In all fairness, those words were devastating enough to cut.

No one without some deep, complicated history could have said them — let alone paired them with a phrase like “pastures already grazed.”

Even the most socially oblivious person at that table could hear, in that moment, what kind of relationship these two had once shared. Old Liu, who had sensed something was off before anyone else, certainly could.

Old Liu looked at Lu Rangchen, then at Yunque, the disbelief in her eyes threatening to spill over.

Before she could say anything, Lu Rangchen was already rising from his seat.

With the atmosphere having turned like this, there was no point continuing to play along. And his pride wouldn’t allow anyone to make him the subject of idle dinner gossip.

He did feel some regret on Old Liu’s account.

But even given another chance, he would have done the same.

Some words, some emotions — they’d been lodged inside him, buried under years of compression. Sometimes they genuinely needed a moment, a sudden surge, just to break through.

So he was unhesitating about it. Unhesitating with a kind of deep-seated fatigue behind it. He said to Old Liu, “I’m sorry — I have something I need to attend to. I won’t be staying for dinner tonight.”

He reached into his pocket, withdrew a club membership card he had prepared in advance, and placed it on the table in front of her. “A small gesture.”

His low, resonant voice settled over the room with an easy warmth — yet the effect it had was the opposite of easy.

He said nothing further to anyone else, and without touching his chopsticks even once, he left early.

With his departure, the atmosphere at the table became even more peculiar.

Every pair of eyes landed on Yunque. In particular, the Chinese language teacher — Zhang Leyao, the one who had opened the door for Lu Rangchen — came over and asked with careful, probing curiosity: “Teacher Zhu, what exactly is your relationship with Deng Zhe?”

The chemistry teacher sitting beside her heard this and gave her a quiet nudge under the table, signaling her to be quiet.

And rightly so.

Yunque’s fingertips had gone white from clenching them, and the color had drained from her face — leaving something like a fine layer of frost on her skin.

Yet even in that state, Yunque answered her.

She said, “He’s not Deng Zhe. He’s Lu Rangchen.”

Zhang Leyao’s eyes went wide. “What? He’s not Deng Zhe?”

She still hadn’t quite pieced it all together when Yunque picked up her phone, stood, and made to leave. Old Liu, who had just come back in after seeing Lu Rangchen out, saw her moving toward the door as well, and said with a slight edge of reproach, “And where do you think you’re going?”

Yunque had always been the kind of person who, once she’d made up her mind, didn’t waver.

Her voice was perfectly level, betraying nothing. “I’m going to step out and say a few words to him. I’ll be right back.”

Like a headstrong daughter refusing to listen to reason, Yunque left that sentence behind and walked out without looking back.

Outside, the night was still damp from the earlier drizzle.

The wind carried a cool, moist chill — but Yunque’s chest was burning.

She knew that if she missed this chance, it would only become harder to see him after this. She knew exactly how absolute he could be when he was angry. So she walked fast — terrified that if she slowed down even for a moment, Lu Rangchen would vanish before she could reach him.

Fortunately, Lu Rangchen’s car hadn’t moved yet.

That unmistakable black G-Class was parked right at the entrance of the residential compound, its headlights cutting through the deep, dense night.

Lu Rangchen sat in the car and watched, with open eyes, as Yunque came toward him, breathing lightly, her steps quick.

The fringe across her forehead was slightly disheveled. She kept her eyes fixed on him, her frame slight and slender, but her bearing — standing before him with a lone, fierce kind of courage.

Still just as stubborn as she’d been eight years ago.

Stubborn enough that tonight, if he didn’t say a word, she would stand there blocking his car and refuse to move.

Lu Rangchen knew her far too well.

And it was precisely because he knew her that his gaze, when it rested on her, turned even colder.

He kept his eyes fixed hard on Yunque, gripped the steering wheel with white-knuckled tension, and let out a low, restrained scoff through clenched teeth. “What does Teacher Zhu want to do now?”

His stare was like a needle, driving pain straight through Yunque’s throat.

She swallowed through the ache in her voice and said, “Explain things to you.”

Lu Rangchen laughed this time — a real laugh, saturated with mockery and the bluntness of someone calling a bluff. “Is there any point between the two of us?”

Yunque said nothing.

Seeing the car about to pull forward, she clenched her teeth and grabbed his car window.

It turned out that move worked.

The foot he’d pressed toward the accelerator never fully committed. In the next breath, he heard Yunque say, “I didn’t know you’d be here tonight.”

Her voice was damp, like the rain.

Those bright, clear dark eyes of hers seemed to have taken on a haze.

Lu Rangchen’s throat moved slightly, his gaze darkening as it fixed on those slender, fair, soft fingers of hers.

Yunque’s voice trembled almost imperceptibly as she continued: “I didn’t know Old Liu was going to try to introduce us either.”

Lu Rangchen scoffed coldly. “So?”

Yunque drew a quiet breath and said, “I didn’t mean to put you in an awkward position. And the person you saw this afternoon — he isn’t—”

Lu Rangchen had no patience to hear the rest.

He cut her off directly. “Zhu Yunque. Do you still think I have some feeling for you?”

The words sent a jolt through her.

Lu Rangchen’s gaze bore into her, relentless. “Or is it that you didn’t finish playing games with me the first time, and you’ve come back to keep playing?”

He laughed — light and careless, cavalier and derisive — and said, “Play me until you get tired of it, then kick me aside. Is that it?”

The tone was strangely gentle. The words were anything but.

Yet that cruelty wasn’t aimed only at Yunque. It was aimed at himself just as much.

He hadn’t been without hope.

In that fraction of a second, he had hoped — hoped to read something in her eyes. Even a trace, even a flicker of something, would have been enough to shake him.

But there was nothing.

What came back to him was only guilt and avoidance.

Yunque’s eyes wavered like a small flame caught in a draft.

She couldn’t quite say what was going through her mind. Perhaps coming back from the capital had been a selfish, impulsive decision all along — she hadn’t thought through what she was doing, hadn’t thought through how to be responsible toward the Lu Rangchen who now stood before her.

He watched the fingers she had rested on his car window draw back, one by one.

The last trace of warmth disappeared from Lu Rangchen’s eyes.

With a desolate, unconscious pull of his lips, he looked down. His voice was very quiet. “Zhu Yunque. Eight years ago, you were the one who begged me to let you go.”

Eight years ago.

He had earned the largest windfall of his life, bought a plane ticket to Australia, and gone there for the sole purpose of asking her to get back together.

But the one who greeted him was not Yunque. It was a new boyfriend she’d taken up with — a Chinese-American raised abroad, from a well-off family, with that polished American elite air about him. He’d been quite direct: Yunque won’t come, he’d said. She won’t see you.

Then he’d added: Yunque asks you to let her go — and to let yourself go too.

Lu Rangchen could no longer clearly recall what state of mind he’d been in as he turned and left in that moment. Perhaps something close to devastation and collapse — but from that point on, he had buried everything to do with Yunque. Whatever needed hiding, he hid; whatever needed deleting, he deleted.

And he never again carried any desire for revenge. Never again went out of his way to act something out with other women in some petty performance.

Because he knew Yunque simply wouldn’t care.

She had her new life.

He even wished her well.

But who could have predicted that eight years later, things would come to this — that just when he had convinced himself he’d healed, she would reappear in his life as audaciously as if she owned it, and proceed to occupy every corner of his attention.

He let out a small, involuntary laugh at his own expense.

Lu Rangchen looked up at her one last time and said, “There’s no such thing, Zhu Yunque.”

“……”

“What’s over is over.”

He withdrew his gaze, his expression blank, and pressed his foot steadily to the accelerator.

In no time at all, that black G-Class dissolved into the deep, dark night.

That evening, Yunque went back and finished the dinner.

After all, it had been a happy occasion before any of this — she couldn’t be the one to ruin it, again and again. Old Liu, of course, was concerned, and privately pulled her aside to ask what had happened.

Yunque was well-practiced at putting on a composed front. In the end, she brushed it off in a few words, saying it was nothing, that Lu Rangchen just couldn’t stand the sight of her.

Old Liu sighed and said that Deng Jiao’s brother really was something, to have been deceiving everyone all this time as if they were all fools.

Yunque didn’t respond. She was distracted throughout the meal, and was the first among them to leave.

When she got home, she couldn’t even bring herself to unpack. She simply washed up, took her medication, got into bed, and went to sleep — as though sleep could wash away every look Lu Rangchen had given her that night, and every word he had said.

By Monday, life seemed to have restarted like a new round of a game.

Everything cycled back around. Lesson prep, teaching, grading, writing work summaries — all of it just as before.

The only difference, if there was one, was Xiao Qingyu’s attitude toward her.

Ever since she had moved into his property, his attentiveness toward her had become more frequent. He even made a point of inviting her to the cafeteria for lunch.

When Xiao Qingyu called out to Yunque, Zhang Leyao — sitting at the far end of the office — made an elaborate show of watching the two of them.

They ended up having lunch together in the school’s second-floor cafeteria, a few of them sharing a table and ordering several dishes between them.

Yunque had a slight aversion to other people’s mess, and as a result, she barely ate anything, let alone had any interest in their aimless chatter.

Lunch was over soon enough.

Yunque’s stomach was still empty, so she mentioned wanting to go to the convenience store.

Xiao Qingyu, ever eager, offered to come along.

Yunque was about to decline when Zhang Leyao cut in with a smile: “Just let Xiao Qingyu do your shopping for you. He’d be more than happy.”

Xiao Qingyu shifted with a touch of awkwardness, then laughed and asked Yunque, “Do you want me to go for you?”

It was then that Yunque glanced over at Zhang Leyao. “No, thanks. I want to go by myself.”

Zhang Leyao was caught off guard by that level look and pressed her lips together with a barely concealed sulk.

Yunque left that comment behind and turned to go.

The store was close to the teaching building — she reached it in no time. She went in, picked out some yogurt and a bread roll, and was just about to leave when a familiar voice drifted over from near the entrance.

A bright, energetic voice — the kind that told you instantly it belonged to a teenager of seventeen or eighteen.

Deng Jiao’s tone carried a thread of complaint: “It’s all because of those two unreliable brothers of mine. Saturday night they insisted on setting up a barbecue in the courtyard, and the whole group of them were drinking and smoking until all hours, so I couldn’t focus on studying upstairs at all.”

The girl she was with was someone Yunque recognized too — one of the top students in the class.

The girl laughed and said, “You’re just making excuses. Even if Saturday didn’t work, there was still Sunday — why couldn’t you memorize your texts then?”

Deng Jiao became even more aggrieved at the mention of it.

She let out a dramatic groan and said, “Don’t even get me started on Sunday — Sunday was even worse. I had to take care of two sick people all by myself.”

At those words, Yunque’s heart gave a sudden jump.

Deng Jiao was thoroughly exasperated. “Those two brothers of mine — they look all tall and handsome and cool, and then what? They both drank until the early hours of the morning, both went out in the cold wind afterward, and the next day one of them had a flare-up of enteritis — his own fault — and the other ended up in the hospital with acute gastritis and a bad cold. And I was the only one there to look after both of them!”

The other girl gasped in exaggerated disbelief. “That serious? Why did they drink so much?”

Deng Jiao sighed. “Why else? Obviously because of a woman.”

She was a girl who didn’t quite understand love yet — but she had strong opinions about other people’s romantic dramas.

“It’s my sworn brother,” she said. “He ran into his ex — that ex he was absolutely head over heels about — and she did something, nobody knows exactly what, but anyway, it set him off again.”

“And my sworn brother, well, he’s always been ridiculously proud. There’s no way he’d back down, so when he got angry, he said all kinds of harsh things to her.”

“He said them, got it out of his system, upset her — felt better in the moment, and then,” Deng Jiao spread her hands, “came straight home and drank himself into the ground out of misery and regret!”

The other girl burst out laughing.

Deng Jiao rolled her eyes and said, “The worst part is me. Not only do I have to serve my actual brother, cooking and making porridge for him — but then I also have to go visit my sworn brother in the hospital. Honestly, sometimes I want to call his ex myself and make her come take care of him. It’s her fault he’s this wrecked.”

The other girl asked with wide-eyed naivety, “Does your sworn brother still like that ex?”

Deng Jiao’s tone was emphatic. “Do you even need to ask? Of course he does — why else would he be this upset? I’m telling you, all these years, she’s the only one who’s ever gotten to him like this. One day, when she comes to her senses and takes a softer approach with him, he’ll absolutely go back to her without a second thought—”

As she said this, Deng Jiao turned around, gripping two bags of shrimp chips — and the last thing she ever expected was to find the ex in question, the one she’d just been describing as the great breaker of hearts, standing right there at the end of the snack aisle.

Same face as always — serene and gentle.

No particular expression as she looked at you. Yet different from before, somehow.

The moment Deng Jiao saw her, she got such a fright her soul nearly left her body. Her voice came out in a shaky, strangled yelp: “Teacher Zhu — how, when, why are you here—”

The words had barely landed before Yunque: “……”

She couldn’t even be bothered to deal with the girl’s chronic swearing problem. She furrowed her brow slightly and said, “What happened to Lu Rangchen?”