The rain followed her home.
It beaded on the black umbrella she didn't remember opening; it hissed against the tires as Jinyu's car cut through the wet streets; it clung to the edges of her consciousness like a soundtrack she couldn't mute.
Sheng Anqi stared out the passenger window, a blurred river of neon sliding up the glass with each red light they passed. The city was a smear of motion and color, a familiar painting suddenly made strange—like someone had shifted the frame by a few centimeters.
"Anqi."
Jinyu's voice cut through the hush of the car, low and even.
She blinked once, slow. Realized the light had turned green, and they weren't moving.
He was watching her instead of the road, one hand on the wheel, the other hovering near the hazard light as though he didn't trust himself not to just park in the middle of the intersection and wait her out.
"You're scaring the drivers behind us," he said. Dry. Almost casual.
Almost.
She forced a breath into her lungs. "Drive."
He made a soft noise, not quite a sigh. The car eased forward. The city resumed its slow unfurling.
The message still sat pinned at the top of their group chat, its polite detachment burning hotter than any argument.
Starting next month, I'll be unavailable for after-hours consultations.
Li Xian, who answered emails at 3 a.m. without complaint.
Li Xian, who had re-routed an entire construction schedule once so she wouldn't lose a pitch.
Li Xian, who had somehow learned the exact kind of black coffee she drank when she was about to cry and appeared with it before she could.
Unavailable.
The word tasted foreign. He had always been the opposite of that—overly available, in her way, unavoidable. A constant presence, like the hum of the city outside. Annoying, sometimes, sure. But there.
She stared down at the screen again, thumb hovering over the keyboard.
[You're joking, right?]
[What's with the corporate tone?]
[Did someone steal your phone?]
None of the drafts were right. All of them felt like negotiation, like acknowledging that a line had been drawn.
She wasn't ready to concede there was a line.
Beside her, Jinyu shifted in his seat. "You're going to wear a hole in the glass," he said. "Keep glaring at it like that."
"Why did he send it to you too?" she asked, ignoring the jab. "You don't even work with him."
"I work with you," he replied. "That's close enough."
The car turned into her neighborhood—a quiet enclave of mid-rise buildings and manicured trees, a pocket of curated calm carved out of chaos. Streetlights cast pale cones on wet asphalt, reflections doubling the world upside down.
"He could've just told me," she muttered.
"You did just turn down his architectural love confession in front of three board members and a very expensive espresso machine," Jinyu said. "Maybe he thought an email was safer."
"It wasn't an architectural love confession," she snapped. Too fast. Too sharp. The words bounced around the car and came back thinner. "It was… impractical."
"A custom-designed house," he listed. "On the exact piece of land you bookmarked three years ago and forgot about. With your exact preferred layout for a home office that you never mentioned out loud. And a kitchen that could probably win design awards."
He paused.
"And a balcony facing east because you like sunrise more than sunset but refuse to admit it since it sounds less dramatic."
She hated him a little in that moment, for remembering. For layering Xian's gesture in specifics she'd chosen to ignore.
"It was too much," she said finally, pushing the words out through clenched teeth. "He makes everything into… obligation. I didn't ask for it."
"Yeah, that's kind of his thing," Jinyu said. "He shows up. You pretend you don't notice. The universe doesn't implode. Everybody wins."
But he didn't say it lightly. His hands were too tight on the steering wheel.
The car rolled to a smooth stop in front of her building. The rain had softened to a steady whisper, like the city was trying to apologize for earlier.
Anqi stared up at the familiar facade. The lobby lights glowed warm, inviting. The elevator would hum obligingly when she pressed her floor. Her apartment would be exactly as she left it: neat, efficient, functional.
Empty.
He used to beat her here, sometimes. On nights when she worked late and forgot to eat, he'd be leaning by the elevator with a box of takeout, pretending he had another appointment in the building. Once, when her hallway light had gone out and she'd filed a maintenance request then forgotten about it, he'd somehow arranged for a new fixture to be installed—sleeker, nicer, brighter than before.
Too much. Always too much.
She'd said that to his face this afternoon. The look in his eyes, right after she rejected the house… It hadn't been anger. It had been something worse. That quiet, resigned kind of hurt that made you feel like a villain for breathing.
She unbuckled her seatbelt with unnecessary precision. "I'm fine," she said. "You don't have to walk me up."
"Didn't plan to," Jinyu replied, too fast for it to be entirely true. "You'd only slam the door in my face if I tried to test your smoke detectors."
She almost smiled. Almost.
Her phone buzzed again as she reached for the door.
[Meilin]: Don't call him tonight.
[Meilin]: Let him breathe.
A beat.
[Meilin]: For once.
There was no kiss emoji, no dramatic meme. Just that—blunt, raw, edged with protectiveness that made Anqi's chest ache.
She didn't reply. Couldn't.
"Are you going to talk to him?" Jinyu asked quietly.
She stared at the faint reflection of her own face in the window. The woman staring back looked tired. Guarded. Not someone who inspired grand gestures. Someone who shut them down.
"I don't owe him anything," she said.
It came out flat. Even to her own ears, it sounded less like conviction and more like a reminder she'd repeated too many times.
Jinyu watched her for a long moment, his gaze too perceptive for comfort. "No," he said. "You don't."
He let that hang in the air, weighty and sharp, before adding, "But he doesn't owe you his presence either."
The words landed like a cold hand pressed to the back of her neck.
She opened the door without answering.
The rain was colder than she expected. It hit her cheeks, slid down the back of her collar, pricked at her wrists where her sleeves rode up. She didn't raise her umbrella until the second step toward the entrance.
Behind her, the car didn't move. She knew he was waiting to see her go inside. It was what he always did.
Presence, she thought bitterly, came in flavors. Xian's had been large, encompassing—like a structure built around her. Jinyu's was quieter, threaded into the seams of her days. The city's was constant; the company's, demanding.
Her own presence, she realized, felt like a closed door.
The sliding lobby doors acknowledged her with a soft chime. The receptionist glanced up, offered a nod, then went back to the muted drama playing out on his tablet.
She rode the elevator alone. The fluorescent light was too clean, the mirrored walls too revealing. Her phone weighed heavy in her hand.
She refused, stubbornly, to scroll up in the chat and see the older messages—the ones from last week, last month, last year.
[Li Xian]: You left your presentation notes at the café. Putting them in your mailbox.
[Li Xian]: Try not to fire your assistant for your own mistake again. :)
[Li Xian]: The coffee machine in your office is making a weird sound. Unplugged it, told maintenance. Don't drink anything it brews unless you want to meet your ancestors.
Stupid, gentle jokes. Practical reminders. Little acts of maintenance—of her life, her sanity, her space.
The elevator dinged. Her floor.
As she walked down the hallway, the new light outside her door flicked on automatically, bright and efficient.
He'd picked that fixture, she thought suddenly. She didn't know it for fact, but it felt true all the way down to her bones. The building management, the way the installation had been expedited and done in an afternoon—only someone with influence and an obsessive streak would bother.
She stood in that pool of light for one long, suspended second.
Then she unlocked the door and stepped into the absence he'd left.
***
On the other side of the city, forty-two floors above the rain-slick streets, Li Xian sat alone in a conference room designed for twelve.
The skyline sprawled beyond the glass, a grid of luminous towers and pulsing signs. Inside, the room smelled faintly of marker ink and coffee grounds and that sterile, recirculated air corporate towers shared, no matter the city.
The folder on the table, with her name on it, remained where he had left it.
He had not moved it.
He had not thrown it away either.
The overhead lights hummed softly. His reflection in the glass looked like a ghost—solid and translucent all at once. His tie was still perfectly knotted, his posture straight, his hands folded neatly on the table.
Everything about him said control.
Inside, there was only empty space.
He had learned young that love was not what you said, or even what you felt. Love was attendance. Love was staying until the end of the recital, even if you were tired. Love was driving across town at midnight with soup because someone coughed in a phone call.
His parents had never said the words. They had simply been there.
He had taken that lesson and refined it into a principle. Show up. Fix things. Be the momentum that keeps other people's lives from veering off course.
For three years, Sheng Anqi's orbit had been his primary project.
Reminding her to eat. Scheduling around her worst habits. Watching the fault lines in her voice when she said she was "fine" and quietly reinforcing the ground before it broke.
The house had been… inevitable, in a way. The culmination of every carefully hoarded observation, each mental note about her preferences, her invisible flinches, her tiny, guilty indulgences.
A sanctuary, tailored to her the way his blueprints were tailored to wind and light.
"Too much," she had said, the words cutting clean through the air.
He had expected that, intellectually. She was consistent in her resistance. He'd prepared himself for a struggle, perhaps even for temporary anger.
He had not prepared for the bone-deep exhaustion that followed.
It wasn't the refusal itself. It was the look in her eyes when she said it—the faint flicker of fear, as though he'd handed her a noose disguised as a key.
He realized, then, that she didn't see his presence as structure.
She saw it as pressure.
You noticed, didn't you?
Meilin's words echoed dully in his memory. She had barreled into his office after the meeting, hair half pinned, eyeliner perfect and eyes wild.
"You can't keep doing this," she'd hissed. "You're disappearing. Piece by piece."
He'd brushed her off, then. He always had more work. More meetings. More emergencies to manage.
Now, for the first time in years, he had given himself nothing to do.
He reached for his phone, thumb hovering over the familiar chat.
Three dots would mean Anqi was typing.
There were no dots.
He breathed out, slow. Set the phone face down.
"Enough," he said quietly, to the empty room.
Not to her. Not really. To himself.
He thought of childhood nights when his parents had stumbled in, exhausted but present, placing their briefcases by the door with ritual precision. He thought of all the times he'd resented their absences at school events, only to realize later that they'd been present in other ways— mortgage payments, tuition, a home that never felt precarious.
He had inverted that, overcorrected. Made himself omnipresent. Essential.
Somewhere along the line, he had stopped noticing the cost.
His phone buzzed.
[Meilin]: Are you still at the office?
[Meilin]: Don't sleep there. Mom will haunt me if you get sick.
He stared at the messages. Typed, then erased, then typed again.
[Li Xian]: I'm leaving soon.
A small lie. Or a future promise.
He did not mention the after-hours message. He didn't owe her an explanation, he told himself. Boundaries were allowed to be quiet.
But Meilin knew him too well.
[Meilin]: Good.
[Meilin]: And… you did the right thing.
He exhaled, a breath that felt like it had been held since the first time he'd offered Anqi a ride and she'd almost refused on principle.
He did not ask if Anqi was with her. He did not ask if she'd reacted.
He was tired of centering his gravity around someone who ran from the warmth as if it were fire.
His eyes drifted back to the folder.
If he closed it, if he shelved this project, it would be the first thing in years he'd started for someone else and not finished.
The thought made his fingers itch.
He left it on the table and stood up. The rain outside had thinned to a fine mist, the city softened at the edges. In the glass, his reflection moved with him, a faint, obedient echo.
"Unavailable," he murmured.
The word felt strange in his mouth. He was still learning how to wear it.
***
Across town, a different screen lit up in a different darkness.
Li Meilin lay sprawled on her king-sized bed in an apartment designed more for showing than living—floor-to-ceiling windows, curated art, the soft glow of strategically placed ambient lighting. Shopping bags lay open on the chaise lounge, luxury logos spilling out like confetti.
Her ring light stood off to one side, a pale halo waiting to be summoned.
She should have been reviewing brand briefs or editing the afternoon's shoot footage. Instead, she stared at her brother's message.
I'll be unavailable for after-hours consultations.
She'd read it so many times the words had lost shape, turned into abstract strokes.
"Coward," she muttered—not at him, but at the way he'd phrased it. So neat. So professional. No blame. No heat.
He'd drawn a line in the quietest ink possible.
Her notifications counter ticked upward in the corner of the screen—comments, likes, messages, tags. Hundreds of people demanding her presence, her image, her curated chaos.
None of them could see the pit in her stomach.
She thumbed into another chat. One that was supposed to stay as empty as possible.
[Meilin]: Are you awake?
The three dots appeared almost instantly.
[Han Jinyu]: No.
Her lips twitched despite herself.
[Meilin]: He sent it.
[Han Jinyu]: I know.
Of course he knew. They'd both received it. At the same time, like a tiny bomb detonating in the three-sided ecosystem they'd built.
[Meilin]: She looked like someone unplugged her.
[Han Jinyu]: Observant, for someone who was threatening to throw a latte at her 20 minutes earlier.
Meilin rolled onto her back, staring up at the ceiling. "I hate her," she said—to the room, to the city, to no one.
Hate was easier than naming the other thing: the grudging understanding that came from recognizing the same brittleness in someone else.
She hated how Anqi took Xian for granted. She hated how her brother gave and gave and wore himself down to bone and blueprint.
And she hated, just a little, how familiar that pattern felt. How many partnerships she'd drained for content. How many friends she'd let orbit until they burned out.
[Meilin]: I told her not to call him.
[Han Jinyu]: She won't.
[Meilin]: That's what I'm afraid of.
The cursor blinked on the new line, waiting.
She typed slowly, forcing each word through fingers that wanted to curl into fists.
[Meilin]: We should talk.
[Han Jinyu]: About?
[Meilin]: The thing we agreed never to talk about.
A moment. She could almost see him blinking behind his glasses, expression flat, mind racing.
[Han Jinyu]: The thing where we woke up in your hotel suite with matching headaches and no clothes?
[Meilin]: And the thing where your landlord thinks I'm Mrs. Han now, yes.
[Han Jinyu]: Specificity is important in communication.
Her laugh came out choked. The memory flashed, unbidden: the taste of cheap whisky, the blur of his profile against city lights, her own voice slurring something like, "He chose her over himself," before the world tilted.
Then morning. The sheets. The pounding in her skull. His horrified politeness as they both scrambled for scattered clothing.
The contract had come later. Calm, rational, typed in bullet points.
Mutual non-disclosure. Fixed-term marriage. Public appearances on her schedule. A quiet influx of funds into his account to cover the family debt he'd been pretending didn't exist.
She had framed it as a brand strategy on her end—a shield against rumors, a way to control her narrative. For him, it had been logistics. Survival.
For both of them, it had been a way not to feel anything too closely.
[Meilin]: We can't let this blow up right now. Not when my brother is… doing this.
[Han Jinyu]: "This" meaning finally acting like a human with boundaries?
[Meilin]: Don't be smug. It doesn't suit you.
[Han Jinyu]: I'm not smug. I'm horrified. If he sets a precedent, you might start respecting other people's limits too.
She stared at the text, at the calmness layered over his dry humor.
She wondered if Anqi knew about the loan notices stacked under his microwave. About the way he hedged every coffee invitation, calculating the cost down to the yuan.
Of course she didn't. That was the point.
[Meilin]: We're agreed, then. No telling her.
[Han Jinyu]: We were already agreed.
[Meilin]: I'm re-agreeing. Aggressively.
[Han Jinyu]: Noted.
Her fingers hovered.
[Meilin]: And you'll… be around him? At work?
[Han Jinyu]: Occasionally. Our departments overlap.
[Meilin]: Watch him. If he starts doing that thing where he smiles too much, he's not okay.
[Han Jinyu]: You realize you're asking me to spy on your brother while married to me in secret, to protect him from your best friend who doesn't know any of this?
[Meilin]: Congratulations, you summarized the situation.
[Han Jinyu]: It sounds like the worst drama ever written.
[Meilin]: Trust me, the casting is great.
She could almost feel his exasperation through the screen.
She hesitated, then added:
[Meilin]: And…
[Meilin]: Don't let him go back. If he tries.
[Han Jinyu]: To her?
[Meilin]: To that version of himself.
The three dots lingered, vanished, came back.
[Han Jinyu]: I'll try.
[Han Jinyu]: But he's not like you. He doesn't know how to disappear from people he loves.
She rolled onto her side, curling into the duvet as if it were a shield.
The city outside glittered and pulsed, alive and indifferent.
"So we vanish for him, then," she whispered to the dark.
On her finger, the thin band she'd slipped on in a notary's office—a ring chosen for discretion, not aesthetics—caught a shard of city light and glinted.
A prop. A legal instrument.
A promise she was not supposed to feel pressing against her skin.
She turned her phone off and closed her eyes.
Somewhere across the river, her brother was learning how to occupy his own absence.
Somewhere closer, in a building where the hallway lights shone too bright, Sheng Anqi stood in the center of her immaculate living room, phone in hand, staring at a chat that had gone abruptly professional.
She typed a single word.
[Okay.]
No punctuation. No greeting. No protest.
Her thumb hovered over the send button.
Then, slowly, she backspaced until the screen was blank again.
She placed the phone face down on the coffee table.
Outside, the rain finally stopped.
The city inhaled.
In the hollow that opened where his presence had always been, something quiet and unfamiliar stirred.
Not yet regret.
Not yet.
But the first, faint awareness of space—of how much of her life had been scaffolded by a man she'd treated like a convenient safety net.
The silence around her grew loud.
And somewhere, in the angles between their separate apartments, their separate beds, their separate screens, the absence they had all created together began to take shape:
Invisible, weighty, patient.
Waiting for someone—anyone—to move first.