sui could think was: it would be even better if there was a little wine right now.

She looked at Xie Yichen for a moment, then made a sincere suggestion: “I have an idea.”

He responded, disengaged: “What is it?”

“How about we open a motivational coaching school together someday — you’d be the lead lecturer, and we’d transcribe every session into a published textbook.”

Ning Sui gave him a measuring look, and said with solemn earnestness: “I have a feeling that with your ability, it won’t be long before you go national franchise, selling over a hundred thousand copies a month.”

Xie Yichen raised an eyebrow: “And what would you do?”

“I would—” Ning Sui’s tone became, all at once, deeply sincere: “……benefit from the fruits of your labor?”

“……”