Jiang Nuan did not look at Jiang Ce.
The barbecue restaurant was bustling with noise. People at the next table were loudly chatting about something, and the air was thick with the smell of charcoal and sizzling meat. The din made her ears ring.
Yet all Jiang Nuan could hear was her own heartbeat.
Before she had been transported here, this would have been the textbook prelude to a confession.
Going shopping together. Remembering how well-done she liked her barbecue. Wiping sauce from the corner of her mouth. Chasing away someone trying to hit on her. Then asking, “What am I to you?”
If her roommates had been there, they would have screamed on the spot.
But this was not the world from before.
This was a twisted world, steeped in bloodshed and killing.
The foundation of their relationship had never been normal to begin with.
After two seconds of silence, Jiang Nuan slowly put down her spoon.
“Big brother?”
She smiled, and there was a trace of self-mockery in that smile.
“Jiang Ce, do you think that what we have… counts as a normal relationship?”
Her gaze fell on the grill.
The charcoal burned fiercely. Fat dripped from the newly placed slices of meat onto the coals with a hiss, sending up a wisp of white smoke.
One piece had been left too long, its edges blackened, the faint bitterness already in the air.
No one turned it over.
“Given the relationship we have now, discussing whether you’re ‘like a brother’ or not... don’t you think that’s—”
She paused.
“—a little too much to ask for?”
The moment the words fell, the sounds around them seemed to be put on pause. The silence was unnaturally complete.
The expression on Jiang Ce’s face froze.
Something in his eyes—eyes that always seemed so full of sunlight—rapidly dimmed.
It was the helplessness of being told, to his face, that his kindness could not change anything.
Seeing that look on him made Jiang Nuan’s heart tighten.
She knew with painful clarity that this blade had not only cut into her own ridiculous pride; it had wounded the one person who least deserved to be hurt.
Among Squad Zero, Jiang Ce was the only one who never looked down on her, never tried to force her hand through sheer strength.
His gentleness and tolerance were the only place in this mad world where she could catch her breath.
And yet she had chosen to stab him with sharp words.
“I’m sorry,” Jiang Nuan said instinctively.
“I wasn’t blaming you.”
“...I can’t say these things in front of Lu Shiyan or Ye Que.”
She paused, and her voice softened.
“I only dare to say them to you because, in front of you, it feels like I don’t have to pretend.”
She lifted her head and met his gaze.
Her eyes, always guarded and wary, were now filled with confusion.
“But because of that, I’m even less able to tell anymore.”
“With a relationship like this, the boundaries between brother, teammate... or something else, have long since blurred, haven’t they?”
Jiang Ce listened in silence.
He did not interrupt her once from the moment she spoke her first word. The flames on the grill flickered twice. A drop of grease spat into the fire with a sharp crack.
Only after she had asked that final question, and the silence had stretched on for a long while, did he slowly let out a breath.
As he exhaled, it seemed as though even his shoulders sagged slightly.
Then, in the next instant, he pulled himself together again.
“I’ve never thought of you as a little sister. Little sisters are the ones who need saving.”
“But... you’re the one saving us.”
He paused.
“I know what those things mean to you...”
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he forced down the emotions surging within him.
“It means that my being able to protect you here is, in itself, built upon your compromises.”
The charcoal crackled softly. The forgotten piece of meat had burned completely through, a thin wisp of bluish smoke rising from its edges.
“Actually, if I could...”
He looked at her.
In his eyes, beneath the suppressed ache, was a tenderness so intense it was almost impossible to bear.
“I’d rather you could light up the way you did today, over new clothes and good barbecue.”
“The fact that you’re happy—that alone is what matters most.”
“Not because of what you can do for us. And not because of... whatever relationship we have.”
“But because you are Jiang Nuan.”
“The fact that you’re happy has meaning in itself.”
The air remained still for a long time.
Long enough for that burned piece of meat on the grill to turn completely into a small black lump of charcoal.
Jiang Nuan found that she could not look at him.
She lowered her head and stared at the smear of pink mousse on the tabletop, something welling up behind her eyes.
She blinked hard.
Since arriving in this world, she had heard too many people say, “Your ability is important,” or, “I need you.”
Those words were true.
But they were shackles, too.
Behind every expression of need was a thread, tugging her toward somewhere she had no choice but to go.
No one had ever told her that it was enough for her to be happy.
Without attaching conditions or identities to it.
Just her.
Just Jiang Nuan.
An ordinary girl who could be content simply because she had new clothes and barbecue.
Jiang Ce seemed to sense the vulnerability spreading through the air between them.
A little awkwardly, he looked away and rubbed the back of his neck.
After several seconds of silence, he looked back at her, deliberately lightening his tone.
“Oh, right,” he said.
“When we were shopping earlier, I noticed you looking at a milk tea shop several times.”
Jiang Nuan thought back for a moment and remembered.
There had been a newly opened trendy milk tea shop in the mall. The queue outside had wound around three turns, and its pink sign featured a chubby cat. It was cute enough that she had glanced at it twice as they passed.
But only twice.
“...You even noticed that?”
“Mm.”
Jiang Ce stood up.
As he rose, his figure blocked the overhead light, casting a broad shadow over her.
Like a wall that could move—except this wall was smiling at her.
“Wait here. I’ll go get it. I’ll be back soon.”
He took two steps, then stopped and turned his head slightly.
“What flavor do you want?”
“Thirty percent sugar. Any flavor is fine.”
He nodded and strode toward the entrance.
Jiang Nuan watched his broad back disappear through the doors of the barbecue restaurant, then slowly withdrew her gaze.
The seat across from her was empty.
On the table was the pork belly he had just grilled for her, cooked perfectly, with a neat stack of tissues beside it that he had pulled out in advance.
Her gaze lingered on that stack of tissues for two seconds before shifting to the window.
Pedestrians came and went. Outside, a couple had stopped nearby, the young man bending down to tie the loose shoelace of the young woman beside him.
The scene was too vivid, too ordinary.
So ordinary that Jiang Nuan was briefly dazed. What if she were still in her old world?
What if she were still an ordinary college student, reserving seats in the library and making weekend hotpot plans with her roommates?
Would she be like the girls on the street, too—walking arm in arm with her boyfriend, queueing for half an hour for a cup of milk tea, then posting it online with the caption: “Life support restored.”
Her hand unconsciously stroked the new clothes she was wearing.
Jiang Ce had helped her pick them out.
She looked at her reflection in the glass.
The outfit fit perfectly. It looked good on her.
But she also knew that beneath these clothes, there were still marks left behind by things that had nothing to do with the gentleness of this moment. Under the skin on the inside of her wrist was something that served as both protection and restraint.
She sighed, and suddenly her nose stung.
Just then—
Outside the window, the giant advertising screen suddenly began to distort and flicker. Then, with a sharp crack, Qinian’s face shattered into a screen full of static.
