What Shen Ruoxi had not expected was that, after a brief pause, Xie Yan actually flicked the cigarette butt out through the narrow gap in the window.

A small ember of red flashed in the darkness and was gone.

The car moved in steady silence along the quiet road. Neither of them said anything.

Shen Ruoxi did not tell him about what had happened at the ballroom. If she did, she knew Xie Yan would not stand by — not out of any particular concern for her, but because she had been recommended by him, and for the sake of his own reputation he would not permit such things to happen.

But what good would that do? Xie Yan was a busy man. He could intervene for a moment, but he could not look after her indefinitely.

In the end, whatever kind of person she became and whatever road she walked would have to be faced and resolved by herself.

The car stopped at the entrance to the alley. Xie Yan turned his head. “Get out.”

Shen Ruoxi said a sound of acknowledgment and pushed the door open.

The alley was quiet, but the moment her footsteps sounded, wild cats appeared on the walls in twos and threes, popping up all around.

The moment they saw her, the cats set up a chorus of meowing. Several of them leapt down from the wall and came straight to her side.

Shen Ruoxi was surrounded by the swarm of cats. She crouched down and picked up the one closest to her.

“Heihua, a few days without seeing you and you’ve gone thin with hunger.”

“And Dahui — how did your tail get hurt again?”

“Come, come — I brought you all something good to eat. I guarantee it’s things you’ve never had before.”

Xie Yan sat inside the car, watching the girl from the half-lowered window.

Every other time he saw her, her face was a mask of cool detachment and stubbornness. But in front of these cats, she seemed to drop every one of her defenses, her smile bright and genuine all the way to her eyes.

She trusted no one by instinct — yet animals were the most uncomplicated of creatures. Their affections came entirely from within, without any ulterior purpose mixed in.

Only when she was with them could she feel that the world was not, perhaps, so impossibly complex after all.

A mischievous little cat scrambled up onto her shoulder, and she reached up with a patient finger and tapped it gently on the nose.

Moonlight fell soft as water over everything. Her smiling face was like a painting rendered in ink and wash — spreading open and drifting free.

A horn sounded. Shen Ruoxi turned to look.

Xie Yan had stepped out of the car at some point and was now leaning against the car body, smoking.

She had thought that her comment about late-night smoking being bad for one’s health had actually gotten through to him — apparently not.

“How long are you going to be?” His low voice came through with a trace of impatience.

“You’re waiting for me?” Shen Ruoxi blinked.

“What do you think?”

Shen Ruoxi set down the cat in her arms and walked over. “Thank you for the ride, Mr. Xie.”

“Get in the car first.”

“In the car? Going where?”

“You work at the Red Gate Ballroom now. You’re not a wanderer anymore. Do you really intend to keep living in a broken-down alley?” Xie Yan’s brow creased. “Are you not afraid of carrying the smell of it on you and driving all the customers away?”

Xie Yan’s point was not without merit. The alley had its own particular reek — stay long enough, and you would inevitably carry the stench of rubbish on you.

In the days when she had been drifting from place to place, she had been able to ignore it entirely. But now things were different. She had a job.

“I have an apartment in my name. You can stay there for now.”

Shen Ruoxi looked at him. Wariness was plain in her eyes.

“I’ll charge rent,” Xie Yan said, discarding the cigarette with evident displeasure. “Get in the car.”

Hearing that he would charge rent, Shen Ruoxi’s apprehension eased. If he had wanted to keep her as a kept woman, there would have been no need to arrange work for her at all — she could have chosen that effortless path on her own.

The apartment Xie Yan mentioned was on Cujin Road, not far from the Red Gate Ballroom — a stretch of three-storey red-brick buildings with blue-grey tile roofs, two units to each floor, each laid out with a sitting room and a bedroom.

Xie Yan’s driver unlocked one of the units. It appeared no one had lived there in a long while; inside, the air carried the damp, stale smell of a long-vacant room.

Shen Ruoxi peered in from the doorway. Every piece of furniture was draped in white cloth, the cloth thick with a settled layer of dust — clearly the place had sat empty for quite some time.

The driver said, “If Mr. Xie hadn’t mentioned this place, I might have forgotten it existed entirely. It really has been a very long time.”

Shen Ruoxi asked curiously, “Was someone living here before?”

The driver was just about to answer when Xie Yan said, “Go open the windows.”

The driver immediately went to do so, and Shen Ruoxi did not press the question further. She walked to the draped furniture and began pulling away the white cloth, piece by piece.

“Mr. Xie, there is dust everywhere here — you should go outside,” Shen Ruoxi said, covering her nose with one hand and giving him a well-intentioned word of advice.

But Xie Yan did not move. He watched as she pulled the cloth away one piece at a time, and the room gradually reclaimed its shape through the grey, dusty haze.

The furnishings were plain and simple — almost entirely without color. In the bedroom, a wooden bed, a writing desk, and on the wall above the desk, a painting.

Shen Ruoxi stood before the painting. The colors were heavy and chaotic — all manner of hues crossing and overlapping without any apparent pattern or order.

At first glance it looked like nothing more than a child’s scribble, utterly incomprehensible.

“It’s just a painting. Does it really warrant that much attention?”

Shen Ruoxi was so absorbed in looking that the sudden voice from behind made her start.

She did not turn around. Still looking at the painting, she said, “It looks disordered and senseless — but it is not.”

Xie Yan’s pupils contracted sharply. But just as quickly, he concealed his reaction. “What do you see?”

Shen Ruoxi pointed to one blurred patch of color and said, “Look — doesn’t that look like a rainbow-colored candy?”

Xie Yan narrowed his eyes and said nothing.

“And this — this is a little rocking horse.”

“And that — a little white dog.”

Shen Ruoxi pointed them out one by one. “It looks like a world a child has built for themselves — full of candy and rocking horses and little dogs. But there is one thing missing from this garden. The most important thing.”

“What?” Xie Yan’s voice came low and quiet. Shen Ruoxi was too focused to hear anything in it.

“Family.”

Shen Ruoxi looked at the painting, something complicated passing through her gaze — as though she understood this feeling from the inside. “This was painted by someone who longed for family. For warmth. But because they did not want anyone to see too clearly into their heart, they chose to disguise it as a piece of child’s scribbling.”

After a while, she remembered there was someone standing behind her. When she turned around, Xie Yan was already gone.

Shen Ruoxi went out to look, but found only the driver cleaning the room.

“Where is Mr. Xie?”

“He went downstairs.”

Shen Ruoxi crossed to the window and looked down. Sure enough, she caught a glimpse of the hem of a coat disappearing into the car door just as it closed.

“That man — leaving without even a word. Here one moment and gone the next, like a ghost.”

Shen Ruoxi joined in to help the driver with the cleaning and, out of curiosity, asked, “Uncle Liu, who used to live here?”

Uncle Liu smiled slightly. “The apartment has been empty for five or six years now. As for who lived here before — I only heard Mr. Xie mention once that it was a friend of his.”

From the way Uncle Liu’s eyes shifted and avoided hers, Shen Ruoxi knew this was not the truth. Most likely Xie Yan did not like others inquiring about the apartment’s previous occupant.

She left it alone and did not press further, turning her full attention to the cleaning instead.

After Uncle Liu had helped her tidy the room, he took his leave. Shen Ruoxi collapsed onto the wide bed, exhausted, her back and waist aching.

Yet the thought that she would finally have a small shelter of her own to retreat to swept away every bit of her fatigue.

Having worn herself out completely, she was too tired even to wash her face or bathe. She lay down fully dressed and fell into a deep sleep.

She slept until noon the following day — and would have slept longer still, had it not been for the magpie outside the window chattering incessantly until she could ignore it no more.

The ballroom opened at five in the afternoon, and once there, the evening was spent in makeup and rehearsal — so the daytime hours were entirely her own.

The moment Shen Ruoxi opened her eyes, she saw the painting hanging above the writing desk. She could not explain why, but she felt instinctively that whoever had painted it must have had a wretched and pitiable childhood — and had poured every longing and memory of what they had never had into this painting. To keep others from seeing through to the truth, they had chosen the form of a scrawl.

Shen Ruoxi opened the window to let in some air. It was cold; after just a little while the room was full of freezing air.

When she went to close the window, her eyes happened to fall on the rubbish bin at the foot of the building below. Two flower pots had been set out beside it — each one holding a cactus.

Apparently someone had grown tired of them and put them out with the rubbish.

Shen Ruoxi’s spirits lifted at once, and she hauled both pots up to her room, setting one on each side of the windowsill.

The room’s decor was so sparse it barely had a color to speak of, and the arrival of these two little cacti brought an undeniable spark of life to the otherwise dull space.

“There’s still hope for you,” Shen Ruoxi said, fetching a watering can and pouring water for them as she spoke. “You may be a cactus, but you shouldn’t be left to dry out like this. Poor little things — let me be your savior.”

Once she had seen to the cacti, Shen Ruoxi found herself at a loss for how to fill the time. She had no clothes to sort through, no jewelry to polish.

Even finding something to eat had become an exercise in despair — for the simple reason that she had not a single coin to her name.

Just as Shen Ruoxi resigned herself to enduring until she could eat at the ballroom later, a knock came at the door.

The only people who knew she was staying here were Uncle Liu and Xie Yan. Whoever was at the door was likely Uncle Liu.

“Are you Miss Shen?” To her surprise, a woman in a dark green qipao was standing outside, a string of red agate beads at her throat, her hair set in fashionable large waves. Her looks were unremarkable, but she carried herself with great poise.

“May I ask who you are?”

“I am the landlady here,” the woman said. “Uncle Liu told me you are the new tenant.”

“Please forgive the intrusion.” Shen Ruoxi bowed quickly.

“Call me Sister Hong from now on,” the woman said. “If you need anything, come find me — I live on the first floor.”

Then she held out a paper bag. “I brought some food. Take it if you’re not too proud.”

Shen Ruoxi quickly waved the bag away. “Thank you, Sister Hong. I really cannot accept this.”

“Take it,” Sister Hong said without ceremony, and pressed the bag into her arms with a decisive push. She gave a wave of her handkerchief with one slender, willow-like wrist. “All right — I’ll be going now. Remember to come find me if you need anything.”

Shen Ruoxi thanked Sister Hong and, spirits high, hugged the bag back inside.

Inside the bag was a few apples and two beef-stuffed flatbreads — still warm, the fragrance wafting up as soon as she opened the bag.