On the outskirts of T City, where the hills met the lake at the Lingnan estuary, a cluster of villas sat back from the world.
Yu Hao parked in the lot, tilted his head back and drained the last of his Red Bull in one go. He sat for a moment, composed himself, then got out and walked toward the red-brick house.
Among the sleek modern villas surrounding it, this one stood apart immediately—its old Southeast Asian character impossible to miss. Along the porch ran an arcade in the old shophouse style—shelter from sun and rain, and something more besides. He unlatched the garden gate; a stone fountain murmured somewhere nearby; shrubs and flowering plants crowded in thick and green on all sides.
In one corner of the garden, a low hedge enclosed a small pavilion—her private corner, for tea and tending to her plants. In the garage, a red four-ring coupe sat under a coat of dust. Three years ago, when he'd replaced Si Chen's car with a Mini Cooper, this one had gone to her younger sister. The wheels hadn't moved since. The windscreen had long since gone grey. The new owner was still overseas, and showed no sign of coming back for it.
At the door, he followed the house rule: shoes off before entering. Barefoot, he stepped inside.
The interior carried the same unhurried warmth it always had—Southeast Asian in feeling, with a high-ceilinged foyer, arched wooden windows, and sheer white curtains that diffused the light into something soft. Rattan furniture in reddish brown, broad-leafed plants in generous pots, a bronze ceiling fan turning slowly overhead. Southen winters were damp and cold in a way that got into the bones; the underfloor heating in this older house—installed at his insistence, years ago—was still doing its job.
A fragrance met him in the hallway. Rich without being sharp. Not the punch of curry but something mellower, the scent she always described with a certain fondness: coconut rice. Coconut milk, pandan leaf, garlic, and the faintest suggestion of chilli, the smell she had mentioned more than once, always with a particular warmth.
He followed it to the kitchen, calling softly toward the figure inside.
"Ma—"
A woman in a plain white dress, black hair falling long and glossy, paused mid-stir. She turned, and her eyes lit with warmth.
"You're here!"
"I brought some ginseng." He held up the bag, perhaps a beat too keen.
"Stay for dinner. I'll just add a couple more dishes."
"You really don't have to—"
She waved this off and pointed at the trays of meat and vegetables already stacked beside the hob. The expression on her face settled the matter. This was her kitchen. Opinions from outside were not invited.
"Where'sSi Yuan?"
"In his mother's room."
Halfway up the carved wooden spiral staircase, Hao heard it—the unmistakable sounds of a game in full battle, rising and falling. At his grandmother's, the boy apparently saw no reason for headphones. The door was pushed to but not shut, and the noise came through freely.
She had lived in this room for twenty years. Even so, Hao knocked—quietly, knowing the teenager inside, eyes locked on the screen, fingers flying across the controller, would almost certainly not hear it.
The boy glanced over briefly, then went straight back. His thumbs didn't slow.
The room was nothing like the spotless, neatly ordered space he remembered. The bed was piled with things. The wardrobe doors hung open, both compartments visible.
One side had shelves built into the upper half, packed with books in Chinese and English, spines worn and crowded; the lower half held a writing desk. An old calendar sat open on the surface—a decade out of date—several dates ringed in different coloured ink, annotated in a hurried mix of Chinese and English. Exam dates, most likely.
The other side of the wardrobe had a storage basket missing from its row, relocated to the floor below. Trophies, certificates, and crystal ornaments were scattered across the second shelf, several of them displaced to the bed. The third shelf had become an improvised dressing table—a small mirror, a jewellery box, a tangle of clothes. Messy in the way that only a room someone actually lives in can be.
He had been here no more than a handful of times. The neatness he'd seen on those visits must have been a version put on for company. This—the controlled disorder of someone's real life—rang truer.
His gaze settled on a blue school yearbook lying open on the desk. The page showed a grid of class photos and names, and in the corner, the warm face of a foreign teacher. In the corner of the grid, her face stood out anyway: those wide, lively eyes, a messy ponytail, a smile that didn't know how to be small.
Without quite deciding to, he reached out. His fingertip rested on the photo—on that once-familiar grin.
He turned the page. Student Achievements. One photograph drew the eye immediately: a boy and a girl in Yinghua uniforms, both laughing, confetti falling around them, a trophy raised between their hands. The same trophy that sat gleaming on the shelf across the room. In the photo they were luminous—young and radiant, as if the whole world were cheering them on.
The boy's gaze was steady and bright—the look of someone for whom victory had never been in doubt.
A surge of jealousy, sharp and immediate. He snapped the yearbook shut.
Beside it lay a clear plastic folder, its contents faintly visible through the milky cover—several sheets of paper, the kind with neat columns. Grade reports, by the look of them.
Some inexplicable pull won out, he eased the folder open.
An international high school transcript. Six A's, lined up without apology. Before the surprise of that had finished landing, the date in the upper right corner stopped him cold—autumn, ten years ago.
The year they met.
He turned to the next sheet. A-Levels: three A's. Dated early spring, nine years ago.
When they had just become official.
His fingers moved again. An offer letter from a foreign university slid out from the folder and fell. He picked it up. The enrollment date held him where he stood—six months before their wedding.
Below that, a line of smaller print: Scholarship: 50%.
Yu Hao stood very still. The paper creased slightly where his fingers had tightened. Something was pressing down on his chest—admiration, and something that ached alongside it, and beneath that, a thread of anger he couldn't quite trace to its source.
The buried fragments came back, one by one.
That evening—he'd gone upstairs to call her for dinner and found her standing in front of the half-open wardrobe, utterly still, staring at it with a look of confusion she hadn't managed to hide. When she heard him, she'd come back to herself with a start and quickly pushed the wardrobe door shut.
That had been the day he came to the house to ask for her hand.