“……”

Honestly, Deng Jiao had genuinely not expected to run into Yunque here.

Running into her was one thing.

But this had to be the most awkward version of that scenario.

And worst of all, the person in question was her teacher — someone she had zero leverage against. One word from Yunque and Deng Jiao had no choice but to walk sheepishly over, doing her best to look innocent as she faced her, and said, “Teacher Zhu, how do you walk without making any sound?”

Yunque didn’t engage with that. She simply repeated: “What exactly happened to Lu Rangchen?”

She rarely used such a serious tone with her students.

Deng Jiao had never seen this side of Yunque before.

Normally she was always composed, as though teaching was simply the most ordinary thing in the world — something she put her heart into while it was happening, and then stepped away from completely when it was over.

This was the first time Deng Jiao had ever seen a personal emotion show on her face.

Deng Jiao was perceptive. She caught on immediately, and deliberately played it down: “Nothing much — he just drank too much and got a bit sick. Went to the hospital and got an IV.”

Yunque’s lips moved. She asked, “How is he now?”

“He’s okay,” Deng Jiao said. “He’s home.”

Her eyes shifted — and then she added: “A pretty older sister came to take him home, actually.”

Yunque appeared unbothered. She only said, “As long as he’s alright.”

With that, she turned and headed toward the checkout.

Deng Jiao’s friend, who had been listening to the whole exchange in bewilderment, came forward to whisper to Deng Jiao what was going on.

But Deng Jiao had no time for her — she went straight after Yunque and said, “Don’t you care about my sworn brother at all? He ended up like this because of you—”

She’d only gotten halfway through the sentence when Yunque turned and looked at her calmly.

It was like her tongue had been scorched. Deng Jiao went completely silent.

They held each other’s gaze for two seconds. Then Yunque looked away. Her tone was perfectly flat as she said, “He wouldn’t want to see me.”

People are strange that way sometimes.

What you feel inside is one thing. What comes out of your mouth is another entirely.

Words, once said, may feel satisfying in the moment — but regret has a way of following close behind.

This was true of Lu Rangchen, drinking himself into the ground that night. And it was true of Yunque now.

After that brief encounter with Deng Jiao in the store, Yunque kept busy all afternoon. It wasn’t until she was heading home from work that she let herself think about Lu Rangchen.

The feeling was genuinely conflicted.

Rationality told her: the two of them were what they were now. Stop struggling. But emotionally, she couldn’t stop wondering — how was he? Had he recovered?

She drifted along like that, not quite noticing, until she found herself back at the residential complex.

And in the very second before she swiped her card to enter, she stopped. And went to the convenience store next door instead.

That evening, Yunque bought fruit, medicine, and milk.

The fruit was a box of seasonal mixed fruit — all the kinds Lu Rangchen liked, down to the last detail.

The medicine was an assortment of cold remedies and things useful in a pinch.

After paying, she also bought a pack of good-quality cigarettes, then went back to the entrance of the complex and handed everything to the security guard on duty.

The guard looked at the clean, fair-featured, polite young woman and couldn’t help smiling. “A girl as pretty as you, and you’re not delivering this yourself?”

Yunque didn’t respond to that. She only said, “Sorry for the trouble.”

The guard said it was no trouble at all, and then, with the warm helpfulness of someone who’d seen it all, asked whether she’d like to leave her name — just in case the recipient asked who sent it.

Yunque shook her head. No need. And left.

Not long after she’d gone, the guard carried that large bag of items upstairs and knocked on the door of Unit 1606.

By then, Lin Zhi had just come back from a shopping run outside.

What was ordinarily a quiet, lifeless apartment had been stuffed to the brim with things by Lin Zhi, the compulsive buyer. Fresh fruit she’d bought. Self-heating rice, a whole case of it. She’d even hired someone to carry it all up for her.

Lu Rangchen, for his part, took the laid-back approach. Knowing she was on her way up, he couldn’t even be bothered to go down and meet her. He just sprawled lazily on the sofa, tablet in hand, watching training footage from the club.

Lin Zhi took one look at him and was furious — told him if he weren’t sick she’d grab a pillow and throw it right at him.

Lu Rangchen only glanced up at her, his expression bland. “Just leave it there. I’ll deal with it later.”

Lin Zhi glared at him. “Deal with it? As if. You’re terrible at looking after yourself — those things I bought would sit and go off before you’d think to put them in the fridge.”

Lu Rangchen let out a quiet snort of laughter.

Lin Zhi, not quite knowing why her mouth ran away with her, muttered almost without thinking, “Can’t even take care of yourself — but back in the day, you were plenty attentive taking care of that Zhu woman.”

It wasn’t an exaggeration.

Back when Lu Rangchen and Yunque were together, Yunque had been sick fairly often.

Every time she got sick, it fell to Lu Rangchen to deal with.

What anyone else would’ve handled as a minor inconvenience, he would blow into something major — off to the hospital, buying all manner of medicine and supplements, and then going home to cook for her himself.

Lu Rangchen’s cooking, to be frank, wasn’t particularly good.

But for Yunque’s sake, he’d taught himself several difficult dishes.

He’d even called Cheng Liru on a video call once to ask how to braise spare ribs, and how to steam fish properly.

Lin Zhi had been there during that video call, and couldn’t help teasing him afterward — telling him he’d never done this for his own mother.

When she said that, Yunque was right there beside Lu Rangchen, nursing small sips of instant noodle broth and looking up at him with wide, earnest eyes.

Lu Rangchen wasn’t bothered by the teasing at all.

He curved his lips into a light smile, that easy, careless manner of his, glanced sideways at Yunque, and silently mouthed two words at her: “Ignore her.”

In the end, he got the recipe.

Cheng Liru taught him over video call, step by step in real time.

Lu Rangchen was extraordinarily quick — hadn’t spent much time in the kitchen, yet somehow, with her guidance, he actually pulled it off.

So that evening, Yunque had, for the first time, eaten the most delicious steamed fish she’d ever tasted, and drunk the most wonderful fresh fish broth she’d ever had.

After eating her fill, her cold had actually gotten significantly better by some miracle.

From then on, any time Yunque had so much as a minor ailment, Lu Rangchen would make her steamed fish and braised spare ribs.

But after the two of them split, Lu Rangchen never set foot in a kitchen again.

He let his life go to ruin with complete indifference — open the fridge and you’d find nothing but drinks and beer. It was as though he’d become a completely different person, someone who no longer cared about himself at all.

Lin Zhi genuinely felt for him, and was also genuinely infuriated.

So infuriated that her mouth ran ahead of her, words coming out like knives aimed straight at the heart.

Of course she was frightened the moment she said it.

She clearly noticed that Lu Rangchen’s expression darkened, just slightly, when he heard those words — the eyes that had been fixed on the tablet going unmistakably elsewhere.

Lin Zhi felt immediately uncomfortable.

Regret and exasperation both, all at once.

Regret at her own inability to keep her mouth shut, at having pried open the exact thing that should have stayed closed — and exasperation at Yunque, who had a perfectly fine life abroad and had no business coming back to South City and making trouble.

She knew perfectly well that Lu Rangchen couldn’t get over her.

And yet she had to appear.

And now here they were — Lu Rangchen had drunk himself into gastritis and ended up in the hospital, and Lin Zhi was worried sick and didn’t even dare tell Cheng Liru.

The more Lin Zhi thought about it, the more furious she became — so much so that even the way she tidied the fridge looked like she was working through a temper tantrum.

She was just about to say something to Lu Rangchen when the doorbell rang.

Lu Rangchen raised an eyebrow at Lin Zhi. “More deliveries?”

“……” Lin Zhi rolled her eyes. “I’m done buying things, for your information.”

Lu Rangchen couldn’t be bothered to argue with her. He got up and went to open the door — and found himself looking at a security guard in camouflage fatigues, carrying two large bags, wearing a broad smile.

Lu Rangchen’s brow tipped upward slightly, asking what this was about.

The guard explained that a friend of his had asked him to bring these things up.

As he spoke, the man set the two bags inside.

Lu Rangchen looked down at them for a moment without speaking. It was Lin Zhi who came over and asked who had sent them.

The guard said, “A very pretty young woman. Spoke softly and gently.”

Lin Zhi frowned at that, turned to look at Lu Rangchen, and said, “What kind of admirer have you gone and picked up now.”

Lu Rangchen slipped his hands into his pockets, nudged one of the bags lightly with the toe of his shoe, said nothing, and gave the guard a slight upward tilt of his chin — a brief, dismissive “thanks.”

The door closed.

Lin Zhi crouched down and started going through the contents of the two bags.

Lu Rangchen simply leaned against the doorway with his arms folded, expression impassive, watching her “inventory” them.

There were all kinds of fresh fruit — the packaging alone told you it was expensive — as well as imported zero-lactose milk, and an array of medications.

Cold and fever remedies, hangover medicine, gastritis medication, and even eye drops for visual fatigue.

He stared at it for a few seconds.

Lu Rangchen suddenly seemed to understand something — and let out a short, quiet laugh.

He ground his back teeth lightly, and the tension coiled in his chest seemed, in that instant, to deflate like a punctured ball — the hostility draining out of him, little by little.

This ambiguous, lukewarm laugh baffled Lin Zhi entirely. She looked up at him and said, “What — remembered which admirer this is?”

Lu Rangchen said nothing.

He didn’t have any particular feeling he could name. He just picked up those two bags from the floor with a cold expression and dumped them on the kitchen island.

Lin Zhi sensed the renewed rise of tension in him and got to her feet, brushing down her skirt — muttering under her breath, not quite understanding, “what a strange one.”

That night, Lu Rangchen dreamed of Yunque again.

He’d lost track of how many times this month it had happened.

In the dream she was exactly as he remembered — cool and composed, delicate — lying still beneath him, her long dark hair spread out across the surface like ink, her narrow shoulders fragile enough that it seemed like one touch could shatter them.

He didn’t know how long the dream lasted. He only knew that the fever broke through sweat, and the illness cleared more than half.

Like a miracle medicine.

When he finally woke, it was to his alarm.

A pale fish-belly gray lit the horizon. Cool, muted morning light seeped through the curtains.

Lu Rangchen sat on the edge of the bed for a few seconds, then let out a sudden, self-deprecating laugh, took a fresh cigarette from the bedside drawer, and headed into the bathroom.

It seemed the rainy season had arrived. The weather in South City was consistently bad around that period.

Even early in the morning, the sky was a dull, heavy gray.

And with a typhoon passing through on top of that, travel during those few days was particularly difficult. One afternoon after work, Yunque got caught in a downpour.

Her resistance had always been naturally low.

Added to that, one of the other teachers in the office had come down with the flu — and with almost no surprise, Yunque caught a severe cold not long after.

Two women — one seated in the southeast corner, one by the southwest window — exchanging coughs back and forth across the office. One would cough, then the other, until the rest of the teachers around them were all anxious too.

Fortunately, they didn’t teach the same subjects or the same classes, and the academic dean, unable to watch any further, gave them both time off.

Yunque in particular.

She was thin and pale to begin with, and once illness struck, the effect looked alarming.

The dean gave her an extra day and told her to go home and get a drip.

Xiao Qingyu offered to walk her back, but Yunque declined.

With men, she had never been the type to drag things out. So she was fairly direct with Xiao Qingyu — she told him she had someone on her mind already and wasn’t looking to date anyone right now.

Xiao Qingyu was mortified, but kept his composure enough to say it was fine.

But having been turned down so plainly, he wasn’t in a position to keep pushing. So that day, Yunque ended up walking back through the rain entirely on her own.

There was a clinic at the base of her building.

Her throat was badly sore and her whole body felt drained, so she went in thinking she’d get an IV drip there.

As luck would have it, that day was full of sick people. Elderly patients, small children, parents with young kids — the waiting area was packed.

The clinic itself was already small, and with that many people crammed in, along with a tangle of smells, Yunque was on the verge of feeling nauseous.

In the end she decided she’d rather go back upstairs.

But the female doctor at the clinic was swamped — overwhelmed with the patients already inside, and with several more urgent home IV visits lined up after. She managed to talk Yunque into finishing the drip at the clinic first, then going back up.

Yunque was feeling so wretched by then that she just agreed on the spot.

What she hadn’t anticipated was that the doctor wouldn’t actually help her carry the drip bag upstairs. The moment the payment cleared, she’d packed up her kit and headed straight out the door, barely stopping to say goodbye.

The nurse left behind was run off her feet, too busy to spare a moment for Yunque either.

Yunque genuinely couldn’t even muster the energy to feel annoyed.

In the end, she simply gritted her teeth and took matters into her own hands — drip in one hand, holding the bag aloft in the other — and walked herself upstairs.

Fortunately, the clinic wasn’t far from her building.

She made it back to the entrance of her block in no time.

There are always kind people in the world. A woman passing by took one look at her and was immediately concerned, clucking in sympathy and asking if she needed any help.

Yunque’s nose stung with the sudden urge to cry. She nodded and said yes.

Standing there with tears barely held back, fair and delicate-looking, holding her own IV bag in the lobby of the building — she was impossible not to notice.

So when Lin Zhi came walking in through the entrance just then, she spotted Yunque immediately.

But unfortunately, Yunque hadn’t seen her — and with the help of the kind woman, she stepped into the elevator.

Lin Zhi stared after Yunque’s retreating figure in stunned disbelief. She could just barely make out Yunque saying to the woman, “Thank you, sorry for the trouble.”

The elevator doors closed.

Lin Zhi didn’t waste a second before calling Lu Rangchen.

Lu Rangchen was over at the club just then, accompanying some city officials who had come to observe and select talent. Seeing it was Lin Zhi calling, he didn’t rush to pick up.

Lin Zhi was fed up with being ignored. She switched to messages and fired them off:

[What the heck, is that Zhu woman out of her mind? How does she have the nerve to move into the same complex as you]

[Wait no, Lu Rangchen, tell me honestly — did you know she was living here? And yesterday’s fruit and medicine delivery — are you kidding me, seriously, what is happening]

[Ugh ugh ugh I’m so angry, what does she even want? Is she determined not to let you have any peace]

[And what are YOU thinking]

[Honestly I swear, if she hadn’t been there all alone doing an IV drip looking absolutely pitiful, I would’ve gone right up to her and given her a piece of my mind!]

Lin Zhi’s messages were a torrent — all of them with that sharp, cutting energy — and they had Lu Rangchen’s phone buzzing without pause.

He was genuinely exasperated by her. He took it out and glanced at the screen while someone nearby chuckled and said it must be his girlfriend, she seemed very clingy.

Lu Rangchen’s mouth pulled into a slight, flat curve. He said no.

And then — the next second — he saw that last message, and felt something give a sudden, sharp lurch in his chest.

Without the slightest hesitation, Lu Rangchen excused himself from the conversation, said something brief to the people beside him, asked them to carry on looking after the visiting officials, and slipped away — phone in hand — to a quiet corner near the front entrance, where he called Lin Zhi back.

Lin Zhi knew him too well.

She knew exactly why he’d called back so quickly.

And it only made her angrier. She lit into him even harder.

“Lu Rangchen, you are a glutton for punishment. She treats you like that, and then she sends you a few things and you just fold?”

But Lu Rangchen’s attention wasn’t on any of that.

His brow furrowed. He lowered his voice and asked, “What exactly did you see? What was happening with Yunque?”

Lin Zhi had given up entirely.

Given up in a way that made her want to laugh.

She said, “Lu Rangchen, if you keep going like this — throwing yourself under the bus — I’m done trying to save you.”

She had half expected those words to land like a slap and knock some sense into him. Instead, the other end of the line went quiet for a few seconds.

Then, out of nowhere, Lu Rangchen spoke — and his voice, when it came, was completely sincere.

“Then what do you think I should do.”

He let out a hollow, exhausted laugh. “Or do you think — if I just stop thinking about her, I’ll be happy? I’ll be fine?”

“……”

“Lin Zhi. I’ve tried. I genuinely can’t.”