If one wanted to fake a suicide, the most basic and simple method was to start with a suicide note.
Lu Henqin couldn’t sleep. After leaving Xia Tingchan’s room, he returned to the sofa, intending to imitate her handwriting and write a suicide note.
He tried writing on a blank sheet of paper, but after a few characters, he frowned in dissatisfaction.
Having not practiced imitation for so long, he had indeed grown rusty. No matter how many times he tried, the only thing that resembled her handwriting was her name.
This wouldn’t do. He held the paper up and compared it to his memory for a moment before decisively setting it aside and heading to the basement.
The basement had two storage rooms. The smaller one was a sealed space he had deliberately partitioned off, its door kept tightly locked at all times. Even the cleaning lady was instructed to skip this room.
Lu Henqin rarely entered this room. As soon as he unlocked the door and stepped inside, the ventilation system in the cramped space hummed continuously, maintaining a low-temperature, dry environment year-round.
A flameless diffuser sat in the room, though its scent had nearly evaporated. Taking a deep breath, only a faint hint of citrus lingered.
This storage room was filled with one person’s name.
Lu Henqin lowered his gaze slightly as he walked in, casually closing the door behind him.
The room held many printed photographs. Fearing they would be damaged by the damp, dark basement, each one had been carefully framed and neatly arranged in a cabinet, large and small, filling it entirely.
Yet every photo faced the wall.
Without lifting his eyes, Lu Henqin walked straight to the cabinet lining the left wall, which was packed with books.
He pulled out a few volumes, accidentally dislodging an old edition of The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant beside them. The book fell to the floor with a thud, and the bookmark tucked inside flew out.
Lu Henqin bent down to pick it up. Without a second thought, he expertly flipped to page 73, where the bookmark had originally been placed, and carefully tucked it back in. The bookmark bore the name of its last borrower: Xia Tingchan.
But that wasn’t what he was looking for. What he sought was the only self-criticism essay Xia Tingchan had ever written in her life.
Xia Tingchan thought her first “formal” encounter with Lu Henqin took place on the 11th floor, on a semicircular balcony facing the exterior wall of the rooftop.
As she deftly climbed up from the 10th-floor exterior wall, Lu Henqin, along with Bai Haoying, Zai Haorong, Ruan Chengli, and others, had surrounded a boy trembling like a leaf.
A textbook, all-too-common scene of elite second- and third-generation bullying.
At that moment, Xia Tingchan’s face subtly conveyed exactly that sentiment.
Lu Henqin felt utterly wronged.
He believed he had been exceptionally sincere, repeatedly and patiently explaining to her that not all wealthy people were so idle as to relieve their boredom by bullying others. His time was precious, his schedule packed—not just anyone could claim a piece of it.
But the boy trapped in the middle let out a pitiful cry of “Classmate Xia!”—a plea so heart-wrenching it could move anyone to tears—and the situation quickly spiraled out of control.
Unwilling to be misunderstood from the outset, Lu Henqin grabbed her wrist, refusing to let Xia Tingchan leave without clearing things up. She didn’t remember him, but he remembered her. If he didn’t explain, she would undoubtedly intervene—
That time, she had stood guard beside a mobile food cart, confronting a middle-aged man.
Lu Henqin was returning late and, disliking the heavy greasy smoke of this snack street, turned into a quiet alley to send his location to the driver. As he was sending the message, the intermittent, coarse voice of a middle-aged man, roughened by cigarette smoke, reached his ears.
Just a dispute over a mobile stall spot—a "major issue" among the lower-class street vendors.
Lu Henqin opened his phone and started a game, trying to hold his breath and slow his breathing to avoid inhaling too much of the greasy, low-quality air.
"The spots are all paid for, and we arrived first today. If you can't find another spot, blocking our stall with your cart—is that how you do business properly?"
"Are you leaving or not? If not, no one does business today!"
"Why should we leave?"
A loud crash echoed.
Lu Henqin frowned and looked up to see the middle-aged man, furious, throwing a stainless steel bucket from Xia Tingchan's stall cart onto the ground.
Milky sweet liquid splattered everywhere, the lid's metal shell dented deeply, splashed with juice.
Beside Xia Tingchan stood a girl of similar age, her collar visible under her jacket, also a Qingyun High School scholarship student.
She seemed terrified, sobbing while tugging at Xia Tingchan's sleeve to pull her back.
The man rolled up his sleeves, ready to throw more, but Xia Tingchan stepped forward with her left foot, blocking the cart's wheel, then pushed it forcefully forward.
The entire cart teetered dangerously before toppling over with a thud, crashing into the man's cart blocking the way. Both carts tipped over heavily together.
Sharp screams erupted again, followed by a stream of foul, unbearable curses.
Lu Henqin rubbed his ear, expressionless, finding it all just noisy.
A step back could have brought peace—why escalate trivial matters into life-or-death struggles? The lower classes always blow minor issues out of proportion.
He watched the figures confronting each other; with many onlookers, the man didn’t dare actually resort to violence.
A teammate in the game called out to him. Lu Henqin sent a signal, lowered his head to play for a few more seconds, then suddenly exited the game screen. Rarely meddling in others' affairs, he casually dialed the police.
Before a bigger conflict could erupt, the sound of sirens approached from afar. The man immediately stopped his threatening gestures, cursing under his breath as he hurriedly righted his cart and pushed it away.
The surrounding stall owners, who had remained silent earlier, finally began comforting the crying girl: "Tongtong, don't cry. That man is just a troublemaker, taking advantage of…"
Lu Henqin glanced over briefly and saw Xia Tingchan borrowing a broom and dustpan to clean up the spilled food on the ground.
After cleaning for a while, Xia Tingchan lifted her feet slightly, feeling the sticky sweetness of the spilled liquid. She glanced around and locked onto this alley.
Only then did Lu Henqin get a clear look at her face, his eyebrows lifting slightly in recognition.
So it really was someone he knew.
Earlier, when the duty teacher was chasing him, none of the Discipline Committee members who saw his face wanted to be the one to speak up, all silently agreeing to keep quiet. But Xia Tingchan had pointed him out without changing her expression.
She was an awkward bookworm who didn't know how to read the room. Ruan Chengli said she had been the top student in her grade for years and was also a "poor student" who consistently received financial aid. Having grown up in an orphanage, her lack of social graces was understandable. But this incident was his fault. When the teacher was chasing him earlier, it was all because he had inexplicably spotted her first in the crowd, and as he passed by her, he had foolishly turned back to stare at her for a moment. That was how the strict classmate Xia had managed to catch the name on his chest badge.
Seeing Xia Tingchan approaching, he silently pressed the volume button to mute his phone and took two steps back into the shadows, letting his face disappear completely into the darkness.
The two girls were still talking.
Ying Tong said, "Xiao Chan, I'm so glad you were with me today to give me courage. If I were alone, I would've… But that uncle was so fierce. Should we have argued with him today? If he insisted on blocking our way, maybe we should have just let him—"
"We can't let him," Xia Tingchan interrupted.
Lu Henqin curled the corner of his lips imperceptibly. In the game, he headshot another player with a single bullet. He thought indifferently that this was exactly why he didn't want to get too involved with such stubborn, principled good students.
Xia Tingchan said, "People treat others based on how they perceive them. He only blocked us and not others because he thought we were young and easy to push around. He wouldn't dare do that to others. He's all bluster. But if we had given in today and shown even a hint of being 'easy to bully,' starting tomorrow, other 'strange' vendors would openly come to take our spot, and you'd never be able to set up your stall here again."
"Today, we argued, we made a scene, and everything ended up on the ground. He cursed, but after hitting a wall, he'll avoid trouble and keep his distance. The onlookers around will think we're tough nuts, and they'll tacitly show us respect. That's the underlying logic."
She washed her hands at the crooked faucet at the end of the alley, then took out her phone and said to Ying Tong, "I'll pay you back for the damages."
Lu Henqin didn't stay to watch the rest of the farce. He remembered he hadn't finished that game either. He turned off the screen and watched the two girls busily fetch water from the tap, repeatedly washing away the sweet syrup from the asphalt road.
Xia Tingchan's hand was still being held.
She hesitated, "You all…"
"This kid has sticky fingers," Zai Haorong pointed to the rooftop. "During a game, something ended up in his pocket."
She looked up and saw a protruding drainpipe halfway up the exterior wall of the top-floor rooftop. Someone had hung a smoke-gray wristwatch on it. The horizontal embossed pattern on the dial was delicate, like ocean waves, with a dazzling diamond set in the center.
Xia Tingchan hesitated, "I…"
"It's a Nautilus Perpetual Calendar in platinum. Brother Lu said if he likes it so much, he can have it—as long as he can retrieve it."
To get it from there, he'd have to climb the exterior wall and flip up. It was unclear who had managed to hang it there in the first place.
Xia Tingchan was troubled, "Actually…"
Lu Henqin smiled, his beautiful eyes fixed intently on her. His eyes were exquisitely shaped, with the inner corners slightly downturned and the outer corners curving upward just right. When he lifted his face to look at her, the sunlight lightened the color of his irises, making him utterly mesmerizing.
With that handsome face, he smiled faintly, subtly hinting that her rule-breaking act of climbing the wall also fell under the "dangerous actions" category in the student handbook, hoping she would understand and they could both let each other off.
But halfway through his patient persuasion, Xia Tingchan’s gaze suddenly sharpened. With one hand gripping the edge of the rooftop wall, she pushed off with her right foot against the surface and swiftly scrambled up a good distance.
She hadn’t listened to any of his lengthy lecture at all.
Lu Henqin was taken aback and slowly closed his mouth.
“Holy shit, she actually went up? Can she reach that watch?”
Lu Henqin stared at the remaining half of her swaying calf in his line of sight… She truly didn’t recognize him, didn’t know his father Lu Wencheng who was constantly on TV, and had no idea about Zhaotai Medical and Commercial Group, the financial conglomerate that served as the largest financial backbone for the National Election Party.
A cat’s meow sounded from the rooftop.
Xia Tingchan moved swiftly, swinging back down. Clutched tightly in her arms was a dusty stray cat. No matter how frantically the cat struggled, it couldn’t break free from her grip. Only then did she turn her good-natured gaze back to Lu Henqin, finishing the second half of what she had meant to say earlier:
“I was just here to rescue a cat stuck on the edge of the rooftop. What were you going on about with watches and people just now?”
Before Lu Henqin could respond, someone shouted sternly from a distance. Bai Haoying let out a couple of “ouch, ouch” cries—it was the annoyingly elusive Discipline Committee again.
The next second, Xia Tingchan let go mid-air and landed cleanly inside.
Lu Henqin instinctively spread his arms and stepped forward, and she crashed forcefully into his embrace due to momentum. To steady herself in the chaos, she even yanked his hair hard. The stray cat she had just rescued from the rooftop joined in solidarity, mercilessly scratching his shoulder with its flailing hind paws.
His ribs ached faintly from the impact, his shoes were dirtied by her rough landing, and to top it off, she grabbed his clothes with hands that had touched the dusty outer wall, leaving smudged fingerprints behind.
Hooked on her pinky finger was the watch, which she tossed directly to him.
He was still dazedly holding her to keep her from falling, nearly missing the catch.
Congratulations—no one escaped. The whole group was hauled off to the office to write self-criticisms.
Xia Tingchan had it even worse. Someone who had secretly held a grudge against her for a long time seized the opportunity to make a big deal out of it, writing an anonymous complaint letter and slipping it into the suggestion box.
Lu Henqin still remembered watching from below the flag platform as she emotionlessly recited her self-criticism. The crowd was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Just as she finished and stepped down, reaching the middle of the stairs, she heard the school committee announce the next agenda item: an address by an outstanding student representative.
Xia Tingchan abruptly halted, pausing in place for a couple of seconds as if slow to react. Before the blaring loudspeaker could call out her name, she leisurely made her way back to the podium.
A repeat performance.
She reached into the left pocket of her uniform, pulled out a piece of paper, and shook it open—only to find it was the self-criticism she had just read. So, in front of everyone, she meticulously folded it back along the original creases. Then, she retrieved another sheet from her right pocket, finally raising an eyebrow in approval and nodding. With the same flat, emotionless tone, she proceeded to deliver the reflections of an outstanding student.
Below, laughter and chatter bubbled up, accompanied by scattered, hushed applause. The sounds rose like irrepressible fizz in soda water. Indeed, many people liked her. Even before she was ordered to stand beneath the national flag and deliver her self-criticism, numerous posts on the campus band’s chat forum had already voiced grievances on her behalf, insisting she had only gone to rescue a stray cat trapped and helpless on the rooftop.
Lu Henqin couldn’t remember whether he had laughed back then—perhaps too much time had passed—but he did recall that even when the school committee adjusted the microphone height and took over to summarize, faint smiles still lingered on their faces.
A model student, exemplary in both character and academics—who wouldn’t like her?
Yet Xia Tingchan remained as unshakable as ever, as if even the sky collapsing wouldn’t ruffle her. This held true even with Zhong Liqun, the rising star of the party and chairman of the university subsidy donation foundation, seated in the front row, alongside Lu Wencheng.
Lu Henqin flipped through the self-criticism letter in his hands. Back then, he had made several deliberate trips to the office just to get his hands on this piece of paper… Of course, he simply thought her handwriting was exceptionally elegant—nothing more. It wasn’t until later, when he could obtain her exercise books daily by transferring money directly to her to “gain knowledge,” that he began idly imitating her script in his spare time.
Perhaps it was because he wanted to buy her too many things, subtly increasing the transfer amounts and frequency again and again, until even Xia Tingchan—who never overthought or dwelled on things—finally asked him seriously in return:
“Why are you transferring so much? Money laundering?”
Lu Henqin selected a few samples of her handwriting and walked out, locking the basement door securely behind him before returning to the coffee table in the living room.
The traces she had left on his body no longer required conscious thought. Two glasses of water placed opposite each other, a pack of tissues, a few mint candies, and a small bottle of eye drops—all were set in their rightful places without a second thought. Back then, he didn’t even know what he was so captivated by; even quietly accompanying her in the library during self-study felt interesting.
It was only after spreading everything out on the table that Lu Henqin realized what a foolish thing he was doing.
Frowning, he haphazardly stuffed everything back into the drawer beneath the coffee table. Then, picking up the glass of lukewarm water from the opposite side with two fingers, he poured it into the kitchen sink with a clatter, tossing both the water and the glass into the basin.
Returning to the living room with a cold expression, he found Xia Tingchan already up at some point. Lu Henqin’s heart skipped a beat, a sudden surge of tension washing over him—as if afraid she might discover what he had been doing.
She was loosely wearing one of his T-shirts, bending over to search for something on the coffee table.
But he quickly asked icily, “What are you looking for?”
Xia Tingchan jumped in fright. Turning her head, she saw his stern expression behind her and obediently pointed at the table.
The table hadn’t been cleared yet.
Lu Henqin’s thin eyelids twitched slightly. He took two steps forward and pressed his hand firmly over the various papers spread across the table.
He wasn’t sure if she had seen his imitated handwriting or the densely written repetitions of her name.
Xia Tingchan still wore that clueless expression. “There aren’t any tissues in the room. I remember there were some here.”
Without lifting his palm, Lu Henqin swept all the papers aside with one hand while fishing out the tissue pack from under the coffee table with the other and handing it to her.
“Thank you.” Xia Tingchan straightened up, the T-shirt riding a little higher on her thighs.
Lu Henqin's gaze didn't drop an inch, as if he hadn't seen anything at all, yet he was asking about the same thing: "Where did you get my clothes?"
Hearing this, she glanced down at herself, hooking the collar with her finger and tugging it: "Your wardrobe. I can't wear a bathrobe all day, can I?"
Lu Henqin replied coldly, "The bathrobe is mine too. If I ever see you entering my room or taking my things without permission again—whether it's clothes or anything else—I'll make you take them off."
Xia Tingchan studied his expression, puzzled: "Next time? What about this time? I can take it off and return it to you right now."
Lu Henqin's face remained stern, the faint crease at the corner of his eye pressed down coldly, his thin lips pressed into an unyielding straight line.
She understood, quickly making an "okay" gesture: "Alright, just this once. But I didn't bring anything with me, so I'll need to go buy some daily necessities later."
Lu Henqin lowered his eyelids slightly, his expression still unfriendly:
"Troublesome."