Chapter 36

*The Moon Runs to Me*
She stared at him for a long moment, then blinked slowly.
For a heartbeat or two, her thoughts simply… stopped. Something had snagged in her mind, stuck between one click and the next. Only her heart moved—thudding high and hard in her chest.
“What do you mean?”
She finally found her voice, but it came out thinner, the tail shaking.
She wasn’t stupid. His behavior had been off for a while—already crossing what “old classmates” usually did. A man like him, who kept such strict lines with everyone, wouldn’t keep losing his balance over an old friendship.
She’d just refused to look at it.
As long as there was even a one-percent chance she’d imagined it, she’d choose to believe that.
Because if she was wrong, the fall would kill her.
Her expression went blank with shock. The little mole at the corner of her eye, usually adding a hint of charm, now only made her look younger.
She didn’t blush and stammer and hide like other girls. She just looked stricken and lost, like someone missing a wire.
It almost made him want to laugh—and wrap her up at the same time.
“You’re very smart, Sang-sang,” he said quietly.
Her gaze met his, clear and bare. He swallowed once, voice turning rough at the edges.
“You already know what I mean.”
…
She didn’t.
Or maybe she did and refused to let the thought form all the way.
Later, sitting in the auditorium, she’d gone through the motions. Penny’s talk had ended to a storm of applause. Qin clapped when everyone else did, hands moving on instinct.
Only when the noise swelled did she realize she’d been staring at the stage, not hearing a word.
“Hm?” she’d said blankly when he leaned in and said something.
He’d tilted toward her too, lips close enough that his breath brushed her ear.
“Wait for me,” he murmured.
Heat had shot from her ear to her fingertips. Her heart had lurched like an elevator dropping from the five-thousandth floor.
She’d nodded without thinking.
“Mm.”
The applause had given her cover to suck in a breath and try to steady herself. Her ears still buzzed. She’d dropped her head, rubbing at her earlobe as if that could erase the feel of his voice.
Pathetic, she thought.
She couldn’t stop following his figure with her eyes when he rose and moved toward the front. An older man—a face she half-recognized from news segments—clapped him on the arm, smiling. They traded a few words. Then both turned to look her way.
The elder’s smile deepened.
He tipped his head in greeting.
She jumped and hurriedly smiled back.
Penny arrived just then, waving a hand in front of her. “What are you staring at?”
By the time Qin blinked and looked back, the two men had already turned away.
Penny followed her line of sight and snorted. “Ah. Chen Gong.”
“Chen… Gong?” Qin repeated. The name tugged at some half-remembered documentary.
“Director Chen Zhijin,” Penny said. “Head of the Fifth Institute. Academician. Chief designer of the Shenzhou spacecraft.”
She added, more softly, “And Teacher Chen to Xie.”
Qin’s fingers tightened around the armrest. “I didn’t know.”
She’d spent all these years circling the edges of his world, unable to find a way in.
She’d only ever watched, from far away.
She’d watched him grow smaller and smaller in the distance while she stayed rooted in place.
She had thought that night by the river, that sudden reunion, was already more than fate owed her.
But people were greedy.
Give them one step closer and they wanted another.
Ten years ago, she’d only been a nameless classmate in a sea of faces. To him, she might as well have been a stranger who’d happened to share a classroom for three years.
Now they stood in the same hall again.
Back then, she’d stood under the stage looking up at the brightest star in the sky.
Now she was still there—under the stage, head tilted back.
He was still dazzling.
Still impossibly far away.
The boy of sixteen, seventeen, had been all sharp corners—eyes cool, jawline slicing, young and too bright.
The man ten years later had smoothed those edges. He was quieter now, settled deeper. Like a moon sinking into a still black lake—cold light, hidden tide.
On stage, he looked out over the crowd.
Then his gaze caught on something. Someone.
The room dimmed around her.
To everyone else, it was just a hall of shadowy shapes. To her, it felt like his eyes came straight to her—found her, held.
“I imagine some of you are surprised to see me here,” he began.
“I’m surprised myself.”
“Two months ago, I was hovering on the edge of giving this up. I’d wondered if I’d made a mistake—if all this stubbornness was just selfishness. If it was wrong for me, wrong for others.”
He’d never doubted before. Not through years of exams and labs and launches. Not through late nights and failures and the weight of other people’s expectations.
Only after his father’s fall, only after the long, suffocating fights at home, had the ground under his feet started to feel less certain.
He remembered his mother’s words—sharp as ever.
“You and your uncle are the same,” Zhou Wanqing had snarled. “Self-righteous. You think your choices are always right. You think the world should bend around you. You call me selfish? You’ve never considered anyone but yourselves.”
“I’ve given you everything,” she’d hissed. “My whole life. Every ounce of blood. I’ve spent years patching holes your father left. And you—so noble, so aloof—stand on the sidelines, judging me.”
“You think your father’s a sinner. You despise him. You despise *me*. You even despise the part of you that came from him. So you stand there and coldly watch him fall. You say nothing. You do nothing. You look down on both of us from your high ground.”
“At least your father has a heart,” she’d spat. “He’s a dog, but a dog with feelings. You—you don’t even have one. You can’t see my pain. You don’t feel it.”
It had been easier, then, to throw himself into work and not think.
But the questions had crept in anyway.
“Am I wrong?”
“Have I hurt people just by refusing to bend?”
When he’d come back from Xibei that night, tired and wired and half ready to say “Fine”—to quit, to leave it all behind—he’d walked past a building with a light still on.
Behind the open window, someone had moved. Her outline had blurred in the glow—small, familiar, pen moving over a script.
She’d turned when he’d called her name.
And she’d told him—in that little rented apartment, under that weak light—that there were more roads in the world than the ones other people pointed at.
That success defined by someone else’s fear was still just fear.
Now, standing under the stage lights, he smiled a little.
“Someone told me,” he said, “that life isn’t a fixed track. It’s an open field. Brave people get to enjoy the world first. Cowards stay in the cages they build for themselves.”
“That choosing a path other people don’t approve of doesn’t mean you’ve made a mistake.”
His eyes softened, warmth bleeding through his usual cool.
He looked at her again.
She knew he did.
Even Penny noticed the way his gaze kept coming back, the way it lingered.
She jabbed Qin lightly with her elbow. “He’s talking about you, isn’t he?”
Qin didn’t answer.
They were all words she’d said.
She’d only wanted to keep the boy she’d loved from crumbling in front of her eyes.
She’d never once thought he was wrong.
People always tried to measure others with their own rulers. To force them onto prescribed roads. To call any deviation a mistake.
But who decided which path was “better”?
If he’d been ordinary, if he hadn’t been who he was, those accusations would never have stuck.
Whispers rustled through the room. People turned in their seats, trying to guess who he meant.
She didn’t notice them.
All her focus was on him—on the man under the lights with a faint, stubborn smile.
“In her eyes,” he said, “I never fail.”
“The truth is, I stumble plenty.”
“I doubt myself. I hesitate.”
He paused.
Then, quieter:
“I’m not as good as she thinks I am. But if I can, I’d like to become the person she believes I am.”
“The only one.”