No one had anticipated it — that someone as quiet and self-contained as Yunque would stand in front of that many people and say what she said.

Direct, unguarded, as though nothing in the world could touch her.

And the two of them were still exes, of all things.

A roomful of young men who had never witnessed anything like it in the arena of love, who hadn’t even noticed the person who’d just stepped in behind them — every last one of them was wearing a dumbstruck, awestruck expression.

Before any of them could so much as open their mouths, Lu Rangchen stepped forward without warning and dropped the drink onto the table with a thud. He pulled out a chair and sat down.

Tall and broad-shouldered, he radiated an air that was wild and cool in equal measure.

A faint drift of deep, rich agarwood clung to the air around him — dark, full-bodied, and quietly captivating.

Sensing his presence, Yunque swallowed softly.

She turned her head slightly, and found herself meeting Lu Rangchen’s gaze.

The rest of the room fell utterly silent, as though someone had cut off the sound at the source. Only Lu Rangchen spoke, unhurried, his expression giving nothing away as he regarded Yunque with half-lidded eyes.

“Had enough to eat?” he said.

“……”

Yunque glanced at what was left in front of her — she was, in fact, already full.

But for reasons she couldn’t quite articulate, she felt an urge to be contrary. She kept her expression composed and said, “Not yet.”

Lu Rangchen raised an eyebrow, his gaze sliding down to her narrow waist.

She was visibly bloated, her stomach rounded from how much she’d eaten — and here she was, lying about it.

Lu Rangchen knew her weight to the last ounce. He gave an immediate, dry laugh, and said — fine, then, eat. He’d wait.

The look on his face was that of someone biding their time to settle accounts.

Then he let his gaze sweep lazily across the rest of the table, his voice sharpening. “What are you all staring at? Mind your own food.”

That got everyone back to their senses. They resumed eating and drinking as if nothing had happened a moment ago.

Only Lu Rangchen continued to watch Yunque from beside her, undistracted by the noise and chatter around them.

Under that gaze, whatever appetite Yunque had left vanished entirely.

Whether it was stubbornness or something else, she set down her chopsticks and met his eyes.

She still wore that composed, coolly composed expression of hers — you knew it was a mask, you knew there was a whole other person underneath, reckless and trouble, someone you could never quite get free of — and yet you couldn’t help yourself.

So they held each other’s gaze for a few seconds.

Then Lu Rangchen asked again: “Full now?”

That gaze of his was thick and burning, scorching the very tip of her heart.

Something lurched inside her chest.

Yunque heard herself say, softly and involuntarily, “Full.”

The moment the words were out, she looked away — afraid that if she held his gaze a second longer, she’d drown in it and never surface.

Lu Rangchen allowed the faintest curve at the corner of his mouth. He rose, picked up her phone from the table, and tilted his chin toward the men sitting there. “We’re heading out. You all carry on.”

Then he glanced back toward Yunque and found that she had already opened the bottle of peach-flavored drink and was taking small sips — her soft lips full and pink.

It was sparkling water.

The bubbles were slightly gritty against the tongue.

Not sweet. But the taste it left behind in the mouth was clean and pleasant.

It was something Yunque used to do after eating something heavily flavored — have a bottle of this before she’d let Lu Rangchen kiss her.

Eight years on, and he still hadn’t forgotten.

When Yunque looked up, Lu Rangchen was already watching her with a low, unreadable look in his eyes. He said nothing, just turned and walked away.

Yunque had no choice but to follow.

Not only because of her phone.

But because this man — he had hooks in him. And they were buried in her.

What Yunque hadn’t expected was that the moment the two of them stepped onto the fourth floor, one after the other, Lu Rangchen grabbed her wrist and pressed her against the cold wall in a single swift motion.

Her heart shot up to her throat.

Not because of the suddenness of it — but because what she’d been bracing for had come true.

Lu Rangchen really had been holding back a fire. Holding back the urge to take revenge on her, to consume her.

He pushed his knee between her legs. He gripped her chin, claiming it the way he claimed everything that was his, and then he kissed her — domineering and fierce.

He must have been drinking cold beer; his lips carried a faint, chilly bitterness — but his tongue was scorching, forcing its way past her lips and teeth, pushing and plundering.

They traded breath, consuming and consumed, wanting growing thick and dense between them.

Yunque tilted her head back, her arms finding their way around his neck with no alternative.

It was the first kiss between them in eight years.

A peach-flavored kiss.

Neither of them could have predicted it — that there would still be something like this between them: impulsive, obsessive, shameless, blazing.

Lu Rangchen kissed her hard and deep, as if terrified she might run away again, his hands cupping the back of her head and her waist, drawing her in so close she could barely breathe, her legs and feet going lightheaded, as if she were floating on clouds.

Then the kiss drifted from her lips to the tip of her ear, down to her throat — trailing fire all the way. Lu Rangchen clearly had no intention of letting her off, and pressed a mark against her neck that belonged to him alone — harder than any time before.

A helpless, involuntary sound escaped the corner of her lips.

Yunque bit down on her teeth, crumpling his shirt in her fists, her voice small and helpless in his ear as she breathed his name — “Lu Rangchen.”

That one sound, entangled and clinging, was just like the sound he heard in his dreams in the middle of every night.

It was clearly a plea for mercy.

And yet it lit a more deeply suppressed flame in him.

The fire burned through him and scorched him.

Lu Rangchen rasped against her ear, his voice rough with resentment and barely leashed control: “Weren’t you asking me to let you go? And now what is this supposed to mean?”

“……”

“Think you’re clever, don’t you — think a few pretty words are all it takes to bring me around.”

“Yunque. There’s no one as selfish as you.”

“When you didn’t want me, when you were afraid of getting hurt — you kicked me aside without looking back. And now? Now you want me again, and you come back — all your little games, open and hidden.”

Lu Rangchen’s chest heaved. He let out a cold, reddened-eyed laugh. “On what basis, Yunque? What do you think I am to you? And what do you think you are to me?”

Those furious words were spent.

The corridor fell into a rustling, trembling silence.

Lu Rangchen gripped Yunque’s slight shoulders, while her eyes filled with a misted light — she looked at him with those shining eyes, and said nothing.

What was there to say.

Nothing worth saying.

Everything that needed saying had already been said just now, downstairs.

She’d said it too late. Lu Rangchen no longer believed it.

So Yunque didn’t struggle. She simply loosened her fingers from where they’d been gripping the hem of his shirt, the tip of her nose faintly red.

Her throat was tight. She lowered her eyes — and a scalding drop fell onto Lu Rangchen’s lean, muscled forearm.

A quiet sound as it landed.

The grip on her shoulders tightened. Lu Rangchen went completely still, as though a blade had just been slid between his ribs.

The next second, he heard Yunque’s voice, rough and waterlogged:

“I’m sorry. I won’t bother you anymore after this.”

And with that.

She gently pushed his hands away.

Turned and walked.

That night, Yunque considered going out to find a hotel.

But she had barely been back in the room for any time at all when the young man called Jiang Sui appeared at the door, fussing over her with all manner of attentiveness.

He came first with snacks and drinks, then came back with everyday supplies — a towel, toiletries, disposable slippers. After that, he took it upon himself to show her how to use Lu Rangchen’s projector, and set up a foreign film she loved. Most absurdly of all, in a flat full of grown men, he produced a scent diffuser from nowhere and insisted on lighting an aromatherapy candle for her.

But no matter how much he fussed and fretted.

Yunque gave no real response. She quietly kept packing her belongings.

Eventually even Jiang Sui ran out of patience and said, “Older sister, whatever you need tonight, I’ll make it happen — just please don’t leave.”

Yunque paused what she was doing and finally looked at him.

Jiang Sui’s expression was that of a man in genuine distress. He added, “Look, it’s nearly ten already, you’re here on your own, going out at this hour is dangerous for a woman, and if anything happened, our boss would—”

He caught himself too late, and gave his own mouth a reprimanding pat, then said, “Anyway. Don’t make trouble. Just tough it out for one night, alright?”

“……”

Yunque wasn’t so oblivious as to miss what was happening.

Jiang Sui seized on that pause to snatch the tote bag from her hands and sling it over his own shoulder.

The image was almost funny enough to make her do a double take.

Jiang Sui said, “Sister, you’re settled in for tonight, I’ll keep this safe and sound, and bring it back first thing in the morning!”

With that pronouncement, he gave her a wave and bolted.

The apartment — not small by any measure — was suddenly just her.

Without her phone, with nothing at all in hand, there was truly no way she could go anywhere.

At the end of it, Yunque understood what Jiang Sui’s performance had been about: Lu Rangchen didn’t want her to leave.

Though perhaps it was only his sense of decency. A small, residual consideration for a former girlfriend.

Whatever the case.

Yunque didn’t want to think about it anymore.

She was exhausted. So tired she wanted only to sleep.

……

Third floor, the club office.

Jiang Sui walked in looking like a man bringing tribute to a superior, and set Yunque’s bag down on the coffee table in front of the sofa.

Lu Rangchen had his elbows resting on his knees, smoking. He looked up at that, took one glance, and regarded Jiang Sui with an expression that quietly said: you’re something else.

Jiang Sui spread his hands. “What was I supposed to do? She’s got way too much backbone. If I hadn’t stolen her bag, she wasn’t going to pay me any attention at all.”

Then he edged closer to Lu Rangchen and said, “Not that it’s my place, boss, but I genuinely don’t understand you. The mood tonight was perfect — how did you manage to upset her that badly.”

The moment those two had been kissing upstairs.

Downstairs, beneath a surface of apparent calm, the whole group had been pressed against the corner of the staircase, ears straining.

Everyone had been certain the two of them would get back together tonight — but then their boss had managed to extinguish that small, flickering flame with just a few words.

Lu Rangchen was already fed up enough as it was.

Hearing that only made his frayed temper flare. He shot Jiang Sui a look like a blade and said, “Are you finished.”

Jiang Sui kept his expression perfectly flat and said, “Not finished. I think you owe the older sister an apology.”

Lu Rangchen pressed his tongue against his teeth and laughed despite himself, stubbing out the cigarette. He said, “Do you have any conscience at all? Who exactly feeds you?”

“……”

Jiang Sui finally shut his mouth.

But he still didn’t look particularly convinced. As he was leaving, he said flatly, “Anyway, what you did tonight was wrong.”

Wrong or not.

Lu Rangchen knew better than anyone.

Otherwise he wouldn’t have been sitting alone in the office chain-smoking all this time, or specifically sent Jiang Sui to block Yunque from leaving.

Only — some words, once said, are like water thrown from a cup. Regretting them changes nothing.

And with Yunque’s stubborn temperament, a few words alone wouldn’t be enough to win her back.

All told, the one who had the worst night of it was actually Lu Rangchen.

His sleep was always troubled to begin with; even with medication he had difficulty drifting off. When sleep finally came, he dreamed of Yunque — the two of them together, the way lovers are together, intimate and entwined.

He woke at three in the morning.

Outside, the world was utterly dark and still.

Lu Rangchen dug out a spare piece of paper, and went, irritably, to shower in the shared bathroom.

Since running into Yunque again, showering in the middle of the night had become a habit he’d somehow picked up.

When he came back, he reached for a cigarette — then thought of something, pulled his hand away, and settled instead against the windowsill with a mint candy.

He crunched through the candy with impatience, and pulled up the security feed for the fourth-floor accommodation.

The camera only covered the living room — he’d forgotten to mention that to Yunque.

The apartment was dark now. The bedroom door was firmly shut. On the sofa in the living room lay one of Yunque’s outer garments.

She really hadn’t left.

Lu Rangchen gave a faint, wordless tug at the corner of his mouth.

He just didn’t know, given that temper of hers, when she’d be willing to see him again.

……

The next morning.

Jiang Sui returned Yunque’s belongings of his own accord, and by before eight o’clock, Yunque had already called a cab and left.

Lu Rangchen only learned of this around nine — by which time Xinyue Xiangfu had already informed him that the power had been restored to the building, and Deng Jiao, in some inexplicable fit of initiative, had also sent him a covertly taken photo of Yunque teaching a class.

She stood at the lectern, slender and graceful, her bearing cool and serene, head bent over a book.

She was wearing the same outfit she’d had on when they ate hotpot together the night before — a clean, understated dress that suited her beautifully, showing off her figure, with embroidery at the waist. He’d run his fingers over that section of embroidery multiple times last night while he’d held her close.

There was a bandage on her neck as well.

Skin-toned, covering a mark he’d left. In the zoomed-in photo it was still fairly obvious.

Lu Rangchen stared at it in silence for a long while, zooming in and out and back in again. In the end, he saved the photo to his phone.

The moment he did, Deng Jiao sent a message: [Lu Rangchen!! Someone got there before you!! She has a kiss mark on her neck!!!]

He was suddenly struck by the thought that this girl was genuinely entertaining.

Outside of teaching, she seemed to be rather adept at everything — even observing people with this level of attentiveness.

He tugged a smile, amused in a thoroughly mercenary way, and replied: [Keep using your phone in class and I’ll have Old Liu confiscate it.]

Deng Jiao: [……]

Deng Jiao: [Goodbye!]

And with that, she truly went quiet.

Lu Rangchen couldn’t be bothered to deal with her.

Only it occurred to him, just then, that Old Liu probably had Yunque’s contact information.

He couldn’t have said exactly what came over him in that moment.

But after finishing up the morning training session and watching the squad run through their drills, he really did call Old Liu.

Old Liu, recognizing his voice, sounded genuinely surprised.

Lu Rangchen rubbed the bridge of his brow and said, “Nothing major — just wanted to get Yunque’s phone number from you.”

Old Liu’s voice carried a few notes of complexity. “But didn’t you two have a falling out the other time?”

Lu Rangchen pressed his tongue against his inner cheek, smiled slightly, and said with a kind of quiet resignation, “Yeah, we did. Which is why I need to get around to making it up to her.”

His tone — for once, stripped of its wild, stubborn edge — was indulgent in a way that could undo a person.

Old Liu caught on immediately, and exclaimed warmly that he’d send the number right over.

And that was how Lu Rangchen got hold of Yunque’s number.

He saved it to his phone, initially typing “Yunque” — then decided it felt too formal and deleted it. Changed it to “Little Sparrow.” Looked at it for a moment, felt that wasn’t right either, and finally settled on four characters: “Infuriating Creature.”

That one he was satisfied with.

Lu Rangchen gave a lazy, lopsided smile and called “Infuriating Creature.”

She must have been busy with something — the phone rang for quite a while before she picked up, and even then, Yunque’s tone was distant.

She said: “Hello.”

Lu Rangchen couldn’t be bothered with pleasantries. He made a languid sound of acknowledgment and said, with an unhurried ease that verged on casual: “How’s that corner of your mouth I mangled last night? All healed up yet?”