At night, the narrow lanes felt all the more winding and hushed. A few bare trees stood there starkly, their branches skeletal — cold and desolate.

At the far end, a lamp glowed. Beneath its light, a blue-and-white street sign was visible on the old brick wall.

Beyond that, the place had another name: Taoyue Lane.

The last time Xia Li had come to this alley, she hadn’t gone in — she had waited in the car.

Now, standing beside Yan Sishi, she turned to look at him as he stood very still for a long while.

In the night, his gaze was deeply guarded, unreadable.

At last, as though he had made some kind of decision, Yan Sishi raised his hand and slid the key into the lock.

The black lacquered wooden door swung open. He stepped over the stone threshold into a two-courtyard compound — spacious and airy, with a few clusters of bamboo arranged in the corners, still green even in midwinter.

This place had been Huo Jizhong’s pre-wedding gift to his daughter. At the time, Beicheng wasn’t the densely valuable city it had become; the purchase hadn’t cost very much. Today, the same location had been driven to astronomical prices, and properties were nearly impossible to find.

It was perhaps Huo Jizhong’s most casual act, and yet his most richly rewarded investment.

After Huo Qingyi passed away, the property had been transferred to Yan Sishi’s name.

The rooms encircled the courtyard on all sides. A light still glowed behind one latticed window.

Yan Sishi explained that a caretaker lived here — someone who helped look after the house and keep it clean.

She answered the door, startled, and asked Yan Sishi why he had come without warning, and whether he had eaten.

Yan Sishi said he had only come to say hello and have a look around — she needn’t trouble herself.

But the caretaker had already stepped out of her room and made her way to the kitchen, telling him to take his time while she brewed some tea.

She asked Yan Sishi where she should bring it when it was ready. He said offhandedly, in the courtyard.

Yan Sishi took Xia Li’s hand and walked toward the room at the northern end, mentioning one thing along the way.

The caretaker was a distant relative on Dai Shufang’s side — a very remote connection. Her husband and child had both passed away. Dai Shufang, seeing that she had no one to depend on, had given her this position.

The room to the north was the sitting room. With the lights on, it was broad and stately — all traditional Chinese furnishings, the whitewashed walls hung with calligraphy and paintings.

Xia Li leaned in to look more closely and noticed the signature and seal on one of the pieces. “This calligraphy is in your hand!” she said, astonished.

It was a verse from Xin Qiji: Calling forth the moonlight to fill the sky, it illuminates my chest, full of clarity and ice, as a hundred rivers flow wide and strong.

Xia Li sighed softly. “It’s beautiful.”

Yan Sishi looked over at it. For a moment he said nothing, something turbulent and deep moving beneath the surface of his gaze. “It’s an imitation of a master’s brushwork.”

She heard his footsteps draw close and he came to stand behind her. His voice was very quiet as he told her:

He had written it in his third year of middle school, that summer. He hadn’t done anything else that holiday — just copied this single piece of calligraphy, over and over.

After he finished, his mother Huo Qingyi had it framed and hung in the sitting room. Whenever guests came, she would tell them it was an authentic work by the calligrapher being imitated. If anyone believed her, she would be utterly delighted, saying: our Xiao Shi — if he doesn’t grow up to be a scientist, he could make a very respectable career as a calligrapher.

That, in his memory, had been the last stretch of time when Huo Qingyi was her normal, lucid self.

In Yan Sishi’s calm voice, there was not even the sound of a sigh: “…After that she fell ill. Everyone said she had gone mad.”

Xia Li felt a jolt and turned to look at him.

His expression was equally calm.

Back then, whether it was Tao Shiyue or the people at the factory — everyone had said Yan Sishi’s mother had fallen ill, and that this was why he had returned to Chucheng. But what illness it was, no one had been able to say with any clarity.

From what Yan Sishi had let slip in a previous conversation, Xia Li had already vaguely guessed that it was not an illness in the ordinary sense.

But hearing him say it plainly still sent a tremor through her.

Before she could say anything, the caretaker came over and announced that the tea had been brought to the courtyard.

In the courtyard, a stone table and stone stools stood beside a bamboo trellis.

Wool cushions had been placed on the stools. On the table sat a teapot and cups; the pot rested on a small brazier burning charcoal to keep it warm.

Beside the teapot were several small white porcelain saucers holding dried fruit and nuts.

Next to the stone table stood a charcoal basin, just recently lit, not yet fully glowing red.

Xia Li sat down and poured Yan Sishi a cup of hot tea.

He held the porcelain cup loosely between his fingers, took a sip, and mentioned offhandedly: “I used to do my homework here a lot.”

“Did you live here for a long time?”

Yan Sishi nodded.

“…Your father — he doesn’t seem to have lived here.”

“No.”

Yan Sishi set down the cup and said, in a quiet, even voice, that his mother Huo Qingyi and his father Yan Suizhang used to quarrel frequently. Huo Qingyi would often come here to stay for a while, and he would come with her.

Huo Qingyi, away from the Yan family home, had seemed far happier.

This courtyard had once been full of flowers and plants — something beautiful in every season — all tended by her with great care.

Yet even then, Yan Sishi had sensed the pain beneath the cheerful surface. It was as though she were deliberately using the gentle rhythms of these small, domestic days to hold back the slow destruction of something collapsing at her core.

“She studied historic building conservation and restoration for her undergraduate degree. Her dream was to become an architectural scholar — someone like Lin Huiyin.”

But not long after graduating, she had met Yan Suizhang and married him quickly.

Yan Suizhang was a man soaked in privilege. The first impression he gave anyone was of a cultivated, well-bred gentleman from a refined family.

He did not pursue women through schemes or tactics — he relied on a sincerity so genuine even he believed in it.

For Huo Qingyi, just out of university and still inexperienced in the ways of the world, she never stood a chance.

At the time of their engagement, his grandfather had actually been opposed — not because he looked down on the Huo family, but because his instinct for reading people told him that Huo Qingyi was not the kind of woman who could play the role of Yan Suizhang’s “wife.”

But Yan Suizhang was determined to marry her — even going so far as to declare that he would give up the Yan family inheritance for her sake.

His grandfather eventually relented.

Yet his instinct would prove correct.

Once Yan Suizhang’s initial ardor faded, he began demanding that Huo Qingyi better embody the “duties” of a wife — above all, that she be broad-minded: what was the harm in chatting with the women who livened up a social occasion? Why turn it into such an issue?

After this happened again and again, he grew impatient: You’re always accusing me of having an affair. I can’t bear a false accusation I don’t deserve.

The time Yan Sishi had “run away from home” coincided with the first occasion Yan Suizhang and Huo Qingyi had an earth-shattering fight — Yan Suizhang had come home reeking of alcohol, a woman’s lipstick mark on his collar.

He had been barely six years old then, too frightened to leave his room. He didn’t know exactly what had happened — only that he felt it must somehow be his fault, because he had heard Huo Qingyi say in a moment of rage: If I’d known it would come to this, I never would have married you and had a child!

No one is born “well-behaved.” It is simply that circumstances force people to learn to read moods and tread carefully.

He hadn’t wanted his parents to fight. So from then on, in everything he did, he held himself to a standard bordering on compulsion — believing that if he were only obedient enough, dutiful enough, if he did everything perfectly, then perhaps everything could be set right again.

He had been, of course, only deluding himself.

Once Yan Suizhang had broken his restraint that first time, he grew ever more reckless — only more careful about it, so that Huo Qingyi never managed to catch him in anything that could be definitively proven.

From the beginning, he had fundamentally misread her. He thought that the pride she occasionally let show was merely an accent to her character — the way a rose needs a thorn or two to be worth longing after.

A woman who was too compliant had, to him, a kind of flat aftertaste. A thorn here and there was fine; but a woman all thorns had no appeal — and as it happened, Huo Qingyi’s true nature was precisely that: thorns on all sides.

Every wall he met with her, he compensated for elsewhere — seeking out women of the softest, most yielding kind, who gave him whatever he asked for.

Looking back on it, Huo Qingyi’s inability either to forgive or to find peace within herself stemmed from the fact that she had genuinely loved Yan Suizhang as a person.

Why else would she have given their only child a name like “Sishi”?

I am glad and grateful to have been born in this time.

It was not merely a wish for a child born into peace and prosperity — it carried, too, the tenderness of love at its most intense.

But there is a line, worn to cliché in old operas: Beautiful youth, like flowing water.

In the end, what remained when the love had run dry was only a vast, unceasing exhaustion.

Not even hatred.

Yan Sishi still remembered the New Year of his first semester in senior high school — here in this same courtyard. Huo Qingyi had dug out a sheaf of architectural drawings she had made herself years ago, and told him: After the new year, I want to pick up my old field again — as a hobby.

But not long into the new year, Huo Qingyi had “gone mad.”

Much later, from the fragmented speech of the “mad” Huo Qingyi, Yan Sishi pieced together what had happened: on a weekend after the Lantern Festival, Huo Qingyi had returned to the Yan family home and walked in on Yan Suizhang in the act of infidelity with another woman — in their own bedroom.

The woman in that bed shared five parts of her face with Huo Qingyi’s own.

After that, Huo Qingyi collapsed entirely.

What the outside world called “sudden” might in fact have been a slow, accumulated suffering — having worn away the white tower of her inner self until nothing remained but dust. That scene had merely been the last breath of wind to scatter it.

The “mad” Huo Qingyi became a scandal for the Yan family — an indelible stain beneath the gold-and-jade surface that Yan Suizhang presented to the world.

The Huo family’s response was to conceal the illness and say nothing. A quiet, closed-off silence.

Until Huo Jizhong and Dai Shufang brought their daughter back to Chucheng.

Once, after a few drinks, Huo Jizhong had told the truth: that he would spend the rest of his life in regret.

Regret for giving his daughter to Yan Suizhang in marriage. And even more regret for having believed Yan Suizhang’s honeyed words — for assuming that everything Yan Suizhang did in social settings was merely the unavoidable performance of a businessman’s life, something he himself could understand well enough.

Yan Suizhang had even said to him: You know your daughter’s nature better than anyone — she’s so unyielding, she won’t give an inch. After every argument, who is it that goes to her and apologizes? And you went and bought her a place of her own — so the moment we have any friction, she goes off and hides there. I go knocking again and again, and she shuts the door in my face every time. The neighbors all laugh at me.

And so, whenever Huo Qingyi had come to him for counsel, he had always told her: a man like Yan Suizhang was naturally going to attract attention from others — there was no need to take it so seriously. Besides, what young couple never argued? Did she really want to push this family apart?

In time, Huo Qingyi stopped confiding in him at all.

He had thought it meant things had improved. Only much later did he come to understand that perhaps those narrow-minded, old-fashioned words of his had been the final blade thrust into her.

Buying her a house had meant nothing in the end — he had never been able to give his daughter true shelter.

At the last, Yan Sishi’s voice remained calm: “Sometimes I think it would have been better if I’d never been born. Perhaps then she could have left without a second thought.”

The charcoal in the basin had burned fully to life now, and the side of his skin facing it felt scorched and tight.

But Xia Li still felt cold — a sensation like ice-laced water flowing slowly through her chest. She reached out and took Yan Sishi’s hand, saying quietly: “…Teacher Dai said you always turn the blame inward — that she wished you were a little more selfish. I feel exactly the same.”

Yan Sishi said nothing.

Xia Li stood up, took two steps to stand before him, and pressed one knee against the edge of the stone stool. She leaned down and wrapped her arms around him. She didn’t know what to say — this was all she could do.

Yan Sishi reached up and drew his arm around her back.

She bowed her head in that somewhat awkward posture and buried her face in his shoulder.

Her voice carried a faint dampness: “…You have no idea how much I love your name.”

Yan Sishi turned his head silently and breathed in the scent of her hair as it fell against him.

She said softly: “My father had an emotional affair once — I found out the day we skipped evening study session in high school. I hated him so much then. But little by little I became indifferent, because I realized it wasn’t my place to judge. How to live their lives — that had to be my mother’s decision. If she wanted to divorce, I would support her completely. If she didn’t, I wouldn’t push her, and I certainly wouldn’t let my father’s mistakes torment me. All I thought was: he’s no longer someone I can rely on. From now on, the only person I can count on is myself. You see — that’s how worldly and compromising and coldly selfish I am. And you are the most spiritually pure person I have ever known. You have no idea how much I love you.”

Yan Sishi said, “I know now.”

“…Thank you for being willing to tell me all of this. I feel so sad right now — I don’t know how to comfort you.”

She hadn’t known that behind his clear, luminous presence, he had been carrying all of this like a blizzard.

Those days — with his nature, caught in the middle of all that — how unendurable the guilt and helplessness must have been. How utterly powerless he must have felt.

She had even, at one point, considered withdrawing because he wouldn’t open his heart to her. And yet how could someone speak easily of something that would weigh heavily on any listener — let alone carry it themselves.

Yan Sishi found it strange himself.

Most of this, he hadn’t even been willing to tell a therapist. Yet now, in this moment, he had told her nearly all of it, without much internal struggle.

He had not set foot here in many years.

A place too full of memory was forbidden territory for someone who blamed himself.

Tonight he had brought her here on a sudden impulse — perhaps because it was a holiday, and the atmosphere was too good.

He had wanted to bring the most important person in his life to meet the most important person he had ever lost.

“Aren’t you already comforting me?”

“…Does this count as comfort?”

Yan Sishi bowed his head and pressed a kiss to her temple. “It’s already enough.”

They sat in quiet, neither speaking.

Until a gust of cold wind swept through and sent the white ash in the charcoal basin swirling into the air.

“Are you cold?” After a moment, Yan Sishi’s arm tightened slightly around her. “If you’re cold, we can go inside.”

Xia Li shook her head and stayed as she was, holding him in that awkward way, unwilling to let go.

Yan Sishi seemed to find it almost gently funny. His warm breath touched the shell of her ear: “Let’s find somewhere more comfortable, so you can hold on as long as you like.”

After saying goodnight to the caretaker, they prepared to leave.

Yan Sishi told the caretaker that he might come for dinner next time and would give notice in advance.

The caretaker had only been doing housekeeping work here, yet was being paid generously — she had always felt vaguely guilty about it. Hearing Yan Sishi say this, she was more than happy at the prospect.

They left through the gate and got back into the car.

Once the car’s heating came on and warm air surrounded them, Xia Li realized she had actually been quite cold just now.

It was already very late. The car drove straight to Yan Sishi’s apartment.

Since they had gotten together, Xia Li had stayed over at Yan Sishi’s place three or four times, always in situations where they’d worked until eleven or twelve at night.

He had set aside an extra set of toiletries and pajamas at his place specifically for her.

When they arrived, Xia Li went to shower first.

When she was done, Yan Sishi went in.

Coming out, he found Xia Li sitting sideways against the sofa armrest, a pillow clasped to her chest, phone in hand — scrolling through her social media feed.

“Did you change the Wi-Fi password?” Xia Li asked. “I can’t seem to connect.”

“I did. It’s 621 in binary.”

“…” Xia Li laughed, held out her phone, and said, “Help me type it in.”

Yan Sishi walked over and sat down beside her, taking her phone.

Xia Li caught a hint of the bath products on him — the exact same shampoo and body wash she used — and recalled the last time she’d worked late here. She laughed and said, “You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” Setting a password she’d have to look up before she could figure it out.

“If you say so.”

She watched the screen — 1001101… — his fingers moved quickly, and she hadn’t memorized it before it was done.

She stared at his hands, as if helpless to stop herself: “…Your hands are genuinely beautiful.”

“Are they.”

“Has no one ever told you?”

“Maybe they have. I don’t recall.”

Yan Sishi returned her now-connected phone, reached over to give the back of her neck a light squeeze, then stood and walked to the bar counter to pour water.

Xia Li said, “Can you pour one for me too? With ice.”

Yan Sishi brought over a glass. Xia Li locked her phone screen and took it.

She raised the glass and took a sip, then caught Yan Sishi looking at her.

He was wearing grey cotton T-shirt pajamas, the neckline loose enough to show the clear line of his collarbones.

His dark hair, freshly washed, had a soft, pliant quality to it. Against that, his brows and eyes looked especially clean.

By all reason, the small amount of wine from earlier should have metabolized long ago — yet she felt, without cause, as though she were still slightly intoxicated. That hazy, tipsy feeling seemed to govern her movements. By the time she came back to herself, she had already leaned close to his lips.

She was holding a small square of ice in her mouth.

Yan Sishi clearly hadn’t expected that. When the ice passed between them, he went still for a moment.

Then he reached out without hesitation, took the glass from her hand, set it on the coffee table, and put his arm around her waist.

The ice melted quickly.

Xia Li felt starved of air — the breath she exchanged with Yan Sishi carried a heat like something brought to a boil.

Yan Sishi pulled back. She opened her eyes a fraction and caught the depth of his gaze, and then he lowered his head. His breath traced a slow path along the line of her neck, pausing briefly at the collarbone.

Xia Li had already braced herself — holding her breath in anticipation — but when the collar of her pajamas was drawn aside and a wide stretch of skin met the faintly cool air, she still couldn’t help the flutter of her lashes. The entirely unfamiliar sensation left her at a loss. She didn’t know what to do with herself.

She didn’t even dare look down. Her fingers clutched the pillow beside her, and she let her gaze drift past Yan Sishi’s shoulder toward the clean expanse of the bar counter.

The tap, the coffee maker, the glassware…

Each one catching the light with a kind of orderly brightness she found pleasing.

It was no use. Her attention wasn’t diverted in the slightest — if anything, everything felt more vivid, more acute.

Fortunately, before much longer, Yan Sishi lifted his head and kissed her.

She felt as though she had been rescued.

But she had not — he had not come to rescue her.

This kiss was unlike the others. There was something unmistakably possessive about it, a clear intent to take. She lifted her hands to gently push against his arm — and couldn’t. Instead, her hands were caught and pinned behind her back, and there was no getting free.

Xia Li’s thoughts dissolved into chaos.

The light from the ceiling fixture above seemed to splinter into a thousand fine, glittering points — like particles of actual dust, raining into her eyes.

Everything she looked at blurred, obscured by a warm, white haze. The tears that came were purely physiological.

In the midst of all that disorder, she still found herself thinking of his hands.

Those long, even fingers. The clear definition of his knuckles. Skin pale and fair. The subtle blue tracery of veins across the back of his hand, running down to where the wrist bone jutted with a spare angularity.

The air had not yet fully quieted.

Or perhaps it had, and Xia Li was simply mistaken — because her heart was still beating loudly, and there was still a rushing, receding echo inside her head.

Her breathing was uneven. All the embarrassment that had been deferred came flooding back at once.

And it was not only the act itself that made her flush — it was the fact that it was Yan Sishi.

She pressed her face firmly into Yan Sishi’s chest and refused to look up for a long time. Her voice was barely a murmur: “…You did that on purpose.”

“What?”

“Because I said your hands were beautiful…”

Yan Sishi sounded amused. “That thought never crossed my mind.”

She muttered quietly that she didn’t believe him.

Just now, Yan Sishi had been unreasonably composed.

Those hands had moved as though conducting an experiment — precise, methodical, adjusting each variable with calm deliberateness until he had identified the most accurate coordinates and the most effective degree of pressure.

That cool and collected, inch by inch, he had dismantled her will.

The air was almost too clean. She had even been able to catch a faint, salt-tinged scent, and because everything had gone quiet — even the wind outside had become inaudible — every small and muffled sound, every soft movement, had seemed amplified, all the more apparent.

Yan Sishi bowed his head and kissed her wet eyelashes.

Seeing that she still refused to look at him, he simply gathered her up and lifted her in his arms.

The moment Xia Li landed on the bed in the main bedroom, she flipped over immediately, pulled the covers up, and buried herself completely beneath them.

Yan Sishi washed his hands and came back to sit on the edge of the bed. He reached over and gave the covers a tentative tug — they didn’t budge.

Then he heard her voice emerge, muffled: “…There’s no spare pajamas for me to change into.”

Yan Sishi went to the wardrobe and found one of his own T-shirts. He brought it back and said, “This will have to do.”

Xia Li peeked out from beneath the covers — the skin behind her ears still faintly tinged with pink.

She reached out a hand and took the T-shirt.

After cleaning up, Xia Li changed into the T-shirt, gathered the pajamas she’d taken off, and walked out of the main bedroom bathroom without looking at Yan Sishi, heading for the door of the room.

Yan Sishi followed, puzzled.

Xia Li held up a hand. “Don’t come closer — I need to use your washing machine.”

She went to the other bathroom, didn’t dare examine how wet the pajama pants were, and stuffed the whole thing directly into the washing machine.

The machine started up with a low, contained rumble — like the tidal surge that still wouldn’t settle in her body.

Passing the bar counter, Xia Li drank nearly half a glass of water in one go. By the time she returned to the main bedroom, she had managed to calm herself somewhat.

Yan Sishi had already settled back against the headboard, leafing through a magazine. He looked up at her, then glanced at the length of the black T-shirt — it barely reached the top of her thighs — and looked away again.

Xia Li climbed up from the other side and lay down.

Yan Sishi saw her go still for a long moment. He reached over and gave her shoulder a light nudge. “Won’t you say goodnight?”

“…Goodnight.”

Xia Li heard the click of the switch, and the light went out.

A cool, clean presence moved close — a warm hand reached over to tip her chin gently upward.

A kiss fell lightly, and his voice in the darkness was as beautiful as a piece of jade dropped into still water: “Now it counts.”