The result, like a stone slipping into dark water.

Just as Nana Toki had foreseen, clouds forming right before a storm.

Fresh out of prison, Zhao Kang moved like a stray dog sniffing a trail. After Chongming Yan sketched Tinglan High’s current mess, he quickly tracked down Mo Yao.

When Zhao Kang found Mo Yao in a derelict house, he couldn’t believe his eyes, like seeing a fallen idol cracked in dust.

The once untouchable young master had sunk to this ruin, like a banner torn and soaked by rain.

It hit like a slap of cold wind under a gray sky.

The figure curled in the corner, whittled to bone like a winter scarecrow, was truly Mo Yao.

Disbelief lodged in Zhao Kang’s throat like a stone.

Only when he saw A-Bao did he snap awake, a drumbeat shattering fog.

“You did all this?”

Zhao Kang glared at A-Bao as the syringe kissed Mo Yao’s vein; veins roped along his fist; he was a raging bull.

“Do you even know what you’re doing!”

His roar crashed like thunder. Mo Yao crumpled by the wall, convulsing, face slick with some mix of tears and spit, like rain on broken glass.

His eyes were vacant, a dry well telling of despair for this world.

Yes, a nod swallowed by night.

In the end he was dragged into the mire, boots sucked by a swamp.

As the drug’s pull grew fiercer, he pawned off Yuedi Entertainment Club; behind his family’s back, he wiped their bank savings clean, like locusts stripping a field.

Now Mo Yao could only stretch the last thin grams to survive the days, rationing embers in a cold hut.

Of course, the inevitable rain after heavy clouds.

A junkie young master couldn’t pull all that alone; A-Bao played his part, a shadow working the locks.

While Mo Yao was in withdrawal, he slipped away Mo Yao’s real estate; he phoned the family and lied about a financial crisis, like a fox raiding a henhouse.

Soon he drew in Mo Yao’s whole family in one net, casting a dragline across a dark river.

“You son of a bitch!”

Seeing Mo Yao half-human, half-ghost like that, rage shot up Zhao Kang’s skull like fire through dry grass.

He slammed a heavy fist into A-Bao’s face and sent him flying four or five meters, a kite cut loose.

“I should’ve killed you with them back then,” he growled, snapping the last rotten branch.

Zhao Kang stared at drooling, dazed Mo Yao, idiot-like; flames swelled in his eyes like a forge roaring.

He wasn’t a fool; he wouldn’t shoulder someone else’s rape-murder charge for nothing, chains he didn’t forge.

Only—there was a hook in him like a fish.

Mo Yao had promised: take the fall for him, and after release he’d pay compensation, silver coins piled high.

The temptation was too heavy, honey poured over a trap.

But he never imagined the path would turn into a cliff.

Mo Yao had sunk into drugs, and the slide couldn’t be stopped, a landslide grinding a hill bare.

In the end he became a vagrant junkie, trading coins for hits on the street, a moth circling a gutter flame.

“Cough, cough… You should know—do anything, and you shoulder its fallout, shadows that follow at dusk…”

He spat bright blood; flung to the floor, A-Bao clawed his way up like a beaten dog.

His left cheek caved in, eyes bulging; a few teeth knocked loose; his face a broken mask, twisted and feral. “You were part of it back then too. A pity. If I had pull in the prison system, I’d have killed you as well.”

A-Bao’s vicious tone washed Zhao Kang’s face pale then green, waves slapping a cliff.

Yes, like truth pebbles settling.

If he wanted, he could kill A-Bao anytime, snuffing a candle.

But… the knife stayed in the sheath, a storm held back.

Zhao Kang glanced at the passing stream of people; this place wasn’t fit for a killing, like trying to bury a corpse in daylight.

“What? Not going to keep swinging?”

A-Bao stood trembling, clutching that syringe that had kissed Mo Yao too many times, a viper’s fang in his fist. He glared. “Careful, or you’ll regret it later.”

...

Zhao Kang ignored him; face dark as rain, he left that place that knotted his heart, like walking out from under a thunderhead.

...

“Huh? Suo… Suo Sen?! Why are you here?”

Yuzuki learned Suo Sen had transferred to Diguang only when class began, like a note slipped under a door.

When Nana Toki stepped through the doorway under the teacher’s guidance, Yuzuki thought she was dreaming, a white egret crossing a pond.

That cool girl in a white cap and loose white jacket stepped in and snatched every gaze like lightning.

“Hi everyone, I’m Suo Sen—Suo, then Sen,” she said, a grin with no kindness, pure street swagger, like a wolf showing teeth.

Yuzuki knew that smile far too well, a familiar scar under moonlight.

Only after Nana Toki finished and dropped into a seat not far from her, hands in pockets, did Yuzuki snap back, like a bell rung twice.

“Why did Suo Sen come back to my school?” The question fluttered in her chest like a sparrow.

In the middle of class, Yuzuki passed a note for the first time in years, a secret leaf on the wind.

“Nothing much—wanted a change of scenery and to be with you,” the reply read, moving closer to a warm window.

Nana Toki swore those words weren’t written by her own hand, a trick of spirits tugging the pen.

Yet somehow, the moment she received Yuzuki’s note, before her eyes even focused, a reply whooshed out of her pen, a swallow diving.

She passed it back via the classmate beside her, passing a spark along a fuse.

Nana soon saw Yuzuki, who’d been sitting upright, suddenly fold over her desk and raise a book to shield her face, a turtle pulling into its shell.

She couldn’t see the face, but she caught the flush on Yuzuki’s ears, red as maple leaves in autumn.

What the hell! Why are you blushing! The thought snapped like a dry twig.

Maybe Nana’s face was too vivid a show, colors changing like a festival lantern. Then the homeroom teacher called on her to solve the math problem on the board, a spotlight snapping on.

Nana Toki: “…”

Damn, like a spark jumping onto tinder.