Lin Luxiao looked down.
She was right.
White T-shirt, black trousers. Nan Chu had her duck-bill cap on, half her face tucked beneath the brim, but it couldn’t hide the upturned corner of her mouth.
The girl was wearing short trousers, her long straight legs bare and pale beside him. Lin Luxiao drew his gaze back, light and unhurried.
She really had grown up.
“Hm.”
Beneath the flowing music, if you weren’t listening carefully, you’d have no idea that sound had been uttered at all — barely more than a breath, a single syllable that might not have existed.
Nan Chu seemed to take it as encouragement.
The person beside her sat with a cool, impassive expression.
Nan Chu began studying him without any pretense of discretion.
His hair was short and black — always that same regulation cut, stiff as needles. Pupils of ordinary size, dark irises, eye corners turned slightly upward as if he were always about to smile, a strong nose, a jaw pulled tight.
He sat in the audience without expression and without a word.
The music hall was dimly lit, but from time to time the spotlight from the stage swept across the seats.
A flicker of brightness, then dark again.
When the beam swept over him, his whole figure was illuminated — the black hair caught pale light, and for a moment you could count every eyelash.
In the dark, only his angular profile could be made out.
This man — every inch of him carried an iron-hard edge. You’d never be able to imagine what he looked like in the moment he fell for a woman.
“Stop staring at me.”
Lin Luxiao looked straight ahead and asked, flat-voiced.
“You’re nice to look at.”
Nan Chu tilted her head toward him and said it without a trace of self-consciousness.
“Something wrong with you.” Lin Luxiao let out a quiet, disparaging sound.
Nan Chu leaned back in her chair, quietly amused, glancing at him now and then. Then she called to him softly: “Hey.”
Lin Luxiao finally looked at her.
Nan Chu pointed her gaze toward the stage and asked, just above a whisper: “What’s your connection to that kid?”
Kid? Lin Luxiao raised an eyebrow and lowered his voice: “You’re not that much older than him, you know.”
Nan Chu frowned with great seriousness. “A lot older.”
Lin Luxiao gave a short, derisive laugh, picked up the water bottle beside him, unscrewed the cap and took a drink, then turned the question back on her: “What does it look like to you?” He screwed the cap back on.
Nan Chu kept her eyes on his moving throat, the tip of that distinct protrusion, and said in feigned astonishment: “Surely that’s not your son?”
Lin Luxiao looked at her sideways. “I seem to remember your head being fairly normal before.”
Right where she wanted him.
Nan Chu took the opening. “Why did you move away afterward?”
Lin Luxiao leaned in his seat and looked at her without expression.
“Mm?”
---
Back then, after weighing the matter carefully, Lin Luxiao had taken Nan Chu home with him.
He had her stay at his apartment while he returned to the station. Half a month later, when his first leave came around, he’d completely forgotten there was a girl at his place. That stretch had included a surveillance plane fire on the 18th that required an emergency landing; the local military police, firefighters, medics, and rapid response teams had all been mobilized overnight to the forced landing site. The fire had roared skyward and the situation was desperate. By the time the rescue operation was over, every single one of them looked like they’d been dug out of a coal mine.
Lin Luxiao got back to the apartment in the middle of the night and walked straight into the bathroom to shower. When he came out, there was just a towel wrapped around his waist, a hand towel in his hand drying his hair as he walked toward the bed — and the moment he sat down, he knew something was off.
There was something soft in the bedding.
He turned his head on instinct. A pair of small soft hands gripped the edge of the blanket, and above them peeked a fuzzy head — two clear, innocent eyes staring right at him.
By the time he realized what was happening, it was too late.
The girl said in a small, soft voice: “You’re sitting on my foot.”
She was young, but it was all there.
Lin Luxiao was an entirely normal man. The moment he caught himself entertaining a thought that was not quite pure, he bolted off the bed — the movement must have been too sudden, because the towel around his waist came loose and dropped onto the mattress.
Underneath he was wearing nothing but a pair of dark boxer shorts.
Nan Chu blinked, straining to look — just as the blanket was snatched up and thrown over her face, plunging everything into total darkness.
Lin Luxiao grabbed a T-shirt and a large pair of shorts from the cabinet, turned his back to her, and dressed while addressing the lump under the blanket in a measured, rigid tone: “If you’re not sleeping, give the bed back to me.”
Then came the sound of the door closing. Only then did Nan Chu obediently close her eyes.
And just like that, she stayed for over a month, without any great incident.
Until Nan Chu met Lin Luxiao’s girlfriend at the time.