Sometime past midnight, Lin woke.
The alcohol had mostly worn off, leaving a dull clarity behind. Fragments of the evening returned slowly—blurry at first, then sharper.
She remembered Yeh kneeling beside the bed, wiping away her makeup.
And she knew exactly why she had drunk more than usual that night.
"In real life, I don't."
Yeh hadn't said it casually. Lin could still hear the pause before it, the way Yeh had leaned closer when she spoke.
That wasn't the tone of someone brushing a question aside.
Precisely because it had sounded sincere, it left nowhere to place the feeling it created.
Lin lay back against the headboard and began replaying the evening.
The brief hesitation in Yeh's eyes when she looked at her. The look that seemed to weigh something—then let it go. And those few seconds afterward, when the air between them had cooled almost noticeably.
Yeh hadn't said no.
She had only said—not in real life.
In some ways that was worse.
Like leaving a door open, while quietly making it clear the room beyond wasn't meant for you.
Lin closed her eyes.
The sharpness of her disappointment surprised her. Not because she had been rejected, but because somewhere along the way she had already placed Yeh in the category of possible.
And now that possibility had been gently removed.
Her mind drifted to the two actresses they had cast earlier that day. They had done nothing extraordinary—simply stood beside each other—yet the room had shifted.
That was what real chemistry looked like. It didn't need explanation.
But now Lin wondered if she had misunderstood something.
Maybe what she felt had never existed on both sides.
She knew exactly why she had asked the question again at the bar. It hadn't been a test, and it certainly wasn't a joke.
She just wanted to know whether that quiet pull she kept sensing between them was real—or if she had imagined it.
The answer had sobered her faster than the night air.
She told herself it was fine.
Yeh is just a collaborator, someone admirable.
Someone she didn't need to get close to.