That night, Li Xun slept at Zhu Yun’s place.
After that opening salvo, they were both too exhausted to say much. Zhu Yun recovered somewhat, but Li Xun was genuinely spent — drenched in sweat, breathing hard, taking a long time to come back to himself.
The occupational hazard of an IT engineer.
Zhu Yun gathered her clothes from the floor. Li Xun lay on the bed, his arm draped across his forehead, resting with his eyes closed.
“Is your back all right?” Zhu Yun asked, concerned.
Li Xun opened one eye and gave her a look of mild displeasure.
She helpfully explained: “I just worry you’re overexerting yourself. You’ve been busy nonstop these past few days and haven’t been getting any exercise.”
Li Xun said with complete calm: “You and I doing this is exercise.”
There was simply no engaging with this man.
“Want to go for a walk?” Zhu Yun offered.
“No.”
He turned over and found a more comfortable position lying face down.
Zhu Yun narrowed her eyes at him. Thoroughly cooked — stubborn to the last breath.
She finished tidying, came back to the edge of the bed, and pressed her hand down on his deltoid. It was as hard as stone.
He gave a small, involuntary flinch of his shoulder. Zhu Yun asked, “Ticklish?”
No reply.
After a man has his fill, only laziness remains.
She pressed down again. He flinched again. Zhu Yun smacked him. “Tell me — is it a tickle or a pain? One word!”
Li Xun’s face was buried in her soft, fluffy duvet. “Pain,” he said.
Something tender and furious moved through Zhu Yun simultaneously. She seized the back of his neck, teeth clenched. “I told you to exercise, I told you to exercise! I spent five thousand yuan getting you a gym membership — how many times have you actually gone?”
Li Xun let her shake him for a moment, then reached up without looking and closed his hand around her throat, pulling her down onto the bed.
He was on top; she was flat beneath him. He held every advantage.
“Go ahead,” Li Xun said quietly. “Give me another reason to show you.”
Zhu Yun lay very still with his large hand at her throat. He gave a slow, deliberate press. She caught the scent of him again — heightened now by the sweat, his warm, deep, physical presence all the more distinct.
He looked down at her with unhurried indifference. “If you’ve got the energy to nag, you could be doing something more useful.”
Zhu Yun managed to wriggle free from his grip for a moment and said, with some difficulty: “Like what?”
His Lordship replied: “Such as giving me a massage.”
Zhu Yun considered this for a moment, then slowly climbed back off the bed and set about providing this “more useful” service. Li Xun’s back was rigid, especially around the shoulders — the slightest pressure caused his muscles to seize up in pain. She could only work gradually, in slow increments.
She had been at it for a while when Li Xun said, “All right, that’s enough. Rest.”
“I’m fine,” Zhu Yun said. “Just lie there.”
The massage was lulling him into drowsiness. “You’re not tired?” he asked.
“Not at all.” Unlike some people, who were barely past thirty and already falling apart.
Li Xun’s voice was becoming heavier, with a note of injured pride. “Why are you not tired… Right, it’s because you were lying flat the whole time. Next time you should be on top…” He trailed off mid-sentence and fell asleep.
Zhu Yun turned out the light and quietly lay down beside him.
They slept a beautiful, long sleep.
Zhu Yun had forgotten to close the curtains. When she woke, the five o’clock dawn was spread across Li Xun’s back, and in that moment, she felt a sudden, fleeting thought — that it would not be so terrible if life were to end right here.
She sat up, knees pulled to her chest, back against the headboard, like a small child.
One turn of her head and she could see his face.
In all her life, Zhu Yun had never committed anyone’s sleeping face to memory — not a single friend, not a single family member. Only Li Xun. Only that slightly tired, peacefully sleeping face of his had left a mark on her life that could never be erased.
So much of his presence felt like something the universe had arranged on purpose. Sending such a person into her life to fill all the gaps she had missed, and complete all the parts of herself that were missing.
He felt her gaze on him and slowly opened his eyes. For the first moment, he didn’t see her — his gaze lifted automatically.
Zhu Yun was already waiting. She said to him: “Li Xun, let’s get married.”
He had just woken, his eyes still heavy, not yet fully open.
“I will make you happy,” she said.
He closed his eyes again, his face settling back into the blanket. A long time passed. Then, she finally heard a single, unsteady word: “Okay.”
---
That afternoon, Zhu Yun drove home.
The atmosphere in the house was like a frozen cellar again. Her mother had been steeling herself since Zhu Yun’s arrival and launched in without a moment’s pause from the second she stepped through the door.
Her mother categorically forbade her from returning to work at Feiyang and handed her a thick stack of company brochures to look through.
Zhu Yun looked through them without a word.