“Yo, how’s life been lately, Yan? I was doing fine in there, like grass stubbornly greening between prison stones.”

A few days later.

Chongming Yan and Yiyi Chen signed the papers at the same old lockup and bailed Zhaokang out, like lifting a lid off a stormed-over well.

Fresh out, Zhaokang didn’t look seventeen; he looked like a man weathered to his thirties, a pine trunk scarred by wind.

His square face was bristled with stubble like steel wool, and his frame was thick as a ram at full charge.

His eyes were bright, a pair of lanterns in a cave that said he hadn’t dimmed inside.

People who saw him wondered if a man like this really walked out of a cell, like doubting a hawk could hatch from a coop.

“Hey, Zhaoge, good to meet you.”

Yiyi Chen stood beside Chongming Yan and greeted him, her smile a white flag fluttering in a curious breeze.

She couldn’t help staring, trying to place what mountain this stranger had rolled down from.

“Oh? This little sister—she Yan’s girlfriend? Pretty as spring blossom, eh? Yan finally grew a brain,” Zhaokang laughed, like a drum thumped in a courtyard.

He hooked an arm over Chongming Yan’s shoulder, leaning in like a boulder tipping off a slope.

The stubble on his jaw pricked Yan’s cheek like needles through cloth, sharp and itchy.

“Hey, Zhaokang, don’t lean on me.”

Yan scowled and shoved, but the man didn’t budge a finger’s width, like pushing a rooted tree.

“So heartless, huh? Almost two years without seeing me, and you tell me to stand back—some ‘bosom friend’ you are,” he sighed, a grin peeking out like sun after drizzle.

Even as he spoke, his arm slid off Yan’s shoulder, like a tide easing from rock.

“But really… two years, and you look smaller,” he said, rubbing his stubbled chin like a file on wood.

“Not just your build, even your aura’s thinner, like a fire gone to embers. You slacking?”

“And also…”

Suddenly, his head turned toward Yiyi Chen, eyes narrowing like shutters in wind. “The girl who used to trail your heels wasn’t this fresh-faced one. Where’s Suo Sen?”

At the name Suo Sen, Chongming Yan’s face went darker than stormwater, like a cloud covering a hill.

His hand rose to his lower abdomen on instinct, a protective palm over an old scar like a leaf over a knot.

That tiny move didn’t slip past Zhaokang’s gaze, sharp as a falcon’s over a field.

The wisp of a smile on Zhaokang’s face made Yiyi Chen’s heart go cold, like a draft under a door, and she shrank behind Yan’s back.

“What, you two have a spat?” Zhaokang lifted a hand to ruffle Yan’s head, casual as a brother swatting wheat.

Yan slapped it away, his eyes like knives catching moonlight. “Don’t stick your nose in it.”

“Alright, alright—fine, I won’t,” he chuckled, a shrug as loose as a wind-tossed sleeve. “You, little lady, keep him in line.”

Zhaokang rubbed his wrist and flashed that big laugh again, bright as a bonfire in dusk. “Take me to see Tinglan, yeah? I haven’t visited in forever.”

“...”

Chongming Yan looked at him, words pooling like rain that wouldn’t fall.

After a long breath, he only turned his gaze aside and nodded, like a pine bending to snow.

“Mm.”

They caught a taxi, the cab humming like a beetle over asphalt, and headed back to Tinglan High.

The moment they stepped out, Yan was about to lead the fresh-out Zhaokang through the gate when a white figure drifted out from the school, like a crane stepping from reeds.

Nana Toki held a white sheet of paper, reading as she walked, her attention folded like a fan over ink.

“Huh? Suo Sen! Suo Sen! Suo Sen!”

Before Yan could speak, Zhaokang—just out of the cab—saw the girl and waved both arms, shouting like a boy spotting an old friend across a river.

“Mm?”

Inside Tinglan’s walls, someone yelling her name made Nana Toki lift her head on instinct, like a cat hearing a dish clink.

And then.

She saw Chongming Yan standing by the curb with others, faces arranged like pieces on a Go board.

Yes.

Nana Toki cracked inside, like thin ice under a careless boot.

For fuck’s sake—how do I run into the Protagonist Lord and the heroine no matter where I go, like bad pennies raining from the sky?

“Hey! Hey! Suo Sen!”

While she was already weighing exits, Nana Toki saw the uncle-looking guy beside the Protagonist Lord and heroine barreling toward her, arms open like nets for a catch.

He ran with both arms spread, clearly aiming for a passionate hug, like a bear wanting to fold a sapling.

The thought of an uncle’s hug made her skin pebble like a pond in rain; she slipped aside on reflex, smooth as a fish.

“Psycho—who the hell are you?”

She tossed the papers, then reversed and caught his arm cleanly, a neat lock snapping like bamboo.

“Hiss—ow, ow, ow! It’s me, it’s me—Zhaokang! You don’t recognize me, Suo Sen?” he yelped, pain flashing like sparks.

“Zhaokang?”

Nana Toki rifled through her memory, pages flipping like wind through a book, and then—

She snapped her gaze down at the uncle she’d pinned, eyes widening like lanterns.

Zhaokang?!

Isn’t this the final boss, the storm at the end?

In the original plot, once the romance warmed like spring after frost, Mo Yao teamed up with freshly released Zhaokang to seize the Protagonist Lord’s turf around Tinglan, a pincer like wolves at a fold.

But the Protagonist Lord had plot armor; in the end, he rallied his brothers like drums calling a village and struck back, taking Mo Yao and Zhaokang down in one sweep.

That counterattack shattered Mo Yao’s fate like a vase on stone, leaving him ruined and scattered.

And Zhaokang, fresh from prison, fared no better; homeless and broke, he turned to theft and landed back behind bars, like a moth returning to flame.

So why isn’t he looking for Mo Yao now—why show up at Tinglan?

Nana Toki felt the track of this world skid off its rails, like a cart veering into wild grass.

It had to be because she’d stepped in, a stone dropped in a pond.

She eyed Zhaokang, who was yowling under her lock, and her thoughts cooled like ink—this guy might have an agenda.

“Suo Sen! What are you doing?”

Chongming Yan’s bark cracked the air from not far off, like a whip, and he strode over to grab her arm.

“What am I doing? Can’t you see this uncle tried to molest a female high-schooler?” she shot back, her words sharp as sleet.

Nana Toki slipped past the Protagonist Lord’s grabby paw with a small twist, a swallow dodging a snare.

Zhaokang: “...”

Too hard—now I’m the “uncle,” and I’m supposedly out here trying to grope a schoolgirl, like a villain in a cheap play.