After hanging up on her father’s call, Lu Yixin let out a cheer while riding her bicycle.

“Fang Yongnian is back!” She yanked the handlebars and banged on them in excitement.

Zheng Ranran said, “…You’ve leaked the secret this badly. How could he not come back?”

“I must be a genius!” Lu Yixin said, intoxicated with herself.

“Right…” Whenever Lu Yixin went crazy, Zheng Ranran was always cooperative.

“I’m going to buy marinated dishes!” Lu Yixin chirped. “My dad only knows how to make four braised dishes, and they’re all especially awful.”

“I won’t treat you to lunch tomorrow. I’m spending all my money today!” Her face was flushed with excitement.

Zheng Ranran followed behind her, smiling. “So happy, huh?”

Lu Yixin grinned from ear to ear and nodded hard.

Zheng Ranran grinned too.

Maybe Lu Yixin liking Fang Yongnian wasn’t entirely a bad thing. At least, her happiness right now was genuine.

୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧

At dinner, sure enough, there were only four braised dishes—braised winter melon, braised chicken wings, braised pork, and braised eggplant. Adding to that, Lu Yixin brought home a pack of osmanthus lotus root, a plate of fried peanuts, and a small bag of marinated pig’s ears. The table was completely filled.

“I’ll go cut a cucumber.” Lu Boyuan clapped his hands.

With eight dishes total, he stood there in his apron admiring them for a moment before setting out three sets of bowls and chopsticks.

Because Liu Miqing wasn’t home, the father and daughter had, over the past few days, developed a kind of revolutionary camaraderie. They worked in perfect rhythm while setting the table and tidying the house, both feeling a little uneasy.

Lu Yixin’s unease came from a tacit understanding, while Lu Boyuan’s feelings were more complicated.

He knew in his heart that the short conversation he had overheard between the old professors couldn’t have been a misunderstanding. The things Lu Yixin said weren’t something a young girl would come up with out of nowhere.

Looking at it from another angle, he realized how clearly the truth of those years had been glossed over.

A project that had invested nearly 300 million RMB, its failure was entirely blamed on a twenty-eight-year-old Fang Yongnian who lost a leg in a car accident. Everyone only sighed with pity. No one said they wanted to look deeper.

Back then, it was as if pushing all the responsibility onto Fang Yongnian made everything perfectly reasonable, and the matter ended to everyone’s satisfaction.

Indeed, too unusual.

And he, only now, four years later, had come to his senses.

“Call him and ask if he’s arrived yet?” Lu Boyuan glanced at the clock and rubbed his hands together.

“He’s downstairs,” Lu Yixin said after receiving the WeChat message, then ran to the entrance without even lifting her head. Leaving behind just four words, she dashed downstairs.

Old Father Lu’s heart suddenly felt complicated for a moment.

This girl, her relationship with Fang Yongnian really was better than with him.

୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧

In the Jiangnan April air, when Fang Yongnian stepped out of the car, he wore a gray shirt and carried his ever-present black trench coat in his hand.

He had gotten even thinner.

Lu Yixin only needed one look for her heart to tighten painfully.

He even coughed a few times after getting out, his hand curled into a fist before his mouth as he suppressed the coughs.

Lu Yixin ran up to him and grabbed the bag in his other hand.

“Peach crisp cookies.” Fang Yongnian thought she was hungry, so he said the name of the food first.

It was an old habit—every time he went out, he would bring her something to eat. But if he wanted to avoid suspicion, shouldn’t this be changed too?

Disliking change, Fang Yongnian frowned.

Annoying.

“Have you not been eating these past few days?” Lu Yixin’s tone was not friendly as she followed closely behind him, step by step.

Fang Yongnian felt the night breeze was a bit cold. He put on the trench coat in his hand and pretended not to hear what she said, walking straight into the stairwell.

Avoid suspicion.

“Your cold hasn’t gotten better yet?” Lu Yixin completely failed to understand his attempt to keep distance, her face serious.

He looked far too pale. That cough had already lasted nearly two months.

“Mm.” Fang Yongnian responded vaguely.

“I’ll go with you to the hospital after dinner,” Lu Yixin said, fussing like an old granny.

“No need.” Fang Yongnian stopped walking and turned around to look at her.

“You promised,” he almost sighed.

This was the stairwell, after all—neighbors were constantly coming and going—yet she was still being this open and obvious.

Lu Yixin froze, her mouth half open.

What had she promised?

“Um…” she leaned forward slightly, lowering her voice as if whispering a secret, “I can’t take you to the hospital, is that it?”

A niece couldn’t even accompany her uncle?

Fang Yongnian: “…”

Forget it. He gave up.

“I already went to the hospital,” he said, starting a back-and-forth with her.

Clearly Lu Yixin was the one with a guilty conscience, yet somehow he was the one feeling exhausted.

“Then why aren’t you getting better?” Lu Yixin’s attention quickly shifted again.

“Is the doctor no good? Should we get you a specialist appointment?” The moment the topic turned to illness, the little girl seemed surprisingly knowledgeable.

She really had spent too little of her childhood with her parents. Fang Yongnian still remembered when she had gastroenteritis as a child—calling him while crying in a taxi in the middle of the night, after hailing the ride herself to the emergency room.

“Shouldn’t we get a specialist appointment?” the fifteen or sixteen-year-old girl had asked, panicked in the backseat of that late-night cab.

“No need.” He softened again, his tone gentler in this back-and-forth. “I’ve just been too busy lately. A few days of rest and it’ll be fine.”

“You’re always busy…” Lu Yixin pouted.

Busy with things she couldn’t understand, busy faking rumors with Yu Hanfeng.

“Who’s busy?” Lu Boyuan stood at the doorway and took the bag of peach crisp cookies from Lu Yixin’s hand. “You’re already this old, and you’re still asking others for food?”

Lu Yixin pouted unhappily and squeezed past him into the house, taking off her shoes on her own.

“What’s wrong with her again?” Lu Boyuan couldn’t make sense of his daughter’s moods. Instinctively, he looked to the only other seemingly normal person in the room for help.

Fang Yongnian coughed once.

Lu Boyuan, still holding the peach crisps, also coughed once in response.

It was awkward. After facing each other with hostility for so many years, this sudden friendliness made both men uncomfortable.

“Let’s eat first,” Lu Boyuan said, rubbing his hands together.

“I’m not hungry.” Fang Yongnian refused.

He wasn’t here to make peace. He had come today to answer Lu Boyuan’s questions. He had come to ask whether Lu Boyuan was truly that innocent. Whether he really had no part in those filthy matters, and knew nothing about them.

“You’re already thin as a skeleton, and you’re still not hungry!” Lu Yixin scooped a bowl of white rice for each person, placing them heavily on the table.

Fang Yongnian: “…”

Lu Boyuan: “…”

“Um…” Lu Boyuan felt unbearably awkward.

Fang Yongnian stood by the entrance for a second. Inside the dining room, that girl kept glaring at him.

Just eat…

He sighed.

One meal wouldn’t make a difference.

The food wasn’t particularly tasty, but it was steaming hot. Though the whole table’s atmosphere was tense, he still picked up his chopsticks.

He couldn’t tell what he had done to upset Lu Yixin. Ever since he said he was busy, she had been acting strange. Without her chatter to ease the mood, the meal felt as dry as the braised pork in his mouth.

And she kept serving him food—placing a separate bowl in front of him, using the shared chopsticks to put dish after dish into it right under her father’s gaze.

They were, admittedly, all his favorite dishes.

But still…

He didn’t expect her to keep her promise for long, but she could at least try to avoid suspicion.

“No need…” He couldn’t hold it in anymore when she started picking out the fatty parts of the pork belly for him.

This looked far too suggestive.

“Yixin… you two really have a good relationship.” Lu Boyuan took a dry bite of rice, his expression complicated. “She’s never treated me like this before.”

Even though he hadn’t spent much time with her, he was still her biological father, after all.

Fang Yongnian choked on a mouthful of rice and coughed violently.

“I told you to go see a doctor,” Lu Yixin muttered in annoyance, giving her father a piece of winter melon.

“He’s been coughing for over a month and still hasn’t recovered,” Lu Yixin turned her head and explained to her father.

Acting so openly made Fang Yongnian’s heart tremble with unease.

His position had become strange…

Strange in every possible way…

But at least the atmosphere had finally lightened up. Lu Yixin possessed a kind of special magic—whenever she wanted to, she could turn any scene harmonious and lively.

Even if, sitting across the table, was Lu Boyuan. The very man Fang Yongnian had once wished to personally send to prison.

The conversation naturally drifted from his cough to his health, then to his appetite. Lu Boyuan even brought up the tofu buns from the research institute.

Father and daughter were chatting enthusiastically. Fang Yongnian, who had been quietly eating the whole time, silently finished an entire bowl of rice.

He felt a bit too full, and a little greasy.

He picked up another piece of osmanthus lotus root for himself.

After Qingming, osmanthus lotus roots didn’t taste as good as before, but they were still fragrant, soft, and sweet.

Lu Yixin and Lu Boyuan had somehow shifted their topic to donkey meat sandwiches. Their round eyes—so alike—were bright and shining, speaking wistfully about food while eating their mediocre home-cooked meal.

Fang Yongnian slowly chewed the osmanthus lotus root in his mouth.

If it weren’t for the gray now at Lu Boyuan’s temples—

If it weren’t for Lu Yixin’s school uniform changing from middle school to high school—

If it weren’t for that right leg of his, which no longer belonged to him—

He would almost believe that those calm, peaceful days had returned.

From the dormitory to the lab had only been a ten-minute walk, lined year-round with changing plants—this season, cherry blossoms would have been fluttering in the wind.

Sometimes, Lu Yixin would come by the lab with an enormous backpack to stay over. Inside, she would secretly hide trendy snacks she’d bought. He’d take her to the cafeteria, and she’d gift him those snacks in return.

He had been exceptionally capable, doing what he was best at and loved most—burying himself in the lab, day and night.

His future had once been bright. Among his seniors, because of his youth, he would sometimes act spoiled and playful.

And now, the only thing that hadn’t changed was Lu Yixin.

“I’m done eating.” He put down his chopsticks. The more he chewed the osmanthus lotus root, the more bitter it became.

He slowly wiped his mouth and looked toward Lu Boyuan.

That man—his senior whom he had once respected. When he was still a freshman, it was this man who had helped him, who had told him that one day, the Chinese people would create the best original medicines in the world.

“Let’s talk.”

Talk about the grudges.

Talk about the filth he had uncovered.