The band’s performance was quite entertaining. When Hu Ke’er came back, she found Xie Yichen and Ning Sui still sitting in the same spot — only something about the atmosphere between them was impossible to name.

Hu Ke’er struggled to describe it. If she had to, she thought it felt a lot like the nougat candy she was currently eating.

She was just about to open her mouth and ask something when Du Junnian arrived.

Hu Ke’er had heard he was around twenty-six or twenty-seven, and had imagined someone in the mold of a suited-and-booted CEO type. He turned out to be nothing like her expectations. Du Junnian was wearing a pullover sweatshirt with athletic trousers — very casual in style, and looking quite young.

His eyes were as deep and attractive as Xie Yichen’s, but by comparison there was a touch more gentleness and a few fewer sharp edges. He wore glasses on his high, straight nose, which gave him an inexplicably studious air. His whole demeanor was mature and steady, and he nearly left Hu Ke’er staring.

……Their family genes were just too good!

Xie Yichen waved him over, calling out “cousin” with easy familiarity.

Du Junnian gave a simple nod in his direction, then caught the eye of the two girls looking at him and gave a mild smile, warm as sunlight: “You must be A’Chen’s classmates?”

Remembering Xie Yichen’s words about not being too formal, Hu Ke’er’s brain shorted out somehow, and she nodded while answering dreamily: “That’s right, cousin.”

“……”

Fortunately Du Junnian didn’t mind.

Xie Yichen exchanged a few brief pleasantries with him, and very quickly Hu Ke’er took over the conversation, asking Du Junnian every question she had been asking in the taxi.

He was clearly a person with a very easygoing temperament — not only did he patiently answer each question in turn, but he also threw out a few questions of his own to ask after their lives. The four of them quickly warmed up to one another.

There were many stalls nearby selling small handicrafts and streetwear brands. Hu Ke’er found a reason to drag Ning Sui off for a browse. Once they had walked far enough that Xie Yichen and Du Junnian couldn’t see them, Hu Ke’er finally couldn’t hold it in and burst out: “Oh my god, Xie Yichen’s cousin is way too handsome.”

Ning Sui picked up a folding fan from a cultural merchandise display and looked it over: “Didn’t you say you had no interest in men more than five years older than you?”

“I was wrong. I was absurdly wrong.” Hu Ke’er’s eyes were practically shining. “That’s just because I hadn’t seen enough of the world.”

She said: “I’m going to revise my old chain-bar fantasy story.”

Ning Sui: “?”

Hu Ke’er said solemnly: “The male lead will be called Du Cold-Night Cold-Han · Shangguan Yunjue. I’m going to spend the rest of my life with him in happiness.”

Ning Sui: “……”

You really are absurd.

At that moment, Xia Fanghui called on a video call. Ning Sui quickly took out her earphones and put them in. The first face to appear on screen was her little brother Ning Yue’s chubby one, his voice bright and cheerful: “Sis! Sis!”

Ning Sui: “Why are you there? Where’s Mom?”

The camera was held a little high. Ning Yue went up on his tiptoes, baring his teeth: “Am I hearing things, sis? Your tone sounded kind of like you’re looking down on me?”

Ning Sui said, warmly: “Trust your instincts.”

Ning Yue: “……”

Ning Sui thought for a moment and decided to show some concern: “How’s your studying going lately? Is math hard?”

Ning Yue: “Not hard at all! Mom didn’t she make me study Olympiad math over the summer? I feel like what we do in class is so easy now.”

Ning Sui: “Good work. Has the teacher given you any praise?”

An indignant middle-aged man’s voice suddenly cut in: “Praise my foot! He went around openly telling his whole class that what the teacher teaches is useless, and your mother and I were called in by the grade director to speak with them!”

Ning Sui: “……”

At that point Ning Deyan turned the phone to face himself. Behind him was a wide, flat stretch of beach and a brilliant blue sea — the microphone was catching a lot of wind — and he had calmed down somewhat: “My dear girl, we brought the little troublemaker to the seaside. Your mother stepped away to buy balloons……How are you? Everything going smoothly?”

The Strawberry Music Festival plan had been reported to Fang Fang ahead of time. Because it was New Year’s Eve, the event was specially running all the way to midnight, when everyone would count down the final ten seconds together.

“Going great. Ke Ke and I are already at the venue.” She panned the camera around, and it happened to catch Hu Ke’er, who cheerfully leaned in to say hello: “Hello, uncle!”

“Ah, hello there, little carrot-top.” Ning Deyan smiled kindly, his eyes crinkling. He chatted briefly with Ning Sui, mentioned that her grandmother at the hospital was doing fine, told her to stay safe, and then ended the call.

The two of them headed back. Hu Ke’er walked alongside Ning Sui, chattering away brightly: “I feel like uncle’s gotten even more easygoing.”

The whole afternoon featured performances by a series of moderately well-known bands — the melodies soaring and lovely, many of them things Ning Sui had never come across before. She spent the entire afternoon happily using an app to identify songs as they played, downloading them to her phone one by one.

As evening approached, they grabbed some snacks from the nearby food stalls, making a simple meal of it. As it neared eight o’clock, the crowd on the grass seemed to grow denser and denser. Everyone was pressing forward. The area in front of the stage was packed with a sea of heads, arms raised, phones thrust into the air to take photos.

Hu Ke’er looked at the performance lineup: “Oh wow, the next act is Accusefive! Let’s go watch from up front!”

They left the inflatable lounger behind, dropped their bags at the temporary left-luggage point, took their personal belongings, and joined the flow of people moving forward.

The sound system was excellent. The driving beats seemed to come from all four directions at once. The atmosphere was wildly lively. The first song Accusefive opened with was “A Bottle of Magic Potion for You.”

Give you a bottle of magic potion / drink it and you won’t need oxygen

Give you a bottle of magic potion / drink it and you won’t be afraid of your body freezing

Let’s go on a space journey together

The wonders of the universe don’t hold my interest

What I care about is / that you want to follow me / to the moon for a heart-to-heart talk

The song was enormously popular, and everyone sang along with the melody, waving flags and glow sticks as the crowd surged like a restless sea, rising and falling in waves.

It was the dead of winter, yet the temperature felt blazing. The crush of people pressed in from all sides, shoulder to shoulder — face after face, lit up with joy and exhilaration. Ning Sui clutched her phone tightly, feeling her steps growing more difficult to manage.

It was an unfamiliar scene, novel but slightly nerve-racking.

Without realizing it, she noticed that Hu Ke’er, who had been right at her side, was gone — she must have been swept away by the crowd somewhere. Ning Sui’s heart lurched with a panicked jolt. She spun around — and met Xie Yichen’s pitch-black gaze bearing down on her.

She grabbed the hem of his coat on instinct: “Where’s Hu Ke’er?”

Xie Yichen’s gaze dropped toward her hand. His voice was barely audible over the waves of sound: “She’s with my cousin. Don’t worry.”

Ning Sui bit her lip lightly and said nothing more. Her fingertips struggled briefly, then ultimately didn’t let go of his coat.

In an environment like this, every sense was overwhelmed by noise. She felt a natural, instinctive anxiety, and her heartbeat quickened in stuttering time with the pounding reverberation of the music.

After a long moment, Ning Sui clutched his coat, tilted her head up slightly, and hesitated: “Then……can we just stay here?”

They were standing very close. All she could see in her field of view was his sharp, well-defined jawline. His voice was low: “Sure.”

Because it was New Year’s Eve, people who had been worn down by months of school and work had finally found an outlet to let loose. No one was holding anything back — jumping, singing along at the top of their lungs. The position they were standing in happened to face the stage straight on — not super close, but enough to see the large screens clearly.

Ning Sui struggled to pull out her phone and raised it to take a few pictures.

Worried about blocking the people behind her, she quickly lowered it again.

The people around them were pressed impossibly close. Ning Sui stepped back slightly, and suddenly she felt her back, through layers of fabric, brush up against an exceptionally firm and solid chest. She stumbled slightly, nearly pitching forward.

Someone caught her and held her in place, and then warm breath cascaded down the back of her neck — it was Xie Yichen, his low magnetic voice unmistakably smiling: “What are you panicking for?”

“……”

Ning Sui didn’t turn around. She stood with her back lightly pressed against his chest, composed: “My footing slipped.”

It took quite a while before she more or less adjusted to the position. The crowd was truly stifling. Ning Sui deliberately pushed the warm, unhurried breath at the back of her neck out of her mind, and concentrated with apparent intensity on the performance.

One song finished quickly, then came a second, a third — in this kind of scene, time seemed to rush by. Ning Sui glanced at the time and found, without realizing it, that it was already past eleven.

Hu Ke’er hadn’t messaged her at all, and Ning Sui had no attention to spare for her anyway. She thought Du Junnian seemed like the kind of person who knew how to take care of people — Hu Ke’er should be perfectly safe with him.

There were only ten-odd minutes left until the new year, and the atmosphere had begun to stir with an edge of anticipation — noisier and more excited than before.

The electric bassist on stage had an especially cool ending pose — stylish and unrestrained. Something stirred faintly in Ning Sui’s heart, and in the gap between two songs she turned her head slightly and raised herself up on her toes toward Xie Yichen to ask: “What is that — a guitar or a bass? It looks like a bass, but it has six strings?”

In the roar of the crowd it was honestly hard to hear each other speak.

But Xie Yichen half-narrowed his eyes, bent his head, and leaned close to Ning Sui’s ear to explain in a low voice: “An electric bass. They come in four, five, six, seven, and even eleven-string varieties. The six-string has two extra low-register strings compared to the standard four.”

Ning Sui suppressed the warmth rising in her chest: “How do you know all that?”

His brow lifted slightly: “I used to play.”

Their eyes met, unplanned. Countless brilliant light effects flickered and danced all around. Xie Yichen looked down at her, and in this close, face-to-face moment, Ning Sui was caught off guard to see her own tiny reflection in those deep, sharp eyes.

Both of them stilled for a beat, as if time had briefly frozen.

At that instant, a force suddenly slammed into them from the side — someone was pushing hard through the crowd carrying a large banner. Before Ning Sui could react, a long, wide hand had cupped the back of her head and pressed her against his chest.

Her cheek touched the front of his coat. Her heartbeat, already going strong, now hammered even more urgently. The music was loud, and the slivers of air between bodies were all heat — Ning Sui heard a girl nearby snarl at someone: “Have you got any decency? You just stepped on my foot!”

All kinds of tangled sounds came pouring in. Maybe someone replied, maybe no one did — but Ning Sui didn’t hear any of it.

Her face was pressed hard against that warm, firm, gently rising and falling chest. Both hands were clutching the fabric at his waist. Her fingertips curled inward of their own accord, and she quietly kept her head buried there.

The strong arms of the young man held her tightly in their circle. After a short while, a slightly rough voice fell from above her head, murmured low and warm: “Alright.”

Ning Sui answered softly: “Mm.”

A few seconds of quiet, then he asked: “Let’s go out. Okay?”

Ning Sui held onto him loosely, gave a vague assent, and then her hand was grasped in his. They turned and walked away, cutting a path out through the crowd as Corntex performed with wild abandon on stage behind them.

“If I — I mean if I — wanted to hold your hand and take you far away……”

Ning Sui’s vision swam slightly. On either side of her were people, endless people, and she didn’t think about much at all — just stared, without blinking, at the tall, upright silhouette ahead of her, and stopped thinking about anything else.

Her fingertips were wrapped in his long fingers, enclosed in his palm, held tight. The skin where they touched burned with an intensity that left her at a loss. They moved against the surging tide of the crowd — slow yet inexorable, parting the thorns and pressing steadily forward.

In that moment, Ning Sui dimly felt as though she were glimpsing her sixteen-year-old self.

That girl studying far from home — timid, prone to silent tears when a math problem stumped her — who used to clutch the straps of her school bag with white knuckles and trail after Xie Yichen one careful step at a time.

Step by step, leaving their marks in the fresh snow along the street.

Fine snow drifting down across the sky.

The lights along the road, being lit one by one, ahead of them.

The only difference was that the boy with the upright, proud spine who had always walked ahead of her by a distance back then — was now here, beside her.

His steadying presence — the warmth of it, the feel of it, the temperature of it — made Ning Sui dizzy in a way she couldn’t explain.

Years had passed and shifted, yet they had still found their way back to each other.

Xie Yichen kept walking, kept pulling her forward, never stopping.

Past the grassy lawn. Out of the park. Until at last they came out onto a pedestrian street, and walked along the empty road.

They seemed like two people who had shed the noise and emerged from it still awake, still burning — the lively energy of it all still clinging to them, fresh and vivid.

A cold wind swept across their faces. Ning Sui looked down at their interlaced hands and still felt something unreal about it all — only the heartbeat in her chest, coming faster and faster, confirmed the reality of her own existence.

The distant noise still belonged to them too.

“Xie Yichen.”

The figure ahead answered in a low murmur: “Mm?”

She bit her lip and ventured: “Are you planning to walk all the way back to Huai’an?”

“……”

It was only then that Xie Yichen stopped walking and turned around.

He looked at her from beneath lowered lashes, saying nothing — but his gaze was burning and intense, lit with a bright, radiant light that made her dizzy.

No one mentioned the fact that they were still holding hands. No one let go either. Ning Sui’s fingers had no strength in them at all. Her ears felt warm. She looked up at him.

“Ning Coconut.”

Xie Yichen spoke in a lazy drawl. “Let me ask you something.”

“Mm?”

He smiled slightly, still looking at her with that burning, unmoving gaze: “Do you still remember what the lock screen password on my phone represents?”

December 9th. That night, when he had ridden her around the sea on his bike, he had told her.

Ning Sui tilted her head down slightly. The tip of her nose, reddened from the cold, disappeared into her scarf: “Your birthday.”

“No.”

“Mm?”

Xie Yichen answered her question with another question: “What day was it when we first met?”

Something in her chest leapt with a sudden, rapid beat — and a very plain answer rose to mind all at once.

“You still remember?” Ning Sui raised her eyes abruptly.

“That was my birthday. I remember it very clearly.”

Xie Yichen bent slightly toward her, his voice quiet as he met her eyes at the same level. “And the day we actually talked — on the staircase — was December 12th.”

Ning Sui’s lashes trembled involuntarily.

Sometimes she felt there was something almost magical about it — the way people came into each other’s lives always arrived in ways no one could predict. Like her and Xie Yichen, who were able to meet in the first place because of mathematics, as though drawn together by some tie that defied explanation.

Their first meeting: December 9th. The beginning of their real connection: December 12th.

Those small details had been sealed away in the deepest part of her heart. She had always thought of them as a secret only she kept quietly, carefully, for herself.

——And had even believed, for a time, that there would never come a moment when she would take them out and look at them again.

And yet, here was someone who had let them see the light, in the most tender way possible.

“Failing to solve a problem is just a matter of not working hard enough — what good does telling me about it do? As if I’m not already stressed enough?!”

“This is proving so difficult. What does that tell you? I can see it clearly now — you’re simply not gifted. You’re a waste. If I’d known, I never would have sent you to study math. What a waste of time and money!”

Xia Fanghui’s voice on the phone had been sharp and cutting.

In that dim, narrow stairwell, he had pulled a packet of tissues from his pocket, crouched down on one knee, and asked her: “Why are you crying?”

Ning Sui had taken the tissues through her tears: “It’s so hard. I can’t figure it out.”

Life was a tangled mess — nothing but problems without solutions.

Ning Sui had a scar on the back of her neck. Xia Fanghui had done it once, when she lost control, hitting her with a book. It had bled quite a bit, but fortunately it was hidden beneath her hair, so almost no one knew.

Ning Sui had hugged her knees and stared blankly ahead, choking out: “Maybe……I really am not gifted.”

Xie Yichen had stayed quiet for a long time.

Just as Ning Sui had thought he was about to leave, he sat down beside her on the step, switched on his phone flashlight, and softened his voice: “Which problem? I’ll go through them with you one by one.”

In the stairwell, the boy’s voice was low and pleasant as he walked her through the problems — like a calm flowing stream, slowly pouring warmth into her heart, soothing that trembling, fearful vulnerability.

Ning Sui had stared, dazed, at his clearly defined profile. In the dim light, his brow and eyes were cast in a handsome, striking glow.

She had asked her questions in a hoarse voice, and he answered patiently. Sometimes she needed him to repeat things twice before she understood.

Her lashes had drooped with the weight of her hurt, and she’d sniffled and asked: “Be honest — am I really that stupid?”

Xie Yichen had turned to look her directly in the eyes.

“I don’t think you’re stupid. On the contrary, I think you’re very smart — quick to catch on. You often arrive at the correct approach to solving a problem but don’t dare to push through and explore it. Sometimes, if you take just one more step forward, everything opens up.”

“Actually, some of these problems — I can’t always see the solution right away when I first look at them either. But if I calm down and take it slowly, I can unravel them bit by bit.”

Ning Sui had buried her face and wiped her tears with the back of her hand, and after a long silence had given a muffled hum of acknowledgement.

She had been trapped by something.

Xie Yichen had watched her hunched, trembling shoulders in silence. After a moment, he had rolled up his sleeve, revealing the scar running along the inner forearm — deep, jagged, harsh.

“I’ve had this since I was thirteen. Pretty ugly, isn’t it?”

All around them was dark, but his eyes were bright. “I tried many ways to get rid of it, and in the end I let it stay.”

“You’re the same,” he had said. “You need to learn to make peace with yourself.”

Afterward, walking back to the hotel, they had gone one behind the other as always, with a distance of a few meters between them. Ning Sui had huddled in her padded coat and edged toward the pool of a streetlight, her voice thin: “You’re walking too fast. I can’t keep up.”

The boy had looked back, lips curving in a half-smile: “Is that my fault?”

Ning Sui had said nothing.

“So scared of the dark, hm.”

Still she had said nothing, her fair cheeks flushed red from the cold. He had softened his voice: “Alright, I’ll slow down.”

“They’re my past. Everybody’s haunted by their past.” John Nash had said this in the film “A Beautiful Mind.”

Everyone is, in some way, haunted by their past.

But it’s alright. Ning Sui, by now, had slowly learned how to make peace with herself.

The streetlights stretched their shadows long across the ground. This was the outskirts, and they stood beside a broad, open road. On the ground were small patches of snow from the previous night, not yet melted.

Ning Sui looked up steadily, and her dark eyes were rendered bright by some nameless light.

After a moment, she asked quietly: “Xie Yichen — it was you all along, wasn’t it? The pen pal I never met in person — Nathan?”

——That pen pal she had never met face to face, but had shared such a deep exchange with.

【Because in the future, you’ll do more than just go to a market to buy vegetables. You might sit on a Ferris wheel by the seaside, or wear formal dress to a classical music concert, or want to know why the sunset is so beautiful, or how far apart the stars and the sun are. Humanity’s ancestors created many splendid ways of existing in this world, and though we still don’t know how vast the universe is, we still hope to measure it with our own two hands.】

These words, which he had written to comfort her, had stayed lodged deep in her memory ever since.

The person standing before her showed no sign of surprise. He only curved his lips slightly and replied in a low voice: “How did you figure it out?”

There had been far too many clues.

Ning Sui gave a few examples off the top of her head: “You knew I don’t get a reaction from alcohol. You said Euler’s theorem has more than one proof. And your username on Qingguo — Anathaniel — contains the name Nathan inside it.”

Ning Sui felt that these had all been clues he had left for her.

Because he knew about her avoidant attachment style, he had been slow and patient, step by careful step, edging his way toward her.

From high school all the way to now — all this time, he had stayed by her side.

As if confirming what she had suspected, Xie Yichen nodded: “Yes. It was me.”

“It was me walking with you through the snow at night. Your pen pal Nathan was me too.”

He enunciated each word in a slow, measured murmur. He paused for a moment, then said with absolute certainty: “And now — the one standing here with you, about to welcome the new year, is still me.”

In the distance, as if through a haze, the music from the festival could still be heard faintly. The evening wind, howling past, seemed to be cradled in the clear moonlight. She could just make out the lyrics.

Ning Sui tilted her head. All she saw were Xie Yichen’s bright, pitch-black eyes gazing at her.

The music surged. Her heart surged with it — striking hard, again and again — and somewhere in a quiet corner of it, something soft gave way with a sigh and collapsed gently inward, her pulse unceasing.

What a warmly ardent and radiant young man he was.

“Ten, nine, eight……”

The midnight bell was about to ring. Everyone was counting down together. In the distance, the waves of the crowd roared with joy, as if they would never stop.

Ning Sui gazed up at him with shining, warm eyes — and a warm heart too.

It was as though — no matter how much she cautioned herself — he remained like an especially sweet trap, drawing her ever closer.

In every moment she had ever needed him, Xie Yichen had always been able to reach into his pocket and produce a piece of candy, press it into her palm, and look into her eyes with sincere and quiet respect, telling her this wasn’t a passing impulse.

She may not have known, before, how to be close to anyone. But right now — she wanted to be closer to him.

Closer than just holding hands.

“Ning Sui.” He was calling her name.

“Three, two, one……”

“——Happy New Year!”

The enormous cheer from the distance fell into Ning Sui’s ears. His brow and eyes, carrying the faint, unguarded spirit of youth, suddenly drew very close — and in that instant, all the sounds in the world fell away. He tilted his head and gently, lightly pressed his lips to her soft, warm cheek.

“I really like you.”