Out of sheer concession to a man who couldn't drive himself, Xia Chan ended up behind the wheel anyway.
She pulled up to the entrance of Jinpuyuan and found He Huaisheng already waiting at the curb — composed, unhurried, as if he hadn't just guilt-tripped her into chauffeuring him across the city. Following his directions, she found a parking spot, climbed out, and began unloading bags from the trunk: large ones, small ones, a collection that had multiplied over the course of the evening. She loaded them all into He Huaisheng's arms without ceremony, keeping only a slim file folder for herself.
He Huaisheng steadied himself under the weight, cast a single glance her way, and started toward the elevator.
She was wearing a loose T-shirt knotted at the waist and cropped trousers — a deliberate departure from the evening gown she'd had on hours before. A strip of bare skin showed at her midriff where the knot pulled the fabric up.
Xia Chan anticipated the question before it formed on his face. "That dress costs more than my dignity," she said. "If it got stained, the dry-cleaning bill would eat my salary for a month."
Being poor came with its own kind of discipline. No glass slippers. No fairy godmother. One wrong stain and six months of effort — gone.
Jinpuyuan's apartments were designed for people who valued their solitude. One unit per floor. The elevator doors opened not into a hallway but directly into a private landing, and the floor gleamed like pale water in the corridor light.
Xia Chan glanced down at it. "Can I take my shoes off?"
He Huaisheng nodded.
She kicked them off without waiting for him to elaborate, padded inside barefoot, and looked around.
The apartment was stark: black, white, and grey, nothing else. Not a cushion out of place, not a warm lamp anywhere.
"Living here long-term," she remarked, almost to herself, "would cure anyone of desire."
But that was a philosophical concern for another night. Right now she was hungry.
"Where's the midnight snack?" she asked.
He Huaisheng reached for his phone.
"Speak," she said, before he could type a single character.
He held still. Then, visibly working at it: "...I didn't make it."
"Then make it."
A pause. "...I don't know how."
Xia Chan stared at him. "You invited me over, promised food, and you don't know how to cook." She looked toward the kitchen. "Please tell me the refrigerator isn't empty."
He nodded — meaning: it wasn't.
It was. Well — no. It was, in fact, impressively stocked.
Xia Chan rolled up the sleeves of her T-shirt, assessed the situation, and got to work. She set porridge going in the electric cooker, then pulled out a large bowl and mixed flour into a smooth batter, folding in chopped spring onions, cracked eggs, and a pinch of seasoning. She heated oil in the pan, poured the mixture in a thin arc across the surface, and let it bloom into a golden egg pancake.
He Huaisheng stood in the kitchen doorway and watched.
He had seen women cook before. But those women had been performing something — elegant, careful, self-conscious. He had pegged Xia Chan as the type who'd be helpless in a kitchen and absurdly particular at restaurants.
He had been wrong.
She moved without fuss. Confident hands, steady attention, the economy of someone who had learned this at home rather than a cooking class. By the time she'd made four or five pancakes, the porridge had finished and the whole kitchen smelled warm.
"Get the bowls and chopsticks," she said, without looking up.
Silence.
She waited a beat, then sighed and did it herself.
She served her own bowl, then glanced over at He Huaisheng. He was watching her in that quiet, contained way of his. "Do you want some?" she asked. "There's extra."
He paused. Then nodded.
She served him a bowl. This time, without being asked, he carried the plate of pancakes to the table himself — a small courtesy, offered without remark.
Xia Chan ate the way people eat when they've forgotten how hungry they are until the food is in front of them: single-mindedly, gratefully, two pancakes down before she surfaced. She finished a full bowl of porridge before she slowed down enough to speak.
"The sausage." She pointed at it with her chopstick. "This is good. Where is this from?"
"Aunt Shen made it."
"Can I have some to take home?"
He nodded.
She studied him over the table. He was eating steadily, without enthusiasm but without complaint. "Do you think the pancakes are good?" she asked.
He nodded.
"If I started a business selling these, would you invest?"
He glanced at her. "...How much?"
Xia Chan laughed — a short, real one. "You'd actually consider it, wouldn't you?"
After the meal, she gathered the dishes and carried them back to the kitchen. She discovered the dishwasher only when she was already staring at it, and realized with mild embarrassment that she had no idea how to operate one.
He Huaisheng appeared in the doorway, rolled up his sleeves, and stepped past her. "I'll do it."
Xia Chan didn't protest. She retreated to the living room sofa, sank into it, and — without quite meaning to — felt her eyelids lose the argument.
She woke to stillness.
For a moment she didn't move, just let awareness seep back in. The apartment was quiet. The blanket across her lap was not something she'd put there herself. She sat up and found He Huaisheng on the opposite sofa, watching her with that unreadable expression she was beginning to recognize as simply him.
"What time is it?"
"Three o'clock."
She absorbed this, then reached for the file folder she'd left on the TV cabinet when she came in, and crossed the room to bring it to him.
"Tonight's cocktail party," she said, handing it over. "All the information."
He opened it. His expression didn't change, but something went still in him in a way she noticed. She thought of what Chen Aijia had told her — that this company should have been his. That somewhere in those pages was a version of a future that had been rerouted without his consent. Watching someone else build a dynasty on your foundations, she thought, was a particular kind of wound that never quite healed.
"I thought you might need it," was all she said.
He looked at her. "Thank you," he said — low, a little rough around the edges, as if it cost something.
"Do you have paper and pen?"
While he got them, Xia Chan scrolled back through her notes app. Two missed calls from Zhou Lan glowed on her screen. She ignored them for now.
When He Huaisheng returned, she copied out the license plate numbers by hand — each one with the corresponding car model — and passed him the sheet. Then she deleted the memo from her phone.
"I went to He Qihua's tonight to deliver documents," she said. "Late as it was, the parking lot wasn't empty. People were still there. I don't know if it means anything, but I wrote down every plate."
He Huaisheng looked at her for a long moment. Then he looked down at the list, and then at his phone.
Her WeChat chimed.
You didn't want to help me at first. What changed?
Xia Chan felt something shift slightly in her chest.
The honest answer was too complicated to give. She thought about the product seminar — the way those men had talked about him, like he was a punchline, like his silence made him less. She thought about a girl from junior high, shabby-dressed and top of the class, who used to sit alone until Xia Chan sat down beside her. The girl had been brilliant and ignored and easy to dismiss, and Xia Chan had planted herself between the girl and everyone who wanted to make a spectacle of her fragility. Years later, the girl had written from a Stanford scholarship office to say thank you.
Xia Chan was not particularly righteous. She knew that. But there were certain things she could not watch without doing something about them.
Physical limitations were not character flaws. They were not ammunition.
She couldn't say any of this to He Huaisheng. He was too proud for charity, and too sharp not to see through anything that resembled it.
So instead, she gave him the other version — the true-enough one:
"If I stay with He Qihua, I'll spend my career being someone else's support staff. But if I back you, and you win—" she met his eyes steadily "—I become your right hand. Investment access when I want to start something. A stake in Xinghui if I don't. I'm not here out of sentiment. I'm here because I've done the math."
Her tone sat at the intersection of honest and strategic. Hard to untangle which was which.
He Huaisheng was quiet for a moment. Then: "I... might not succeed."
"No." She didn't blink. "You will."
Another silence. His phone lit up between them.
What you're doing — leaking information — is technically an economic crime.
She looked up and held his gaze. "Then you absolutely have to succeed."
He didn't answer for a long time.
By 3:30, Xia Chan checked the hour and made her decision. No work tomorrow. But she needed a bed, and preferably her own.
She yawned, pushed to her feet. "Take your time with the documents. I'm heading out." She gestured at the cluster of bags near the door. "The clothes, shoes, jewellery — all there, all intact. Check if you want."
He Huaisheng typed, then stood.
She read the message and shook her head. "Don't see me out. It's the middle of the night — how would you even get back?"
"Taxi."
"I'm serious, don't bother."
She walked to the door. She was reaching for her shoes when his hand closed around her arm.
She turned.
He Huaisheng held her gaze and said — working for each word the way he always did, pulling them up from somewhere that didn't come easily: "...Rest here."
Xia Chan went still.
He added quickly: "...Nothing else."
She considered this. Thirty minutes home, minimum. Her entire body felt like it had been wrung out and left to dry. And yet — a man's apartment. No change of clothes. No convenient explanation.
He didn't give her the space to refuse. He pointed down the hall. "...Go take a shower."
Her brain flagged this. Nothing else, he'd said.
Laziness won, as it so often did when battling reason at 3 a.m.
He Huaisheng, she decided, was not the type to do anything lawless. He was too controlled. Too proud. And — crucially — she was too tired to care.
The shower was scalding and brief. She changed back into her own clothes — there was no alternative — and came out to find He Huaisheng seated alone at the bar, a glass of red wine in front of him, the apartment otherwise dark and still.
He stood when she approached, made room, and poured without asking.
Xia Chan almost declined. Then she registered the label on the bottle and reconsidered. Good for circulation. Helps you sleep. She picked up the glass.
He Huaisheng reached for a cigarette and lighter, glanced at her, registered her silence as permission, and lit it.
She watched the ember catch. He wasn't a heavy smoker — she'd noticed that before. Not the kind who needed it constantly. The kind who only reached for it when something was pressing.
She thought: he's been holding this evening inside him since he chose not to go.
"He Huaisheng."
He was looking straight ahead. He couldn't hear her.
She reached over and pressed her fingers lightly against his arm.
He turned.
"You didn't go tonight."
He made a sound of acknowledgment — low, non-committal.
"If you're in a bad mood," she said, "you can talk to me."
He was quiet for a moment. Then his hand moved toward his phone.
Xia Chan took it from him. Not roughly — just picked it up, set it face-down on the bar, and left her hand over it.
She looked at him.
"Go ahead," she said quietly. "Speak slowly. I'm not in a hurry." A pause. "I'm patient."
The night held around them. The red wine caught the low light. And for a moment, neither of them moved.
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