Jiang Nuan let him guide her through the dance, moving slowly, but her mind had gone blank.
What was wrong with Lu Shiyan today?
He said he was jealous. Said he minded. Said, “I’m happy.” He even asked her to be honest about her feelings.
Had he taken the wrong medicine today?
Or did the ability stabilizer have some side effect she didn’t know about—temporary personality softening, perhaps?
Or had he finally found a weapon more effective than control?
She instinctively looked up at him.
Moonlight fell across his face, sharpening the lines of his brow and nose.
To be honest, she had seen this face plenty of times.
When he looked down at her with an oppressive intensity. When he issued orders without expression. When he gripped her chin and forced her to meet his eyes. She knew every angle of that face by heart.
But tonight, it seemed somehow different.
Perhaps it was because that familiar scrutinizing look had vanished from his eyes.
What remained was an expression she had never seen before, relaxed by several degrees. The moonlight had washed away some of his usual chill, leaving behind a face that unexpectedly looked… gentle.
She suddenly felt that he bore a faint resemblance to Lu Zhaoming.
…So this was what he looked like when he didn’t frown or exert pressure.
The dance music was still playing from the car, but by the time it drifted over here, it had faded into a barely audible melody, as though it had always been part of the frozen lake’s background music.
The moonlight and snow certainly suited the atmosphere here. They suited the face before her, too.
But something was still missing.
She couldn’t say why. She simply felt that amid this silver-white world, there was still something absent.
Silver motes of supernatural power spread from her palm, slowly dispersing through the air.
They floated around the two of them, some high and some low, some spinning while others remained still.
Blending with the moon’s own silver radiance, they became indistinguishable from the moonlight itself.
It was as if a low-hanging river of stars had appeared out of nowhere.
The ice reflected the floating motes, and the snow beneath their feet lit up as well.
Lu Shiyan’s steps slowed. He lowered his eyes to look at the silver fragments of light drifting between them.
The fingers resting against her waist suddenly tightened, then deliberately loosened a second later.
When he looked up at her, his eyes held emotions so complicated they were almost contradictory, as if he were drawing closer and retreating at the same time.
She couldn’t quite identify what was in them. There was something precious and carefully guarded, something that looked like pain, and something like a person seeing once again what they had believed they would never see again.
“…It’s beautiful,” he said, looking at the river of stars—and at her within it.
Jiang Nuan looked at him too. For a long time.
Long enough for her to realize that they had been staring at each other far beyond what could be considered normal.
But it was too late to look away.
Lu Shiyan had already noticed her gaze.
He saw the guilty flicker in her eyes as she tried to turn away. His gaze shifted, and his lashes moved twice, as if searching for somewhere else to land.
Then some of the complicated emotions in his eyes faded.
And once again, he smiled.
The corners of his eyes moved first, followed by the faintest curve of his lips. It was a shallow smile, one he seemed almost unaware of himself.
A very handsome smile.
Jiang Nuan made a mental note of it.
The number of times Lu Shiyan had smiled tonight might already exceed the total number of times he had smiled in all the days she had known him.
Then he tightened the arm around her waist.
With a gentle tug.
It was only a single motion, not forceful, but the direction was unmistakable.
He pulled her into his arms.
The puffy fabric of their down jackets compressed with a soft rustle. Her face sank into the small patch of warmth between his neck and collar, a sheltered shadow of heat.
It was warm there—so warm it felt like an entirely different world from the subzero cold outside.
His chin rested lightly on top of her head, and one arm folded around her back.
The wind swept past them, but it didn’t touch her.
His shoulder and overcoat blocked it from her.
The silver motes of light still floated around them, drifting quietly.
Jiang Nuan’s hands hovered in midair. In the end, she didn’t push him away. She let them drop to her sides, hiding them inside the sleeves of her down jacket. With her face buried in that small pocket of warmth, she remained perfectly still.
After a while—perhaps half a minute, perhaps longer—his voice came down from above her head.
“Your basic dance technique isn’t bad, but you have a problem with distributing your strength.”
“…”
Buried against his neck, Jiang Nuan stiffened.
“When you shift your center of gravity, you tend to lean forward, so you step on me. Practice exerting force more deliberately when we get back.”
“…”
What happened to the atmosphere?
And where had the person who’d said “I’m happy” gone?
She lifted her face from the hollow of his shoulder and looked at him with profound exasperation.
Lu Shiyan looked down at her, his expression already restored to its usual calm composure.
But there was still a trace of laughter lingering at the corners of his eyes.
*
Her terminal vibrated again. She glanced down at it.
Qinian: If you don’t reply to me within fifteen minutes, I’m calling the police!!!!
The corner of Jiang Nuan’s mouth twitched. She turned the screen facedown again.
Lu Shiyan’s voice came from above her head. “Why aren’t you replying to Qinian?”
How could this man have such good eyes?
“…I don’t know how to respond.”
She couldn’t exactly tell him that replying to someone else in front of him gave her the strange feeling that she was sneaking around behind his back.
“You don’t know how to respond.” He repeated her words, then continued, “When you were arranging practice partners with Qinian, Ye Que, and Jiang Ce, you seemed to know exactly what to say.”
So that was what he was waiting for.
“Captain, you really do manage everything,” she said. “Do I need your approval just to practice dancing? Even a father taking his child to an extracurricular class wouldn’t ask this many questions.”
The arms around her stiffened slightly.
She froze too. She couldn’t believe she had actually said that to Lu Shiyan’s face.
But the momentary guilt was immediately swallowed by another emotion.
The smug confidence of someone who had nothing to fear.
After all, it was Lu Shiyan himself who had told her to be honest about everything she felt.
He was silent for two seconds, then actually laughed again.
“You define taking turns practicing dance with three men as an extracurricular class.”
“Then what am I supposed to be? The parent waiting for announcements in the group chat?”
He looked down at her, a hint of gentleness in his eyes. “Jiang Nuan, next time you assign practice partners, remember to include the parent in the schedule.”
…Wait.
The parent? Include him?
So everything he had said just now was because he hadn’t been assigned a slot?
The captain of Unit Zero was competing with three of his own team members for a place on the practice schedule. Where had Captain Lu’s dignity gone?
But… Lu Shiyan today was a little more pleasing to look at.
She couldn’t stop the corners of her eyes from curving as she prepared to say something.
Suddenly, a noise came from the distance.
Jiang Nuan turned her head.
At the arched bridge over the frozen lake, the sky split open with a gigantic tear.
Gray-black mist churned along the edges of the rift. Countless limbs crawled out from within, so numerous that their end couldn’t be seen.
Her scalp prickled.
Wasn’t that bridge where the Lighthouse Team had sealed the anomalous energy?
The next second, Lu Shiyan scooped her up into his arms. He crossed the distance back to the car in a few strides and placed her directly in the driver’s seat.
“Drive back,” he said, then turned and left.
Jiang Nuan stared at his retreating back for a second before pushing open the car door and jumping out.
Her snow boots hit the ground. A silver moon blade had already taken shape above her palm.
“I’m staying!” She lifted her chin toward Lu Shiyan. “Even Lu Zhaoming said I’m good in a fight!”
Lu Shiyan’s gaze swept over the solidified moon blade in her hand before finally settling on her eyes. There was no hesitation in them.
The rupture in the sky behind them continued to widen, and the sounds of monsters hitting the ground grew more frequent by the second.
He did not try to force her back again.
“All right.”
The gentle expression on his face vanished completely, replaced by the familiar layer of coldness.
“But don’t move more than three steps away from me.”
