After having lunch with Cen Jin, Li Wu obediently returned to school.
When he arrived at the dorm, Zhong Wenxuan and Wen Hui were still taking their midday nap, while Xu Shuo was watching an esports live stream with headphones on.
After taking off his coat, Xu Shuo glanced at him, his expression suddenly turning teasing—the implication was obvious.
His diligent and studious roommate had skipped class for the first time due to an urgent matter and returned home, only to come back with his white T-shirt replaced by a black one. Xu Shuo’s meaningful look was impossible to miss, but Li Wu pretended not to notice and pulled out his phone to inform Cen Jin that he had arrived at the dorm.
She replied quickly, with a similar message.
One a student dog, the other a corporate slave—both had to navigate their respective circles, somewhat constrained by circumstances, unable to stick together every moment.
In the afternoon, after two professional courses, Li Wu buried himself in the lab once again.
To many students in the same department and school, Li Wu appeared unsmiling, aloof, and solitary, almost like an ascetic monk immersed in his studies.
Only in front of Cen Jin would he switch to a pleasure-seeking mode, indulging in joyful moments with his beloved.
The weekend arrived quickly, with temperatures in Yishi plummeting to zero degrees, freezing cold.
Li Wu returned home on Friday evening. Ever since their relationship had taken a leap forward, he had been sharing a bed with Cen Jin, and the guest room where he used to sleep had become redundant.
With Christmas approaching, workloads surged, and Cen Jin was as busy as a spinning top, whirling around nonstop.
By nine o’clock the next morning, she had already rushed to the company to handle the new PO from PINA. The client, named Song Ci, was quite satisfied with her and had specifically requested to the boss that Cen Jin handle all future projects.
Cen Jin wasn’t the type to accept every request, but she also had a good impression of Song Ci. She was a highly organized communicator, always to the point and never wasting time on irrelevant topics. Such an efficient client was rare and deserved to be cherished.
Moreover, the new collaboration with PINA came with a budget three times larger than before—who wouldn’t be tempted? Cen Jin certainly couldn’t resist.
She spent the entire morning at the company, working diligently without even thinking about food.
With nothing else to do, Li Wu gathered the coats and padded jackets Cen Jin had only worn once or twice, along with two of his own brought back from school, and took them to the dry cleaner’s.
Upon entering, Li Wu politely greeted the owner.
He had been there several times before, and with his striking appearance, the owner naturally recognized him. After taking the clothes Li Wu brought, the owner cheerfully added, “Perfect timing—your sister left a coat here last time. It’s already cleaned. You can take it back with you.”
With that, the owner turned to fetch the coat from the back.
Li Wu raised an eyebrow slightly, nodded, and rested his hands on the counter as he waited patiently.
A moment later, the owner returned with the cleaned coat and laid it flat on the counter. “Would you like to check it? Your sister asked last time to make sure it was cleaned carefully.”
Hearing this, Li Wu nodded again, not daring to be careless.
The owner swiftly removed the dust cover.
A pitch-black men’s coat suddenly came into view. Li Wu’s expression shifted slightly, and his smooth brow furrowed in an instant.
He took the coat, placed it back on the counter, and examined it carefully. The only two things he could confirm were that the coat was neither his nor Cen Jin’s.
Suppressing his unease, Li Wu continued inspecting it. After a while, he suddenly felt the coat looked familiar.
He racked his brain, trying to untangle the mystery. Before long, he remembered: that morning when he delivered cigarettes to Gu Suian, the man seemed to be wearing a similar coat.Li Wu frowned, flipping through the date on the receipt clipped to the coat hanger—it was the night before he skipped class.
Suspicions he couldn’t suppress stirred and grew in his heart, leaving him bewildered.
Seeing his gaze grow distant as if lost in thought, the shopkeeper called out to him.
Snapping back to reality, Li Wu pressed his lips together tightly, asked the shopkeeper to re-wrap the coat, and took it home.
After arriving home, he placed the coat on the coffee table and sat on the sofa, silently pondering the details.
That night, Cen Jin had asked her to deliver cigarettes, mentioning it was due to a copyright dispute on Weibo.
Li Wu took out his phone, determined to get to the bottom of this.
He rarely used Weibo, and his only follow was Cen Jin.
She seldom posted original content, dutifully acting as part of the Haha party, only reposting funny jokes and videos.
He opened Cen Jin’s following list, clicking through each account one by one, but none seemed to belong to Zhou Suian.
Finding nothing, Li Wu turned to searching for Zhou Suian’s Weibo account. Soon, the internet’s big data precisely pinpointed a blogger named @Suian.
His finger hovered over the screen for a moment before he clicked in.
Zhou Suian’s latest post was a food review of an upscale meal, with over eight hundred comments. The post described the taste and ways to enjoy white truffles.
Li Wu opened the comments section.
The replies Zhou Suian had left were pinned to the top.
The first comment read: “Wow, is that ODM? I just ate there tonight!!”
Zhou Suian replied: “Unfortunately, I went last night.”
The second comment said: “Oho! Suian, our heartthrob, seems to have something going on [dog head] I spotted a girl sitting across from you! Her hands are so pale and pretty!”
Zhou Suian replied: “...[shhh]”
A deep sense of dread washed over Li Wu, sending a chill down his spine. He switched back to Zhou Suian’s homepage, too afraid to view the larger image.
After an internal struggle, he swallowed hard and opened the first photo.
His heart pounded violently.
Clearly visible in the upper left corner of the photo was a woman’s arm, the cuff of her white fleece sweater slightly rolled up. If not for his familiarity with the wristwatch he had painstakingly chosen, Li Wu might have clung to a sliver of hope.
The young man took a deep breath, confirmed the date of the Weibo post, and stood up to compare it with the receipt on the coat.
Finally, he did one more thing—looked up the address of ODM Restaurant.
After witnessing the result firsthand, his mind went blank, as if a gavel had struck.
Li Wu abruptly sat back down, his rushing blood turning into hardened asphalt—dark, heavy, unthinkable, unacceptable, indescribable, and irrational.
The light in his world went out completely.
At 9 p.m., Cen Jin returned home after twelve hours of work.
Assuming Li Wu had returned to school for some reason, she was puzzled by the darkness in the apartment. But when she turned on the light, she was startled by the young man sitting silently on the sofa.
“What are you doing?” Cen Jin patted her chest, then noticed something was off about him.
His face was dark and somber, like a statue on a cloudy day, as if he had been sitting there for a century, unable to move.
Hearing her voice, he looked up, his eyes dark and suppressed, like a sea at midnight before a storm.
Cen Jin then noticed the black coat on the coffee table and momentarily froze.
At the same time, Li Wu slowly stood up, his voice hoarse: “Explain this.” Cen Jin met his gaze briefly, said nothing, then leisurely began unbuttoning her coat, a faint, absurd smirk tugging at the corner of her lips."Speak." Li Wu raised his voice slightly, the words striking her face like the bitter winds of deep winter.
Cen Jin felt uncomfortable. She took off her coat and hung it up: "You've already drawn your own conclusions, haven't you? Just look at what you've become."
Li Wu remained where he stood: "I haven't drawn any conclusions. I just want to hear it from you."
Cen Jin clenched her jaw slightly: "We just had a meal together."
Li Wu's face twisted into a sneer: "Right across from the company. This time you're not worried about people asking questions?"
Small ripples of surprise stirred in Cen Jin's eyes. She couldn't understand how he knew these details.
Her subtle change in expression was captured completely by him, like silent testimony. Li Wu's heart ached as if being forcibly torn from flesh and blood: "He's allowed, but I'm not?"
"When will you break free from this vicious cycle?" Cen Jin tilted her head, exhaled slowly, then looked back at him: "Zhou Suian and I are just handling official business."
"Official business?" Her weary attitude made Li Wu turn sharp: "What about the clothes? How do you explain the clothes?"
Cen Jin: "He was worried I'd get caught in the rain and insisted I take them."
"Oh," Li Wu's lips curved, but there was no trace of smile in his expression. His entire face was as cold and still as a frozen lake: "He offered me his umbrella that day too. I could refuse him. Why couldn't you?"
His tone turned icy: "Then you hid it at the dry cleaner's, didn't even dare bring it home?"
"Hide?" His choice of words made anger surge in Cen Jin: "Why would I need to bring it back?"
"Isn't it because you didn't want me to see it? Either you feel guilty or you're afraid I'll make a fuss. What other reasons could there be?"
Distraught, Cen Jin began tying up her hair: "See? I'm trying to talk to you properly, but you're not listening to a single word."
She wound her hair two more loops than usual, as if venting her frustration, pulling so tight her scalp hurt. After speaking, she headed toward the bedroom, unwilling to continue any confrontation with Li Wu in his current state.
Li Wu rushed forward, grabbing her upper arm and forcibly turning her body back, forcing her to look at him as if determined to pour out all the emotions bottled up throughout the day: "I got drenched in the rain that day just to leave my umbrella with you. Where was your umbrella? What did you tell me the night before? That after delivering the cigarettes everything would be fine, but then you had dinner with him that very evening. These were all things you could have refused, but you chose not to. When it comes to me, it's completely different - you can refuse me freely, push me away, lose your temper. Now I'm even starting to think delivering the cigarettes was just a pretext, to let you continue your secret plot with him. If I hadn't discovered these clothes, would you have gone to see him again? Would I still be kept in the dark?"
The young man's nose reddened, nearly choking with emotion: "The most ridiculous part is, I waited for you all night that same evening, and skipped class the next day because of something you said. You're right - I am just a fool."
"This is how you see me?" Cen Jin's face turned pale, letting out an incredulous laugh: "So this is how low you think I am.""Who exactly is low-class? Who would dare think you're low-class," Li Wu could only keep inhaling sharply, fighting back the pain that threatened to spill from his eyes: "I'm the truly low-class one, there's no one lower than me. Like a dog, treating your every word as an imperial decree, as destiny, as faith, always at your beck and call, accommodating your schedule, your preferences, your moods, not daring the slightest neglect. When you smile at me, it feels like being reborn. You care about your surroundings, about how others see you—do you think I don't care at all? Do you know how my roommates usually describe me? Kept man, bed servant, housekeeping slave, phone pet. I know they're joking, but I'm not heartless—it hurts when I hear it too."
Cen Jin's cheeks stiffened as she stared at him, her tone dismissive: "Oh, how hard it must be for you, top student."
She fixed her gaze on him: "Who forced you to be like this?" Then pointed innocently at herself: "It couldn't be me, could it?"
It felt like a heavy object had smashed down, shattering the existing cracks completely. His beautiful puzzle was ultimately just a puzzle after all. Li Wu completely fell apart: "It's me. I chose this myself. It's all my fault."
How could he blame her? How would he ever blame her?
At first, just being allowed to like her was enough—he felt fortunate and grateful. But why did it change later? Why did he become prone to sharpness, to anger, afraid of loss, afraid of loneliness, wanting to demand equal love, demanding a reliable future.
What changed was him, not her.
He was the one who drove himself into a dead end, fighting against himself, taking things too seriously, going in circles in a dense forest but never finding his way out.
In that moment, all sense of direction vanished. Li Wu was completely lost.
He grew dazed, released Cen Jin, and slumped like a wisp of gray smoke, ready to dissipate at any moment.
Cen Jin couldn't bear to see him like this. Her heart raced with painful throbs. She wanted to reach out with both hands, to pull him close and confirm he was still solid, still warm.
The moment her fingers brushed his knuckles, Li Wu flinched as if stung, jerking his hand away and stepping back as if afraid he'd been too slow.
Cen Jin choked up, her gaze suddenly dimming. She didn't advance further.
"Stop pitying me. You don't actually like me," the youth stood in the shadows, pale as someone who'd lost too much blood, his weakening voice making what sounded like final confessions. "Even without Zhou Suian, there would be other men—men you could openly introduce, interact with, love mutually. And I'll never qualify. How can I ever catch up to you? Why is it so difficult? I really can't keep running anymore."
"Sis, I shouldn't have liked you and forced you to like me back. I'm sorry."
Having spoken these words, he seemed to wake from a dream and strode toward the door.
A tingling sensation spread across Cen Jin's scalp as she rushed after him.
BANG! The youth had already slammed the door shut behind him.
A sharp gust of wind swept through the gap, decisively separating them.
Li Wu walked rapidly without pause, tears streaming down his face. Violent sobs made the veins in his neck and temples bulge, like a child who'd taken a bad fall and hurt all over.
In all his grown years, he could grit his teeth and endure any other hardship—but with her, all his tears were because of her. He truly didn't want to cry for her anymore.
"Li Wu!"
The woman's shout raced down the corridor, piercing his eardrums like a sharp arrow. Li Wu's steps faltered slightly. Then he rubbed his left eye fiercely and stepped into the elevator without looking back.Turning his head, he caught sight of Cen Jin outside through the elevator door gap.
She stood there, a slender figure, her face wooden and sorrowful, not pursuing him further but simply watching him.
Li Wu averted his gaze briefly, then uncontrollably looked back, staring straight at her. Was it defiance or anticipation? He couldn't tell.
Her eyes seemed to convey judgment, regret, pity, and farewell—everything but a plea for him to stay.
In an instant, Li Wu furrowed his brows, afraid of inadvertently revealing his feeble, untenable shreds of dignity. Yet he couldn't hold back any longer; his eyes welled up again, nearly blurring his features.
The next moment, the doors closed.
Like a guillotine, they severed their gaze completely.
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