He looked up, unhurried. “Mm?”
Xia Wan hesitated for a moment, looked down, and said: “Something happened to me recently.”
Lin Luxiao: “Mm.”
Xia Wan’s chopsticks kept pressing into the rice in her bowl.
Nan Chu looked at Lin Luxiao and suddenly thought: this man’s emotional obliviousness might actually be a blessing in disguise.
Xia Wan felt her way forward carefully: “There’s this patient of mine who’s been sending flowers to my ward every day recently. Now everyone assumes I have a boyfriend. I don’t even know how to show my face at work anymore. What do you think I should do?”
Lin Qi slapped the table and burst out laughing. “You’re asking my brother that question?! What exactly are you implying?!”
Nan Chu glanced at Lin Qi — could the boy have finally had a moment of clarity?
Xia Wan thought she’d been seen through already and said quickly, a little flustered: “That’s not — I wasn’t implying anything. I was just putting it out there as a general question. It’s not like Nan Chu isn’t here too! She’s beautiful, she must have dealt with all kinds of situations like this. Don’t overthink it!”
Lin Qi: “I wasn’t overthinking! As for Nan Chu — forget it, nobody in the entertainment industry dares go near her.”
Idiot, Nan Chu thought.
Xia Wan relaxed slightly and turned to look at Lin Luxiao. He had no expression whatsoever and was shoveling rice into his mouth at speed.
Xia Wan tapped the table. “Hey. Can you say something? This person — someone is pursuing me! Sending flowers to my office every day! Everyone assumes I have a boyfriend! What should I do?”
Each word of someone is pursuing me rang out like a drumbeat.
Nan Chu thought: if Lin Luxiao still didn’t react after this, Xia Wan’s next move would probably be announcing that someone had assaulted her.
Lin Luxiao ate quickly — two, three bites and the bowl was clear. He reached for a paper napkin, wiped his mouth, tossed the napkin into the bin, shoved both hands into his pockets, leaned back in the chair, and said with complete ease: “That’s fine.”
Xia Wan stared at him, incredulous. “What?”
Lin Luxiao continued: “It’s not like you have a boyfriend.”
Xia Wan jabbed at her bowl with her chopsticks. “You don’t have a girlfriend either!”
Lin Luxiao said nothing.
Nan Chu, rarely one to interject: “Commander Lin still hasn’t found someone yet?”
Xia Wan said stubbornly: “No, and with that attitude, who would ever marry him?”
Nan Chu looked at Xia Wan and said, slow and easy: “I think quite a few people would.”
Xia Wan stopped smiling. She looked at Nan Chu with sudden wariness.
Lin Luxiao stood up.
Lin Qi called after him quickly: “Ge, where are you going?”
“For a smoke.”
He didn’t look back.
Lin Luxiao left. The private room was down to three. Not long after, Nan Chu stood up as well.
Xia Wan watched her. “Where are you going?”
This is where women differ from men.
A woman’s sense of threat requires nothing more than a single glance.
Nan Chu smiled, genuine and gracious: “The bathroom. Want to come?”
Xia Wan rose with equal composure. “Sure, I’ve had a bit to drink anyway.”
The two walked out together. Lin Qi watched their retreating backs and muttered to himself: “What is it with women and going to the bathroom together.”
---
It had been a long time since Nan Chu had walked side by side with someone toward a restroom.
Near the entrance, she could see Lin Luxiao’s silhouette — he was smoking. His spine was straight, always perfectly upright no matter when or where he was standing. The T-shirt draped over him caught a gust and billowed briefly, then pressed back against him — and in the instant it clung to his back, the lines of his body appeared.
His build wasn’t the kind with muscles bulging out everywhere. It was proportional — everything where it should be, nothing missing.
The definition of: a jacket that hides everything, and nothing underneath.
Xia Wan looked at Nan Chu. She was sensitive by nature, gentle and obedient since childhood, and had been fast-tracked all the way through school on merit. Her parents were ordinary wage earners who had spent every resource they had and pulled every connection they could to help her stay on at the hospital where she now worked.
Xia Wan understood clearly: everything she had was earned through effort.
She had been strict with herself from a young age, never permitting herself a single misstep — including in love. She knew what she needed and had always known.
She and Lin Luxiao were inevitable.
She believed this.
No woman in the world suited Lin Luxiao better than she did.
Certainly not Nan Chu.
The two stood side by side at the wash basin. Xia Wan asked, in a tone of idle curiosity: “You’re close with the abbess at Qingchan Temple?”
Nan Chu turned on the tap. “I’ve attended her teaching sessions for a while.”
“The teachings there are really something. The abbess is a person who sees things clearly.” Xia Wan agreed.
Nan Chu didn’t respond, and waited for what she was building toward.
“The abbess told me my life has a benefactor — someone from the military.”
Nonsense.
The abbess would never say such a thing.
Nan Chu didn’t call her out. She turned off the tap and drew a paper towel from the dispenser, quietly drying her hands.
Xia Wan looked at her: “I’ve heard quite a lot of gossip about you.”
Nan Chu glanced at her, then leaned against the marble countertop, reached into her clothes, and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She shook one out: “Such as—”
Xia Wan was caught slightly off guard — she was starting to feel that this girl was not as easy to manage as she’d assumed.
“A lot of tabloids have dug into it — they say your father is a crime boss.”
Nan Chu placed the cigarette between her lips, bent her head, and lit it. Smoke diffused around her. Her eyes narrowed to a half-close, her voice utterly flat: “Go on—”
Xia Wan felt an inexplicable tightening in her chest.
“They say you’ve had a lot of men.”
Nan Chu took the cigarette from her mouth and gave a short laugh — the sardonic kind.
The bathroom was filling with her smoke; through the pale wisps, Xia Wan suddenly thought Nan Chu looked like something out of a ghost story.
Two girls, facing each other in the mirror.
Xia Wan cut straight to it: “Lin Luxiao has the looks and the blood. Of course he catches girls’ eyes. But you two are impossible. So don’t go getting any ideas about him.”
Nan Chu drew the cigarette away from her lips and aimed a smoke ring in Xia Wan’s direction, then said: “And what if I already have?”