Just before Xia Li ran entirely out of breath, Yan Sishi finally stepped back.

She said a quiet “thank you,” let her arm fall, then reached up to smooth the strand of hair on her right side, tucking it behind her ear — insurance against a repeat performance.

Xia Li laughed. “Were you asking me? I thought it was you who wanted something to eat.”

Meanwhile, Yan Sishi had already taken out his phone and was calling Wen Shubai to ask whether he knew any good restaurants in the area.

He had been away from Beicheng too long to keep up with the constant turnover of new places.

When it came to food and entertainment, Wen Shubai was the undisputed authority — his standards were high, and his taste was reliable. Whatever he recommended, you could trust.

Wen Shubai rattled off four or five restaurant names. Yan Sishi committed them to memory, said goodbye, then asked Xia Li which one she preferred.

Yan Sishi opened the maps application on his phone, plugged in the options, compared the distances, chose the nearest one — within walking range — took one look at the route, memorized it, locked the phone, slid it into his coat pocket, and said: “Let’s go.”

Xia Li noticed that Yan Sishi always made decisions quickly. It was as though he had some internal decision-making process — he rarely agonized over small things.

Fast to decide, fast to act. Clean and efficient, with no dragging of feet.

Maybe that was why he was such an academic standout.

The restaurant was tucked inside a small lane off a brightly lit pedestrian street — easy to miss and a little removed from the noise.

When they sat down and looked at the menu, she saw it was Sichuan cuisine.

Xia Li flipped through it briefly — spicy fried chicken, husband-and-wife beef slices, boiled beef in chili broth — one glance and everything was fiery red with heat.

“Should we find somewhere else?” she said. “Most of the dishes look pretty spicy.”

“Can’t handle spice?”

“I’m fine with it, but you can’t—” Xia Li caught herself and went quiet.

Yan Sishi looked up sharply.

She fumbled: “…I just meant that most people who grew up in Beicheng aren’t that big on heavily spiced food, especially not Sichuan cooking.”

An obvious attempt to walk it back.

Yan Sishi looked at her. A memory surfaced.

Sometime in his second year of high school — he couldn’t remember exactly when. He only remembered that Wang Chen had been there, and Xia Li, and one of Xia Li’s classmates from Class Seven, and a boy from the sciences track who was very good at physics — his surname might have been Nie — though try as he might, he couldn’t recall the name.

The five of them had gone to a small restaurant across from the school for a meal.

Being from Chucheng, everyone there had a high tolerance for spice. The few home-style dishes that were ordered gave him nothing he could eat.

It was Xia Li who had gotten up, gone to the counter, and fetched a glass of ice water for each of them. Then a little later, she had quietly added an order — one plain dish of stir-fried greens with no spice.

He had eaten with her very rarely. That had been the only occasion that involved spice and whether or not he could handle it.

Could it be…

Yan Sishi wasn’t sure whether he should follow that line of thought.

At the very least, back then, he had never picked up on any particular intention from Xia Li toward him.

And he always felt that over-interpreting would make him arrogant.

And that kind of arrogance was a very common failing in men.

“It’s fine,” Yan Sishi said. “Order whatever you want.”

She didn’t argue.

She turned back to the menu and deliberated for a while, eventually settling on dried mandarin peel beef with shadow-thin slices, lotus-white chicken in egg white, sweet braised pork belly, and one dish of seasonal greens.

All but the first were non-spicy.

Once the server had taken the menu away, a brief silence fell.

Xia Li rested her chin in her hand and glanced at Yan Sishi across the table, then looked away.

She wasn’t sure what to talk about.

She was still working it out when Yan Sishi spoke: “You’re in contact with people from Class Twenty?”

“Just Tao Shiyue, Wang Chen, and the boy who transferred to Class Twenty from our Class Seven — those are the ones I added. But I’m only really in touch with Tao Shiyue. She came back to visit during the holidays once, and we had a meal together. After Wang Chen and I added each other, we basically never talked — he’s still in America, right?”

The friendships of youth were pure — and they dissolved just as easily. After graduation, everyone’s life went in a different direction, and the people who had once mattered quietly became strangers who existed only in old memories.

“The last time I saw him was in America,” Yan Sishi said.

Xia Li looked at him. “He was very worried about you at the time — no news, no way to reach your family. He said it seemed like your phone was switched off the whole time.”

Yan Sishi’s expression was as calm as still water. “I lost the phone. When I came back to Beicheng afterward, I didn’t renew the number.”

Xia Li felt as though there was a dark, still river running between her and where Yan Sishi truly was. To actually reach him, she would need to wade through it.

She was asking this question not simply because she was concerned about the phone.

If he had wanted to stay in contact, a lost phone wouldn’t have stopped him. Not if he’d truly wanted to.

And that — the real heart of the question — he had just quietly stepped around.

Xia Li didn’t feel hurt or particularly surprised.

Maybe to have that conversation, given where they stood, was still asking too much too soon of too little familiarity.

And Yan Sishi had always had a strong sense of the appropriate boundaries between people.

Of the four dishes they had ordered, not all of them were finished.

She hadn’t expected Yan Sishi to eat so little. It seemed he had only tasted the chicken and the greens; the beef and the braised pork were left almost untouched.

When Yan Sishi went to the counter to pay, Xia Li asked the server to box up the leftovers.

He came back from the register, picked up his black coat and put it on, then held out a hand toward her.

She took two seconds to process it, then handed over the paper bag with the takeout boxes inside.

They walked out together. As they went, Xia Li had her phone out and was tapping away at something.

She had fallen half a step behind, and she didn’t notice that Yan Sishi had suddenly turned around — she nearly couldn’t stop in time and almost walked straight into him.

Yan Sishi looked down at her. “Are you transferring me money?”

“Oh—”

Xia Li’s finger froze. Just below it was the green “Transfer” button, the amount already entered.

She was very sure he hadn’t seen her screen.

How had he known?

“I don’t like splitting bills,” Yan Sishi said. “You can treat me next time.”

Next time…

Xia Li turned the phrase over quietly in her mind.

Yan Sishi reached out and pushed the door open, holding it, waiting for her to go through first.

Maybe it was just having eaten that made the air seem not quite as cold on the walk back.

At the entrance, Yan Sishi asked whether she wanted to leave the takeout in the car first.

“Sure.”

The two of them walked around to the back lot, Yan Sishi unlocked the car, and he put the bag on the back seat.

There and back, nearly an hour and a half had passed.

When the two of them reappeared, Wen Shubai grinned. “I was starting to think you’d just left us here.”

In truth, whether Yan Sishi was present or not had very little bearing on the atmosphere of the gathering — he had never been the one who set the tone.

Wen Shubai turned to Xia Li: “Want to sing? I can put something on for you.”

Xia Li smiled and shook her head. “No thanks. I’m not much of a singer.”

“What do you mean, not much? Are you completely tone-deaf?”

“It’s not that bad…”

“Then just sing for fun. Look — no one else is singing either.”

She still said no.

“Alright.” Wen Shubai turned to Yan Sishi. “You sing one?”

“Does the owner give you a commission?” Yan Sishi said.

“…” Wen Shubai laughed and said something choice under his breath. “If you didn’t actually have a good voice, do you think I’d bother asking? You really think I’d stoop to flattering you?”

Xia Li had never heard Yan Sishi sing.

He was the type who put in earphones and napped at karaoke.

So apparently he had a good voice.

After the two of them sat back down, some of the others came over to ask if Yan Sishi wanted to play cards.

He declined.

Wen Shubai settled onto the couch beside the table. “If you’re not singing and not playing cards, what are you two just sitting there doing?”

Yan Sishi said: “You could sing a couple of songs. Get the mood going.”

Xia Li could tell that among everyone here, Yan Sishi’s relationship with Wen Shubai was the closest. He was the only person Yan Sishi ever spoke to in that faintly playful, wry way.

“…Fine,” Wen Shubai said, laughing. “I can tell when I’m not needed.” He picked up a beer bottle and wandered off.

Xia Li opened a bottle of water and drank a little, then asked Yan Sishi: “Was it Wen Shubai who recommended Mushishi to you?”

Yan Sishi stilled almost imperceptibly.

He did remember going with her to Shangzhi Bookstore to buy the manga — but whether he’d mentioned that a friend had recommended it, that specific detail, he had no memory of at all.

Yan Sishi nodded.

“Good taste, then,” said Xia Li.

Yan Sishi glanced over at Wen Shubai.

Apart from eating, drinking, and general leisure pursuits, he really couldn’t say what good taste Wen Shubai possessed in particular.

Xia Li didn’t stay much longer; she had work in the morning.

Yan Sishi naturally offered to drive her home.

As an evening out, it had been something like two tourists drifting through a lantern festival — skimming the surface, not quite arriving anywhere.

Wen Shubai said he’d done a thoroughly mediocre job of organizing this one.

He walked the two of them downstairs and managed to get in a quiet word with Yan Sishi: “Next time don’t use me as cover. If you want to invite someone, just invite them yourself. Do you know how long it took me to get all these people together?”

Yan Sishi patted him on the shoulder. “Thanks.”

Xia Li’s place wasn’t far from where the gathering had been, and on the drive back they only touched on two brief topics before the car pulled up to her building.

The car eased to the curb and stopped.

Xia Li unclipped her seatbelt and said her thanks.

She pulled the door open, smiled back at him. “I’ll head up then. Bye.”

Yan Sishi gave a small nod. He watched her step out of the car and wave back at him, then she pushed the door closed.

A gentle thud, and the sounds of the wind outside were cut off at once.

The window hadn’t been open; there was no wind inside the car. Yet in an instant, the pale, faintly bitter scent of tea and citrus that had filled the space simply — vanished.

Only a hollow, dried-out quiet remained.

Xia Li was nearly at the gate of her complex when her phone rang with a voice call notification.

She quickly dug it out of her bag, certain it would be Jiang Hong — the only person who called her directly without texting first.

It was Yan Sishi.

She blinked, then picked up the call and looked back toward where the car was parked.

Through the phone: “You left something.”

She saw him push the rear car door open. He was holding the paper bag with the takeout containers, and he walked toward her.

He’d stepped out without his coat — just the black sweater underneath, in the cold night air.

Xia Li quickly walked back toward him and reached out to take the bag. “Thank you — I completely forgot about it.”

Yan Sishi said nothing.

Xia Li looked at him. She had a feeling there might be something he wanted to say — but she waited, and nothing came.

He only looked at her.

In the silence of that moment, she felt something stir quietly in her chest, like a wild crane’s wing grazing the still surface of a dark lake at night.

The wind cut through — sharp for the season — and he was out here in only a sweater. It looked thin.

Xia Li came back to herself and smiled. “I’ll go up now?”

“Yes,” said Yan Sishi.

It was only then that she realized neither of them had ended the voice call.

In the phone pressed to her ear, she could hear Yan Sishi’s voice — and then the same voice, live, in front of her, like a quiet echo following itself out of a cold mountain valley.

The sensation was strange and oddly affecting.

“…Well then. Good night.” Xia Li took a step back and ended the call.

“Good night.”

She turned and walked toward the entrance to the complex.

As she went through the gate, she glanced back. Yan Sishi had already returned to the car.

The small black gift bag sat quietly on the center console.

Yan Sishi reached out and picked it up.

Inside was a black box.

When he lifted the lid, the gift was revealed.

A lighter.

A collaboration piece with a museum — a silver lighter, its surface engraved with a relief of ocean waves.

He flipped open the lid and struck the wheel. A blue flame appeared.

He let go. The flame died at once.

He wasn’t a regular smoker.

But now he reached into the storage compartment and took out a pack of cigarettes that had been sitting there untouched for some time. He knocked one out, put it between his lips, then struck the lighter again, tilting his head, one hand loosely curved around it, bringing it to the tip.

He took only one drag.

His arm rested along the steering wheel. He watched that single point of continuous burning glow, while his other hand turned the lighter — flicking the lid open, then pressing it closed. A small metallic click.

Open, then closed again…

The warmth of that small flame was something he hadn’t felt in a long time.