When he had no work to do, Jiang Hansheng would come and follow Zhou Jin — sometimes driving, sometimes walking behind her.

By then, Zhou Jin had already cut her hair short and transferred to the Major Crimes Unit, becoming the apprentice of the unit chief, Tan Shiming.

Getting from her home with Jiang Cheng to the Major Crimes Unit required taking Bus Route 116, a forty-minute commute.

Before work each morning, she would stop at the street stalls near her home to buy soy milk and steamed buns. Jiang Hansheng had tried them too — the taste wasn’t particularly good, and they weren’t especially clean — but Zhou Jin liked them, so he had eaten them many times.

She would go to crime scenes with Tan Shiming. In the beginning, the sight of a corpse would make her vomit; it took roughly half a year before that improved.

She threw herself into her work relentlessly. Investigating cases took her running all over the place, and sometimes when she was busy, she couldn’t get even a sip of water for an entire day. By the time she returned to the Major Crimes Unit after wrapping up, it was usually very, very late. If she could still catch the last bus, she would go home; if not, she would sleep in the on-call room.

Her life was simple — either working, or resting, with very little time for the latter. It was probably because Zhou Chuan’s case had never been solved, and she felt that allowing herself even a moment of relaxation was a kind of sin.

The closest Jiang Hansheng ever got to Zhou Jin was on a certain night when she was heading home from work — on that bus.

She was sitting in a window seat.

Jiang Hansheng wore a black baseball cap pulled very low, half of his face hidden in shadow, silently keeping watch behind Zhou Jin.

They had barely passed two stops when Zhou Jin began to doze off. As sleep muddled her senses, her body slowly started to slide to one side, and in the moment she was about to topple over, Jiang Hansheng almost instinctively reached out and caught her head with the back of his hand.

Zhou Jin didn’t wake. He couldn’t pull his hand away. The delicate sensation against the back of his hand made his heart race. He knew he shouldn’t get any closer — and yet his bottomless desires and longings were crying out recklessly.

Jiang Hansheng couldn’t help himself. Just this once, he thought.

He sat down beside her and let Zhou Jin lean against his shoulder.

Jiang Hansheng was so tense his entire body went rigid. But in that moment, Zhou Jin rested against him in peaceful sleep, her breathing slow and steady. The bus moved smoothly along the road, rocking gently now and then. Outside the window lay the deep darkness of night, and lights scattered like stars…

Time grew so quiet it seemed to stop, and he felt a peace he had never known before.

The night was beautiful. Zhou Jin was beside him. He watched the streetscape flowing past the glass window, and even the wind felt gentle.

Before leaving, Jiang Hansheng spoke to her in the softest of voices: “Zhou Jin — see you tomorrow.”

Just that once. Nothing more.

Jiang Hansheng had never once thought of disrupting her normal life. What he wanted was to watch Zhou Jin walk freely and unrestrained in the sunlight. For that reason, he made himself the shadow beneath her feet.

A shadow need not be seen — but it will always be there.

Zhou Jin listened to him say all of this, was quiet for a moment, then asked: “You followed me for three years — all for a pocket watch you don’t even know where you lost?”

“Yes.” Having laid bare this much, Jiang Hansheng no longer shrank from admitting it. “That pocket watch belonged to your brother, Zhou Chuan.”

Zhou Jin’s brow creased slightly. She thought back and recalled that Zhou Chuan had indeed owned a pocket watch — an award, and a mark of his honor. Zhou Chuan had no use for something so refined, but she had always loved it.

Zhou Chuan had originally promised to give it to her. She had asked him for it, but he had been secretive about it, telling her he had already given the watch to someone else who needed it more.

She had never imagined that person would be Jiang Hansheng.

The more Zhou Jin listened, the heavier her heart grew. She thought of those hazy childhood memories with Jiang Hansheng, and then of everything that had happened after their marriage…

Zhou Jin suddenly let out a long breath, as if releasing some great weight. She closed her eyes, pressed her hand to her forehead, and murmured: “How can a person like you even exist?”

Jiang Hansheng could not see her expression and could not precisely read her true emotions. He assumed she was finding it difficult to accept.

He apologized: “I’m sorry.”

Zhou Jin gave a bitter smile. “I’m sorry? It seems like you’re always saying that to me.”

Jiang Hansheng’s self-loathing quietly fermented. He said: “You shouldn’t have come to that blind date. You shouldn’t have walked into that restaurant. And you definitely shouldn’t have agreed to marry me…”

There was something base and obsessive in his nature — an obsession fixed entirely on Zhou Jin.

Before, he had thought that being able to watch her from a distance was enough. But once he truly had the chance to possess her, that obsession transformed into an endless, consuming desire to claim her.

Jiang Hansheng knew he was capable of jealousy, but he had believed he could keep that jealousy well in check — that it would never rise above his love for her.

He had thought he could make himself not care about Jiang Cheng, not care about her having intimate moments with other men. Yet the longer he spent with Zhou Jin, the harder it became to endure.

Impossible to endure anyone touching even a single strand of her hair. Impossible to endure her showing care for anyone else. Even more impossible to endure the tangled, unresolved connection between her and Jiang Cheng…

He yearned for Zhou Jin to love him — to love only him, ideally more deeply and more steadfastly than she had ever loved Jiang Cheng.

His soul was impoverished and hollow. Zhou Jin was his treasure. If the two of them stayed together, he would endlessly take from her — and when he couldn’t get what he wanted, he would lose control, wanting to hurt her, to possess her completely.

“I am in so much pain, Zhou Jin. I hate who I am right now.”

The body that had been strung as taut as a bowstring, stretched to its absolute limit — finally snapped with those words.

He reached out and pressed Zhou Jin’s head against his shoulder and neck, his voice trembling slightly in a way that wasn’t quite right. “Don’t stay with me anymore.”

Zhou Jin raised her arms and hugged him back. Pressed against his chest, she said in a muffled voice: “Then don’t like me anymore, starting from now.”

Jiang Hansheng’s heart seemed to stop for a beat. He pressed his lips together and said quietly: “All right.”

Swallowing back the surging pain in his chest, he loosened his hold and began to pull back from Zhou Jin, intending to properly discuss the division of assets after the divorce.

But Zhou Jin was holding onto him, and her arms showed not the slightest sign of loosening — if anything, she held him tighter and tighter.

“Zhou Jin?”

Something warm and wet suddenly spread across his neck and shoulder, and it made him freeze.

Zhou Jin was crying?

“Let me be the one to like you instead.”

“…”

Zhou Jin bit down on her trembling jaw and said: “I will like you — until you no longer hate yourself. Jiang Hansheng… how can a person like you even exist? How can someone like you exist?”

She clutched the folds of his hospital gown and wept with her eyes shut.

Five years ago — surviving the death of Zhou Chuan, surviving Jiang Cheng’s betrayal — she didn’t know how she had made it through any of it. Those days felt as though they had carved a great hollow out of her heart, like a gaping wound; even looking back at it made her feel a chill run through her.

But now she learned — learned that during all that time when she had been moving alone through a cold steel forest, numbing her pain with endless work, Jiang Hansheng had actually been with her. Watching over her…

That hollow that had never been filled was suddenly flooded, completely full, with warmth.

Zhou Jin’s eyes burned.

So she had been cherished all along. She had been watched over all along.