Jiang Nuan lifted her eyes from that dazzling rose, her gaze passing over the transparent glass wall to Ye Que outside the greenhouse.
He was leaning against the white colonnade outside, his black combat uniform outlining his broad, upright shoulders and back. His posture seemed relaxed and casual, but those ink-black eyes pierced through the glass, locking onto the space between her and Bai Siyuan.
Even through an entire glass wall, that gaze pressed down on her spine, making it hard to breathe.
"A Nuan," Bai Siyuan suddenly let out a sigh.
The sigh was very soft, as if it was something he had deliberated over for a long time before finally deciding to say it.
"You don't have to keep hiding it from me anymore."
He faced her, his expression tinged with helplessness.
"In front of me, there's no need to put on an act with that fellow surnamed Ye."
He paused for a beat.
"I know you two are faking it."
Jiang Nuan's heart tightened.
She tilted her head slightly, her tone unchanged. "What is brother talking about?"
Bai Siyuan didn't respond.
He looked at her, then slowly walked to her side.
He raised his hand, his fingertips gently brushing aside a lock of hair that had fallen by her temple.
Jiang Nuan instinctively took half a step back.
Her heel hit the edge of the flower bed behind her, cutting off any retreat.
Bai Siyuan withdrew his hand.
"See."
He smiled, and the smile carried a hint of bitterness.
"Your instinct is to flinch when I touch you."
Jiang Nuan said nothing.
"Every time you get close to Ye Que, your shoulders tense up first, and only then do you relax."
He paused, his gaze settling on the strands of hair by her ear.
"It's very subtle."
"But I've been with you since we were children. I know every little move you make too well."
The greenhouse fell silent for a few seconds.
"It's the same with you and me—on a subconscious level, you have a resistance to him too."
The air was thick with an almost suffocating floral scent.
Jiang Nuan was silent, her gaze dropping to the rose between her fingers. She knew Bai Siyuan was right, at least partially right.
When she got close to Ye Que, she would experience a contradictory reaction—a sense of wariness and a sense of security appearing at the same time, one rising as the other fell, never truly settling.
Her heartbeat would quicken when he held her hand, and even last night when she slept beside him, there was a feeling of steadiness she hadn't anticipated.
But her mind kept warning her, over and over.
Wrong.
Relying on your keeper isn't love—it's conditioning.
Even if what Ye Que had started to say on the couch last night was real, even if the weight in his eyes when he said "I can't let go of her" was heavy and true.
Even if all of that came from the heart.
She couldn't even tell whether that quickened heartbeat of hers was because of Ye Que himself, or because he happened to be the nearest sense of safety in this world full of danger.
Bai Siyuan looked at her silent profile and didn't keep pressing on the subject.
He took a step back, giving her room to breathe.
Then he tilted his head slightly, his gaze moving past Jiang Nuan's shoulder to that black figure outside the greenhouse glass.
When he looked back, his expression was more serious than before.
"A Nuan, were you forced to stay with Zero Squad?"
A pause.
"Do you want to leave that place?"
She instinctively raised her eyes, her gaze passing through the roses and the glass once more, finding that figure leaning against the colonnade outside.
He was also looking this way, and their gazes met in the air.
Across the entire glass greenhouse, past the room full of blazing roses, Ye Que's eyes were dark and steady.
Jiang Nuan looked away first.
Bai Siyuan followed her gaze for a moment, then looked back.
"There’s no need to be afraid. The greenhouse has special soundproofing—even if he has psychic powers, he can’t hear what we’re saying."
Jiang Nuan lowered her head.
"Brother," she began, "there are a lot of things from before that I can’t remember anymore."
Her gaze lingered on the heart of the rose in her hand—petal after petal, growing darker the deeper they went.
"My memories are fuzzy. Everything that happened after we separated in the refugee district… so much of it I can’t piece together."
She paused.
"So I can’t make this decision."
Bai Siyuan listened quietly.
He gave a slight nod, as if he’d expected her to say exactly that.
Then he took a slow step forward.
"A Nuan, stay with Zero Squad."
"They protect you because you’re useful."
There was no aggression in his tone.
"They need your purification ability."
"Only I," Bai Siyuan took another step closer, "have known everything about you from the very beginning."
"Only I am truly looking out for you."
His voice grew heavier on the last line.
The air in the greenhouse was humid and stifling, the scent of red roses so thick it was cloying, pressing in from every direction.
That Bai Siyuan knew she was a purification psychic wasn’t surprising. She was a registered purification specialist in Zero Squad, and the Bai family had more than enough channels to obtain that information. Whether he knew her exact rank or method wasn’t something she could be sure of, but that wasn’t the most pressing issue right now.
How much of Ye Que’s protection was sincerity, how much was obligation—no one could say for certain.
But a man who had personally erased his sister’s memories—what right did he have to say he was doing things “for her own good”?
"But you and I have been apart for so many years."
Jiang Nuan’s gaze was utterly calm.
"I don’t know what kind of person you are now."
"To me…"
She looked him in the eyes.
"Brother, you’re a stranger too."
The last few words landed, and she clearly saw Bai Siyuan’s lashes tremble.
Part of what she said was a test, and part was genuine honesty.
The years in the Bai family had vanished from her memory. The Bai Siyuan she carried in her mind would forever be that boy in the refugee district who gave her his entire half-piece of red bean cake.
But the man in front of her—the head of the Bai family, a mental psychic, a memory-sealer—was separated from that boy by too many things she couldn’t see.
Maybe precisely because she remembered nothing, she could look at him with such a steady gaze.
Bai Siyuan didn’t rush to rebut after she finished, as if he was holding something back with great effort.
"You’re right. We’ve been apart too long."
He set down the pruning shears, the metal meeting the table with a soft clink.
He turned around, his gaze falling on Jiang Nuan’s face.
"But A Nuan, how long have you known the people in Zero Squad?"
Bai Siyuan paced slowly over to the glass wall of the greenhouse.
His gaze passed over that sea of red flowers, through the transparent wall, landing on the man outside who had been watching him this entire time.
A few seconds of silence.
"That day at the base, I saw what was on your neck."
His voice suddenly went hoarse, as though those words had to be squeezed out of his throat.
"A collar."
The word came out of his mouth, the ending trembling uncontrollably.
Jiang Nuan’s fingernails pressed into her palms.
So that day he had seen it.
Bai Siyuan’s voice continued.
“Now I’m wondering if you have other ways of being tracked on you.”
He pulled his gaze away from Ye Que and turned back to her.
“You think I’m a stranger—”
His voice tightened.
“But I have never once had any intention of hurting you! I never put a collar on you, and I never planted any monitors around you!”
The last few words were almost gritted out through his teeth.
The moment his voice fell, the greenhouse fell so quiet you could hear the sound of water droplets rolling off the petals.
Bai Siyuan himself was the first to realize he had lost his composure.
He lowered his eyes, raised a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, and pressed there for two full seconds.
As if he were forcibly pushing some emotion back down.
When he looked up again, his expression had already returned to calm.
Only a faint trace of undertow remained in his eyes, flickering on and off in the sunlight.
“Would you rather define those people as familiar?”
His voice had regained its steadiness.
“Does that mean what they did was aboveboard?”
The greenhouse fell silent for a moment.
Jiang Nuan kept her head down, staring at the rose in her hand.
The petal swayed gently between her fingers.
“Brother says they’re not aboveboard.”
She slowly raised her eyes, her gaze cutting through the profusion of brilliant roses, through the cloying, almost suffocating perfume, and landing on Bai Siyuan’s face.
“Then, Brother.”
“Is there nothing you’re keeping from me?”
