Whenever she thought back to that night afterward, Yunque always felt that the snow in Nancheng seemed to have fallen longer than the weather forecast had predicted.

The snow melted the moment it touched the ground, affecting traffic and temperatures, yet it did nothing to diminish the romance of that evening.

Before long, the snowfall had made it onto the local trending searches, and opening any social media app meant scrolling through an endless stream of snow photos taken by young people.

It was just a pity — that romance did not belong to her and Lu Rangchen.

After he drove her back to the shop, Lu Rangchen got in his car and left.

Lin Zhi seemed to be quite insistent on her end, calling him repeatedly to urge him back.

And so, the most vivid image etched into Yunque’s mind from her nineteenth birthday was simply that moment when Lu Rangchen, having dropped her off at the shop, sat in his car with his dark, fathomless eyes fixed on her — his gaze like an unbreakable thread.

Like a parent who has delivered a child home safely but doesn’t know where they’re going next or how long they’ll be gone, he sat there and stared at her.

Yunque held that moment of wistful sadness for just an instant before finally squeezing out a small smile and giving him a little wave.

She never forgot that as Lu Rangchen left, he was still wearing the matching ring — the one that paired with hers.

She just didn’t know whether he would take it off when he was in front of Cheng Liru.

……

The days that followed were, unexpectedly, peaceful.

It was as if all that messy, heartbreaking business had never happened at all.

Yunque stayed quietly at home, keeping Feng Yanlai company through the New Year’s holiday. During the day the two of them tidied up the shop, went for follow-up medical appointments, and searched for a new place to live.

Feng Yanlai no longer wanted to stay in Cheng Liru’s apartment — she didn’t have the face to, either.

They found something new quickly, hiring a moving company and getting it all done in a single day.

By evening, Yunque finally had time to borrow Liang Tian’s notes and start preparing for the upcoming exams.

In those few days, life suddenly felt like high school again.

She often spent time alone, sitting at the desk in her bedroom, keeping company with a sea of practice problems.

During that period, Lu Rangchen reached out a few times.

Always by phone — he would call, and Yunque would answer. The calls were never long. Sometimes Lu Rangchen was the one to hang up first; sometimes it was Yunque.

She knew what he was being careful about.

She had nothing to resent him for, and couldn’t bring herself to put him in an even harder position.

When she returned to school, she gradually grew accustomed to that rhythm.

Those around her were surprised, though — why had Lu Rangchen been absent from Yunque’s side lately?

The two of them had never been a low-key couple. Both were prominent figures on campus, and wherever they went, they drew attention. There was no hiding it — especially since Lu Rangchen’s feelings for Yunque were so genuinely, obviously deep.

During that stretch of time, if you ran into Yunque around campus, you could almost always count on Lu Rangchen being nearby. Many of those who had loudly declared their intention to steal one of them away had quietly backed down and gone silent.

So naturally, people grew curious.

Curious whether something had gone wrong between them.

Yunque took it all in stride.

Her answers were breezy, indifferent. “He’s had some things come up at home recently,” she would say. “He hasn’t been back.”

With final exams approaching, everyone was busy studying, and gradually the campus lost interest in the eye-catching couple — including Yunque herself, who spent day after day tucked inside the library, absorbed in nothing but studying.

The next time they saw each other was after she’d finished the first exam.

At noon, Yunque and Liang Tian headed to the dining hall for lunch. Barely a moment after they sat down, hushed whispers drifted in from somewhere behind them.

Two female voices, not particularly careful about their tone, murmured to each other: “Hey, didn’t he come back from his hometown? Why isn’t he eating with her?”

“Right — I heard they always eat together.”

“They didn’t actually break up, did they? My boyfriend says he’s already back on the team.”

“Hard to say. Look at what he has going for him — there’s a whole line of girls waiting to take her place. Maybe he got tired of her a long time ago.”

The insinuation was impossible to miss. Across the table, Liang Tian’s expression darkened with irritation, and she shot a glare back at the two of them.

The pair flinched, caught in the act. Their eyes met Liang Tian’s and they immediately deflated, falling silent and burying their faces in their food.

Liang Tian looked back at Yunque and found her completely unfazed. “Those two are just running their mouths,” Liang Tian said. “Don’t mind them.”

Then, a little curiously, she asked, “Did Lu Rangchen really come back?”

Yunque was looking down, nudging the broccoli and chicken around in her bowl, spooning small bites of plain rice into her mouth — barely tasting any of it.

Several seconds passed before she said, “I’m not sure.”

Her voice was as light and unbothered as ever, as if those whispers hadn’t landed at all.

But the truth was, they had. There was a brief, stinging moment of heartache.

Then again, she thought — it was her own fault.

In the end, the only one left speechless was Liang Tian.

For a second or two, she genuinely wondered whether the two of them really had broken up — until that doubt was put to rest after their afternoon exam.

Yunque and Liang Tian came out of the teaching building arm in arm, and before they’d gone far, they spotted Lu Rangchen waiting beneath a tree.

It was January in the capital, and fresh snow had just fallen.

The air was clean and crisp. The fading light of the late afternoon sun filtered faintly through thick cloud layers, and between the frozen earth and the sealed-up sky stretched vast swaths of frost-white.

Lu Rangchen stood beneath a tree wrapped in silver by the snow.

His tall, solitary figure had that lazy, untamed quality about it. His clothes were understated, yet there was something about him — something impossible to contain — that made him the only thing your eyes could find in all that bleached-out stillness.

Yunque’s footsteps stopped. Her heart lurched, catching itself.

Across the surge of people moving between them, Lu Rangchen stared at her without blinking for just a fraction of a second — then the corner of his mouth curved upward.

Liang Tian couldn’t contain herself. She grabbed Yunque’s arm and shouted on her behalf, “Yunque! Your boyfriend!”

It was, perhaps, a deliberate dig at certain people within earshot.

Maybe couples who’ve spent time apart always get that honeymoon feeling when they finally see each other again.

That evening, Lu Rangchen took Yunque out to dinner with some of his teammates.

One of the guys on the team was celebrating a birthday and had asked Lu Rangchen to come.

Lu Rangchen had had one condition: he wanted to bring his other half.

Because he was bringing Yunque, a few other teammates brought their significant others along as well.

A whole group of them, eating barbecue. Lu Rangchen barely seemed hungry — he just grilled and kept passing things to Yunque. Yunque ate quietly, and as she did, she noticed that the ring on his middle finger was still there.

After dinner, the group clamored to go sing karaoke.

Lu Rangchen asked Yunque if she wanted to go. Not wanting to dampen the mood, she said sure, why not.

So off they all went.

It was fun at first — singing, drinking, playing games. When the girls lost a round, their boyfriends drank on their behalf.

Yunque’s luck wasn’t great, and as a result Lu Rangchen ended up drinking quite a bit for her.

Later, Yunque decided she was done playing and stepped out to take a call. It was Feng Yanlai.

Feng Yanlai had been extremely clingy with her lately — a call every day. Yunque was patient with her, and even when she missed a call, she always rang back.

But that particular evening was different.

It wasn’t just Feng Yanlai being clingy. Lu Rangchen was too.

When Yunque had been gone long enough that he began to wonder, Lu Rangchen went straight out to look for her — and found her standing at the entrance to the KTV in a thin sweater, on the phone.

From her tone, Lu Rangchen could tell who she was talking to.

He didn’t rush her. He simply slipped off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders, then pulled her into his arms by the waist, tucking her securely against him.

He pressed the lower half of his face into the warm hollow of her neck and breathed her in.

Yunque sensed his exhaustion. She reached up and covered his hand where it rested at her waist, and the two matching rings clinked softly together.

Finally, Feng Yanlai finished saying everything she needed to say.

Just before hanging up, she suddenly asked, “Exams are here — has Lu Rangchen come back?”

The air went still for just a moment.

Yunque was quiet for a beat, then said, “He’s back.”

This time it was Feng Yanlai who fell silent.

She seemed to want to ask something — but couldn’t bring herself to. In the end she said nothing at all, and let the call end as if nothing had happened.

At that moment, Lu Rangchen straightened up and turned her to face him, wrapping his arms around her from the front.

A faint trace of alcohol drifted from him, along with his own particular scent — that dark agarwood.

It was as though only now, in this moment, were the two of them truly facing each other.

Lu Rangchen stroked her earlobe, his dark eyes lingering on her with a searching, hesitant expression. He said, “I don’t want to sing anymore. Want to go home?”

The home he meant was the apartment near campus — the place where the two of them had spent so many nights tangled up together. Yunque realized she hadn’t been there in a long time.

She held the drawstring of his hoodie, looking down. Her delicate, lovely face stayed quietly neutral, and it was hard to tell what she was thinking.

Lu Rangchen missed her so much it had driven him half out of his mind.

He didn’t care whether anyone was watching. He leaned down and kissed the corner of her mouth — restrained — then moved to her ear and pressed his lips there softly.

He wore her down, voice low and rough, murmuring, “Don’t you miss me?”

The corner of Yunque’s mouth tugged upward, just slightly. “I miss you,” she said.

But she didn’t dare think about it too deeply.

She was afraid that if she let herself feel it fully, she’d end up with nothing again — only empty disappointment.

And yet — how could you truly love someone and hold yourself back?

In the end, they didn’t stay for the rest of the gathering. Yunque and Lu Rangchen left early and went back to the apartment.

A place they hadn’t returned to in more than ten days.

But the space was immaculate — not a speck of dust anywhere. Even the cat’s bowl had been freshly filled with water and food.

Yunque had just taken off her jacket and was about to say something when Lu Rangchen pushed her gently against the wall.

His kiss was the same as always — urgent and intense — one hand tilting her chin up as he pulled her closer, demanding to know who the boy who had been hanging around her lately was.

So he’d known all along.

He knew everything.

He just never said a word.

Yunque’s back pressed against the wall. Her arms were wound around him. The tension between them was unbearable, and yet she held her ground, stubborn and deliberately contrary, telling him that the boy was her backup plan. So what?

But of course — it wasn’t true.

There was no backup plan. There was nothing. She only liked him.

That quietly studious boy had been turned down by her long ago. The reason they’d been spending time together was for a class project and club activities.

But since Yunque didn’t explain, how was Lu Rangchen to know.

All he knew was that he was losing control.

For so many days, he hadn’t been able to see Yunque — hadn’t even been able to look at his phone for more than a few seconds at home, terrified of upsetting Cheng Liru.

The divorce, the lawyers, the lawsuit, the dispute over assets.

On top of everything the Cheng family was throwing at them — all of it, every last bit, seemed to land squarely on his shoulders alone.

In those days, Lu Rangchen often felt like a city teetering on the edge of collapse — as if at any second, without warning, he might simply crumble.

Only when he saw Yunque did he feel his wound-tight nerves finally ease.

Outside the window, thin snow fell in a soft murmur. The curtains were open — up this high, there was no need to close them.

Lu Rangchen poured everything he had into her, his words carrying a hard edge, asking her over and over — “Couldn’t you have just come to me? If I don’t come to you, you’d be fine forever without reaching out? Is that it? Is that it?”

The more he pressed, the more he crowded her, as if he were taking revenge.

Yunque’s voice wore out. She stopped fighting and simply let herself go, the tangled sheets rising and falling around them.

Whatever Lu Rangchen wanted, she gave.

Even when it stung enough to redden her eyes and draw tears.

Looking back, she thought — to have each other in a snowy night like that was, in its way, romantic.

At the very least the heating was on, so neither of them had to worry about catching cold.

When Lu Rangchen’s energy finally gave out, he sank into her arms, a faint sheen of perspiration on his brow. Their scents mingled together, and he held her tight — unbearably tight — as if he wanted them to merge into one, unwilling to loosen his grip even a little.

Yunque blinked up at the dark ceiling.

She found herself thinking about two years ago — herself in an oversized school uniform, sneaking glances at him during outdoor exercise; or passing his classroom and pretending not to look, just letting her eyes sweep past the door.

How small she had made herself, back then.

Small enough that one extra glance from Lu Rangchen could keep her happy for days. She hadn’t dared imagine that someday the two of them would have a day like this — one that belonged completely to each other.

This seemed to be a day when Lu Rangchen loved her completely.

Only it seemed like that day was already drawing to a close.

She wondered who, in the end, would be the first to pull away.

—

For any student, exam week is an ordeal.

But for Lu Rangchen and Yunque that winter, it was one of the rare stretches of time in which they could truly lose themselves.

Whenever Yunque looked back on those weeks afterward, she always thought a particular phrase fit rather well: “the darkness before dawn.”

The dawn belonged to Cheng Liru and the Cheng family.

The darkness was hers and Lu Rangchen’s to inhabit.

Even so — even though they were entangled in each other almost constantly in those days, desire silent and consuming — nothing could stop the slow forward march of life’s progress.

Some people, some things — when they reach a certain turning point, change becomes inevitable. No one can stop it.

For example, after exams ended.

Lu Rangchen had to go back to Cheng Liru.

Not to Nancheng, not to the capital — he went to New Zealand.

It was said the environment there suited Cheng Liru’s recovery, that it would do her good to get away from the toxic atmosphere of her current surroundings. The Cheng family had made all the arrangements well in advance: Lu Rangchen was to accompany her there for the entire winter break.

Yunque, meanwhile, followed her own routine and went back to Nancheng for the holiday.

During that time, Lu Rangchen remained in frequent contact — WeChat messages, video calls, phone calls, none of it stopped — but the conversations were always brief.

As if he were still being careful.

And yet he never let more than a moment pass without being there.

Xu Linda didn’t know about any of the ugliness that had taken place between the two families.

But seeing it from the outside, she couldn’t help venting about Lu Rangchen — about how clingy and insecure he seemed to have become since he started dating.

Then, as if suddenly remembering something, she turned serious and looked at Yunque. “Oh, right, sweetheart — I forgot to tell you something.”

The two of them were sitting in a cat café at the time, petting cats.

Yunque was cradling a British Shorthair in her arms. She raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”

Xu Linda chewed her lip, choosing her words carefully. “If I tell you, please don’t blame me, okay? It really wasn’t intentional. And honestly, telling you or not doesn’t actually change anything between you two — but I feel like… I shouldn’t have kept it from you. It’s on me…”

Sometimes, Yunque genuinely lost patience with how long Xu Linda could drag things out.

She bit back a laugh and said, “Just tell me straight.”

Xu Linda pursed her lips, and finally came clean.

A while back, she and Deng Zhe had patched things up. And Deng Zhe had told her something.

Back when she was still in high school — before graduation — there had been one night when she and Deng Zhe had a fight. She’d drunk too much and spent the whole night crying, and Deng Zhe had taken her home.

That night, she had said things she shouldn’t have.

“I think I told him,” she said, “that you’d been secretly in love with Lu Rangchen for a long time.”

Xu Linda looked at Yunque with guilty eyes. Yunque looked back at her.

After a brief pause, Yunque said, “And so?”

“And so,” Xu Linda summed up, “Lu Rangchen knows that you’ve had feelings for him all along. Of course, it didn’t change anything between you two — look, you’re together now.”

“And I didn’t tell him on purpose — I only found out from Deng Zhe afterward. I asked him why Lu Rangchen had suddenly started pursuing you — it seemed strange — and Deng Zhe said it was because I’d drunk too much and let your secret slip. Anyway… you shouldn’t blame him either. If Deng Zhe hadn’t told Lu Rangchen, Lu Rangchen might never have chosen to attend Beijing University, and the two of you might never have gotten together…”

She got it all out in one breath and sighed with relief.

But when she finally looked up, she found Yunque’s expression had gone somewhere distant — blank in a way that was hard to read.

Xu Linda’s heart sank. “Hey — are you actually mad? I swear, Deng Zhe only told Lu Rangchen, he didn’t tell anyone else!”

“……”

Yunque came back to herself, shaking her head. “No, I’m not mad.”

“Then what were you just thinking about?”

“Nothing.”

Yunque looked out through the glass at the busy street beyond.

She had just suddenly realized something — that perhaps she was far less unique, far less irreplaceable, than she had imagined.

After seeing Xu Linda, Yunque attended two class reunions over the following couple of days.

She didn’t have much else to do at home anyway, and it was good to get out and clear her head.

Her social standing in class had never been particularly strong, but Yunque had always been well-liked. Add to that the fact that she was now dating Lu Rangchen, and she spent the whole reunion with people clustering around her, asking all sorts of questions.

Most of them were about her and Lu Rangchen — and why he hadn’t come.

Yunque told them he was in New Zealand with his mother.

She seemed perfectly calm about it, her manner light and serene.

Then she went to the bathroom and came back to hear two guys murmuring behind her backs, saying Lu Rangchen had gone to New Zealand? He’s clearly still in China — I ran into him at Nancheng First Hospital just a couple of days ago.

The words had barely finished when Yunque walked back in and sat down.

She looked exactly the same as always — cool, composed, that clean and quietly pretty face of hers betraying nothing, carrying that slightly unapproachable air of haughty composure.

The two guys fell silent immediately, and never found occasion to speak to Yunque for the rest of the evening.

The dinner wrapped up.

Yunque chose to walk home.

She remembered vaguely that there was heavy wind and snow that day, and she caught a bad cold shortly after getting back.

It was close to the New Year holiday. Feng Yanlai had gone to Guangzhou to stock inventory.

No one was there to take care of her.

Yunque had no choice but to call Lu Rangchen.

But Lu Rangchen didn’t pick up.

She couldn’t say why, but that night she was unusually stubborn about it. Even though Lu Rangchen called her every day at a fixed time, she just needed to call — and when he didn’t answer, she called again, and again, as if she were trying to confirm something.

But no matter how many times she tried, Lu Rangchen never picked up.

Yunque stopped calling. She put on her down jacket, went downstairs, found a nearby clinic, and got an IV drip.

Four bags of it.

There was no one to swap out the needles for her, so she just sat there and let the clinic’s doctor handle it.

Midway through the second bag, a couple arrived in the bed across from hers. The boy was there with his girlfriend, and he’d brought her all kinds of snacks to keep her from being bored, set up a tablet to play a Korean drama — all just to make her happy.

The girl’s smile was so bright it lit up the room — so bright that even Yunque couldn’t help but let the corner of her mouth lift, just a little.

But when she looked back down, the sting behind her nose was impossible to ignore.

That whole night, Lu Rangchen never called.

Yunque never forgot: they went three days without contact.

In those three days, she didn’t hear from Lu Rangchen — but wave after wave of devastating news found its way to her.

On the very day Feng Yanlai returned from Guangzhou, the internet erupted with a bombshell story: Nandong University professor Lu Dingzhong had been having an affair — and his partner was the owner of a popular online clothing shop affiliated with Nandong, none other than Feng Yanlai.

A video of Feng Yanlai being beaten that day was uploaded by an anonymous bystander, and within hours it was everywhere — consuming nearly half the trending slots on Weibo.

Yunque only found out through the Beijing University alumni group chat.

Someone had dug up the connection: her mother was Feng Yanlai; Lu Rangchen’s father was Lu Dingzhong. As soon as the news broke, the chat exploded with discussion.

The first thing Yunque saw when she opened the chat was a string of posts that cut right through her —

“Unbelievable. And Lu Rangchen still hasn’t broken up with her?? There are plenty of pretty girls out there. What’s he getting out of this?”

“How do you know they haven’t broken up? Maybe they split a while ago.”

“Really? Any proof?”

“What proof do you need? Look at couples these days — some of them only last a few months even without any drama. And have you seen Lu Rangchen’s background? I heard his mother has real power and status. Never mind this mess — even without it, they were never going to last.”

“Am I the only one who thinks Lu Rangchen might have dragged this out on purpose?”

“Dragged it out? What do you mean?”

“Either he wasn’t done with her yet, or it’s payback — think about it. He keeps the relationship going, then when the news breaks, he pulls a disappearing act or just breaks up with her cold. The girl would be devastated. A pretty neat way to get back at the ‘other woman,’ right?”

“Oh god, now that you put it that way, I can’t help but wonder — could this have been engineered by Lu Rangchen’s mother’s side all along?”

The messages kept coming, faster and faster.

As if the only thing that could satisfy their hunger for drama was pouring over someone else’s life.

Yunque’s chest tightened. She closed the chat.

Almost immediately, her phone began ringing — call after call from people she was close to, including Xu Linda and Liang Tian. She let them all go to voicemail, except for Ye Tian.

Ye Tian told her that something had happened at Feng Yanlai’s shop.

The shop from the video — people had gathered outside to gawk, and some were there to cause trouble.

He had happened to walk past and see it.

The moment Yunque heard this, it was like a bolt of lightning had gone straight through her — as if everything had been drained from her body at once.

Even so, she got in a cab and went.

By the time she arrived, things had already spun out of control. Ye Tian, in his effort to protect Feng Yanlai, had gotten into a physical fight with someone from the crowd. The man he’d hit had a head wound, and blood was flowing freely.

Someone called the police. The patrol car arrived quickly, and both Ye Tian and Feng Yanlai were taken to the station.

In the end, the whole ugly incident dragged on for an entire day.

The injured man finally agreed to accept a settlement. Ye Tian narrowly avoided any formal charges.

Deng Jiali wept with fright outside the police station, hitting Ye Tian over and over, cursing him for being useless — hadn’t she told him not to fight? Why had he done it anyway?

Ye Tian said nothing, jaw set, expression unyielding — he clearly didn’t believe he’d done anything wrong.

Not long after, Zhu Ping’an arrived as well.

They had, after all, been married once, and shared a daughter together. Zhu Ping’an had come to offer Feng Yanlai some comfort.

But the moment he showed up, Feng Yanlai only broke down harder — sitting in a chair with her face in her hands, sobbing loudly.

Through all of it, only Yunque remained calm, watching from the outside like someone who didn’t quite belong.

She had nothing to say and no emotions left to release.

She was just exhausted.

So tired she wanted to close her eyes and never wake up.

The small mercy was that the chaos lasted only one day before it ended.

Someone — no one knew who — paid to suppress the trending topics. The video of Feng Yanlai being beaten disappeared from the internet. The only thing that remained was Lu Dingzhong’s suspension and disciplinary action.

Public attention moved on quickly, chasing after the next new thing. Everyone was busy welcoming the new year.

And just like that, the Spring Festival was upon them.

The festive cheer of the holiday seemed capable of washing away everything — all the noise, all the turbulence. As if overnight, the world had returned to how it used to be.

All in all, Feng Yanlai was relatively stable during those few days.

On New Year’s Eve, she brought Yunque back to Yanliuxiang to celebrate.

An awkward family gathering, yet the mood was strangely warm. After dinner, Yunque and Ye Tian settled on the sofa to watch the Spring Festival Gala, and that was when a message came through from Liang Tian.

Liang Tian first asked whether she’d managed to get in touch with Lu Rangchen.

Then she told her something else — that the people who had been gossiping about Yunque in the group chat had not only been silenced, but had also been called in for a meeting with the student advisor. And every discussion thread about the two of them on the campus forum had been deleted and muted without exception.

She told Yunque not to worry — all that mess was over, and it wouldn’t hurt her anymore.

Yunque had barely been in contact with anyone for several days.

Her phone had been off. It was Feng Yanlai and the others who’d kept pestering her to go into the group chats and grab the New Year’s red envelopes, so she’d finally turned it on.

As soon as she did, a flood of missed calls and messages poured through.

The most, by far, were from Lu Rangchen.

In the days she’d gone silent, Lu Rangchen had finally reappeared.

He’d called many times, and he’d sent many messages. He said he wanted to see her. He said he wanted them to talk properly. He said there was a lot he needed to explain to her.

The most recent message had come just half an hour ago.

Yunque couldn’t quite name what she felt in that moment.

She only knew that the candy in her mouth was sweet, yet somehow it tasted bitter to her. The people on the television were laughing and happy, but she couldn’t feel any of it.

She wanted desperately to cry — but everyone around her was smiling.

She sat there for a long time, unmoving.

Liang Tian’s messages arrived and told her everything.

But honestly, Yunque didn’t care about any of it.

In some ways, she had always had a certain emotional resilience — an ability to let things roll off. But for certain people, certain things, all it took was a single thought and the grief felt like it could bury her alive.

In the end, Yunque sent Liang Tian only one message in reply.

She wrote: 【Thank you, Tiantian. I’m doing fine, really.】

After closing that chat window, she opened the one with Lu Rangchen.

It was full — packed — with messages from him.

She had never seen Lu Rangchen speak to her in a tone that approached anything like humility, and yet here he was, asking again and again — pleading with her to appear, to pick up the phone, to see him just once.

He was such an unyielding, indomitable person.

And yet he was willing to strip himself bare of every trace of pride for her.

But what could she do, Lu Rangchen.

It was already too late.

Tears came all at once — a sudden, unstoppable fall, drop by drop, hitting the screen and spreading, blurring the words beneath them.

Yunque’s fingertips went numb. She could barely breathe as she typed out one line.

She wrote: 【Lu Rangchen, let’s break up.】