In that moment, Yan Sishi was struck by a powerful sense of déjà vu.

In the quiet library on a rainy day, he had been following a textbook, teaching himself to write a small program. What exactly it was, he could no longer remember — it was too far back.

He only remembered that the process had not gone smoothly. A bug that kept throwing errors refused to be resolved.

His train of thought was interrupted by what sounded like a pencil rolling across a desk.

He looked back. Xia Li had caught the pencil, her expression carrying a faint flicker of alarm.

She asked to borrow a dictionary from him. He noticed the sizeable volume on her desk with a vaguely familiar cover design.

She showed him her notebook and asked about some vocabulary. Seeing the words, he felt an even stronger sense of recognition.

Because not long before, Wang Chen had come to him asking for help with some passages from a translation — and several of the less common words in that vocabulary list had appeared there too.

He looked again at the book. Even though she had quickly covered it, he suspected it might be the very one he had recommended to Wang Chen — Guns, Germs, and Steel.

As for how she had come to know about it — that, he had no way of knowing.

Now, recalling the old memory, he found himself wanting to confirm that one small detail.

He thought Xia Li had probably long since forgotten something so minor.

But to his surprise, at what had been no more than an offhand question, Xia Li’s expression shifted — she looked exactly like a student caught with hidden notes during an exam.

“…Yes,” Xia Li said, looking away. Then she smiled. “I overheard you and Wang Chen talking about the translation — it sounded like a nonfiction book about world history. I was really into history at the time, so I looked it up, thought it sounded interesting. The city library happened to have a copy, so I borrowed it.”

Had he believed her explanation? She couldn’t be sure. His expression gave very little away.

Not daring to linger on that subject, Xia Li kept flipping through the notes he had organized and said with a smile, “Thank you — this was a huge help.”

Yan Sishi asked if there was anything else she needed him to do.

“No, no — please, go do your own thing. I’ll handle the compiling from here.”

The volume was substantial, and pulling everything together took Xia Li considerably longer than she had anticipated. Song Qiao’an kept pressing her, and she was starting to feel a persistent headache coming on.

She stole a glance — Yan Sishi had returned to the sofa, laptop on his knees, fingers occasionally sweeping across the touchpad.

Just like back then — plainly removed from the crowd, yet always somehow the first person you’d notice.

If this evening’s task hadn’t been so pressing, sharing a room with him would have had her mind wandering every few minutes.

Xia Li finished the report and then put together a concise summary slideshow. By the time she was done, her head felt like a muddled mess.

She sent it to Song Qiao’an and waited for his response. When she checked the time, it was already eleven at night.

She opened WeChat and sent Xu Ning a message: Almost here?

Accounting for the baggage carousel and the taxi — if traffic cooperated, Xu Ning would be home in at least forty minutes.

Song Qiao’an replied saying the content was fine and asked her to send it to a designated email address.

Once the email went through, there was a release that comes only from reaching the absolute limit of exhaustion.

Xia Li closed her laptop. She could not have looked at it for one more second.

She let out a long, drawn-out yawn and looked toward the figure on the sofa. “I’m done.”

The figure didn’t move.

Xia Li paused. She stood up gently and pushed back her chair with a slow, careful hand so it wouldn’t scrape.

She walked to the sofa and looked — Yan Sishi was leaning sideways against the backrest, eyes closed, breathing deep and slow, his laptop resting beside him.

He was asleep.

Xia Li felt immediately terrible. Here was his perfectly good holiday, and not only had she spent it working, she had pulled him into it too — letting him waste the entire afternoon and evening here.

Since Yan Sishi was already asleep, she was even less willing to disturb him.

She put her phone on silent. She picked up the magazine he had left on the coffee table and sat down on the grey carpet beside the sofa.

It was an English-language magazine focused on high-tech fields — full of specialized terminology, demanding to read, especially now that working overtime had drained every last bit of her energy.

She got out her phone and scrolled through Weibo for a while. Even that felt like too much effort.

At some point it seemed she simply couldn’t absorb another word of anything.

She set her phone down, leaned her arms on the coffee table, and stared blankly into the air.

Without meaning to, she found herself looking up at the figure on the sofa.

His face was serene in sleep. He looked, in that stillness, like a snow-capped mountain.

She had the feeling that even breathing would be a disturbance.

She lay there watching quietly for a long while. The room was too silent, and exhaustion from hours of focused work rose up and washed over her thoughts.

Before she knew it, her eyes had closed.

She woke because she sensed something settle onto her shoulder.

Xia Li’s eyes flew open — and met a pair of cool, clear eyes looking directly into hers.

Yan Sishi was sitting on the edge of the sofa near the coffee table, leaning forward to drape the blanket over her.

Xia Li straightened up at once. “You’re awake.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry, I fell asleep again…” The life of a working drone was a life of perpetual sleep deprivation.

“It’s time to sleep.”

“What time is it…”

Yan Sishi lifted his wrist. “Ten past midnight.”

Xia Li rubbed her arm, which had gone numb from being a pillow for so long.

Yan Sishi looked at her. “Has Xu Ning arrived? I’ll drive you back.”

He paused, then added quietly: “You can also stay here for the night.”

As he finished speaking, he gave a soft, quiet yawn.

That yawn was what stopped Xia Li cold.

For more than one reason, she found it genuinely difficult to ask Yan Sishi, at this point, to get back in the car and drive her home.

There and back would be over forty minutes. By the time he returned it would be past one in the morning.

And if she suggested taking a cab herself — knowing Yan Sishi’s considerate nature, he would never agree.

It seemed as though only one option remained.

She knew it wasn’t entirely appropriate.

She knew that.

“…Would it really be no trouble?”

Yan Sishi looked up at her. “You mean…”

“Staying here for the night.”

Yan Sishi said evenly, “No trouble. Do you have your toiletries with you?”

Yes — and a change of clothes too. Everything was in her suitcase.

That single line tipped the scales entirely toward the option that wasn’t quite proper.

“…Then I’ll impose on you again.” Xia Li pressed her palm to the coffee table and pushed herself up.

She had been curled up for too long. Her legs had gone to sleep. Halfway up, thousands of fine, sharp pins went off at once, sending both legs out of her control. Her whole body lost its balance.

By reflex she reached out to find something to hold.

When she realized she had grabbed Yan Sishi’s knee, she yanked her hand back in a panic.

Which only made her fall worse.

“Watch out.”

A hand caught her by the arm — a light, precise pull — and the direction of her fall shifted, sending her tumbling toward his side and slightly forward.

The world tilted.

Her left knee landed against the edge of the sofa cushion between his legs. Her right palm braced automatically against his shoulder.

A situation considerably worse than a moment ago.

Xia Li couldn’t breathe. In that instant her heart stopped entirely.

It was, to all appearances, as if she had fallen completely into his arms.

The hand gripping her arm had cool fingers — and yet it felt like a point of heat. His breath, close enough to catch, moved like wind echoing low through a valley.

A wildfire sweeping across open land — she felt the flames lick across her face.

Her skin was burning. She was running out of air.

On the verge of suffocation.

Yan Sishi raised his eyes just slightly and could see, in the lamplight, her unadorned face — like a white apricot blossom blooming quietly in the fullness of spring, asking nothing of the world.

Her eyelids were half-lowered, her gaze dropped as far as it would go, concealing itself — only those faintly trembling lashes visible.

She was wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt. He had caught the inch of her arm just above the elbow, pressing down over the cotton fabric, brushing against a small patch of bare skin. Soft and warm.

A faint, clean sweetness drifted past his senses, and his breath snagged for just a moment.

A faint, rising itch in his throat.

In the end, it was Xia Li who pressed her palm against Yan Sishi’s shoulder, found her footing, and said in a voice that was clearly — though not entirely successfully — forced into composure: “…Sorry, my legs went numb.”

Yan Sishi hadn’t said anything yet before she had already stepped back half a pace. “…I might need to use the bathroom.”

“Sure.” Yan Sishi stood as well, entirely composed. “Shall I bring your suitcase to the guest room?”

“Yes… thank you.”

Wen Shubai had a wide circle of friends, and in those days often had people coming to stay — so a guest room had been kept ready. It had always been maintained with a kind of hotel-like tidiness. When Yan Sishi moved in, it was already like this. The housekeeper cleaned it as a matter of course, and he almost never entered that room or thought to change anything in it.

He opened the guest room door, switched on the light, pushed the suitcase inside, then showed Xia Li to the guest bathroom.

It was a three-part layout, all the fixtures standard — nothing requiring special explanation.

Yan Sishi set out a clean bath towel and hand towel on the corner of the vanity, then stepped out.

Xia Li returned to the guest room and pulled the door shut behind her.

Her heartbeat had not yet steadied.

She crouched on the floor for a moment to collect herself, then opened the suitcase and took out her sleepwear and toiletry bag.

When she passed through the living room again, Yan Sishi was nowhere to be seen — likely in the study or the main bedroom.

She showered, stepped out of the bathroom, and looked out at the empty living room. Bracing herself, she called out: “Yan Sishi…”

A moment later, the door beside the guest room opened.

She said, “I don’t think I can find a blow dryer.”

He came out of the room and walked to the bathroom.

The blow dryer had been stored in a black organizer basket on the shelf beneath the stone sink counter — she hadn’t wanted to go rummaging through his things, so she hadn’t found it.

Yan Sishi took it out, plugged it in, and handed it to her.

“Thank you.”

Before he turned to leave, he glanced at her — she was wearing a very plain set of pajamas, dark navy blue, printed all over with small white rabbits and cherry blossoms.

A towel was draped over her shoulders, framing the damp, loose fall of her hair.

The wet ends of her hair were dripping. When she lowered her head, a trail of water wound from her collarbone down the pale expanse of her skin, falling toward somewhere lower…

Yan Sishi immediately averted his gaze.

Xia Li dried her hair, cleaned up the loose strands, and came out of the bathroom.

Yan Sishi was at the kitchen counter, drinking water. In the clean white light, the line of his back had a certain solitary stillness about it.

“Um…”

Yan Sishi turned.

“I’m going to sleep now?”

“Go ahead.”

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

Xia Li went into the guest room and lay down, then reached for her phone to reply to Xu Ning’s message: I’m staying at a friend’s place tonight. Don’t wait up. You get some rest.

Xu Ning: Which friend?

Xia Li ignored the question and sent a good-night emoji.

She lay flat on the bed, surrounded by the clean scent of body wash and shampoo, wholly unable to manage anything resembling a good night.

She was exhausted, thoroughly, in every part of her — and yet some other small, flickering excitement kept pulling at her cerebral cortex, refusing to release it.

It felt very much like being so utterly drained that you down a coffee to force your body to keep going, and then you can’t sleep.

The room was absolutely quiet, the soundproofing remarkably good. Almost nothing of the outside traffic filtered through.

She turned off the light and lay there for a long time, turning from one side to the other.

It was past one in the morning before the faintest edge of drowsiness finally crept in.

In the main bedroom, Yan Sishi also fell asleep very late.

When sleep finally came, a strange dream startled him awake.

It was a continuation of that glimpse in the bathroom — water trailing downward, toward a lower place.

In the midst of the entanglement, the light shattered and scattered, rippling fragments swaying — in her eyes, on her pale, translucent skin.

The swaying undid him. For the first time, his reason deserted him entirely. Something close to madness.

An acute, urgent desire to ruin someone.

Even he found it strange to himself.

Waking, he found the room terrifyingly quiet, only his own heavy breathing filling the air.

He didn’t often indulge in self-relief — perhaps that was precisely why he had dreamed something so unhinged.

The sweat on his back cooled slowly. A deep, saturating chill.

He rested his arm across his forehead and waited for his breathing to settle. Then he got up, lifted the glass from the nightstand, and drank.

The ice had melted. The temperature — somewhere between cool and lukewarm — was deeply unsatisfying.

He drained it in one go, then pressed on the bedside lamp, put on his slippers, and went to the main bathroom for a cold shower.