Chapter 1

Chapter 1

What happened last night was so absurd that I don’t even know how to talk about it.

At one in the morning, I got a call from my childhood friend Jiang Beichen. He sounded drunk, and told me to come find him in Room 302 at Shanhai Cloud Residence.

Shanhai Cloud Residence was the most secluded guesthouse in our village, owned by Jiang Beichen’s second uncle.

The inn sat alone on the mountaintop, overlooking a sea of clouds rising beyond the bamboo forest.

The scenery was beautiful, but the location was truly remote.

It would take at least ten minutes to drive there from my house.

That didn’t sound far, but the problem was, I didn’t have a car. And during the New Year holiday, there was no way I’d find a taxi out here in this mountain backwater.

I’d have to walk.

I refused on the spot.

“It’s still snowing outside. If I walk through the snow for an hour, I’ll freeze to death.”

Jiang Beichen gave a low, rough laugh on the other end of the line.

“Xiao Lu…”

He deliberately lowered his voice. It was already deep to begin with, and over the phone it sounded even more magnetic, like a feather lazily brushing along the rim of my ear.

“Don’t you want to see me?”

“What’s a little snow? Even if knives were falling from the sky, you’d still come keep me company, wouldn’t you?”

After a brief pause, Jiang Beichen slowly dragged out his words.

“Didn’t you want an answer?”

“I’ll be waiting for you in my room.”

The lingering note in his voice was enough to set my heart racing.

I stood by the window for several minutes, clutching my darkened phone.

Snow fluttered against the glass, melting away before freezing again into fresh frost.

And my heart blossomed with it.

This wasn’t even a hint anymore. He was practically spelling it out, wasn’t he?

Was he finally going to accept me?

I let out a shriek, hugged my phone, kissed it twice, spun around in place, and felt so happy I could almost fly.

I had liked Jiang Beichen for a full ten years.

From fifteen to twenty-five, I had never once hidden my feelings from him.

I brought him breakfast, bought him snacks, waited by the basketball court to hand him water, got his food for him in the cafeteria ahead of time, and on weekends I even took the initiative to bring his clothes back to the dorm to wash.

Everything a young girl chasing after a boy could do or shouldn’t do in movies and novels, I had done it all.

Everyone said that when a girl pursued a boy, only a thin veil stood between them.

My friends always comforted me too:

“Jiang Beichen definitely likes you. Otherwise, how could he put up with you hanging around him for all these years?”

“His rowdy friends all call you his future wife, and he never denies it.”

Yes, I had found sparks of hope in those ambiguous moments countless times.

Jiang Beichen let his friends joke around like that. He accepted my gifts as if it were only natural. On New Year’s and on my birthday, his wishes were always the first to arrive.

If one of our friends jokingly said they wanted to introduce me to some guy, Jiang Beichen would go cold and pretend to be angry.

“You’re introducing her to another man? What, do you think I’m dead?”

After we graduated from college and rented our own places, Jiang Beichen set the passcode to his apartment to my birthday.

“With that brain of yours, you can’t remember anything. Had to pick something easy.”

I put on an exaggeratedly coy act and turned him down.

“What exactly is our relationship? Why would I need to remember your apartment passcode?”

Jiang Beichen grinned and reached out to wrap an arm around my waist.

“You’re my little house fairy. If I don’t give you the passcode, how are you supposed to come over and do my laundry and cook for me?”

“Get lost. I’m not going to be your free nanny!”

I scolded him in mock annoyance, but inside, I was thrilled.

That veil had always seemed so thin, so transparent. I kept feeling that if I just moved a little closer, tried a little harder, I would finally reach the real him.

But I never expected that after ten years of loving him, our relationship would still be stuck in the same place.

And at last, I finally saw things clearly. What stood between us wasn’t a thin veil at all, but a pane of tempered glass.

It looked transparent, but in truth it was cold, hard, and impossible to break through.