Steam rose in thick white clouds from the hot pot, blurring both their faces.
Across from her, Su Yang held a slice of tripe between his chopsticks and swished it through the red-oil broth—up and down seven times—before placing it neatly in front of Jiang Nuan.
“Thank you,” Jiang Nuan said, then stuffed the tripe into her mouth.
At the first bite, she narrowed her eyes in bliss. It had been cooked to perfection.
“You seem to really like hot pot,” Su Yang said with a gentle smile.
“Mmm. I like the feeling.”
She pointed at the ingredients bobbing and sinking in the pot, all crowded together.
“Everything’s bubbling away in the same pot. It feels so wonderfully alive.”
Su Yang chuckled and added a ball of shrimp paste to the broth.
He was meticulous when he cooked the food, timing each item perfectly. Once he fished something out, he even caught it with a spoon before placing it in the dish beside her.
Jiang Nuan looked at the ever-growing pile of food in her dish, then at the bowl in front of Su Yang, which he had barely touched.
“You should eat too.”
“I am,” Su Yang mumbled casually, picking up a strand of glass noodles.
To return the favor, Jiang Nuan used the serving chopsticks to place several pieces of meat she had cooked in the mushroom broth into Su Yang’s bowl.
Su Yang paused.
Then he picked up the meat in front of him and smiled, his eyes curving.
“It’s delicious.”
The broth bubbled and simmered. Even the strands of their hair had absorbed the fragrance of hot pot and sesame sauce.
This was Jiang Nuan’s first time eating hot pot since she had crossed into this world.
She stuffed a fatty beef roll drenched in far too much sesame sauce into her mouth, leaving a smear of sauce at the corner of her lips.
Su Yang glanced at her, pulled a tissue from the box, and handed it over. With a fingertip, he pointed to the corner of his own mouth.
“Here.”
A little embarrassed, Jiang Nuan took the tissue and wiped her mouth.
Yesterday, she had thought he was nothing more than a reckless, clumsy boy. It turned out he was much more considerate than she had expected.
Without realizing it, she looked at him a little longer.
Su Yang withdrew his hand, his expression relaxed and serene.
*
By the time they left the hot pot restaurant, the sky outside had grown dark and overcast.
A chilly wind carrying the bite of early winter swept past them, but Jiang Nuan had just finished eating and felt warm from head to toe. She wasn’t cold at all.
Su Yang bought two cups of milk tea from the shop next door and handed the hot one to Jiang Nuan.
She instinctively wanted to say that she preferred the iced one, even in winter.
But before she could speak, Su Yang smiled as if he had seen straight through her thoughts.
“It’s pretty cold today. Don’t drink it iced.”
Jiang Nuan held the cup, its warmth radiating into her hands, and looked up at Su Yang.
His face wore a clean, gentle smile.
This guy… He was practically a worm in her stomach, somehow aware of even her harmless little bad habits.
It was probably just a coincidence. After all, she had been staring openly at the other cup.
Jiang Nuan took a sip of the milk tea. The sweetness was just right.
The two of them walked side by side down the street, taking their time without anywhere they needed to be.
The street around them was brimming with the rhythms of everyday life.
There were streetlights, milk tea shops, noisy vendors, and children running everywhere.
Su Yang walked easily beside her, like any ordinary young man out for a weekend stroll.
And yet she was inside a restricted zone from twenty years ago, a place where no one knew what the future would bring.
What about his future, twenty years from now?
In that world, forever transformed by the restricted zone, would there still be someone named Su Yang?
Perhaps. Or perhaps he would become a battle-worn soldier, or a survivor struggling among the ruins.
But the memories of that person would not include yesterday’s barbecue restaurant, today’s hot pot, or this stroll through the streets.
It would be like the same book with several chapters torn out and replaced with an entirely different story.
The title and cover would remain unchanged, but it would no longer tell the story of the book she had read.
“What are you spacing out about?”
Su Yang’s voice pulled her back.
Jiang Nuan came to herself and realized that she had stopped walking without noticing.
“Nothing. I was just thinking about how good this milk tea is.” She took another sip and answered casually.
Su Yang smiled gently and slowed his pace to match hers.
She turned her head and glanced at him.
She still hoped he would make it safely to twenty years from now.
*
The two of them continued toward Xinghai Hotel. As they passed a corner, Jiang Nuan’s gaze was suddenly caught by a sign on the roadside.
It was a barbecue restaurant.
The familiar logo was exactly the same as the one from yesterday.
“Hey, look. That barbecue place is part of the same chain as yesterday’s.” Jiang Nuan turned toward Su Yang and pointed at the sign with her milk tea. “The one where we first met.”
Su Yang followed the direction of her gesture and narrowed his eyes slightly.
“Yeah.” He looked away, then turned to Jiang Nuan. “Speaking of which, why did you save me back then?”
Jiang Nuan froze.
The real answer was… complicated.
Even though she knew their story’s ending had long since been set, the encounters between them were real, and so were the vivid emotions they had shared.
As long as it was within her power, she couldn’t simply stand by and do nothing.
Besides, Su Yang’s table had been diagonally in front of hers.
After that monster killed Su Yang, she would inevitably have been its next target.
Rather than wait passively to die, it was better to strike first.
Several reasons had all come together. None of them, by itself, was the answer.
But none of that was something she could tell the boy standing in front of her.
A sly smile rose to Jiang Nuan’s lips. She tilted her head slightly and looked at Su Yang.
“Maybe because you’re handsome, and you put so much effort into hitting on me. I figured saving you wouldn’t be a bad deal.”
The words had barely left her mouth when the smile on Su Yang’s face suddenly froze for an instant.
Then an even brighter smile than before blossomed across his face.
“Hitting on you… Right.” His voice dropped into a lower register. “After all, who wouldn’t want to… take a few extra looks at someone like you?”
Jiang Nuan was momentarily rendered speechless.
What on earth was wrong with him today? He had always been a little unpredictable, but still…
For some reason, the tone Su Yang used when he said those words made her feel that, for a fleeting moment, the person standing before her wasn’t Su Yang at all, but someone else.
Jiang Nuan decided it would be best to get back to Xinghai Hotel as soon as possible and wait for Shen Wu and Zhou Mengmeng. Judging by the time, they should be back soon.
The pedestrian signal ahead turned green.
Su Yang didn’t wait for her. He turned around and stepped onto the crosswalk.
His stride was light, and he was even humming an off-key tune.
Jiang Nuan watched his retreating figure, and the sense of wrongness that had just surfaced began to fade.
The corners of her lips curved up despite herself.
At least for now, it was wonderful to have a moment when there was nothing to worry about.
She lowered her head and took a sip of milk tea, then lifted her foot to cross the road.
And then—
A black sedan stopped behind the line suddenly surged forward without warning.
It accelerated violently, the driver slamming down on the gas until the engine roared at full power, drowning out every other sound.
And it was headed straight for the boy standing in the middle of the intersection, who had just turned around, a smile still on his face.
Jiang Nuan opened her mouth, but the cry caught in her throat.
Everything happened too quickly.
The car had already slammed into Su Yang.
Su Yang was thrown into the air, his body twisting at an unnatural angle.
Then he hit the ground hard, the impact producing a dull, sickening thud that made everyone’s scalp prickle.
The screams around them seemed to come from somewhere very far away.
Jiang Nuan stood at the edge of the crosswalk, watching the red stain spread from beneath Su Yang’s body more than ten yards away.
The milk tea slipped from her fingers and smashed onto the pavement. The lid sprang open, splashing tea across her shoes and calves.
That small moment of tenderness she’d known was an illusion shattered completely.
The crowd had already surged forward. Su Yang lay there, his body twisted into that unnatural shape.
He wasn’t going to make it.
Someone was calling the police. Others were screaming.
The driver stumbled out of the car. He lowered his head and stared at his trembling hands, as if he had no idea what had just happened.
Then he looked up and saw the mangled body nearby. Only then did a scream force its way from his throat.
At the other end of the street, behind the floor-to-ceiling windows of a high-rise building,
a slender figure stood there in silence. Slowly, he opened his eyes and looked down at the crowd below.
His fingers brushed the edge of a petal. He gently straightened the slightly crooked red rose and set it back in the center of the vase.
