Tao Zhi didn’t stay with Jiang Qihuai for very long.

After learning those things, she only wanted to see him, wanted to look at him, wanted to tell him that she would always be here.

When she met him, Tao Zhi hesitated for a moment and felt there was no need to tell him those things; she didn’t want to bring any extra, useless pressure to Jiang Qihuai.

She would just pretend she knew nothing.

And Tao Xiuping’s reaction was within the range she could understand.

Tao Zhi was fairly confident she could persuade Tao Xiuping — after all, since childhood, no matter what it was, Tao Xiuping almost always went along with her ideas and tacitly approved any decision she made.

She wore Jiang Qihuai’s coat home. Just as she got out of the car, she saw Ji Fan pacing back and forth at the residential gate, hopping about everywhere.

She closed the car door; Ji Fan happened to look up.

The young man frowned, looking impatient: “I’ve been waiting for you a long time, why are you so slow.”

Tao Zhi glanced at him: “Why are you out here.”

“My dad told me to come find you. He was going to come out himself, but he didn’t want to argue with you about this again today,” Ji Fan cast a glance at the coat on her that obviously didn’t belong to her, raised an eyebrow, “Sneaking off to tattle?”

Tao Zhi raised an eyebrow too: “If you’re so afraid I’ll tattle, why didn’t you go with him?”

Ji Fan waved his hand and walked into the compound: “Not interested in being a third wheel, though I kind of know where his place is now — around where you suddenly got out of the car at the last sports meet, right?”

Tao Zhi’s steps paused: “Dad knows too?”

“…Old Tao isn’t an idiot,” Ji Fan sighed, “He dug up Jiang Qihuai’s background, detailed like a résumé and life story; how could he not know this little matter? And that house seems rented too; his family doesn’t have money to buy a place in the capital.”

After he said that, he looked at Tao Zhi.

The girl looked utterly unconcerned; Ji Fan continued: “Anyway, you think as long as our family has the money to buy it, that’s fine.”

“It might just mean a long fight with Old Tao,” Tao Zhi said, then suddenly hooked her arm around Ji Fan’s neck and gave it a little tug, asking anxiously: “Xiao Ji Fan, just in case I’ll ask straight — you’re on my side, right?”

Ji Fan was pulled so his body bent forward; he said earnestly: “Honestly, I’m planning to stand with Dad.”

Tao Zhi bared her teeth and tightened her hold on his neck: “Say that again!”

Ji Fan coughed twice and wriggled down with effort: “I’m telling the truth! Although for certain reasons I don’t get along well with Jiang Qihuai, objectively speaking, he’s actually not bad. If his family is just a bit poor, I don’t see a problem with you dating him. With you pushing like this, his future conditions won’t be bad.”

“But after seeing those things today, I actually don’t support it much,” Ji Fan escaped her clutches and, unusually, grew a bit serious as he looked at Tao Zhi, “Old Tao’s way of thinking is a bit cruel and a bit selfish, but he also has his reasons. Frankly, how powerful can our family be? We’re just a relatively better-off ordinary family. Do you think with that scumbag father of Jiang Qihuai’s, Old Tao can really get him put away or make him vanish without a trace? He can’t, right. This isn’t a TV drama where you can make someone disappear from this world within the count of ten. It’s impossible.”

Tao Zhi lowered her eyes and remained silent. Ji Fan continued: “So the only thing Old Tao can do now is try to protect you as much as possible, to keep you away from such uncertain factors. Jiang Qihuai is innocent and also a victim, but everyone first thinks of their own family, not someone else’s child — that’s human nature.”

“If the child you raised with your own hands grows up to like the son of a freeloading murderer — think about it, if it were you, could you support that? No matter how selfless he is, no matter how much he respects your thoughts, something like this — which parent could possibly accept it?”

“And besides, Old Tao’s always been a rational type. After all these years, don’t you know that already?”

Ji Fan’s voice suddenly lowered: “He liked Mom so much, but back then between Mom and his career, didn’t he still end up choosing his career? Maybe to him, love was never a necessity in life. You think if it’s you in her place, he’ll suddenly change his way of thinking?”

Impossible.

Tao Zhi couldn’t come up with a single word of rebuttal.

What Ji Fan said was the truth. Tao Zhi was stubborn — once she decided on something, she would charge ahead no matter what, a temperament she inherited completely from Tao Xiuping. Ji Jin used to joke that the boy in the family wasn’t like their father, but the girl was.

Call it determination or call it obstinacy — once she’d made up her mind, even if there was a mountain standing in front of her, Tao Zhi would insist on carving out a path through the rock.

She had originally planned to confront Tao Xiuping and reason it out after this, running over the argument in her head thousands of times — but Tao Xiuping never came to talk to her about it again.

He acted as if nothing had happened, going about his business as usual, which only made Tao Zhi feel uneasy.

No matter how she racked her brain, she couldn’t figure out what trick that old agent was scheming up now.

So she decided to set it aside for the moment and focus all her energy on the exams.

At the beginning of January, the results came out.

This time, the test papers were overall a bit harder than before, yet Tao Zhi’s total score still stayed around 580, though her ranking in the grade rose by more than a dozen places.

Before the exam, she’d been so anxious, as if every exam were a battlefield and she had to rush into each one to prove something — but now, Tao Zhi suddenly felt calm again.

Compared to some things, grades really were the simplest, most honest, and most straightforward thing.

What you put in, it gives back to you — fair and cool-headed, unlike everything else.

There were so many things in this world that, no matter how hard you worked, showed no return, no light at all.

And Jiang Qihuai had always been struggling in such a reality, fighting against fate day after day.

Tao Zhi’s nose suddenly felt a little sour. She turned her head and looked at the boy sitting at the back desk.

Sensing her turning, Jiang Qihuai lifted his head.

Tao Zhi propped her cheek on her hand, quietly looking at him, lost in thought.

Jiang Qihuai closed his test paper.

The faint sound brought Tao Zhi back to herself. After a brief daze, she smiled, leaned down a little, lazily resting on his desk, looking at him.

Jiang Qihuai let her stare for a while before asking, “What are you looking at.”

“Looking at my handsome and charming top-of-the-grade boyfriend,” Tao Zhi said openly.

“……”

Ji Fan couldn’t stand this blatant display of affection. He rolled his eyes, raised a hand like a knife, and made a throat-slitting gesture at himself.

Tao Zhi completely ignored him. She reached her hand under the desk and, sneaky and hidden from sight, gently tapped Jiang Qihuai’s knee with her fingertip.

Jiang Qihuai also reached his hand down.

The classroom was full of people discussing the newly released grades. Li Shuangjiang, who had filled in two answer bubbles wrong out of carelessness, was howling in regret and running wildly up and down the aisle between desks. Amid that chaos, the small movement under the desk went almost unnoticed.

Tao Zhi groped around slowly until she found his fingers.

She held his fingertip and gave it a light squeeze, then blinked at him.

Jiang Qihuai pressed his lips together.

During this period of time, although Tao Zhi tried her best to make herself look no different from usual, the girl had clearly become much quieter than before.

Gone was the noisy, restless way she used to fuss about; most of the time now, she would just stare at him in a daze for a while.

A faint unease spread bit by bit in Jiang Qihuai’s heart.

He was, in truth, a very selfish person. Perhaps it was instinct or nature — ever since he was young, he had never really possessed the quality called “kindness.” In any situation that didn’t concern himself or Jiang Qinghe, he could always stand by indifferently.

And even though Tao Zhi knew that was wrong, even though she had already seen that kind of scene, he still dared not tell her anything.

Jiang Qinghe was his family, his blood, a bond that could never be cut off. But Tao Zhi was not.

Since she could draw near, it meant she could also choose to leave.

A faintly guilty, dark thought took root in him — Jiang Qihuai had no confidence that, after learning everything, after knowing all the chaos and bloodlines that trailed behind him, Tao Zhi would still smile at him the way she did now.

He possessed very little, so even the smallest possible risk was something he couldn’t bear to take.

He wanted, just this once, to be selfish — to cling tightly, desperately, to that light that had squeezed through the cracks.

Tao Xiuping wasn’t merely pretending to stop interfering. After that night, not only did he never bring it up again, he didn’t even restrict Tao Zhi’s actions much, except for the evening curfew.

Several times, Tao Zhi wanted to talk to him about it, but she could never bring herself to start.

If they talked, he would most likely oppose it.

But if they didn’t talk, it was like a buried mine sitting there — one day, the fuse would still get pulled, and it would explode.

On Saturday night, after her tutoring session ended, she sent Jiang Qihuai a message in advance.

He also had tutoring that day and would get back very late. Tao Xiuping wasn’t home that night, and Ji Fan had gone out to eat and hang out with his old middle school friends. With no one watching her, Tao Zhi, unable to sit still, decided to go to Jiang Qihuai’s house and have dinner with Grandpa Jiang.

The old man stayed home alone every day, and Jiang Qihuai, with his reticent personality, rarely kept him company for long chats — it must have been dull.

After greeting Aunt Zhang, Tao Zhi specially picked out a bright-colored coat, then took a cab over.

It was a little past five in the evening when she got out. At that hour, Grandpa Jiang probably hadn’t started cooking yet. Tao Zhi ran into the small supermarket next door, bought some beef and fruit, and carried the bags as she turned into a narrow alleyway.

The area where Jiang Qihuai lived was completely different from the neighborhood around Tao Zhi’s home. The buildings here weren’t tall, only five or six stories high, and along the street, every few storefronts there would be a narrow alleyway, just wide enough for two people to walk side by side.

Icicles hung from the tops of the walls, and old, rusted bicycles and piles of cardboard boxes stood buried beneath thick layers of snow.

Tao Zhi passed through the long alley and arrived at the building below, when she heard a faint, sparse sound from up ahead.

She went around the bicycle shed and leaned forward to look — there were two figures ahead.

An elderly man with graying hair had fallen and was curled up on the snowy ground. Another man was crouched in front of him.

At first glance, Tao Zhi thought someone had fallen and the other was helping him up — until she recognized that the old man was Grandpa Jiang.

And the one crouching beside him was that man from before — the one in the black down jacket — cursing under his breath as his frozen hands rummaged roughly all over the old man’s body.

Almost by instinct, Tao Zhi stepped back half a pace.

Her shoe sole pressed into the soft snow with a faint crunch. The man instantly turned his head — his gaze, beneath the streetlight, was cold and shadowed.

It was different from the fights at school, different from all those childish scuffles. Tao Zhi realized it in an instant.

The man in front of her was a grown criminal. In his eyes, Tao Zhi could sense not a trace of what could be called humanity — only a mad, obsessive hunger.

She froze where she stood as though turned to ice. Her blood seemed to solidify; even her teeth were trembling uncontrollably.

Without making a sound, she slipped her hand into her pocket. Her fingers shook so hard she almost couldn’t grip the phone inside.

Jiang Zhi looked at her with amused interest. After a few seconds, he recognized her. “You’re that little girl from last time?”

Tao Zhi bit down hard on her lip, forcing her voice to sound steady. “I’ve already called the police. They’ll be here any moment. You should leave now.”

“Oh.” Jiang Zhi gave a short, mocking laugh. His tone was icy. “I’m terrified.”

“If you want something, you can just say it,” she said, trying to stall for even a little more time. “There’s no need to hurt anyone.”

“I’m handling family business. What’s it got to do with you? Don’t go playing the hero, little girl.”

From the snow, came a faint, pained sound from Jiang Qinghe. Supporting himself on the ground, he tried weakly to rise, struggling feebly.

Jiang Zhi turned back toward him. He pressed his knee into the old man’s arm to restrain him, clamped a hand over his mouth, and rasped hoarsely, “You old bastard — if you’d just cooperate, we’d be done already!”

Jiang Qinghe bit down hard on his hand.

The man let out a scream of pain — “Ah—!”

In the dim light, Tao Zhi couldn’t see his movements clearly; only the muffled thuds of a down jacket and heavy blows reached her ears.

Jiang Qinghe turned his head with effort. The moment their eyes met, Tao Zhi saw his eyes clearly.

He was crying.

Gentle, kind Grandpa Jiang — the one who cooked delicious chicken wings for her, who laughed heartily at her words, who loved reading and playing chess.

He was the most precious person in Jiang Qihuai’s life.

Tao Zhi clenched her teeth tightly. Forgetting all thought of delay, without even thinking, she suddenly bolted forward.

The two bags in her hands fell into the snow as she dashed straight ahead, kicking the man with all her strength and rushing to the old man’s side, struggling to support him as she tried to move him forward.

Completely unprepared, Jiang Zhi was sent sprawling into a snowbank. Cursing furiously, he struggled to his feet. Tao Zhi, unable to bear both their weights, fell hard onto the ground, staring at the man as he stepped toward them one step at a time.

He looked down at her from above. “I only want the old man. I don’t want trouble. Don’t get in my way.”

Tao Zhi held Jiang Qinghe tightly, throwing herself over him to shield him with her body. She glared up at the man without moving.

Jiang Zhi clicked his tongue. He suddenly seemed to grow irritated, losing control. Lifting his foot, he spat viciously, “Why do you have that same look in your eyes as that damned kid—”

Tao Zhi closed her eyes.

“Exactly the same—”

Sharp, heavy pain struck her again and again across her back and the back of her head, in rhythm with his curses. Her arms were being yanked, but she refused to let go — unmoving, like a solid wall, stubbornly shielding the old man beneath her.

The fruits in the bag spilled out; large, bright strawberries were crushed underfoot, their juices seeping into the snow, dyeing it in patches of faint red.

The metallic sweetness of blood spread across her mouth like rust. Tao Zhi clenched her teeth tightly, counting the seconds in her mind.

At some point, she faintly heard footsteps approaching from the mouth of the alley, the wail of police sirens echoing closer. The man’s lost reason seemed to snap back all at once. He took two steps back, then turned and fled in panic.

Shouts, scuffling, sirens, and hurried footsteps all tangled together into chaos. Struggling, Tao Zhi lifted her head and saw someone running toward her.

That person moved lightly, carefully lifting her up. A familiar scent surrounded her. Tao Zhi sniffed, clutching tightly at his sleeve, her voice urgent: “Grandpa, Grandpa…”

“Grandpa’s fine,” the boy’s voice was hoarse, his breathing uneven. His warm palm pressed against her face, fingertips trembling uncontrollably. “Zhizhi is fine too.”

Tao Zhi let out a long breath of relief. She smiled faintly; when her lips pulled up, even her ears ached with numb pain. “We agreed. I’ll protect you.”

Her voice was small, soft. “A’Huai, and everyone important to A’Huai — I’ll protect them all.”