Lin Congzhi was truly furious. In his eyes, Yu Shijing was genuine fine arts academy material, yet after taking just three days of sick leave plus a weekend away, this kid had somehow caught a fever for chasing “grand master” styles out of nowhere.

He walked downstairs in a huff, pressing the elevator button with far more force than necessary.

The coffee shop was right downstairs next to the convenience store. Most buildings in this area were office blocks, crowded with companies that couldn’t afford the Central CBD, so coffee shops were everywhere. He pushed open the door of the nearest one and walked inside.

It was strange, really. In the five years since their breakup, neither of them had changed their phone numbers, deleted each other on WeChat, or even blocked each other on Moments. Lin Congzhi’s chat history with him had been frozen at the early hours of five years ago—the day he boarded the ship for the first time. Xiao Jingwen had sent him: Be safe, take care of everything. He had replied with a simple Okay, and what followed was five years of absolute silence.

He had expected that Xiao Jingwen wouldn’t feel at ease leaving him alone. Back then, as a twenty-two-year-old fresh graduate carrying luggage, a drawing bag, and a art supply box off toward the sea, anyone would find it hard to feel at ease. Thus, it came as no surprise when he occasionally spotted Xiao Jingwen’s men on the ship later on.

He sent Xiao Jingwen the coffee shop’s location on WeChat and went to the counter to place an order. When ordering, he actually hesitated over how many cups to get, mainly because he didn’t know how many people Xiao Jingwen was bringing… Wait, Lin Congzhi startled himself at his own thought—What are you thinking! What does that have to do with you!

“Hello, one extra-large cold brew Americano, please,” Lin Congzhi said.

Right as he finished speaking, his eyes caught the dessert display next to the register. The cashier immediately launched into a pitch: “It’s our seasonal new item, called ‘Sunset Melts the Sea.’ Would you like to try one? We have a combo deal with coffee!”

By the time Lin Congzhi snapped back to reality, a dessert fork was already poking into the tip of a lemon-yellow, triangular slice of cake.

“Ugh.” Taking a small bite and swallowing, he found it tasted terrible.

Seriously… Lin Congzhi took a large gulp of coffee just to wash away the cloying sweetness and harsh acidity lingering in his mouth.

Next, the wind chime above the coffee shop door rang twice. It was a rare sunny day in Yuchen today, even a bit glaring. Xiao Jingwen wasn’t wearing a suit jacket, dressed instead in a white Empire-collar dress shirt with a printed black tie, holding a laptop bag in his hand.

He immediately scanned the coffee shop to look for Lin Congzhi, but to be honest, he didn’t dare recognize him at first glance.

Because today, Lin Congzhi was wearing a pink T-shirt printed with My Melody. He had fair skin and naturally curly hair, and paired with the bright yellow slice of cake sitting in front of him, Xiao Jingwen thought for a fleeting moment that he was looking at him back in their university days, standing dazed on the spot.

Xiao Jingwen walked over, placed his laptop bag on the chair on the other side of the table, and asked, “Is anyone sitting here?”

“No.” Lin Congzhi couldn’t understand—wasn’t he sitting here completely alone?

Xiao Jingwen went to the counter to order. The barista here made drinks very quickly, and in the blink of an eye, Xiao Jingwen sat back down. Lin Congzhi’s gaze froze as he looked at the drink he carried back, then at his face.

“You…” Lin Congzhi didn’t know what to say for a moment, because Xiao Jingwen had ordered a pink drink. It was the exact same pink as his shirt—likely some kind of berry-flavored slushie, topped with a dollop of whipped cream.

It was extraordinarily cute and delicate, and extraordinarily ill-suited for Xiao Jingwen.

Xiao Jingwen remained entirely nonchalant about it: “I drank a bit too much coffee today, and the staff recommended the new item.”

“Oh.” Lin Congzhi didn’t believe a word of it. He felt offended, yet had zero reason to call Xiao Jingwen out, since the blackout curtains in his bedroom were so good that he hadn’t even been able to tell apart this “for collection only” T-shirt in the morning gloom.

Xiao Jingwen picked it up and took a sip. His expression underwent a subtle shift, which gave Lin Congzhi a wave of satisfaction—without a doubt, all the new seasonal items in this shop were sweet enough to kill someone.

A French song, Minuit, was playing in the shop, its lyrics cheerfully singing, “You guessed right, tonight my smile belongs only to you.” The guests at the neighboring table seemed to be a couple, sharing a plate with the same dessert as Lin Congzhi’s, except they were eating happily, two people sharing one piece of cake.

Xiao Jingwen was quite startled by the texture of this pink drink. He wasn’t big on sweet things, nor did Lin Congzhi like them, so being suddenly assaulted by sugar… He took another sip. Lin Congzhi’s gaze held a hint of admiration.

“Because the catalog needs to be prepared beforehand to be sent out to buyers along with the invitations, it’s a bit urgent.” Xiao Jingwen flipped open his laptop, turned it around, and pushed it in front of him. “This empty section is what you need to fill in. Once you finish, I’ll upload it.”

“Oh, okay.” Lin Congzhi adjusted the laptop. On the screen was a spreadsheet, with his column left blank—just as blank as his mind at this moment.

Sitting across from him, Xiao Jingwen continued to take out an iPad from his laptop bag to start working, signing some documents.

The customers in the coffee shop were very quiet. The atmosphere was peaceful, the temperature comfortable, and the scent of coffee drifted from the counter through the air.

Lin Congzhi couldn’t write a thing.

Especially since he had already written a bio for this painting once before, he couldn’t think of how else to introduce the piece.

Behind the laptop screen, his head sank lower and lower. Xiao Jingwen let out a silent sigh and took another sip of his absurdly sweet drink. He reached his right hand over and tapped on Lin Congzhi’s side of the table. Lin Congzhi looked up and asked, “What’s wrong?”

His head tilted slightly as he looked up, the naturally curly tips of his hair swaying with the movement. Xiao Jingwen let out a laugh, then swallowed to restrain his smile slightly, saying, “Are you lacking inspiration with the keyboard? How about writing it by hand?”

He gestured toward the tablet computer and stylus in his hand.

Lin Congzhi nodded: “Okay.”

Then, it turned out he couldn’t write it by hand either, sitting there as if trying to channel inner energy.

Xiao Jingwen couldn’t help him either; he could only continue working on his computer, waiting patiently. Meanwhile, the person across from him started scratching his ears and cheeks, taking two sips of coffee, then using a napkin to wipe away the condensation droplets on his coffee cup, and then wiping his hands.

In short, he was doing literally anything other than the task at hand.

“Teacher Lin,” Xiao Jingwen said, utterly helpless.

“I…” Lin Congzhi felt ashamed. “I’m writing, I’m writing it now.”

What followed was another three minutes of channeling inner energy. Having no choice, Xiao Jingwen put down his work for the moment and said, “What was written on the previous bio card? Just edit and shorten it.”

Lin Congzhi raised his eyes to look at him. He fell silent, asking again: “It won’t be completely gone once edited, will it?”

Lin Congzhi nodded.

If he edited out the content regarding Xiao Jingwen, then the previous bio card would only be left with one single sentence: At this moment, the moon is three hundred and seventy thousand kilometers away from me, and there are still 17 days until the next full moon.

They looked at each other in silence, speechlessly choked up.

Another customer walked into the coffee shop—a tall, thin young man who scanned every table the moment he entered, eventually fixing his gaze on Lin Congzhi.

The newcomer was none other than Yu Shijing. This kid was actually quite stubborn, stubborn in the sense that he had stayed in high school for too long and needed a logical reason for everything. He slammed himself down into the seat beside Lin Congzhi and Xiao Jingwen, leaned his empty laptop bag against his back, and said, “Teacher Lin.”

“Ah?” Lin Congzhi was surprised. “How did you find your way here?”

Xiao Jingwen quietly looked at Yu Shijing, then picked up his pink drink and continued to chug it in large gulps. He recognized this as the voice that had shouted over the phone earlier.

Yu Shijing had an aggrieved expression, his eyebrows slightly knit: “I still don’t understand. Just tell me what exactly is wrong with this drawing of mine.”

Saying that, Yu Shijing placed his phone on the table. Only after setting it down did he realize there was a Xiao Jingwen sitting next to them, so he greeted him: “Hello, Big Brother.”

Xiao Jingwen froze for a second, then nodded: “Hello.”

“Shouldn’t you call him Uncle?” Lin Congzhi looked at Xiao Yu. “You’re a high school senior calling someone ‘Big Brother’—is that appropriate?”

“I’m in high… high school year seven.” Yu Shijing counted in his head how many years he had been repeating.

“That’s still a high school student. Show some manners,” Lin Congzhi said.

Xiao Jingwen didn’t mind it at all; whether called “Big Brother” or “Uncle” was fine by him, though he secretly wished that after calling him “Big Brother,” the kid would turn around and call Lin Congzhi “Big Sister-in-law.”

Yu Shijing had come down to get a clear explanation, so he pushed his phone toward Lin Congzhi’s hand again, saying, “What exactly is wrong with this piece of mine? Tell me, and once you do, I’ll give up.”

Lin Congzhi sighed, pointing at his own iPad: “I have stuff to do.”

Yu Shijing was quite stubborn: “I’ll wait for you.”

Great, now with two people staring at him, he was even less capable of writing. Lin Congzhi sighed and pointed at his phone screen: “Tell me, aren’t the basic shapes of these glass bottles you drew completely off?”

“Mine is—”

“Don’t give me that nonsense about distortion under water traces. Other people distort lines; you’re distorting structural relationships.” Lin Congzhi, wearing the most delicate My Melody shirt, delivered the most hurtful words: “You’ve been drawing for nearly ten years. I believe you could draw these glass wine bottles with your eyes closed. What’s distorted isn’t your drawing, but your mindset and perspective. You’re obsessed with the Central Academy to the point of madness, Yu Shijing. This isn’t called taking an unconventional path; it’s called seeking your own doom.”

Yu Shijing naturally refused to submit: “This is a different artistic form of expression.”

Lin Congzhi closed his eyes: “Let me tell you what kind of students the art academy wants. They want students with solid foundational skills, excellent control over the picture, and a moderate amount of self-expression.”

Yu Shijing pursed his lips in silence, visibly defiant.

Lin Congzhi could only continue: “Don’t view this as so-called ‘dancing in shackles.’ Everyone is a complete stranger—why should the grading teachers trust that you possess the stature of a grand master? This is how the world works: you must always show the side that convinces people first—not your ‘self,’ but your ‘ability.'”

Just as he finished speaking, Lin Congzhi froze.

Across from him, Xiao Jingwen leisurely picked up his drink again and began to savor it, drinking it not like the coffee shop’s seasonal Icy Berry, but like some top-grade Dahongpao tea.

Over on his side, Lin Congzhi felt something was off after speaking. He instantly fell into a kind of contradiction—he had just been denying the artistic nature of a student’s painting. Furthermore, he was transmitting the framework of art and the constraints it faced—this real world.

Suddenly, as Lin Congzhi looked at Yu Shijing, he seemed to see himself from five years ago. A sentence surfaced faintly in his mind like rising and falling waves: If you’re not at the table, you’ll be on the menu.

Five years ago, Xiao Jingwen had tried to instill that message into him: This is how the world works; you must adapt to the rules. Meanwhile, Yu Shijing was still talking endlessly beside him, but Lin Congzhi couldn’t hear a single word. Those statements about artistic merit and creative drive—he was actually arguing against them now.

Yet he had no choice; he was facing a fine arts student who had been repeating for four years.

“By the way,” Xiao Jingwen suddenly interrupted, extending a hand toward Yu Shijing. “I haven’t introduced myself yet. My name is Xiao Jingwen, and I work at Gleam.”

“Ah, really!” Yu Shijing hurriedly shook his hand, immediately realizing, “Big Brother, you work at an auction house? Could you take a look at this painting of mine then?”

“Teacher Lin is right,” Xiao Jingwen said. “Not just fine arts academies, but for us at auction houses, the first item in evaluating submitted works is value. We are worldly people, and to us, value only recognizes money. Especially for artists collaborating for the first time, conservatism must come first. Before you achieve fame under the sun, you must first understand that you inherently live within such a framework. If you want to break through this framework, at the very least, you must first grow to the very top of it.”

Lin Congzhi took several deep gulps of cold brew and resumed writing the bio.

What followed was a long silence—or rather, a silence for Yu Shijing alone. Lin Congzhi kept his head down, writing the bio on the iPad, while Yu Shijing sat there blankly staring at the table. Xiao Jingwen wasn’t idle either; after finishing up a few email replies on his end, he noticed the yellow jam cake that Lin Congzhi had only taken one bite of.

He asked, “Why aren’t you eating this?”

Without looking up, Lin Congzhi replied, “It tastes bad.”

Xiao Jingwen nodded: “Quite a waste. Give it to me.”

“Oh.” Lin Congzhi was scribbling furiously at the moment, his words trailing behind his brain: “Go ahead and eat it.”

As for Yu Shijing, after staring blankly for a while, he seemed to have gained enlightenment—or perhaps not—and stood up with a dazed expression, saying, “Teacher, I’m heading upstairs first.”

Lin Congzhi gave an acknowledgment, and right after, he finished writing the bio. Selecting all to convert the handwriting into text, he handed the iPad back to Xiao Jingwen.

Finishing it brought a wave of pride. His whole being felt refreshed, as if he were incredibly capable; he sat up straight and casually scooped up a bite of cake with his fork to eat.

Just as the cake entered his mouth, he felt something was wrong. Across the table, Xiao Jingwen also raised his eyes, and as their gazes met, Lin Congzhi’s Adam’s apple moved as he swallowed it down.

What was the situation now? Sharing a slice of cake like the couple at the neighboring table?