Shang Zhitao felt she could neither move forward nor retreat. Luan Nian had blocked all her escape routes, leaving her feeling helpless. After leaving the hospital, she curled up on the sofa in Luan Nian’s living room with a cup of hot water he had boiled for her beside her. Luan Nian forced her to drink water—every time he glanced at her, she had to take a sip.

She heard Luan Nian talking to his mother on the phone: “It’s mycoplasma infection causing mild pneumonia, with symptoms of coughing and high fever. What should she eat?”

The person on the other end spoke for a long time, then Luan Nian answered:

“It’s not me, I’m asking for a friend.”

“I understand. Bye.”

Luan Nian hung up the phone and went to get his coat. He said to Shang Zhitao: “You should ask Alex for leave, take five full days of sick leave.”

“I still have work to do.”

“When you’re dead from fever, you won’t have to worry about work anymore.”

“Then I’ll go home to rest.”

Luan Nian stopped moving when he heard this and looked at Shang Zhitao. He asked her directly: “What are you being awkward about?”

Shang Zhitao pressed her lips together without speaking. Luan Nian glanced at her: “Organize your thoughts, and we’ll talk when I get back.”

Shang Zhitao was indeed organizing her thoughts. She had a fever and her brain wasn’t working well, but she still managed to distill the key points: First, what happened between us was an accident; Second, our relationship is immoral; Third, we’ve already ended our relationship—I was the one who suggested it. Therefore, we shouldn’t do anything that seems ambiguous.

As Shang Zhitao pondered, she fell asleep.

People with fevers tend to be drowsy, and Luan Nian’s sofa was comfortable. The thin blanket covering her was warm, and the place was quiet without the noise of renovation drills. Everything was just right, perfect for sleeping.

Luan Nian returned carrying bags of items. He saw her curled up on the sofa, sound asleep, her face flushed red, fine sweat on her forehead, and a wheezing sound coming from her nostrils—the viruses inside her body were battling it out.

He took off his coat and went to the kitchen.

He had just bought many things, all from the recovery list his mother, Dr. Liang, had sent him. Dr. Liang had even wished his friend a speedy recovery, saying that proper care was essential because if pneumonia wasn’t treated well, it could recur and cause much suffering later.

If Dr. Liang knew his “friend” was sleeping in his home right now, what would she think?

Luan Nian prepared food for Shang Zhitao, referring to the notes on his phone about what Dr. Liang said she could eat and what she should avoid. He didn’t delve into why he felt anxious and concerned when Shang Zhitao was sick; he just thought she seemed a bit pitiful being alone in Beijing.

Sympathy at work. That was how he summed it up.

Since when did you start having sympathy? He asked himself while cooking.

When the food was ready, Shang Zhitao was still sleeping. Luan Nian sat on the sofa flipping through magazines while a pot of rock sugar and pear soup simmered on low heat in the kitchen. Luan Nian’s home had countless magazines; he read them in his spare time to see what was popular. Occasionally, he reached over to check her temperature—it was a bit better than before.

Shang Zhitao woke up in the dim light and saw Luan Nian had turned on a small lamp. Under the light, his facial features still looked hard, a cold and detached person. She felt a bit sad; no one had told her what to do after falling in love with such a man. She watched him quietly, waiting for the right moment to speak and deliver the speech she had prepared.

Luan Nian heard movement and looked over at her: “Awake?”

“Mm.”

“Let’s eat.”

Shang Zhitao was surprised, and the words she had prepared disappeared. She coughed a few times and followed Luan Nian to the dining table.

“Thank you for your trouble.”

“Change how you speak.”

“What?”

“All this formal ‘you’ speech—aren’t you tired of it?”

“Oh.”

Luan Nian had prepared several vegetable dishes and slow-cooked beef stew. Shang Zhitao was caught off guard by such special treatment, and the speech she had prepared before sleeping was completely forgotten. She ate quietly, occasionally glancing at Luan Nian, finding him still the same cold person, as if the man who had smiled so happily in Hokkaido wasn’t him. After the meal, she felt she should leave, but Luan Nian brought out a small bowl of rock sugar and pear soup.

Shang Zhitao’s heart suddenly ached.

If he was this good to a casual sex partner, she could imagine how he must have treated Zang Yao. It must have been beyond her imagination.

She drank the pear soup with her head down, then stood up to put on her clothes, saying: “Thank you for taking care of me. I’m much better now. I won’t disturb you anymore.”

Luan Nian frowned but didn’t say much: “I’ll take you home.”

“Then I’ll trouble you.”

Shang Zhitao no longer wanted to say those words. She felt that being firm herself was more effective than saying anything. She got into Luan Nian’s car, and as they approached her place, she rummaged through her bag for her keys. Her keys were missing. How could they be missing? They had been in a safe place in her bag. So she called Sun Yu, who heard her hoarse voice and asked if her condition had worsened. She said she was much better. “I can’t find my keys. When will you be back?”

“I’m on my way to Tangshan now. There’s a matchmaking event tomorrow, and I need to oversee it.”

“That’s fine, I’ll ask Zhang Lei.”

After hanging up, she remembered that Sun Yuanzhu had gone to the Northwest, and Zhang Lei had gone to Chengdu. Shang Zhitao clutched her phone, not knowing what to do.

Luan Nian’s car made a U-turn, heading back toward his home.

“You can drop me off at the corner; there’s a hotel nearby.” Not returning to Luan Nian’s home was her last act of defiance.

“To die in a hotel?” Luan Nian was particularly cruel when angry, but he didn’t get angry often. In the past half year, the few times he had gotten angry were all because of Shang Zhitao.

Shang Zhitao was silenced by his comment and truly became angry. She looked out the window without speaking. Because of her cold and anger, her breathing was heavy, her chest rising and falling.

Luan Nian was skilled at manipulating others. He read out a phone number and said: “This is the right one, isn’t it? If you go to a hotel, I’ll inform your family about your condition and also make it clear that if you have any accident or aftereffects, it won’t be the company’s responsibility.”

Shang Zhitao’s anger immediately deflated. Luan Nian knew exactly where to strike—he had found her weakness. She didn’t want her parents to know she was sick because she was afraid they would worry. After all, she had always told them on the phone: I’m doing very well, my colleagues like me, my boss values me, my income is enough for me to spend lavishly; at this rate, I can buy a house in Beijing before I’m thirty.

If Luan Nian called her parents, he would say her performance was mediocre, that she had repeatedly been on the verge of being fired or optimized out, that her income was below average at the company, and that she couldn’t possibly buy a house before she was thirty. He might even say: Your daughter seems to have improper personal conduct.

With that poisonous mouth of his, he would say that.

“I just don’t want to trouble you.”

Luan Nian gave her a cool glance and said calmly, “Rest assured, our relationship is over, but we’ve slept together a few times. I’m providing after-sales service. Once you’re better, we’ll be completely done.” Then he mimicked Shang Zhitao’s tone: “I absolutely won’t tell anyone about our affair.”

…Shang Zhitao couldn’t argue with him and had to nod: “Then I thank you.”

“You’re welcome. It’s what I should do.”

After all this back and forth, they returned to Luan Nian’s home. The security guard, seeing their car leave and come back, couldn’t help but greet them: “Mr. Luan, you’re back so soon.”

Then he smiled at Shang Zhitao. The security guard always felt that Shang Zhitao didn’t look like someone of ill repute, and Luan Nian didn’t seem like the type to solicit prostitutes, but she didn’t look like Luan Nian’s girlfriend either. Their relationship was strange.

It wasn’t just the security guard who was curious.

Shang Zhitao was curious too.

What kind of person was Luan Nian? Such a hard man, yet he made her a meal for the sick; with so many women around him, yet he dared to bring her home; others would want to stay away from a pneumonia patient, yet he took care of her.

“Could you lend me a T-shirt? I don’t have pajamas, and I need to take out my contact lenses…”

Luan Nian went into the guest room, opened the closet where two sets of loungewear hung, then went to the bathroom, pulled open a drawer containing a contact lens case, contact lens solution, and women’s skincare products.

Shang Zhitao didn’t understand what was going on, why he would have these things in his home. Luan Nian just shrugged: “You’ll have to share with other women.” He was half-joking, half-serious, even taking out different colored sticky notes: “Label them, so others won’t wear or use the wrong ones.”

Shang Zhitao wasn’t that naive; she could see Luan Nian was teasing her. These were prepared for her because she had asked before: “Pajamas, towels, contact lens solution…”

At that time, what had Luan Nian said? “Can’t you remember them yourself?”

So he was that kind of person. Someone who seemed not to care about anything, but listened to everything you said.

So he had accepted that she could leave her things at his place—was it because she was his only bed partner in this city?

Shang Zhitao’s mind wandered as she went to take a shower and put on the pajamas Luan Nian had prepared for her. The pajamas were comfortable, but she felt a bit uncomfortable without wearing underwear. Luan Nian knocked on the door to bring her medicine. She dove under the covers with just her head showing, watching him place the medicine on the bedside table, refusing to come out.

Luan Nian couldn’t help but laugh at her behavior: “Haven’t I seen it all before?”

“?”

“What are you afraid of?”

…”It’s not appropriate for a man and woman to be alone together.” Shang Zhitao said seriously.

“Mm.” Luan Nian turned to leave, stopping at the door to say: “You didn’t find anything inappropriate when we were being intimate?”

He closed the door and left.

Shang Zhitao stayed at Luan Nian’s home for a whole week under his coercion and persuasion, until they went for a follow-up examination, and the doctor said the inflammation had subsided; only then did he agree to let her leave. Shang Zhitao followed Luan Nian out of the hospital and returned to his home to pack her things—just those two pieces of clothing—into her backpack. Before leaving, she wanted to go to the bathroom and saw the contact lens solution prominently displayed there. Her heart suddenly ached. She still couldn’t understand why Luan Nian would prepare these things for her, along with the Christmas gift placed on the sofa. These things gave her the mistaken impression that Luan Nian liked her a little.

Suddenly, a wave of grievance welled up in her heart.

She stood there for a good while before pushing the door open and going out, seeing Luan Nian waiting for her at the entrance. She walked straight up to him, looking into his eyes, and asked seriously: “Why are you so venomous when you speak?”

“Are you venomous to everyone or just to me?”

Luan Nian didn’t understand why she was asking these questions; his brows furrowed slightly.

Whoever is serious next is a damn fool! Shang Zhitao cursed in her heart as she grabbed Luan Nian’s collar, forcefully pulling him toward her, and bit his lip.

Neither of them mentioned Shang Zhitao’s earlier words about ending their relationship. She had just recovered, and Luan Nian was gentler and more patient than before. Shang Zhitao was desperate for something, but he pinned her hands above her head, refusing to fulfill her wishes.

Luan Nian held grudges. Now she was desperate, but when she had declared an end to their relationship, how cool had she been? He wouldn’t give her what she wanted; to be frank, he was punishing her. He teased her until she was agitated, her eyes reddening, before asking against her lips: “Not ending it anymore?”

Shang Zhitao felt she was losing her mind. She shook her head slightly, her lips brushing against his, offering her tongue to him.

They couldn’t deceive themselves or each other. No matter how poisonous their words were, their bodies were most honest. Their bodies preferred each other more than anyone from their past. Eventually, they both lost control a bit. Luan Nian’s teeth caught her earlobe, asking fiercely: “Still going to make trouble?”

Shang Zhitao shook her head, her eyes misting with tears. Luan Nian suddenly felt a pang of heartache and softened, pulling her into his embrace.

Luan Nian finally admitted that after Shang Zhitao had said they should end their relationship, the drink he had was bitter, and he felt a bit of regret in his heart.

He truly liked her body.