Nan Chu pinched out the cigarette and walked over to him.
“What are you doing here?”
Lin Luxiao unlocked the door, his tone without particular feeling.
“I came to celebrate your birthday, of course.”
Nan Chu stopped at his side. The hem of the dress drifted against his trouser leg, and Lin Luxiao glanced downward — at her slender, fair ankle, where a small black moth perched, its wings forever mid-flutter.
An unusual tattoo.
An unusual woman.
Lin Luxiao dropped his keys on the cabinet and walked inside in his slippers.
Nan Chu stood at the doorway. Something about his entrance jogged a memory — whenever he came in, it was always this: change shoes, drop keys.
She followed him in and pulled the door shut behind her. She looked around for a spare pair of slippers, but there were none to be found. She looked up again — the man had draped his jacket over his arm and disappeared into the bedroom, the military coat folded neatly and hung across the back of the sofa.
“Do you have any spare slippers?!” Nan Chu called toward the interior.
A beat of silence. Then from inside came a languid: “No.”
Not even guest shoe covers. Nan Chu shrugged, slipped off her shoes, and padded inside in bare feet.
Lin Luxiao came out of the bedroom in a clean white T-shirt, still in his military trousers, wearing slippers. He lowered himself onto the couch, propped his elbows on his thighs, reached for the cigarette box on the coffee table, pulled one out, lit it, and sat there smoking.
Nan Chu surveyed the room. The apartment was overall larger than his old one, though his possessions were sparse — probably because he didn’t live here year-round, it had a somewhat uninhabited feel to it.
The clock on the wall ticked steadily.
“This place of yours could use a woman’s presence.”
After ten minutes of quiet observation, Nan Chu delivered her verdict.
Lin Luxiao was caught mid-drag and nearly choked. He flicked her a faint look, the corner of his mouth twitching slightly, and then turned his head away to keep smoking without responding.
Nan Chu walked over and stood in front of him.
The two of them faced each other — one standing, one reclining with legs crossed.
The hem of Nan Chu’s dress kept drifting softly, occasionally grazing the top of his foot — a barely-there sensation, just slightly ticklish.
He glanced down with the cigarette held between his fingers.
The young woman stood barefoot, her toes slender and finely shaped, pale as tender lotus shoots. The moth at her ankle was even more visible now, seeming to stir with the swaying of her skirt.
“What do you think of me?”
Lin Luxiao raised his head and met a pair of perfectly round eyes looking back at him.
Pupils darker than ink, with a faint watery gleam.
He lowered his gaze and let his eyes travel downward.
Nan Chu was bent forward slightly with her arms crossed, causing what little she had to be pressed together. The black dress was doing its very best — below the delicate and fair collarbone, the soft, feminine curve of her figure was on full display. It was an entirely different landscape from the flat expanse he had glimpsed the last time.
Lin Luxiao thought to himself:
Good lord. That really is something else entirely.
The night had its own particular quality — looking out at the stillness beyond the window, it always seemed as though a man’s sense of presence was somehow amplified in the dark, while a woman seemed all the more soft and captivating, igniting the imagination in ways the daylight couldn’t.
“Go put your shoes on.” Lin Luxiao said.
It was unsettling to look at.
Nan Chu didn’t move.
Lin Luxiao pushed his own slippers toward her. “Put these on.”
Nan Chu, satisfied, stepped into them — men’s size 43, still faintly warm.
“Your feet are huge. Bigger than the average man’s, I think,” she remarked with genuine admiration.
Lin Luxiao gave a short, amused exhale, drew on the cigarette, and raised an eyebrow lazily. “Sounds like you’ve seen quite a few pairs.”
“……”
Suddenly, a phone rang. It was Lin Luxiao’s. Nan Chu pointed at his glowing trouser pocket. He looked down, cigarette still between his fingers, and with a single motion shifted her out of the way. “Stay there, don’t move.” He watched her skirt hem for a moment —
Satisfied that it wouldn’t drift against him again, he fished out the phone from his pocket.
That skirt kept grazing against him in a way that was genuinely irritating.
The call had barely connected before someone bellowed from the other end: “Open the door for your old man!”
Lin Luxiao instinctively looked over at her. He spoke into the phone: “Not opening it.”
“……”
“Your old man came all this way to celebrate your birthday!”
Lin Luxiao frowned. Apparently fed up, he said: “I’m already asleep.”
“Don’t open it, I’ll call nonstop. You hang up, I’ll pound on the door. You turn your phone off, I’ll break the door down!”
Lin Luxiao cursed under his breath, tossed the phone onto the couch, and went to open the door.