The car was parked at the mouth of the alley — just a few steps away.

Yet even so, Lu Rangchen held Yunque’s hand in a tight grip the entire way.

She was the slender kind of thin — not gaunt, but fine-boned. Her hand was long, soft, faintly cool, as though a single squeeze might shatter it.

Lu Rangchen had always loved playing with her hands back then. Only he had never imagined that after they broke up, there would ever be another day quite like this one.

Yunque was led by him into the passenger seat just like that.

Li Tie had left a pack of cigarettes on the passenger seat. Lu Rangchen didn’t even glance at it, tossed it to the backseat, and switched on the air conditioning.

The interior held a faint, settled fragrance.

That scent that belonged specifically to Lu Rangchen — deep and clear at once, drawing you close, making you feel safe.

And just moments before, Yunque had genuinely thought she might never breathe that familiar, beloved smell again.

That anxious, uncertain feeling was still vivid. She couldn’t help it — she looked at him.

Lu Rangchen hadn’t rushed to start the engine either.

Seeing her looking at him, he raised an eyebrow, deliberately teasing her: “Why are you looking at me?”

Yunque’s eyelids were still faintly red.

She looked like something that needed to be cherished. And the words she spoke made it all the more so — she said, “I’m looking to see if you’re real.”

Lu Rangchen gave a half-smile and regarded her without saying a word. But his hand wasn’t behaving — it reached over and gave her cheek a deliberate little squeeze.

He said, “And now? Is it real?”

That touch wasn’t painful — pure indulgence in the force of it — pressing a soft, almost cute imprint into her cheek before releasing, careful not to make her cry.

Yet Yunque remained just as she had been — perfectly still, perfectly quiet, perfectly obedient — watching him with eyes as clear as a still pool of water.

Yet one knew, and knew it plainly, that this wasn’t actually her true nature.

She wasn’t so gentle. She wasn’t so easy.

She was the most masterful creature at commanding a person’s heart without even trying.

She was thoroughly, completely maddening.

Lu Rangchen’s throat moved. In the end he couldn’t hold the distance — his long lashes dipped low. He leaned in and pressed his lips to hers.

He kissed; Yunque lifted her chin slightly to reach him — naturally, the way lovers in the height of their feeling did.

A very light kiss. No desire tangled in it. Just lips meeting briefly, like a dragonfly skimming the water’s surface — and then they pulled back, eyes meeting as the distance resumed.

When the space between them had returned to something normal, Lu Rangchen spoke again: “You just cried that much, and I held you and comforted you for all that time — is there nothing you want to say to me now?”

His voice was low and measured — a rare kind of patience from him.

Yunque looked at him and thought: yes, there was.

There was a great deal.

But in the moment, she didn’t know where to begin.

She settled for reaching out and catching the first thread she could. She said, “I only got in contact with Xie Han today.”

Her eyes on Lu Rangchen were open and unguarded, without an ounce of equivocation. “It was my mom who went to find him. He helped with my little brother’s situation, then reached out to me. We’ve always been decent friends, so of course we’d naturally go out for dinner together.”

“What did he help your brother with?”

Lu Rangchen tilted his head and watched her at his leisure, his gaze pointed: “And another thing — why didn’t you come to me first when there was trouble?”

She had known he’d say that.

Yunque’s lips pressed slightly together. Her voice was very soft: “What are you to me, that I should go to you with every difficulty?”

The phrasing held a faint, playful edge of petulance. It made Lu Rangchen let out a low, suppressed laugh.

He narrowed his eyes with casual insolence and said, “Yunque — stop using that kind of line as an excuse. Do you really not know what weight you carry with me?”

— The weight she carried with him.

A small, quiet pulse in Yunque’s chest.

She looked up at him, her gaze shifting faintly.

Her eyes — guileless, deer-like — drew people in without any intention of doing so.

At last she swallowed and said, “How am I supposed to know what you think of me?”

She looked away slightly, lowering her eyes. “You’re the one who said it — that I was selfish, that I had no intention of having a change of heart.”

The words from that day, that moment — branded into her, and no matter how much time passed, Yunque could still recall them.

She couldn’t forget.

When it came to Lu Rangchen, she had never had that much confidence.

Even now, it had taken everything she had to say it out loud.

Only those delicate, refined brows and eyes could barely conceal the look of someone intending to settle scores — yet too stubborn to meet his gaze directly.

Lu Rangchen heard her and let out a laugh — a genuinely helpless one.

He tugged at the corner of his mouth and said, “Of everything I said that night, you picked out just that one part and twisted it completely out of context, didn’t you?”

One long, beautiful hand reached over and turned Yunque’s face toward him.

Lu Rangchen held her gaze with his own, eyes dark and deep, his tone unusually deliberate: “Yunque — can you have a little conscience? If I had truly meant it that way, would I have come back to find you the next day?”

“……”

Truly, he wouldn’t have.

She knew his temperament, his character. Once he actually made up his mind about something, he was ruthlessly cold — he wouldn’t even waste a glance on you, let alone call.

All of this Yunque knew perfectly well.

She simply couldn’t help herself — couldn’t help resting in the certainty of being valued, couldn’t stop needing reassurance, again and again.

And so she said, “Then what did you mean that day? Why did you kiss me and then say something that cut so deeply?”

Her expression was perfectly serious — the picture of someone come to collect a debt.

Lu Rangchen found it quietly amusing. He made a casual sound of acknowledgment and said, “Oh? So you’re still nursing a grudge about that, are you?”

“……”

“But — was I the one who was cruel? Think about it. Between the two of us, who wronged whom?”

At that, Yunque suddenly had nothing more to say.

Because all that past, all those old entanglements — who owed whom, who had wronged whom — both of them knew it clearly, down to the bone.

It was Lu Rangchen who let out a fairly calm laugh, then said, “Alright — I’ll admit, what I said that day was cruel. Including what happened at Lao Liu’s place. But have you ever thought about why I was that way? Hurting you with one hand, and drawing closer to you with the other — wanting you to draw closer, too.”

Yunque’s heartbeat went unsteady under his words.

Something was pressing against her chest — a tangle of feelings piled together, impossible to unknot or explain.

Lu Rangchen let his eyes fall half-closed, turning a lighter over in his fingers as though he had been thinking this over for a long time. He set aside any further argument and said, “Actually, I should have asked you long ago — what exactly did you come back wanting?”

As he said it, his tone was level, plain.

Even the gaze he turned on Yunque was calm and clear-headed.

Yunque had never seen this version of Lu Rangchen — that look cut straight through and swept into the deepest corners of her.

Lu Rangchen fixed his eyes on hers and said, “Do you truly want me? Or do you only want to feel the warmth of what we once had?”

She didn’t know why, but something in Yunque’s nose stung sharply.

Instinctively she parted her lips, wanting to say something — but Lu Rangchen held up a hand, cutting her off before the words could come.

He gave a small, quiet laugh on his own and said, “I don’t need you to answer me right now. I know you don’t decide things that easily.”

Yunque’s nature was what it was — three hits with a stick wouldn’t produce a single sound. Even now, in a situation like this, where the two of them seemed to have reconciled, she wouldn’t necessarily give you the answer you wanted. So Lu Rangchen had no choice but to accept that, and take the initiative to lay his own cards down on the table.

In truth, it was rather a helpless position to be in.

But that was the reality.

She barely needed to crook a finger, and he came rushing back to her side, like a dog on a leash.

It didn’t matter how firmly he had once made up his mind, or how flawless a performance of indifference he’d put on — in secret, he’d still lie awake all night after kissing her, and any small sign of change from her would leave him restless and unsettled.

Never mind just now, seeing her step out of another man’s car.

For one split second, Lu Rangchen had genuinely thought he was going to lose his mind.

Otherwise, he wouldn’t have gone forward — drawn in by the sight of Yunque’s lost, unmoored expression.

Lu Rangchen suddenly felt quite exhausted.

He didn’t want to go on like this any longer. He didn’t want this kind of pointless entanglement. So he said, “I’m not asking for any kind of declaration from you. Tonight I only want you to listen to me.”

He turned to face her and looked at her eyes with complete attention.

Her eyes were bright as diamonds, holding the same clear, luminous light that had made his heart race even when they were young.

Looking at her, his throat tightened. He had to look away, out through the car window at the dense night soaked in neon light.

His tone was plain and sincere: “Although I can’t say I’ve been enormously successful, I’ve saved a reasonable amount of money over these years. It isn’t a great deal, but it’s enough to get married, to buy a house, to raise children. It wasn’t borrowed from family — it was earned by my own hands, honestly and cleanly.”

“My mom — I wasn’t lying to you last time either. She really has found a new partner. She’s living well. Her depression hasn’t flared up again; she’s even healthier than she used to be.”

“She’s always wanted me to come back to the capital and live with her, but I’ve always insisted on staying in Nancheng. I won’t go back and live with her in the future either.”

“So in reality — she has no hold over me. No one has any hold over me. I became independent a long time ago.”

“As for Lin Zhi and my grandfather — I won’t accommodate them. I won’t get engaged, and I won’t get married for their sake. If I were capable of caving in, I would have caved long before now.”

“I’ve never known what you’re hesitating over. What you’re afraid of. Maybe you don’t like me enough. Maybe you’re afraid of a lot of things that lie ahead.”

“All I can say is — whatever comes before, I can’t fix that. But whatever comes after, I give you my word: if we’re together, I will not break up with you. And I will give you a good life. I, Lu Rangchen — have always been the same with you. That has never changed.”

At that point, Lu Rangchen’s voice went slightly rough.

He turned to look at Yunque.

But Yunque’s eyes had long since grown misty and warm. Burning, wet tears ran down her face from the corners of her eyes, falling onto her skirt — one drop, then another.

Those were the words that had been conveyed to her through Ye Tian on the day they broke up, all those years ago.

Yunque had kept them in her heart ever since. And she had never imagined that one day Lu Rangchen would speak them again, so vivid and alive, so that she could hear them herself.

In that moment, Yunque felt, for the very first time in her life, a truly wretched kind of shame.

Yet what she didn’t know was that the instant Lu Rangchen saw her cry, something in his chest collapsed entirely.

But he couldn’t stop.

He couldn’t stop, and he couldn’t let her keep pulling him back and forth like this.

So in the end, Lu Rangchen looked away. As though using silence to resist this moment of weakness, or perhaps something else entirely — either way, he said nothing.

Until Yunque spoke. She drew a quiet breath, her voice slightly hoarse: “Lu Rangchen — honestly, you’ve had rather bad luck meeting me.”

He hadn’t expected her to say that.

Lu Rangchen couldn’t help smiling. His eyes dimmed slightly as he said, “Yeah — pretty bad luck. But what can I do? I happen to want to.”

As he spoke, he turned to look at Yunque again.

Their eyes met, held.

As though finally ready — Lu Rangchen’s gaze went deep and steady, and he laid down the words that held up everything beneath: “Yunque, I’m giving you three days. Just three days. I need you to think it through completely.”

“If you still want to be with me — then for the rest of our lives, we’re bound together. Whatever comes our way, we don’t separate. Even in death, we’re buried side by side.”

“If you don’t have that kind of courage—”

A flicker in Lu Rangchen’s gaze. A faint, self-deprecating laugh. “Then you and I, in this life—”

He didn’t finish.

Yunque grabbed the hem of his clothes.

A light, quiet pull — like catching the trailing end of his very soul.

Lu Rangchen’s throat moved. He turned to look at Yunque.

Her gaze was trembling, soft and blurred with moisture. Her voice came out damp and slightly raw: “Lu Rangchen — let’s make up.”