Xia Li slept straight through until seven o’clock the next morning.

The sofa had left her entire body feeling as though it had been beaten — even the smallest movement sent a throbbing ache through her head.

She pushed herself upright and went to look for her phone, eventually finding it in the pocket of her trench coat, which was hanging over the back of a chair.

She’d been desperately thirsty, and drained the glass in one go, then spotted more in the kettle and poured herself a second cup.

Brushing her teeth, she caught her reflection in the mirror — hair somewhat disheveled — and ran a hand through it absently.

The memory of last night began to return: going out to dinner with Yan Sishi, being completely floored by half a bottle of fruit wine.

Her last clear memory was of getting into Yan Sishi’s car.

After washing her hair and bathing, Xia Li toweled her hair dry, put on a hair wrap, and went back to her room.

She unlocked her phone. When the lock screen cleared, the WeChat icon in the corner had a red badge showing 327 unread messages.

She had all her group chats set to silent, so under normal circumstances, unread counts like this were nearly impossible. Her first instinct was that something had gone wrong at work and someone had created a new group to coordinate — or more accurately, to spread the blame.

She steeled herself and opened WeChat.

There was indeed a new group — but it wasn’t a work chat.

“Everyone come look, someone’s risen from the dead.”

No legitimate work group would ever have a name like that.

Of the 327 unread messages, 283 of them had come from this single group, generated over the course of one night.

Xia Li tapped in. She scrolled back through the chat history a little and discovered, to her surprise, that Yan Sishi was in this group.

She checked the member list: aside from herself, the other six were Yan Sishi, Lin Qingxiao, Xu Ning, Nie Chuhang, Wang Chen, and Tao Shiyue.

Strange as the combination was when you first looked at it — once you read it alongside the group name, it made a peculiar kind of sense.

Tao Shiyue, the group founder, was truly a genius.

Since she had nothing else to do, Xia Li scrolled the chat history all the way to the very beginning and worked her way forward in chronological order.

The group had been created because Yan Sishi needed Xu Ning’s phone number.

Scattered in between was what appeared to be a slightly-out-of-the-loop Nie Chuhang, tagging Yan Sishi’s handle and asking if it was really him.

Yan Sishi didn’t respond for a long time. The others in the group chatted among themselves for a while, in all directions.

Then, nearly forty minutes later, Yan Sishi appeared and replied to Nie Chuhang: It’s me.

The group came alive again, almost entirely focused on Yan Sishi.

Questions flew: where was he working, what industry, when had he come back to the country, why hadn’t he continued to pursue his PhD — that last one was from Wang Chen.

Yan Sishi answered most of them, but very briefly, in a style that was distinctly like a cool, logical, concise AI.

Once the basic questions had been covered, what followed was a chaotic open-mic-for-all: Wang Chen tirelessly expressing his regret that Yan Sishi hadn’t continued his studies; Nie Chuhang and Lin Qingxiao finding every gap in the conversation to take jabs at each other — which was clearly just an excuse to be affectionate; Tao Shiyue, calling in from Hong Kong, saying she might be coming to Beicheng for a work trip the following month and telling Yan Sishi he’d better be buying dinner…

Of everything in the group chat, what caught Xia Li’s particular attention was a message Lin Qingxiao had sent right after the group was first created —

xxxxiao: Why are you making such a big fuss about finding our Xia Li today @YAN.

Every message that had specifically tagged Yan Sishi — he had replied to.

Every single one, except this one.

By the time Xia Li had scrolled through all the group messages, she still hadn’t seen any reply from Yan Sishi to Lin Qingxiao’s question.

She exited the group chat and checked the private messages that had come in — all from last night.

First was Wang Chen:

— Yan Sishi asked for your phone number.

Then Tao Shiyue, two messages:

— Hey hey, are you and Yan Sishi in contact now?

— He asked me to help find your phone number. Let me know when you see this~

Xu Ning’s messages:

— Xia Li, are you asleep? Do you have Tao Shiyue on WeChat? She’s asking for your phone number — can you message her back?

— Oh, apparently Yan Sishi asked her to help find it. You can reply to Yan Sishi directly if that’s easier.

— I gave Tao Shiyue your number, just so you know.

— Have you sobered up? Are you okay? I’m almost home.

Lin Qingxiao had sent a flurry of messages:

— Xu Ning just told me — Tao Shiyue went around asking a bunch of people in Class 7 for your phone number?

— And Yan Sishi was the one who asked her to find it??

— When did you two get back in contact?!

— Have I missed some major news here????

— Why did Tao Shiyue add me to this group [eye-roll emoji]

— …Have you disappeared?!

…

Xia Li had never experienced such a chaotic morning.

She, a thoroughly inactive presence on Moments, had never in her life been the center of this kind of attention — as if the whole world were trying to reach her at once. For a moment, she half-wondered if she’d somehow stumbled into a script that wasn’t meant for her.

Just as she was working through the backlog of messages one by one, Ouyang Jing chimed in with a new message of her own, joining the commotion: I think I just heard some gossip about you.

By the time she’d more or less dealt with all of those messages, her hair had almost dried.

She now owed Ouyang Jing, Lin Qingxiao, and Tao Shiyue each a lunch centered entirely around gossip.

Finally, she tapped open her conversation with Yan Sishi.

She’d been planning to say thank you, but then thought better of it and decided she’d get the full picture first.

She went to the bathroom to fully blow-dry her hair, changed her clothes, headed downstairs, grabbed breakfast from a nearby spot, and brought a portion back for Xu Ning too.

Half an hour after she got home, Xia Li was at the dining table working through emails on her laptop when Xu Ning shuffled out of her bedroom, stifling a yawn.

“Morning.”

“Morning — are you feeling better?”

“Yeah.”

“I called out to you when I got back last night, but you didn’t wake up. I couldn’t carry you either, so I left you to keep sleeping on the sofa.”

Xia Li said it was fine. “I brought breakfast for you — might be a little cold by now.”

“I’ll brush my teeth and be right out.”

A few minutes later, Xu Ning settled at the dining table and felt the side of the breakfast bag — still faintly warm.

Too lazy to reheat it, she just opened it and started eating.

Xia Li half-closed her laptop lid and looked at Xu Ning. “How did I get home last night?”

“Yan Sishi brought you back. He called me to ask for the building number.”

Xia Li had already guessed that much from the group messages. “What I mean is… how did I get upstairs?”

Xu Ning paused mid-sip of her soy milk. “…Could you walk on your own at that point?”

“…Probably not.” She’d barely been conscious — that whole stretch of memory was completely gone.

“Then it was either carried or piggyback’d,” Xu Ning concluded with reasonable logic.

“…”

Xu Ning studied her face, eyes curving into a grin. “A little disappointed, aren’t you? Not remembering any of it.”

“…I am not!”

“Are the two of you flirting with each other or something.”

“That’s even more of a ‘not.'”

“What kind of person is Yan Sishi — yet he went through all that trouble for you last night. Do you know how many people came to ask me what was going on?”

“…Don’t people have anything better to do?”

Xu Ning set aside the teasing and switched to a more analytical tone: “From a third-party perspective, having read that ‘memoir’ of yours, I’ll say objectively — even back in high school, the way he treated you was pretty different. The things he did for you, has he ever done any of those for Ouyang Jing or Tao Shiyue? And he was closer to Tao Shiyue, wasn’t he?”

“…Was he?”

“So how do you feel about him now?”

The question seemed to catch Xia Li off guard.

She picked up her cup and took a sip of water, her teeth lightly resting against the rim of the glass, lost in thought.

Around the New Year, a college roommate had reached out to chat and shared something that had left her speechless:

There had been a boy in her middle school class she’d been completely taken with — dark-complexioned and clean-cut, tall, sunny and handsome, grades nothing special, but exceptional at basketball. At the time, at least a third of the girls in the year had a crush on him. When she ran into him at a middle school reunion during the holiday, ten years later, the illusion shattered entirely — not even twenty-six yet, he’d put on a considerable amount of weight; his face had filled out and gone puffy. He’d attended some unremarkable local vocational college and she’d lost interest in asking what he was doing now. What struck her was how his manner had curdled into something crude and vulgar — lines like “Men and women are different, it’s natural for men to play the field, most men don’t settle down until their late twenties” and “When choosing a wife, looks shouldn’t be the main thing — find someone domestic and filial to her in-laws” fell from his mouth without a second thought. Remarks that were plainly dismissive of women, steeped in a sense of male entitlement.

She’d felt as though she’d been struck by lightning.

Her roommate’s final verdict: Only dead crushes stay perfect forever.

And Yan Sishi?

The Yan Sishi who had stepped out of her memories and back into reality had done nothing to disillusion her — he was still exactly as she’d remembered him: clear and bright, like moonlight on still water.

If anything, having entered the working world and met so many more people, she found that without the sheltering simplicity of school to smooth over the rough edges, most men revealed their true character — and each had their own particular way of being unpleasant.

Which made it all the easier to understand just how rare someone like Yan Sishi was: accomplished, disciplined, humble, and someone who knew how to respect women.

Perhaps it was that she had grown more cautious since entering adulthood, more clear-eyed about the gap between herself and Yan Sishi.

So she didn’t dare go throwing herself into the winding terrain of his mountain, carrying all those old, weighty feelings from the past.

What she feared most wasn’t that it would lead nowhere — it was that she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from tallying up what she’d given, from seeking some kind of belated “justice” for the long years she’d spent loving someone unrequitedly, the way someone who has gone hungry too long will binge when food is finally in front of them.

She didn’t want to become that kind of person.

Too complicated a feeling.

All she could say, in the end:

“…I don’t know.”

Xu Ning finished eating and retreated to her room to work on her script.

Xia Li stopped her quiet typing, reached for her phone, and opened her conversation with Yan Sishi.

Sherry: I’m sorry for the state I was in last night. Thank you for getting me home.

YAN: Don’t mention it.

YAN: Have you sobered up?

Sherry: Yes.

A brief lull in the conversation.

Xia Li typed the character for “I” on the nine-key pad, then deleted it.

She felt an odd, unsettled restlessness.

What had happened didn’t stop existing just because she couldn’t remember it.

Like something she couldn’t control, she found herself compulsively trying to fill in that missing stretch of the night — trying to piece back together what she’d lost: had he carried her on his back, or in his arms?

Yan Sishi would know.

…But she couldn’t very well ask him.

Then, across the conversation interface, Yan Sishi sent a new message.

YAN: Your hat was left in my car.

Xia Li only then realized she hadn’t seen the beret anywhere. She replied quickly.

Sherry: Could I trouble you to bring it to me on Monday?

YAN: Sure.

She ended the conversation, and found herself wondering — honestly and a little guiltily — whether the fact that she’d be seeing Yan Sishi again had taken even the tiniest edge off her usual dread of Mondays.

Monday, at work. The morning started with the usual team meeting.

Xia Li gave a summary of the recent campaign.

After the meeting, her supervisor Song Qiao’an pulled her aside to offer a personal word of praise for her work, then mentioned that the department’s annual trip had been set for June and asked if there was anywhere she’d particularly like to go.

Xia Li smiled. “That’s really a decision for admin, isn’t it? I’m happy with anything — I’ll go with whatever’s arranged.”

“Admin collects opinions from us first.”

“Then I’ll go with whatever the majority wants.”

“…”

Song Qiao’an was unfazed — he knew her well enough. “In that case, as a reward for your hard work this trip, how about I take you to dinner tonight, just the two of us?”

“What am I supposed to do when all I want is to go straight home and sleep? My jet lag isn’t sorted yet.” Xia Li smiled pleasantly and deflected, light and deft as always. “Another time.”

Song Qiao’an decided not to press for now.

Back at her desk, Xia Li logged into the desktop version of WeChat and opened her conversation with Yan Sishi.

Sherry: Are you free at lunch?

Yan Sishi replied almost instantly.

YAN: Yes.

Sherry: Could I trouble you to come down and give me the hat?

YAN: Of course.

Sherry: Twelve thirty — meet at the courtyard café seating area?

YAN: Sure.

Xia Li calculated the timing and ordered delivery for lunch.

The food was set to arrive around twelve ten. She went downstairs to pick it up, swung by Starbucks for an iced coffee, then headed over to the courtyard seating area to wait.

A handful of outdoor tables and chairs beneath a deep green sun umbrella.

The upkeep wasn’t great — the chairs and tables were usually covered in dried leaves and dust — so over time, the spot had become more of a landmark than somewhere people actually sat. Most people used it the way she was using it now: as a meeting point.

She set her takeout bag and coffee down on the table, phone in hand, scanning the area around her.

The office park was ringed by buildings on all sides; she really had no idea which direction Yan Sishi would come from.

A new message had come into the work group chat. Xia Li bowed her head to reply.

A moment later, something shifted — a familiar cool, faint scent drifted past her.

A hat dropped and settled gently over her head.

She spun around, breath caught.

Yan Sishi was right behind her — barely a hand’s breadth away.

A caramel-toned trench coat over a white button-down shirt, the fabric soft yet structured, draping perfectly over his tall, upright figure.

It was mid-March; the first hints of clear spring weather had begun to show.

In that bright, lucid light — a sudden close-range meeting of eyes — the cool and refined lines of his face struck her, just for a second, with a beauty that left her breathless.

“…How do you walk without making any sound?” she laughed, reaching up to take the hat off her head and stepping back, as casually as she could manage. Around him, she always felt as though the air grew thin.

“Maybe you were too absorbed in your phone to notice,” Yan Sishi said. His gaze moved to the two bags on the table beside her. “Just delivery for lunch?”

“It’s faster. Leaves me time for a short nap afterward.”

Xia Li picked up the Starbucks bag and held it out to him. “This is for you. You really went out of your way the other night — I’m sorry for the trouble.”

Yan Sishi reached out and took it.

A moment of quiet fell between them.

Before him stood someone in a white, loose-knit pullover and a pale celadon-green ankle-length skirt — like the very first new bud unfurling from the tip of a green willow branch on a misty, overcast day.

He’d drifted for a moment because his mind had gone back to the other night.

It was only after he’d had time to calm down that he’d realized how improper and presumptuous he’d been.

Seeing Xia Li again now, he couldn’t help but feel slightly awkward.

But looking at her, the words came without much hesitation: “Tonight, I…”

He didn’t get to finish. A voice rang out nearby, cutting across: “Xia Li!”

She turned. It was Song Qiao’an, coming from the direction of the main gate.

He strode over, relaxed and unhurried, offered a casual greeting, and smiled. “Did you two come back from lunch together?”

Xia Li said no.

Song Qiao’an didn’t press further and told Xia Li, “Just got notified — there’s a joint social dinner with the design department tonight.”

“Where?” Xia Li’s expression fell slightly.

“SO3. A new restaurant-bar that just opened.”

“…Does everyone have to go?”

One of Xia Li’s cardinal rules for surviving the workplace: after hours, colleagues become strangers — no contact unless absolutely necessary, and befriending coworkers was something she approached with extreme caution. As for team-building events, she avoided them whenever she could.

“It’s the department head organizing it — what do you think?”

“…Alright.”

Song Qiao’an raised his wrist to check his Apple Watch. “Heading back up?”

“Go on without me — I just need another minute with my classmate.”

At that, Song Qiao’an turned his gaze and looked Yan Sishi over.

Yan Sishi looked back, entirely unmoved.

The dinner invitation had been intercepted. A rare flash of something edged passed through his eyes — barely perceptible, like the cold gleam of a blade catching the light for just an instant before it was gone.

A quiet undercurrent of tension rippled through the air, felt only by the two people involved.

Song Qiao’an said, “Alright then, I’ll head up.”

Once Song Qiao’an had left, Xia Li turned to Yan Sishi. “What were you about to say just now?”

Yan Sishi answered calmly: “…I forgot.”