The first time Mu Ning spotted Jing Xuan among the forty-some-thousand “worker bees,” he was feeding a cat.
It was early this year, in the stretch just before the New Year.
Bincheng was a city where you could never get away with wearing a down jacket, but when the winter rains came, there was still a certain damp chill in the air.
That night a downpour hit, and many people were trapped on the campus. Mu Ning counted herself lucky to live nearby—no need to queue up as number 200 on the ride-hailing app.
Her colleagues filed out one by one. Under the pretext of “research,” Mu Ning openly played a wildly popular otome game in the office—one of the perks of working at a game company.
She got so absorbed that she didn’t notice the time until past ten. Only two programmer guys remained, both gaming on the company network just like her.
Mu Ning packed up, clocked out, and headed home. The rain had already stopped outside. The air was saturated with moisture, and every breath that filled her lungs carried the fresh scent of damp earth.
The road after the rain was slick and glistening. As Mu Ning passed through the central courtyard of the campus, a glimpse of something made her stop in her tracks—
In front of a bench covered in fallen leaves, a young man was crouched there feeding a cat. He wore a black soft-shell jacket, and under the dim light, his skin was pale as the glaze of fine porcelain.
Her first thought was: whose shoujo manga protagonist got left behind here?
Her second thought: in this world full of color, whoever created him seemed to have forgotten to paint him in.
He seemed to be in a bad mood. From start to finish, he kept his head down, watching two cats fight over a single can of cat food, without saying a word.
She watched him for as long as he stayed there.
Only when the cats had eaten their fill and turned their backs on him without a second glance did he pick up the empty can, stand, toss it into the trash, and head toward the main gate.
About thirty or forty meters behind, Mu Ning followed him all the way out the gate, watched him walk in the opposite direction from where she lived, take a right at the intersection, and then disappear from sight.
Like a hazy, dreamlike mirage.
That chance encounter with a lost page from a shoujo manga didn’t weigh too heavily on Mu Ning’s mind.
It wasn’t until after the holiday break, when everyone returned to work, that it happened again. One day, rushing home to catch the latest episode of a Netflix series, she clocked out at 7:30 and stopped by FamilyMart to grab a bento and some snacks.
As she turned the corner of the shelf, she nearly collided with an impossibly tall figure.
Mu Ning quickly braked to a stop.
Her breath caught a faint, clean scent of soap. She instinctively looked up—and when her eyes met that face, with its high-bridged nose, slightly pressed thin lips, and lowered lashes, her heart skipped a beat.
Her best friend Meng Meng was a fangirl. There was a male celebrity she’d loved for years, and she’d gone to two of his offline events. She’d described it to Mu Ning once, saying, You don’t know how mind-blowing 187 centimeters is in real life. When you see a person that tall, you really feel like he’s on his own separate layer—so gorgeous it leaves you speechless.
The inadequacy of language is that without real experience, imagination alone can never fully convey the feeling.
In that moment, she understood.
Falling for someone purely on looks was, of course, terribly shallow. But she’d never claimed to be a person of depth—since elementary school, she’d been a faithful devotee of cultural consumerism. Life is short; school and work are exhausting enough. Don’t elevate everything to such a serious height.
After that, aside from payday, X became another reason Mu Ning went to work.
She was addicted to these irregular chance encounters, like playing a game rich with side quests—never knowing where on the map that mysterious NPC might be triggered.
She was also addicted to observing from the shadows—he didn’t know she existed, like a luminous celestial body spinning on its own axis, unaware that on some distant planet, a telescope had already locked onto it.
And at this very moment, the celestial body shifted its angle.
It had observed her observation.
Jing Xuan stopped in front of her, looked down, and asked, “Do you have wet wipes?”
“Oh… yes.”
Mu Ning pulled out a pack of portable wet wipes. She was about to take one out when she paused, reached back into her bag, and retrieved a 30ml bottle of no-rinse alcohol gel. She asked Jing Xuan, “Do you want this instead?”
“Yes. Thanks.”
He didn’t take it. Instead, he simply held out both hands.
Mu Ning pressed a pump of gel into his palm.
He rubbed his hands together, and the scent of alcohol filled the air.
Jing Xuan said, “I actually really like the smell of alcohol.”
“Why?” Mu Ning tried hard to tear her gaze away from his beautiful fingers.
“It feels clean.”
“Do you have germaphobia?”
Jing Xuan thought about it seriously before answering, “Not to the level of germaphobia.”
After finishing with the gel, Jing Xuan wiped his hands with a wet wipe, tossed it into the nearby trash can, and turned back to her. He swung his backpack to the front and unzipped it.
Nova’s plush doll, along with a small paper bag, was held out to her.
Mu Ning let out a “wow” as she took the bag, glancing at the paper carrier—it was printed with a chibi group photo of all the NPCs from Echoes of the Ruins. Inside were badges, coasters, standees, acrylic charms, and art boards… all featuring Nova.
“Thank you, Teacher Jing, for generously parting with these. Looks like I’m becoming a Nova solo stan now.” Mu Ning said with a laugh.
“Weren’t you before?”
The online batting game seemed to have shifted offline.
“…I used to like Mortis too.”
“The all-loving Teacher Mu.”
It was such a plain tone—why did she pick up on some kind of helpless indulgence in it? Was her brain so fried from writing too much otome game plot that she’d turned into a complete romance-addled mess?
Mu Ning opened a badge on the spot and pinned it onto her canvas tote.
Then she pulled out the art board from inside and held it out to Jing Xuan: “Could I get a signature from the lead planner?”
The art board featured a full-body Nova illustration with gold powder detailing on certain parts—absolutely exquisite.
Jing Xuan smiled slightly. “Did you bring a pen?”
“I did, I did.” Mu Ning pulled a gold marker from her bag.
“Is there anything you don’t have in that bag?”
“Is there anything else you need?”
“Nothing else for now.” Jing Xuan smiled as he took the pen.
He uncapped it, then paused mid-motion. “Actually, now I do.”
“Hm?”
“Paper. Do you have any?”
“I have tissues.”
“Paper for writing.”
“What for?”
“I’ll practice my signature first. I only have one art board—don’t want to ruin yours.”
“The responsible Teacher Jing.”
Jing Xuan’s response was a slight raise of his eyebrow.
Mu Ning let out a small laugh and said, “I have a notebook I use for jotting down ideas.”
The notebook was A6-sized. Mu Ning flipped to a blank page from the back and handed it to him.
He held the pen in his right hand, pressing his left thumb against the notebook’s spine, hesitating without immediately writing—seemingly because the notebook was suspended in midair, making it awkward to work with.
Mu Ning held her breath for a moment, clearly hearing herself say: “Is it hard to practice like that? Should we find another place?”
Jing Xuan stopped moving, lifting his gaze from the paper to her face.
“You gave me merch…” Mu Ning gave the Nova plushie tucked under her arm a little shake. “Let me treat you to a late-night snack.”
“What do you usually eat?”
“FamilyMart?”
“That works.”
“Just kidding. FamilyMart’s not worthy of our Teacher Jing.”
“Do we have to keep calling each other ‘Teacher’?”
Mu Ning laughed out loud. “If we used first names, it’d feel a bit… presumptuous?”
“Mu Ning.” Jing Xuan looked at her, pausing briefly. “Would that feel presumptuous?”
…Not at all. It would only make my knees weak.
Mu Ning tucked a strand of hair behind her ear somewhat self-consciously and asked, “Is there any place you like?”
“A friend of mine runs a bar, and the bar snacks there are pretty good…” Jing Xuan’s words grew hesitant, and he added, “…They also have non-alcoholic drinks.”
He made an expression that was hard to categorize, then quickly retracted his own suggestion: “…Let’s just do FamilyMart.”
She’d chatted with him on WeChat before and thought he seemed like a high-level player, but now she figured that wasn’t the case. She could sense a certain clumsiness in how he proposed and then vetoed the idea: that bar was probably somewhere he frequented, so it came to mind first; but in the process of saying it out loud, he realized how it might look—taking a girl to a bar late at night was too ripe for gossip.
In fact, face-to-face conversation was completely different from WeChat. Every sentence he said carried a stiffness that anyone could spot at a glance.
“Where’s the place?” Mu Ning asked.
Jing Xuan glanced at her, as if he hadn’t expected her to ask that.
“Where do you live… which area?”
Mu Ning raised her hand and pointed. “Over there, about a ten-to-fifteen-minute walk.”
“That’s not far.”
Mu Ning hugged the plushie tucked under her arm tighter and tilted her head to look at him. “Then let’s go.”
Jing Xuan nodded. “I’ll call a ride.”
Mu Ning waited for him to finish hailing the car, then walked side by side with him toward the entrance.
Not having to observe each other’s expressions in real time seemed to make conversation a little easier.
“Did you… wait long earlier?” Mu Ning could feel her heart bobbing up and down, unable to settle.
“No. I came over at ten to nine.”
“From the airport, or home?”
“The office. I got back from the business trip this afternoon.”
“You had to work right after coming back?”
“Yeah.”
“So even being a producer is like that. I feel a bit better now.” Mu Ning joked.
Jing Xuan let out a soft laugh too.
“Do you feed the cats around the campus often?”
“Only when I happen to have snacks on me.”
“Do you have pets yourself?”
“If I did, I wouldn’t feed the strays.” Jing Xuan said. “I work overtime a lot—it’d be sad for a pet to never have anyone around.”
“That’s true.”
“You have a cat, right?”
“Yeah.” Mu Ning remembered the lie she’d told that night about the kitten knocking over the water bowl.
“What’s its name?”
“Xiao Wa.”
“The ‘Wa’ from Valerius?”
“Yeah…” At that moment, Mu Ning thought, it could just as well be the “Wa” from “Nova.”
“Is it a purebred, or—”
“An American Shorthair. I adopted it from my WeChat Moments last year.” Mu Ning paused in her steps. “Do you want to see a photo?”
“Sure.”
Mu Ning lit up her phone and turned the screen toward him.
Jing Xuan looked at her lock screen wallpaper seriously. “Very pretty.”
“She’s pretty smart too. When I’m bored, I train her with freeze-dried treats. She already knows how to shake paws and do the chicken squat.” Mu Ning put her phone away and continued, “Next step, I’m planning to train her to do a backflip.”
Jing Xuan burst out laughing.
“…You know that internet meme, right?”
“Yeah. Although I don’t really like using social media, that meme spread pretty widely.”
“Then…” Mu Ning glanced at him. “Has any cat ever done a backflip for you?”
A not-so-subtle direct pitch.
Too risky. Mu Ning immediately regretted it.
“Someone has invited me before,” Jing Xuan said. “But so far, I haven’t said yes to any of them.”