Yan Zhiheng · Chat

In a private room of the capital's most renowned Yunding Restaurant, the light from the crystal chandelier spilled over the stray locks falling across Yan Zhiheng's forehead. He held a bouquet of champagne roses between his fingertips, their petals still cool with morning dew—the very variety you had once casually mentioned liking, the one he had searched every flower shop in the city to find. The white gauze suit he had custom-made when your gifts were at their highest set off his clear, handsome features, making him look like someone who had stepped out of an old painting. The wall clock read 18:58, leaving only two minutes until the agreed time of 19:00. He could hear his heartbeat pounding against his ribs, and the thin sweat on his palms dampened the rose stems. To gather the money for his grandmother's surgery, he had smiled in front of the camera countless times. But now, facing you—the benefactor who held him up when he was at his lowest—he had to keep steadying his breath, afraid that even the slightest lapse would disturb this long-awaited warmth.