Coming out of the changing room, a staff member handed Zhu Yun a large towel.
The hot spring area was divided into two sections — indoor and outdoor. Zhu Yun looked around the indoor area and saw no sign of Li Xun. She headed outside, where it grew colder with every step. The sky had already turned completely dark.
Zhu Yun carefully pushed open the glass door. A gust of cold wind made her skin tighten, and she pulled the towel more snugly around herself. But the towel only covered her upper body, leaving her pair of fair, long legs bare and trembling slightly.
She looked down at the path. The ground was paved with pebbles, dusted with snow, making it somewhat slippery. There were no streetlights out here — only the lights from each hot spring pool glowing, turning the steam a deep, ethereal shade of pale green. The water shimmered and swayed, occasionally revealing untrimmed black branches overhead, and the sound of water droplets falling into the pools was soft and clear.
Zhu Yun followed the pebble path forward. Several pools in a row were empty. The colder she grew, the more tempting the steaming water on either side became. Just as she was about to give in and slip into one of them, she finally spotted the silhouette of Li Xun.
He appeared in her line of sight with perfect stillness — arms folded, eyes closed, leaning back against the edge of the hot spring pool. His shoulders above the waterline glistened with droplets, and the light rippling from the pool floor moved across his skin like a living thing.
The steam made it difficult to see his face clearly. She guessed he might have fallen asleep, but in truth he hadn’t — he kept shifting his body almost imperceptibly, as though he couldn’t find a position in which he could fully relax.
Zhu Yun walked over. Li Xun sensed her quickly. He opened his eyes, and Zhu Yun crouched down beside the pool.
Li Xun tilted his head to look at her.
That angle, that expression — it inevitably brought back memories of the past.
The night she had first sought him out on her own initiative, he had been sitting on the school’s sports field. She had called out to him nervously, and he had looked up at her. It was almost exactly the same as now — only the light from a notebook had been replaced by the glow of the hot spring pool, and neither of them was young anymore.
Was this the privilege of old acquaintances — that any random word, any casual glance, could carry infinite meaning?
She remembered it all far too well.
They looked at each other in silence. Zhu Yun asked softly, “Are you feeling unwell?”
Li Xun had stopped moving since she arrived. He shook his head. “No.”
Zhu Yun crouched there without a word. After a moment, Li Xun asked, “Aren’t you cold, squatting there like that?”
Zhu Yun came back to herself.
“…Yes. Cold.”
Li Xun tilted his chin. “Then get in.”
Zhu Yun sat on the edge of the pool, flinching at the cold stone beneath her. She lowered her calves into the hot spring. The contrast with the outdoor air made the water feel scalding, and she immediately pulled her legs back out.
“It’s so hot.”
Li Xun’s slender fingers emerged from the water, pointing in a direction. Zhu Yun looked over — at the edge of the pool was a small electronic display showing the water temperature: forty-one degrees Celsius.
“That’s not that hot,” Li Xun said. “Go in slowly.”
Zhu Yun put her legs back in. Strangely, after hearing his words, she genuinely felt the water wasn’t as scorching as before.
Does alcohol have a numbing effect? Or can it actually work like hypnosis?
Zhu Yun left the towel on the poolside and slowly slipped into the water. As she descended, the chiffon skirt of her swimsuit drifted up, floating gently with the current.
“Still cold?” Li Xun asked. His voice came from about twenty centimeters away — its quality undiminished.
Zhu Yun shook her head. “No.”
Warm now. Not cold anymore. All was right with the world.
“You’ve been drinking — try not to stay in the hot spring too long,” he added.
Zhu Yun’s gaze drifted to her floating skirt. Her mind was still a little foggy, and she hadn’t quite caught what Li Xun had said — she only vaguely made out the word “drink.”
“Why don’t you drink…?” she asked.
Li Xun said nothing.
Zhu Yun turned to look at him and asked again, “Why don’t you drink?”
Li Xun suddenly smiled. He turned his head too, and their eyes met. Beneath the water, his hand hooked the hem of her skirt and gently tugged it down — the skirt flipped under, like smoke dissolving in water, and beneath that smoke lay smooth, full thighs.
His voice was calm, half-joking. “If I were drinking, do you think you’d still be able to leave?”
They were very, very close. The air all around felt overwhelming with heat. Zhu Yun felt her cheeks burning — whether from the hot spring or something else, she couldn’t say.
Zhu Yun had heard him clearly. A sudden surge of impulse rose in her chest. She turned and looked directly into his eyes, and said with complete sincerity, “If I can’t leave, then I won’t.”
The teasing expression on his face gradually faded.
“Did you drink to work up the nerve?”
Zhu Yun’s face grew even hotter. Li Xun leaned back against the edge of the pool. “There are things you can’t say when you’ve been drinking. Your behavior when drunk really is just as bad as it used to be.”
Zhu Yun was left speechless. Instinctively she felt she had been scolded and criticized — and she accepted every reason for it. She suddenly noticed that the two of them were caught in a state of extreme contradiction, much like their surroundings: the body soaking in warm spring water, while the face and mind were lashed by cold wind.
After a long stretch of silence from Zhu Yun, Li Xun glanced over — and saw that her eyes had gone red.
He frowned.
“Why are you crying?”
“I’m not crying.”
“Am I blind?”
Zhu Yun hadn’t actually shed any tears yet — but Li Xun’s harsh tone forced them out on its own. Seeing this, Li Xun’s tone grew even sharper.
“I told you not to cry!”
“Why are you shouting?!” Zhu Yun raised her voice, stung by him.