Starting college, the only friend I could count on to split the sky and complain about the universe with was Tong Zhen. She was over in the School of Architecture and made it her personal mission to drag me along to gawk at their resident treasure: Xu Jiangshu. He was the ultimate romance-novel male lead—obscenely rich and ridiculously smart.

When Tong Zhen asked if I had a thing for Xie Lin, I almost leaped out of my skin to deny it. “He’s my dog! I’m just protecting what’s mine!” But the moment Xu Jiangshu appeared and offered to buy us lunch, Xie Lin’s sudden arrival at the campus gates shifted the energy entirely.

Xie Lin’s eyes, usually so submissive whenever I picked on him, turned bone-chillingly cold the second he locked sight on the handsome upperclassman standing beside me. Stranger still, I didn’t snap at him this time. Being around him for so long had given me a weird, unexplainable sense of security. Just the instinct of a longtime dog owner, I told myself.

Lunch turned out to be an exercise in unprovoked irritation, mostly because I had to watch every other girl in the restaurant glue their eyes to Xie Lin. I dragged him away early, ditching Tong Zhen with her campus heartthrob.

While waiting for Xie Lin to pull the car around, my phone vibrated with a text from an unknown number:

My blood ran instantly cold. Every single word felt like a snake crawling up my spine. As Xie Lin pulled up in front of me, I immediately threw up my bristles to mask the terror, unleashing a barrage of scolding at him for keeping me standing in the sun.

Once I got into the passenger seat, another notification flashed across my screen: “Baby’s flirting with other men again. I’m going crazy with jealousy.”

I flinched so hard I didn’t even notice Xie Lin leaning over until he was right there. The familiar scent of fresh citrus washed over me. Brows furrowed, he pulled the seatbelt across me and clicked it into place, looking thoroughly helpless. On the drive back, his voice dropped low. “Is that guy from today your boyfriend?” I yelled at him to drown out my own panic, but seeing his eyes drop in that usual meek submission made my stomach knot up—it felt like kicking a pile of soft cotton.

The moment we reached the apartment, I kicked Xie Lin out and rushed into the shower to scrub away the chaotic mess in my head. But just as I walked out into the living room, towel wrapped around me, my phone screen lit up again.

Same number:

I froze solid. Cold sweat broke out across my body as I curled into a trembling ball on the sofa.

A horrifying realization dawned on me: Someone was watching me. He knew where I lived, he knew what I was doing, and he even knew I had just stepped out of the shower. For the first time since moving out on my own, I felt the icy breath of danger pressing against the back of my neck.

I grabbed a small utility knife and searched every corner of the apartment, but found no one. I completely broke down when the next text buzzed through:

In a blind panic, the only person who came to mind was Xie Lin. The second I heard his voice over the line, I burst into hysterical sobs. Less than ten minutes later, he was through the door, wrapping me tightly in his arms and that comforting scent of citrus. His presence acted like a soothing drug, instantly cutting my terror in half.

Clutching the hem of his shirt, I whimpered, “Stay… watch the place for me.” Xie Lin didn’t say a word, his lips merely curving into a faint smile—a look I was far too terrified to realize was entirely out of character.

The nightmare deepened shortly after. Xie Lin discovered hidden cameras planted all over the place—in the living room, the bedroom, even the bathroom. The sensation of being stripped completely bare before a set of anonymous eyes made me shake violently. Xie Lin stopped me from calling the police, reasoning that it would “alert the snake in the grass,” promising he would handle it personally. Strange enough, for the next month, everything went terrifyingly quiet, as if the stalker had never existed at all.

Come October, a substitute professor took over our Microeconomics class. The second she laid eyes on me, she gasped out my mother’s name: “Li Shu?”

It turned out she was an old friend of my mom’s. When I hesitantly asked about the first love my mother had written about in her old letters, the professor smiled warmly, reminiscing. “Ah, I remember. If I recall correctly, the name was Meng Yu.”

I went completely rigid, the air trapped in my lungs. “Professor… that’s just a common name, right?”

She pulled up an old photograph for me to see. The woman in the photo was a ninety-nine percent match for Meng Yu. My brain felt like it was exploding. My mother’s first love… was a woman? And that woman was the very person my father had just brought home? Then what about Xie Lin… whose son was he?

The shock was too massive to digest, driving me straight to a bar with Tong Zhen to self-destruct. In my utterly wasted state, I began slurring nonsense about my mom’s bewildering taste in lovers and the cosmic joke of Xie Lin and his mother barging into my life.

“What does it feel like… to be with a girl?” I slurred, slumping against Tong Zhen’s shoulder as the alcohol took over.

Panicked, Tong Zhen reached for her phone to call Xie Lin to pick me up, but I went wild instantly. “Don’t you dare call him! He’s the son of my mom’s ex-lover! The whole damn world has lost its mind!”

Amidst the thumping bass and flashing strobe lights, I felt the very foundation of my life crumbling into dust. What I didn’t know was that behind the dark secrets of the adults’ past, another meticulously crafted trap was waiting for me back home.