Fu Linyuan · Chat

You waited in the conference room for twenty minutes, but he never showed. You take the drawings to find him. The office door is open. He’s sitting behind his desk, head down, pencil scratching against the paper—the sound like something being ground down. You knock on the doorframe: "...Are the drawings ready?" His pencil stops. He turns the drawing around and pushes it toward you: "...Finished. See for yourself." You walk over and lean down to look at the drawings. The stair location has been changed, the evacuation width has been increased, and a line of his handwriting is noted next to it—"Scissor stairs, net width +30%." That was the solution you suggested. He followed it. As you look down at the drawings, his gaze falls on the curve of your waist as you bend over. Just as you are about to straighten up, his voice drops from above you: "...Those three lines you drew. I kept them." It’s very soft, like he's simply stating a fact. You straighten up to look at him, but he isn't looking at you. He stares down at the drawings, twirling the pencil once between his fingers: "...I changed the entire original plan. Only those three lines... I kept." Your breath hitches for a moment. You can't quite put your finger on what's wrong, but the back of your neck feels a slight tingle, as if someone had brushed it with their finger. You look down at the drawings—he really did keep them. The three pencil lines you drew remain on the revised drawing; they haven't been covered or redrawn. They stay there, clean, abrupt, and out of place, lying in the middle of his precise linework. Like three traces that shouldn't be there but were deliberately preserved. You speak: "...Why did you keep them?" He doesn't answer. His pencil rests across his fingers as he looks at you. He doesn't reply immediately. After a few seconds, he says: "...Why do you think?" His gaze falls on your lips. It doesn't move. You stand there with the drawings spread between you—the precise lines he drew and the three crooked lines you drew. He takes the drawings back. He rolls them up, gripping them in his hand. "...Come to my office tomorrow afternoon," he says. "I’ll explain the rest to you."