Shen Xifan didn't sleep deeply, but for the first time in months, her dreams didn't ache.
They moved slowly.. shadows of trees, glimpses of water, the weight of something soft and unspoken. When she woke, she felt as if she'd traveled somewhere quiet and real. The kind of dream that didn't dissolve when touched by daylight.
It had been one day.
Just one quiet afternoon in a studio lined with stone dust and the scent of old tea.
But something had shifted.
Not in the world. In her.
She sat up in bed slowly, blinked at the pale slats of sunlight stretching across the wall, and pressed a hand lightly to her chest.
The ache was still there.
But it no longer filled her.
By mid-morning, the fog had lifted from Shuǐyuè Zhèn, revealing a pale blue sky so clear it felt unreal. The rooftops shimmered from last night's dew, and vendors began setting up bamboo stools outside shuttered shopfronts, preparing for the slow dance of local life to begin again.
Xifan stood in the center of her courtyard with her hair still damp from a lukewarm shower. She wore a clean linen blouse tucked into soft, worn trousers, sleeves folded to the elbow. A small thermos of tea sat untouched on the stone bench beside her, and her sketchbook was closed, resting on the wall where she'd left it after last night's lantern-light drawing session.
She wasn't sketching today.
Her hands needed to feel something else.
Her feet led her across the lane almost of their own accord.
Xu Jade Studio was quiet when she arrived.
The door stood slightly open, just as it had the day before. Not as an invitation. As an expectation.
She paused briefly at the threshold, her fingers brushing the wood.
Then she stepped inside.
Light filtered through the high windows, casting long rectangles across the wooden floor. The scent of stone dust and something warm,roasted barley, maybe hung gently in the air. At the far end of the room, Xu Songzhuo stood hunched over his table, one hand bracing a block of jade, the other adjusting a clamp.
He didn't look up.
But he said, "You're early."
"Not really," she replied. "You're just always here."
"I like the quiet hours," he said. "Before the town wakes up too much."
"Even the town doesn't talk much," she murmured.
He looked at her now, faint amusement in his eyes. "Then maybe I like it for the company."
She blinked. He wasn't smiling, exactly.. but his voice had changed. Softer. Looser.
She didn't reply. Just walked toward the empty workbench beside him and took her seat.
The tools were already laid out. A fresh linen cloth spread flat. A smaller piece of jade waited, its edges uneven, its center glowing faintly green in the light.
She reached for the chisel with fingers more steady than yesterday's.
He noticed.
"Your grip's better."
"I practiced," she said.
He raised a brow. "With what stone?"
She hesitated, then smiled faintly. "With memory."
They began without further words.
The rhythm returned quickly, tap, pause, breath. The studio filled with the sound of small, deliberate movements. She carved slowly, more sure this time, but still cautious. The chisel bit gently into the edge, shaving delicate fragments away. Stone dust collected in soft curls along the cloth like curled petals.
She stole glances at him.
He worked with more precision than she could imagine—less effort, more focus. Every motion had the quiet authority of someone who had shaped their world by repetition and reverence.
"Do you always carve standing?" she asked quietly.
He didn't look up. "Depends on the piece."
"And when you sit?"
"I only sit when I'm carving things I'm not afraid to ruin."
Her breath caught.
She didn't ask what that meant. Not yet.
An hour passed like water.
They said little.
But the silence held depth.
He occasionally offered a pointer, not instructions, not critiques, just small nudges.
"Less pressure."
"Angle the blade."
"Listen to the resistance."
It reminded her of learning to dance, except here, the rhythm came not from music, but from listening to material instead of melody.
The first time her chisel slipped and scratched too deep, she inhaled sharply and froze.
He looked over, calmly.
"Don't panic," he said.
"I ruined it."
"No," he said. "You interrupted it. That's different."
She frowned.
"Most people think jade is unforgiving," he added, setting down his own blade. "But it's not. It's just honest. If you hurt it, it remembers. But it doesn't stop being beautiful. You just have to work with the mark."
She lowered her gaze to the shallow gash in her carving.
It wasn't deep.
But it stood out like a scar.
Still, she didn't try to hide it.
She carved around it.
By the time they paused for tea, her fingers were coated in fine dust, and her shoulders ached in quiet ways. Xu Songzhuo handed her a towel—still warm from resting near the kettle.
She took it wordlessly.
They sat on the small wooden step at the edge of the studio floor, where the light hit the boards just right. Her mug was chipped. He had a jade handle.
"This is going to sound strange," she said after a while, "but I keep expecting a camera crew to walk in."
He looked at her. "Even here?"
She nodded. "Especially here."
"Why?"
"Because this feels like the part of the story you never get to see. The quiet chapter. The breath before the storm."
He was silent for a moment.
Then: "So you think this is temporary?"
She hesitated.
"I don't know."
He took a sip from his cup.
"I used to think peace was something you earned," he said quietly. "After enough struggle. After enough proving."
She watched his profile, the way his jaw clenched ever so slightly.
"But now," he said, "I think peace is just something you agree to. You choose it. Like picking up a chisel."
She turned to him. "Have you always chosen it?"
He met her eyes.
"No."
The tea had gone cold between them, but neither reached to refill it.
Outside, the town was waking slowly. She could hear the faint rattle of carts being pulled across the cobblestones, the squawk of birds overhead, the clatter of a mop bucket down the alley. The world was moving. But here, they were suspended.
Stillness had become its own kind of gravity.
Shen Xifan held her mug loosely between her hands. The clay was cool now, but the rim was still faintly stained with steam.
"I used to think I could outwork the noise," she said suddenly.
Xu Songzhuo turned toward her, quietly alert.
"I thought," she continued, "if I worked harder, smiled brighter, hit every mark, they'd stop questioning why I got to be where I was. As if effort could make the voices stop."
He didn't interrupt.
She didn't need prompting.
"I memorized entire scripts in one night. I answered every question with a soft voice and folded hands. I swallowed back anger. Even when I wanted to scream, I gave them grace."
She paused.
"I did everything right."
Her voice didn't rise, but something in her chest trembled.
"And still," she whispered, "all it took was one lie. One photo. One headline."
He didn't move. But she felt his attention sharpen, like a knife gently turned.
"I lost everything overnight," she said. "Endorsements. Projects. People I thought were friends. Even my agent told me to go quiet. Let the heat pass. But it didn't. It just… burned through everything."
She finally looked up at him.
"I'm not asking you to understand. I just—"
"I do," he said.
She blinked.
His voice was low, steady. "You were carved into someone else's story."
She hadn't expected those words.
Something in her throat closed.
And then—softly, without ceremony—he reached out and brushed a speck of dust from her sleeve.
Not her hand.
Not her face.
Her sleeve.
But it was the first time he touched her—without gloves of silence.
She stood not long after that.
The air had grown heavier with sunlight. Shadows now curved across the floor, long and leaning. The smell of stone was thicker near the benches, mingling with the faint scent of linseed oil and warm clay.
"Can I try something different?" she asked, her voice steadier now.
He didn't ask what.
Just nodded.
She walked to the far corner of the studio, where an old seal press sat beside a faded scroll. It was a corner she hadn't examined yesterday—a shelf of inkstones, a few trial carvings, a large block of uncut jade resting like a waiting heart.
She looked over her shoulder. "What were you making here?"
"That?" he asked. "Nothing."
She raised a brow.
He added, "I started and stopped. Couldn't hear what it wanted to become."
She reached for the block and ran her fingers along the edge. Cool. Smooth. Slightly veined.
Then: "Can I draw on it?"
"Draw?"
"Not with ink," she said, pulling a charcoal pencil from her satchel. "Just outlines. I think… I think I want to see what happens if I map something that doesn't have a face yet."
He stepped back, giving her space.
She crouched on the floor beside the block and began sketching directly onto the surface. Her hand moved slowly at first, testing angles, following grain. A curl of a sleeve. The sweep of the neck. The bend of a shoulder leaning forward into light.
When she finished, she sat back and exhaled.
It was him.
Not clearly.
Not literally.
But it was the shape of what she saw when she closed her eyes and remembered how he stood when he was unaware of being seen.
He walked over silently and stood behind her.
He didn't speak.
But he looked for a long time.
Finally, he said, "I've never let anyone do that."
"Draw on your stone?"
"Be part of the beginning."
They stayed like that for a while.
Then she asked, "Do you ever feel like some things can't be fixed?"
He thought for a long time.
Then: "No."
She looked at him, surprised.
"I don't think it's about fixing," he said. "Some things aren't meant to go back to what they were."
He stepped closer, and for a moment, his hand hovered near her shoulder.
But he didn't touch her again.
He only said, "I think the cracks are where the light gets in."
Later, they sat outside the studio.
The back of Xu Jade Studio opened into a narrow terrace framed by low bamboo fencing and shaded by a lean willow. It wasn't fancy, just two stools, a worn clay planter filled with forgotten herbs, and a bamboo water ladle resting on a nail. But it felt open. Private. Like a held breath between one moment and the next.
Xifan sat with her knees pulled up slightly, elbows resting atop them, her sketchbook balanced on one thigh. She didn't draw at first. Just breathed in the scent of drying stone and green tea leaves that had been poured out over the soil.
Xu sat beside her, a wooden mug in hand. He drank slowly, like everything else he did.
She spoke first.
"You don't laugh very often."
He raised a brow.
"I mean, not loudly," she added. "But you do… smile. With your eyes."
His gaze slid toward her. "You're the first person to say that."
"I doubt that."
"No," he said with faint amusement. "Most people are too busy watching my hands."
She smiled, half-twisting to face him. "Do you want to know what I used to hate most about being famous?"
He tilted his head. "What?"
"When people watched me like they were entitled to me," she said. "Like my face was theirs to interpret. And when I gave them quiet, they decided it was arrogance. When I gave them honesty, they called it weakness."
He looked at her, gaze steady.
"I know the feeling," he said.
"You do?"
He turned the mug in his hand. "When I first took over the studio after my grandfather passed, collectors would come just to test me. They'd bring stones with flaws and say they were heirloom-grade. They wanted me to argue. Or fail. Or make something too clean, so they could say I lacked soul."
"And did you?"
"No." He smiled faintly. "But I let them think I might. Just long enough to see who was really listening."
She laughed, lightly, for the first time all day.
It startled her.
And startled him too, by the way his eyes widened slightly, the corners of his mouth lifting, not quite into a smile, but into something warmer.
She opened her sketchbook then.
This time, deliberately.
"May I?" she asked, already placing the tip of her pencil to the page.
He didn't answer with words.
He just sat still.
Not stiff — still.
The way trees grow in place without asking if they're beautiful.
She drew.
His profile first. The curve of his jaw. The angle of his neck, slightly turned. The way one of his hands rested loosely over his knee. She didn't rush. She didn't exaggerate.
When she finished the first pass, she glanced up.
He hadn't moved.
But his gaze was on her sketchbook now.
"You drew me again," he said softly.
"This time on purpose."
He looked at her.
"Does it feel different," she asked, "being seen when you know it's happening?"
He thought for a long time.
Then: "Not if it's you."
Her fingers froze.
Not her whole body.
Just her hand — the part of her that could still be startled by gentleness.
She lowered the pencil slowly.
Their eyes met.
And at that moment, for the first time, she didn't feel like someone was recovering from being broken.
She felt seen.
Not for what she used to be.
Not even for who she might become.
Just… as she was.
The moment stretched long.
A breeze passed through the bamboo, rustling the old stalks. Light caught in the shallow basin of the water ladle, casting ripples onto the wall.
She could have said something.
He could have too.
But neither did.
Because stillness — this kind of stillness — was a choice.
When she finally stood to leave, the sky had turned from gold to indigo.
She placed the sketch into her satchel without tearing the page. She didn't need to give it to him. He already had the version that mattered.
He rose with her, but didn't follow.
She turned at the gate.
"Same time tomorrow?"
"If you come," he said, "I'll be here."
She nodded.
Then paused.
"I don't think I've told you," she said.
"Told me what?"
"That this is the first time I've ever… learned something slowly."
He held her gaze.
"And you?" she asked, quietly.
He said nothing.
But after a moment, his answer came in a way only she could hear.
Not in words.
In stillness.
In the silence between them.
He remained there long after she had walked away.