She stumbled home, and at last all her strength gave out. She sat down on the sofa and stared blankly into space, remembering the day before yesterday, when she and Yan had sat here together, talking and laughing, as vivid as if it were before her eyes; remembering that moonlit night in her senior year of high school, when Yang Ce had tried to kiss her and she had refused; remembering the New Year temple fair, when she and Yan had kissed by pure accident; and remembering the night before last, when she and Yan had kissed with all their hearts. All of it was etched before her eyes, and yet it all seemed so far away. Zhao Ying did not understand why Yang Ce and Wang Yanqiu had deceived her. It was not as if she could not accept it—she loved Yang Ce, and she would embrace everything about him; even knowing full well that he had other girlfriends, she had still flung herself into the flame like a moth. None of that mattered. What mattered was Yang Minlan—whether his feelings for her held any love at all. If it had been yesterday, Zhao Ying would still have believed it; but today, Zhao Ying was at a loss. She had thought Yang Ce had truly gone to Wang Yanqiu's house yesterday to look for her, and her heart had been both shy and stirred. On impulse she had run home, taken that thing, and come to Yang Juehuan's villa—only to be told by Auntie Li that Yang Ce had gone out and probably would not be back. Zhao Ying's ardor plunged to the bottom at once, but she still forced down her disappointment, hoping a miracle might happen, and so she waited there like a fool in Yang Juehuan's villa—only to have what she waited for turn out to be this.

Yang Ce and her best friend, walking hand in hand; and Yang Ce had spent the night at her best friend's house. In an instant, Zhao Ying lost all her confidence.

Looking back on all the little things, it seemed that Yang Pinlan really had been lukewarm toward her all along. Could it be that he was only going through the motions for her sake—and for her mother's—just to fulfill his duty as her pretend boyfriend?

Zhao Ying had been holding up better at first, but once she started down this line of thought, there was no stopping it, and the more she thought, the more plausible it seemed. Otherwise, why was it that after all this time, she and Yang Ce had only just begun to make progress, while Wang Yanqiu, whom she had met only after him, had already reached the point of living and sleeping together?

Perhaps there were complications she did not know about. But why had neither Wang Yanqiu nor Yan told her the truth? Did they take her for a child? Could she not see it for herself?

Zhao Ying shook her head in anguish. Perhaps Yang Pinlan was only being kind to her because he did not want to hurt her—out of a sense of duty. People say women in love are foolish; in truth, women pining for love are just the same. Zhao Ying thought only of Yang Ce and Wang Yanqiu, and overlooked her own attitude entirely. If not for her own hesitation, would she and Yan be stuck in this awkward limbo now?

But what Zhao Ying thought was this: the one Yang Ce truly loved was Wang Yanqiu, and Wang Yanqiu did not want to see her hurt either, and so the two of them had kept it from her together. And so she overlooked one important thing—that Yang Puqi had always been a man of exceedingly broad affections.

Looking at the little box in her hand, a rush of sweet and bitter, sour and painful feelings welled up in her heart. She raised her hand, wanting to throw the thing away, yet could not bear to. Several times her hand went up, and several times it came back down.

In the end Zhao Ying could only give a helpless, self-mocking smile and set the thing on the shelf in the hall. She did not know what she ought to do, nor what she could do. At this moment, the only thing she could do was cry her heart out, curl up in bed, and sleep—and better never to wake at all. She turned off her phone, locked the doors and windows, went into the bedroom, and huddled under the covers, thinking of all that had happened over the past while, and began to sob.

After hanging up, Yang Ce sped up his washing. There was no help for it—when the father-in-law summoned, he had to hurry; even though it was the father-in-law who needed a favor from him, he still had to go rushing over.

The bathroom door was suddenly pushed open, and Wang Yanqiu came in, groggy and bleary-eyed, clearly not having noticed Yang Ce. Yang Ce found it strange—how was this girl always like this? She had been this way from the very first time he saw her, muddle-headed as could be. And this was supposed to be an assassin?

Yang Ce was still marveling at the absurdity when he saw Wang Yanqiu reach out and twist the hot water valve. Yang Ce turned pale with fright; the instant Wang Yanqiu opened the valve, he leaped out of the tub and cried out, "Wang Yanqiu, are you trying to murder your own husband?"

"Ah!" Wang Yanqiu was jolted fully awake by Yang Cenbin's shout. She blinked her drowsy eyes open and saw Yang Puqi standing naked in the bathroom. She frowned at once, baffled. "Standing there buck naked first thing in the morning—are you being a pervert?"

"Do I need to be a pervert with you?" Yang Ce said sourly. "I'm in the middle of a bath, and you come over and start opening the hot water—trying to scald me to death? Good thing I react fast. Anyone ordinary would've been turned into roast meat by you."

"You think an ordinary person could bathe in my tub?" Wang Yanqiu yawned, utterly unconcerned. "If you got scalded to death, all the better—it'd let me see your true worth early on, and save me from entrusting the future of the assassin group to you."

"Only the future of the assassin group? And your future too, surely?" Yang Ce reached over and shut off the hot water valve. The bathwater had gone a little cold anyway, and the hot water he had just let in warmed it right back up. He tested the temperature with his hand—just right.

"I can't be bothered with you." Wang Yanqiu rolled her eyes at Yang Puqi. "Hurry up. When you're done, I'm washing."

"Let's wash together." Yang Ce chuckled, his thoughts turning lecherous again.

"Wash your head. A tub this small, with two people in it?" Wang Yanqiu glared at Yang Puqi. "Don't just stand there airing yourself out—get in. I've no wish to admire you with no clothes on."

Yang Ce gave a laugh and hopped back into the tub.

"Yang Ce, why are you up so early?" Wang Yanqiu decided not to leave after all, and sat down on a chair in the bathroom. Every morning, the first thing she did upon waking was take a bath—it woke her up completely.

Right now she was not yet fully awake, and she could not be bothered to go back.

"Going out to take care of a few things," Yang Yanzhou said. "I should be back by this afternoon. You're on your own for the day."

"Oh." Wang Yanqiu and Yan got along quite well now, but at bottom their relationship was nominal, a partnership. She had no right to interfere in Yang Juehuan's ordinary life, and besides, Wang Yanqiu did not want to know so much—she was afraid she might sink too deep.

Because last night, as the two of them walked back after dinner together and Yang Ce took her hand, Wang Yanqiu had felt something very subtle stir in her heart—a kind of excitement, a kind of nervousness. Though Wang Yanqiu had never been in love, she had read books of that sort, and when she felt this, she realized with alarm: could it be that she had fallen for Yang Ce?

This was no good sign. Wang Yanqiu reminded herself that she must never let herself be lost, that she and he were merely partners, not lovers.