Meng Ning froze for a moment.
She gripped her phone in her hand. It was encased in a transparent plastic shell, and she had to press her thumb hard against it to feel a twinge of pain. Qi Xiao’s head had drooped down again as she slept. Meng Ning reached out with her other hand to steady it, but Qi Xiao resisted like they were wrestling, her face scrunched up in a way that inexplicably made Meng Ning burst out laughing.
Song Xiao, up in the front seat, was messaging someone on WeChat and let out a soft chuckle.
This kind of easy companionship made Meng Ning feel safe. She was close enough to Qi Xiao and Song Xiao to quietly pass the time together, yet not so close that they needed to bare their souls or exchange a torrent of words.
No one had truly noticed that phone call with Wen Zenian earlier.
She tapped the phone screen lightly. Her nail clicked faintly against the tempered glass protector. The screen lit up, revealing her wallpaper: a vast expanse of ocean.
No calls. No messages.
She sat curled up in the back seat of the BYD ride-hailing car, her long legs cramped by the tight space. Her everyday companions were right there beside her, making that call from Wen Zenian feel like nothing more than a fleeting illusion.
But she tilted the phone slightly, glancing down to unlock it with her face. Her finger betrayed her, tapping into the call log. There it was—the call, clocked at a brief 1 minute and 37 seconds. That still included the time she’d signaled Song Xiao and Qi Xiao to climb in, then slid into the seat herself and gently shut the door.
She didn’t know why, but every time, she deliberately avoided the first half of that eleven-digit number, fixating only on the ending digits: “89.”
Not an illusion. Modern electronics had shattered any lingering hopes or disappointment.
Wen Zenian’s final words kept brushing against her eardrums like a whisper: “If it’s inconvenient, forget it.”
After a moment’s thought, she nudged Qi Xiao to lean back against the seat, released her hold on the side of Qi Xiao’s head, and began typing: “I’m sharing a place with two friends.”
It sounded like a polite brush-off.
But then she followed it up by sending Wen Zenian their address.
The street name included an obscure character—””—that was all too easy to mistype on predictive text. She dragged over the correct icon, deleted the error, and carefully entered the right one.
As she did all this, she realized even the excuse of “a momentary impulse” wouldn’t hold water anymore.
If it had truly been a spur-of-the-moment thing, she would have snapped out of it long before wrestling with such fiddly typing.
Yet she couldn’t claim to be entirely clear-headed, either. The two drinks from the bar still burned in her stomach. Once the message was sent, she locked the screen and shoved the phone back into her pocket, as if trying to escape the reality of what she’d done.
She stared at the passing streetlights the whole ride. They flickered on and off, like the even and uneven beats of some ancient poem. The old poets had been masters at concealing their deepest thoughts—turning endless yearnings into a single line: “The flower markets glow as bright as day.”
The car finally pulled up to the mouth of the narrow street. Meng Ning called softly, “Qi Xiao.”
Qi Xiao wasn’t a bad drunk; she just dissolved into fits of silly giggles and insisted on getting out by herself. When Meng Ning asked, “Can you even walk?” she declared with perfect confidence, “Of course I can! I can walk a straight line!”
Meng Ning released her arm. Qi Xiao tottered forward in a path that was straight-ish at best, her whole body listing to the left like a flagpole knocked askew.
Song Xiao laughed. “She’s really something.”
Meng Ning’s lips curved into a smile as well. It wasn’t too late, but most of the shops on the narrow street had closed for the night. The owner of a stir-fry noodle stall was out front sweeping up. A fruit stand and a small supermarket were still open, their lights casting a dim yellow glow. A cat with a pink collar sat yawning in front of the supermarket door.
It was all so real. So utterly mundane. Mundane enough that no one would believe a woman straight out of a fever dream had just called her, asking, “Is it okay if I crash at your place for the night?”
Had she been drinking? A late-night banquet on the island—she probably had—but her voice had sounded perfectly sober, with just a hint of tipsiness curling at the edges of her words.
Why would someone attending a banquet on the island make a call like that to her?
Some cruel prank?
First off, Wen Zenian wasn’t that bored. Second, she didn’t have the spare time.
She and Song Xiao kept a close eye on Qi Xiao all the way home. Qi Xiao passed out immediately upon arrival. Song Xiao headed off to shower, and Meng Ning retreated to her own room. Only then did she fish the phone out of her pocket for a look.
No calls. No messages.
The two texts she’d sent had vanished like a stone into the sea. She checked the chat again to confirm.
She had sent them. No typos.
Maybe Wen Zenian just wasn’t in the habit of checking messages. She’d assumed it was inconvenient and let it drop.
Fine, Meng Ning thought. Why wouldn’t Wen Zenian have anywhere to stay? Even if she really came into the city, there were five-star hotels aplenty for her to choose from.
She stared at the phone for a while, a fleeting impulse rising to call Wen Zenian back.
But first, too much time had passed since that initial call.
Second, because of their past acquaintance, Meng Ning dreaded coming across as too eager in their interactions.
She locked the screen and slumped over her desk. Song Xiao knocked on her door from outside. “Meng Ning, the bathroom’s free.”
“Coming.”
She grabbed a T-shirt and a pair of lounge shorts, along with a towel. Their bathroom was tiny, without a proper dry-wet separation—just a shower curtain printed with cartoon cats to divide the space.
She emerged from the shower with uncharacteristically quick steps, though she wasn’t sure why.
Slipping back into her room in her flip-flops, she tapped the phone screen to life.
No calls. No messages.
While she was blow-drying her hair, she kept thinking she heard the phone vibrate. The first time, she switched off the dryer to check—nothing but her imagination. The second time, she killed the dryer again and saw a real incoming call.
The number ended in “89.”
She stared blankly for two seconds. Her fingertips were still hot from fiddling with the dryer on her hair as she pressed accept. “Hello?”
She’d wondered if Wen Zenian was drunk by now, but the voice sounded clear. Perhaps someone like her stayed composed even when wasted.
She was wrong.
By this call, the alcohol was evident in Wen Zenian’s voice.
It started with a breath—not heavy, but clear enough to hear.
The sound created a subtle pause before she spoke. “Meng Ning.”
A long silence stretched out until Meng Ning clutched the phone and murmured an “Mm.”
Wen Zenian drew a slightly heavier breath. “Come downstairs and get me.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a command.
Meng Ning yanked on a hoodie in haste. On second thought, she stripped it off, slipped into a bra, then pulled the T-shirt and hoodie back on. It was just a quick trip downstairs—no time to swap out her shorts, anyway.
She jammed her feet into her everyday sandals and clomped down the stairs.
It was nearly midnight now. Even the fruit stand downstairs had shuttered, leaving only the little supermarket holding the fort. The cat out front had vanished somewhere.
The dim yellow streetlamp left the area feeling empty. Meng Ning clutched her phone, instinctively wanting to call Wen Zenian, but she raised her hand only to lower it again.
Their rundown building sat at a T-junction of three streets. From where she stood, it was left or right.
She made a bet with herself and headed left.
It was a pointless game. If she guessed wrong, she’d just make Wen Zenian and the driver wait longer. She walked on, hearing only the soft swish of her sandals against the pavement.
Then she saw it—a car parked there, bathed in the warm glow of the streetlamp amid the empty night.
She gripped her phone a little tighter, as if clinging to something solid. She approached and rapped on the window. “Gwyneth.”
Calling an English name in a scene this ordinary felt absurdly out of place.
The door unlatched from inside. Meng Ning took half a step back.
Wen Zenian sat alone in the back seat, her eyes seemingly closed until the knock. She opened them, blinked against the streetlight, then opened them again. The corners of her eyes drooped slightly, her expression more languid than smiling.
That was when Meng Ning confirmed it: Wen Zenian was drunk.
She leaned there in the cab’s back seat, gazing at Meng Ning, the streetlamp’s glow encircling her like moths drawn to a flame. She wore that suit from the candid photo, her hair pinned up, a tiny diamond earring glinting on her right ear.
The night had softened her shirt somehow—or perhaps she’d undone another button—exposing the sharp line of her collarbones, a porcelain expanse of skin.
For some reason, Meng Ning felt inexplicably annoyed staring at that open collar.
“Aren’t you the one who told me to come pick you up?” she said. “Well, here I am.”
Wen Zenian quirked her lips from the back seat.
This was her hired private car, complete with a driver in white gloves. She murmured “thanks” to him before stepping out. Meng Ning hesitated for a second about offering a hand, but Wen Zenian seemed perfectly steady despite the stilettos.
Today’s heels were taller than usual, putting her a good half-head above Meng Ning as they walked side by side.
She thanked the driver but not Meng Ning. The alcohol hit her after exiting the car, bringing a wave of heat. She shrugged off her suit jacket and draped it over one arm. The shirt draped softly now, revealing the pale sheen at the nape of her neck. The hem was tucked neatly into her black trousers, cinching her waist into a slender curve.
She asked Meng Ning, “What floor is your place on?”
“Fourth.”
Wen Zenian nodded and took the lead toward the building entrance, as if she were the one guiding Meng Ning.
Her outfit clashed hilariously with the dingy old street and its narrow alleys. The building had no elevator, and the stairs were shallow and worn. Her wide-leg trousers, cut long to elongate the leg, brushed subtly against each step, covering her shoe tops.
Meng Ning eyed the pant hems, wondering just how much those trousers had cost. The tailoring was impeccable, hugging her legs perfectly. It made her heart ache a little for her.
They’d reached about a third of the way up the third-floor stairs when the low toll of the Ancient Bell Tower echoed from the distant downtown. Plenty of residents had complained about that midnight chime, calling it a public nuisance. In truth, anyone sleeping soundly wouldn’t hear it at all.
In this building right now, the only sounds were theirs.
Wen Zenian glanced back. Meng Ning was rounding a landing, gazing up at her from five or six steps below.
Some of Wen Zenian’s lipstick had flaked away. Her thin lips parted slightly, as if on the verge of saying something. In the end, she turned and continued upward.
Meng Ning watched her back, the slow chimes reverberating behind them.
Cinderella had lost her magic at the stroke of midnight, her dream shattering as the carriage turned back into a pumpkin. But on this night—four days shy of Spring Festival—Wen Zenian climbed the dusty old stairs with quiet poise.
Like an impossible dream, stepping straight into reality.
Meng Ning pulled out her key and unlocked the door. After giving it half a turn, she glanced back at Wen Zenian and said, “Two friends share this place with me. You know Qi Xiao, and there’s a girl who works at an advertising company named Song Xiao.”
“I understand,” Wen Zenian said. “Shh.”
She held a designer handbag in one hand and had her short suit jacket draped over her other arm. As soon as Meng Ning pulled the door open, she stepped inside first.
“Gwyneth.” Trailing behind her, Meng Ning let out an exasperated hiss she could no longer suppress. “Could you please adjust your shirt collar?”
