Midnight.
The Return-to-Dust Studio had long since turned off its lights.
The old wooden curtains on the first floor were drawn tightly shut, and not a trace of light could seep through the gaps.
There was not the slightest sound from the second floor either. Even voices had been swallowed by the thickness of the night.
Changning Alley was quieter than usual.
The rain had only just stopped, and the stone-paved road still gleamed with wetness.
That black business van at the entrance of the alley was still parked there. Its windows were pitch-black, making it impossible to tell whether anyone was inside.
Two black shadows silently vaulted over the back wall of the Return-to-Dust Studio, their toes landing on the wet mud of the rear courtyard without making almost any sound.
They wore dark, close-fitting clothes, their faces covered with black cloth. Their movements were clean and precise, clearly indicating professional training.
One of them crouched in the corner and swept his gaze across the rear courtyard.
A stone vat, an old well, a withered osmanthus tree, and several half-dead plants.
After confirming that there were no surveillance cameras or motion-sensor lights in the rear courtyard, he slightly tilted his head and gestured to the person behind him.
The other person nodded, took a small jammer from his waist pouch, and stuck it beside the lock of the back door.
The green light flashed twice, then went dark again, as though nothing had happened.
They had been observing the place for four whole days.
Every night, a little after eleven, the lights in the shop would gradually go out.
Around midnight, the entire Return-to-Dust Studio would become completely silent.
No customers, no delivery trucks, no abnormalities of any kind.
It was quiet to the point of being abnormal.
The two exchanged glances. The electronic lock on the back door had already been disabled.
One of them pried open the back door, moving extremely lightly. The hinges gave a tiny “click,” like wood contracting on its own in the night.
The door opened.
The interior was pitch-black.
One of them switched on a miniature flashlight.
The beam was very narrow and deliberately kept low, illuminating only a small area.
He swept it across the old objects on the shelves, sachets, tea tins, paper umbrellas, then across the counter and the old calligraphy and paintings on the walls.
Finally, it stopped at the tightly closed wooden door deep in the corridor.
That door did not look much different from the other doors in the Return-to-Dust Studio.
Its vermilion paint was old, with some wear around the edges. The door knocker was made of copper and engraved with intricate cloud-and-water patterns.
But for some reason, when the beam fell upon it, both men felt that the door seemed somewhat darker than everything around it, as if some of the light were being absorbed by something as it approached.
One of them whispered something.
The other nodded, and together they walked toward the door.
Just then—
“—People sent by Boss Sheng?”
A voice came from behind them, like night wind passing through a crack in a window, yet it was enough to make both their movements freeze instantly.
One of them whipped around.
The flashlight beam swept across the front hall of the Return-to-Dust Studio, across the shelves, across the counter—
Then he saw it.
Behind the counter, a man wearing thin-framed glasses was sitting there.
Black shirt, black trousers, lurking within the darkness of the night.
In his hand was a cup of steaming coffee.
As though he had been waiting there for a long time.
Or rather, as if he had been sitting there from the very beginning.
Only now had he decided to let himself be seen.
“What are you looking for?”
Xiao smiled.
The smile was gentle, as though he were asking a customer who had come to visit the Return-to-Dust Studio late at night.
The two did not answer.
One of them instinctively reached for his waist, where a stun device was concealed.
The other quickly stepped backward, attempting to create some distance.
They were fast.
Xiao was faster.
A black shadow flashed.
Before anyone could see how he had moved, he was already beside the person closest to him. One hand firmly covered the man’s mouth and nose, while the other lightly pressed a certain spot on the side of his neck.
The man did not even have time to struggle before his body went limp.
The other man’s pupils contracted sharply. He turned and tried to flee.
His foot had only just lifted when a faint sting came from the side of his neck, like the bite of a mosquito.
He reached up to touch it, and his fingertips encountered an extremely fine metal needle.
The needlepoint had pierced his skin, like a piece of ice melting into his bloodstream.
He did not even have time to make a sound before he lost consciousness.
The entire process took less than ten seconds.
The Return-to-Dust Studio returned to silence.
Xiao lowered his head and looked at the two people lying on the floor, his expression calm, as though he were dealing with two bags of trash that had accidentally wandered into his home.
He kicked one man’s foot backward, arranging the two of them side by side.
Only then did he pick up the coffee sitting on the counter and slowly take a sip.
The coffee was still hot.
After an unknown amount of time—
When the two woke again, they discovered that they were tied up.
Their hands were bound behind their backs, the ropes pulled tight, precisely enough to prevent them from breaking free without causing obvious injuries.
Their mouths were sealed shut, the tape pressed firmly over them. Even their muffled whimpers were trapped in their throats.
Everything before their eyes was dim. Only one lamp was lit.
It was an old-fashioned kerosene lamp. A thin layer of dust had accumulated on its shade, and the flame flickered faintly inside the glass, pushing back a circle of darkness around it, only for the darkness farther away to gather again.
Standing within the lamplight was Xiao.
He was still wearing that black shirt, the sleeves casually rolled up to his elbows. In his hand was an extremely thin folding knife.
The blade was short and gleamed coldly. He spun it once between his fingers before casually placing it on the counter.
“Awake?” His tone was gentle, as though he were entertaining guests. “A little faster than I expected. Good constitution.”
The two struggled desperately, but the ropes did not budge.
One of them tried to push against the ground with his feet to move himself. He had only moved slightly when Xiao’s gaze fell upon him.
There was no anger in that look, no threat, and not even much emotion.
He simply looked at him calmly.
The man stopped struggling, because that gaze was simply too cold. When it looked at him, it was as though it were looking at a lifeless object.
Xiao smiled.
“Didn’t you want to know the secret of the Return-to-Dust Studio?”
He turned and walked toward the door deep in the corridor.
His footsteps were very light, making almost no sound.
The door stood there silently, no different from when they had seen it earlier.
Xiao extended his right hand and gently pressed his palm against the door.
At that instant, the surface of the door seemed to tremble slightly.
Extremely faintly, like something that had slept for a very long time being awakened, slowly opening its eyes in the darkness.
“Don’t rush.” Xiao’s voice was as gentle as if he were coaxing a child, and yet it also sounded as though he were soothing something far more ancient. “I’ll show you.”
His slender fingertips slid along the cloud-and-water patterns carved into the door, from top to bottom, as if touching a silent pulse.
Following his movement, light began to seep from the crack beneath the door.
It was not cold white.
It was a dark, heavy red, like blood spreading through water, or like the final trace of sunset lingering across the horizon after the sun had gone down.
The red light grew increasingly intense. It slowly flowed out through the crack, spreading downward along the doorframe and gathering into a small pool of wavering light on the wooden floor.
The light was not dazzling, yet it instinctively made people uneasy.
As if something that should never be looked at was looking back.
The cloud-and-water patterns on the door began to twist.
Those originally motionless patterns seemed to come alive, writhing one by one, intertwining and converging until they finally condensed into clusters of half-bloomed flowers.
—Flowers of the Other Shore.
The flowers spread across the entire door.
Their petals overlapped layer upon layer, each one trembling slightly, as though breathing.
As if the door itself were a living creature.
Upon seeing such a bizarre scene, the two spies began struggling frantically, muffled whimpers coming from their throats.
Their lips moved desperately beneath the tape, as though drowning men trying to grasp at air.
Xiao bent down, grabbed one man’s shoulder, and dragged him up from the floor.
The man’s legs scraped chaotically across the stone floor, like a fish being dragged toward a chopping board.
“The door is actually quite picky.”
Xiao’s tone was light, as though he were casually chatting while feeding something.
“But it’s been a little hungry lately.”
The man’s eyes were completely filled with terror. Tears slid from the corners of his eyes, soaking the edge of the tape covering his face.
Xiao grabbed him by the hair and pressed him against the door.
The instant they made contact, the ancient patterns on the door suddenly lit up.
Red light burst from deep within the patterns, like blood being squeezed out of veins.
The petals of the Flowers of the Other Shore suddenly spread open. From their centers, thin red blood vessels extended outward, densely wrapping themselves around the man’s body.
His face, his neck, his hands, his torso.
The red tubes writhed like living things, binding him firmly against the door.
His body convulsed violently, as though something had seized him in a death grip.
He opened his mouth, wanting to scream, but his voice was simultaneously suppressed by the tape and some even more powerful force, leaving behind only a series of muffled, broken breaths.
The man’s gaze gradually dimmed, little by little, as though something were being extracted from deep within his body by the door.
The red light within the crack of the door brightened noticeably. The petals of the Flowers of the Other Shore spread slightly, blooming more vividly and more eerily.
Like something that had been starving for a long time had finally tasted its first bite of food.
Not long afterward, the man was finally released by the door and fell heavily to the ground.
His eyes were wide open, yet they could no longer focus.
He was still breathing, but his soul seemed to have already been drawn away.
He was merely an empty shell that had once been called a “human being.”
The other man completely broke down.
Watching what had happened to his companion, his body trembled violently.
Tears and mucus flowed together, gathering into a small wet patch along the edge of the tape. His entire body shook like a sheet of paper trembling in the wind.
Xiao quietly watched him.
The red light remaining in the crack of the door was reflected in his lenses, making his eyes appear somewhat hazy.
There was no emotion in those eyes, no sympathy.
Only a deep, bottomless silence and coldness.
Xiao bent slightly forward, his voice cold as ice.
It sounded like a warning.
“The Return-to-Dust Studio is not a place you can touch. Neither is Su Muchen.”
He turned around and walked toward the second man, who was struggling to retreat but remained trapped in place by the ropes.
“I actually don’t like dealing with this sort of thing either, so don’t come again.”
He bent down and reached out to press a hand against the man’s shoulder.
The moment his fingertips touched the fabric, the man’s body went taut like a string on the verge of snapping.
He pushed the man toward the door.
The crimson light flared up again. The petals of the Flowers of the Other Shore opened once more, like a hungry beast opening its eyes.
This time, the process was even faster.
As if it had already tasted the flavor and no longer needed to savor it slowly.
When the last trace of red disappeared into the crack of the door, the Return-to-Dust Studio once again fell silent.
Only the flame of the kerosene lamp gently flickered inside its glass shade, stretching Xiao’s shadow long across the wall of the back room.
He stood before the door and lowered his head to look at his clean hands.
There was no blood, no trace, nothing at all.
Yet these hands were not as clean as they appeared on the surface.
Although he could not smell any blood, he still felt that the air was unclean.
Out of habit, he took a small bottle of spray from his pocket and sprayed the door a few times, then sprayed some onto himself. Only then did he feel slightly better.
The red light within the crack of the door was still slowly flowing, like a beast that had just eaten its fill and was digesting.
The patterns of the Flowers of the Other Shore had faded somewhat, but had not disappeared completely, like a beast unwilling to go to sleep.
Xiao raised his hand and lightly pressed his palm against the door.
The door trembled softly, as though responding.
“Shh, be quiet.” Xiao’s voice was very low and soft, like he was talking to himself. “Go to sleep.”
The patterns on the door quietly lit up once.
Then they gradually faded, returning to ordinary cloud-and-water patterns, as though nothing had ever happened.
He had long forgotten how many times he had soothed the door like this.
The Return-to-Dust Studio once again returned to the appearance it should have at night—quiet, old, like nothing more than an ordinary, dilapidated little shop.
Outside the window, the black business van at the entrance of the alley was still parked there. Its windows were deep black, making it impossible to see whether anyone was inside.
A trace of coldness appeared in Xiao’s eyes.
Sheng Chengxiu would soon discover that the people he had sent had returned.
It was just that what returned was no longer the people they had originally been.
Some secrets were not things one could simply take away after learning them.
◇◆◇◆◇
Su Muchen had not slept well all night.
He got up to wash his face. The cold water splashed against his face, finally clearing his muddled consciousness somewhat.
He raised his head and looked at his slightly exhausted face in the mirror. Two obvious dark circles lay beneath his eyes, as though someone had drawn them on with an ink brush.
He could not help sighing inwardly.
Although he often warned others not to stay up late and wrote the rules more strictly than anyone else, when it came to himself, all those principles became like a deflated balloon, unable to hold themselves up no matter what.
He changed into his usual white shirt, rolled the sleeves up to his elbows, opened the door, and walked downstairs.
The old wooden steps creaked familiarly beneath his feet, like the old shop murmuring indistinctly in the morning.
The air on the first floor carried the aroma of coffee.
It was not strong, but it was enough to make a newly awakened person feel a trace of reassurance.
He descended the last step and saw Xiao sitting behind the counter, his posture almost exactly the same as usual.
The tablet was resting on the table. One hand propped up his chin while the other lazily swiped across the screen.
“Morning,” Su Muchen said.
Xiao looked up at him. His gaze paused for an instant on the dark circles beneath Su Muchen’s eyes, but he did not point them out. He merely replied lazily, “Morning.”
Su Muchen walked over beside the counter.
He did not look into Xiao’s eyes, nor did he ask about what had happened last night.
That door, that cold plum-and-burning-wood fragrance, that brief yet icy look in Xiao’s eyes when he had stood before the door.
Those images were like shadows submerged beneath the water.
He knew they were there, but he did not know whether he should reach out and touch them.
“Go back and rest,” he said in the end.
“Mm, then I’ll go back to sleep.”
Xiao stretched lazily and put away the tablet, his movements slow as if something were dragging down his hands and feet.
He stood up. When he passed Su Muchen, his footsteps paused for a moment, as though he wanted to say something.
In the end, he merely patted Su Muchen lightly on the shoulder.
That touch was very light.
Like a silent message—call me if anything happens.
Xiao’s figure disappeared outside the door. The copper bell gave a soft ring, then fell silent again.
Xiao’s residence was in an apartment in the back alley, about a five-minute walk away. He always said that the second-floor lounge was merely “a backup,” but Su Muchen suspected that the room’s real purpose might simply be to give him a legitimate reason to remain at the Return-to-Dust Studio at certain times.
The morning light of Changning Alley slowly seeped in through the crack of the door, spreading a thin layer of gold across the floor.
Su Muchen withdrew his thoughts and walked into the back kitchen.
He opened the refrigerator and took out some eggs, vegetables, and the leftover cold rice from last night.
He slowed his movements, as though using these ordinary, repetitive trivialities to fill that empty place in his heart.
Crack the eggs, cut the vegetables, heat the oil.
The sounds from the pan were especially clear in the quiet Return-to-Dust Studio, like a ritual in which only one person participated.
However, whenever he passed through the corridor, his gaze would still involuntarily fall upon that door deep inside.
The door looked completely unchanged.
The vermilion paint appeared even older in the morning light. The worn edges looked as though they had been gnawed away by time. The cloud-and-water patterns on the copper ring rested quietly there, like some kind of sleeping seal.
It looked like an ordinary door.
There was not much difference between it and any other door in the Return-to-Dust Studio.
Su Muchen stared at the door for a long while without approaching, as if confirming that it really was not moving at all.
In the end, he withdrew his gaze, turned back to the stove, and poured the beaten egg into the pan.
The oil pan gave a “sizzle,” and the egg quickly solidified into a thin golden layer. Its edges curled slightly, filling the air with the aroma of eggs.
Just then, a sound came from the back room.
Faint, yet clear.
Su Muchen’s movements abruptly stopped. The spatula in his hand hung suspended in midair. A drop of oil slid down the edge of the spatula and landed on the stovetop, making an extremely faint “pop.”
Cold white light seeped through the crack of the door.
One strand after another, like morning mist being pushed aside by the wind.
It was not dazzling, yet it made everything before Su Muchen’s eyes suddenly become vivid.
Then the door opened.
A person walked out from within the light.
The edges of his dark-black armor were still stained with damp mud and dark traces.
There was a shallow slash across his shoulder guard, as though it had been fiercely scraped by some sharp weapon.
His long hair was somewhat disheveled. Several strands of white hair were mixed among the ink-black strands, cascading over his shoulders like ink-colored mountains covered by wind and snow.
There was a very fresh abrasion across his brow, already covered by a thin scab.
It was Xiao Yuan.
He was back.
Su Muchen stood where he was, still holding the spatula, staring at him without moving.
Nine days.
A full nine days.
The door had not opened. There had been no white light, no echo.
It was like a kite whose string had been cut.
He had thought it would take even longer, that he would have to wait much longer.
But Xiao Yuan had really returned.
Before he had time to speak, Xiao Yuan was already walking toward him.
His steps were somewhat hurried, as if something that had been suppressed for a long time had finally lost control at the moment he saw him.
He reached out and pulled Su Muchen completely into his arms.
The armor was hard, the cold metal pressed against Su Muchen’s chest and arms, carrying the chill of the northern frontier’s wind and snow.
But the force of the embrace was very tight, as though confirming that this person was real, as though confirming that he had truly returned.
Xiao Yuan said nothing. He merely maintained the embrace, his breathing somewhat unsteady, carrying the lingering aftermath of something that had yet to fully settle.
Su Muchen smelled the scent of rust, dust, snow, and blood mixed together on him, along with a faint pine fragrance.
That scent was both unfamiliar and familiar, brought back from some battlefield he could never reach.
He could almost read the images from that scent.
“Jingyuan…”
Su Muchen struggled slightly.
“…It’s too hard. It hurts.”
Xiao Yuan’s movement stiffened slightly, as though those few words had pinned him in place.
Then he released Su Muchen and lowered his head to look at him. There was a fleeting hesitation in his expression, one that did not quite seem like him.
Su Muchen met his gaze, only then realizing what he had just said.
The tips of his ears immediately grew hot beyond his control, and he hurriedly looked away.
“I meant the armor.” His tone deliberately remained calm, as though explaining something completely ordinary. “The armor is too hard. It knocked against me and hurt. What… what were you thinking?”
Xiao Yuan did not speak.
He merely looked at Su Muchen, as if confirming that the faint flush on this person’s face was real, that the panic in his voice was real, that all these ordinary, fragmented things belonging to the Return-to-Dust Studio were real.
“Mm.” He finally answered, his voice still carrying a trace of hoarseness. “I forgot to take off my armor first.”
Su Muchen felt that his heartbeat had still not completely calmed down. Everything had happened too suddenly, to the point that he had not yet fully reacted.
He did not know what Xiao Yuan had gone through, but the weight of that embrace and the way Xiao Yuan looked at him seemed somewhat different from before.
He secretly glanced at Xiao Yuan, only to meet the other’s gaze again, and hurriedly looked away.
Finally seeing him again, he felt a sense of relief, as though he could finally let go of the worry in his heart.
At that moment, the smell of something burning drifted over.
Only then did Su Muchen remember that the egg was still frying in the pan. When he turned his head, the egg in the pan had already curled into a dark brown mass, its edges charred black and wisps of white smoke rising from it.
He hurriedly turned around, turned off the heat, and moved the pan away from the stove.
“…It’s burnt.”
His tone carried a trace of helplessness, but not much annoyance.
Xiao Yuan did not look at the burnt egg.
His gaze remained fixed on Su Muchen, like a person who had gone a long time without seeing light and had finally entered a room with the lights on, unwilling to move his eyes away.
Su Muchen set the pan aside and only then looked seriously at Xiao Yuan.
The injury on his brow, the slash on his shoulder guard, the dark stains along the edges of his armor, and the deeper exhaustion beneath his eyes compared with before they parted.
Su Muchen’s brows immediately furrowed. The warmth brought by their reunion was instantly replaced by another, more familiar worry.
“You’re injured again?” he asked.
“It’s a minor injury,” Xiao Yuan answered smoothly, as though he had long expected him to ask.
Su Muchen glanced at him. He did not immediately argue. Instead, he pointed to the chair beside them.
“Sit down.”
This time, Xiao Yuan did not say, “It’s nothing.”
He sat down as instructed. His posture loosened slightly as he sat, as though he had finally allowed himself to release some of the tension he had been holding.
Su Muchen pulled the medical kit out from beneath the counter, opened it, and took out iodine, gauze, and medical tape.
His movements were practiced, as though he had rehearsed these steps countless times in his mind.
He stood before Xiao Yuan, bent slightly forward, and began treating the abrasion on Xiao Yuan’s brow.
When the cool iodine brushed across the wound, Xiao Yuan did not flinch. He merely closed his eyes slightly.
“What happened these past few days?” Su Muchen asked.
His voice was deliberately calm, as though he were merely confirming an ordinary matter. Then, almost casually, he added with a hint of complaint, “The door never opened. I waited nine days.”
Xiao Yuan opened his eyes, his gaze settling on his face.
The words had been spoken casually, but Xiao Yuan could hear the weight beneath them.
It was not “nine days have passed.”
It was “I waited nine days.”
He thought that Su Muchen must have been very uneasy.
“At first, we were traveling.”
Xiao Yuan’s voice was lower than before, as though he were organizing the sequence of events. “After leaving Hanchuan, we headed north the entire way. For several days, we couldn’t sense the door at all, as if something were blocking it.”
Su Muchen did not stop what he was doing, but the pressure of his fingertips lightened slightly as he quietly listened.
“Before we reached the First Military City of the Northern Frontier, an emergency military report came from the border. The Northern Di had crossed the border and attacked the outpost.”
He paused, as if weighing how much he should say. But when facing Su Muchen, he ultimately chose to finish.
“Commander Pei Yi led the troops to stop the first wave of attacks. I arrived shortly afterward and engaged the Northern Di at the border, until last night, when we forced them back beyond the boundary.”
Xiao Yuan spoke very briefly.
But from those few words, Su Muchen pieced together the scene.
Endless snowfields, the sound of horse hooves, blades, spears, and arrows crossing, beacon fires and billowing smoke.
Those were scenes he had read about countless times in history books and seen in video archives, yet had never truly experienced himself.
And Xiao Yuan had stood right in the middle of those scenes.
Su Muchen secured the gauze in place, lightly pressing along the edge of the tape with his fingertips to make sure it was firmly attached before withdrawing his hand.
“How did you open the door?”
“After the fighting had settled down somewhat, I returned to the city and tried it.” Xiao Yuan said, “I didn’t have much hope to begin with. But this time, it went very smoothly.”
He said it plainly, but this was also something Xiao Yuan had only been able to try after finally finding a moment to catch his breath amid the journey and the fighting.
Su Muchen did not respond. He simply closed the medical kit and put it back beneath the counter.
“I’m hungry. I’ll prepare breakfast first.”
He said it in a tone that had regained some of its usual steadiness, but the slight upward curve of his lips as he turned away still betrayed something.
Xiao Yuan looked up at him.
Su Muchen continued, “I’ll prepare a portion for you too.”
He turned and walked toward the back kitchen. After taking two steps, he stopped and looked back at Xiao Yuan.
“Sit there. Don’t move around.”
Xiao Yuan did not answer, but Su Muchen saw the corner of his mouth move slightly.
Barely perceptibly.
Su Muchen turned around and walked into the back kitchen.
The stove fire was lit again, and the pan once more filled with the sound of oil meeting ingredients.
The morning at the Return-to-Dust Studio finally gained a trace of warmth.
Everything seemed to have returned to the days before, yet it also seemed that something had already changed.
Su Muchen prepared breakfast for the two of them.
He had originally wanted to make coffee, but remembering that Xiao Yuan had never had it before, he instead dug out some tea leaves he had bought earlier and brewed a cup of hot tea, placing it in front of Xiao Yuan.
The breakfast was very simple: he merely heated some frozen egg-pancake wrappers in the pan, serving them with eggs and a sauce Su Muchen had made himself.
The fragrance of eggs and the aroma of the pancake wrappers mingled together in the small kitchen, and time seemed to stretch into something slow and gentle.
The previous moment, Xiao Yuan had still been on the battlefield.
Now, he was sitting inside this old, dilapidated little shop, with a steaming-hot breakfast before him.
He accepted the chopsticks Su Muchen handed him and took a bite.
It was a very simple flavor, yet it was the most relaxed meal he had eaten in days.
The hot food settled into his stomach, slowly melting away those cold, tense things within him.
“Nothing happened at the Return-to-Dust Studio these past few days, right?” Xiao Yuan asked.
His tone sounded casual, but Su Muchen could hear the vigilance beneath it.
He had always been worried that Sheng Chengxiu might play some other trick on Su Muchen.
“It was pretty quiet,” Su Muchen said.
He paused. Remembering what had happened last night, he did not know how to explain it, so he said nothing more.
Xiao Yuan glanced at him but did not press further. He merely gave a soft “Mm.”
The two quietly ate their breakfast.
There were actually many things Su Muchen wanted to ask, but at this moment, he did not know where to begin.
He wanted to ask how Xiao Yuan had gotten through this period.
But Xiao Yuan had rushed to the battlefield before even reaching the military city. Surely, he had not had many easy days.
He also wanted to ask whether Xia Lanshi had been taking good care of himself, whether he had developed another fever.
He wanted to ask whether Chi Banyue was doing all right, whether she had exhausted herself.
He wanted to ask what the current state of the battle was.
His mind was filled with all kinds of worries, yet he did not know where to begin.
In the end, he put down his chopsticks and asked only one thing:
“Are you taking supplies back this time?”
He had prepared a whole pile of things, waiting for Xiao Yuan to come over.
He had never expected that this wait would last nine days.
Those boxes were still stacked in the storage room, arranged neatly in rows, like a squad that could not set out.
Xiao Yuan, however, shook his head.
“Not this time. I still have to go back and deal with the aftermath first.”
He paused, then gave an extremely light and faint smile.
“This time, I just came over to see you first.”
The words gently fell beside Su Muchen’s ear.
He froze for a moment, then the base of his ears grew slightly warm again, as though the lingering warmth of those words had singed him.
“…Mm.”
He lowered his head, pretending to concentrate on eating the egg pancake, and answered softly.
But his slightly reddened ears had already completely betrayed him.
The morning light of the Return-to-Dust Studio slanted in through the window, falling across the tabletop between the two of them and coating that simple breakfast in a layer of warm golden light.
Xiao Yuan lowered his head and continued eating.
Su Muchen quietly drank his tea as well.
Neither of them said anything more.
But the words they had left unspoken had already become more numerous than those they had spoken.