Xia Chan's feelings contradicted each other in ways she couldn't untangle. When He Huaisheng went silent, she wanted a message from him, some proof she still occupied a corner of his thoughts. But when the message came, she wished it hadn't.
She couldn't read him. And the harder she tried, the less she understood herself.
She had no control over her own surges and drops. Every word he said, every small thing he did, she placed on a scale inside her chest and turned it over and over. The result never came close to what she needed. It was like a ship blown far off course, needing a full, deliberate correction to come home. It kept swinging in the current, just short of that one steady breath that would set it right.
She thought about it for a long time, then sent back only: Happy New Year.
She waited. Nothing more came from his side.
She felt no surprise at all. She locked her phone, gathered her things, and left the room.
At the door she stopped. She reached into her bag, took out the key, and set it quietly on the coffee table.
She looked around the apartment. She turned off the lights. She stood in the doorway for a moment, then pulled the gate shut behind her.
Outside, fireworks cracked open one after another, printing their light against the dark sky.
She drove back slowly. At an intersection she hesitated, then turned.
Huaiyin Road was quiet. Bare branches reached over the walls on both sides, the same as the first time she had come here.
She had wrapped herself in layers, but her face was still open to the cold, and the sharp wind had made it numb.
She walked until the small building came into view. She was about to look through the fence gate when the first-floor door swung open. Laughter. Footsteps.
She pulled herself back fast and pressed into the shadow of a nearby tree.
The fence gate opened. He Qin's laughter spilled out, and then Shen Xuefei's. From the tree to the gate was maybe four or five meters.
She didn't catch what they were saying. She wasn't listening. Her eyes had gone straight to the man standing just behind Shen Xuefei.
He wore a smoky gray coat. The light from the doorway caught the edges and gave them a faint warmth, but his silhouette, the line of his jaw and shoulder, held its usual unyielding stillness.
The group moved away from the gate, walking until they passed out of sight.
The breath she had been holding came out slowly.
She was about to step out from under the tree when her phone rang. The sound split the silence. Her heart stopped. She jammed her hand into her pocket and cut it off.
Ahead, He Qin's voice: "Whose phone was that?"
A beat.
Shen Xuefei: "There's no one."
He Qin: "Maybe I imagined it."
She gripped the phone until her knuckles ached. She watched their shadows stretch long and thin across the ground.
After a moment the other shadows shifted and moved away. Only one remained. The longest one.
It stayed still.
Then it moved, two steps, toward her.
Her heart climbed into her throat. She watched the shadow come one step closer, then another, all the way back to the fence gate.
He stopped. He looked around.
The yellow-orange light from above fell into his eyes and rested there, quiet, a little warm.
She stared at his face in that light, not breathing, and a thought rose inside her, slow and clear.
If you find me, I will never hide again.
On the fifth day of the new year, Xia Chan kept her promise and went to be photographed for the designer who had lent her the dress.
His name was Sun Jiaze. Thirty-three. He spoke slowly and clearly, every word placed with care. He did not match her picture of a fashion designer at all.
He handled both the design and the photography. While he got his setup ready, she walked around his studio. Large photographs covered every wall, all black and white, all people.
She noticed quickly that he loved to photograph eyes. Each of the dozen or so works on the walls held an entire story inside it.
His assistant came to bring her to the changing room. Seven or eight outfits hung in a row on the center rack.
"Do I wear all of them?"
"That's the plan. It's a series."
She sat while someone came to do her makeup. When it was done she looked in the mirror. Her lips were a smoked red. The corners of her eyes had been sharpened and lengthened.
She put on the first outfit and followed the assistant into the shooting room.
Sun Jiaze was adjusting his camera. He looked up, smiled. "Come here. Let me test the lighting."
She walked to the spot he indicated and stood there, stiff without meaning to be.
He pressed the shutter a few times, checked the viewfinder, repositioned the reflectors on both sides. Then he started to direct her.
She held her face blank and forced her body into the shapes he asked for.
He took several frames and was not satisfied. He wasn't impatient either. He talked her through it carefully. "You don't need to smile. Just let your face loosen a little. Look at me. Good. You are beautiful. There is nothing to be nervous about."
Three hours passed. Two outfits photographed.
Sun Jiaze showed no urgency. He told her she had three full days and there was no rush.
At noon he took her across the street to a tea restaurant for a simple lunch.
She asked him over the meal why he hadn't hired a professional model.
"Professional models are more skilled, but that training shows in the face. It's not what I'm after."
She laughed. "Then I'm far too raw for this."
"Raw is not the same as wrong. Raw carries its own kind of understanding. It has surprised me many times. Real inspiration has come out of it."
They went back in the afternoon.
This time he suggested starting with a few portrait shots of just her. He said she had been too guarded that morning, and a large part of it was that she didn't trust him yet.
Hearing that made her more tense, not less.
"It's fine," he said. "Go into the cloakroom and pick something for yourself."
"What kind of thing?"
"Whatever you want. What you wear a lot. What you've always wanted to wear but keep putting off."
She wandered through the rack and came out with her choices.
Sun Jiaze was talking to his assistant when he heard the back door and glanced over.
She had put on a long orange-red dress, an ink-blue top, a fringed scarf full of color tied around her neck, a beaded necklace, slip-on sandals, and a string of shells around her ankle.
"Like this?" she asked.
He smiled. "Yes. Like that."
He placed her under the light, adjusted the camera. "Find a position that feels comfortable to you."
She thought for a second, lifted the hem of her skirt, and sat down on the floor.
He crouched to her level. "Treat it like a selfie. Move however you want."
She tried. Her body was still stiff.
The shutter kept going. "How was the new year for you?" he asked.
"Fine."
"Did you get any red envelopes?"
"...Yes." Wang Hongtao had pressed a thousand yuan on her and refused to hear no.
"Your scarf is beautiful. Could you spin it a little toward me so I can catch it?"
She did it without thinking.
"What did you study, Miss Xia?"
"English."
"Have you been abroad?"
"No."
"...Shift your position. Be a little more loose."
She moved as he said.
He kept asking, ranging all over the place, everything easy to answer without pause.
Then gradually the questions got harder, and he told her not to stop, just ask and answer fast.
"How many people have you been with?"
"Two... no, three." She stopped. "No. Two."
"All while you were in school?"
"Yes."
"Do you remember the first one?"
She shook her head.
He moved around her and kept the shutter running. "Why did you choose this outfit?"
"...Just felt like it."
"Is this how you dress usually?"
"No."
"What do you usually wear?"
"More formal things."
"So I can take it that what you chose today is something you've always wanted to wear but never let yourself?"
She nodded.
"All the colors are loud."
"Yes."
"But you're in a dark place right now."
"...Yes."
"You wrap yourself up tight because you don't feel safe?"
She pressed her lips together.
The shutter sounds came faster.
"What is it right now that makes you feel that way?"
A pause.
"Keep moving."
She combed her fingers into her hair and tilted her head down.
"Lift your chin. Look at me."
She brought her head up.
"What makes you feel unsafe?"
"...A relationship."
"What kind? A lover?"
She didn't answer.
"Answer."
"Yes. More or less."
"Does he make you feel unsafe?"
"Yes."
He shifted his angle. "Think about the last time you saw him. Before today."
She pulled at her hair. Her lip caught between her teeth. Her mind went blank all at once.
When was the last time?
New Year's Eve. Just past midnight.
The sound of fireworks in the distance, breaking open in waves, lighting up the sky in pulses.
She had stood in the shadow of a tree and watched He Huaisheng's still figure in front of the fence gate.
She had thought: If you find me, I will never run again.
Her heart had nearly torn through her chest. Her palms had been cold and wet. The tension and the wanting had pressed so hard against her ribs she could barely breathe, and her ears had filled with a low ringing.
Then footsteps. He Qin running over to take his arm.
He looked back one last time. His gaze passed through the shadow of the tree. Then he turned and walked away with her.
That was the last time.
Something reached in and squeezed, and her eyes burned.
She pulled in a long breath, stood up from the floor, and said flatly: "I'm done for today."
Sun Jiaze made no argument. He put the camera down and smiled. "That's enough for today, Miss Xia. We'll do the costumes again tomorrow morning."
She went back to the cloakroom and stripped off everything she had put on, piece by piece, and changed back into her own clothes.
She picked up her bag and walked to the makeup room to wash her face.
She looked in the mirror and went still.
At some point, a film of water had gathered across her eyes.
It sat there like mist over a morning forest, like rain that had been falling for years without anyone noticing.