Not long after receiving Yunque’s message that day, Li Tie called.

Not getting any response from Lu Rangchen, this fellow was getting anxious, and launched straight into: “Are you free tomorrow or not? If you are, I’ll go book a place.”

Under ordinary circumstances, Lu Rangchen had no other friends worth visiting in Nancheng — you called and he came.

And yet Lu Rangchen came out with a flat “no.”

Li Tie was taken aback. He made a sound of disbelief. “Really? You really don’t have time?”

“No time.”

Lu Rangchen’s voice was low and cool, his brow carrying an uncharacteristic gloom and irritability.

He sat there with a blank expression, holding the phone with a slack gaze, zooming in and out on that photo, while Li Tie snickered in his ear and teased, “What, got a pretty girl you have to go see?”

That quip made Lu Rangchen grunt with contempt.

He was about to fire back with a few choice words, but his brain suddenly produced a rotten idea.

He wanted to go back and make her pay for this.

He was quiet for two seconds.

Lu Rangchen raised his hand and rolled his shoulder, then gave a low, slow laugh. “Let’s say I do.”

“……”

They’d been friends for years — Li Tie was more than capable of telling truth from fiction in his words. He was immediately thrown off. “What’s going on? Who is it? How do I know nothing about this?”

“You’re not supposed to know.”

Lu Rangchen’s mind was playing back Yunque’s face — that expression of hers, pure and stubborn all at once. His voice came out husky and languid. “I just decided.”

“Decided what?”

“Going back to school tomorrow.”

Lu Rangchen said it with the same tone as going for a meal or taking a nap — dropped the line and got to his feet, heading toward the bedroom.

The phone was on speaker. From the earpiece, Li Tie was rendered utterly speechless. “You just got here today and you’re already going back tomorrow — you’re not worried your mom will be furious?”

At that, Lu Rangchen gave a humorless laugh, pulled his top off and tossed it on the bed, then fished a black button-down shirt from the wardrobe.

The floor-to-ceiling window reflected his silhouette — his upper body bare, proportionate and fair-skinned, broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist, the lean, toned abdomen carrying that easy, youthful sensuality.

His gaze paused in the dressing mirror for two seconds.

Lu Rangchen’s mind conjured up that photo of Zhao Qijia again, and he let out a short, derisive exhale.

He honestly didn’t know what she saw in that guy.

Swallowing a mouthful of irritation, Lu Rangchen pulled on the black shirt and stood at the mirror, his expression cool and detached as he did up the buttons. “She’s been having a cold war with my dad lately — having me around would just put her in a worse mood.”

Li Tie, with his supposedly perceptive mind, caught the real meaning underneath. “So tonight, you’re—?”

“Go ahead and book somewhere,” Lu Rangchen said. “Let’s have a round tonight.”

That evening’s barbecue didn’t last long before Yunque lost her appetite. Two messages sent were like stones dropped into a lake — gone without a trace.

Lu Rangchen didn’t reply.

By the time Zhao Qijia settled the bill, the phone had remained completely silent.

Yunque glanced at it a few times without meaning to, and after doing so several times, decided it wasn’t worth the attention. She followed Zhao Qijia out of the barbecue restaurant and casually transferred him the cost of the meal.

Zhao Qijia was genuinely at a loss over her insistence on being proper. “Is this really necessary? We know each other well enough.”

Yunque’s tone was calm. “I said today was on me.”

“Alright then,” Zhao Qijia said with a playful ease, “how about this — tomorrow I’ll treat you, and you can pick the place.”

Their gazes crossed.

The boy’s look held a cautious hopefulness, and he seemed a little awkward under Yunque’s direct stare. He quickly laughed at himself. “It’s fine, if you don’t want to come that’s okay too — I was just putting it out there……”

“Fine.”

Yunque’s voice came out flat and even.

She couldn’t have said why — she just agreed, like that.

The National Holiday crowds in Sanlitun were enormous.

Zhao Qijia had been thinking of walking around a bit, but Yunque said she was a little tired, so the two of them caught the subway back early.

On the way, Zhao Qijia offered to walk her all the way back to her campus before heading home, but Yunque declined.

She didn’t want to trouble him, and she didn’t want to cross a line.

Besides, she had used him tonight — only it seemed the using hadn’t accomplished much.

Perhaps a vague sense of guilt was eating at her. Before she got off the subway, Yunque finally offered him a smile that came from the heart and said goodbye.

Back at the dormitory, she was alone — Liang Tian was spending the night at a friend’s place and wouldn’t be back.

Yunque washed away the smell of barbecue and got into bed early to watch a film on her tablet.

She dragged the progress bar back and forth, and half an hour later had failed to absorb a single detail.

Eventually the tablet was pushed aside with a sigh of defeat.

Yunque lay there on the bed for a while playing dead, then finally pulled out her phone and opened Lu Rangchen’s social media profile.

Same profile picture. Same background image.

The one difference was a post from half an hour ago.

It was a photo taken inside a bar.

On the table: glasses and bottles toppled at all angles. In the foreground: a group of people radiating noise and energy just by looking at them.

Lu Rangchen had gone to a bar.

That answer surfaced in her mind, and Yunque’s breath involuntarily tightened. Then she recalled Zhao Qijia’s assessment of Lu Rangchen.

— With money and looks, he’s bound to play the field.

The power of words seems to far exceed what people imagine.

Two light, offhand sentences were enough to demolish the confidence that someone had spent so long carefully building up.

Yunque’s mind went blank for a while. She couldn’t tell whether she was calm or not — she just forced herself not to think about any of it, turned off the light, and went to sleep.

But sleep wouldn’t come.

She tossed and turned until well past midnight. Just after twelve, the phone rang.

The rabbit in Yunque’s chest gave a violent leap.

She slowly rolled over and picked up the phone in the pitch-dark dormitory. Sure enough, she saw Lu Rangchen’s three characters glowing on the small screen.

It seemed he was determined to make her answer — the phone rang for a long time without stopping.

Yunque stared at those three characters, steadied her breath, and pressed accept, calling out a soft “hello.”

Her voice was wide awake, with not a trace of drowsiness — it was obvious she hadn’t been asleep.

As if he’d predicted exactly this, Lu Rangchen let out a quiet laugh through his nose.

His voice was low and husky with the ease of late-night fatigue, warm and resonant as though carrying an electric current, burrowing straight to the heart. “Not asleep yet.”

Yunque pressed her lips together and said nothing.

She said nothing; Lu Rangchen didn’t push. No matter how noisy the background on his end was, no matter how much his friends beside him laughed and jostled and swore, he paid none of it any mind — just waited for her, unhurried and nonchalant.

The sound of soft, shallow breathing passed between them over the line. The two of them sat in this peculiar mutual silence for quite a long time, until that restless energy finally crested and ebbed, and Yunque quietly said, “Aren’t you either.”

She paused, then added, “Sounds like the bar is fun.”

Even trying to keep it light and breezy as she did, the words still carried an unmistakable undercurrent.

Lu Rangchen laughed at that — laughed so hard he coughed a couple of times, then stubbed out his cigarette and shot back in that half-reckless, half-shameless way of his: “Not nearly as fun as you.”

“……”

Yunque’s lashes gave a small flutter.

The tips of her ears were unexpectedly set ablaze.

As if afraid his tasteless joke would make her angry, Lu Rangchen quickly spoke again, his tone casual, giving no indication of how much or how little he cared. “What about you — was dinner good tonight?”

“It wasn’t.”

Yunque was very straightforward about it.

Lu Rangchen let out a short, satisfied-sounding laugh. “I thought Zhao Qijia would make everything taste delicious.”

A clear, rich Beijing accent sounded especially good in the quiet of the night.

Especially with that magnificently sour, petulant arrogance behind it.

Yunque suddenly felt that if she kept talking to him like this, she wouldn’t be getting any sleep tonight.

She turned over and pressed the phone to her other ear. In a gentle voice, she said, “Lu Rangchen, I’m going to sleep.”

She almost never spoke in that particular tone.

It was like coaxing someone, like a girlfriend murmuring softly in your ear.

Something in his throat gave an inexplicable tickle.

Lu Rangchen curled the corner of his mouth, his voice low and warm. “Okay, go to sleep.”

He had barely finished saying that when someone called out his name — asking him to come back for another round.

Hearing that, Yunque felt that vague, unnameable feeling surge up out of nowhere.

She didn’t hang up. Acting on impulse, she spoke before Lu Rangchen could respond. “What time are you going to sleep?”

The girl’s voice was decisive, with a barely-there edge of authority.

Lu Rangchen clearly hadn’t expected her to say something like that. He blanked for a moment and then broke into laughter. “What, are you managing me now?”

Still that same defiant, doesn’t-answer-to-anyone tone.

And yet, with a rare thread of indulgence woven into it.

Yunque’s heart was beating very fast.

She wanted to say “do you want me to?” But the words came up to her lips and were scorched back down.

She struggled for a few seconds, then said, “Staying up too late is bad for your health.”

A very practical thing to say.

And naturally without a shred of romance.

Lu Rangchen couldn’t quite say what he had been hoping to hear. He tilted his wine glass, watching the liquid swirl, and laughed quietly. “Alright, I’ll call it early then.”

Yunque pressed her lips together.

She couldn’t tell if that was a sincere promise or not, but given where things stood between them, maybe this was as far as it went.

And so the conversation ended there.

Yunque said goodbye softly.

Lu Rangchen replied with a breezy hum, then a quiet “goodnight.”

The call ended.

Yunque stared at the dark ceiling, her mind somewhere far away.

She didn’t know how much time passed, but on a sudden whim she sent Xu Linda a message.

It was daytime where Xu Linda was, and she replied the instant the message arrived.

Xu Linda: 【? Why are you asking about Brother Rang’s social feed — did he block you?】

Yunque: 【No.】

Yunque: 【Just help me look.】

Xu Linda: 【……Fine.】

She was perhaps in the middle of class — Xu Linda didn’t ask much, and simply sent over a screenshot of Lu Rangchen’s social feed.

In the screenshot, Lu Rangchen’s feed contained only one post — “Love is a superstition born of perfect timing and perfect place.”

The moment she saw it.

The emotion that had been lodged in her chest dissolved, in the most inexplicable way.

Yunque stared at the screenshot with disbelief, zooming in and then out, then tapping back to Lu Rangchen’s own profile.

There was the photo from the bar, still sitting at the very top of the feed.

Visible only to her.

……

The drinking party wrapped up sooner than expected.

Not long after hanging up the phone, Lu Rangchen, as if someone had found his weak point and pressed it, drained the last mouthful from his glass, set it down on the table with a thud, and got up to leave.

With him — the main attraction — gone, Li Tie dragged the thoroughly drunk Zhou Jin out after him.

In the car, Li Tie was quite put out, asking him what was going on — it was a gathering the two of them had organized together, and here he was shamelessly walking out first.

Lu Rangchen had called a designated driver.

He sat in the passenger seat, head slightly bowed as he thumbed through his phone, turning over plans for the airport the next morning.

It wasn’t until Li Tie started muttering that he gradually came back to himself, and tossed out in an idle voice: “Staying up too late is bad for your health.”

“……”

Li Tie immediately made a face like he was about to roll his eyes and be sick.

He knew this guy had just gotten off the phone with some girl — he just hadn’t anticipated that a single phone call would be this effective.

Setting aside the fact that he was going back to school early for her.

A single sentence from her was enough to send him home to bed.

Li Tie shook his head with a sigh. “You’re done for, Lu Rangchen.”

“With your rotten temper, and she’s still got you completely hooked — you’re absolutely finished.”

At those words, Lu Rangchen’s fingers paused.

He turned his head sharply, skimmed Li Tie with an eye full of languid disdain, and said slowly, “I think you’d be better served worrying about when the person you’re currently holding is going to develop feelings for you.”

“……”

Li Tie, who had his arm around Zhou Jin, exploded in exasperation. “Lu Rangchen, that’s enough out of you!”

The second day of the National Holiday, Yunque had the evening shift.

Working hours ran from noon straight through to closing time at seven.

Since she didn’t need to be up early.

Yunque indulged herself and slept until eleven.

By the time she arrived at the library, Zhao Qijia had already settled into his usual spot as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

He had apparently dressed up with some care. That day he wore a white hoodie and jeans, looking fresh and full of youthful energy, and had even put on a light touch of cologne.

Knowing she had slept in, he’d even brought her sushi and milk tea — and when he placed them in her hands, the milk tea was still warm.

Yunque, not quite sure how to receive this, found herself saying, “I already ate.”

The substitute student worker beside her grinned with knowing amusement. “That’s fine — just save it for dinner.”

Zhao Qijia also smiled. “Really, it’s nothing — if you don’t eat it, I’ll eat it.”

“……”

Yunque’s expression was mildly awkward. In the end she could only take it and set it to one side.

The moment Zhao Qijia turned around and walked away, the substitute student worker leaned in and murmured in Yunque’s ear, “Do you have any more of this type lying around? Help me find one.”

Yunque was a little exasperated. “How about I introduce him to you?”

The substitute student worker looked completely alarmed. “Are you serious? I’m not here to poach someone else’s territory.”

Yunque was indifferent. “He’s not my territory — just a good friend.”

The substitute student worker caught the undertone and came closer to ask: “What do you mean by that — you’re not interested, or is there already someone else on your mind?”

Yunque rinsed the coffee equipment without rising to the bait.

The substitute student worker wiped the counter and muttered to herself, “Honestly, I think he’s genuinely great — this attentive, here early just to wait for you, not waking you up while you slept, completely devoted. How many guys are that devoted these days?”

Something about the cold tap water.

A tiny stab of pain ran through Yunque’s fingertips and she looked down, only now noticing she had somehow cut a small slit in the skin without realizing it.

She absentmindedly rubbed it.

She didn’t know how, but her thoughts drifted to Lu Rangchen — to that warmly ambiguous phone call the night before, and to his social media post that was visible only to her.

So.

What exactly were the two of them to each other?

Yunque turned this over for a long while and couldn’t arrive at an answer.

Perhaps at this very moment, Lu Rangchen had just woken up.

Plenty of people would be after him — guys calling him out to hang, girls sending warm little check-ins and dropping off breakfast.

Her mind wandered through this idle, jumbled haze until the ordering system chimed.

Yunque snapped back.

“Five rows, table three, one vanilla latte, no sugar.”

The substitute student worker read out the order. She got through the first line and then froze. Her brows knitted together in a knot as she read on, “Notes: request Yunque to deliver personally?”

At those words, Yunque’s chest gave a startled thump.

The student worker looked at her in surprise. “It specifically names you — do you know who it is?”

Yunque: “……”

She shook her head, though something like a premonition quietly took shape in the back of her mind.

Table three, row five was at a diagonal behind her.

All she had to do was step out from the café counter and glance over.

Yet for some reason, her legs felt as though they had been filled with lead — she couldn’t make herself move a single step.

Yunque thought this was absurd, and at the same time didn’t quite dare to believe it.

After thinking it over, she could only say, “Hey, I’ll make it, but can you take it over for me?”

The substitute student worker pointed at herself. “Me? But he specifically asked for you.”

“……I can’t very well go running out just because he asks for me.”

Yunque’s cheeks were warm, and after a moment she said, “Take it over first and check who it is. If he’s not satisfied, I’ll go personally.”

The substitute student worker looked conflicted.

But on second thought — maybe Yunque had some kind of difficult situation. An ex who wouldn’t leave her alone, or an ex’s current girlfriend, or something of that sort.

After all, it was broad daylight, in a campus library, surrounded by people — it wasn’t as if there was any danger.

In the spirit of helping out, the student worker nodded and agreed. She picked up the vanilla latte Yunque had made, went out, and offered Yunque a word of reassurance on the way. “Don’t worry, I’ll go take a look.”

With that, she strode out at a brisk pace.

Yunque stood absently at the counter, her fingertips feeling strangely cold and soft.

A few seconds later, her phone gave a sudden buzz.

She reflexively glanced down, and immediately saw a WeChat message from Lu Rangchen.

Lu Rangchen: 【Not bad for a top student — pretty good at countering moves.】

“……”

A mystifying line.

Yet Yunque’s heart already had its answer.

She let out a quiet breath.

Yunque suddenly felt both speechless…and like laughing.

Her heartbeat seemed to speed up too. Holding her breath, she turned and slowly took a piece of sliced raspberry cake from the refrigerated display case, placed it on a tray.

The substitute student worker came back just then. “He specifically asked for you.”

She wore an expression that was partly exasperated, partly not-really-exasperated, looking at Yunque. “Am I just a prop in your little drama?”

“……”

Yunque suppressed the corners of her mouth, not quite knowing what to say. “Sorry for the trouble.”

“Trouble my foot.”

The student worker hurried to push her toward the door. “Quick, go — in a minute the guy is going to get impatient and come over himself.”

Yunque: “……”

Her ears had gone even redder.

And so she carried the sliced raspberry cake, left the counter, and turned to make her way toward the diagonal behind her.

There, Lu Rangchen was seated — at the window seat in row five, position three.

He was wearing a light-blue long-sleeved shirt with an unusual design, pristine to the point of near-purity, while his whole air — defiant and clean-cut — was the sort of eye-catching that felt almost deliberate.

As if sensing Yunque’s gaze.

Lu Rangchen slowly raised his eyes, his deep, far-reaching gaze going straight to her.

By the time she walked up to him, Yunque could see that the book placed in front of him — The World of Dew — hadn’t been opened.

And Lu Rangchen had no intention whatsoever of reading it.

From the very beginning, those clear, dark eyes had been fixed on Yunque — teasing, savoring, and holding something unnamed within their depths.

Yunque did her best to keep her expression under control, placed the cake before him.

And was about to turn and walk away.

Lu Rangchen reached out and closed his hand around her wrist.

It was scalding — the particular warmth that belonged to a man’s palm, pressed hard against her skin, dominant and forceful, wrapping around her soft wrist.

His blazing gaze went straight to its mark and fixed itself on her.

Yunque silently froze.

Lu Rangchen’s eyes curved upward at the corners, as though they carried hooks designed to ensnare, his voice dropping low to just the edge of suggestion. “Were you that reluctant to see me?”