It wasn’t a heavy remark, not exactly a light one either — but it landed on the noise of the dinner table like something sharp and precise.

Whether it was the man himself or the words he’d said, both carried the same unhurried, arrogant edge that no one had been remotely prepared for.

For a moment, everyone stared.

Zhao Xiaoqiu was even slower to catch on — it took her several seconds more to register that the exceptionally striking man now seated in front of her, radiating a particular kind of refinement, was the same person she’d just used to get under Yunque’s skin: Lu Rangchen, the school’s golden boy, once adored by practically every girl on campus.

You had to admit — time was profoundly uneven in how it distributed its effects.

For ordinary people, time was relentless erosion. But for a certain kind of person, it functioned as something else entirely — a catalyst that made everything sharper and finer.

Like Lu Rangchen, whose presence was commanding in a way that caught at the breath. Or Yunque, who managed to be the most striking person in any room simply by sitting quietly and saying nothing.

What made it more ironic still.

Zhao Xiaoqiu had intended to use Lu Rangchen as a weapon to embarrass Yunque — and instead the boomerang came flying back almost immediately, and the man himself had shown up to deliver the blow personally.

Rattled, Zhao Xiaoqiu’s voice faltered: “Lu Rangchen — what are you doing here?”

She knew Lin Zhinian. But that didn’t mean Lu Rangchen remembered Zhao Xiaoqiu.

He wasn’t particularly in the habit of indiscriminate magnanimity, and so he simply regarded her with a sardonic tilt of one brow and said: “And you are?”

A tone that laughed without laughing — a dismissal that landed like a gale. Zhao Xiaoqiu’s expression went dark in an instant.

And from somewhere across the table, one of the men who’d never warmed to Zhao Xiaoqiu barely suppressed a snort.

Her cheeks burned as though they were on fire.

Zhao Xiaoqiu simply stopped talking.

But Lu Rangchen was not finished.

He leaned back in his chair with idle ease, the corner of his mouth curling lazily. “Weren’t you being so very well-informed just a moment ago? Why stop now.”

Managing people was something he’d been doing for years in the club, dealing with a whole pack of younger troublemakers.

There was a quality in how he moved, how he held himself, that ordinary people simply didn’t have — a natural weight. It looked like carelessness on the surface, like he didn’t give a damn — and yet every word he said had a way of landing precisely on his target’s pressure point, leaving no room for a response.

The atmosphere at the table visibly curdled.

Zhao Xiaoqiu’s face cycled through shades of pale and gray, casting about for some way to recover.

Just then, something soft and gentle nudged against Lu Rangchen’s trouser leg under the table.

His trousers were loose and relaxed in cut — the fit of the fabric over his lean, long legs was easy and unhurried. Yunque hadn’t dared to do anything too bold; she’d only just barely pinched the fold of fabric where it gathered.

Like a small cat, drawing one careful claw across a place that mattered.

Lu Rangchen’s eyelid twitched. His gaze dropped sideways and landed on her face.

Yunque’s makeup was light today. Her profile was delicate and lovely. When she glanced over at him, her expression was quietly composed with a kind of clear-eyed gentleness — except for one corner of her mouth, where the skin was broken and faintly pink.

She said nothing. But her expression said it plainly: Enough.

Lu Rangchen’s brow shifted. For just a moment, the urge to actually laugh was genuine.

But the contrary streak came up, and the corner of his mouth curved almost imperceptibly. He said, deliberately, in full view of the whole table: “What are you tugging at me for.”

That tone — it made instantly clear that these two knew each other in a way that went far beyond strangers or casual acquaintances. This was not the behavior of people who’d long since parted ways.

The expressions around the table were varied and intrigued — everyone riveted.

Yunque was done.

Under that look from him, Lu Rangchen let his gaze rest on her openly, lifting an eyebrow. “Why aren’t you saying anything.”

As he spoke, his leg under the table deliberately bumped against hers.

The charged undercurrent was wordless and thick.

“……”

Yunque’s heart gave a hard thud.

There were moments she genuinely wanted to make a serious effort to hit him.

He was such a contradictory person — last night he’d gone after her with deliberate force, raged at her, and tonight he was pulling this.

She had no idea how Lu Rangchen had even known she was here.

And she had no idea what he wanted.

Her shoulders tensed invisibly. She could only say: “It’s a perfectly nice evening. Let’s not ruin the mood.”

Then she looked at Lu Rangchen. There was a clear accounting-to-be-settled quality in her eyes. She pressed her lips together and said, quietly, low enough for only the two of them to hear: “Wasn’t the incident at Old Liu’s enough?”

The others weren’t oblivious.

Watching the exchange between these two — the glances, the dynamic, the way they held themselves — it was plain that whatever was between them was nothing like what Zhao Xiaoqiu had made it out to be.

Zhao Xiaoqiu had very much kicked the wrong person.

She made a show of being absorbed in her phone, as if suddenly she had something pressing to attend to — just to save herself the worst of the embarrassment.

But Lu Rangchen really couldn’t have cared less about anyone else at that table.

From the moment he’d walked in, those dark, deep-set eyes of his had had only Yunque in them.

Now, at her remark, Lu Rangchen let out a low, amused sound, turning to look at her with undisguised boldness and saying, “Listen to yourself — any conscience in there?”

His voice was quiet.

As if he were deliberately keeping the resonance low, murmuring just to her.

Yunque’s pulse picked up its pace.

She didn’t look at him. She picked up her water glass and took a sip, then said softly: “No.”

That was her.

Even when she felt ten parts, she let three parts show, at most.

Stubborn enough to leave you at a loss, and infuriating enough to make you itch.

Lu Rangchen knew her nature far too well — knew that stiff, contrary temperament of hers wasn’t going anywhere in the near term. He could only give a helpless huff of quiet laughter.

Just then, the man across the table had been working up the nerve to strike up a conversation with Lu Rangchen.

So the two of them diverged, and the conversation between Yunque and Lu Rangchen drifted off for the moment.

The man was the one who had been so openly admiring of Lu Rangchen a few minutes ago. Having finally caught a proper opening, he introduced himself without hesitation.

Lu Rangchen wasn’t the type to be aloof, for all that he’d been raised with every advantage. When someone reached out to him, he engaged — everyone at this table was more or less a stranger, so why not.

They talked — how the club had gotten started, the commercial prospects of Lu Rangchen’s tennis team, the main things the club offered. As the conversation went on, more people at the table drifted in.

Yunque didn’t say a word the entire time. She only occasionally glanced over at Lu Rangchen.

And whenever she looked, he was already looking back. Their eyes found each other with an ease that needed no effort.

It had to be said: there was something almost inexplicably compelling about this man. He didn’t have to do anything deliberate. He simply sat there, breathing, and the pull of him was enough to make a person’s thoughts drift.

She wasn’t the only one, either. A few of the women at the table had that same glitter of interest in their eyes — the admiration too genuine to feign otherwise.

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

Perhaps it was the emotion from last night that hadn’t fully settled. Perhaps it was jealousy. Perhaps it was bewilderment — bewilderment at how he’d shown up, at why he’d shown up, at why he’d come to her defense.

But before she could work up to asking.

The table began receiving dishes.

Niu Haifeng had chosen well — a good hotel, dishes that weren’t cheap. He was genuinely generous in that way.

When he saw the full table, he came over immediately.

And when his eyes landed on Lu Rangchen, he stopped short, genuinely taken aback. He never could have imagined that this one would be here.

After all, Lu Rangchen had left at the end of his second year. There had been no way to reach him with an invitation.

Lu Rangchen offered an easy explanation, lifting a glance. “Yunque mentioned it. I had nothing on, so I came. Wanted to see you.”

Then he slid a brief look toward Yunque.

Niu Haifeng looked between the two of them.

Teachers see a great many people in their lives — he picked up on the particular quality of their dynamic immediately, and said, with the slightly belated air of someone working it out: “Oh — do you two know each other?”

Yunque nodded without thinking and said yes.

But at the same moment, Lu Rangchen opened his mouth, and said, in a tone heavy with implication: “Know each other doesn’t begin to cover it.”

Just having him look at her like that made something inside her shiver.

Niu Haifeng caught something like an old wound in the air between them and laughed, asking in good-natured teasing: “Some old score between you two?”

A dozen pairs of eyes scorched the two of them.

Just when Yunque was bracing for Lu Rangchen to stir up trouble again, he tugged the corner of his mouth, looked at her directly, and — with magnanimous restraint — said: “No. She’s just a younger sister’s teacher.”

Then, as if to drive the point home, he looked at Yunque with a teasing, playful expression, and said: “Got to stay on good terms with the teacher, haven’t I.”

“……”

Because of those words, Yunque didn’t give him a single glance for the rest of the meal.

Not that it seemed to bother Lu Rangchen.

He looked perfectly at ease from the outside — but under the table, he found quiet, steady occasions to place food in her bowl.

He didn’t like crab himself, but he still carefully extracted several portions of crab roe and dropped them into her plate. He had an excuse, after all — he was “staying on good terms with the teacher.”

No matter how irritated Yunque was, she wasn’t about to start a fight with food. In the end, she ate it all like a good sport.

After the meal, she and Li Chan went to find Niu Haifeng to give him their red envelopes privately.

Niu Haifeng demurred quite a bit, and in the end accepted Li Chan’s.

Li Chan smiled and said, “It’s not much, just a token — please don’t mind it, Teacher.”

Niu Haifeng laughed with genuine warmth. Seeing a student he’d watched grow up now working at a listed company in Nancheng — he couldn’t help but feel proud.

Though what gave him even greater pride, if he was honest, were Lu Rangchen and Yunque.

After Li Chan stepped away, he spoke privately with Yunque.

Yunque gave a small, wry curve of her mouth and said, “There’s nothing to be proud of — it’s a private school, and it’s not exactly a strong class.”

Niu Haifeng disagreed. “That has nothing to do with whether it’s private or not. What matters is whether you’re realizing your own potential. I’ve heard people mention you — said the English scores in your classes have gone up noticeably, and even the difficult students have settled down. Your principal can’t stop praising you. Doesn’t that deserve recognition?”

Yunque wasn’t used to being praised. She only pressed her lips together in a quiet smile and said nothing.

Niu Haifeng then asked: “But I’m curious — you were doing well at that international school in the capital. Why did you come back all of a sudden?”

The salary at Yuhua School was decent, but it couldn’t compare to that institution.

Niu Haifeng had never quite understood why she’d been willing to give up such a promising position.

No one had ever asked Yunque this question so directly and sincerely before.

Perhaps the weight of a former teacher’s regard simply carried more.

Yunque pressed her lips together and told the truth. She said: “Because there’s someone in Nancheng I couldn’t let go of.”

Who that person was required no elaboration.

By this point, Niu Haifeng had read the situation between the two of them clearly. He nodded with a smile and said: “If it’s him — then of course you couldn’t let go.”

“After all, out of every girl I ever taught, quite a few of them never stopped thinking about him.”

“……”

Yunque’s brow gave a sudden, involuntary leap. She was abruptly mortified.

It was exactly then that Niu Haifeng declined her red envelope, explaining: “In that case, I won’t take yours — Lu Rangchen already gave on behalf of both of you.”

Yunque stilled at that. “Lu Rangchen gave it on my behalf?”

Niu Haifeng confirmed it — said the amount hadn’t been small, and that Lu Rangchen had said it was from the two of them together.

Niu Haifeng had too many relatives and friends to attend to and couldn’t stay in one place long. However it had unfolded, the red envelope Yunque had prepared never made it out of her hands that night.

Her feelings were impossible to untangle.

And a kind of aimless, unmoored feeling had come over her.

It was right at that moment that she stepped out of the hotel’s main hall, turned — and found Lu Rangchen leaning against the wall beside a rubbish bin, smoking with unhurried ease.

Tall and languid, casually propped against the wall. His bearing set him apart from everything around him.

Between his long, pale fingers a point of deep red glowed. Blue-white smoke coiled around him, and he stood half-narrowed in it, his gaze on her both wild and invasive, as if he intended to take all of her in.

Something lifted in her chest.

Yunque stood where she was, barely breathing.

Lu Rangchen looked at her through the haze of smoke and ash with steady patience — as if he’d been waiting quite a while — and the moment he saw her, he crushed the cigarette out with unhurried ease.

He let the lingering scent of tobacco scatter around him, and pushed away from the wall at a relaxed pace, one hand going into his pocket.

He tilted his chin toward the door outside.

His gaze settled on Yunque — dark, deep, and unhurried — and the corner of his mouth pulled very faintly as he said:

“Head back together?”