Mid-July, the heat was relentless. Cicadas buzzed in the treetops. Sunlight poured down from above, the ground scorched to near-burning, and every gust of wind that stirred was thick and stifling.
Lin Luxiao had one hand braced against the car door. He turned around. The girl was standing right behind him — pale and slender and tall, striking enough to draw the eye, and when the sunlight hit her she seemed to glow.
“Where are you going?” Nan Chu tilted her face up and asked again.
Lin Luxiao crossed his arms and leaned against the car door. The furrow between his brows made it plain he was more than a little impatient. He looked at Nan Chu, then reached into his pocket for a cigarette case, took one out, bent his head to light it, and asked in return: “You know Lin Qi?”
Nan Chu nodded.
He flicked off the ash, continuing: “Where’d you meet him?”
“Milan.”
He took another drag, his throat moved, and his gaze drifted idly to one side. “Alright. Package delivered. I’m going.”
Nan Chu reached out and grabbed his arm.
The man’s bare forearm was hard and powerful — the moment she closed her grip it felt like closing her hand around a block of iron, solid and unyielding, and warm.
Her heart gave a sudden lurch.
Lin Luxiao pulled his arm free. “Something else?”
“Give me your number.” Nan Chu held out one hand, palm up.
Lin Luxiao looked down at it. The girl’s palm was snow-white and delicate, the lines in her palm clearly visible, her fingers long and slender — like the tips of young bamboo shoots after the rain.
He looked away. His voice was completely flat: “Don’t have one.”
“Then when’s your next leave?” Nan Chu pressed, watching him steadily.
Lin Luxiao leaned against the car, smoking. Hearing this, he narrowed his eyes and studied her for a moment, then drew the cigarette away from his lips, bent forward until his face was level with hers, and the space between them collapsed — sharp brows carrying a warrior’s spirit, dark black eyes, lips pressed into a flat line, and yet something in his expression was not quite a smile.
He hadn’t changed. After all these years, the force of him was even more overpowering.
The distance closed.
The air pressure seemed to drop. His breath was right there, winding around her. The sudden nearness made Nan Chu instinctively step back.
Lin Luxiao was still bent forward, both hands tucked in his pockets.
He gave a low laugh and looked away with something contemptuous in his eyes, then turned and got into the car.
A quiet afternoon.
The engine started. Tires rolled over the ground, sending up a wave of heat.
Then a car pulled out of the film base and drove away into the distance, swallowed by the haze of exhaust and blazing air.
---
Nan Chu had first met Lin Luxiao when she was sixteen.
Back then, Nan Yueru was constantly flying all over the world. Nan Chu was alone in the house. A faulty wire somewhere started a fire, and by the time she woke up, flames were roaring to the ceiling and smoke was choking the air. It was Lin Luxiao who pulled her out of the blaze.
By the time she came to, she was already in a hospital.
In those days Nan Chu didn’t yet have a management team. When she woke, her first thought was to call Nan Yueru.
She had just been through a brush with death, and even though she and her mother weren’t close, Nan Chu had wanted to hear her voice.
“Mom, the house just caught fire, but I’m okay now…”
The little girl gripped her phone, trembling and tentative, terrified of saying something that might worry her mother.
Nan Yueru’s voice on the other end was unreadable, entirely without inflection. “Are you hurt?”
Nan Chu looked down at her ankle. “No. Just a burn on my foot. The doctor says it might scar.”
“See if they can do a skin graft. I’m busy — I’ll call when I have time.”
It was always like that.
Never more than three sentences before the line went dead.
Nan Chu put down the phone, hollow. She knew clearly: Nan Yueru had never truly wanted her.
Years of grief compressed into a single moment and broke open all at once.
The head nurse only discovered Nan Chu was gone when someone came running in: “Quick, call 119 — there’s a girl on the roof trying to jump!”
The head nurse went pale with fright. “Who?!”
The person was too frantic to remember the young celebrity’s name. “The one who just came in — the one who was burned and unconscious!”
The hand that dialed 119 was trembling.
By the time Nan Chu was pulled back from the rooftop, she was still in a daze.
She lifted her head — and saw Lin Luxiao’s face.
He was in a dark fire-fighting uniform, helmet on, features hard and unyielding. When he caught sight of Nan Chu, he visibly startled. “You again?”
That instant when she’d ended the call — she had thought about ending her life.
But the moment she stepped to the edge of the roof, her hands and feet had begun to shake. She couldn’t move — just stood there frozen for half an hour.
“Thank you for the trouble,” Nan Chu said, lowering her head.