Zhu Yun was still standing where he’d left her.
“Come on,” he called.
She didn’t move.
Li Xun scratched the back of his neck. No help for it — he walked back.
By the time he was standing in front of her, a traffic light had cycled through and the cars behind her were beginning to ease forward again.
“Why aren’t you moving?” he said.
Zhu Yun held his gaze, expression composed and unreadable.
“Li Xun.”
“Yeah?”
“Tell me honestly. Are we in a rut?”
“…” Being asked the same question twice in one day, he couldn’t help it — he laughed. “What is going on in your head?”
But whatever he did, however he laughed, Zhu Yun remained unmoved.
He studied her for a moment. “Are you angry?”
Silence.
Ten seconds passed. Finally, Li Xun exhaled, reached out, and grasped her wrist with a kind of reluctant resignation.
“Alright. Come with me.” He changed direction, steering them toward the residential block where he rented his room.
The unit was small, but tidy — Zhu Yun’s work, of course.
Inside, Li Xun set a kettle to boil. Watching his back from across the room, Zhu Yun felt something rise in her chest that she couldn’t quite name.
They were so close to each other. And yet he still looked, somehow, like someone who was entirely alone.
She needed to talk to him properly.
“Li Xun.”
He made a sound of acknowledgment.
“You’re not alone anymore.”
He raised an eyebrow, and there was something almost smug in the way he turned — pleased with himself, or pleased with her, she couldn’t quite tell. He didn’t seem to register the seriousness in her face. He came over and put his arms around her.
“No,” he agreed. “I’m not.”
The moment he held her, the edge went out of her voice.
“It’s just that…”
“What?”
“You have to communicate with me.” She looked up at him, reclaiming her serious expression with some effort. “Li Xun. We need to communicate. Do you understand?”
He looked down at her, brow settling. He had grown up entirely on his own, by his own rules — the idea of another person being genuinely woven into his life was still unfamiliar to him, even now. After a moment, he gave a small nod. “Alright. What do you want to know?”
Zhu Yun, relieved that he had agreed so readily, asked: “Who exactly is Fu Yizhuo to you?”
“A business partner.”
The water in the kettle began to murmur. Li Xun didn’t bother with it. He leaned back against the headboard and said: “I’ve known him since we were young. Our lives were completely different — normally we’d never have crossed paths. It was an accident, really, that we did. His family is in business. His father has a large company, and Fu Yizhuo is an only child. The father had his whole future mapped out — inherit the family enterprise.”
Li Xun smiled faintly as he said it. “But you’ve seen the man. He doesn’t have a single gene for it. Eventually his father probably accepted that his son was a lost cause, and stopped insisting on the succession plan.”
Zhu Yun: “…………”
“But the father is a proud man,” Li Xun continued. “He absolutely could not accept a son who didn’t even go to university.” He glanced at her. “You can see a resemblance between us, can’t you.”
Zhu Yun nodded. Li Xun said, with a quiet smile: “We looked even more alike when we were young. I earned my first real money through him — I was fourteen. He had an important exam coming up, and I sat it for him. Full marks across every subject. He paid me five hundred yuan.”
Zhu Yun’s eyes went wide. “Wow.”
“I was inexperienced, though. I got caught.”
“…”
“At the time, Fu Yizhuo and his father were at each other constantly. He wanted nothing but to dance; his father thought it was nonsense. Fu Yizhuo didn’t have many friends — I was one of the few people he got along with. Once, after a particularly bad fight with his father, he gave me money and asked me to help him run away. His father had him back before we’d gotten anywhere.” He paused. “His father looked into my background and asked to meet with me. It was straightforward enough on both sides — we made an arrangement. After that, he sorted Fu Yizhuo’s school transfer.”
“What was the arrangement?”
“His father wanted him to attend a good university. I wanted to keep studying. His family had the right connections, and it wasn’t difficult to manage. I took his place — sat the exams under his name. After the university entrance exam, his father arranged for me to transfer elsewhere, and I sat the exam again the following year under my own records.” He looked at her. “You know the rest.”
He’d been talking long enough that his throat had gone dry. He got up and poured himself a glass of water.
Zhu Yun found herself genuinely curious about Fu Yizhuo. “He really loves dancing that much.”
“He does.” Li Xun gave a short, sardonic laugh. “His father always assumed it was a phase — that he’d give it up eventually. But here we are, all these years later.”
“So why did he come to you today? What was he asking about?”
“What else would it be.” Li Xun set down the glass. “Outside of textbooks, everything comes down to money. His father wants to move into the technology sector. He wants to invest in me — set me up with a studio.”
“That sounds like a good thing,” Zhu Yun said, puzzled. “Why did you say no?”
Li Xun didn’t answer straight away. He moved, unhurried, to the side of the bed, bent forward, and planted both hands on either side of her.