Chapter 6

Two and a half years ago, deep winter. The north wind howled. The cold split the earth.

To celebrate Qin Yue’s birthday, Guan Xiangchen splurged a small fortune, which was really just a month’s salary, and treated her to the most famous influencer bar downtown.

Neither of them had been there before. The grimy stalls in the night market nearby were another story.

But that didn’t dampen Guan Xiangchen’s enthusiasm one bit. Armed with her natural gift for making friends, she was mingling with the crowd on the dance floor within minutes.

Dazzling lights careened through the air. The heavy bass shook the walls.

Guan Xiangchen held a drink in one hand and a smoking-hot woman in the other, hips swaying, passionate as though they were deep in love rather than having just met without even knowing each other’s names.

“Boys and girls, are you ready?”

“Raise your hands up high!”

“……”

On stage, the DJ amped the energy. Guan Xiangchen and the woman locked together in a wild kiss. In a corner booth, Qin Yue sat alone, all her attention absorbed by a circuit schematic on her phone.

Wei Xincheng hadn’t been promoted to workshop dean yet. He was a team leader on Qin Yue’s production line, and he’d leveraged his one rank of authority to dump private side work on Qin Yue: design a linear power supply with low ripple and stable performance.

Qin Yue knew perfectly well that even if the supply was designed and went into smooth production, she’d get none of the credit. She took the job anyway.

Because she wanted to learn. Anything she could get her hands on.

She’d started working right after high school. No degree, no knowledge base. Her only option was to enrich herself through massive observation and accumulation.

The process looked like pure docility. As Guan Xiangchen always said, she didn’t know how to push back; whatever was handed to her, she took. But Qin Yue relished it.

She’d never worked on a linear power supply before. This was a chance. So after completing the design, she was meticulous, allowing herself no margin for error.

She knew that only if the first attempt succeeded would there be a second, a third, and the countless ones after.

She didn’t have Wei Xincheng’s connections. This seemingly exploitative situation was actually an incredibly precious learning opportunity.

A sudden cheer from the dance floor broke her train of thought. She looked up to see Guan Xiangchen being groped and kissed.

A few seconds later, her gaze returned to the schematic.

Excessive focus left Qin Yue unaware of her surroundings. She didn’t even notice when Guan Xiangchen and the woman left together.

Not until the schematic was confirmed did she see the WeChat messages.

【Yue’er, I’m not coming back tonight】

【Be careful on your own. No matter who offers you a drink, don’t take it. Remember that】

【Smart Move.jpg】

Qin Yue sent a brief reply and prepared to leave.

Seeing the untouched slice of cake on the table, her movements hesitated.

Guan Xiangchen had ordered it specially for her.

She’d cursed up a storm when ordering: “This expensive? Why don’t they just rob you?”

The moment Qin Yue said she didn’t want it, Guan Xiangchen slammed the table grandly. “Order it! We’re here for your birthday. Even if it were gold, we’d order it!”

That kind of sincerity was rare. She couldn’t just ignore it.

Qin Yue gave up on leaving, unlocked her phone, and snapped a photo of the unremarkable cake. If gold had this quality, it would have lost its collectible value ages ago.

The corner of her lip twitched. She picked up the fork, cut a piece, and put it in her mouth.

They said sweets made people happy. After a few bites, Qin Yue actually found herself curious enough to look around properly. The place was saturated with sound and cheering. Lights and alcohol clouded the mind, and then desire quietly sharpened. Young men and women, their nerves worn ragged by the pace of modern life, were reborn in the nightlife. Nourished by alcohol, summoned by desire, growing strong enough to overpower reason, scenes of vivid sensuality began to play out.

Qin Yue watched without expression, occasionally lowering her head for another bite of cake.

Too much sweetness got cloying.

She turned her head to find the water glass and her peripheral vision caught something unsavory in a dark corner.

A man wearing glasses, with the look of a refined gentleman, sprinkled powder into a drink, stirred it with his finger, then picked up the glass and walked past Qin Yue to sit across from a woman not far away.

The woman sat with her back to Qin Yue. She couldn’t see her face. But Guan Xiangchen had once said that a beautiful woman had to be flawless down to every strand of hair.

Qin Yue watched the woman reach up to brush aside her long hair and mentally added: Her wrists must be slender, her knuckles even, her skin translucent as jade, and every gesture must carry effortless allure.

That was Qin Yue’s first impression of Shen Jianqing, formed before she’d even seen her face.

The club was too noisy for the man to maintain his gentlemanly act. He raised his voice. “Hey gorgeous, here alone?”

Shen Jianqing gave a short, light laugh. Her voice, steeped in drink, seemed to materialize in that very second. Languid and draped, the words came slow. “If you hadn’t already watched me carefully, would you have dared to come over?”

Called out, the man dropped the pretense and pushed the glass toward Shen Jianqing. “Then would I have the honor of buying you a drink tonight?”

Shen Jianqing sank into the sofa. A few strands of her immaculate long hair ruffled against the backrest. “And if I said no?”

The man raised his glass and smiled. “My presumption. Then I’ll drink my punishment.”

He adapted on the fly, agile-minded, and the way he drained the glass was impressively smooth.

Shen Jianqing, perhaps drawn by his candor, actually leaned forward and picked up the drink.

Qin Yue saw it from the corner of her eye. Her hand paused on the cake for one second before the fork pressed down again.

Shen Jianqing swirled the glass leisurely. “How did you know I like this wine?”

The man borrowed her own words. “I’ve been watching you since the moment you sat down.”

“Really?” Shen Jianqing half-lidded her eyes and brought the glass close to inhale the aroma. The motion was elegant and full of character.

The man pushed up his glasses, voice dropping. “I’m probably not the only one. Most of the men in here have their eyes on you. Maybe some of the women too.”

Shen Jianqing propped her elbow on the sofa back, tilted her head, and pressed a finger to her temple. She looked toward the center of the room. “If you hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t have known I was so popular.”

“In a club, a woman who’s mature and sexy, yet unhurried and content with her own solitude, makes people want to conquer her.” The man rushed the last line, and every bit of his earlier polish evaporated.

Qin Yue could clearly see the disgust creeping into Shen Jianqing’s smile. It sharpened her profile, and when her lashes lowered, the allure was crushed under a cold indifference that kept people at arm’s length.

That was good.

Keeping people at a distance means safer odds. Disgust means she won’t drink what he gives her… right?

Then why is she still drinking?

Qin Yue sighed and set down the fork.

“There’s something in the drink.” Qin Yue stood by the table and said it bluntly.

The secretly delighted man and Shen Jianqing, who’d just brought the glass to her lips, both froze. The atmosphere turned sharp.

The man noticed the probing stares from all around and was the first to leap up. “Who the hell are you?! What drug?! Don’t you dare make false accusations!”

Qin Yue pressed her lips and coughed twice. She looked at him calmly. “I don’t know what it is. You can confess, or wait for this lady to call the police and have them test it.”

“Bullshit!”

“Shut up.” Shen Jianqing set down the glass. Her expression, suddenly iced over, could have frozen fire. “If you don’t want this to blow up, get lost. Now.”

The man was cowed by Shen Jianqing’s look and didn’t move immediately.

The murmurs around them grew louder. He squirmed.

Before it escalated into a public accusation, he shot to his feet in fury and jabbed a finger at Qin Yue. “Don’t let me see you again!”

Qin Yue didn’t even glance at him. Hands still in her pockets, she kept her head down and coughed quietly.

The bar’s gaudy lights swept across her impossibly pale face again and again. The image was fractured. That mass of thick, dark hair draped beside her dry, dehydrated lips made the whole picture look terribly fragile.

Shen Jianqing sat back in the sofa, expression already restored. She studied this stranger before her with casual curiosity.

Very young. Standing alone in the throbbing nightlife, surrounded by heat, yet never part of it. When the lights seemed to favor her, she tucked her chin against her collar and hid half her face inside.

An image that didn’t fit in anywhere was always conspicuous.

Shen Jianqing watched Qin Yue quietly for a while before suddenly speaking. “Why did you come over to warn me?”

“Someone needed to,” Qin Yue said.

It took her a long moment to look up.

When her eyes met Shen Jianqing’s, Qin Yue’s gaze trembled violently, then locked in place.

Shen Jianqing seemed accustomed to this reaction. She laughed softly, picked up her jacket and bag, and stood. “Thank you.”

Qin Yue’s lips parted, but before any sound came out, the woman with the faint scent of wine had brushed past her and was already far away.

Qin Yue looked after her, belatedly realizing just how beautiful she was.

A contradictory kind of beautiful.

She wore a daring deep-V dress and slender black stilettos that accentuated her ankles, yet there was no trace of dissipation in her bearing. She walked with upright composure, nothing like the men and women in the bar whose movements and gazes never settled.

Qin Yue’s eyes followed Shen Jianqing of their own accord.

When she came to her senses, she was already outside the bar, trailing behind for a considerable distance like some furtive creep. Meanwhile, Shen Jianqing, wearing only a long coat that was wildly inadequate for deep winter, appeared to notice nothing, strolling at a leisurely pace.

At the street corner, Shen Jianqing turned. Qin Yue’s line of sight was cut short.

She stood in the biting wind and heard reason lecture her earnestly: Enough.

Qin Yue stopped.

On the empty street, snow fell thick.

It was too cold.

Qin Yue pulled her down jacket tighter. Her toes, already going numb, tapped the ground.

She remembered that around the corner, a hundred or two meters ahead, was the subway station. Direct route home.

She was just going home. Not following anyone.

She…

“So you did follow me.” The woman’s playful voice drifted from around the corner.

Qin Yue choked on the wind, her hands tightening in her pockets. She coughed several times.

Finally catching her breath, Qin Yue looked up at Shen Jianqing, who stood with arms folded, leaning against the wall with lazy grace. “I…”

“Do you want to sleep with me?” Shen Jianqing cut in. Her tone was light and clear, but the content was explosive.

Qin Yue realized immediately that Shen Jianqing had lumped her in the same category as the man from the bar.

She couldn’t blame her. From the moment she started following, Shen Jianqing had every right to judge her with any humiliating words she chose.

Asking only whether she wanted to sleep with her was remarkably civil.

So… did she want to sleep with her?

“You’re definitely going to say yes.” Guan Xiangchen lay on the bamboo mat, half-asleep and mumbling.

Qin Yue’s thoughts returned from that winter street to the present. Listening to the urgent rain outside, she said, “Mm.”

Back then she’d given Shen Jianqing a single word: yes. And Shen Jianqing had taken her home, where they explored together in a warmly heated room, brows furrowed and sighs low, and together experienced the first shuddering climax of her life.

Perhaps firsts were always the most memorable.

Two months later, Shen Jianqing was treating her students to dinner at a restaurant near campus.

The instant she saw Qin Yue, her composed expression visibly faltered.

Qin Yue thought she was avoiding the encounter from that night and made to leave for the second floor. But Shen Jianqing slipped away from the others and found her. “What’s your name?”

“Qin Yue.”

“I’m Shen Jianqing.”

“Hello. Something you need?”

“Mm. A question.”

“What question?”

“Do you still want to sleep with me?”

For nearly three years after that, their relationship ran on a strict and simple rhythm: when they weren’t busy, they met every Friday, spent the night together, then returned to their separate lives without disturbance.

Today’s time in 312 had been a singular exception.

That exception showed her a slightly different Shen Jianqing.

In all the countless encounters before, undifferentiated and routine, Shen Jianqing had always been like water: languid and careless, even a bit untidy. She’d wash clothes and not hang them, take things off and not put them away. But once roused, she was uninhibited and passionate.

That was the Shen Jianqing Qin Yue knew.

Today, at the university, in Shen Jianqing’s domain, she was loved by students and trusted by colleagues. She could frown and analyze problems with the gravity people expected of a teacher, or rebel by leaving her collar wide open and smoking against the back of a car.

That was the Shen Jianqing Qin Yue didn’t know.

She might stay a stranger for a long time, until this relationship ended.

“A-Yue…” Guan Xiangchen lay on the mat, drowsy, and called Qin Yue’s name. Then she was quiet for a long time.

Qin Yue thought she’d fallen asleep and was about to empty her mind and sleep when Guan Xiangchen suddenly said, full of guilt, “I’m sorry.”

Qin Yue opened her eyes. “Sorry for what?”

Guan Xiangchen curled up, voice muffled. “I’m gay, and I never held back in front of you. I led you astray.”

Ripples spread through Qin Yue’s calm heart.

Regarding homosexuality, she really had only learned of it after meeting Guan Xiangchen. But her following Shen Jianqing after she left…

When Qin Yue swallowed, she felt a soreness in her throat. The onset of a cold. She forced herself to stop thinking and fall asleep as quickly as possible.

Come morning, her well-ordered life had to continue.