Be Passionately In Love

Xu Zhi was delivering Xu Guangji’s meal card—he had left it on the dining table when he left in the morning. He called and asked her to bring it over, but she hadn’t expected to hear Old Xu rambling nonstop the moment she reached the corridor outside the department.

She couldn’t even remember when she had said those things. At most, she had taken a couple of sips of his Wuliangye liquor when she saw him drinking alone and feeling down. Unable to handle the strong aftertaste, she had mumbled, “Dad, I think I kind of miss him.”

“It’s your first relationship, Dad gets it. It’s bound to feel deeper,” Xu Guangji had calmed down by then and even tried to console her with a philosophical tone. “Nannan, most people’s lives aren’t about weathering storms or riding the waves. It’s about growing little by little through setbacks and hardships—whether you’re willing to let go or not.”

He also said that life was never a field of blooming flowers or birds singing everywhere. It was just the fragrance of a cluster of flowers, the freshness of a patch of grass, the scorching heat of a beam of sunlight, and a little drizzle to nourish it all. That was life. The rain would always come, and the sky would clear again.

……

So what was he arguing with Chen Luzhou about now?

Xu Zhi pushed the door open and mercilessly called him out, “Dad, what nonsense are you spouting?”

Xu Guangji was stunned, not expecting his daughter to arrive so quickly. He could only scramble for an excuse. “Patient, why didn’t you knock?”

Xu Zhi instinctively looked down at herself. “Do I look like one of your patients?”

Xu Guangji, probably embarrassed, snapped at her, “Even if you were my dad, you’d have to knock before entering the urology department!”

With that, he turned around to write Chen Luzhou a prescription, slamming the medical record onto the table irritably. “Go to the restroom yourself. Come back after you get the results.”

Chen Luzhou: “…”

He didn’t turn around, just lazily leaned back in his chair and slowly picked up the medical record from the table. He wasn’t sure if Xu Zhi had left, and running into someone in this kind of place was awkward—especially when, as Zhu Yangqi put it, they were still diamond-grade high school boys. But then, to his surprise, Xu Zhi closed the door and politely knocked twice. “Son, may I come in?”

Xu Guangji: “…”

Chen Luzhou: “…”

By the time Chen Luzhou came out, Xu Zhi was already leaning idly against the corridor wall, watching him. The hallway was empty, making her seem all the more brazen and impossible to deal with. Chen Luzhou walked over and looked down at her. “Why are you here?”

“Bringing my dad his meal card. Let’s go get my ears pierced later. Do you have anything else to do?”

“No. Wait here for me then.”

Xu Zhi crossed her arms, grinning mischievously, just like that afternoon. “Need my help?”

Chen Luzhou’s mind was filled with one thought: I’m the teddy bear cookie here, aren’t I? The one being toyed with. “Are you trying to start something?”

“What are you thinking?” Xu Zhi burst out laughing, taking the medical record and a bag of promotional materials from the department from his hands. “I meant I’d hold your stuff for you.”

Chen Luzhou ignored her and walked off. “…Sure you did.”The test results would take an hour, so Chen Luzhou and Xu Zhi went for a stroll nearby. By the time they returned to collect the report, it was almost half past eleven. Xu Guangji was sipping tea with a serious expression, spitting out tea leaves as he scrutinized the report. Suddenly, he remarked, "Why did you come back so late?"

Xu Zhi's heart tightened at his words. "What does that mean? Is there no hope?"

Xu Guangji suddenly noticed her presence and shot her an impatient glare. "Why are you in here again? I told you to wait outside!"

Chen Luzhou, exhausted, leaned back in his chair with a post-event laziness, his legs sprawled wide as he pulled the person beside him away. He sighed, "Xu Zhi, go wait outside."

Xu Zhi obediently went out, and Xu Guangji rolled his eyes at Chen Luzhou. "Wait for you?"

Chen Luzhou straightened up and smoothly corrected himself, "Wait for you to finish work."

"Cut the crap," Xu Guangji said, knowing his daughter all too well. "Where are you two going later?"

Chen Luzhou answered truthfully, "Taking her to get her ears pierced."

Xu Guangji hummed in acknowledgment. "She's been saying she wanted to get her ears pierced since she was little. Several times I took her, but she ran back halfway. You might not see it, but she’s actually afraid of pain. Especially when she was younger, she was really good at acting spoiled. After her mom left, she became a different person. She never talks to me about big things, only trivial matters. Maybe I didn’t give her enough sense of security." He chuckled self-deprecatingly, his eyes filled with guilt. "I’m a pretty lousy dad, aren’t I?"

Chen Luzhou was about to say, "No, you’re great," when Xu Guangji narrowed his eyes and suddenly turned serious. "But even a lousy dad’s fists are hard. Don’t you dare bully my daughter, or I’ll beat you to death." He added, "If you’re leaving, leave early. Don’t drag it out."

Chen Luzhou lowered his head and laughed softly. Honestly, he was really envious. "Got it."

The whole way, Xu Zhi kept pestering him about the results. Chen Luzhou had no choice but to show her the report. Xu Zhi studied it with great interest, though she couldn’t make sense of the data. Finally, she asked, "What is this?"

Chen Luzhou replied, "This is the sperm test report of an outstanding male high school student."

Xu Zhi lazily glanced up at him. "Narcissist."

"Me, a narcissist?" He grinned, his smile radiating charm. "I’ve never said anything like ‘my handsomeness knows no bounds.’"

Xu Zhi froze. "Did my dad show you the video?"

"He did. My favorite part was when you said, ‘If I’m elected, I hope everyone will cooperate with my work and not make things difficult for me.’" Chen Luzhou took the report back from her hand, slipping it into his pocket, and smiled again. "Xu Zhi, you were such a bratty little cutie when you were young."

They were standing by the roadside hailing a taxi. Xu Zhi had already come to terms with it—that video would probably be on loop at her wedding someday. She looked at him calmly as he joked around and said, "Right? If we’d known each other as kids, you’d have been bowing at my diaper in no time."

Chen Luzhou shot her a sidelong glance.

Xu Zhi raised her hand to flag down a taxi and raised an eyebrow at his expression. "Don’t agree?"

"Wouldn’t dare," Chen Luzhou said as the taxi pulled up. He opened the door for her, shielding her head with one hand as she climbed in, then casually added, "I’d be too afraid you’d steal my diaper to wear."

Xu Zhi burst into laughter as she settled into the seat. "Chen Luzhou, you get me."Once in the car, neither of them spoke. Two raindrops fell abruptly from the sky, splattering against the window like ink spreading across paper, creating rippling circles. In an instant, the downpour began in earnest. The rain pounded densely against the car roof, but with the windows tightly shut, the sound was muted outside. Though it was now a torrential storm—trees bending under the force, billboards swaying wildly in the gusts of wind, towering buildings looming like giant beasts—inside the car, it felt distant.

Chen Luzhou gazed out, seeing only a curtain of rain against the glass. A thin layer of fog gradually formed on the side window, and in that hazy moment, he thought to himself: You understand me so well. You haven’t even tried to stop me from leaving, not even once. But then again, you’ve always been like this—just like when you ran for class monitor and said, “If I’m elected, please cooperate with me so I won’t be put in a difficult position.” So now, you’re not making things difficult for me either.

When Xu Zhi wanted to get her ears pierced, Chen Luzhou had known what she was thinking with just one glance. Leaning lazily against the doorway, he asked, “Which ear are you doing?”

She had originally planned to pierce both but changed her mind. “The right one,” she said.

Chen Luzhou hummed in acknowledgment and walked over to the piercer. “Then I’ll do the left.”

There were a few high school girls waiting in line, and Xu Zhi was convinced that the idiot had deliberately positioned himself by the door to attract customers. If he ever can’t make money, he could just open some obscure little shop like this—turn off the lights, make it pitch black, and no one would even know what shady business was going on inside. People would probably mistake it for a host club, especially with him standing there. In just that short time, the shop had filled up with girls packed like sardines.

After the piercings, the shop owner grinned and said, “We really benefited from having your boyfriend here.”

Xu Zhi paid with a stiff smile. Benefited? More like took advantage. Who told you to touch his ear?

That day, the rain was heavy. As they stepped outside, Xu Zhi looked at the waterlogged ground, its surface shimmering with reflections, and suddenly had an idea. “Hey, Chen Luzhou, let’s go watch the sunrise tomorrow.”

“You’d actually wake up for that?” He handed her a tub of Häagen-Dazs.

“Ah, never mind. I have work tomorrow. But I could wake up—during senior year, I slept at 11 and got up at 4 every day.” Standing by the roadside, she reached out to catch some raindrops and casually asked, “Hey, what’d you get on the science section?”

Chen Luzhou thought for a moment. “292?”

Xu Zhi: “And math?”

“142.”

She scooped a spoonful of ice cream into her mouth. “Guess what I got in math.”

Hands in his pockets, Chen Luzhou watched her eat and laughed helplessly. “I checked your scores—you think I don’t know? You’re good at math, 147. I remember.”

Xu Zhi grinned. “But your science score is insane. Chen Luzhou, I’ll probably never meet another guy who scores above 290 on that.” She studied him curiously. “What about you? What time did you sleep and wake up during senior year?”

The truth was, they always had endless things to talk about. Like now—Xu Zhi didn’t know why, but the more she knew he was leaving, the more she wanted to understand him.The two of them hadn’t brought an umbrella, so they stood at the entrance waiting for the rain to stop. Chen Luzhou leaned against a coin-operated rocking horse by the shop door, idly spinning his phone in his hand as he looked down at her. His gaze seemed somewhat distracted, but he still answered, “Actually, it’s the opposite for me. I sleep around three or four and wake up at eight, then go straight to morning self-study.”

Truth be told, their senior year of high school had been pretty lax. Most days, they’d just wash their faces after waking up and head to morning self-study with messy bedhead.

“You actually stay up late? I thought you were always disciplined.”

“Only during senior year.”

“Oh, but your morning self-study starts that late?”

“Our class is pretty relaxed. Since it’s a competition class, our schedules are all over the place.”

Talented people often worked hard too. Xu Zhi had always assumed he was the naturally gifted type, but she hadn’t expected him to be so diligent. Tired from standing, she squatted down and looked up at him, asking another question that had puzzled her for a while: “No wonder your school is so competitive. Are there more hardworking students or naturally gifted ones in your class?”

Right above where Xu Zhi squatted was a flowerpot. Worried she might get hit if it fell, Chen Luzhou sighed and pulled her up. Thinking he wanted ice cream, she scooped a spoonful and fed it to him. He naturally bent down to take a bite. The shop’s awning was too small, and with so many people crowding under it to avoid the rain, he could only let her stand inside while half of his body remained exposed to the rain. He swallowed and said, “Hard to say. A lot of the students who seem naturally gifted actually work really hard in private. The more talented they are, the more they want to push their limits, so they work even harder. Take Li Ke, for example—he didn’t get a full night’s sleep all of senior year. He’d go to bed at three and wake up by six or seven, getting only three or four hours a day.”

Xu Zhi thought about it and realized he was right. For exceptional people, hard work might just be a habit, and pushing their limits was perhaps the answer they sought. Chen Luzhou always knew just what to say—even if he wasn’t entirely correct, in that youthful, admiration-prone phase of life, Xu Zhi wanted to applaud him, openly and without reservation.

“Anything else you want to ask?” Chen Luzhou said.

Xu Zhi: “Not for now.”

Chen Luzhou wasn’t sure what he was waiting for. Seeing she had nothing else to say, he simply replied, “Mm. I’ll go buy an umbrella and walk you home.”

After that, they didn’t see each other for about two days. Chen Luzhou was leaving the following Thursday, which meant they really only had four or five days left. Xu Zhi didn’t reach out to him again, and even their WeChat exchanges dwindled. The only message he sent her was the final draft of his speech, completely rewritten from start to finish—all his own work. Xu Zhi politely thanked him, and Chen Luzhou replied with just a single period. Sometimes, when he didn’t know how to respond, he’d send a period. He was always the one to end conversations anyway—otherwise, Xu Zhi would tease him, “Chen Luzhou, you’re even colder over text than in person.” He was used to it. Some girls would confess their feelings over WeChat, so if his replies were too lengthy or filled with stickers, they might get the wrong idea. That’s why he kept his messages brief.

But Zhu Yangqi said, “Xu Zhi’s already adjusting to life without you, and here you are, dumbly waiting for her to reach out. She won’t. That girl’s sharp as a tack.”Those days, apart from watching movies day and night, Chen Luzhou spent his evenings eating cicadas with Zhu Yangqi and Jiang Cheng. Whether it was because they had been feasting too heavily on late-night snacks, he noticed the cicada sounds around the alley had grown noticeably weaker. The nights became eerily silent, so quiet that even the slightest noise from upstairs would wake him.

Tan Xu was still jumping rope upstairs late at night to work out. Too lazy to go up and confront him, Chen Luzhou simply called Jiang Cheng instead. After Jiang Cheng relayed the message, Tan Xu switched to lifting dumbbells—but it was still noisy. Chen Luzhou couldn’t tell if he had become overly sensitive or what, but those nights were hard to sleep through, and he woke easily. As a result, he spent most of his days catching up on sleep.

On Tuesday afternoon, Chen Luzhou returned to the rental apartment from the villa. He had just finished an unpleasant lunch. The moment he stepped inside, before he could even change his shoes, his aunt’s call came relentlessly chasing after him. Rambling and disjointed, she reminded him not to be ungrateful.

"Luzhou, you’ve always been sensible and obedient since you were little. You can’t be this stubborn now. Your parents have raised you all these years—when have they ever treated you unfairly? They’ve been even better to you than to Chen Xingqi, and of course, you’ve lived up to their expectations. We all know you’re a good student, but Luzhou, for a family like ours, a diploma isn’t actually the most important thing. What matters is what you can do for this family. You silly boy, do you really think he won’t leave you anything? But the condition is that you have to be obedient. Your aunt’s getting older these years, so I’ll just speak plainly—don’t take it to heart. To put it bluntly, even if they had raised a dog for over a decade, they’d have developed feelings for it by now."

Chen Luzhou wanted to say, Auntie, aging isn’t the problem. Uncle won’t cut your allowance just because you’ve got another crow’s foot. But acting entitled because of your age—that’s the real issue.

But in the end, he said nothing and simply hung up.

At that moment, Chen Luzhou sat on the sofa, legs spread, arms slack between them. The veins on his lean arms stood out starkly. His expression was cold, his head bowed numbly. Yet his hand, gripping the phone, tightened and loosened mechanically, as if playing with the muscles on his arm. The well-defined tendons twitched sporadically. It was a habitual motion—whenever he faced a problem or something he couldn’t figure out, he would mindlessly watch the veins on his hand bulge. Maybe that was why they were so pronounced. After a while, as if tired of the motion, he turned his gaze to the window, helplessly watching the dense curtain of rain outside. It seemed to fill the entire world, the long, unbroken sheets of rain connecting sky to earth like a prison.

He spent nearly the entire afternoon in a daze on the sofa. Outside, the rain came and went. The sun peeked out briefly but never cast its light on him. His heart remained hollow. Around four, Zhu Yangqi arrived, shaking off raindrops as he stepped inside.

"I invited some people over to hang out," he said, folding his umbrella and tossing it by the door. He carelessly wiped his feet on the entry mat before continuing, "I’ve decided to leave a month early too. It’ll be boring here once you’re gone. I’ll go with you the day after tomorrow. Oh, I bought two karaoke machines—we’ll sing a few songs later. Tonight’s our graduation fantasy."Chen Luzhou was a level-ten violinist, and he also had a great singing voice. Back in elementary school, he loved showing off—whenever there was a talent show or performance, he’d be the first to sign up, performing at least two acts each time. But by high school, he stopped participating in such events altogether, even leaving the "special talents" section blank on forms. He just didn’t feel like flaunting it anymore. Zhu Yangqi figured he’d finally realized how much attention he attracted and had learned to tone it down. Honestly, Chen Luzhou was the type who grew more handsome with age. As a kid, his face was so thin and pointy he looked like a monkey—nothing like Zhu Yangqi’s own round, chubby cheeks that made him naturally likable. Back then, Zhu Yangqi had been genuinely worried for him, thinking, This guy’s gonna have a hard time finding a girlfriend. But reality turned out nothing like he’d imagined.

Kids might look cute with a bit of baby fat, but for boys, it wasn’t necessarily the case. In elementary school, Chen Luzhou had been a fairly average-looking boy, but by middle school, he and Zhu Yangqi were worlds apart. They hung out every day, so at first, Zhu Yangqi didn’t notice. But when Chen Luzhou went to study in another province and only came back occasionally during holidays, Zhu Yangqi started sensing something was off. During basketball games, way too many girls would watch him. Random people would stop him on the street to ask for his number—even aunties who looked old enough to be his mom would join in. By high school, the title of "school heartthrob" clung to him like glue. Keep in mind, City No. 1 High had plenty of arts students like Gu Yan and even a few alumni who’d become celebrities. It was a place teeming with good-looking guys and girls, yet no matter how many fresh-faced underclassmen cycled through year after year, everyone still agreed that someone like Chen Luzhou—aloof and infuriating—had the most charm.

Zhu Yangqi sighed. Otherwise, why would Gu Yan be so obsessed with him?

"Who’s coming?" he asked.

"Just Jiang Cheng and the others. Oh, and a special guest—you’ll find out later. Don’t worry about it."

Chen Luzhou couldn't be bothered to intervene. He cast an inscrutable glance at Zhu Yangqi before settling onto the sofa to rest with his eyes closed. Zhu Yangqi was on the phone with someone, his voice as faint as a mosquito's buzz, lulling Chen Luzhou into drowsiness until he truly fell asleep. In his half-conscious state, he found the overhead light glaring, so he casually grabbed a hat to cover his face, leaning back on the sofa to continue his nap.

When Xu Zhi first stepped inside, this was the scene that greeted her: a black bucket hat folded haphazardly over his eyes to block the light, revealing only the lower half of his strikingly handsome face—his lips and chin. The lines of his jaw were clean and sharp, his Adam's apple jutting out coolly. In his ear was the freshly pierced hole they had gotten together, still too new for an earring, just a black stud inserted. His jawline looked firm like this, she thought. It would feel even more defined when kissing.

Chen Luzhou was awakened by a kiss. He was a light sleeper and had heard the door open, but assumed it was Zhu Yangqi bringing in takeout or something, so he paid it no mind, drifting in and out of sleep. It wasn’t until the sofa dipped beside him that he realized it might not be Zhu Yangqi.

Xu Zhi knelt halfway on the sofa, one hand braced against the backrest, cradling her head as she leaned down to kiss him. Tentatively yet lingeringly, she trailed kisses from his brows, down the bridge of his nose, the soft, featherlight sounds sending tremors through them both. Xu Zhi trembled as she kissed him—had he opened his eyes then, he would have seen the fluttering butterfly in her gaze, restrained yet exhilarated.

The room was silent, the once hesitant sounds of their kisses growing bolder. Their lips parted wider, no longer cautious but now devouring each other, like two evenly matched generals each trying to outmaneuver the other with their tactics. Yet as their heartbeats thundered in the air, breaths mingling wildly, he still managed to gasp out a question—

"Did you miss me, or did you just want to kiss me?"

Author's Note: Two chapters combined.

200 red envelopes.

Tomorrow is the finale of the first volume. The next volume begins the day after.

The ending line was changed because it overlapped with a scene in tomorrow's plot.