Jiang Nuan had been looking for the right moment to bring it up since the afternoon.
After all, he was the team captain—and Lu Zhaoming was his father.
But she could never quite figure out how to broach the subject.
“Reporting to the captain: I’m going to be your father’s dance partner.”
That sounded far too flippant.
“When you were little, you thought I was pretty interesting and insisted that your father invite me.”
…The sheer weirdness of that sentence was enough to serve as the premise for an entire horror-zone scenario.
“Your father’s pretty handsome. Dancing with him can’t be a bad deal.”
That thought survived in Jiang Nuan’s mind for less than 0.1 seconds before her survival instincts strangled it.
Whoever said that avoiding something was shameful but useful was a liar. The longer she put it off, the more she felt like dying.
She dragged it out through the entire afternoon, through preparations for dinner, and all the way until the few of them were seated around the dining table.
The meal itself proceeded quite normally.
Lu Shiyan sat at one end of the table, discussing the details of today’s mission with Qi Sui in a low voice.
Jiang Nuan pricked up her ears and caught the words “experimental samples.” Her chopsticks paused.
She remembered that Qi Sui might have conducted human experiments in Sector C.
So had he gone on today’s mission despite not being fully healed to look for experimental samples?
But that thought had barely made half a circuit in her mind when Lu Shiyan inexplicably glanced at her between sentences.
What was that about? Why was he looking at her for no reason?
Jiang Nuan shoveled down a couple of mouthfuls of rice, then secretly raised her eyes.
Lu Shiyan was already discussing something else with Qi Sui.
As the meal drew to a close, Lu Shiyan set down his chopsticks.
For some reason, that simple movement made Jiang Nuan feel as if several degrees of air had been sucked out of the room.
“Jiang Nuan.”
She had just put down her chopsticks. Her back stiffened for an instant.
She knew it. She knew there was something off about the atmosphere at this meal.
Lu Shiyan looked at her. “Don’t you have something to tell me?”
Oh no. Did he already know something?
Well, it wasn’t anything worth getting nervous over. It was necessary for the mission, perfectly reasonable, and there was no reason for her to feel guilty.
She was just about to speak when Qinian’s chair let out a shrill scrape.
He practically sprang out of his seat, bracing both hands on the edge of the table. “I didn’t do it on purpose! This afternoon, my brother, Jiang Ce, and I were discussing how to accompany you more effectively during dance practice tomorrow. The captain just happened to be coming from—”
“Just happened to be passing through the corridor.” Lu Shiyan finished the sentence for him, his eyes still fixed on Jiang Nuan.
Qinian choked.
“…Right.” He obediently sat back down, then added in a small voice, “Nuannuan, I’m sorry.”
Jiang Nuan closed her eyes for a moment.
All the wording she had agonized over for the entire afternoon was now useless. It was more devastating than typing out a two-thousand-word essay only to have the computer blue-screen before it could be saved.
She should have just forced herself to say it before dinner.
Lu Shiyan stood up, pushing his chair back slightly. “Come with me.”
No one would mistake that for a request they could refuse.
Jiang Nuan rose and followed him. As she passed Qinian, she couldn’t resist shooting him a glare.
She had already made up her mind. On the first day of dance practice, she would find Qinian and stomp on his feet—she wouldn’t waste a single step.
Qinian hunched his shoulders. Only after the sound of their footsteps had faded did he cautiously lean toward the person beside him.
“Do you think the captain’s going to blow up Lighthouse Base?”
Shen Wu glanced at him. “Blowing up Lighthouse Base is too much trouble. Blowing you up would be more convenient.”
Ye Que stood up, looking as though he intended to go with Jiang Nuan.
Jiang Ce looked at Ye Que. “Nuannuan can handle it. It’s only for the investigation.”
Ye Que was silent for a moment, then gave a quiet hum. But his gaze remained fixed on the retreating figure until the door closed.
*
When Jiang Nuan got to her feet, she had prepared herself to be taken into the study—or perhaps trapped beside some bedroom bay window.
After all, this was Lu Shiyan. Closing a door and blocking off every possible escape route was one of his usual tactics.
But he picked up the car keys instead.
Jiang Nuan paused, then put on the white down coat that reached all the way to her ankles and followed him out of the house.
The cold wind came rushing toward them, carrying snow from the ground.
He opened the passenger-side door for her without a word.
Jiang Nuan climbed into the car. The click of her seat belt locking into place sounded unusually clear.
The heater was turned up high.
Yet neither of them spoke during the drive. The only sound in the car was the hum of the engine.
Lu Shiyan kept his eyes on the road ahead. The streetlights slid across his profile, highlighting its hard, stern lines and deepening his silence.
He hadn’t started questioning her the moment they got in about why she hadn’t reported this to him immediately. Even the oppressive presence that usually made it difficult to breathe had been reined in considerably.
If she had been dancing with anyone else, he probably would have said something by now.
But the name Lu Zhaoming might have left him unsure how to process the situation.
Jiang Nuan stole two glances at his profile.
She had to admit, the curve of his brow was quite attractive. But this was not the time to admire good looks.
Her gaze drifted lower, landing on the hand gripping the steering wheel.
His fingers rested against the wheel, holding it a little too tightly.
She quickly looked away.
The car slowed.
The scenery ahead drew closer. It was the frozen lake.
The ice was solid beneath the moonlight, the surface quiet and still, like a painting.
The car stopped beside the lake.
The engine fell silent. The interior became so quiet that they could hear each other breathing.
Jiang Nuan ground her back teeth together. If she delayed any longer, she might end up dying in this car tonight.
The heating system was still running, the vent on the passenger side blowing directly at her calves.
The warm air was trapped beneath her down coat, leaving a thin sheen of sweat on her lower legs, yet the patch of skin on her back pressed against the seat was cold.
Outside, everything was quiet. Moonlight lay across the frozen lake, and it truly was beautiful.
But Jiang Nuan was in no mood to admire the scenery.
The man in the driver’s seat said nothing, his eyes fixed on the ice-covered lake ahead.
…Was he waiting for her to explain voluntarily?
After all, what he had asked at dinner was, “Don’t you have something to tell me?”
Jiang Nuan rapidly ran through the thirty-some opening lines she had prepared that afternoon.
Forget it. She might as well just say it directly. At worst, he’d stuff her into the frozen lake and let her cool off.
She steeled herself and explained the whole situation from beginning to end.
“…That way, I can enter the Lighthouse team’s base a day early and get a basic understanding of the terrain, giving us more intelligence for our operation on the night of the gala.”
She paused, arranging the final sentence in her mind.
“And besides—”
She looked Lu Shiyan in the eyes and said with perfect righteousness, “The fact that Lu Zhaoming invited me to be his dance partner was an idea you came up with yourself when you were a child.”
There was even a hint of accusation in her voice.
He couldn’t very well blame her, could he?
Lu Shiyan didn’t look surprised.
He even nodded.
“Entering Lighthouse Base early to investigate the serpent-patterned tree, using the rehearsal as cover. The plan is viable.”
Jiang Nuan blinked.
That was it?
She had spent the entire afternoon mentally preparing herself. Since after lunch, she had been drafting opening lines and rearranging them into every possible combination. She had even prepared for the worst-case scenario: being pressured, cornered, and interrogated in some dead-end spot.
And all she got was, “The plan is viable”?
Was Lu Shiyan unusually easygoing today?
Then why had he dragged her into the car and driven her to this frozen lake in the middle of nowhere?
Was he simply here to admire the night scenery?
She eyed Lu Shiyan’s profile suspiciously, feeling certain that things could not possibly be this simple.
Jiang Nuan’s terminal vibrated once. She raised her wrist and saw a message from Qinian on the screen:
【Nuannuan, are you still alive?? Do you need me to pretend there’s an emergency and call you so I can rescue you?!】
The corner of her mouth twitched. Without changing expression, she turned the screen facedown.
Alive. For now.
But things weren’t that simple.
She had known Lu Shiyan for so long that she’d learned a certain rule.
The quieter he was, the less she could afford to let her guard down. Before a real storm arrived, the pressure was always at its lowest.
Her body was still wound tight whenever she was around him.
Several seconds of silence passed.
“But I mind.” Lu Shiyan’s gaze shifted from the windshield to her face.
It wasn’t an assessing look. He was simply looking at her.
The breath Jiang Nuan had just managed to let out immediately lodged back in her chest.
She knew it. There was no way this was going to end that easily.
There was even a touch of self-mockery in Lu Shiyan’s voice. “I’m jealous of someone who’s already dead.”
Wait. What was Lu Shiyan talking about?
Jiang Nuan wondered if there was something wrong with her ears.
“That person was my father.” He continued, his voice dropping slightly. “My biological father. He invited my woman to dance. And the person who made it happen was me, when I was a child.”
After he said this, the car fell silent again for several seconds.
Jiang Nuan stared at him. She had spent the entire afternoon preparing what to say, but she had never prepared herself for this reaction.
…Who exactly was your woman?!
No, that wasn’t the point.
The point was that the words “jealous” and “Lu Shiyan” simply did not belong in the same sentence.
The Lu Shiyan she knew was someone who sealed off every escape route, carved rules into his bones, and used absolute control in place of every other form of emotional expression.
He would say, “This is mine,” or, “You are not allowed to leave.”
He could say nothing at all—just stand there—and make a person’s knees go weak, ready to confess everything.
But he would never say, “I’m jealous.”
Jealousy meant admitting that you were at a disadvantage. It meant admitting that someone had made you uncomfortable and that you could do nothing about it.
That wasn’t Lu Shiyan.
Or rather, it wasn’t the Lu Shiyan she had always imagined.
Then he seemed to sigh.
Or perhaps it was more like finally releasing a stuffy breath he had been holding deep in his chest for far too long.
“…It’s not as if I can strangle my eight-year-old self to death.”
As he said this, his eyes narrowed slightly.
Jiang Nuan had the distinct impression that he had seriously considered whether that option was feasible.
It was absurd. But even more absurd was the fact that she seemed to detect a hint of something she wasn’t sure she ought to interpret as hurt.
Lu Shiyan’s version of hurt—silent and covered beneath a shell of rationality. This time, a tiny bit had accidentally slipped through a crack.
But she didn’t want to think too deeply about why she could understand that emotion, or about the faint, sour ache that gently twisted somewhere in her chest.
She decided to bring the conversation to an end while the atmosphere was still relatively normal.
“I understand,” she said, speaking a little faster than usual. “Next time something like this happens, I’ll tell you beforehand.”
When she finished, she forced the corners of her lips upward, as if that could give the conversation a reasonably dignified ending.
That was it. Conversation over!
They could go home.
Tonight, she would make it out of this car alive.
Lu Shiyan looked at her.
He looked for a long time—so long that the casual smile on her face was beginning to slip.
“You’re nervous,” he said.
Jiang Nuan’s shoulders tensed. She quickly patched the smile back into place and tried to look more natural. “…I’m pretty relaxed, aren’t I?”
Who could stay relaxed while alone in an enclosed space with Lu Shiyan and being watched by him like this? Wasn’t this simply a normal human stress response?
“You’re nervous.” He repeated himself.
“…”
Jiang Nuan’s fingers curled inside the pocket of her down jacket. He was right.
“You’ve been nervous since you walked out that door.” There was no pressure in his voice. It even carried the faintest trace of a sigh. “Putting on your coat, getting into the car, fastening your seat belt—you spent the entire time waiting for me to lose my temper.”
“You dragged things out all afternoon without telling me,” he continued, pausing slightly at the end of the sentence. “That was because of this too, wasn’t it?”
Outside the car, the wind swept up the snow on the ground and tapped softly against the roof.
“Have you always been this afraid of me?”
There was no accusation or question in his tone. It sounded more like something he already knew the answer to, but still wanted to hear confirmed from her own lips.
Jiang Nuan’s fingers tightened inside her pocket.
Was she afraid of him?
Yes.
From the moment Ye Que had dragged her onto the Zero Team’s vehicle and she had heard through the communicator that he intended to personally verify the situation.
From the first time she met him, when she was told she had no choice.
From the night she had been crushed beneath the weight of it all, when he had told her, “Don’t be afraid.”
From those nights when her body had nowhere left to retreat, and his demands seemed to have no end.
She was afraid of the strength that made resistance against him impossible, of the power that allowed him to establish rules with a single sentence, of the way he blocked every possible escape route, and of his possessiveness—the need to enclose someone at his side so completely that even breathing seemed to require his permission.
But she didn’t know when this fear had begun to grow complicated, with something else mixed into it.
When she learned about his father.
When he acknowledged her abilities.
When they fought side by side…
And in the thoughtful care he showed her in everyday life. In the words he had practically forced out through clenched teeth: “I’m only an ordinary man too.” And in what he had said in the study: “Try not to assume the conclusion beforehand.”
She didn’t want to admit how long these things had lingered in her mind.
“Mm.” She heard her own voice. “I’m afraid of you.”
After saying it aloud, she felt less tense.
He already knew, anyway. There was no point pretending.
“…But I’m even more afraid today.”
A subtle tremor passed through Lu Shiyan’s eyes.
Jiang Nuan drew a breath. “When you’re angry, at least I have some idea of what I might be facing.”
“But when you suddenly said you were jealous—and after the things you said a few days ago…”
“You suddenly became like a…”
She swallowed the rest of the sentence.
Like a person. Like an ordinary man.
That frightened her even more than facing Lu Shiyan the controller.
“Now, instead of being afraid of you…I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do in front of you.”
The car remained silent for a long time.
He reached out a hand.
Jiang Nuan instinctively held her breath.
But that hand did not seize her chin or press down on her shoulder. It did not land anywhere that carried the implication of control.
His hand moved in her direction, then passed her by.
He opened the passenger-side door.
The night wind, carrying snow from the ground, rushed into the car.
“Get out,” he said.
Jiang Nuan froze.
“…What?”
Lu Shiyan had already opened his own door and unfastened his seat belt.
He stepped out, walked around the front of the car, and stood outside her open door.
Moonlight illuminated him in cool, clear lines.
He held out his hand to her.
Palm up.
“Since we’re going to dance,” he said, “you should at least let me see what you can do first.”
Sitting in the passenger seat with warm and cold air striking her face at the same time, Jiang Nuan stared at the hand suspended before her.
The frozen lake. The moonlight. The snowy plain.
Lu Shiyan wanted to dance with her here.
