The blizzard had subsided, leaving the cabin encased in a thick, silent shroud of white. Inside, the furnace was finally roaring, but the atmosphere remained ice-cold. To break the tension, Zhang Wei produced a bottle of expensive cider he'd been hiding in his snow boots.
"Alright, 'Seven Stars' plus two," he announced, circling us around the low wooden table. "We're playing 'Never Have I Ever.' Standard rules: if you've done it, you drink. If you haven't, you stay dry. And since we're all over 90% scorers here, no lying. We'll know."
Su Lan smirked, leaning back with her glass. "I'll start. Never have I ever... intentionally sabotaged a rival's project."
Li Yan and I both drank immediately. The group laughed—our middle-school "Presidential" wars were legendary.
"Never have I ever," Mei Ling chirped, "kept a souvenir from a high school crush."
I froze. My hand moved toward my glass, but I stopped halfway. Li Yan also reached for his drink, his fingers hovering over the stem. We locked eyes. The "Slow-Burn" was deafening. Slowly, we both took a sip.
Hao Ran's smile faltered. He looked at me, then at the silver medal hidden beneath my sweater. The silence in the room shifted from playful to predatory.
"My turn," Hao Ran said, his voice dropping the "Golden Boy" cheerfulness. He looked straight at Li Yan. "Never have I ever... rejected someone just because I was too much of a coward to love them."
The room went tomb-quiet. Jia Yi dropped her stirrer. Ying Yue adjusted her glasses, her analytical gaze darting between the three of us.
Li Yan didn't flinch. He picked up his glass, finished the entire drink in one go, and slammed it back onto the table with a sharp clack.
"I drank," Li Yan said, his voice a low, dangerous vibration. "Now it's my turn. Never have I ever... pretended to be in a happy relationship just to make an ex-rival jealous."
I felt the blood drain from my face. I reached for my glass, my hand trembling. I drank.
Hao Ran stood up, his chair scraping harshly against the floor. "What is this, Li Yan? Some kind of psychological game? Xiao Xing and I are real. Unlike you and your 'research partner' who looks like she's here to audit a personality."
"Hao Ran, stop," I whispered, grabbing his sleeve.
"No," Hao Ran said, looking down at me with a hurt I hadn't expected. "I'm not a line of code you can just run when you're bored, Xiao Xing. I see the way you look at him when the lights go out. I see the way he looks at you like he wants to rewrite the last four years."
He turned back to Li Yan. "You had your chance at the boba shop. You threw it away. You don't get to come back now and 'optimize' her life."
Li Yan stood up, matching Hao Ran's height, the "Cold Prince" finally stepping into the ring. "I didn't come back to optimize anything. I came back because the 'Group of Seven' is a set. And a set is incomplete without its core."
"You're not the core," Hao Ran snapped. "You're the glitch."
"Enough!" Su Lan shouted, slamming her hand on the table. "This is a reunion, not a courtroom. Hao Ran, sit down. Li Yan, shut up."
Hao Ran looked at me, waiting for me to say something—to defend him, to confirm "us." But I couldn't speak. I was looking at Li Yan's hand, which was resting on the table, still clutching that old blue keychain.
"I'm going for a walk," Hao Ran muttered, grabbing his coat and slamming the cabin door behind him.
Ying Yue stood up gracefully, smoothing her hair. "I think I'll go check on the car. The 'logic' in this room is getting a bit... irrational."
As the door closed again, leaving the "Seven Stars" alone for the first time in years, Zhang Wei sighed. "Well. That went well."
"You two are a disaster," Su Lan said, looking at me and Li Yan. "A beautiful, 98.2% disaster."
Li Yan didn't look at her. He looked at me, his eyes dark with the same raw hunger from the storm. "The game isn't over, Xiao Xing. It's just the middle of the match."