Xu Ze was brought back into the living room. He was somewhat bewildered, not knowing what he had done wrong.
The lady of the house sat down on the sofa, picked up her teacup, took a sip, and said to him, “If you like a toy, you can just tell your older brother and have him give it to you. How could you steal it?”
Xu Ze had been accused of something he had never done and could not react for a moment.
He heard his grandmother ask, “Where did you put the little car?”
The chubby boy was still crying, but there was not a single tear on his face.
Xu Ze ran to the corner where he had been sitting earlier and pushed aside the various toys beside him.
There was nothing underneath.
But he had clearly put the little car there.
Xu Ze did not know how to explain it. He could only shake his head.
“Then let’s check the security footage,” the lady of the house said gently.
The nanny pulled up the surveillance footage on a tablet.
It showed everything from the moment Xu Ze sat down in that corner and picked up the little car, through the chubby boy’s constant harassment and bullying, until Xu Ze stood up.
Twenty-eight minutes in total.
At the very end, when Xu Ze put the little car on the floor and stood up, he had moved so quickly that his actions looked as though he had braced himself against the floor with his hand. Because the toys beside him blocked the view, it was impossible to tell whether he had actually put the little car down or was still holding it.
The nanny turned off the surveillance footage and exchanged a glance with the lady of the house.
Then she searched Xu Ze.
She found nothing.
“Then we’d have to ask the property management to pull up the surveillance footage from the road outside. Perhaps he was afraid of being discovered and hid it in the grass by the roadside.”
The lady of the house looked at Xu Ze and smiled faintly.
“But that’s too much trouble. There’s no need to make such a big production out of it. We have guests coming, too. Let’s just forget about this. Children make mistakes sometimes. Just don’t do it again.”
It was Xu Ze’s first time experiencing what it felt like to be falsely accused.
He had never known it could hurt so much.
“He wouldn’t.”
Ye Yunhua, who had been silent all this time, suddenly spoke.
She had always been extremely polite toward the lady of the house, but her voice was hard now.
“Xu Ze wouldn’t do something like that. You can check the surveillance footage outside.”
The lady of the house looked somewhat surprised, but she maintained her elegant composure and said gently, “Chef Ye, I know you care about your grandson, but you can’t spoil a child like this. He’ll learn bad habits.”
“Check the surveillance footage.”
Ye Yunhua took off her apron and wiped her flour-covered hands on it.
“Wait until you’ve seen the footage before you say anything. If Xu Ze really took it, I’ll bring him back to apologize and compensate you. I’ll be leaving for now. The oven has already been set. Just take the pastries out when the time comes.”
“Let’s go.”
She took Xu Ze’s hand and led him through the kitchen and out through the backyard.
They walked silently for a while.
Then, for the first time, Xu Ze spoke there.
“Grandma, I want to go over there.”
“What for?”
“I made a friend.” Xu Ze’s voice was very quiet. “He always waits for me.”
Ye Yunhua did not ask anything further.
Just as she believed Xu Ze would never steal or lie, she believed him now too.
She followed Xu Ze to the backyard of a villa.
Xu Ze ran over and looked through the fence.
There was no one there.
“Can I wait for him for a while? Until he comes out?” Xu Ze looked up at Ye Yunhua.
He could not eat, read comics, or play with toys together with Lu Heyang today.
And he probably would not have another chance in the future either.
So he wanted to say goodbye to Lu Heyang.
“Wait here.”
Ye Yunhua beckoned to Xu Ze, signaling for him to stand beneath the tree across the road.
Xu Ze clutched the edge of Ye Yunhua’s clothes and stood beneath the tree, staring intently at the backyard as he waited for Lu Heyang to come out.
He waited for more than half an hour.
His legs were already sore, but Lu Heyang never appeared.
“Grandma, let’s go.”
Xu Ze lowered his head.
Ye Yunhua said nothing. She simply picked Xu Ze up.
She had always been efficient, stern, and quiet. Xu Ze rarely felt any warmth or affection from her. He had always thought his grandmother was different from everyone else’s.
“Grandma, I’m sorry.”
Xu Ze lay against Ye Yunhua’s shoulder and said it quietly.
“Why are you saying sorry? You didn’t steal anyone else’s toy.”
“But Grandma can’t earn money here anymore.”
“She can earn money somewhere else, but no one gets to bully you like that.”
Xu Ze felt a little more at ease. He rubbed his eyes and looked at the empty swing set gradually growing farther away. Silently, he said in his heart, We’ll see each other again, okay?
Xu Ze had a little notebook. On one of its pages, there were eleven circles drawn with watercolor pens, each one representing a time he and Lu Heyang had met. Beside the last circle, seven-year-old Xu Ze had written in crooked, uneven handwriting: We’ll see each other again, okay?
It was a childish wish made without expecting anything. Just when Xu Ze had almost forgotten about it, it suddenly came true one day—although seven years had already passed.
In his second year of middle school, Xu Ze underwent secondary differentiation and became an S-rank alpha. The preparatory school pulled up his records and notified him to take the entrance assessment. After passing the assessment smoothly, Xu Ze went to the preparatory school to submit his documents.
Inside the office, Xu Ze stood in front of the desk of the teacher who would soon become his homeroom teacher, waiting for her to review his documents. Someone knocked twice on the door.
“Come in,” a teacher said.
The door was pushed open. A teacher looked up and smiled.
“Lu Heyang? Here to pick up your report card?”
The name was familiar yet distant. Xu Ze suddenly froze and stiffly raised his head.
Sunlight streamed in through the doorway in a long beam. The alpha stood within that beam of light, like a tree growing tall and straight.
“Mm.” The alpha’s voice was low and clear, a tone that did not even sound hoarse during puberty. “Sorry, Teacher. I only just came back yesterday.”
“It’s fine, it’s fine. I thought someone else would come pick it up for you. I didn’t expect you to make a special trip yourself.”
Lu Heyang smiled slightly. When he took the report card, he lifted his eyes, his gaze briefly passing over Xu Ze. There was still a trace of a smile on his face—the polite yet distant smile one gave to a stranger.
He left soon after, without paying any particular attention to Xu Ze—the alpha standing silently beside one of the desks, his face slightly pale.
Nor would he know what kind of enormous waves had surged through this unfamiliar alpha’s heart during that half-second of eye contact.
Seven years had passed. The Lu He-Yang who had always smiled brightly and spoken in a clear, ringing voice in Xu Ze’s memories had grown into a tall Lu Heyang with a deep voice. His appearance and bearing were strikingly exceptional, but he also genuinely seemed much colder.
Back then, every time they parted, Lu Heyang would tell Xu Ze, We’ll see each other again, okay?
Yet when they truly met again, he did not recognize Xu Ze.
Xu Ze thought this was perfectly reasonable. He had never told Lu Heyang his name. They had been out of contact for years, and their appearances had changed. Forgetting and becoming strangers were inevitable.
It was just that, for Xu Ze, he had never gotten to see Lu Heyang one last time during his childhood, leaving behind an unfulfilled regret. Because of that, the memory had also become especially vivid.
Just like happiness would never keep a person awake at night. What kept you tossing and turning was always the regrets that could never be smoothed away.
When Xu Ze returned home that day, he dug the yellowed little notebook out of his room. He opened it and, after the eleven slightly faded colored circles, added another circle with a black pen. Beside it, he wrote:
We met again.
“Later, because of some things, Grandma stopped going to other people’s homes to make pastries. She opened a breakfast shop by the roadside.”
The memories were long, but Xu Ze summed them up in just a few words. He looked at the IV bottle as though he were telling someone else’s story.
“Later, my mother passed away. Grandma’s mental health started to deteriorate. A few years ago, she got even worse and was sent to a psychiatric hospital.”
“She had always been in poor health too, and life in the psychiatric hospital was very difficult for her. That’s why I started making money, so Grandma could move to a better nursing facility.”
Xu Ze stopped there, worried that he had been talking too much, even though he had only said a few sentences in total. Perhaps Lu Heyang did not necessarily want to hear any of this.
Xu Ze licked his lower lip.
“It’s late. Are you sleepy?”
“No.”
Lu Heyang listened quietly until he finished, then poured him a glass of water and handed it to him. At the same time, he asked, “You said you weren’t going to fight anymore. Was that true?”
“I don’t know.”
Xu Ze answered honestly. He had told Tang Feiyi that he was quitting because, in that situation, he had genuinely felt tired and sick of it. But there were many things that were not up to him to decide.
“I’ll go less often in the future,” Xu Ze added. “Summer vacation is coming. I found a job, and a subsidy I applied for on Grandma’s behalf is also about to come through.”
He could not make much money from part-time work, and the subsidy was not much either. Everything depended on Ye Yunhua remaining stable. If anything unexpected happened to her, that money alone would absolutely not be enough.
“What kind of job?”
“Just some odd jobs.”
Lu Heyang did not ask further. Instead, he changed the question.
“How much is the subsidy?”
“Probably a few thousand yuan. It’s better than nothing.”
Xu Ze seemed already satisfied with that.
“There are also two other subsidies. I applied a long time ago, but there’s still been no news. I guess they won’t come through.”
He calmly and honestly described a situation that, in other people’s eyes, was extremely difficult. Lu Heyang thought that if Xu Ze had thicker skin, a little more scheming, or learned how to play up his misery, his life would probably be easier than it was now.
But then he would no longer be Xu Ze.
Lu Heyang looked at him for a while before saying, “I’ll head back first. Get some good rest. If you feel uncomfortable anywhere, call the doctor.”
He took the water glass from Xu Ze’s hands and set it aside. Xu Ze leaned against the pillow and watched him. Lu Heyang stood up, and Xu Ze’s gaze followed him upward.
“You’re looking at me like that again.”
Lu Heyang seemed to smile faintly as he said it.
Xu Ze lowered his eyes and obediently said, “I won’t look anymore.”
But somehow, that answer seemed to be wrong.
Because Lu Heyang stood beside the bed for a moment before suddenly bending down. He braced one hand beside Xu Ze’s pillow, while his other hand gently brushed over the bruised swelling at the corner of Xu Ze’s mouth.
His voice was gentle.
“I didn’t say you weren’t allowed to look. Get some good sleep tonight. There will be plenty of chances to look at me in the future.”
He said there would be plenty of chances.
But Xu Ze knew there actually wouldn’t be.
“Be careful on your way back.”
Xu Ze paused before saying, “See you next time.”