Zhu Yunque hadn’t known when Lu Rangchen had arrived.

Lu Rangchen didn’t say. The first thing he did after taking her hand was bring her out to buy a bandage.

There was a shop directly across the street.

The two of them walked over with fingers laced together, not a single unnecessary word between them.

The pharmacist glanced at the cut and said it was minor, but that it still needed to be disinfected properly. So after buying the antiseptic and bandages, Lu Rangchen brought her back to his car.

Strictly speaking, the car wasn’t his — it was Cheng Liru’s. Even the scent inside was feminine, mingled with the lingering trace of cigarette smoke.

Lu Rangchen hadn’t smoked in a long time. Since they’d been together, he’d stopped. His friends had found it endlessly amusing — said a perfectly good man had let his girlfriend strip away one of life’s finer pleasures.

Lu Rangchen always laughed without concern.

He genuinely couldn’t be bothered explaining that Zhu Yunque was far more addictive than cigarettes.

Though there were exceptions.

When his mood was particularly bad, he would find a corner and have one.

But the way he’d been smoking this evening — that, Zhu Yunque had never seen before.

So the first thing she registered upon sitting down was the depth of how bad his mood actually was.

They sat in silence.

Lu Rangchen took her hand and, with his eyes lowered, long lashes resting still, carefully applied the antiseptic and dressed the cut.

Zhu Yunque watched for a moment, then said, “How is your mother?”

Lu Rangchen didn’t even look up. His voice was calm. “Nothing serious. She’ll be alright.”

Reassurances designed to smooth things over — he offered them as naturally as breathing.

Zhu Yunque suddenly found herself with no idea how to continue.

It was Lu Rangchen who spoke again. He asked her, “How is your mother?”

“……”

Zhu Yunque looked at him with a faint, startled expression.

Lu Rangchen smiled. “What is it?”

Zhu Yunque’s throat tightened. “Why do you still care about her? Shouldn’t you hate her?”

That helplessness — even Zhu Yunque herself, in the instant she learned what had happened, had felt a flash of something like hatred.

But Lu Rangchen said, “What would hate accomplish?”

He looked steadily into her eyes. “Would hating her bring my mother back to health?”

Zhu Yunque felt her heart lurch under the weight of his gaze.

Lu Rangchen continued, “Even without your mother, there would have been someone else. Another woman named Zhang, another named Wang, another named Li — the two of them would have ended up here regardless.”

He paused, and let out a quiet, mocking laugh. “It’s simply the nature of men like him.”

That landed somewhere tender in Zhu Yunque, and she felt a small, faint wince she couldn’t quite suppress.

She wanted to ask — would you ever be like that?

But the words reached the edge of her mouth and stopped there. She didn’t have the courage to send them further.

And what standing did she have to ask?

None.

Her hands were cleaned and bandaged. Lu Rangchen helped her out of the car.

It was he who asked — had she eaten that night.

Zhu Yunque said no. Said she wasn’t hungry.

She had somehow, imperceptibly, lost all the self-assurance she used to carry so naturally. She was back to being the Zhu Yunque of high school — guarded and quiet.

Snow drifted down in a faint, intermittent fall.

Lu Rangchen looked at her for a moment, his expression unreadable, throat moving slightly — and then, with no forewarning at all, he kissed her.

A soothing kiss. He tilted her chin up, pressed his lips softly to hers.

Even her lashes caught a scatter of snowflakes.

It lasted only a few seconds.

And yet for Zhu Yunque, those few seconds were enough to hold her together for the rest of the night.

When the kiss ended, Lu Rangchen looked at her, his gaze clear and quiet, and smiled. “Let’s go buy a cake. I promised — your next birthday, I’d make sure it was a good one.”

At those words, Zhu Yunque thought of the birthday he’d spent with her in high school.

He had complained about the last-minute cake being ordinary.

Said he’d get her a proper one next time.

She had assumed there would be a next time. She hadn’t known that next time would take two years to arrive.

So he had remembered all along.

Even after all this time.

Her eyes grew warm again. Zhu Yunque nodded and said yes, and Lu Rangchen curved a smile and took her hand, walking her to the bakery on the street ahead.

Not far from Feng Yanlai’s clothing store.

This stretch of street was all prime real estate — the cakes would naturally be good.

Lu Rangchen added several hundred extra and asked the baker to move their order to the front. When they came out of the shop with the cake box, the snow was still drifting down in its soft, shallow way.

The night was hazy, as though a pure white veil had been draped over it.

The kind of atmosphere you’d find in a television drama — and with Lu Rangchen’s face there beside her, it was easy to feel as if you’d stepped inside the screen.

Zhu Yunque hooked his finger with hers, tentatively testing the waters. “Let’s eat inside the shop. I still have a few things I haven’t finished dealing with in there.”

She meant Feng Yanlai’s clothing store.

A rather fraught place to suggest.

But she wanted to go back. It was almost as though some part of her — without thinking — was trying to find out where the line was with him.

It was selfish.

Zhu Yunque silently criticized herself for it.

But she was exactly this difficult, exactly this self-centered.

And yet Lu Rangchen didn’t seem to register it as anything at all. His voice was the same as always — accommodating her without a second thought — as he said, “Alright, I’ll help you sort it out.”

And as he spoke, his long, lean fingers tightened their grip on hers, then tucked her hand into his pocket, warm and solid.

The sting behind Zhu Yunque’s nose rose without warning — but before she could find words for it, the phone in Lu Rangchen’s pocket vibrated.

Her injured fingertip throbbed at the movement.

Lu Rangchen stilled, took it out, and answered.

Zhu Yunque pulled her hand back and glanced over — caught the name: Lin Zhi.

No need to verify. The moment the call connected, that woman’s distinctive voice came through.

All directness and fire — someone who, when she liked you, would say the most candid and heartfelt things to your face; when she disliked you, the contempt would seep through every word.

Zhu Yunque heard the contempt Lin Zhi held for her, plain as anything.

Lin Zhi asked Lu Rangchen if he was with her. She told him to come back, said Cheng Liru had woken up and wanted to see him, and told him not to upset her.

At those words, Lu Rangchen visibly stiffened.

He very rarely wore that kind of unease, so transparent on his face. He didn’t even dare look at Zhu Yunque — just turned his head away to take the call.

Zhu Yunque couldn’t have said what she felt in that moment.

Only that she pulled the corner of her mouth into a hollow sort of smile.

She looked at Lu Rangchen for another moment. Then she pressed her lips together, said nothing, took the cake box, and turned to walk away.

It didn’t matter.

She had the cake in her hands, at least.

She might actually enjoy it more eating alone.

With that thought, her foot hit a slick patch — Zhu Yunque lurched sideways and nearly fell, and in that instant a force seized her from behind, catching her and pulling her steady.

Lu Rangchen had come after her.

He had his arm around Zhu Yunque’s waist and held her there, secured against him, a new sharpness in his expression that hadn’t been there before — something coming at her like a tide.

His throat moved. Lu Rangchen fixed his gaze on her, voice low and rough. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Something in his eyes said that if he loosened his hold for even a moment, she would disappear.

She didn’t know if it was the cold.

Or something else entirely.

Zhu Yunque’s lashes trembled. She couldn’t speak. After a few seconds she managed, voice catching in her throat, that she was going back.

She pulled free of Lu Rangchen’s hold. “Go,” she said. “I’m fine.”

Lu Rangchen’s expression held something low and steady, neither warm nor cold. He met her eyes for a moment. Then he asked, “What about you, then?”

Zhu Yunque sniffled and said she was going to clear out the shop.

Lu Rangchen said nothing. He only watched her, the stubbornness in his eyes utterly immovable.

After a beat, he took hold of her wrist and said, “Come with me.”

He was already pulling her with him when Zhu Yunque yanked her hand back. Her eyes were red, and something pressed against the inside of her chest.

She held it down and said, “Are you out of your mind, Lu Rangchen?”

Lu Rangchen stopped. He looked at her from under lowered lashes, his expression drained of anything readable.

Snow fell on his lashes. On the tip of his nose. Gone almost as soon as it landed.

That face — sculpted by some impossible precision into something beautiful from every angle — looked more remote and unreal than ever in the cold of winter.

Something between them was quietly, slowly coming undone.

Then Lu Rangchen’s eyes reddened almost imperceptibly at the corners, and he let out a brief, sudden laugh. “Why the rush — I haven’t even given you your gift yet.”

Her heartbeat stumbled.

Zhu Yunque’s voice came out soft and unsteady. “What?”

Lu Rangchen reached into the other pocket of his coat and brought out a small black jewelry box tied with a silk ribbon. He opened it. Inside, nestled quietly, were two rings.

Eighteen karat gold, clean and spare in design. Words had been engraved on each band.

Two words in English, one on each ring.

Lu Rangchen took one out, swallowed quietly, and said, “Give me your hand.”

Zhu Yunque: “……”

It felt as though even his gaze had grown heavier in that second.

Her chest tightened with something she couldn’t name. She said nothing, and held out her hand.

A pale, slender hand — held in his, it felt extraordinarily soft, extraordinarily at home.

He had always had a thing for her hands when they were together. By this point, he knew the dimensions well enough to have them memorized.

That was what had put the idea in his head — to have rings made.

He’d commissioned them long before this, with both their initials engraved on the inside.

He had always meant them as a birthday gift.

Lu Rangchen held Zhu Yunque’s hand and slid the smaller of the two rings onto her middle finger.

As he’d expected — a perfect fit. The rose gold made her hand look even more graceful and slender.

Only then did Zhu Yunque read the word engraved on it: “wind.”

She looked toward the other ring.

Lu Rangchen turned it so she could see the engraving clearly.

Sure enough — “kite.”

The meaning was simple.

She was the wind. He was her kite.

The turbulence inside her stilled in that instant, completely subdued.

Zhu Yunque’s eyes shimmered, and she fell entirely silent, as though the words had been taken from her.

Lu Rangchen slipped his own ring from the box and put it on his middle finger in front of her. It fit exactly.

He said, “Do you like the gift?”

That untamed, restless person — and yet with her he was always this careful and tender, and when he spoke, the sincerity never wavered, not even slightly. He never let his love for her become careless.

So it was that Zhu Yunque suddenly felt she didn’t deserve it.

Didn’t deserve the rare and precious weight of a love like his.

She wasn’t that wonderful.

Her mother was that contemptible.

And then tears came — falling from her eyes, one after another, landing in the snow, pressing small, uneven marks into the white.

Lu Rangchen always made room for her.

Even now, when his own emotions were in disarray, he was still willing to wipe her tears and smile through it. He said, “What are you crying for? I haven’t gone anywhere.”

Zhu Yunque shook her head, eyes bright red at the rims.

Lu Rangchen pulled her toward him, wrapping both arms around her, and let out a long, deep breath.

He had wanted to do this for a long time. As if holding her close was the only thing that made him feel steady.

The words that came from his throat were low and burning. “Hold me,” he said.

“Hold me — just once — and then I’ll go.”

His voice carried something rare — a quiet that didn’t belong to the version of him who lived above everything else. Like a man who had shed every layer of composure, and was bowing, just for her.

Tears soaked into his coat, spreading a dark patch of dampness, and Zhu Yunque felt such a weight in her chest that only throwing her arms around him seemed to ease it.

So she held him just as tightly.

Tightly enough that it felt like she was trying to grow into him.

Lu Rangchen’s lean jaw came to rest on her narrow shoulder.

His lashes fell, and his large hand cupped the back of her head, unwilling to let go, as his voice came out low and quiet, like something dissolving into her: “Yunque — happy birthday.”

The warmth in his voice could draw a person under.

Zhu Yunque bit her lip. Her breath came in fragments.

Lu Rangchen’s hand moved gently through her hair, and he said, “Next year’s birthday — I want to celebrate it with you too. Will you let me?”