Members' Day

The long, tedious days of high summer stretched on, the moonlight so faint it tasted like plain water. Yun Huizhi lazed around town, acting as a self-appointed ambassador through her photography and articles. One day, she paired a landscape shot with an unhinged caption: "Amateur tour guide here. If you're thinking of traveling and want a short-term girlfriend on the side, consider me. Price negotiable (pretty women only)."Someone slid into her DMs to ask what her standard for "pretty" was. Yun Huizhi decided to be difficult: "Send a bare-faced selfie." She thought that would kill the conversation. To her surprise, the person actually sent one.Yun Huizhi's dignity evaporated on the spot. "From now on, my sole reason for living is waiting for you to get here."—When she finally picked up the client, Yun Huizhi thought, What the hell—the woman was even more stunning in person. No way she was short on travel buddies. "Why me?""Just got divorced. Came to heal. Your photos are decent." The woman turned the question around. "Why do you do this?"Yun Huizhi answered, "Family's poor. Earning tuition."She played the part of the perfect guide. By day, she showed her client the sights—drinking, eating, biking after the sunset. By night, the town's moonlight swayed, burning hotter than the sun as they toyed with each other, with the wind, with the moon.Half a month of absurd bliss. Then the other woman left without a word, leaving money behind. Yun Huizhi stayed on in town, killing time.—At the pre-semester training, the new teacher introduced herself as Yun. Her partner homeroom teacher, dressed conservatively and buttoned-up, acted as if she had amnesia, addressing her formally as "Ms. Yun."Yun Huizhi walked back with her to the faculty apartment like they were old friends. "I just found out—Ms. Chu has always been single."Chu Ruoyou gave a cold laugh. "Someone who pretended to be a broke student to make money has the right to ask?"Yun Huizhi's attitude was impeccable. "You paid too well. I had no choice but to chase after you and keep working for you."The lie shattered. The town's moonlight fell into the late summer night, and the deliberately buried memories came flooding back."You're such a bastard.""But you said you wouldn't leave a bastard. I believed that part."

The new neighbor is quiet, well-mannered, and strikingly beautiful. She cooks well, often knocks on the door with food and drinks. She’s even willing to join in on bedtime relaxation exercises. After one such session, the neighbor asks, “Do you need a girlfriend?” Sheng Qi shakes her head. The neighbor calmly puts on her clothes, leaves her home, and returns in the evening to cook her favorite dishes as usual. Sheng Qi thinks, *This neighbor would actually be perfect for a relationship.* *If only she hadn’t kicked me away once before.* Back in their teenage years, this woman was already her neighbor—the school’s undisputed top student. Brilliant, beautiful, aloof, and indifferent. The only thing she couldn’t stand was Sheng Qi’s aimless, idle life and her pack of troublemaking friends, stubbornly trying to set her on the right path. Later, the girl who once kissed her as a reward for studying coldly said, “Your life is yours to waste. Fly away like a bird or rot like a flower in the mud—I don’t care. Just don’t let me see it, don’t let me know how stupid I was to ever believe you could change.” Sheng Qi became that bird, traversing mountains and rivers, gone for years. Her neighbor never mentions the past and never minds her hot-and-cold attitude. Calm at last, Sheng Qi decides to end the absurdity. “Why are you being foolish again?” “*I* was the true fool back then.”

As a lover, Lin Zhiyang was forbidden from getting too close. After a year together, she only knew the exact locations of the professor’s moles. The consequence of trying to melt a glacier was that, on the day she painstakingly prepared to confess, the other woman walked past her as if she didn't exist. So when she said "break up," Yu Che's deathly pale face made the words taste sweet—as if they had ever been legitimate in the first place. * Yu Che didn’t dare underestimate Lin Zhiyang's pull on her. Every rejection was a form of self-torture. No one knew how much courage it took for a glacier to inch closer to the sun. To steal a sliver of its warmth, she drank poison to quench her thirst. She never asked for deep love—only for it to last. After Lin Zhiyang left, this years-long dream, vacillating between torment and bliss, collapsed in an instant. She finally understood: love cannot be hidden. * *"You come to this world once, you ought to see the sun, and walk down the street with your beloved."*