The moment he said this, Zhanlei was stunned. The whole room fell silent.
Xie Quan remained composed, casually pulling Lu Nanyang back by the arm. “I’d appreciate it if you stopped harassing my boyfriend, okay?”
Zhanlei stared at him for a while, then laughed angrily. He pointed at Lu Nanyang and said, “Fine. Real nice, Lu Nanyang.”
With that, he left without looking back, glaring at everyone in the library on his way out. “What are you looking at? What’s so interesting?!”
A few girls who got caught in his glare flinched and quickly turned away.
Zhanlei stormed off, leaving only Lu Nanyang and Xie Quan behind.
Xie Quan let go of his arm. His eyes briefly swept over the book in Lu Nanyang’s hand before he looked away. “You planning to just stand there forever?”
“Where else should I go?” Lu Nanyang calmly returned the book to the shelf.
“There’s a rooftop upstairs. Wanna go?” Xie Quan asked.
Lu Nanyang didn’t say anything—just nodded.
The library rooftop was open to students. No one was up there, though some cigarette butts and bits of trash were scattered around the stairwell entrance. There were no lights on the rooftop, so Lu Nanyang turned on his phone’s flashlight and set it against the wall for illumination. In the distance, the academic building was brightly lit, and a few guys were yelling and passing a basketball back and forth on the court.
“Do you smoke?” Lu Nanyang asked, nudging a cigarette butt with his foot.
“Just because we’re on the rooftop doesn’t mean we have to smoke,” Xie Quan replied. “No, I don’t. Ashes stain your clothes easily, and I don’t like the smell.”
Makes sense, Lu Nanyang thought. You’ve got something even stronger.
“Thanks for helping me out just now,” Lu Nanyang said as he sat down on a relatively clean spot.
“You’re welcome. Just repaying a favor,” Xie Quan replied indifferently, hands in his pockets, standing perfectly straight—probably too disgusted by the dirty rooftop to lean on anything.
Lu Nanyang found his posture kind of amusing and laughed. “Do you know who that guy I was arguing with just now is?”
“No idea. Don’t care,” Xie Quan said. “I was just returning a favor. Don’t get the wrong idea.”
Lu Nanyang nodded, his grin widening. “His name is Zhanlei. Lu Zhanlei. The biological son of Lu Hongzhen.”
Xie Quan said nothing at first. His gray eyes slowly widened, and disbelief spread across his face.
“You’re telling me,” he said slowly, word by word, “that the guy I just offended… is the actual young master of the Lu family?”
“Exactly,” Lu Nanyang confirmed.
Xie Quan’s reaction was too entertaining. Lu Nanyang wished he could take out his phone and record it.
“Hey, I never asked you to help me,” Lu Nanyang said with a grin. “You said you were repaying a favor. Nothing to do with me.”
“Now you owe me one,” Xie Quan muttered through clenched teeth.
He really hadn’t expected that helping Lu Nanyang would end up offending the real heir of the Lu family.
In Yuncheng, almost every major institution and school had investments from the Lu family, including their university and the central hospital that Xie Quan wanted to work at.
If someone could establish a connection with the Lu family, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say they’d be set for life.
So, really, thanks to Lu Nanyang for cutting off all those possibilities at the root.
“Well, I’m truly sorry then,” Lu Nanyang said with a smile. “In order to help me, the ‘fake young master,’ you’ve ended up offending the real one.”
Xie Quan looked at him, searching his face for any sign of discomfort. But Lu Nanyang was smiling with ease, as if he didn’t care at all about being labeled the “fake young master.”
“You and Lu Zhanlei have deep conflict?” Xie Quan asked.
“No, it’s one-sided. He’s the one who has a problem with me,” Lu Nanyang said, chuckling. “Like a kid who had his snacks stolen.”
Xie Quan didn’t respond. Behind his glasses, his eyes quietly observed Lu Nanyang.
Lu Nanyang was very different from most people Xie Quan knew. In fact, every time they met, he seemed to refresh Xie Quan’s impression of him.
Sometimes he was emotional, handling things like an impulsive child who didn’t think things through. But other times, he was incredibly meticulous—like when he flawlessly won the lawsuit against Li Xin, and also tactfully avoided pressing Xie Quan about anything that happened in court that day.
And now, once again, Xie Quan couldn’t see through those eyes.
Lu Nanyang didn’t continue talking about Lu Zhanlei. Instead, he pushed himself up with his hands on his knees and looked off into the distance.
Above was a deep indigo night sky, stretched over the city lights like a curtain. If you listened closely, you could faintly hear students chatting and laughing somewhere on campus.
“The building I lived in as a kid had a rooftop too,” Lu Nanyang said. “When I didn’t want to do homework, I’d sneak up there and lie on the concrete to watch the clouds—sometimes all day, until my dad stormed up there to drag me back down. My dad—uh, my biological dad—would take this really long bamboo stick and spank me. However long I lazed around, that’s how many times he’d hit me. Later on, he nailed wooden planks over the rooftop door. But I stole a fruit knife and slowly chipped away at them until I could make a hole. No matter how many times he sealed it up, I always found a way to sneak out again.”
Lu Nanyang laughed softly. “Then I moved to the Lu family. The Lu mansion has a private garden out front, and next to it, an outdoor swimming pool. Funny thing is, I never went there. Not even once.”
Xie Quan was silent for a moment before speaking quietly, “My dad wouldn’t care.”
“Hm?” Lu Nanyang turned to look at him.
Xie Quan lowered his eyes. The lenses of his glasses reflected a faint light, as if he didn’t want Lu Nanyang to see his expression. “My dad never cared where I went. Sometimes I’d disappear for a whole day and he wouldn’t even notice. Once, in elementary school, I twisted my ankle during PE. The teacher called him to come pick me up, but I waited until school ended and no one ever came. I limped home by myself. When I got there, the lights were off, no one was home, and I was locked out. I just sat there at the door and dozed off in the dark.”
“…” Lu Nanyang didn’t know what to say. The fingers hanging by his side twitched nervously.
“That night, the sky was perfectly clear—not a single cloud, just like today.” Xie Quan looked up at the night sky, then suddenly pointed in a direction. “Can you see the brightest star to the north?”
“What?” Lu Nanyang followed his gaze, a bit confused.
“Turn off the light.”
Before he could react, Xie Quan reached over, grabbed the phone sitting beside them, and switched off the flashlight function.
Darkness instantly surrounded them. Lu Nanyang instinctively reached to the side, and just so happened to brush against another warm presence.
The rustling of fabric echoed quietly, and in this vision-deprived space, the sound of the other’s breathing seemed amplified—clearly audible.
“Look up,” Xie Quan said.
In the darkness, the stars spilled across the sky like a waterfall, draping themselves above their heads.
“Due north, there’s a star that’s the brightest around here,” Xie Quan pointed. “That’s the North Star. It lies on Earth’s axis of rotation. No matter how other stars shift around the sky, it always stays fixed in that one spot.”
Lu Nanyang followed his finger and indeed spotted it.
“Above and to the left of the North Star—right above us—there are three bright stars that form a triangle. This one, this one, and this one. Can you see them?”
“I can,” Lu Nanyang said, his eyes tracing where Xie Quan pointed.
“Those are Altair, Vega, and Deneb,” Xie Quan said. “They’re the three brightest stars of the summer night sky. Even in the city, as long as you avoid artificial lights like this, they’re easy to see. If the air were clearer, you’d also see the dazzling Milky Way stretching between Altair and Vega.”
Xie Quan pointed at the topmost star. “In some folk legends, the bridge that Altair and Vega meet on is called ‘Tianjin.’ Some say it’s also the name of the fairy who escorts them. Deneb may not seem as bright as Altair or Vega, but it’s actually one of the brightest known stars. Its diameter is about 220 times that of the Sun, and its mass is 20 to 25 times greater. But it’s just so far away—2,615 light years from us.”
Lu Nanyang stared at Xie Quan’s pale gray eyes and couldn’t look away.
He suddenly had a thousand questions he wanted to ask him, but they all caught in his throat. “You—”
Just as he finally opened his mouth, his phone rang.
Lu Nanyang frowned and answered, “Hello?”
Wen Fei’s voice came through. “Hello? Where are you? Did you fall off the face of the Earth? We’ve been playing hide-and-seek in this giant library looking for you!”
He had completely forgotten about his friends.
“Uh… I just went to the bathroom. I’ll be back right away,” Lu Nanyang said, standing up as he spoke.
“Hurry up, if you’re any later the dorm building will be locked.”
Lu Nanyang responded with a string of “okay, okay, okay” as he hung up the phone.
He saw Xie Quan stand up as well, silently walking toward the stairwell. He was reminded of the last time Xie Quan had left just like this—without a word, silently disappearing into the night, leaving without any warning, like a dandelion drifting in the wind. If you failed to catch it once, it would vanish into the air forever.
“Xie Quan,” Lu Nanyang called out.
The dandelion actually turned around this time, raising an eyebrow and casting a questioning look at him.
“Can you take me off your WeChat block list?” Lu Nanyang asked.
