Chapter 19: A Sudden Regret

She'd expanded the plot a little further than intended.

The main task of the scene was to intercept intelligence and report to Qin Xiaoyi — envelopes, opened one by one, each revealing something about Rong City's inner workings. The backstory: the General, before his death, had arranged for a young man named Feng Youjin to suppress bandits in Rong City, where he had accidentally killed the entire Qin family at a banquet. Qin Xiaoyi had been studying abroad. He came back to a massacre and developed a hatred that became his primary organizing principle. His first act upon gaining power had been to imprison Feng Youjin's wife and children in the Qin family's own secret chamber.

The intelligence in Hu Xiu's hands could resolve the misunderstanding — clear Feng Youjin, free his family, engineer a reconciliation. Or she could use it as leverage. Threatening Qin Xiaoyi with publication would give her multiple interactions, scheming glances, the whole negotiation. The money she extracted would end up funding his faction anyway, which was — she worked out the logic — arguably loyal.

She had finally understood what interactive theater actually was: no matter what task you completed, it should be serving the love story. Since she was here to pursue someone, all plots worked in service of that.

She walked up to him. Gathered herself.

"Minister Qin. Do you want to win?"

He raised an eyebrow, leaning back slightly. "What do you mean?"

That voice. She pressed on. "I'm asking whether you want to win. I have intelligence that's both unfavorable and advantageous to you."

His expression shifted — just briefly — and then the composed smile returned. "Follow your own heart."

She took a breath. The words she'd prepared dissolved. What came out instead was: "Alright, then I'm going to extort you, Minister Qin. If you don't buy this report, I'll hand it to Herzen — the journalist on Feng Youjin's side — and he'll publish it on the Rong City Report Wall."

The moment she finished, she mentally slapped herself. Extort. She had actually said extort. Unrehearsed words never worked.

Qin Xiaoyi reached into his inner pocket and produced the money with a sigh. "What kind of followers have I raised? The only one I could trust has also turned. Rong City is truly a melting pot of corruption."

"Huh?"

"Someone as simple and loyal as you, and even you've started extorting me. Extort." He almost seemed to appreciate the word. "How cunning."

She took the money, privately elated. "Minister Qin, although it pains you now, you've protected your reputation. And the money will still go toward your faction — keeping the benefits within the family, so to speak."

"The wool comes from the sheep's back," he said, and leaned closer. "Let me check your bag for a Traitor Card."

Before she could respond, his hand was already inside it. Slender fingers moving through the contents. He was close — the kind of proximity that belonged to other categories of relationship, the warmth of it arriving before she'd processed what was happening.

Her first coherent thought: This is too close. My chest is too flat. I need to move.

She stepped back.

The abruptness of it made things momentarily awkward. He straightened and adjusted his collar. "No Traitor Card. Good. Remember whose side you're on."

She stood there and reviewed what had just happened. She had created and then immediately squandered a close-contact opportunity. Zhao Xiaorou's Dating Guide had been quite specific about this. She hadn't smelled his scent. She hadn't done anything except step backward.

"What are you thinking about?" He tapped her forehead once with one finger. "Come with me."

She followed. She tested the spot on her forehead discreetly with the back of her hand. Matte. No grease.

---

The department store set was quiet without Bai Luoyu.

Qin Xiaoyi stood at the jewelry counter looking at her with mild assessment. "Pick something. Your taste really isn't great. Good thing I didn't send you to Lin Qiumei — she'd like me even less if she'd seen your choices."

Hu Xiu stood at the counter with doubt. "I think my taste is fine. Doesn't green make one look fairer?"

"You're not dark-skinned." He reached into the velvet-lined display and picked up a pair of pearl earrings, then touched her earlobe lightly as if testing the fit. "These are right."

Her mind went blank. She stared at his shoulder, not daring to look higher. "Aren't you going to help me put them on?"

He placed them in her palm. "Wishful thinking."

---

Every encounter she stored carefully, planning to dissect the acting from genuine feeling once she got home.

The shift ended close to two in the morning.

She stayed. She told herself she was watching for the off-duty version of him, the real one — and she stood on the midnight street outside the security exit and yawned repeatedly and waited.

The alley behind the mall was narrow, the sidewalk wide. Actors came out in groups, still laughing. Qin Xiaoyi emerged in good spirits and held the door for Lin Qiumei. Someone knocked from inside; Feng Youjin came through with a complaint; the group assembled under the lights with the ease of people who'd done this many times.

Qin Xiaoyi wore his white T-shirt under the Lakers jersey. His eyes moved past her without pausing. The smile said: we're all friends here.

"Why are you still here?"

"I was— calling a car."

"She's here for you," Ning Zechen said cheerfully. "Who does repeat runs for all the endings? Her heart's set on someone."

"Stop it." Qin Xiaoyi pointed at him. "She came back for your ending this time."

"She's seen mine at least twice. And how do you know who she came for? Have you two been talking privately?"

Ning Zechen tapped two fingers together three times. "Where? His car? His place? The—"

Qin Xiaoyi shoved him. "Don't go that far. Private contact with a player is a salary deduction."

"A girl like that's worth a two-thousand-yuan fine," Feng Youjin said, lighting a cigarette.

Hu Xiu understood: unauthorized contact between staff and players meant money docked. He was drawing the boundary to protect her from further teasing, not from her.

If she were Zhao Xiaorou, she would have leaned into the teasing and let everyone take it wherever it went. But affection constructed from other people's jokes was a fragile thing. She needed to do this herself.

The thought was clearer than usual. The night air helped.

Then she looked at what she was wearing. White blouse. Black skirt. The brown boots she'd bought, which she'd liked, but which combined with the rest made the complete picture of what Zhao Xiaorou had specifically told her not to wear. Boring schoolteacher. For safety reasons, she'd also swapped her contacts for her glasses.

Qin Xiaoyi, from where he was standing, was seeing exactly that.

She should not have waited.

Lin Qiumei's actual boyfriend — someone who resembled Ning Zechen and had come to pick her up — arrived and put his arm around her. Hu Xiu watched Qin Xiaoyi take one step back before turning to ask if anyone was coming for drinks. The look on his face in that moment was brief and unguarded: the specific texture of wanting something he wasn't going to have.

She recognized it. She had seen it before, on a late-night street in another context.

The group drifted away. She realized she had not called a car.

---

Three kilometers home. Straight road. She was dressed plainly enough that walking at two in the morning was probably fine. The main reason she was doing it was that Qin Xiaoyi had left without a second look, was currently frustrated about Lin Qiumei, and her being safe getting home was not something that would occur to him as relevant.

Under the elevated tracks of Lines 3 and 4, the streetlights stretched and compressed her shadow. The night was quiet enough that she could hear her own disappointment without trying.

Ten encounters. She'd been grinding repeat runs for weeks, and somewhere in the process had confused presence in his day with part of his life. Qin Xiaoyi spent every working day in Rong City with Lin Qiumei. That world was closed to her from the outside. There wasn't even room to feel jealous.

She passed a storefront and saw her reflection in the glass. The rigid posture, the glasses, the whole picture. She laughed at it.

Dating a young guy. What wishful thinking.

"Hu Xiu—"

She stopped. Almost three in the morning. Someone knew her name.

She turned around.

Qin Xiaoyi was approaching on a bicycle, coasting. As he drew near she caught a faint scent — something like wooden flooring. He put his foot down beside her and tilted his head toward the rear seat.

"Get on."

She sat down. The landing was slightly forceful. She checked the rear wheel on instinct — the tire still had air; she wasn't that heavy.

He pedaled. Said nothing for a while. Then: "I was going to drinks. At the intersection I looked back and saw you hadn't taken a cab. Thought about your neighborhood. Figured you might be walking."

"I forgot."

"If the tickets are tight, you shouldn't come every week. Thousands a month adds up."

"It's fine. I just — wanted to see you."

"Then it's even less necessary," he said. "What's so great about me?" A few seconds. "It's an honor that you'd do this. There's not much I can offer. Just the two wheels."

"Two wheels are much better than four! Eco-friendly, and it's—" she searched for what she meant— "more romantic. Like the high school senpai in shoujo manga."

She knew immediately it had landed awkwardly.

He let it pass. "I used to ride shared bikes — convenient, but they never felt like mine. I care about whether things belong to me or not. I've played Qin Xiao a long time. After a while it's hard to tell what's real and what's character."

"That proves you're professional. Blurring the lines is a sign of a real artist."

"Don't keep praising me like that."

The wheels turned slowly. He wasn't in any hurry. The shadows on the road were both of them, stretched long and then short again under each light. She ran through everything in Zhao Xiaorou's playbook — name, contact, address, getting into his home — and gave up. She watched the 23 JAMES printed on his jersey instead. At least now she knew he liked basketball.

She thought about what Zhao Xiaorou would do: charge in, ask for a clear answer, take the result. She'd watched Zhao Xiaorou operate with that directness her whole life. But after her own previous experiences, Hu Xiu found she wasn't in a hurry. Not with this one.

The gradual kind — the way drizzle accumulated on your hair and face before you'd realized it was raining — left marks that didn't come out easily. She just had to keep showing up. He loved disappearing into roles. He wouldn't forget her.

This was a thought that existed at two in the morning and might be completely gone by tomorrow, when she'd see him and lose her train of thought entirely.

But at least tonight: with someone you want and want to keep, you had to go carefully.

The bicycle turned into a narrower lane. A crescent moon above the gap between buildings, very precise, like a stage light.

---

At her building entrance she lingered. "What floor?" he asked.

"The penthouse. You really don't need to—"

"A good deed should be carried through to the end." He was slightly slouched on the bicycle, which looked cool from this angle, and also like a slightly self-satisfied boy who knew it. "If you don't need me, then I'll go."

"No—" She stopped herself. Her mind had gone blank again.

"Go inside. I have work tomorrow. I'm tired."

She stood at the unit door and leaned out, making a private promise that this would be her last greedy question for the night.

"Can I know your name?"

His bicycle was tilted at an angle in the middle of the lane. Both hands in his pockets.

"Diao Zhiyu." A pause. "The zhi as in childish."