The weather stayed sunny for only a single morning. At noon, Lin Congzhi and Xin Jue had a quick lunch at the convenience store downstairs from the art studio and chatted about the current status of their students.

It was now June, and the National College Entrance Examination (Gaokao) scores would be released in two days. Those retaking the classes right now were students who already knew they hadn’t passed the school-specific artistic entrance exams—no matter what score they got on the Gaokao, they wouldn’t care; they were set on attending a specific art academy and nowhere else.

Most art students had determined their professional major long ago; all they needed to choose was the school. Everyone wanted to attend an academy of fine arts, but there were only so many of them, and they only admitted a fixed number of students each year. So if they didn’t make it in one year, they would try again for a second year, or even a third.

Painting was a process of accumulation. Generally speaking, a person’s skill improved the more they painted. Therefore, for fine arts students, retaking a year wasn’t a terrible thing… but continuously retaking years was quite frightening.

“How many times have I said this?” Lin Congzhi frowned, tapping the end of his paintbrush against the student’s canvas. “The ‘fuzziness’ of distant still-life elements isn’t an excuse for you to be sloppy. You draw a proper bottle sitting there first, and then meticulously render the still-life objects in the foreground to create contrast. What is this supposed to be? Painting the distance fuzzily, and painting the foreground carelessly.”

The student didn’t dare utter a sound, merely nodding continuously.

Lin Congzhi stepped in to modify the painting himself. The color palette of the still-life arrangement consisted of fairly standard jars and bottles. He dipped into a bit of raw sienna and a small amount of cerulean blue, mixing them on the palette as he said, “You don’t need to blend the paint too thoroughly—keep a touch of the raw colors. Once you lay down a brushstroke, don’t modify it back and forth. The colors need to retain the light, shadow, brightness, darkness, distance, and closeness of a sketch—don’t outline line-by-line like a pencil sketch.”

The student nodded, half understanding and half confused.

Lin Congzhi had gone through this stage himself—concepts like distance, perspective, edge control, and sharpness used to sound like a monk chanting scriptures back when he was learning. While painting, he would keep minding the light source, distance, and perspective in his head, yet the moment his brush touched the paper, he would still revert to painting however he originally did.

“Look here.” Lin Congzhi switched to a detail liner brush. “If you used large color blocks for the highlights, then when you pull the specular highlights, you also need to follow the brushstrokes and direction of those large color blocks.”

Lin Congzhi felt that the most charming aspect of painting was that while most people viewed it as a subjective, emotional expression—artistic, literary, and free—painting was actually remarkably rigorous. Where the light source was, where the shadow fell, unified perspective, how to transition, how to integrate bounced light—

Representational art, impressionism, and abstract art all had their own fundamental laws.

Art exam students needed to master the most fundamental methods of painting. So on this day, to train everyone’s brushwork control and understanding of light and shadow, Teacher Lin reset a new still-life arrangement.

The classroom was dead silent. The students set up their easels, arranged their paintboxes, and sat in a circle around the still-life platform. The air conditioner hummed as it blew cool air. Although it wasn’t raining today, the atmospheric pressure was very low, humid and muggy.

“Holy crap…” Xin Jue walked over after finishing critiques in another classroom, staring in shock at the still-life platform Lin Congzhi had set up. “Teacher Lin, what on earth are you doing?”

Lin Congzhi turned his head: “Hmm?”

The students set to draw the still-life looked utterly dead inside. On the still-life platform sat a stainless steel kettle, a lit rechargeable desk lamp, and a white porcelain plate with a fork and spoon resting on its edge. Up to this point, with staggered heights and multiple light sources, the difficulty was still manageable for art exam students.

However, the source of Xin Jue’s shock was… Lin Congzhi had picked out a few oranges and apples from the fruit basket, placed them inside a transparent plastic bag, tied a knot in the bag, and rested it on top of the plate.

A few students were already starting to choke back tears.

Xin Jue let out a couple of dry laughs: “Haha, Teacher Lin, there’s no need to be this ruthless, is there?”

Teacher Lin spread his hands: “They have to grow up eventually. Get painting.”

Lin Congzhi joined them to paint as well. Taking Xin Jue’s easel and drawing board, he stood on a stool at the outermost circle—around the two staggered rows of seated students—to paint from an overhead perspective.

Art students suffered greatly from transparent objects: glass cups, glass bottles, and plastic bags. Lin Congzhi used to dread the stainless-steel nightmare arrangements himself, but once he mastered the underlying principles, it proved to be nothing special.

The process of conquering it was exceptionally beautiful.

“Paint normally,” Lin Congzhi held up his palette, using raw sienna to lay down the structure as he instructed the students. “Life drawing means painting what you see. Practice your sense of color; the tone must be unified. Also, don’t give me any of that nonsense where the whole piece is cool-toned while drawing the desk lamp in warm tones right in the middle.”

Xin Jue offered the students a look that wished them luck, then turned back to the high school sophomore class to check on those students.

That day, Lin Congzhi worked virtually non-stop in the studio until sunset, when it began to rain again in the evening. Lin Congzhi walked to the window, took a top-down photo of the rainy street scene from the studio above, and projected it onto the studio’s large screen to teach a photo-based watercolor life-drawing session that night.

Painting watercolors on rainy days had its pros and cons. The paper dried slowly, allowing full use of humidity to control the wash. Yet because it dried so slowly, there would be color shifts in the pigments.

After projecting the image onto the screen, Lin Congzhi froze for a moment.

It was a street scene photo he had casually taken looking downward; the top-down view of the rainy city street was bathed in an overall muted gray-blue tone. From the high angle, one could only see the tops of pedestrians’ umbrellas, not the people themselves. Car headlights reflected long columns of light across the wet road. Lin Congzhi had just picked up his spray bottle, preparing to explain the technique for handling this lighting—

When he noticed in the photo on the screen, parked along the sidewalk, was a car. A man stepping out of the car was walking through the rain toward a dessert shop by the street.

Recognizing someone by their silhouette wasn’t difficult, especially someone intimate—the posture while walking, the body proportions, and a suit that always fit impeccably.

Lin Congzhi lowered his head and smiled softly.

Sure enough, after class ended that night, he received a WeChat message right on time from Xiao Jingwen saying the car was parked in the underground garage. Inside the car was a sweet scent of fresh cream; Xiao Jingwen had also bought some cookies.

“I saw you,” Lin Congzhi said as he buckled his seatbelt. “When I was taking photos of the street scene, I caught you in the shot.”

“Is that so?” Xiao Jingwen smiled gently. “Let’s head home.”

The car drove out of the garage. Over the past couple of days, influenced by a typhoon, heavy downpours raged relentlessly. Every year when the plum rain season arrived, it was always like this—rain, traffic jams, blaring horns, and night winds rushing between high-rises sounding like a subway entering a station, while morning breakfast carts were completely unable to set up shop.

Everyone knew that every year brought a stretch of days just like this, yet every time this season arrived, it always felt as though the rainy season was impossibly long, as if it would go on for a lifetime.

During a traffic jam, Lin Congzhi tilted his head slightly and asked him, “Did you not bring an umbrella?”

“I ran out of umbrellas,” Xiao Jingwen acted aggrieved on purpose. “The only umbrella left was given to you when you left the house.”

“Isn’t there another one in the closet?”

Xiao Jingwen paused for a moment: “That one is too old. When the wind blows a little harder, it’s me protecting it from the wind and rain.”

Lin Congzhi chuckled softly. He had spoken too much today and painted two color studies, leaving him a bit tired. The traffic still hadn’t moved. He reached over, gently running his hand through the hair on the side of Xiao Jingwen’s head, and said, “Thanks for your hard work.”

The weekend turned sunny.

It was the kind of blazing sunny weather where a huge sun beat right down overhead.

The entire city felt like a band-aid that had been peeled off after being stuck on for far too long. Lin Congzhi stared out the window with a messy head of bedhead hair, feeling somewhat unaccustomed to such harsh sunlight.

Lin Congzhi let out a yawn.

As usual, Xiao Jingwen had woken up very early and left. Sometimes Lin Congzhi would marvel at how hardcore he was as a CEO—a CEO who still had to act like the ones in TV dramas—while also feeling that certain amounts of money were indeed meant to be earned by people like him.

He lazily got out of bed, changed clothes, washed up, and went to the kitchen to find something to eat. Afterwards, he headed to the studio to continue working on the painting Xiao Jingwen had bought. Originally, he had wanted to paint a wooden mannequin, but as he kept painting, he ended up covering the exposed joints, adjusting the texture, and painting a human body of real flesh and blood instead.

—Mainly because he later switched to drawing from life, stripping Xiao Jingwen bare to paint him.

And so, this human figure piece that was supposed to “be discussed next year,” driven by pressure from the client, was rushed to completion within this week after all. Chiefly because today was Xiao Jingwen’s birthday.

Lin Congzhi took a few steps back to evaluate the overall piece: a red background paired with fair human skin, facial features not yet detailed, a half-profile view, with an exceptional jawline and neck line.

Every time he painted a portrait, finishing was the hardest part. Lin Congzhi was a bit of a perfectionist, so that final bit of progress would be dragged out especially long.

Using a detail liner brush to adjust details on Xiao Jingwen’s face, the eyes were half-draped, the eyelashes short and dense, and because he had single eyelids, his outer eye corners tilted slightly upward when looking down.

Xiao Jingwen’s face truly aligned perfectly with his aesthetic tastes.

As he painted, he began to smile to himself, feeling a sense of delight that said, My aesthetic taste is just too good.

In the afternoon, he went to the gallery to check on Xiao Chen’s progress. When he took Xiao Chen on as an apprentice, she had explicitly stated that her goal in learning art was to take commissions, so she likely wouldn’t stay long-term at the gallery. Lin Congzhi didn’t care either way; he only cared whether the person enjoyed painting or not.

On Xiao Jingwen’s birthday, he had held meetings all day long, receiving his birthday gift only in the evening.

In truth, he didn’t care what Lin Congzhi got him. Five years ago when they were together, it was already June, and they broke up at the end of December, missing Lin Congzhi’s birthday. Getting back together this year happened to miss May 20th as well.

So compared to receiving his own gift, Xiao Jingwen felt far more regretful about having been unable to celebrate Lin Congzhi’s birthday.

“What’s this?” Xiao Jingwen asked him. The car’s engine was shut off, parked in the underground garage.

Lin Congzhi was sitting in the driver’s seat, driving Xiao Jingwen’s Volkswagen. The Bluetooth had reconnected; he had driven over today to pick Xiao Jingwen up from work.

“Open it and see, then you’ll know.”

It was a wooden box the size of a palm. Xiao Jingwen opened it, and inside lay a pair of square jade cuff links.

“Very pretty.” Xiao Jingwen admired them for a moment, then leaned over to kiss his cheek. “Thank you, baby.”

“Doesn’t it look familiar?” Lin Congzhi looked at him with a smile.

“Hmm?” Xiao Jingwen was puzzled. “I… should find it familiar?”

Lin Congzhi reached over and flipped one of the jade pieces over, letting him see the designer’s laser signature and serial number along the edge.

After a long pause, realization struck Xiao Jingwen: “This… this is something I sold five years ago.”

Five years ago, CEO Xiao was still Manager Xiao. To close a business deal, Manager Xiao—who hated drinking—had downed countless glasses of alcohol with clients, throwing up by the roadside in the rain.

In the end, he secured that deal, acquiring a pair of jade cuff links for 100,000 yuan, which ultimately sold under the hammer for 310,000 yuan.

That day, he met a young man who gave him an umbrella.

The young man was handsome and clear-eyed, with a gentle gaze.

Xiao Jingwen had drunk far too much that day and was somewhat dazed from intoxication, yet he still tried his best to stand up straight before the young man.

“Remember now?” Lin Congzhi started the car. Looking at his dazed expression, he said, “Manager Xiao, happy birthday.”