As the steam in the bathroom finally cleared, Jiang Nuan realized she was facing a very practical problem.
She stood before the sink, staring at herself in the mirror.
Her wet hair clung to the back of her neck, and she was wrapped in nothing but a bath towel.
The clothes she had been wearing had been soiled beyond saving during the escape—dragged across the ground, pinned down, and generally put through hell.
Lu Shiyan had said there were clean clothes of his in the closet.
Jiang Nuan opened the wardrobe beside the bathroom.
There weren’t many clothes inside. They were arranged with almost obsessive precision, all in shades of black and gray.
Her fingers brushed over a row of hangers before finally stopping at the only light-colored garment in the corner.
A white shirt made of soft fabric with a cool, silky touch.
She pulled it on.
The collar hung slightly open, revealing a small patch of skin beneath her collarbone.
The sleeves were too long, so she rolled the cuffs twice, barely exposing her fingertips.
The oversized white shirt wrapped around her slender body. Its hem stopped midway down her thighs, covering everything it should, yet revealing hints of what lay beneath whenever she moved.
That crisp, cool scent uniquely belonging to Lu Shiyan enveloped her completely.
*
The sound of running water stopped in the open kitchen.
Lu Shiyan was plating the last dish. The motion of his hands halted the instant he saw her.
His gaze traveled from the damp ends of her hair to the collar hanging slightly open and the faintly visible line of her collarbone, then dropped to the stretch of skin exposed by the shifting hem of the shirt, so white it was almost glaring.
Then he looked away.
He picked up the ladle and continued serving the soup, filling her bowl a little more than the first.
“Sit.”
Jiang Nuan pretended not to notice anything. She pulled out a chair beside the dining table and sat down.
Her toes brushed against the protective film left on the chair legs, producing a faint sound.
It was the second chair to be used at the four-person dining table.
Several dishes were laid out on the table.
A plate of scrambled eggs with tomatoes, bright and appetizing, the eggs coated in tomato and rich with sauce. A plate of stir-fried greens, fresh and emerald-colored, cooked to perfection. And a plate of stir-fried shrimp.
The soup was seaweed and egg-drop soup.
Three dishes and one soup—simple and homestyle.
Lu Shiyan sat down across from her and handed her a pair of chopsticks.
Jiang Nuan took them and first picked up a bite of the scrambled eggs with tomatoes.
Her eyes lit up the moment she tasted it.
The tomatoes were perfectly balanced between sweet and sour, with that distinctive wok hei—the unique fragrance produced by cooking over high heat.
She took a sip of soup.
Fresh and savory.
Jiang Nuan smacked her lips and couldn’t help looking up at the man across from her, who was calmly eating his rice.
“You can cook?”
Her voice was full of disbelief.
Lu Shiyan picked up some greens and chewed them unhurriedly.
“What’s so surprising about that?”
“No, it’s just…” Jiang Nuan mumbled around her food. “You’re the Zero Squad Captain, the core of the Federation’s greatest combat force, and now Governor Lu, the highest-ranking official in all of Whale Harbor…”
She pointed at the plate of scrambled eggs with tomatoes with her chopsticks.
“And you make them better than the food at our base cafeteria.”
“The cafeteria’s standards aren’t exactly high.” Lu Shiyan lifted his bowl, utterly unruffled.
“I still think it tastes great.”
“Your standards are even lower.”
“…”
Jiang Nuan glared at him, but her chopsticks honestly continued making their way from one dish to another.
It really was delicious.
After ten hours of hunger and nearly dying several times, this taste of ordinary daily life almost brought her to tears.
Halfway through the meal, her mouth moved before her brain could stop it.
“Where did you learn to cook? Did your family teach you?”
The moment the words left her mouth, her chopsticks froze.
Silence lingered for several seconds.
Jiang Nuan raised her eyes, watching Lu Shiyan’s expression.
His father had been a member of the Lighthouse Squad.
The spirited young men in that old group photograph—the team that had tried to save the world but ultimately brought about an apocalypse—were something Lu Shiyan almost never spoke about. He had rarely mentioned anything concerning his family.
She opened her mouth, intending to say, “You don’t have to answer.”
But Lu Shiyan had already spoken.
“I’ve cooked for myself since I was little.”
His tone was utterly flat.
“My mother died young.”
“As for my father…”
He paused.
“My impression of him is that he was a man who fell from the altar.”
There was no resentment in Lu Shiyan’s voice, only a hint of weariness.
“I hardly ever saw him.”
“The people from the first-generation investigation squad,” he said, setting down his chopsticks, “almost none of them had normal families. After turning the world into this, they couldn’t accept it. They wanted to fix it. To keep researching. To prove that the path they’d chosen back then hadn’t been wrong.”
“Again and again.”
“Every time they failed, they tried once more.”
He lowered his head and took a sip of soup, his eyelashes casting a small shadow in the light.
“The ironic part is, I spent my whole life trying to escape his shadow.”
“In the end, I fell headfirst into the era he had created with his own hands.”
Jiang Nuan froze. Something flashed rapidly through her mind.
“This forbidden zone was constructed based on the period when the Lighthouse Squad had yet to be destroyed.”
Lu Shiyan’s words struck like lightning, cleaving through the fog in Jiang Nuan’s mind.
She instantly thought of the report about the Lighthouse Squad that Lu Shiyan had thrown at her in the interrogation room—a report stating that they had caused a disaster that killed a hundred thousand people.
So that was it. The world fabricated by this forbidden zone was currently modeled on the era when the Lighthouse Squad had sealed away the anomalous energy and the disaster had only just begun—a shadow of the past.
And Lu Shiyan had been trapped inside this prison forged from his father’s shadow for more than four hundred days.
She couldn’t imagine it.
Every morning, he woke to streets, buildings, news broadcasts, and the casual conversations of ordinary people—all of them bearing the marks of that era, all of them carrying the shadow left behind by his father.
Yet he had not only endured it. To investigate the core of the forbidden zone, he had climbed step by step until he became governor.
Lu Shiyan would not be trapped.
Not by his father’s shadow.
Not by the bygone era woven by the forbidden zone.
But—
Jiang Nuan glanced at Lu Shiyan, who was quietly drinking his soup, then at the hand that had brushed over the report on the Lighthouse Squad and was now trembling almost imperceptibly.
Her heart felt as though something had clenched around it, leaving her unable to breathe.
“Your father and the others… they wanted to make the world a better place too, didn’t they?” Jiang Nuan asked softly as she looked at him.
“At least… you’re still here.”
“Just because your father couldn’t do it doesn’t mean you can’t.”
Lu Shiyan’s eyes lowered slightly. The hand holding the soup spoon hovered in midair.
Jiang Nuan’s heart sank.
Someone like Lu Shiyan might not appreciate being comforted.
As she anxiously wondered whether she had said the wrong thing, he suddenly spoke.
“My father…”
His voice was very quiet, almost as though he were talking to himself.
“…was terrible at cooking.”
Jiang Nuan looked at him in confusion.
At last, Lu Shiyan raised his head.
The light reflected in those deep eyes, along with the image of her.
“So you’re right,” he said.
“I’m not like him.”
*
Jiang Nuan swallowed her last bite of food. When she looked up, she found herself meeting Lu Shiyan’s bottomless gaze.
He was simply watching her.
She had no idea how long he had been doing so.
The light struck his face from the side, and something seemed to stir slowly beneath the surface of his eyes.
After spending more than four hundred days and nights in this gray fog, building an identity out of lies and weaving a web with power, watching the false city lights flicker on and fade away—
Everything here was fake.
The girl wearing his shirt sat across from him, eating the meal he had cooked and earnestly trying to comfort a wound he had never spoken of to anyone.
Her breath was warm, her eyes clear and bright.
She was the only thing that was real.
Only now did he feel truly alive.
“Um…” Jiang Nuan shifted under his gaze. “Should I do the dishes?”
“No need.” Lu Shiyan withdrew his eyes and stood. “Go sit on the sofa.”
Lu Shiyan walked to the cabinet along one side of the living room and took out a first-aid kit.
Jiang Nuan had already settled onto the sofa. She watched as he carried the kit over.
Lu Shiyan pulled up a chair and sat down in front of her.
They were so close that his legs were almost touching her knees.
“Hold out your hand.”
Jiang Nuan froze for a moment, then instinctively glanced at her hands.
After that, she obediently extended both of them.
He took hold of her right wrist. With his long, slender fingers, he gently turned her hand over and pushed up the oversized sleeve.
Her pale, delicate wrist was exposed beneath the light, revealing a dark red mark circling her skin.
A mark left by the restraints.
Lu Shiyan stared at it, his gaze growing darker.
He opened the first-aid kit, took out a cotton swab, and unscrewed a tube of transparent ointment.
His rough fingertips supported the back of her hand, his touch exceptionally gentle. The cotton swab, coated in cool ointment, slowly spread it over the mark.
The refreshing sensation covered her skin, gradually easing the stinging burn.
He applied it very slowly, working the ointment along the mark bit by bit.
Jiang Nuan watched his lowered lashes. She watched the hand that had gripped a whip in the interrogation room only moments ago now carefully cradle her wrist.
She flexed her fingers.
“Captain, when you tied me to the chair in the interrogation room just now, you certainly didn’t treat me this gently.”
Lu Shiyan’s hand paused.
He raised his eyes to glance at her. “Not satisfied?”
Jiang Nuan was perfectly frank. “Of course I’m not satisfied.”
“If you’re not satisfied,” Lu Shiyan said without looking up, switching to her other wrist as he continued applying the ointment, a faint curve touching the corners of his lips, “you can tie me up in return.”
