The light in Lin Zhengyin's study was still on. Meng Minxin had been temporarily settled into the guest room—a space dominated by pale grey and off-white, so clean and orderly it almost contained no trace of human life. Like a suite in a high-end hotel, polite yet distant. She lay on the bed, the mattress soft beneath her, but it couldn't absorb the stiffness and coldness that clung to her body.
The sharp accusations from Lin Guang in the living room, her daughter Lin Xin's silent back, and the heavy mixture of ecstasy and anguish in Lin Zhengyin's eyes kept looping through her mind like a lantern carousel.
She had come home, and yet she felt trapped inside a transparent shell. The house was both familiar and strange; her husband familiar yet aged; the children… She hardly dared think about the two youthful figures who now looked at her with hostility and alienation.
She did not know how much time had passed when soft footsteps stopped outside her door. The doorknob turned quietly.
Meng Minxin immediately closed her eyes, slowing her breath.
The door opened just a crack, the hallway light slicing a long, narrow streak across the floor. Lin Zhengyin did not step inside; he simply stood at the doorway in silence. She could feel his gaze resting on her for a long, careful moment, as though confirming that her presence was not a midnight hallucination. His eyes held too much weight—so much that it nearly suffocated her.
At last, the door was gently pulled shut. His footsteps drifted away—not toward the master bedroom, but seemingly back to the study.
Meng Minxin opened her eyes again, staring at the blurred shadows on the ceiling. A nameless impulse seized her. She got up quietly, her bare feet touching the cool floor, and without turning on any lights, she slowly opened the guest-room door.
The hallway was silent. A faint glow seeped from beneath the study door. The master bedroom door stood slightly ajar.
Her heartbeat suddenly quickened. That was their room—hers and Lin Zhengyin's. Fifteen years ago, and… apparently still now?
As if pulled by invisible threads, she gently pushed the master-bedroom door open.
The curtains were not fully drawn; the city's light pollution filtered through the glass, draping the room in a misty, gray-blue haze. The layout hadn't changed much, though the furniture was clearly newer. The bed was larger, more minimalist. The wardrobe was built-in. The air carried his familiar, faint, cool-toned cologne—subtle, yet everywhere.
Then her gaze landed on the corner near the window.
There stood her dressing table.
Yes—hers. The one she and Lin Zhengyin had bought together at a secondhand furniture market fifteen years ago. Beechwood, simple design, its corners softened by time. The pale lavender embroidered cloth on the tabletop was something her mother had left her. Everything on it was arranged neatly—almost unnaturally so.
A peach-wood comb, with no trace of a single strand of hair between the teeth. A half-used bottle of lotion, its surface polished spotless. A rattan jewelry box, the carved lotus on its lid still clear. A ceramic pen holder holding several sharpened drawing pencils she used. And an oval mirror, its surface gleaming, reflecting her pale, stunned face.
Everything was exactly as it had been the morning she "left." Even the angle of the lotion's cap, the placement of her favorite 2B pencil—frozen in time.
No—not frozen.
Maintained.
Preserved.
Her fingers trembled as she touched the smooth tabletop—spotless. Then she noticed the floor beside the dressing table: a small vacuum-nozzle attachment, clearly used to clean tight corners. Next to it, a neatly folded microfiber cloth.
He hadn't simply left things untouched.
He had been cleaning—day after day, year after year—maintaining this corner exactly as it once was.
Like a devout believer tending to a shrine of a deity who no longer answered.
The tears surged without warning—not shock, not grievance, but a deeper, sharper ache that spread from the core of her being. She bit her lip hard to stifle the sound, her body trembling as she slid down the side of the dressing table to the cold floor.
Fifteen years. Over five thousand days.
With what kind of heart had he come into this room, morning or night, silently wiping and dusting? Was it hope? Despair? Habit? Or fear—fear that letting even a speck of dust settle might sever the last fragile thread connecting them?
She remembered Lin Guang's words: "Everything of hers stays exactly as it was."
So that was the truth.
It wasn't simply "left untouched."
It was worship.
It was imprisonment.
It was a man's clumsy yet relentless resistance against time and forgetting.
Soft footsteps approached, stopping at the doorway.
Through her blurred vision, Meng Minxin saw Lin Zhengyin standing there. He hadn't turned on the lights. In the faint city glow, he looked at her sitting on the floor beside the dressing table. His expression held no surprise—only a bottomless fatigue, and the naked calm of someone whose secret had finally been seen through.
"I…" Her voice broke before she could say a word.
He walked in, his steps soft. He didn't help her up. Instead, he lowered himself slowly, sitting beside her on the floor, leaning against the same dressing table. There was a small gap between them, yet the cramped space and shared memories made them feel unbearably close.
"Got used to it," he said, his voice rough and low, as though unused to speaking. "Sometimes I can't sleep, or things feel… unbearable. Then I come and wipe it down a bit. Feels like… I can be closer to you that way."
He gave a faint, self-mocking curve of his lips. "Stupid, isn't it?"
Meng Minxin shook her head violently, tears scattering. She wanted to say I'm sorry, say thank you for waiting, but nothing would come out. She could only reach out—tentative, trembling—and take his hand resting on his knee.
His hand was cool, the joints prominent, his palm slightly calloused. The moment she touched him, he flinched almost imperceptibly, then slowly closed his fingers around hers—a grip tightening like someone catching a lifeline.
They sat like that on the cold floor, backs against the dressing table, sharing the vast, silent void left by fifteen years of separation. The still objects on the tabletop became the heaviest, quietest witnesses.
After a long time, footsteps sounded down the hall—Lin Guang waking to use the bathroom. His steps paused briefly outside the bedroom.
Neither of them moved. Neither let go.
The footsteps resumed, heavier this time, tinted with displeasure. The guest-room door shut—not lightly.
Lin Zhengyin breathed out softly, a breath heavy with exhaustion.
"Guang… he…"
Meng Minxin's voice was hoarse.
"He misses you," Lin Zhengyin cut in, certain and steady. "When he was little, he cried for you every day. Slept hugging your shirt. Later, he stopped crying, but he'd secretly look at your photos and videos. Then he got older… and turned into this."
A pause.
"Anger sometimes means caring too much, and not knowing how to face loss… or getting something back."
"And Xin Xin?"
Meng Minxin asked, her chest tightening.
This time, Lin Zhengyin stayed silent longer. "Xin Xin… rarely mentions you. It's like she accepted it, and yet never did. She turned very quiet. Likes drawing, but the things she draws…"
He didn't finish.
"She's not close to me either. This house… most days it feels like a tomb."
The word tomb made her entire body tremble.
"I'm sorry…" she finally whispered, the words fragile, meaningless against the weight of the past.
He turned to her. His gaze was complex—pain, tenderness, years of weariness—but not blame.
"Don't apologize," he said softly. He brushed aside the tear-wet strands of hair sticking to her face. His fingers were warm and slightly rough, trembling faintly.
"If these fifteen years were spent somewhere suffering, then I should be the one apologizing—for not finding you. If… if this was truly an accident we can't explain," his voice cracked, "then no one is at fault. Only fate, playing a cruel joke."
"But Guang and Xin Xin…"
Her tears fell again.
"We'll take it slow," he said, firmer this time. "You, me, them. Fifteen years is too long—it changes everything. But as long as we're under the same roof, we'll find a way."
He braced himself on the dressing table and stood, legs tinged with numbness. Then he offered her his hand.
She looked at that hand—the hand that had waited fifteen years, had wiped this table through five thousand nights—and placed her own in it.
He pulled her gently to her feet. They stood face-to-face, so close they could feel each other's breath.
"Go rest," he murmured. "It's late. Tomorrow…" He trailed off—uncertain how tomorrow should begin.
"…Tomorrow we'll deal with it."
Meng Minxin nodded and let go. His warmth lingered on her palm.
At the doorway, she turned back.
He still stood by the dressing table, his silhouette dim and solitary. His hand drifted unconsciously across the smooth surface—an absent-minded caress, tender and fragile.
That night, she lay awake in the unfamiliar bed.
Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw Lin Guang's cold gaze, Lin Xin's silent profile, and Lin Zhengyin's exhausted figure beside the dressing table.
This home was filled with her traces, yet it shut her out at every turn.
And the untouched dressing table—warm as an altar, cold as a gravestone—silently told the story of a long wait and an agonizing reunion.
Fifteen years of lost time—how could it ever truly be bridged?
She didn't know.
But one thing was certain: someone had spent five thousand days proving she had never been forgotten.