Three days passed.
He went to work. Took meetings. Signed documents. Said the right things at the right times.
Nobody noticed anything different.
He was good at that.
But at odd moments — in the elevator, in the silence between one task and the next — it came back. Her face. Clear and complete in a way it had never been before. The sound of her voice saying something so ordinary it shouldn't have meant anything at all.
Rework it. Debug it. No time like today.
He'd heard her say it before. In another life. At her desk, late at night, when she thought no one was listening.
He had always been listening.
He sat in his office one evening and looked at nothing in particular for a long time.
She was here.
She was actually here.
On the fourth day he went down to the seventh floor.
No reason given. He didn't need to give one.
The room was quieter than the night of the breach — back to its normal rhythm, the crisis patched over if not fully healed. People glanced up as he entered and then back down at their screens.
He looked once around the room.
She was at her desk. Hair tied back. Expression focused. A half empty cup of something cold sitting forgotten at her elbow.
He walked over.
She noticed him when he stopped beside her desk. Looked up without particular surprise.
"CEO"
"Miss Lin" he said. "Do you have a moment"
She saved her work. Stood.
They walked to the corridor — not far, just out of earshot of the room.
The hallway was quiet. The overhead light hummed faintly. Through the glass wall the rest of the team was visible, heads down, unbothered.
He looked at her.
She looked back at him, expression calm and waiting, the way she always was — patient without being warm, attentive without giving anything away.
He said it simply.
"I like you"
A beat.
She regarded him for a moment. Then —
"CEO, I think you may have confused familiarity for something else. We work in the same building. It's a common—"
"I like you" he said again. Quieter this time. Not louder. Just more certain.
She looked at him.
He looked back.
She exhaled once, very slightly.
"I see" she said. "I'll pretend I didn't hear that"
She turned to go back inside.
"You're still the same"
She stopped.
Turned back slowly.
He hadn't moved. He was looking at her with an expression she couldn't quite categorize — not quite sad, not quite fond. Something in between that had no good name.
"...still" she said.
The word sat between them.
He didn't explain.
She waited a moment longer — that particular stillness of hers, the one that meant she was actually paying attention even when she looked unbothered.
Then she turned and walked back into the room.
He stayed in the corridor a moment longer.
Through the glass, he watched her sit back down. Pick up her cup. Look at the screen.
She didn't look back.
But her hand, resting on the desk — was very still.
Across the room, Han Ming had not been looking.
She had absolutely not been watching the corridor for the last several minutes.
She turned back to her screen.
...oh ho
A smile was threatening to break across her face and she was fighting it with everything she had.
She picked up her coffee very calmly.
So that's how it is