The chandelier scattered light like shattered diamonds across the Grand Yu Pavilion. Strings swelled, glasses chimed, and every smile in the room was sharpened to a blade. On the towering central screen, a looping reel showed Wen Qingmei in crimson silk, dazzling under camera flashes. The caption beneath it read:
"Mo Liuxian × Wen Qingmei — A Perfect Match."
Bai Xueyi stepped from the shadow of a marble column, invisible in a simple black dress that skimmed her frame like silence. No jewels. No announcement. No name card.
Good, she thought, lips barely curving. The unseen always sees more.
Across the hall, Mo Liuxian stood in a faultless charcoal suit, speaking to city officials with the politeness of a winter blade. His profile—high, ascetic, untouchable—tilted toward the stage but not once toward Wen Qingmei.
Xueyi watched him, not as a woman who had once loved him, but as a strategist reading a rival. He listened without listening. He smiled without warmth. His gaze flicked to the exits every few minutes, as if measuring routes.
Paranoid, President Mo? Or waiting for a ghost?
"Champagne, miss?" A waiter blocked her view with a silver tray.
She took a glass. "Who's handling staff access tonight?"
The waiter blinked, startled by the question. "Head steward, Ma Jian. He—he handles backstage too."
"Good." Xueyi's eyes softened. "Don't spill the tray when the announcement comes."
He paled. "Announcement?"
Her smile didn't reach her eyes. "You'll know."
She moved, unhurried, along the edges of power. Conversations frayed in her wake, curious eyes catching only the outline of a stranger. She paused at the donor wall—plaques naming those who had funded the new children's wing.
MO FINANCIAL EMPIRE — platinum plate.
WEN FOUNDATION — gold plate.
A third name, small, almost hidden beneath floral arrangements:
AURORA CONSORTIUM.
Her fingers stilled. In her previous life she had never noticed that. Aurora—an overseas shell company that appeared in the and-then of police reports but vanished in the therefore. Rumored to be a courier for dangerous favours: special permits, bottles without labels, fires without survivors.
Beneath the floral shade, a card tucked halfway behind the plaque glinted. She slid it free.
A black RFID access card, stamped with the hotel's crest. A handwritten note on the back in quick, angular strokes:
1706 | Service Lift B | 22:10
Her pulse slowed, not quickened. She tucked the card into her clutch.
"Excuse me," a bright voice chimed. Wen Qingmei, surrounded by assistants like petals around a rose. "You're new, aren't you? Which label is that dress? It's… very minimalist."
"It hides bloodstains," Xueyi said mildly.
Laughter fluttered among the assistants, assuming a joke. Only Wen Qingmei's smile twitched, then smoothed, then sharpened. "Enjoy the show." She glided toward the stage, gown a river of red.
Music dimmed. The screen cut to black. The host boomed: "Ladies and gentlemen, tonight we celebrate generosity—and love."
Applause.
Wen Qingmei turned, finding Mo Liuxian at the foot of the steps. He offered his arm. He did it perfectly—elegant, unassailable—and yet something in the gesture looked like a man placing his hand on a door he had already locked.
Xueyi drifted closer, positioning herself where he would see her if he ever looked away from the script.
He didn't.
Wen Qingmei leaned to the microphone, smile radiant. "Tonight, the Mo family and I—"
The ballroom lights flickered.
A murmur rippled. The projection sputtered and flashed—then a still image flooded the screen: an official invoice, stamped, dated, paid.
AURORA CONSORTIUM: INDUSTRIAL SOLVENTS — SPECIAL PERMIT.
Recipient: Grand Yu Pavilion Maintenance.
Delivery: Three days ago.
Gasps. Swift, confused. The host stammered. Wen Qingmei's eyes widened a fraction—then she recovered, laughing like glass. "What a naughty AV team! Testing our attention!"
The image vanished. The gala reel returned. Laughter, shaky but compliant, stumbled after her cue.
Xueyi's mouth tasted like iron. She hadn't planned that reveal. Someone else was moving, too.
She set down her glass, the stem ringing once against silver.
1706. 22:10.
Time: 21:52.
She walked.
Through a service corridor that smelled of lemon cleaner and tired feet, past banquet staff loading canapés with the desperation of people who knew tips disappeared when scandals broke, she found Service Lift B. The RFID card beeped green. The doors sighed shut, counting floors like a quiet prayer.
Seventeenth floor—empty, thin carpet, lights too bright. Room numbers marched evenly along the corridor.
She slid the card again.
Click.
The room was dark but not unoccupied. She didn't turn on the overhead. She found the bathroom by memory of the blue glow from hotel mirrors. Inside the tub: two empty metal drums, their mouths ringed with residue that smelled like last nights and fires that never quite died.
On the counter, a hotel maintenance badge. Next to it, a lighter engraved with a letter: W.
Her hand hovered over the badge. She didn't touch it.
The air shifted behind her.
"Still curious where the smoke began?" A voice—smooth, amused—spoke from the doorway.
Mo Liuxian.
His silhouette filled the bathroom entrance, blocking the hall light, a patient night pressed into a man's shape. He didn't look surprised to find her here, which meant he had either followed her or expected her or both.
Xueyi's heartbeat did not change. She turned, every muscle tranquil, every instinct awake. "President Mo," she said, as if greeting a stranger. "Congratulations on your engagement."
His eyes slid to the metal drums. "You shouldn't be here."
"Neither should industrial solvents at a charity gala," she replied. "Aurora Consortium? Your accountants must have interesting hobbies."
A pause, soft as a breath. "You saw that."
"I see many things now."
Something fractured in his gaze—there and gone in the space between one violin note and the next. He stepped closer. The scent of rain clung to him; beneath it, steel.
"Who are you?" he asked quietly.
She smiled, polite, incurious. "No one worth your attention."
He moved again, closer than polite, his shadow folding over hers. "You're not part of this industry," he said. "You move like backstage staff. But you watch like an auditor."
"And you hypothesize like a man who knows he's being watched," she said. "Tell me, President Mo—are you protecting your gala from a scandal, or a woman from a funeral?"
His jaw tightened. "Leave."
She tilted her head. "Or what? You'll set another room on fire?"
Silence struck like a match.
They stared at each other across the white tile and the ghost of flames. The years between her death and this night pressed close, whispering.
From the hall, footsteps scrambled—hurried, panicked. A man in a maintenance uniform darted past the open door, eyes blown wide. He carried a black duffel with the hotel crest. When he saw Mo Liuxian in the doorway, he froze—then bolted the other way.
Mo moved first.
Xueyi was already there.
She caught the bag strap as it brushed her hip, used his momentum, pivoted, and drove her heel lightly into his shin. He stumbled; the bag tore free and crashed to the floor. The zipper burst, spilling fuse wire, gloves, and a hotel master key set onto the carpet.
The man swore in a local dialect and fled.
Mo didn't chase him. He didn't look impressed that she had tripped a grown man with a dancer's grace. He looked at the master keys.
Then he looked at her.
"You will leave," he said again, lower now, not ice but iron. "And you will forget what you saw."
Xueyi crouched, sifted through the spill without touching, found a folded sheet wedged into the bag's inner seam. She lifted it with the tip of a hairpin.
An event schematic. Red pen had circled "Penthouse Fire Stairs — Locked 22:15–22:45." A second note: "Trigger after toast." Initials at the bottom: W.Q.
She let the paper fall, the hairpin clinking softly on tile. Her eyes met his, calm as winter sky.
"Forget?" she murmured. "President Mo, I remember everything."
From the ballroom below, applause detonated—the toast.
Mo reached for her wrist.
She didn't flinch.
"Who are you," he said, voice rough for the first time, "to walk into my fire and not burn?"
Xueyi's smile was almost kind.
"The woman who died in it," she said.
The lights in the corridor flickered again. Somewhere far below, a door was locking on schedule.
Cliffhanger: The fuse wire in the spilled bag begins to smoke.