The days that followed were still the kind of military training that tested one’s willpower to the extreme.

The midday rest period was very short — essentially just one hour. After finishing lunch, they’d lie down for twenty minutes before having to reassemble.

Ning Sui and her dormmates always moved as a group, going everywhere together. Although this sometimes meant they couldn’t find a table, the main reason was that the four of them had such perfectly compatible energy, with topics to discuss that never ran dry, so they constantly acted as a pack.

Liang Xinyue stretched and said pitifully, “All this marching practice has my muscles nearly cramping. I think my calves have gotten thicker.”

Bi Jiaxi cheerfully suggested, “Once it’s all over, let’s go get massages together!”

Today was the final day. That afternoon, the closing ceremony would be held, where they’d march in formation to demonstrate the results of their training.

After finishing lunch, the group didn’t dare linger too long chatting. They picked up their trays, emptied their plates, and headed out of the cafeteria. Ning Sui and Bi Jiaxi went to the fruit and dessert window to buy yogurt, while Liang Xinyue said, “Qin Qin and I will wait for you outside.”

However, the moment they stepped through the main entrance, they came face to face with a tall, lanky male student.

The moment he spotted Yu Qin, he rushed over and tried to grab her arm. “Qin Qin, why haven’t you been answering my calls?”

Yu Qin’s expression changed immediately. She shook off his hand and said coldly, “Do you think I still have any reason to answer your calls?”

“Just let me explain — the thing is—”

“Explain what?” Liang Xinyue cut him off. “Are you going to explain how you weren’t two-timing two girlfriends at the same time? Or how you weren’t getting cozy with some other girl under the dormitory building?”

Fang Muzhuo hurriedly said, “Qin Qin, that night really wasn’t what it looked like. She and I are just regular friends — she came to return my textbook, that’s all. You definitely misread the situation.”

Seeing that Yu Qin wasn’t speaking, he cautiously stepped closer, his face a mask of wounded innocence. “You know I’ve always really liked you, and I can’t live without you. Stop being upset, come back to my side, okay? I swear, from now on I’ll keep better control of my boundaries when interacting with girls of the opposite sex.”

That was quite a high-minded speech, but everyone in the dormitory had seen the photos Yu Qin had taken — he was clearly hugging that girl, and it even looked like he had kissed her cheek.

Liang Xinyue pulled Yu Qin back, her expression visibly disgusted.

She wasn’t going to bother being polite anymore. “Don’t try to weasel your way out of this. We have evidence.”

She paused, then said, “Don’t act like a saint after acting like trash. People say a toad pretending to be a frog — ugly on the outside and playing the field on the inside. Our Yu Qin isn’t someone without a temper, she just didn’t think it was worth getting into it with a dog. So please have some self-awareness and get lost.”

Fang Muzhuo seethed, “You—”

He instinctively raised his hand. At that moment, Ning Sui and Bi Jiaxi came up from behind, carrying yogurt. Bi Jiaxi saw what was happening and cried out, “What! You want to hit someone?!”

They’d caught most of the conversation as they approached.

Seeing that two more girls had arrived, combined with the evidence Liang Xinyue had just mentioned, Fang Muzhuo’s confidence deflated, and his attitude immediately softened.

One had to marvel — a scumbag is truly remarkably flexible, like a trained actor, pulling a complete one-hundred-and-eighty-degree reversal in attitude. He said sincerely, “Qin Qin, I really wasn’t with her. She bombed an exam and was in a bad mood, so I comforted her a little, gave her a hug, that’s all it was.”

“I’ll admit that was my mistake, okay? I know I was wrong — can you give me one more chance?”

Yu Qin laughed mockingly and shook her head. “I’ve already gotten the full story. You two have been together for two months. How do you still have the nerve to stand here making things up? Even online fiction writers aren’t as creative as you.”

In truth, she knew she was somewhat prone to letting her feelings rule her head. The reason she hadn’t blocked Fang Muzhuo until now was that she’d still been reluctant to let go — after all, throughout their final year of high school, she’d always looked up to him as her academic role model.

In the eyes of her high school classmates, he was a top student with a great reputation.

To stand shoulder to shoulder with him, she had studied hard and ultimately gotten into the elite university of her dreams. And in the end, she discovered that the person she had admired was nothing more than this.

Fang Muzhuo’s expression cooled. “So you’re not willing to make up?”

Yu Qin almost rolled her eyes — she had never felt more clear-headed. “My friend just said it’s not worth wasting time on a dog.”

Fang Muzhuo was visibly furious and humiliated. “Then I’ve got nothing left to be decent about.”

He said indignantly, “Do you know why things ended up like this between us? It’s because you weren’t understanding enough. You always tried to control my social life from a distance, and you were petty and jealous — extremely annoying. At the time I held back from being too harsh because you still had your college entrance exams. But with a personality like yours, who besides me could ever put up with you?”

Ning Sui immediately said to Yu Qin, “Don’t believe him. He’s trying to gaslight you.”

“……”

Fang Muzhuo glared over at her. Ning Sui looked back at him slowly and said with exaggerated seriousness, “Senior, may I ask — was the fat from your face used to build the Great Wall? Otherwise I can’t imagine how it got that thick.”

New student military training was always when the cafeteria saw its highest traffic. The entrance was a constant stream of people coming and going. The group had been standing there for quite a while, and a small crowd had gradually gathered around them, frequently glancing over.

Fang Muzhuo apparently felt he couldn’t keep face. His complexion cycled through several shades of pale and greenish before he finally swallowed his words and slunk away.

The four of them walked side by side back toward the dormitory. After a moment, Bi Jiaxi raised a thumbs-up with genuine admiration. “Incredible. How are you all so good at telling people off? Can you teach me?”

“……”

The afternoon’s closing ceremony was extraordinarily grand, ending with a burst of colorful streamers and celebration fireworks. The moment dismissal was announced, the students erupted like animals released from cages — sprinting, laughing, and taking photos all over the field.

The sun was gloriously bright. The sunset was beautiful too.

It was the last day of August, and this summer had come to a perfect close.

Ning Sui’s class was comparatively restrained. They simply took a tidy group photo with their drill instructor. Compared to some of the other companies, this was a minor affair — Ning Sui saw students from several other departments leaping and climbing everywhere, practically scaling the goalposts on the soccer field.

Even worse, an entire group conspired to lift their drill instructor and spin him upside-down around a pillar in a celebratory punishment.

The force, the angle — it carried more than a hint of personal grievances. Ning Sui winced just watching it.

“……”

Given that this was a day very much worth celebrating, the students from the mathematics department arranged to go out together for a late-night meal near Wudaokou.

It was a Korean restaurant — fried chicken, army stew, the whole spread — and they ordered beer too. Everyone was in high spirits.

Ning Sui assembled nine photos for an album and posted a moment to WeChat Moments. Only one was of herself; the rest were of classmates and friends — daily training, the field at dusk, the cheese hot pot at night, people and scenery alike.

Immediately, a flood of likes came in.

Sometime in the past two weeks, she’d been interviewed while walking on campus by the university’s student news society — they specifically sought out the more attractive incoming female students to gather some impressions from new enrollees. The official account had a sizable following, and the senior student’s equipment was apparently quite high-end; it captured her looking fair-skinned and beautiful. This had made Ning Sui briefly famous among the new students, and quite a few male students had reached out through mutual contacts to get her WeChat.

Ning Sui had only added those from the mathematics department. The rest she left unattended.

Now, new notifications piled up on her Moments in a stack of 99+, with comments streaming in below.

Kuge Lin: [Nice, didn’t you all do a proper farewell ceremony with your instructor? 🐶]

Paopao Ke: [I’m finally free!!! Miss you so much my adorable baby, coming to find you for food tomorrow!]

Jin Ge: [This is so Jingda — even the sunset is this pretty 😤]

Even Shen Qing had left a comment: [Such clever composition. The person is beautiful and so is the scenery 😮]

Since Shen Qing had left for America, the two of them had chatted a few times, though the time difference made it infrequent.

Ning Sui replied to each one. To Shen Qing she wrote: [I wouldn’t dare show off in front of you 🙏]

There were also a slew of compliments on her appearance below. Ning Sui scrolled for a long time, but she didn’t see the dark gray profile picture.

She searched through the likes — it wasn’t there either. She looked again carefully and finally found it, somewhere in the middle of the list.

Just then, her phone gave a quiet buzz.

She exited and saw a red notification dot in her private messages.

Xie Yichen: [Did you drink?]

His observational skills were impressive. To avoid Fanfang asking a million questions, Ning Sui had done her best to move the empty beer bottles out of frame before taking the photos. But in one of them, the corner of a bottle had crept into the shot unintentionally.

He’d spotted that?

Ning Sui had already washed up and climbed into bed by this point. Her phone’s screen glowed warmly under the covers, making her eyes look especially bright. She typed back one word at a time: [A little. Not very much.]

Xie Yichen: [Still out at the dinner?]

Sui Sui Sui: [No, I’m in the dorm. Just listening to my roommates chat.]

Ning Sui blinked: [Do you know how to fight?]

Xie Yichen: [?]

Sui Sui Sui: [My roommate’s boyfriend is a total scumbag. We’re discussing the feasibility of finding someone to tie him up and beat him.]

“……”

Yu Qin was currently recounting the story of how she had first met Fang Muzhuo with an expression full of disdain, analyzing why she’d ever had feelings for him in the first place. She’d had quite a bit to drink tonight — using the courage it gave her to finally say goodbye to the past.

“So guys are all the same. He was the one who came after me first, and then once he had me, he didn’t cherish it at all.”

Yu Qin considered herself someone who let her feelings lead, but Ning Sui actually thought she was handling it quite calmly — emotionally stable, not clinging, not crying.

At that moment, Yu Qin grabbed a cotton facial wipe, was waving it above her head like a flag, and jumped up and down: “Good riddance! On to the next, who’ll be even better!”

“I’ve decided — from now on, only happy foolishness! Absolutely no sad foolishness!”

“……”

Xie Yichen’s reply came back around that time: [Violence is not the most effective way to solve a problem.]

How profound.

Ning Sui was about to ask what his brilliant suggestion was, when he, as though seeing the future, sent two more messages right after.

Xie Yichen: [Typing is too much of a hassle.]

Xie Yichen: [Transfer me 50 yuan and I’ll tell you over the phone.]

Ning Sui: “……”

Lying on her back and typing was admittedly getting tiring, and there was always the anxiety of the phone accidentally falling on her face. A phone call sounded… fine, actually.

Ning Sui’s eyelashes flickered. She slowly sent him a 50-yuan WeChat red envelope, then rustled around in her covers to find her earphones, and called him as a matter of course.

The line picked up in that unhurried, languid way: “Hello.”

Still that low, deep voice. Ning Sui pulled her covers tighter and noticed he hadn’t touched the red envelope. “Why aren’t you accepting the money.”

Xie Yichen, breezy: “I changed my mind.”

“?”

“I’m in a good mood today.”

“Going to charge you more.”

Ning Sui: “?”

……How did every single sentence he said manage to be completely unexpected.

Xie Yichen: “I’ll settle for fifty minutes on the phone. Barely acceptable.”

He sounded quite reluctant about it too.

Ning Sui was speechless for a moment, then steered the conversation elsewhere. “So, what actually is the most effective way to solve this problem?”

Xie Yichen laughed. “Want to know?”

Ning Sui had no idea how long he intended to string this out — he was endlessly full of tricks. But she held her patience regardless. “Yes, yes, I do.”

Only then did Xie Yichen say with a savoring tone, “I heard that Qingda and Jingda recently collaborated on a biodegradable trash bin project — it’s a sort of charitable initiative. You can have text engraved on the bins for free. They’re making roughly fifty units of each design.”

He laughed softly, his tone unmistakably wicked. “Have your roommate get her ex-boyfriend’s name engraved on them, and apply as many times as possible. Make sure he ends up walking the streets of Beijing.”

“……”

So that every passerby can dump their garbage on him?

Ning Sui was stunned for a second, then wanted to burst into applause — brilliantly devious. Even more cost-effective than her cockroach method.

Liang Xinyue and the others were still downstairs chatting and listing Fang Muzhuo’s offenses. Ning Sui caught a bit of it with half an ear, then turned over. That question she’d been curious about flickered back into her mind.

Not wanting to disturb her roommates’ conversation, she lowered her voice sincerely: “So, have you never solved a problem with violence?”

“That’s not entirely true.”

“Hmm?”

There was a pause on the other end before he said, offhand, “I got into fights in middle school.”

For that age, it wasn’t unusual — but it was genuinely hard to picture him fighting.

Ning Sui asked instinctively, “Why?”

“……”

He seemed to go quiet for a moment.

It wasn’t just Ning Sui — even Xie Yichen himself found it hard to imagine that he’d once gone through a phase of being a troublemaker.

It had probably been right after he found out about the secret between his parents. He’d been somewhat rattled by it, and so he started drifting. Not exactly self-destruction — more like hitting a dead end for a while, feeling low, wanting an outlet.

His temperament hadn’t been great back then. He was always cold, didn’t like to talk, didn’t like to explain himself. Even without starting trouble, people would pick fights with him, and Xie Yichen hadn’t bothered showing them any mercy.

Back then he only knew how to solve things with his fists. He lived alone, so he could come home covered in injuries and no one would care. If something really went wrong, there were people to smooth things over. Xie Yichen was full of wild energy, afraid of nothing, and even the teachers found him a headache.

It was too complicated to explain in a few words, so Xie Yichen kept it brief. “My parents’ relationship was in a bad place then. I went off course for a while. Back then, problems I could have solved with words — I refused to back down from.”

He paused, and then said with a touch of self-deprecation, “My temper was bad. I probably offended a lot of people. On the way home from school I’d often get ambushed by delinquents from a nearby school armed with things. Of course I fought back — I’ve got tough bones.”

Ning Sui suddenly spoke: “Xie Yichen, if you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to force yourself.”

The air went still. The young man’s gaze flickered, and whatever he was about to say next dissolved quietly in his throat.

He lowered his head. His eyes settled on a very thin crack in the wooden surface of the desk in front of him. His throat moved slowly up and down. He was briefly, quietly lost in thought.

She always seemed to catch details like this.

To notice the small, hairline fractures within his words — fractures even he hadn’t realized were there.

Xie Yichen stared at that spot for a few seconds. The corners of his mouth slowly curved upward. He said, openly and steadily: “Got it.”

“Yeah.” Ning Sui accepted this naturally, saying in her soft, unhurried way, “Then let me tell you something that happened to me in middle school. It’s pretty outrageous — I guarantee you won’t see it coming.”

— Full buildup.

Given her nature, how outrageous could it really be?

Xie Yichen gave a brief, light laugh. “What.”

“I asked my mom if she would kneel down for me.”

“?”

Xie Yichen’s brow shot up involuntarily. “What?”

This really was like pulling a tiger’s whisker. Ning Sui cleared her throat lightly. “No — don’t misunderstand. Let me explain.”

It went like this.

Fanfang had a short temper even when Ning Sui was in middle school. Ning Sui had long assumed she was hitting early menopause, but later came to realize — that menopause had apparently arrived and never left.

So every time an exam came around, Ning Sui was filled with dread, terrified that one bad result would bring down another scolding. Over time, she developed a strategy: before the scores were released, she’d casually hint to Fanfang that she felt like she hadn’t done well, thereby managing her expectations and preemptively drawing off some of her anger.

That way, when the actual results came out — whether good or bad — the landing would always be soft.

One time she tried this same approach. But that day, Xia Fanghui was already in a bad mood, and she just latched onto Ning Sui and scolded her for ages.

Ning Sui felt she had overdone the expectation-management, so she tentatively reminded her mother that the scores might turn out better than expected after all.

Xia Fanghui declared furiously, “If you can score first place, I’ll kneel right down in front of you!”

As it turned out, neither of them expected it — Ning Sui actually did rank first in her grade.

Ning Sui sighed. “I was young and foolish at the time. The more I thought about it, the more I felt I’d been scolded for nothing. So I shamelessly went home and asked if she intended to honor her promise.”

Xie Yichen laughed so hard his chest shook. “And then?”

Fanfang did have a certain remarkable shamelessness.

“……She said she’d never said any such thing.”

Ning Sui had her earphones in, and hadn’t noticed Liang Xinyue calling from below. Only when the bed frame was knocked did she feel it, and she poked her head out from the upper bunk. “What’s up?”

Liang Xinyue and Bi Jiaxi were clearly in a panic down below. “Quick, quick, quick — Qin Qin is drunk and having a meltdown in here, hurry and help us get her to the bathroom to throw up!”

A potent cloud of alcohol hung in the air. Yu Qin was sitting on the floor, wild with excitement. “Where’s the pan-fried buns?! Shove them in my mouth right now!”

“……”

When Liu Chang returned, Xie Yichen was sitting at his desk, intently browsing GitHub — an open-source code repository where developers and programmers from all over the world share code.

Yao Class was a place where results were the only currency, and it was never short of provincial top scorers. Yet Xie Yichen was one of the few people Liu Chang genuinely admired most.

Setting aside everything else, for one thing: his self-discipline was extraordinary.

Qingda’s military training had ended two days earlier than the university next door. The students in neighboring dorm rooms were all out having fun right now, yet Xie Yichen was calmly, steadily in here studying topics he found interesting.

Liu Chang knew his parents had relevant professional backgrounds, and that Xie Yichen himself was naturally gifted in this area — calling him heaven’s favored child wouldn’t be an exaggeration. But unlike others who hid their hard work out of fear of being surpassed — trying to maintain the illusion of effortless brilliance — Xie Yichen let it all show openly, no matter what anyone else thought of it. And no matter what others did, he remained perfectly, unmovably grounded.

Liu Chang found that genuinely impressive.

Xie Yichen didn’t notice the deep and complex way Liu Chang was looking at him. After a while, his phone rang. He picked it up, walked straight past Liu Chang, and went to take the call on the balcony.

“……”

The caller was his beloved great-aunt.

Qin Shufen had recently taken on several cases that were giving her a headache.

She was probably calling to vent again.

Sure enough, the moment the call connected, she launched into a rapid-fire tirade: “The ultra-wealthy couples I deal with these days have eight hundred tricks up their sleeves. One of my clients — her husband secretly took her phone while she was asleep and, posing as her, sent a WeChat message in her name agreeing to take on a massive debt.”

“And there’s another one — my colleague told me about it — a couple who can’t stand each other but are so entangled financially that they refuse to divorce. Just waiting to see who outlasts who.”

“……”

“Tell me — does living like that not exhaust them?”

Xie Yichen was well used to her venting by now. He said, placidly composed, “Only they know whether they’re exhausted or not. Maybe they enjoy resting on a mountain of gold and silver.”

Qin Shufen said, “Thank goodness our generation was simpler. None of these games. Your great-uncle and I were introduced through someone — we never even thought about signing a prenuptial agreement. If it were today, who would dare do that.”

That was a rather sweeping generalization.

Xie Yichen gave a lazy half-smile. “That probably depends on how deep the feeling is.”

Qin Shufen was quiet for a moment, then suddenly said, “A’Chen, there’s something I don’t know whether I should ask.”

Xie Yichen: “Go ahead.”

Qin Shufen had always felt that Xie Zhenlin and Qiu Ruoyun, as parents, had raised A’Chen by treating him as an equal adult — analyzing every situation in terms of its pros, cons, rights and wrongs. It had produced someone with his mature, clear-headed character.

That approach had its benefits, certainly. But sometimes, love doesn’t follow logic.

In the way they treated Xie Yichen, there was rarely the kind of gentle, protective warmth one shows a child. Every ache of growing up in adolescence — he’d borne it alone and through sheer force of will.

When he got into fights in middle school and came home covered in wounds — six stitches at the hospital — the two of them didn’t show up until the day the stitches were removed.

Qin Shufen had handled legal matters for their company. Although it was never made explicit, she had long been able to read between the lines of this couple’s marriage.

“After everything you’ve been through with your parents — do you still believe in any of it?”

Xie Yichen’s breath paused. “Believe in what — marriage and love?”

“Yes.”

Outside, the night was as bright and loud as daytime. Looking down from above, the Zijing athletic field was lined with a row of glowing streetlamps, and a sparse scattering of silhouettes ran freely beneath them in the dark.

Wind swept through. Leaves rustled and rustled in that soft, living sound full of vitality. In that moment, nothing specific came into Xie Yichen’s mind — no particular image or memory. And yet, a few lines of words suddenly surfaced, unbidden.

— Perhaps, once, he truly had held something close to indifference.

But later, someone had given him a new answer.

It was a topic they’d once discussed as pen pals — the subject of love and what one believed about it. Xie Yichen remembered how that answer had taken hold of him with an unstoppable force, lodging itself in his mind so thoroughly that it remained there, vivid and precise, right up to now.

She had said: I believe that true love is ardent. It is sincere. It contains not a single trace of rational calculation.

It is the deep, wordless understanding of two souls who recognize each other. It is walking side by side through glory and through shame alike. It is carefully, clumsily tending to the wounds on the other person’s body.

— Even if only one piece of candy remains in my pocket, I want you to taste something sweet.