Chapter 15: Hints and a Showdown

Back at his high-rise apartment, Lu Chen stripped off the suit he'd worn all day at the signing event and changed into loose loungewear.

He stood before the floor-to-ceiling window, a freshly brewed unsweetened hot Americano in hand. His eyes rested on the glittering night view, but his head was full of this afternoon—every frame from the signing event.

Her sitting on that stage, face written over with guilt as readers pressed her about the male lead's real-life model; her panic when the word "Lu" nearly slipped out; the way she swallowed "Chen" back down, pivoted to "assembled from various sources," and clutched her chest like a crash survivor...

Lu Chen smiled.

These past weeks he had watched suspicion rob her of sleep, watched her test the waters and talk herself out of it, watched her seesaw between "L is Lu Chen" and "it can't possibly be that coincidental." He had meant to drag it out a while longer—to see when she'd finally figure it out herself.

But today, at the signing, she'd nearly given herself away.

"Rather than let her keep guessing herself sick... why don't I give her the answer myself?" Lu Chen took a sip of coffee. "Besides, I'm getting a little... impatient."

He set down the cup, picked up his phone, and let his fingertips hover over that familiar anonymous chat for two seconds before typing the first line.

That same night, after the signing, Shen Miaomiao lay in her big bed flipping over and over like a fish on a griddle.

Only a night lamp was on, bathing the room in dim amber. Hugging a pillow, she sank into chaos like nothing she'd ever known.

Every coincidence of the past weeks: the plain congee and fever medicine that had shown up at her door; the trench-coated silhouette in the rain outside the private-kitchen restaurant; the keyboard shortcut his long fingers had pressed when she logged into WeChat Web on his computer; and today, that unreadable look on Lu Chen's face in the front-row VIP seats when the host asked her question...

The images spun through her head like a carousel on overdrive. The last pieces of the puzzle were all but falling into place.

"Impossible... Do things this absurd actually happen?" Miaomiao smothered her face in the pillow, her voice coming out muffled. "If [L] the longtime fan really is Devil Lu... then all those things I said to him—complaining that Devil Lu is rigid, cold-blooded, impossible to reason with... Oh my god. Just delete me from existence right now."

Just as she was thrashing in quiet despair, the clock read 11:59 p.m.

Ding.

The notification chime cut through the silent room with impossible clarity. Miaomiao's heart skipped; she snatched up her phone.

[L]: "The signing went very well today, our illustrious author Shen."

Reading it, Miaomiao's heart flat-out skipped a beat. Her palms started to sweat.

Every previous time [L] had known something about her life, she'd soothed herself with longtime fans pay attention and he's just good at guessing. Today was a different animal entirely!

Biting her lower lip, fingers trembling so hard she nearly mistyped:

[Anonymous User 9527]: "How... how do you know I had a signing today?! I've been sick with a fever and catching up on drafts—I never once mentioned it in the group chat!"

On the other end of the chat, Lu Chen sat in his study in his loungewear, watching her panic-soaked reply scroll up the screen, his thin lips curving into a smile both doting and devious.

This time, he didn't smooth it over with tidy logic the way he always had. He left her no exit to retreat through.

He had decided to pierce that last thin layer of window paper with his own hand.

[L]: "Because I was there today. Front row. VIP seats."

"What the—?!"

Front row?! VIP seats?! The front row today had been nothing but publishing-house executives and heavyweight invited guests! And dead center, the most prominent, the one person she could not possibly have missed—was Lu Chen!

Miaomiao's fingers shook violently as she sat bolt upright in bed. Forcing down a heartbeat in full gallop, she typed, shivering:

[Anonymous User 9527]: "[L]... don't joke about this... where exactly in the front row were you sitting?! What do you look like?!"

Lu Chen's long fingers flew across the screen:

[L]: "In the seat with a clear view and sound of you saying, 'the male lead's model was assembled from various sources.'"

The phone slipped from her fingers and landed on the quilt with a soft thud!

That line! That throwaway cover-up she'd improvised on stage this afternoon! No one outside that banquet hall could possibly know it!

She snatched the phone back up, shaking like a leaf. Every inference, every coincidence, every wild guess—confirmed, all at once!

The devil of an editor who took a red pen to her drafts every day in the office, forcing her to write contemporary romance... and the "online boyfriend" who bickered with her every midnight, coaching her line by line in push-and-pull and how to fall in love...

Were one and the same person!

[Anonymous User 9527]: "Are you... are you actually Lu Chen?! Have you been watching me make a fool of myself this whole time?!"

This time, the "typing..." indicator at the top of the chat ran on and on.

He didn't type. Instead he held down the record key, captured three seconds of voice, and sent it.

Ding.

Miaomiao stared at the voice message that had appeared in the chat, palms drenched. She swallowed, and with trembling fingers, played it—

Through the phone's speaker came that voice she knew far too well—low, magnetic, laced with a soft laugh and unmistakable fondness:

"Ms. Shen Miaomiao. Sunday, midnight, come to my place. I'll answer you in person."

As the voice ended, a location pin popped up in the chat.

That voice—no disguise whatsoever, Lu Chen's own magnetic baritone—drained every ounce of strength from her body. She dropped onto the bed with a plop!

Her cheeks burned like they might catch fire; her heart rate hit 180!

Oh my GOD! It really is him! It's really Lu Chen!

To think that all this time she'd been telling Lu Chen himself that Devil Lu was cold-blooded and rigid, that Devil Lu wasn't human—that she'd even been playing fake online relationship with him, and calling him the best online boyfriend in the world...

Miaomiao pressed her hands over her burning face and let out a scream of pure agony into the mattress!

"Shen Miaomiao, you are DONE FOR!"

But after the screaming, staring at the address on her screen and that line—come to my place, I'll answer you in person—so thick with challenge and tenderness at once, an ache of giddy sweetness surged through her chest all the same.

That scheming devil of an editor... he'd been waiting from the very start for her to fall into this gentle trap!

Bite on her lip, pillow hugged tight, Miaomiao stared at the address—eyes flickering with embarrassment, shock, and something wordless and endless that could only be anticipation.