In the year Lin Congzhi turned 29, Xin Jue roped him into helping with the art exam prep course once again.

Inside the training studio, he spotted a familiar face among the sea of students. Out of everyone sitting low to the ground, this particular student looked as though she was trying to shrink right under her drawing board.

Lin Congzhi composed his breathing, turned around, and walked over to Xin Jue. Xin Jue raised his head in confusion: “Huh?”

“Lu Jue? She’s repeating the year again?” Lin Congzhi asked.

“Yeah,” Xin Jue nodded. “The first year she passed the exam for some comprehensive university’s… design major or something, I forget. Anyway, she didn’t go. Then she repeated the year because she wanted to get into an fine arts academy, and now she’s repeating again.”

“…” Lin Congzhi was rendered speechless. “Didn’t she start studying art in the first place just to…”

He didn’t finish the sentence, but Xin Jue nodded with an understanding expression: “Yep. Back then, Lu Jue and her parents really just wanted to use the art exam route to get into a school with a prestigious name. But somewhere along the way, she had an epiphany and decided she had to go to a proper fine arts academy.”

With matters having come to this, Lin Congzhi could only nod with a wistful sigh.

That is simply how people change. Some things do not require anyone to guide them; when a person is immersed in a certain environment and regularly absorbs certain concepts, it isn’t surprising at all when their outlook shifts.

That girl Lu Jue was a prime example. Xin Jue always asked every student about their goal for taking the art exam—not to treat them differently, but to tailor his teaching during the intensive training period.

In the first year, Lu Jue and her parents shared the mindset that since her academic scores weren’t enough, she might as well take the art exam to secure a degree from a decent-sounding university. By the second year, her mindset shifted: she wanted a real fine arts academy, so she repeated the year again.

Lin Congzhi was at a loss whether to feel sad or happy about it.

That evening, Xiao Jingwen came to wait downstairs by the studio to take him home. Sinking into the passenger seat, Lin Congzhi let out a long sigh.

“Repeating a year… Didn’t you say art students aren’t afraid of repeating?” Xiao Jingwen said.

“When Zhang Miao yells every day about ‘pouring molten lava into the art museum’s office,’ does that mean she’s actually not afraid of lava?” Lin Congzhi offered a hardcore analogy, and Xiao Jingwen nodded in understanding.

Speaking of the art museum’s office, for some reason this year, they had repeatedly approached Lin Congzhi, hoping to collaborate with his gallery to get discounted custom paintings from him. The compensation offered by the museum was as low as the price for mere decorative art, bundled with the added ‘honor’ of being exhibited in their venue.

Reaching out to the gallery meant going through Zhang Miao. Expecting someone to do 300 yuan worth of work for 100 yuan had infuriated Zhang Miao to no end.

“By the way, did the museum reach out to you guys again this month?” Xiao Jingwen asked, resting his hands on the steering wheel. The traffic ahead was moving slowly, with several police cars blocking lanes ahead, likely setting up a breathalyzer checkpoint.

Lin Congzhi nodded: “Yeah. In my memory, the museum didn’t use to be like this. Didn’t they always collaborate with academy professors? Besides offering rock-bottom prices, they’re demanding custom paintings with all kinds of specifications. I run a gallery, not an advertising firm.”

Xiao Jingwen coasted slowly along with the flow of traffic. As long as Lin Congzhi was in the car, he didn’t care how slow they moved. He smiled softly: “Five or six years ago, the museum indeed wasn’t like this. But as time passed, many of the professors they worked with retired and stopped painting. The earlier generations of leadership at the museum reached retirement age too. The new management can’t secure partnerships with academy teachers anymore, so it’s only natural they came looking for you.”

Hearing this, Lin Congzhi thought it made sense.

“What kind of custom work do they want, anyway?” Xiao Jingwen asked out of curiosity.

“A creative prompt,” Lin Congzhi said. “’Cityscape’.”

“A cityscape? For a creative prompt?”

“Right!” Lin Congzhi almost slapped his thigh. “Do they think this is an academy entrance exam?”

Up ahead was indeed a breathalyzer checkpoint. Xiao Jingwen rolled down the window to blow into the device and was promptly waved through. Once past the checkpoint, traffic smoothed out, and Xiao Jingwen merged into another lane to head up the elevated expressway.

Lin Congzhi felt a bit tired. Teaching the intensive course was draining, and he let out a yawn.

“Why don’t you sign with us as a partnered artist?” Xiao Jingwen suggested. “Once you have an exclusive partner, the museum won’t bother you anymore.”

Lin Congzhi glanced sideways at him: “I don’t do exclusive representation. It says so right on the gallery homepage.”

Xiao Jingwen intentionally let out a sigh: “Ah, I can’t even partner with my own husband.”

Lin Congzhi didn’t pick up on the line, but he didn’t reject it either. In truth, Lin Congzhi understood that it wasn’t a matter of signing a contract or not; Xiao Jingwen simply wished for more ties binding them together. As a businessman, he trusted black-and-white contracts.

They had registered their marriage in Las Vegas back then, but a same-sex marriage ultimately held no legal validity domestically. Even if it did, marriages could still end in divorce. Xiao Jingwen’s sense of security was paper-thin, and Lin Congzhi had no simple remedy for it.

Once the car pulled up to the house, Lin Congzhi opened the door, stepped out, and wrapped his arms around him in the garage. He gently stroked Xiao Jingwen’s back. The private garage was quiet, completely sealing out the sound of the summer night wind sweeping through the branches outside.

That embrace swallowed a thousand unsaid words; there were things between them that didn’t need to be voiced. Lin Congzhi simply held him, then tilted his head to press a gentle kiss against the skin of his neck.

Time trickled by slowly, arriving once more at Yucheng’s plum rain season.

Lin Congzhi’s official homepage had been sitting dormant, primarily because he painted far too slowly. Over the past two years, he had grown increasingly lazy; a still-life oil painting at home had been in progress for half a year, yet the progress remained virtually unnoticeable.

The piece he was currently working on was a gilded cloisonné enamel candlestick brought home from Gleam’s warehouse, painted from a photograph. When taking it out of the warehouse to photograph, Lin Congzhi had chosen a sharp side-lighting setup—a dramatic chiaroscuro light source, placing the terminator line right down the center of the object.

The complex details of the candlestick made it extraordinarily difficult to paint.

Lin Congzhi conservatively estimated that it would take him two years to finish.

Of course, he wouldn’t spend two years painting only this piece. On this day, Xiao Chen sent him a WeChat message saying a massive cargo ship was docked at the pier, sitting in the rain with an incredible atmosphere. Xiao Chen sent over a photo as well, adding that the picture couldn’t capture even a fraction of it, that it was perfect for sketching, and that he simply had to come see it in person.

In the photo, the pier was deserted in the rain, tarpaulins covering the cargo containers, with a massive freighter sitting on the silent coast. Against the gray sky and sea, even a casual phone snap revealed a natural, cool gray tone that Lin Congzhi fell in love with instantly.

So he put down his phone, changed his clothes, and hailed a taxi to the pier. But in his rush to leave, though he remembered his sketchbook, pencils, umbrella, and even a water bottle, he forgot his phone.

Fortunately, the leather cover of his sketchbook had a small inner flap containing a single paper bill. That cash had been tucked inside the sketchbook for years, and luckily it was still there—otherwise, he would have had to ask the driver to pull over at the gallery.

The driver fumbled around for a long time trying to make change, unable to piece together the exact coins, so Lin Congzhi told him to keep it. He stepped out of the car, opened his umbrella, and stood behind the railing. The staircase leading down to the beach was locked by the local community, bearing an iron sign that read: Dangerous on Rainy Days, Do Not Enter.

Heavy rain clattered against the hull of the ship. Because of the downpour, there were hardly any cars on the road by the pier. The young man stood by the roadside under a large black long-handled umbrella, its edge bearing the logo of Gleam Auction House. The umbrella was large enough, but it was also quite heavy, resting against his shoulder as he stabilized it with his arm.

It was a tiring posture, holding the sketchbook against his forearm while his right hand sketched the vessel.

Fortunately, there was almost no wind today, and the rain fell straight down; otherwise, a gust would have flipped both his umbrella and his notebook. Landscape sketching was not particularly difficult for him: the first page roughly captured the coastline, pier, shipping containers, and ship; the second focused solely on the vessel; the third detailed the bow.

His eyesight wasn’t the sharpest to begin with, and behind the curtain of rain, the fine details of the freighter were blurred, slowing his pace.

Lin Congzhi had always felt that rain brought silence—even if the ambient noise right now couldn’t strictly be called ‘quiet.’ The sound of the rain was loud, so loud that with a bit more resonance, it might sound like firecrackers. Yet when it rained, the heavier the downpour, the quieter the city felt.

The shoulder propping up the heavy Gleam umbrella began to ache, so he switched it over to his right shoulder. Forgetting his phone was indeed inconvenient; it was nearly impossible to hail a cab out here by the pier road—who would drive out to the pier in the middle of a downpour anyway? Fortunately, the bus stop wasn’t too far away.

A black umbrella, dark clouds, heavy rain, a cargo ship, and a young artist.

The world’s progress bar seemed to hit a glitch, freezing right here for this young man under the unchanging clouds and steady rain. Waves surged rhythmically against the rocky shore before receding, while the tip of the charcoal stick slid across paper like a physical melody.

Lin Congzhi was deeply absorbed; when focused, he easily lost track of the outside world. He didn’t know what time it was, nor how long he had been standing there. Landscape sketching shared similarities with landscape photography, but with one key difference: sketching allowed him to alter elements for a better artistic composition—for instance, streamlining away several oversized trash cans by the dock.

Finally, he felt it was complete. Closing the sketchbook, he tucked his pencil into the side zip pocket of his crossbody bag, then looked straight ahead, imprinting every color in his field of vision into his memory.

This was a skill every painter possessed: when unable to take a photo and without paints or a palette on hand, you memorized every shade you saw with raw focus. Mixing gray in the mind, a touch of ultramarine, and a tiny hint of burnt umber reflected off the ship’s painted hull.

Once he felt he had captured it all, he turned around—

Standing a few steps behind him on the sidewalk was a man staring straight at him, water dripping from his cuffs and suit jacket hem, having stood there for who knows how long.

As their eyes met, a faint roll of thunder rumbled across the horizon.

Xiao Jingwen’s throat bobbed up and down. He was terrified, unsure of how to explain his presence here at this exact moment. What good reason did he have? Was it because Lin Congzhi hadn’t replied to his WeChat messages, and upon returning home, he found that the phone had been left behind with no sign of him? So he contacted everyone he could think of, until the apprentice Xiao Chen mentioned he might be at the pier.

And then what? Would Lin Congzhi view him as a neurotic, controlling freak? Was his condition getting worse and worse, to the point that after less than two hours of lost contact on a rainy day, he had hunted him down like a madman? Only to find him simply sketching here, without the slightest intention of leaving… yet lacking the courage to step forward?

In that silent gaze, Lin Congzhi looked at him—first in surprise, then with a softening expression. The corners of his lips curved upward into his naturally beautiful cupid’s bow, forming a smile that felt deeply healing.

In truth, he understood everything. He understood Xiao Jingwen all too well.

Lin Congzhi stepped forward toward him, splashing through the puddles, and held the umbrella over his head, asking softly, “Did you come to pick me up?”

A flicker of light crossed Xiao Jingwen’s helpless, desperate eyes, and he nodded: “Yeah.”

“Then let’s go home,” Lin Congzhi said. “Let’s go home and take a hot bath.”

“Yeah.” Xiao Jingwen seemed capable of nothing more than nodding.