Faced with a choice between eating and folding the blanket.
Nan Chu chose Lin Luxiao without a moment’s hesitation.
Perhaps once Nan Yueru came back, she might not even get another chance to see him. Thinking of it that way, that particular evening seemed like a gift from heaven, given to “Nan Chu at sixteen, with her first stirrings of feeling.”
That night.
Lin Luxiao leaned against the window, smoking.
Nan Chu stood by the bed with her heart full of unspoken thoughts, folding and refolding the so-called “tofu-block” blanket over and over again.
The young woman learned quickly — each attempt better than the last. When she got it right, she was pleased with herself, turning her head around to look at him with an expression that plainly asked for praise.
Lin Luxiao lounged against the wall, flicked some ash off the cigarette, and glanced over. “Crooked.”
The young woman’s face fell. She turned back to adjust, and kept going until the blanket was folded into a perfectly squared, regulation-standard cube.
Only then did Lin Luxiao give a satisfied nod. He pinched out the cigarette and walked away.
The curry rice on the table had gone cold and inedible. Nan Chu wasn’t particularly hungry anyway, so she tipped the rice into the bin, settled onto the couch, and took out her script to study — the screenplay for the first film she was set to appear in.
She was about halfway through when something appeared on the coffee table.
A white plastic bag.
Nan Chu looked up.
A takeout order, still steaming.
On instinct she turned her head. Lin Luxiao dropped his keys on the coffee table and plonked himself down on the couch beside her.
“What is this?” Nan Chu asked.
Lin Luxiao: “Didn’t you not eat enough?”
“You went out specifically to buy this?”
He raised an eyebrow and leaned back against the couch, lazily drawling: “How else — did it fall out of the sky?”
“Thank you,” Nan Chu said.
Without much expression, he gestured for her to eat quickly, picked up the remote and started flipping through channels. Nan Chu moved the noodles onto the coffee table and sat on the floor to eat.
Lin Luxiao glanced at her, grabbed one of the cushions from the couch and tossed it to her. “Don’t just sit on the bare floor like that.”
Nan Chu: “……”
She was still wearing her trousers.
He always spoke directly, without any pretense of chivalry. To Nan Chu’s ears, it was actually quite refreshing.
The TV screen kept cycling. Lin Luxiao couldn’t find anything he wanted to watch, so he casually asked Nan Chu: “What do you want to watch?”
Nan Chu looked up. The screen had happened to stop on a foreign literary film — “The Decameron.” She slurped up a mouthful of noodles and said: “This, I guess. I’ve never seen it.”
Lin Luxiao raised a brow. “Are you sure?”
Nan Chu slurped another mouthful of noodles, the ends hanging from her lips. She hadn’t bitten through yet. She nodded. “Have you seen it?”
Lin Luxiao shook his head, lit a cigarette, and used his chin to point at the screen. “No. Go ahead.”
The film was a Hong Kong remake. Many of the more explicit scenes had been cut, and what remained was nothing that couldn’t be watched. But the entire film revolved around the world of sex workers, and certain scenes still made the cheeks flush and the pulse quicken.
Nan Chu pretended to keep her head down over her noodles, all the while sneaking glances at Lin Luxiao from the corner of her eye.
He was sprawled lazily on the couch, elbow braced on the armrest, fingertips holding a cigarette, his long legs comfortably spread. Smoke drifted in the air. When he smoked, his eyes went half-lidded, and then he’d part his lips slightly and blow out a ring of smoke.
That really was what it looked like to be young and unrestrained.
There was a genuine difference between a man and a boy.
Nan Chu thought about the boys in her class sometimes exchanging certain kinds of content with that characteristic air of grubby sneakiness.
Lin Luxiao had none of that.
He was still somewhere between youth and maturity at the time — with the unguarded willfulness of a young man, yet the settled composure of an adult.
In the end, they never finished the film.
About halfway through, Lin Luxiao pinched out his cigarette, stood up, and walked away.
Nan Chu sat on the floor hugging her bowl, her eyes clear and still fixed on the screen, which happened to have paused on a famous line: “Though I drink wine, I do not drown in it. Though I give myself to desire, I know when to stop.”
……
The car pulled up outside a residential complex. Nan Chu’s thoughts came back to the present. Lin Luxiao pushed the car door open and stepped out. She glanced around in mild surprise — this was near the neighborhood where she was currently filming the campus drama.
No wonder Lin Qi had asked him to drop off the tickets that day.
Nan Chu rolled the window down and watched Lin Luxiao’s upright retreating figure. She said to Lin Qi: “Hold on, I’m going to smoke.” Lin Qi turned to look at her, and though he looked ready to say something, he took in Nan Chu’s blank expression and held his tongue.
One cigarette passed.
Nan Chu watched as Lin Luxiao entered one of the apartment buildings, then a few minutes later, a window on the fourth floor lit up.
She casually ground out the cigarette and told Lin Qi: “Let’s go.”
A month later, the campus drama finally wrapped.
There had been a few crying scenes left to shoot, but the director waved his hand magnanimously: “Kill it, kill it.”
He simply didn’t have the confidence to keep going. The wailing and howling those female leads produced during the crying scenes was enough to give him a nervous breakdown if it went on any longer.
The original plan had been to give Nan Chu a full month off.
As luck would have it, Shen Guanzong suddenly booked her for a fashion advertisement — a major Italian luxury brand that had specifically requested Nan Chu — and the scheduling was rushed. She had to fly out the very next evening.
Nan Chu counted the days. Tomorrow would be exactly the ninth.
Xi Gu was in the middle of packing her luggage. Nan Chu hung up the phone and started doing her makeup, rummaged through the wardrobe, and after half an hour of deliberation, put on a black low-cut spaghetti-strap dress that fell to her ankles. She stood in front of the mirror applying lipstick. It was only then that Xi Gu sensed something was off and asked: “Are you going out?”
Nan Chu pressed her lips together. “Mm.”
“Shen Guanzong told me to keep an eye on you. You can’t just run off.”
Without turning around, Nan Chu spoke to the mirror as she applied mascara: “If he told you to jump off a cliff, would you do it?”
“……”
Nan Chu finished her makeup. The low-cut black dress was flattering on her figure, and the woman in the mirror looked bright-eyed and vivid. She realized it had been quite a while since she’d last seen herself looking like this.
Before she left, she cupped Xi Gu’s face between her hands. “Be good while I’m gone. Don’t cause me any trouble. Understood?”
Xi Gu called after her retreating back: “Where exactly are you going?!”
“To settle a score.”
Nan Chu gave her small handbag a light swing as she walked away.
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