Satisfied, Old Li hummed a cheerful little tune and jangled his keys all the way out the door.
Lin Xun stood in the doorway, holding the lone takeout bag, watching the back of Young Master Shen’s hand where it rested against the doorframe.
The skin was pale, almost translucent. Beneath it, blue veins crossed and stood out in relief, clear as lines on a map. He looked malnourished.
Strip away the expensive cars and tailored clothes he used to have, and the sharp gleam that once lived in his eyes, and the Young Master Shen before her looked, surprisingly, a little fragile.
Lin Xun scratched her head, unsure what to do next. Not that she found his circumstances particularly grim — when she’d graduated, she couldn’t even afford a place like this. She’d spent two years in a basement eating instant noodles and had come out fine. But still: old habits die hard, and everyone had their pride. Lin Xun pressed her lips together and figured that, at this particular moment, he probably wouldn’t want to run into an old classmate — even one they’d barely spoken to back then.
After a brief silence, Shen Yu tilted his head half an inch and “looked” toward where her breathing came from. “Takeout?”
“Uh…”
Sharp ears.
Lin Xun thought for a moment, then stepped forward with the bag, skipping past any awkward reunion, and spoke in a flat, matter-of-fact tone: “So, I live upstairs. The delivery driver left your order at my place by mistake.”
She looped the bag’s handles over his door handle. “I’ve left it on the door. Bye.”
Without waiting for a response, she turned and walked back down the narrow, long corridor.
─ ⊹ ⊱ ⊰ ⊹ ─
In that narrow hallway, Shen Yu listened as the woman finished in a few words. Her voice was unhurried, a little off-key — husky, like someone who’d just swallowed a mouthful of cold, aged liquor.
Not exactly a pleasant voice.
But a familiar one.
He stood leaning against the door, facing the direction of the corridor, his expression frozen for a moment.
His world was dark as a cave. All he had were sounds: footsteps, quick and sure-footed, climbing to the third floor, then a thud at the landing — she’d kicked the trash can — followed by a long hiss and a muttered curse.
Then the faint scrape of a key. The clang of a door shutting.
Every sound slotted quietly into place against something stored in his memory — not a sight, but something that functioned like one.
Outside a car window speeding past: a girl of sixteen or seventeen, high ponytail, standing on a slope. Her arms, thin but wiry, shoved a three-wheeled cart with everything she had. The effort was hard enough to distort her face, jaw locked tight.
The car kicked up a half-wheel of dust. Most of it landed on the side of her face; the rest settled across her white athletic set. She had no hand free to shield herself. She only glared through the glass with those upturned eyes, and through the swirling dust, the irritation in them was plain and completely unguarded.
When all the sounds had faded into quiet, Shen Yu reached out and took the takeout bag from the door handle, then pulled the heavy iron door shut. He turned, touched his fingertips to the uneven wall, and used it as a guide to walk back to the living room, slow and steady.
This path had been cleared specifically. Nothing in the way.
The sofa sat against the center of the living room wall.
His fingers, each knuckle distinct, followed the wooden armrest down until they found the rough fabric of the sofa cushion.
Ten years. The sensation was no longer new — and no longer frightening, the way it had been at the beginning.
Once he’d fixed his position, Shen Yu folded his long legs and settled deep into the sofa.
He set the takeout on the coffee table without opening it, and instead felt around for a cigarette.
The moment the lighter’s flame died, thick smoke curled through the air in slow, graceful ribbons, and the small, damp room quickly filled with the cold bite of Cuban tobacco — leather and dry grass.
By the time he’d finished the cigarette, his left index finger and thumb pinched the stub and found the ashtray’s rim without a second thought. Cool ceramic grazed his fingertips. The burning ember died against his skin.
After a long while, he took out his phone, navigated to his contacts, and called Fang Cun — the whole sequence smooth and unbroken, barely different from anyone else’s.
His phone ran a screen reader built for the visually impaired. The synthesized male voice was set to triple speed, its pitch sharp enough to grate on ordinary ears, syllables and tones mangled beyond recognition. To him, every word came through clear.
With enough practice, ears could take in information faster than eyes.
The call connected. On the other end: a bar in full roar, bass and shrieking voices crashing through the sweetness of spilled drinks.
Fang Cun looked at the caller ID on his screen and felt his scalp prickle. He clamped a hand over the mic and shoved through the heaving crowd until he made it outside to relative quiet, then let go.
The street was busy. The last of the evening light was retreating, and the lampposts were coming on one by one.
Fang Cun cleared his throat against the night breeze and opened with forced composure: “…Boss. Go ahead.”
His girlfriend’s birthday. A whole group of them had gotten carried away and forgotten to check in with the man himself.
Back in the apartment, Shen Yu was sunk into the sofa. The living room windows were layered with curtains. Around him, and within him, it was completely dark.
He was usually impassive, but the landlord’s patronizing lecture earlier had left a trace of irritation on his face. His tone was equally unfriendly.
“I was gone three months. Your salary kept coming the whole time. And this is what I get? The purchase contract fell through, you stopped paying rent, and the landlord just showed up threatening to throw me out.”
“…”
Fang Cun’s first instinct — even when he’s chewing me out, his voice sounds that good — was swiftly set aside. Then he remembered: this month’s rent for Shengling Yuan had, in fact, slipped his mind entirely.
He was one of Shen Yu’s three assistants. Unlike the other two, who handled professional matters, Fang Cun had a background in nursing and was responsible for Shen Yu’s day-to-day life. The job kept him busy around the clock — always on call, required to flag anything in advance if he needed to step out. The pay, however, was far beyond anything else in the field.
The boss had a bad temper, but he was generous, principled, and never lost his head for no reason.
Fang Cun was hardworking and straightforward. Three years in, things had been smooth enough, and his salary had gone up every year.
Then in early May, Shen Yu had abruptly taken off for a rural area in the northwest for some public interest project, leaving the studio in a pile of unresolved business and refusing to let Fang Cun come along. He’d given him one task: watch the apartment.
Fang Cun had spent his days worried that Old Li would pull something underhanded and sell the place out from under them, so he’d planted himself in the narrow two-bedroom unit and done little else — ordering takeout, lying on the sofa, slowly going stale. No work to speak of, salary landing on time every month, nothing but money and free time. He’d gotten a little too comfortable.
Now the memory of what had happened last year surfaced unbidden: the administrative assistant who’d bungled a voice-acting contract through sheer negligence and been dismissed on the spot. Fang Cun felt his nerve ends go cold.
“I’m sorry. I’ll pay right now.”
He ducked out of the call, transferred three months’ rent in one go, then came back with a dry report: “Done. I’ll call Old Li to confirm in a bit.”
Then he went quiet and waited for the verdict.
After a moment, a light, unhurried “mm” came through the line.
“…?”
The night breeze cut right through Fang Cun’s scalp.
That was it? The boss must be in a decent mood today.
Fang Cun exhaled and steered the conversation somewhere safer. “The purchase is still a bit of a headache. Old Li isn’t hurting for money — that apartment is his golden goose, and he won’t let go of it no matter what we offer. The old lady lived there for over thirty years, tried to buy it multiple times, went thirty percent above asking, and still couldn’t get it done.”
The old lady in question was Shen Yu’s maternal grandmother.
She had opposed her daughter’s marriage to Shen Yu’s father, and over time the two had drifted apart entirely. After retiring, she had rented a unit at Shengling Yuan on her own. It wasn’t that she lacked the savings to buy — Old Li simply refused to sell. And she was old, set in her ways, unwilling to move, so she’d rented for thirty years.
Earlier that year, the boss had finally coaxed her into moving to Linjiang Pavilion, with two helpers arranged to look after her daily needs. But she’d lasted barely six months before complaining the place was too quiet and kicking up a fuss to go back to Shengling Yuan. He couldn’t argue her out of it, so he’d started looking into buying the unit outright.
Shen Yu closed his eyes, tossed his phone onto the coffee table, and switched to speaker. “Everyone has a price — it’s just a matter of how much. He’s been a landlord long enough to know exactly what this property is worth to him. Thirty percent above market isn’t going to beat decades of rental income, especially when prices in this area are still climbing. Offer him twice the market rate, flat.”
“…”
Fang Cun wanted to say ‘sounds like you’re the one who isn’t hurting for money‘, but thought better of it. “Should we work our way up to it? Going straight to double seems like we’re leaving a lot on the table. Maybe he’d fold at fifty percent above.”
Zhoushan was a near-tier-one city. Property prices weren’t cheap. Fifty percent over market might be enough.
“Give someone an inch and they’ll take a mile. Every time you come back with a higher number, you’re just feeding his appetite and his nerve. I don’t have the time or the patience for that.”
Shen Yu kept his tone even. “One price, one deadline, take it or leave it. Be generous with the number and firm on everything else. The money is in your hands, which means the leverage is in your hands. He’s the one who’ll be up at night wondering what to do.”
“Got it.”
It landed like cold water to the face. The boss wasn’t short on money — or on sense.
Fang Cun felt steadier now. His voice lifted. “Don’t worry, I’ll get on it right away. Are you heading back to Linjiang Pavilion? I can have the driver come now.”
The boss normally stayed at the hillside villa there.
Shen Yu paused.
He’d flown back to Zhoushan from the northwest that afternoon. The airport was closer to Shengling Yuan, so he’d had the driver drop him here instead. He’d only meant to check on the place — he hadn’t planned to spend the night.
Not that he found it lacking. He’d lived here through university. Every tile, every corner was familiar ground, and in some ways it felt steadier than the sprawling Linjiang Pavilion. But the apartment had sat empty too long. There was a dampness in some of the rooms, the kind of mildew smell that seeped into corners. It would take a proper cleaning before anyone could live in it comfortably.
Shen Yu tapped a finger lightly against the ashtray. Something crossed his mind, and he changed course.
“Have the housekeeper come by to clean. I’ll be staying here for a while.” He ran a hand over the cheap fabric of the clothes he’d picked up at a market in Qingyuan — the mountain region out west. “Bring a month’s worth of clothes and whatever I’ll need. And take your takeout with you while you’re at it. The smell is overpowering.”
“…”
Fang Cun said yes. Internally, he was mourning the eel rice he’d ordered.
The boss had come back suddenly, and the household chef was still on leave. On top of that, he’d heard from the contacts in Qingyuan that the boss had been particular about food, eating almost nothing out there — just a few spoonfuls of plain white rice alongside the other volunteers each day.
Three months of that, and he’d come back on the edge of malnourished.
So Fang Cun had splurged on takeout — over two hundred yuan for one order — and now it was overpowering?
With taste and smell that precious, he deserved to go hungry.
Before hanging up, the boss added one more request that Fang Cun couldn’t quite make sense of: “…Get me the resident list for the third floor.”
