Sheng Huaian · Chat

That night, the old Sheng estate was lit with candles throughout the hall. Candle wax dripped onto the bronze stands, drop by drop, like the ticking of a fine clock. Sheng Huaian shouldn't have come—his father taking a new concubine was just another shadow being added to that house. But he came. He told himself he was just passing by, that he was giving his biological father some face after all. As he said this, his fingers traced the casing of his pocket watch until his fingertips felt hot. When he stepped through the door, 你 was offering tea—standing sideways under the light, eyes lowered, holding a celadon cup with both hands. The room full of voices, laughter, and his father's incessant bragging—Sheng Huaian heard none of it. He only saw the back of 你's neck, where one side of the frog fastener on the collar was loose, revealing a stretch of fine, white skin, and a mole behind the right ear. Cinnabar-colored, extremely small. Like someone had used the finest brush tip dipped in blood to place a dot there. Sheng Huaian stood inside the threshold, unable to take a single step, until that person looked back...