"Boss, do you have sixty seconds to not assassinate the messenger?"
Chen Rui's voice was careful, his smile missing. He stood in the doorway of the CEO's office, tablet clutched like a shield.
Gu Ze Yan looked up from his desk, calm as glass. "Forty."
Chen Rui hesitated, then spoke each word like stepping on thin ice. "Dr. He called. Haiyun District People's Hospital. They brought in a woman from a traffic scene. Concussion, minor injuries. Stable."
The river outside kept shining; the city kept moving. Only the air in the room shifted.
Chen Rui lowered his voice. "He thinks it might be… her."
Silence.
For five years, Gu Ze Yan had carried storms under clear skies. He had built a company, raised an empire, smiled for boardrooms and dinners. He was the CEO people whispered about: cold, brilliant, untouchable. To the world, he was flawless steel.
But inside—
The old earth tilted. The pulse that had never faltered skipped once.
"What room?" he asked, his tone steady.
"Observation. He'll meet you at triage." Chen Rui tried for a grin and let it die. "He also said… to breathe."
"Keys," Ze Yan said.
"In your pocket." Chen Rui had put them there after the morning sync—because he had been braced for this call for years, too.
Ze Yan rose. Jacket. Phone. The book on his desk slid into his bag without him seeing the cover. He turned off the lamp he didn't need, shut the window on the noon light he couldn't feel.
"Do I call anyone?" Chen Rui asked carefully. "Legal? PR? Shen Qiao?"
"No."
"Your sister?"
"No."
"Do you want me to drive?"
"No."
They reached the door. Chen Rui opened his mouth, then closed it. Finally, softer: "Boss… it's okay to—"
Ze Yan looked at him. The calm in his eyes was a blade.
"I know," he said.
He stepped into the corridor. Past the glass walls where employees froze without knowing why. Past reception where the guard sat straighter as if the air had changed. Into the elevator that swallowed him whole.
Chen Rui exhaled only when the cables began to sing. He texted three words to a contact saved as Blue Pajamas: On his way.
The elevator dropped. The city tilted like falling.
Lunch crowds lifted lids. Taxis blinked. Office plants hummed quietly under artificial green.
And across the river, in a hospital bed under buzzing fluorescent light, lay the woman he hadn't seen in five years.
Lin Qing Yun.
Would she open her eyes to remember him—
or to forget him all over again?