Winter Time Rendering

"Come with me later."

The girl’s head snapped up, her hand freezing mid-cut on her meat patty.

Despite this, she replied slowly and reluctantly,

"Why would I go out with you?"

"I’m inviting you to go to the mall."

But then Gu Qiuyan took a bite of her fried egg and suddenly couldn’t help but laugh.

"Are you stupid or what?"

This was the first time he’d asked the girl out since regressing. It wasn’t even close to being a date, yet he was being called stupid. Zhang Shutong bit the inside of his cheek.

He then heard Gu Qiuyan say in her crisp voice,

"My family owns that mall. What do you mean *you’re* inviting *me*?"

"Then how about we say I’m just tagging along, thanks to you?"

She huffed at his words.

"Who else is going?"

"Qingyi, Ruoping, plus the two of us. Four in total."

"I’m not on good terms with her," she said, without actually saying whether she would go or not.

"So you don’t want to go?"

But Gu Qiuyan didn’t answer. She stuffed the last of her food into her mouth in a couple of bites, her cheeks puffed out, and then CLIP-CLOPPED to the elevator in her slippers, her heels showing. It wasn’t until the moment the elevator doors slid shut that her voice drifted out from inside:

"Wait for me to change, I’ll be right down..."

Looks like her low blood sugar was cured.

Zhang Shutong’s reason for asking her out was simple—he was afraid something would happen to her if she stayed home alone.

The people Father Gu sent wouldn’t arrive until tomorrow at the earliest. Now that her family’s dog was gone and the villa was so remote, it wasn’t very safe.

In theory, the arsonist was caught last night. In theory, this group of culprits had acted earlier than in the original timeline. In theory, the threat against Gu Qiuyan had been basically eliminated.

But Zhang Shutong saw no need to cling to theories. Her bodyguards were coming back tomorrow. Since that was the case, and he had already put in so much effort, it made no sense to let his guard down at the last second.

But there was one thing he couldn’t figure out:

In the previous timeline, Song and the nanny were there, so why did they wait until Tuesday, December 11th—a full day after Gu Qiuyan disappeared—to file a police report?

Before regressing, Zhang Shutong hadn’t thought much about it, assuming her parents were just neglectful. But now, it seemed there was more to the story.

The only explanation he could come up with was that filing a report meant going through official channels, but Gu Jianhong might have had some unspeakable secret that made him reluctant to involve the authorities so soon.

There were still too few clues. If he could, he’d love to grab the Du Kang from eight years in the future and grill him for more answers.

Just then, Song Nanshan came over and asked curiously,

"What are you two raising a fuss about now?"

So Zhang Shutong gave him the gist of it. Song was reliable when it counted, so it would be best to get him to take this seriously.

Unexpectedly, the point he took seriously was completely off track:

"You brat, you’ve finally seen the light."

The homeroom teacher was greatly relieved.

’It seems my repeated refusals last night made him think I see Gu Qiuyan as some kind of monster to be avoided at all costs. It’s really not that serious. Unless I have a specific goal in mind, I rarely do things that look so obviously contrived.’

Song went on to say that this was the right way to do it; feelings needed to be nurtured over time, and love at first sight was just bullshit.

Zhang Shutong had heard this line of reasoning before—that "love at first sight" was just a pretty way of saying "lust at first sight." But he had no intention of cultivating any feelings for Gu Qiuyan. Finding Song too noisy, he retreated to the sofa to scroll through his phone. That Angry Birds game Ruoping used to play seemed pretty fun, so he downloaded it to kill time while waiting for Gu Qiuyan to come down.

After all, she said she’d be right down.

But as it turned out, Zhang Shutong shouldn’t have believed the young miss. He had already cleared a dozen levels, his birds advancing triumphantly toward the pigs’ den, but there was still no sign of the girl.

So, Zhang Shutong found Gu Qiuyan’s QQ—he’d added her last night and gotten her number at the same time. Her profile picture was a chibi-style drawing of something that looked like a cloud and a sheep. It was much cuter than the scary face on the glass. Her ID was "Autumn Rain Mianmian."

"New Peach, Old Talisman" asked "Autumn Rain Mianmian":

"Not ready yet?"

"Almost."

Zhang Shutong double-tapped the home button and returned to the front lines to continue his war against the pigs.

Coming up with a screen name these days was a real art, which he figured fell into three main schools of thought: the gaudy "Shamate" style, the Western-name style, and the literary-youth style. His former self had belonged to the last category. Shutong... Shutong... By all rights, his name, Zhang Shutong, should have tied him inextricably to the Tong tree for life. But in reality, his name wasn’t originally written with the character for "tree." It was supposed to be a different, homophonous character—not the one from the word for "pupil," but one taken from a poem by Wang Anshi: "A thousand doors, ten thousand homes, in the bright rising sun; they always replace the old talismans with new peach wood ones." The character meant the bright, warm light of sunrise.

But it happened to be drizzling on the day he was born, casting a gloomy shadow over the name. The clerk registering his household made a mistake and wrote down the wrong character, turning the "Shutong" of "sunrise" into the "Shutong" of "tree." So whenever someone asked him what his name meant, commenting on how elegant it sounded, Zhang Shutong never knew how to answer.

But his mom was an easy-going woman and didn’t mind. In fact, she thought the clerk’s minor error had created a kind of magical chemical reaction with her son’s name. Who cared what it meant, as long as it sounded artistic enough? And so, the name stuck.

Zhang Shutong was against it at first, but his mother coaxed him, saying, "Silly boy, isn’t the character for ’tree’ easier to write than the one for ’sunrise’? You’ll find out someday if a teacher ever makes you copy your name as punishment."

Zhang Shutong fell for his mom’s words yet again. He’d never been able to win an argument with her. However, he had been a model student ever since he started school; the only places he ever had to write his name were on homework and tests. He’d been tricked once more.

In any case, when he was first coming up with a screen name, he flipped through the Book of Odes but wasn’t satisfied with any lines related to the Tong tree. In the end, he traced his original, intended name back to its source and took the latter half of the poetic line: "New Peach, Old Talisman." He’d thought it sounded incredibly profound.