The hazy night was as densely black as a beautiful ink-wash painting.

But Yunque was in no mood to appreciate it. She walked on unsteady feet toward the cafeteria, and before she had taken more than a few steps, her phone rang.

It was an unknown number.

Yunque stopped in her tracks.

She had never made a habit of answering calls from strangers.

Yet in that moment, she had the inexplicable feeling that this particular call was one she absolutely had to answer.

She hesitated for two seconds, drew a soft breath, and pressed the answer key.

Behind her, footsteps of measured weight drew close without her noticing.

The instant the call connected, two voices from opposite directions overlapped and merged.

They blended into that tone that made the heart tremble — clear, magnetic, and bewitching — a voice that had crossed more than five hundred days and nights to settle softly beside her ear.

Lu Rangchen was staring straight at her back. “Where are you off to?”

Yunque: “……”

Her fingertips curled tight, then relaxed. Her throat tightened for no particular reason.

She turned sideways and looked back.

Lu Rangchen was standing right there.

He stood at the intersection of the pale golden glow of the streetlamp and the silhouette of willow branches.

The light and shadow were ambiguous; his expression was dim and unreadable. Yet Yunque felt, without any rational cause, a pressure that was both soft and deeply oppressive.

Like a hunter who had waited a long time for his prey.

Patient, and utterly certain of victory.

Their gazes held for a few seconds.

As if he had already decided she wouldn’t speak first, Lu Rangchen curled the corner of his mouth and walked toward her.

It wasn’t far. Lu Rangchen moved neither hurried nor slow.

As though he wasn’t the slightest bit worried she might run again, he came to a loose, unhurried stop in front of her.

A year and a half had passed; he’d grown even taller. His porcelain-white skin had the quality of cold jade in the moonlight.

Yunque was wearing flat canvas shoes. She had to tilt her head back with mild effort to look up at him. Her eyes appeared clear and bright, yet within them lurked a dazed bewilderment, as if she were falling through a dream.

Lu Rangchen smiled faintly. “Really don’t recognize me?”

His tone carried a hint of layered meaning — still that careless, effortlessly commanding manner that he’d always had.

Facing him, Yunque’s heartbeat still skipped, yet it was different from when she was seventeen. At the very least, she could now calm herself quickly and was no longer so flustered and helpless.

Yunque nodded at him. “Haven’t forgotten.”

“Haven’t forgotten and still don’t greet someone.”

“Didn’t see you clearly.”

As she said this, her gaze didn’t waver — she looked straight at him, eyes meeting his, no longer tiptoeing around him the way she used to.

Lu Rangchen couldn’t say whether he was satisfied or dissatisfied.

He lowered his gaze and studied her for a moment, his tone softening. “Finished with military training?”

Yunque said yes.

Then she took the initiative and changed the subject. “What brings you here?”

Lu Rangchen said, with a casual ease, “I came chasing after you.”

Yunque’s chest lurched.

Her earlobes had just started to grow warm when she saw Lu Rangchen raise an eyebrow and back away from the implication. “Haven’t I caught up now?”

The barely perceptible lift at the corner of his mouth made it obvious he was teasing her on purpose.

How could Yunque not know that?

She simply had no way of not caring, no way of turning around and walking off with carefree ease — yet she wasn’t willing to fall into his trap the way she once had.

She pressed her lips together and gave him an aloof retort. “We’re both adults now. You should probably say less of that sort of thing in the future.”

Without waiting to see Lu Rangchen’s reaction, she turned and walked away.

Her steps were neither large nor fast.

Lu Rangchen only had to lift his leg slightly to catch up with her.

And indeed, he gave her no chance to feel disappointed. After a brief pause, he tucked his hands into his pockets and strolled leisurely along beside her.

The night was quiet.

The two of them walked together, neither close nor far apart.

Lu Rangchen lazily tugged the corner of his mouth. “So how should adults talk to each other? You teach me.”

His tone was a little provoking, carrying a faint air of picking a fight.

Yunque didn’t quite know what she had to be annoyed about. When she turned to look at him, she found Lu Rangchen had long since been leisurely waiting for her to glance over.

That face was handsome enough to render anyone completely defenseless.

Yunque’s deep, translucent dark eyes seemed to hold some suppressed emotion.

In the end, she pulled her gaze away and looked down at the path ahead. “Why did you choose to go to university here?”

She had assumed Lu Rangchen wouldn’t answer directly.

She didn’t expect him to shrug with complete composure. “Didn’t want to go abroad. Didn’t want to listen to other people.”

“Other people” naturally meant the Cheng family.

The Cheng family was large and prosperous, but across three generations, the male heirs were few.

Even though Lu Rangchen was a grandson by marriage, he had always been treated as a direct grandson.

That was also why the old matriarch whom he would normally address as a maternal grandmother by convention had always been called “Grandma” by Lu Rangchen.

For some reason, Yunque thought of all this that Xu Linda had once told her, and her mind went blank for a few seconds.

“Also, the tennis team here is quite good.”

Lu Rangchen’s low, magnetic voice pulled her back.

Yunque startled slightly.

In the dim glow of the roadside lamps, Lu Rangchen glanced sideways at her, his eyes deep and dark without a trace of humor.

He said, “You’re here too, aren’t you.”

……

That evening, the farewell dinner with the drill instructors ended quite early.

Seeing that Yunque hadn’t returned, Liang Tian called to ask where she was.

Lu Rangchen had walked her to the sports field and now stood casually beside her, hands in pockets, listening as the girl on the other end of the phone joked about whether she had gotten another boy’s number again.

At those words, Lu Rangchen raised an eyebrow, his expression turning pointedly serious.

Yunque didn’t look at him. She didn’t answer directly, only said she’d be back soon.

Once the call ended, before she could even open her mouth, Lu Rangchen spoke up in his unhurried way. “Still so sought-after.”

Yunque: “……”

She raised her eyes and looked at him without a ripple of expression. “Not as eye-catching as you.”

That one line made Lu Rangchen laugh outright.

He chuckled twice, then looked at her sideways with reckless nonchalance, his gaze not entirely innocent. “Over a year and you’ve learned how to give back as good as you get.”

Yunque’s emotions were sent rolling up and down by his few words.

She swallowed silently.

“I’m heading back,” she said.

Lu Rangchen gave a slight nod. “Remember to save my number. Makes it easier to keep in touch.”

The phrase “keep in touch” was delightfully ambiguous — effortlessly conjuring a sense of anticipation, leaving one’s curiosity hooked.

Yunque paused.

In the end, under his clear, deep, and commanding gaze, she quietly saved it.

Only this time, it was no longer a special nickname but a properly formatted “Lu Rangchen.”

When she got back to the cafeteria, Liang Tian had already been waiting for quite some time.

Yunque handed her one of the drinks, and the two walked back to the dorm arm in arm. Liang Tian, in her soft southern accent, complained to her about how oily and insufferable the drill instructors had been.

It was only once they were inside the dorm that Liang Tian noticed something was off with Yunque.

Her usually admired cool, pale skin was flushed with a faint rosy glow, the blush spreading from the tips of her ears all the way down her slender neck.

Liang Tian’s eyes went wide. “Yunque, what’s wrong with you? Do you have a fever?”

“……”

Yunque, belatedly realizing, touched her burning face — and only then discovered just how obvious it was.

She quickly shook her head and said it was nothing.

She then picked up her fresh change of clothes and went to the bathroom to shower.

She had gotten through so many days of military training without burning or breaking out.

Yet in just this short while.

Just a few exchanged glances and a handful of words with him, and she was this flustered.

Yunque stood under the showerhead, rubbing her face a few times, and was suddenly overcome with a profound sense of defeat.

That night, just before lights-out.

Xu Linda finally replied to her message, asking what she had needed.

Yunque got up and went to the activity room next door to call her on voice chat.

When Xu Linda heard that Lu Rangchen was also at Capital University, she was so shocked she cried out, “Oh my god, has he lost his mind?! Tsinghua and Peking University right there and he won’t go, he won’t go abroad, and he comes to Capital University???”

“……”

Yunque was almost made to laugh by her outburst. “Do you have any idea how dismissive you sound? It’s still a top-tier university, you know.”

Xu Linda made a dismissive sound. “That’s not what I mean. I’m just amazed — Lu Rangchen clearly had better options, yet he ends up here. And of all things, at the same university as you. Oh god, don’t tell me he specifically came for you.”

Yunque fell silent.

She thought of the way Lu Rangchen had looked at her those few times.

Even knowing that such a plot device would be far-fetched even in a novel, her once-firm inner “denial” kept wavering against her will.

She genuinely didn’t know what Lu Rangchen was trying to do.

The thought of spending the next four years living in his “shadow” filled Yunque with a deep, unsettled melancholy.

Xu Linda, on the other hand, was brimming with excitement. “Somehow I feel like you two are about to rekindle an old flame.”

Yunque gave a wry smile. “Please, no. I heard he has a girlfriend.”

Xu Linda choked. “Lu Rangchen has a girlfriend??? How come I don’t know about this.”

Yunque said, “Isn’t it perfectly normal that you don’t know? You didn’t even know he was coming to this school.”

Xu Linda: “……Fine.”

But she was still unwilling to let it go. “That said, maybe it’s another rumor. Back in high school you had a whole misunderstanding where you thought he was seeing someone, didn’t you?”

That logic wasn’t entirely wrong.

But having two misunderstandings in a row seemed a little too lucky.

Yunque had never thought of herself as the lucky sort.

She gazed at the thick, rich color of the moonlight and the bright stars in the night sky, and said in a mild tone, “Whether he does or doesn’t have one has nothing to do with me.”

Having already decided to let go, she wasn’t going to easily make the same mistake again.

Xu Linda knew how ruthless this girl could be when it came to matters of the heart. After thinking it over, she could only sigh. “Then let fate decide. If you two are truly meant to be, even running won’t help. It’ll just depend on what fortune brings.”

Yunque’s gaze went vague and drifted downward.

Then, as if remembering something, she said, “Still, I feel like he’s different from before.”

“Different how?”

“His bearing. His presence. The look in his eyes.”

Yunque struggled to find the right words. “Before, I felt like he was a person who kept himself reined in. But now it feels like… he’s let go.”

Xu Linda laughed softly. “What kind of answer is that? ‘Let go’ — I’ve only ever heard that in the context of certain kinds of conduct.”

The word “conduct” gave Yunque a flash of inspiration.

She pressed her lips together and said maybe that was it — “conduct.”

The old Lu Rangchen had been proud and cold, reining in his sharp edges, keeping a restrained and measured distance from any woman, giving no sense that he had any interest in romance whatsoever.

But the Lu Rangchen of their reunion was visibly more unrestrained than before.

As though he no longer deliberately held himself back. In his unreserved eyes, something always seemed to radiate outward, present but unspoken.

But all of this she didn’t say to Xu Linda. She didn’t want to give herself any more opportunity for wishful thinking.

She told herself to treat it as the way he was with every girl.

That was what Yunque decided.

She didn’t want to taste disappointment again.

That night, after the phone call with Xu Linda — like having cleared a congestion from her heart — and with military training finally behind her, her body and mind at ease, Yunque was asleep within minutes.

The next day was the first proper day of classes after the start of term.

The dorm woke up early and everyone began getting ready.

The other three girls were all particularly beauty-conscious, each sitting in front of their desk doing full makeup.

Only Yunque, entirely unbothered, grabbed a sundress, threw it on, washed her face, blow-dried her hair, and applied sunscreen.

By the time she was done with her simple routine, the other three had finished their full faces of makeup.

Reality was that brutal: even so, on the way to class, Yunque was stopped by a boy from the class next door asking for her number.

Li Yuqing, the most put-together dresser in the dorm, draped an arm over Yunque’s shoulder and shook her head in envious disbelief. “People who won the genetic lottery really are something else.”

“She was already the best-looking one when we were all in camouflage.”

“Now that everyone’s out of uniform, she stands out even more.”

Yunque felt a little helpless. “You’re exaggerating.”

Han Xiao, sipping from a carton of soy milk, said, “Not exaggerating at all. Yunque is just genuinely pretty. I don’t know about campus beauty queen, but department beauty is absolutely locked in.”

Liang Tian nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly — tall, slender, and fair, and when all three come together, even if the face is just passable it would still turn heads. Hers is more than passable.”

Yunque felt she must have been so thoroughly put down growing up that even a little praise now left her deeply uncomfortable.

She could only let them carry on.

Arriving at the lecture hall, the four of them snagged seats in the very back row of the tiered auditorium — the widest spot with the best sightlines, and safely out of the professor’s direct gaze.

After quickly finishing their breakfast, the professor came in and began lecturing to the four combined classes.

After the first class ended.

Han Xiao and Liang Tian went off to the restroom hand in hand.

Yunque, just as she had in high school, was organizing her notes during the break.

After a short while, Xu Linda sent her a WeChat message.

There was no telling what time it was on her end, but her energy looked absolutely unhinged.

Xu Linda: 【!!! I found out!!!】

Xu Linda: 【[Image]】

Yunque tapped on the image. Her brow twitched.

It was a screenshot of a chat log —

Xu Linda: 【Tell me honestly, do you have a girlfriend at Capital University】

Xu Linda: 【Lie to me and your future wife will cheat on you with someone else】

Lu Rangchen: 【……】

Lu Rangchen: 【Did she ask you to ask?】

Xu Linda: 【? Who】

Lu Rangchen: 【Zhu Yunque】

Xu Linda: 【……】

Xu Linda: 【Of course not, I’m asking on my own. Yunque doesn’t even care, okay】

Ten minutes later.

Xu Linda: 【Why aren’t you saying anything, where’d you go】

Lu Rangchen: 【No.】

Xu Linda: 【Really???】

Lu Rangchen: 【Yeah.】

Lu Rangchen: 【But there’s someone I have my sights on.】

Xu Linda: 【……………………Oh god.】

Xu Linda: 【Okay then.】

Xu Linda: 【So what’s she like? Do I know her?】

Lu Rangchen: 【You talk a lot.】

Xu Linda: 【……Oh.】

Lu Rangchen: 【Never mind, class is almost over. I’m going to go find her.】

Xu Linda: 【That person you have your sights on?】

Lu Rangchen: 【Who else?】

Xu Linda: 【……………………Goodbye!!!】

The screenshot ended there, abruptly.

Yunque silently stared at Lu Rangchen’s words — “there’s someone I have my sights on” — and her thoughts went briefly blank.

So he already had someone he liked.

With that answer surfacing in her mind, Yunque’s fingertips turned faintly cold.

And then, right on cue, Xu Linda sent another message.

Xu Linda: 【Damn it, I really shouldn’t have held out any hope for Lu Rangchen. And here I thought he came all this way for you.】

Xu Linda: 【Oh well, at least now you can move on quickly. Better than letting you pine over him.】

Xu Linda: 【Don’t be upset — tomorrow I’ll introduce you to a cute British guy for a passionate international romance!!!】

Three messages popped up in quick succession.

Yunque stared at them with unfocused eyes, a feeling like seawater rushing in and sinking her chest.

It was just at that moment that Han Xiao and Liang Tian came back.

The two of them had apparently run into something exciting — they practically bounded up the steps toward Yunque, calling out, “Yunque! There’s a super handsome guy at the door asking for you.”

Liang Tian, an absolute enthusiast for attractive people, eyes practically sparkling, said, “He is so, so, so, so handsome!!!”

Han Xiao nodded vigorously beside her. “Seriously, incredibly handsome. He specifically asked for you — go on out!”

Without waiting for Yunque’s dazed expression to clear, the two of them grabbed her and pushed her straight toward the door.

Yunque’s head was still foggy as she instinctively set down her phone and walked out on unsteady feet.

Yet no matter how she tried, she could never have anticipated that the person waiting outside the classroom door… was Lu Rangchen.

The sky was crisp and clear, the air fresh and cool with a faint bite, and even the sunlight flooding the corridor felt bright and cheerful.

Lu Rangchen was wearing a light-colored button-down shirt and jeans, leaning lazily against the entrance of the tiered lecture hall.

His 187-centimeter frame was relaxed yet upright — clear-featured and proud.

Girls passing by wore expressions of struck awe, their eyes drifting toward him again and again.

Lu Rangchen, for his part, was entirely unmoved. He kept his gaze lowered, thin eyelids half-closed, idly scrolling through his phone, until Yunque stood before him.

He lifted his eyes and saw the girl’s startled, delicate face. His gaze settled. He straightened his long legs unhurriedly, and the corner of his mouth curved up in a quietly covert smile.

The answer was already understood between them, without a word.

Lu Rangchen blinked slowly, his gaze patient and captivating.

“Want to have lunch together?”