Strong feelings always come with a price.
She woke the next morning with a throat that felt like sandpaper. No need to look anything up—she knew the routine by heart. Fever within two days, cough once it broke. The last thing she wanted was a second person to know about it. Specifically: him.
And yet Yu Hao appeared with medicine already in hand. It was as though he'd had her wired up the entire time, leaving her nowhere to hide.
Her mother, who had declared herself a permanent fixture the night before, had apparently revised her position on the "water already poured" front and swept off with Si Yuan without a backward glance—ostensibly to fatten the boy up properly, as any devoted grandmother would.
Which left the two of them on the sofa, side by side. Si Chen cut a sideways glance at Yu Hao, who was staring at the actor on screen with complete absorption. Four days. He was still here. Was he not planning to leave?
This was the man who had taken a day off—exactly half a day—to register their marriage. The man who had never once arrived late or left early, who treated work as the fixed centre of everything. And now here he was, throwing out the rulebook without explanation.
For the past four days he had been a constant shadow. Wherever she went, he followed. Laundry, cooking, the clinic, the pills, the small daily kindnesses; he had missed nothing. She was starting to wonder if she was actually dying, how else to explain him hovering over her like this. Every extra glance felt like a bonus.
Right on schedule, the phone rang. She didn't need to think about it, that would be the woman from the office, calling in with the devotion of someone who believed the world stopped turning without him, or at the very least, that she needed to keep orbiting him until he noticed.
The drama hero on screen chose this moment to gaze soulfully in Yu Hao's general direction. Si Chen felt her stomach turn. She suspected he did too.
The phone rang again. Something had to give. She slapped her hand down over it and fixed him with a look—mouth tilted, challenge clear: go on, then. Let's see.
He barely glanced over, then returned to the television without reaching for the phone. Her irritation spiked. So now he'd added selective deafness to his repertoire. Predictably, the woman didn't give up—inside two minutes, the second call came through.
Well. If fate put the target right in front of her, she wasn't going to miss.
She slid to answer and got in the first shot before the other end had a chance to speak.
"Who's this? Hao's in the shower, he can't take your call right now."
Her voice thick with a genuine fever rasp, pitched deliberately lower still, with just a suggestion of something that had no business being on a respectable person's tongue.
A beat of stunned silence on the other end.
"Who… who is this?"
"Me? Oh—don't tell me you're his wife."
"I—I need to speak to Mr Yu Hao—"
"Is it urgent? Hold on just a moment—"
She darted to the kitchen, cranked the tap up full, and delivered the rest.
"Hao says he's not taking anyone's calls for a few days. Wife's calls only. He also says—" she let the pause land— "his time's very valuable."
Her conscience caught up with her—she did have some standards, after all, and there was always the chance something at the company actually needed sorting, partly to watch him handle the wreckage.
She handed the phone to Yu Hao, he solved it in one move. Power off.
Everything catches up with you eventually.
Half an hour later, her own phone rang, from Kaiwen.
So he ignored his own calls but paid close attention to hers. After a few rings she looked across at Yu Hao and made a small, pointed gesture: after you. Fair's fair.
He answered without hesitation and went straight into damage control.
"She can't take calls right now."
"I'll pass the message on."
"You're reading too much into it."
Si Chen watched his face tighten by degrees, brow pulling in, his tone sliding from neutral to something cooler. Then, without warning: "He wants to talk to you directly." And the phone was in her hand.
So even this, she had to sort out herself.
"Hi, Kaiwen."
"I heard you weren't taking calls—what's going on?"
"A cold. Barely got a voice."
"Is it bad? Do you want me to come by?"
"No—I'm in A City. I'll find you when I'm back."
She ended it quickly, afraid one more sentence would give something away. On the momentum of the exchange, she felt she'd completely lost that round. He got up and went to pack.
She'd had a send-off line ready. Then she looked over and stopped cold. He was packing her things as well. She crossed the room and blocked him.
"Why are you touching my stuff?"
"We're going back to A City."
"Why?"
"Because that's what we said. A City."
"You're still skipping work, aren't you?"
"I've got plenty of leave."
To his credit, he knew when to back off—before she could truly explode, he was back at work on the second day in A City. He left one condition: she wasn't to leave A City.
Just as well. Much longer without showing his face at the office, and even Xiao Yang would have started texting to ask if the company was going under.
"No," she replied lightly. "We're getting ready to go public."
When things felt stuck, she went out for some air.
The mall was saturated with Christmas cheer. A three-metre tree in the atrium blazed with lights and ornaments, pulling in clusters of people with their cameras. Every counter displayed its holiday limited editions, packaged with careful festivity. At the entrance, a Santa beamed with professional warmth at everyone who passed.
She'd chosen the café window seat deliberately. After sending him a message, she sat alone and looked across at the department store opposite. In the display window, a mannequin stood in her favourite brand of work suit.
Back then, money had been tight. They'd bought a small two-bedroom on the outskirts of T City and scrambled every month to cover the mortgage and the fit-out costs. Every time they walked the high street, they passed this shop. She would stop and stare at the outfit in the window, then turn to Yu Hao and say:
"One day I'll wear that and go everywhere—every corner of this country, and then the world."
A goal is a strange thing. It's a lighthouse—it shows you which way to point, and it keeps you moving. But somewhere along the road toward it, you lose other things without even noticing.
She had never actually bought anything from that brand, not once, though she'd been able to afford it for years. She couldn't explain why.
They had known, once, exactly what they were doing: keep moving, plan well, earn more. One flat paid off, then another. Circuits traced across China. Stamps collected in passports. And somewhere in the process, they drifted further and further apart.
She felt lost. No, both of them were.
She couldn't have said when it started, or where.
She had known for a long time: everything Yu Hao did was, in truth, for her. He accumulated wealth to give her ground solid enough to stand on, to prove to her—and perhaps to himself—that her choice had been the right one. He gave her the widest possible freedom, going along with whatever she wanted, however she wanted it. He took care of her, indulge her, hold her as the thing he valued most. He dispelled her bad moods and give her a sense of safety that never ran out.
So much love. Surely that deserved gratitude.
To others, Yu Hao was steady and thorough—a man built for significant things. To her, he was simply the one who stayed. Quiet, constant, always there.
His impeccable manners came from habit—from the practice of keeping a certain distance from people. His refusal to stop before a goal was met came from something closer to fear: because, deep down, he couldn't afford to lose. She had seen the coldness in him, and ached over the weight he carried in silence. She had seen through the bravado.
There were moments when he seemed genuinely startled that she understood what he wanted more clearly than he did himself.
And now he was standing behind her. Had been, for a while.
She knew. She was letting him know she knew.
"You're here."
"Mm. Shall we eat out?"
She didn't answer. He hadn't really expected her to. He sat down and looked at the shop window before finally speaking—the words coming out carefully, like something he'd been rehearsing and still hadn't got quite right.
"That… India. It's chaotic. For a woman traveling alone, it's not safe."
She turned and looked at his face—the discomfort written clearly across it—and said, quietly:
"Why can't you just say it straight? Tell me not to go."
This paper wall between them. She was going to break through it today, one way or another.
He didn't falter the way she'd expected. He let out a long breath—the slow exhale of someone setting something down—and said:
"It's your dream."
"I thought so too, once."
She was tired.
She didn't want to go.
She wanted to stay. Right here. Just like this.