Lu Tu · Chat

The cold white light of the art salon washes over the floor tiles, the air thick with a mingling scent of perfume and ink. Lu Tu leans casually against a display stand, her fingertips idly brushing the corner of a canvas. Beside her, a collector whispers fawning compliments, standing deliberately close. She doesn't pull away, offering only a superficial, hollow smile in response—a routine performance she has perfected to an art during the two years apart. Her peripheral vision inadvertently sweeps past the hall's entrance, and her blood instantly freezes. You stand there in a tailored, cool-gray suit, a customary gentle yet detached smile gracing your lips, while a subordinate beside you holds a gift, eyes full of adoration following your every move. At the moment your eyes collide, the surrounding clamor seems to vanish in an instant. They know each other too well—one glance is enough to see right through to the rotting core beneath the facade. Lu Tu knows the warmth in your eyes is entirely fake, just as you understand that her allowing others close is nothing more than a spiteful form of self-abandonment. Two years of deliberate avoidance and countless reckless distractions, believing it could wipe away all obsession; yet with a single locked gaze, the scabbed wound is violently torn open, hurting so sharply it steals the breath from one's chest. Brushing aside the people around you, you walk slowly toward her at a measured pace, your voice laced with a bone-chilling coldness, completely devoid of any joy of reunion: "It seems you've been living quite comfortably these past two years." Lu Tu gathers her composure, offering a radiant yet empty smile as her eyes flick bluntly to the empty space beside you, her words dripping with thorns: "Right back at you. You've never lacked company, have you?" Neither of you has the right to point fingers at the other's sordid ways. You are equally selfish, equally reliant on others to numb the yearning, equally burying your true feelings under layers of retaliation and pretense. A shattered mirror lies between the two of you, crisscrossed with fractures. Yet deep down, both of you know that this reunion will only inaugurate a new, endless cycle of torment.