Rainwater splashed through the window and streamed down the table. This was the scene Cheng Wenhui encountered upon entering the room: Qi Bailu was kneeling on the floor, his face pressed against Ruan Qiuji’s shoulder, trembling as if from a deep chill. The water pooling on the floor had nearly soaked through his slippers. Cheng Wenhui closed every window, shutting out the wind and rain, then picked up the telephone receiver Qi Bailu had dropped. He wiped the rainwater off with a tissue and set it back in its cradle.
After finishing, Cheng Wenhui glanced at Ruan Qiuji. Ruan was cupping Qi Bailu’s face, observing his soul-shaken expression. "Who were you talking to just now?" Ruan asked.
Qi Bailu’s teeth were clenched, his jaw trembling; he didn't say a word. Just moments ago, they had all heard the distant sound of a siren—two short bursts that quickly vanished into the rainy night. Ruan Qiuji waited a moment, then used a tissue to wipe away the tear tracks on Qi Bailu’s face. "If you don't want to say, then don't," he said softly. "It's alright."
Ruan Qiuji supported him as they stood up. Qi Bailu’s clothes were half-drenched; he allowed Ruan to manipulate him like a wooden puppet. Finally, Ruan had him lie down and covered him with the quilt. Qi Bailu turned his back to him, never asking why Ruan was there.
None of this had happened without warning. Ruan Qiuji signaled for Cheng Wenhui to keep a close watch on him, then stepped out to make a call. As he waited for the line to connect, he walked down the stairs, his eyes scanning the house. Standing here now, he felt like a squatter in another man's nest.
It was impossible for Qi Bailu to have left with Zheng Kunyu, but Ruan hadn't quite figured out why Zheng had made that call. Several thoughts spun through his mind. The moment the call connected, his footsteps faltered. Zheng Kunyu wasn't stupid enough to expose his own location—unless this was a final farewell.
The curtains billowed in the wind. The shadows in the house seemed to drift, huddling together and pressing down like a flood continuously cresting over the warning line, ready to submerge everything in the next instant. His secretary said "hello" twice, asking if Director Ruan needed anything.
The weight of that shadow pressed upon him, and it took a moment for his mind to steady. "Arrange an emergency meeting for eight o'clock tonight," he said.
The secretary quickly agreed. Ruan Qiuji hung up and walked through the shadows toward the door. He knew now, and Qi Bailu knew too—this was the shadow of death.
Zheng Kunyu’s death wasn't made public until the third day, but Cheng Wenhui knew by the second. Because of the torrential rain, there were no witnesses, so the news was kept tightly under wraps. Cheng Wenhui didn't dare drive his own car for fear of being recognized by the media; he borrowed a relative's car to take Qi Bailu to the police station.
Two officers invited them into an interrogation room. Cheng Wenhui appeared relatively composed, but Qi Bailu looked unwell—his face was pale, his eyes downcast, unfocused and hollow. The officers sitting opposite them exchanged a look. After a few polite formalities, they asked Qi Bailu directly where he had been the previous evening.
Sensing a hint of suspicion in their tone, Cheng Wenhui asked if Zheng Kunyu’s death wasn't a suicide. One officer replied, "Have you ever seen a person commit suicide who spends the half-hour before their death watering flowers?"
Cheng Wenhui was silenced. The officer’s implication was that someone who had lost the will to live wouldn't remember to water flowers, but such an act wasn't strange for Zheng Kunyu. Cheng Wenhui said, "Director Zheng loved flowers; many people knew that. Bailu was at home all day yesterday. I was there too; I can testify for him."
The officer looked at Cheng Wenhui and lowered his head to take notes. The other asked, "Mr. Qi, I assume you don't mind answering our questions? What was your relationship with the deceased?"
Qi Bailu looked up, meeting the probing gazes of the two officers. He didn't flinch, but it was as if he didn't see them at all; his gaze had no focal point. Cheng Wenhui looked at him nervously. The officer repeated, "What was your relationship with the deceased?"
Superior and subordinate, lovers, betrothed, enemies—which one was it?
"Friends," Qi Bailu said.
His voice was cold and stiff. Even he was surprised he had the courage to speak, as if another person hidden inside his body was answering for him.
"You should know why we called you here. The last call Zheng Kunyu made before he died was to you. What did you talk about?"
Qi Bailu clasped his hands together, staring at the officer without moving. "I urged him to surrender," he said slowly. "To turn back from a dead end."
"Anything else? Did you hear anything unusual on the other end of the line?"
Qi Bailu shook his head.
"Then why do you think he committed suicide? Did he ever mention it?"
Qi Bailu paused. "He didn't want anyone to judge him."
The officer didn't understand the meaning behind those words. "You mean he committed suicide to escape punishment for his crimes?"
Escape punishment? How could he be afraid? He was a man who refused to cross the river to safety, choosing instead to endure fifteen years of gasping for breath in that place.
"He judged himself."
The officer’s expression remained somewhat blank, as if Qi Bailu had just delivered a line from a play. "It seems you knew him very well?"
Qi Bailu’s hands were clenched tight. He appeared calm on the surface, but Cheng Wenhui felt he was on the verge of a breakdown. "Yes," Qi Bailu said. "Is there anything else?"
The officer pulled out a small, transparent evidence bag and placed it on the table for Qi Bailu to see. "Is this yours?"
Inside the bag was a ring. When Cheng Wenhui saw it, a cold sweat broke out. Qi Bailu didn't move for a moment. He picked up the ring and looked at it. After seeing the engraving on the inner band, his eyes froze. He put it back without a word.
The officer then produced several photos—event photos from different occasions. In the photos, Qi Bailu was wearing the same ring.
"This is yours, isn't it? Your name is engraved on it in pinyin. The shop also confirmed it was purchased in your name. It's clear you wore it constantly for the past two months. Why did you suddenly stop?"
"Where did you find it?"
"In the deceased's pocket."
"Yes, it's mine."
Cheng Wenhui, who had been silent, interjected, "He lost it a while ago. It seems Director Zheng picked it up and hadn't had the chance to return it yet."
The two officers seemed to have no more questions. They lowered their heads to finish their notes. After a brief discussion, they said to Qi Bailu, "If this really is yours, it will be returned to you once the investigation is concluded."
Qi Bailu said nothing. Cheng Wenhui spoke for him: "Thank you. Can we go now?"
The officers nodded.
They had investigated the ring, but they hadn't figured out if it was a pair or a single piece. This oversight actually saved Qi Bailu; otherwise, if they had dug deeper, the relationship between Qi Bailu and Zheng Kunyu would likely have been exposed to the world.
Qi Bailu and Cheng Wenhui left the interrogation room. After walking a distance down the hallway, the officer suddenly chased after them. "Wait."
Cheng Wenhui saw that Qi Bailu’s expression was already terrible. He turned back alone. "Is there something else?"
"Don't you want to see him?"
Qi Bailu’s chest heaved violently. His hand instinctively gripped the hem of his shirt. "No..." Cheng Wenhui said.
The officer shifted his gaze to the back of Qi Bailu’s head, waiting for his answer. "The dead are gone," Qi Bailu said curtly. Having said that, he walked forward without looking back. Cheng Wenhui said "Sorry for the trouble" to the officers and followed Qi Bailu down the hall.
It was still raining outside. Cheng Wenhui walked out of the lobby, grabbing Qi Bailu’s arm with one hand while trying to open an umbrella with the other, but he couldn't get it to pop open. Qi Bailu shook him off and walked down the steps. Cheng Wenhui abandoned the umbrella and reached out to grab him; if he hadn't been quick, Qi Bailu would have missed a step on the stairs.
Cheng Wenhui felt like he was trying to restrain an ox. He finally managed to shake the umbrella open, holding it over both their heads as he pushed Qi Bailu toward the car, not forgetting to keep Qi’s face hidden. Three or four people passed by, glancing their way; he firmly gripped the back of Qi Bailu’s neck to keep him from looking up, pulling down Qi’s baseball cap to shield his face.
He pressed Qi Bailu all the way back into the car. He didn't know if he had hurt him, but Cheng Wenhui heard one or two suppressed sobs from beneath the brim of the hat.
"...It has nothing to do with you," Cheng Wenhui said. "It's not your fault."
He thought Qi Bailu would cry, would explode, but he didn't. After tossing Qi Bailu into the passenger seat, no matter what he said, Qi Bailu remained silent. After a long while, the car braked sharply at an intersection. Cheng Wenhui looked at the white curtain of rain ahead. "You should just cry."
Qi Bailu gave a soft "mm," but he didn't cry. His heart was burning with a searing pain like a dormant volcano; he had no sensation, no ability to cry. All the moisture in his body had been scorched dry. He spoke as if to himself, his eyes red. "His sins are atoned for. But what about mine?"
Cheng Wenhui wasn't a soft-hearted man, but hearing those words, he turned his face away in distress, unable to face him. Qi Bailu tilted his head back and asked again, "What about mine?"
The rain continued intermittently for several days. Beijing didn't feel like Beijing, because it rarely rained there. This was why Qi Bailu disliked the city. The red walls and long streets were momentarily washed clean, the layer of dust brushed away, but as soon as the sun came out, the gears—never rusted, never painted, always shrouded in dust—continued to turn. This city always felt gray in his memory, devoid of human warmth; even its red was a dusty, gray red.
For the third time, he lost his sense of time.
The first time was when he was locked in the mental hospital. Looking out the window, the activity yard was a field of weeds, so thick they could be woven into a blanket, knee-deep. The hospital organized them to cut the grass, giving everyone a sickle. He told the person next to him, "I'm a normal person," and that person said back to him, "I'm a normal person too." There was everything in that grass: all sorts of biting and non-biting insects, earthworms, and snakes. The nurses watched them listlessly from a distance. It took three days to cut all that grass, but it felt as long as three weeks.
The second time was three years ago in that apartment. In the days that followed, he didn't remember if he had begged Zheng Kunyu, or if he had played along just to be let go. He deliberately avoided those memories so he could pretend they never happened. He only remembered his moment of greatest clarity, when he picked up a wine bottle and smashed it over Zheng Kunyu’s head, only to have his wrist caught and pinned down. Zheng Kunyu had squeezed his chin and shoved the slender neck of the bottle into his mouth, and into his body. He had been soaked in wine, soaked through, soaked until only numbness and absurdity remained.
The third time was now. The dictionary of his life seemed to have been dropped halfway into this rain; even after flipping through the entire ruined book, he couldn't find a single path to guide him. The ink was fading bit by bit; between the pages, things were sticking, softening, collapsing.
More and more of his past belonged to the public, to those voyeuristic rumors, and less and less of it belonged to himself.
Qi Bailu was indifferent to the changing world outside, and indifferent to which day Ruan Qiuji came to see him. Until the day before the rain stopped, when Ruan Qiuji prepared to leave. Lin Yuewei saw him to the door and returned the music box to him. "Bailu said this is for you," she said. "He hopes you won't come back."
Ruan Qiuji didn't take it. Lin Yuewei added, "You can't expect me to throw it away for you."
The card was still there. Now, all the causes and effects were clear. The trifle he had sent him by chance back then had turned out to be a "calculated" comfort. Perhaps at the time, Qi Bailu had also thought they were destined. But even with destiny, they always seemed to miss each other by a fraction, again and again.
"Is he resentful of me?" Ruan Qiuji asked.
"He doesn't resent you," Lin Yuewei said. "He's afraid of you. Even I am afraid. It was you who suggested I go to Tahiti; you had already calculated that I would invite Bailu along. You asked me before what it would be like if you had met him earlier. You said you truly liked Bailu, so I acted as a bridge for you to meet at my studio. But looking at it now, if you had met him earlier, you would have just been another Zheng Kunyu."
Lin Yuewei continued, "He was never sick. His father just didn't want to deal with him, so he sent him to that place. A normal person would become sick there even if they weren't. If you ask me, you're the ones who are sick. The state Bailu is in today was caused by both of you."
Ruan Qiuji listened quietly. "When I said I liked him, I meant it," he said.
"Liked him enough to flick him like a bead on an abacus, to want his life? Mr. Ruan, do you really think you're a good person?" Lin Yuewei looked at him unmoved, bending down to place the paper bag at his feet.
Ruan Qiuji stood in the light rain, watching Lin Yuewei close the front door. He looked up at the window with the tightly drawn curtains. In truth, he had never thought of locking Qi Bailu away. Locking him in a tower? He might have wanted that even more than Zheng Kunyu did, but there was a precedent reminding him that this path was closed.
He didn't know that someone else had once stood in the same spot and looked up, but in this moment, he suddenly felt a flash of sympathy for Zheng Kunyu. Ruan Qiuji smiled, a smile at how they had both wasted their ingenuity. After all their schemes, they had both ended up losers. Zheng Kunyu had lost his life, and he had lost all his chips and hidden cards.
The shockwaves sent through the film and television industry by the bribery scandal didn't begin to fade until over a month later. Cheng Wenhui went to Yuntian Media and began managing the new artists Ruan Qiuji had assigned him, but he remained in charge of Qi Bailu’s management work, which Ruan Qiuji tacitly permitted.
For Cheng Wenhui, the current Qi Bailu didn't require much of his attention because Qi was on an indefinite hiatus and wouldn't be returning to any film sets for the time being. Because of that mental health record, there were very few scripts coming Qi Bailu’s way. With his old agency collapsed and Qi Bailu yet to sign with a new company, casting him was a risky move. Many agencies were watching to see where Qi Bailu would go; they all assumed he would go to Yuntian Media. To everyone's surprise, Qi Bailu seemed uninterested in any company.
*How Much Regret in the West Wind* was shelved because of Zheng Kunyu, and the release of *Fierce Spring Water* was also postponed. Aside from a cameo in an art film, Qi Bailu had no "stock" left. This was a very dangerous situation; it meant he wouldn't be appearing before the public again this year. Without continuous exposure and buzz, no matter how famous he had been, it would only be a flash in the pan.
Qi Bailu might not have been in the mood to think about these things, but Lin Yuewei didn't want to see him forgotten by the public. She knew Qi Bailu had renewed his contract with Zheng Kunyu. Now that Jinhe Film and Television was in Ruan Qiuji’s hands, Qi Bailu’s contract would follow to Yuntian Media. That lawyer, Mr. Song, had also been investigated for bribery after Zheng Kunyu’s downfall. Lin Yuewei asked Cheng Wenhui about the specific details of the contract. Cheng Wenhui knew the truth could no longer be hidden and told Qi Bailu everything.
To keep Qi Bailu, Zheng Kunyu had given him a so-called fifty-year renewal contract. When Lin Yuewei heard "fifty years," she couldn't help but say, "That's impossible! Anything over twenty years is legally invalid."
Qi Bailu, who had been sitting nearby like a clay statue, blinked. It was as if color had been painted onto him, and he slowly came back to life. Cheng Wenhui was silent for a moment. "You're right. So, that contract was void from the very beginning. Bailu didn't know about that, and Director Zheng knew he didn't know, so—"
Cheng Wenhui looked at Qi Bailu and showed him the contract he had signed, specifically turning to the signature page. Qi Bailu glanced at it; his eyelid flickered when he saw Zheng Kunyu’s name. He naturally recognized Zheng Kunyu’s handwriting—the strokes were connected, and the dot in the character for "Jade" (玉) was always written with enough force to nearly tear the paper. His own signature was messy and soft, still faintly reflecting his heartbreak at the time.
They all saw it clearly: the contract had no official seal.
Lin Yuewei was speechless. This contract had so many loopholes; it hadn't even been properly formalized. If Qi Bailu had asked her or anyone else at the time, he might have seen through the deception long ago. And Cheng Wenhui had actually helped Zheng Kunyu hide it from him all this time.
Qi Bailu burst into a hollow laugh. Should he blame himself for being too stupid, or blame Zheng Kunyu for being too conceited? Zheng had used a piece of worthless scrap paper to threaten him, to lie to him, and he had believed it for so long. Fifty years? Eternal devotion? Time was clearly something that vanished in the blink of an eye.
The more Qi Bailu thought about it, the more absurd it felt. He laughed until tears nearly came. Cheng Wenhui called his name, which finally stopped his laughter. "What about the previous contract?" Lin Yuewei asked.
"The previous contract terminates at the end of the month. Bailu, after September, you are a free agent. Even Yuntian Media won't be able to do anything to you."
Qi Bailu repeated softly, "A free agent?"
Those words were like a hole carved into a sealed cave. Looking forward, there seemed to be light.
"If you don't want to sign with a company in the future, you're welcome at my studio," Lin Yuewei said.
"There are several agencies you can choose from," Cheng Wenhui added.
Qi Bailu looked at Zheng Kunyu’s signature on the contract and said nothing. Seeing his expression, Lin Yuewei closed the contract and handed it back to Cheng Wenhui. Cheng Wenhui hesitated for a moment. "Bailu, I won't be managing you anymore after the contract expires. It might be for the best."
Shedding an old skin, cutting off a branch, transplanting into a new pot. The price of a new life was a fundamental upheaval, even a series of endless goodbyes. Qi Bailu watched Cheng Wenhui’s retreating back as he bowed slightly and left. After a pause, he said, "Thank you."
Lin Yuewei had never talked to Qi Bailu about Zheng Kunyu. Or rather, she knew Qi Bailu might not want to hear that name. She knew that after Qi Bailu turned his phone back on, he eventually threw it into the bathtub. She also knew he had spent the past month sleeping only on the sofa. One night, she woke up in the guest room and went downstairs for water, only to see Qi Bailu walking in the garden. She had never seen him cry.
After Cheng Wenhui told him the truth, the situation seemed to improve slightly. One day, she passed the study and saw the door open. Qi Bailu was rummaging through things, seemingly looking for something. She asked if he needed help; he said he was looking for a camcorder. Lin Yuewei went in to help him. On the desk lay a half-read script, face down. Lin Yuewei saw Zheng Kunyu’s signature on the cover and discreetly looked away.
They searched from the study to the bedroom but didn't find it. In the walk-in closet, Lin Yuewei saw a neatly hung Hawaiian shirt. Realizing the owner was gone gave her a suffocating feeling. She had no affection for Zheng Kunyu—in fact, she had been somewhat repulsed by him—but remembering the good times the four of them had in Tahiti, she felt for the first time the stark reality of life and death, of how things remain while people change.
She couldn't imagine Qi Bailu’s state of mind. Perhaps Qi Bailu should have cleared all these things out and thrown them away, renovated the whole house—but this entire house had been bought for him by Zheng Kunyu. Even the flowers in the garden had been personally chosen by Zheng. She found it hard to imagine such a man enjoying planting flowers.
They searched Zheng Kunyu’s bedroom thoroughly but never found the camcorder. Qi Bailu even searched the bathroom. An old-fashioned straight razor sat on the shelf; it still looked very sharp, perhaps enough to slit a throat in one stroke, just like in the movies.
Lin Yuewei asked him what was on the camcorder. Qi Bailu didn't answer, but instead said, "I've been wondering why he didn't go all the way, why he didn't completely destroy me. It wasn't because he was soft-hearted. He knew that if that video were exposed to the public, I would die without hesitation. I wouldn't let him go even in the underworld. But he didn't want me to die. He wanted me half-dead, so I would remember him forever, living in his shadow."
"What if it wasn't that? Maybe he felt sorry for you." Lin Yuewei knew it was only a "maybe." She didn't want to see him tormenting himself.
"Why in that apartment?" Qi Bailu turned to look at her, but his gaze seemed to pass through her to someone else.
What was he thinking in the final moment before he jumped? Was it resentment, shame, remorse, refusal to give in, longing, or something else entirely corrosive? Why in that apartment? That was their beginning, the mist-shrouded Mount Wu, the crime scene, the prison. Now it was the gallows, the execution platform, the end of everything.
What was Zheng Kunyu really thinking? In those final moments, did he love him a little more, or hate him a little more? Qi Bailu would never know; it was an eternal mystery. His love itself was a heavy secret that couldn't see the light of day—was that love? Could a narrow, selfish heart truly love someone? Whatever it was, from now on, it would be like a dusty pearl, forever locked in the casket of death.
"What he did to you is unforgivable," Lin Yuewei said. "But he is dead, and you are alive."
He was indeed alive. He had nearly died once. He had been lying on the cold floor, and when he was picked up, he remembered his voice finally breaking as he called his name. He was alive because he never, ever wanted to see Zheng Kunyu again. For the first time, he wanted to live to be a hundred, to live for a thousand or ten thousand years.
Strangely enough, that night he dreamed of Zheng Kunyu for the first time. He dreamed they were in that apartment where they first had sex, the night he had wanted to jump and commit suicide.
He dreamed he walked through the glass doors, through the fluttering curtains, all the way to the edge of the balcony. The rose-family plants on the balcony were lush and green, swaying in the wind. He gripped the railing and looked down. He was about to fall, but Zheng Kunyu grabbed him from behind, pulling him back by the waist with force, just like Jack holding Rose in *Titanic*. Zheng Kunyu rested his chin in the crook of his neck, prying his fingers open one by one, and said behind his ear: "You jump, I jump."
The twenty-sixth floor. Falling from there was like being thrown into a raging river; there was no chance of survival.
It was too farcical, too absurd, too ridiculous. He had actually dreamed of him saying lines from *Titanic*, dreamed of him saying "in life and death" with such a steady tone.
He didn't remember what happened next in the dream. He didn't remember if they actually jumped. Regardless, Qi Bailu woke up laughing. He chuckled for quite a while until his stomach felt tight, then he went to wipe his face. But the tears wouldn't stop; he realized he had been covered in tears since the moment he woke up.
Qi Bailu lay in the darkness for a long time. The air conditioning was very cold, like being soaked in ice water. He got up, put on his slippers, and walked to the living room. Using a flashlight, he pushed the sofa aside and found the ring on the floor. He put the ring in his pocket and lit a cigarette. The morning light filtered through the curtains like milk slowly soaking into toast. Qi Bailu was indeed hungry. After finishing the cigarette, he walked to the kitchen and turned on the natural gas. Although the kitchen wasn't used for cooking, the gas supply was still active.
After doing this, he returned to the living room. He cupped his lighter and brought it close to the curtain. An orange flame the size of a fingernail flickered and leaned toward the bottom of the fabric. After a moment, as if drawn to it, it pressed against the curtain, and the fire suddenly surged higher.
The flames were like plants growing wildly from the ground, becoming more robust in no time, climbing upward like vines. Qi Bailu felt the heat of the fire and threw away the lighter, stepping back. He stared at the flames. A small charred piece of the curtain melted and dripped in the fire; more pieces fell in succession, one after another, like the tears of the fire.
The sky was only just beginning to lighten. Because the rain had just stopped, the clouds were a somber, dull grayish-blue. There were already many cars on the road. It took Ruan Qiuji fifteen minutes to drive to the Linhu Villa. By the time he arrived, the fire trucks were already there, and firefighters in bright uniforms were dragging high-pressure hoses to extinguish the blaze. But the fire overwhelmed everything else. That beautiful villa was burned beyond recognition, the soaring smoke and flames like the wings of a giant bird spreading out to blot out the sky.
Ruan Qiuji’s expression was grim. He was about to grab a firefighter to ask questions when he suddenly saw someone sitting by the lake. Qi Bailu was sitting on the fence by the water, quietly watching the burning Linhu Villa. From Ruan Qiuji’s angle, he could only see Qi Bailu’s back, but Ruan could recognize him from the shape of his neck.
He looked as if he had been sitting there for a long time, unharmed, his clothes neat and clean, his bare feet in a pair of slippers.
The stone path on the ground had been washed by the rain; the lake and the road reflected the bright light of the fire. The burning flames seemed to spread all the way into the lake. Ruan Qiuji walked a few steps along the shore and saw Qi Bailu’s profile. His pale cheeks were flushed slightly red by the fire, and there were still wet tear tracks on them.
Ruan Qiuji took off his suit jacket and draped it over his arm. He silently gazed at him, and at those eyes shimmering with tears.
There was an unpleasant smell of burning in the air. The roaring flames lunged forward like tigers in the wind. The roof of the villa had already collapsed, and the crackling of the fire was occasionally punctuated by the sound of explosions—likely electrical appliances being destroyed. If there were an apocalypse, it would probably look like this; even the low clouds were scorched red, like the clouds at sunset.
Ruan Qiuji watched him for a long time. The fire seemed as if it could never be extinguished. His brows and eyes were still his brows and eyes; his chest rose and fell gently with his breath. Silently, however, some strange change seemed to have occurred. Ruan Qiuji suddenly realized this might not have been an accident.
The sky grew brighter, though the sun had not yet appeared in the east. The fire grew more ferocious, and the ash and smoke drifted over the lake. It was as if a sun were about to grow out of the fire on the ground.
Ruan Qiuji’s lips moved imperceptibly. He felt as if he were looking at a portrait, a world he could only observe from afar but could not enter. He almost called his name, selfishly wanting to drag him out of that world. Unexpectedly, at that moment, Qi Bailu turned his head without warning, looking directly at him without flinching, his eyes bright with the reflection of the fire.
Ruan Qiuji’s heart was violently tugged.
It was as if, in this moment of eye contact, the fire had spread to him.
***
| Chinese | English | Notes/Explanation |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| 临湖别墅 | Linhu Villa | The villa by the lake where Qi Bailu lived. |
| 《客途秋恨》 | Autumn Regrets on a Journey | A famous Cantonese opera piece. |
| 《西风多少恨》 | How Much Regret in the West Wind | A film project mentioned in the story. |
| 《泉水凶猛》 | Fierce Spring Water | Another film project Qi Bailu worked on. |
| 公章 | Official Seal | The corporate seal required to make a contract legally binding in China. |
| 自由身 | Free Agent | Referring to being free from a restrictive contract. |
| 巫山 | Mount Wu | Often used in Chinese literature as a metaphor for sexual passion or a dreamlike, misty encounter. |
