Rain tapped against the edges of the umbrella, producing a crisp, wet sound. The night air was moist and cool against their faces. The greenery in the old town was fresh and clean, a rough-hewn kind of beauty. What had been a vivid, lively summer night had grown considerably cooler in the wind and rain.
Her words dissolved into the sound of the falling rain and were difficult to make out. This kind of environment created a softened barrier around the senses.
At precisely that moment, a pedicab passed by soliciting passengers. It went straight through a large puddle in the road, sending up a sudden spray of water.
Xie Yichen took hold of Ning Sui’s arm and pulled her behind him, shielding her from the splash: “Watch out.”
Ning Sui saw small dark flecks of muddy water land on his clothes: “I’m sorry — your shirt got wet.”
Xie Yichen seemed unbothered. In an unhurried, matter-of-fact tone: “It’s fine — I’ll change when we get back.”
His fingers were still around her forearm. Through the thin surface of her knit sleeve, Ning Sui could still feel the precise outline of his long, firm knuckles. Her wrist felt faintly, almost imperceptibly warm.
She stole a glance at him. But Xie Yichen released her hand quickly and asked: “What were you saying just now?”
Hu Ke’er and Zhang Yuge were power-walking ahead — like something out of a three-legged race — their awkwardness somehow tipping into the faintly absurd.
It didn’t seem like the most natural moment for conversation, but Ning Sui kept pace with Xie Yichen’s quickened step and said calmly: “I was saying — the one engraved on your umbrella. Isn’t it the X from equations?”
Xie Yichen turned to look at her then, an eyebrow lifting slightly: “That’s exactly it. What made you think of that?”
He probably genuinely didn’t remember her. But then, it was understandable — they’d only crossed paths briefly a few times, said a handful of words. Two passing strangers, nothing more.
Rain fell onto the back of her hand. The air was cold and damp, but Ning Sui didn’t bother about it. She only tilted her lashes slightly: “I heard you’d studied the mathematics competition. I did as well, so I made the association instinctively.”
Xie Yichen showed no particular surprise at this answer. He just curved the corner of his mouth faintly: “That’s quite a coincidence, then.”
They walked side by side for about a hundred meters. Ning Sui sensed that he was deliberately keeping the pace considerate of her — not walking particularly fast. She pressed her lips together lightly and quickened her own steps.
There was something she genuinely wanted to know: “So… why did you give up the national team?”
It was actually a fairly personal question. Speculation about the hidden reasons was everywhere outside — including among some of his closest friends, many of whom assumed it had to do with his parents, who presented such a picture-perfect couple in the media, quietly having relationship problems, which had affected his state of mind in Year 12.
Xie Yichen glanced at her sidelong, seemingly without much concern: “A family member fell ill. I wanted to spend more time with them.”
“Is it serious?”
Xie Yichen paused, and didn’t elaborate: “It’s a chronic condition.”
“I see.”
She couldn’t very well follow that up with “what a coincidence — I also had a family member fall ill,” and Ning Sui hadn’t yet figured out the right thing to say when she heard his voice again, unhurried and slightly upward at the end: “And frankly, it’s not really ‘giving up’ either. I only made it into the training team — whether I’d have gone further was anyone’s guess.”
“…”
That was a rather extravagantly understated way of being arrogant.
He’d cut his way through thousands of competitors to get this far without breaking a sweat. Was the last hurdle really supposed to be in doubt?
Ning Sui looked at the ground and couldn’t help tucking her head down slightly: “You already knew that being in the training team was enough to guarantee you into Tsinghua. Continuing further would’ve just been a waste of time.”
Xie Yichen said then: “I have a strange feeling you know me quite well.”
His tone was slightly ambiguous. Ning Sui’s breath paused for an instant, then she answered quickly.
“Because you’ve been rather famous lately? There’s been a lot of talk about you.”
“Ah, I see.” Xie Yichen drew the syllable out lazily, then asked, with an air of meaning something more: “Then just now in the bar — even with those spinning lights — how did you recognize me at a single glance?”
“…”
He tilted his head to look at her more closely: “Have you seen me before?”
That faint scent of dry wood drifted past again, wrapped around his low, resonant voice, circling softly somewhere in her chest.
The fine, dark strands of his hair lay across his forehead. His downcast lashes were dark as crow feathers. His features, cast in the glow of the streetlamps and the falling rain, were finely and sharply drawn. Ning Sui’s fingertips curled inward slightly.
Only for a moment. She raised her eyes — clear and steady — and met his gaze without flinching, answering with full seriousness: “No. I heard Zhang Yuge call your name.”
I only knew about you from news reports. I heard someone call out to you, and it clicked. The logic is sound.
Their gazes collided again, somewhere in the space between them.
They’d been catching each other’s eyes a remarkable number of times today. Four eyes meeting — and it felt like a quiet, wordless competition of wills.
Xie Yichen was a full head taller than her. From that natural height, he let his gaze slope down toward her.
The rain murmured steadily on. That moist, pressing dampness was close and dense. A faint tension flickered somewhere in Ning Sui’s chest. Before she had the chance to say anything else, there was a shout from up ahead.
— And it was, indeed, his name.
Zhang Yuge and Hu Ke’er had stopped, two small vertical shapes in the rain-mist, holding their umbrellas. Zhang Yuge was practically yelling: “My lord, are you trying to see how slowly a person can walk?! Keep this up and I might actually watch the rain stop!”
What should have been a fifteen-minute walk had stretched to half an hour in their hands. His voice had taken on a distinctly wounded, helpless edge.
The two hotels were right across the street from each other. Hu Ke’er and Zhang Yuge had been waiting at the entrance for who knew how long. Xie Yichen brought Ning Sui over at an unhurried pace, and said with entirely insincere warmth: “Sorry.”
Ning Sui observed that Zhang Yuge’s expression had taken on a quality of aggrieved, suppressed indignation.
The four of them faced each other — the rooms here were all traditional courtyard-style guesthouses with open-air gardens, and the entrance was still a stretch down a deep alley. Were they going in?
Ning Sui was wearing a form-fitting beige knit top that day, with a dark pleated skirt in a demure style below, and a small crossbody bag in the shape of a white stuffed rabbit for her phone and small items. The whole outfit was soft and delicate — getting it wet would be very troublesome.
Xie Yichen cast her an unhurried glance.
Ning Sui’s fingertips were just catching at the strap of her bag, on the verge of saying something, when a voice called out her name clearly: “Ning Sui.”
Shen Qing came running out of the alley with a large umbrella in hand, another folding one in his other hand: “Xu Zhou wasn’t feeling well, so he sent me out to meet you —” He took in the two groups standing across from each other and paused: “Who are…?”
“Friends we just met,” Ning Sui said, glancing at Xie Yichen, and moved of her own accord from under his umbrella to Shen Qing’s side. “Thanks.”
“…”
It was unclear whom she’d been thanking, but Shen Qing, standing close by, instinctively looked at the other person.
Even from a male perspective, one had to acknowledge that this person’s looks were the kind you encountered maybe once in ten thousand. The breadth of his shoulders, the precise taper of his waist. Tall, long-legged, leaning there with a careless, undeniable cool — the kind of face that made clothes look like they were made for him.
Ning Sui showed no inclination to make introductions. Xie Yichen didn’t look at Shen Qing either — he just made a single quiet sound with one hand in his pocket, which seemed to serve as an acknowledgment of the earlier thanks.
Hu Ke’er took the folding umbrella Shen Qing held out and quickly moved close to Ning Sui. Even with her typically boisterous nature, she didn’t say anything further to Zhang Yuge and the others — she couldn’t quite explain it, it just felt strange. Either way, the group chat was there. The two groups said their goodbyes at the entrance, and parted ways.
Standing at the doorway of their accommodation, watching the three figures gradually recede into the distance, Xie Yichen raised his gaze briefly and said, in a languid voice: “Let’s go.”
Zhang Yuge had the nagging feeling that something was slightly off, but couldn’t name it. It might have been because the umbrella had been too small, and he was slightly built enough that without thinking he’d crowded Hu Ke’er off to one side. Knowing she had a boyfriend, he’d felt the need to compensate by keeping close, and the resulting awkwardness had been excruciating. They’d lurched through a few attempted conversation topics, and Zhang Yuge couldn’t remember the last time he’d found time moving this slowly. It had been intensely uncomfortable throughout.
Back in the room, he let himself collapse bodily onto the beanbag chair, too exhausted to relive the experience: “Wow. I have never felt this hopeless around a girl before. Talent with absolutely nowhere to go. Honestly, I can now finally understand how you feel whenever you’re dealing with Sun Hao and Zou Xiao — I was way too quick to dismiss that earlier.”
“Also — do you know what happened while we were making our heroic march? We ran straight into a foreigner coming the other way. He was crying his heart out in the wind and rain into his phone, telling the person on the other end: ‘You don’t love me at all. You only stayed with me to practice your English!'”
“…?”
Zhang Yuge’s impersonation was impressively accurate. Then, without missing a beat, he turned it into a complaint: “But I was waiting for you to come rescue me, and you never came. What the hell — your brother suffers in the trenches up front while you’re back there surrounded on both sides, is that it?!”
Xie Yichen had just tossed his jacket aside and wasn’t in the mood to deal with Zhang Yuge’s grievances.
In one smooth motion, he pulled his damp white T-shirt up and off over his head. The movement exposed his abdomen with complete ease — several defined, compact, hard-earned blocks of muscle.
Zhang Yuge had already been in a state, and at the sight of this, let out a yelp and grabbed whatever shirt was on the bed to throw at him: “Have you been secretly training without telling me again!”
Xie Yichen sidestepped it easily, and in the same breath gave a perfectly composed reply to what Zhang Yuge had said earlier: “Both sides? There was only one.”
Zhang Yuge was maddened by his unruffled composure.
Though for the moment, nothing seemed particularly unusual about it. Based on what Zhang Yuge knew about him, the most likely explanation was: “Did you actually know that girl — Ning Sui — from before? Because you two seemed oddly familiar with each other.”
Xie Yichen leaned down to pull a towel from his bag at random: “No.”
“…”
The number of good-looking girls who’d developed feelings for his friend over the years was considerable. Zhang Yuge figured Xie Yichen had probably just done a rapid mental scan through the names just now — this one had a habit of being quietly aggravating in the smallest ways.
“Then she must have recognized you from the news, like everyone else.” Zhang Yuge figured it made sense — who in all of Huai’an didn’t know him at this point?
A case of one person’s glory lifting all boats. It wasn’t just their class teachers and year-level director — the principal, the cleaning staff, and the dormitory supervisors all beamed with reflected pride at the sound of his name.
Xie Yichen said nothing, slung the towel over his shoulder, and walked into the bathroom.
Zhang Yuge called out urgently to follow, and Xie Yichen turned around slowly, arms folded across his chest: “I’m going to shower.”
Zhang Yuge: “?”
“If you’re really set on watching,” Xie Yichen said, leaning in the doorway in a lazy, off-hand way that managed to come across as both indolent and faintly suggestive: “I charge by the second. Six hundred and sixty-six per.”
Zhang Yuge: “??”
Although he hadn’t been caught in the rain at all, Xie Yichen showered and washed his hair. He came out afterward with a towel, drying his hair as he walked. Water traced the lines of his throat and disappeared into the neat hollow of his collarbones — the very image of someone insufferably attractive stepping out of a bath.
Zhang Yuge had been sitting on the sofa staring into the middle distance, but snapped back and asked with eager interest: “Game?”
Xie Yichen flipped back the covers, got into bed with uncharacteristic abstinence, and reached up to pull the metal chain on his bedside lamp, clicking it off on his side: “Sleeping.”
Zhang Yuge clicked his tongue in protest: “What are you, an old man?”
“Tomorrow we’re up early to watch the sunrise at Cai Village. Stay up if you can handle it.”
Zhang Yuge’s laughter came to an abrupt stop: “…Another one?! Are you even human?!”
“Who was it that said he’d let me plan the itinerary entirely?”
The voice from the bed was loose and unhurried: “I’m waking you at six-thirty.”
Zhang Yuge: “…”
Their Huahua mathematics competition training started at seven-thirty in the morning, and even that had been brutal enough. He was on the verge of a breakdown: “How are you even more ruthless than your terrifying math teacher, old Zhou?!”
Zhang Yuge bolted into the bathroom to execute a streamlined shower-brush-everything routine.
The bathroom door, fortunately, had decent soundproofing. Aside from the light filtering through the gap at the bottom, only the faint sound of running water reached the room.
Xie Yichen lay face-up, arms folded behind his head, letting his mind wander without purpose.
After a while, he slowly opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling.
— I heard you’d studied the mathematics competition. I did as well, so I made the association instinctively.
The water in the bathroom continued its light, lively sound. Zhang Yuge had started humming contentedly to himself in there. Xie Yichen’s throat shifted almost imperceptibly. He turned over of his own accord.
The mathematics competition. Something from several months ago now. He hadn’t touched it since withdrawing from the national team selection.
But the reason, he hadn’t told anyone.
All the teachers were bewildered — they felt it was such a waste.
It was, in some respects, a regret. But Xie Yichen didn’t regret the choice itself.
He just felt a little bad about it, where Zhou Sheng was concerned.
Xie Yichen still remembered when Zhou Sheng had first taken over the class — it had been winter of Year 11. There happened to be a training program in Nanjing at the time, and even though it was already halfway through, Zhou Sheng immediately arranged a spot and sent him down.
He’d already missed three or four days of the sessions. During the day he attended class; at night he worked through the papers he’d fallen behind on. So he always left late.
The sessions were large lecture-format classes. The students came from top schools all across the country, and no one knew anyone else’s name. The teacher moved at a fast pace, and there was no interaction or Q&A during class, so none of these people were people he knew.
Only one person left any kind of vague impression.
A girl. Just like him, she seemed to stay on after the session ended, sitting quietly in her corner doing problems. Which was how, eventually, they had crossed paths by chance outside the building.
That night, after she’d successfully made it back to the hotel by following him, she’d seemed to latch onto him — always hovering nearby, peering around cautiously as she trailed along behind. But every time he turned back, she’d bow her head guiltily and put more distance between them. He’d found it oddly amusing.
Then one time, the classroom had nearly emptied. She’d been bent over her work in the front rows a few minutes earlier, writing furiously. But when he looked again, she was gone.
He’d nearly cracked the last of the problems he was working on and was feeling thirsty. He went to find the water dispenser.
The hallway near the far end of the building was quiet. Almost no one ever passed through there. He heard faint, muffled sounds, and pushed open the fire door.
He hadn’t expected to find Ning Sui sitting on the staircase landing, arms wrapped around her knees, crying as she held the phone to her ear.
On the other end of the line, a woman was in the full grip of emotional collapse. Her words were sharp and cutting. Even from where he stood, he could hear them.
Xie Yichen had stumbled into a painful, private moment that wasn’t his to witness. His footsteps came to a halt.
He didn’t turn around and leave — because Ning Sui had already sensed him, and looked up at the sound.
— A fair, oval face, with long, dense lashes. A girl.
In the dim amber light of the corridor, she was biting her lip in a futile effort to hold herself together, her face full of anguish. Her eyes, wet with tears, held a trembling, watery light — like a moon floating on the surface of a pool, unsteady and luminous.