It had rained the day before.
The pavement outside the theater still held the sheen of it, black and mirrored, so that every flashbulb from the press looked doubled — like each camera had a twin belowground, blinking from another world.
Shen Xifan remembered the chill in her spine more clearly than the cameras.
She wore a pale silver gown with feathered sleeves that itched under the arms, her hair swept into a high chignon that gave her a tension headache. Her stylist whispered something behind her as she stepped onto the carpet, but she didn't hear it. Her heart was already counting.
Five seconds between flashes.
Three seconds between questions.
Two seconds between practiced smiles.
This wasn't her first red carpet.
But it was the last one before everything changed.
It was a film festival. Not the biggest — not Cannes, not Venice — but still important. Her film had just wrapped and hadn't even aired yet. She was scheduled to give a brief interview and pose alongside her co-star.
What she hadn't expected was the other woman to be there too.
Not part of the cast.
Not part of the press.
But invited.
Smiling.
Wearing red.
She had walked in just before Xifan's turn — posing in the exact same spot where Shen Xifan had once stood two years ago for her first breakout role.
Reporters turned their heads like dominos falling.
Flashes tripled.
And someone said, too loudly into a live mic:
"Didn't she steal her role and her man?"
Laughter.
Not from cruelty. From hunger.
The kind that only the press knew how to wear like cologne.
Xifan smiled through it.
Stepped forward when her name was called.
Tucked her hair behind her ear like her PR coach taught her: gesture softens the face, lowers tension.
And then a reporter shouted — not even from the front row —
"Shen Xifan, do you regret what you did?"
That was the moment she realized:
There was nothing left to defend.
No matter what she said, they had already chosen the story.
And she was not the one holding the pen.
That night, she skipped the after-party.
She walked alone in heels through the back streets of the city, a coat thrown over her gown, mascara still perfect but soul unraveling thread by thread.
She didn't cry.
Not then.
Not until the elevator mirror in her apartment reflected someone she didn't recognize.
Someone beautiful.
And utterly hollow.
She didn't return to the set the next day.
She told her manager she had the flu.
She told her stylist she was cutting her hair.
She told herself:
"If I stop performing, maybe I'll find the girl I used to be."
Now, seated in the courtyard of a water town, carving a single curl of stone from a jade block that didn't care about her past, Shen Xifan remembered every second of that night.
Not to mourn it.
But to lay it down.
Xu entered the courtyard as she finished the last curve.
She looked up at him.
He said nothing.
But she knew — from the way his eyes held hers —
that he could tell she had just let go of something heavy.
And hadn't broken.
Xu Songzhuo didn't eavesdrop.
He never had to. Shuǐyuè Zhèn wasn't the kind of town where secrets screamed — they floated, quiet and close to the surface, carried like mist on slow water. Most things reached you, eventually, if you stayed still long enough.
That's how he heard it.
Two women outside Madam Jin's bun stall. Not cruel. Just curious.
"She used to be famous, didn't she?"
"The one from that drama? I think so. My niece had her photo on a keychain."
"Do you think she's staying for good?"
"Who knows? Those people always float back to the city in the end."
Float back.
Like driftwood.
Or trash.
Or someone who didn't know how to stay.
He didn't say anything when they passed by the studio gate.
He didn't even frown.
But later that day, when Shen Xifan returned from the market carrying a bag of tofu skins and red beans, laughing gently about how a small boy had tried to sell her a paper fan in the middle of spring, he didn't join her laughter.
He smiled, of course.
But it didn't reach his chest.
She noticed.
But she didn't ask.
Not yet.
She let the silence sit between them like cooling tea — familiar, but not quite warm.
That evening, he stood in the back room of his studio, alone.
The unfinished letter from Xuyiang was still tucked beneath a tray of carving blocks. He hadn't written back. But he hadn't thrown it away either.
He stared at it now.
Wondering.
Not if she would leave.
But if she was meant to.
He'd never said it aloud.
Never asked her to stay.
Because love, to him, was not a gate.
It was a space.
And he didn't want to be the one to close it.
But now…
He realized he was afraid.
Afraid that everything he had offered — his silence, his steadiness, his waiting — might not be enough to compete with a world full of lights and movement and memory.
What did he have?
A courtyard.
A studio.
A history carved in dust.
And yet — when she knocked gently at the studio door that night, holding two porcelain mugs of ginger tea, hair slightly damp from her shower — he opened the door before she could knock a second time.
He took the mug with both hands.
And said nothing.
But she reached out anyway — touched his wrist lightly.
And said:
"You don't have to ask me to stay. I already am."
The misstep wasn't loud.
It didn't come in a fight or a flung accusation. It came in the shape of a conversation overheard and misunderstood.
Xifan had gone to return a sketch to Yuling that morning. The girl had drawn a new storefront design for Madam Jin and wanted feedback. Xifan praised the balance, the line work, the playful ink shading along the corner of the bun stall.
"It's beautiful," she said.
"Not half as graceful as yours," Yuling replied.
Then: "I heard someone in town say they hope you reopen a studio in the city someday. Maybe even act again. Would you?"
A simple question.
Not loaded.
Not sharp.
But it hovered, and Xifan answered without thinking.
"Maybe."
Xu had been walking back from the south bridge, hands dusted with stone powder, sleeves rolled from the heat.
He heard it.
Not the whole thing.
Just the maybe.
And that was enough.
He didn't bring it up.
Didn't ask.
But he was quieter that afternoon.
Not distant. Not cold. Just… quieter.
As if his hands had returned to stone before his voice did.
Xifan felt it.
She stood behind him as he carved and didn't speak for nearly ten minutes. The room was filled only with the gentle tap-tap of chisel to stone and the shift of dust falling onto cloth.
Then she said softly:
"You heard what I said."
He paused mid-cut.
Didn't move.
Didn't nod.
Then, after a moment:
"I heard you say maybe."
She sat down beside him, not facing him.
"I didn't mean it the way you think."
He said nothing.
She kept going.
"I'm not looking back. I'm just… remembering that I still could, if I wanted. That the choice is mine now."
Finally, he turned.
And what he said surprised her.
"I want you to have that choice."
Then added, after a pause, "But I don't know if I can survive waiting for another 'maybe'."
Her breath hitched.
Not because he was wrong.
But because he was right.
They sat like that for a long time.
Close. Honest. Wounded, but without blame.
And in that curve between the names they no longer used — "actress," "heir," "public," "legacy" — they found a space where not knowing was allowed.
The carving between them was a pendant — simple, unfinished, almost a mirror of the one he had given her.
But this one was different.
It had two soft curves, back to back.
Two sides of a name.
Two versions of the self.
Waiting to meet.
The sky darkened slowly, as it always did in Shuǐyuè Zhèn — not with drama, but with inevitability.
It had rained earlier in the day, just enough to dampen the stones and hush the birds. Now the air smelled like river reeds and drying earth. The courtyard trees stood in still silhouette against the dusk.
Xu Songzhuo lit a single lamp in the studio.
He didn't call her.
But she came anyway.
She stepped through the gate with the quiet confidence of someone who no longer questioned her place here. Her hands were bare. Her sleeves rolled. There was something clear in her eyes that hadn't been there before — not certainty, but peace in the absence of it.
"I want to show you something," he said.
She nodded.
He led her out of the studio, through a side gate she hadn't noticed before — half-covered in climbing vines, the latch stiff with disuse.
Beyond it: a narrow path, overgrown but still walkable. The stones beneath were cracked and moss-lined, but they held.
They walked in silence for ten minutes.
Not a long time.
But enough.
Enough for her to feel the rhythm of the path, and for him to decide he was truly ready to show her.
At the end of the path was a second courtyard — smaller than his, framed by plum trees older than either of them. The house was empty. Abandoned, perhaps, but cared for. The windows had been shuttered but not sealed. The tiles swept. A shrine near the rear wall glowed faintly with incense ash.
"This was my grandfather's first studio," he said.
Her breath caught.
He stepped inside, and she followed.
The room smelled like cedar, clay, and old smoke.
A low shelf held sketches from another lifetime — landscapes, not carvings. Ink still bled faintly into the parchment.
"He stopped drawing the year his wife died," Xu said. "But he never closed this place."
She touched one of the sketches lightly — not to disturb it, but to acknowledge it.
"Did he teach you here?" she asked.
"No. He let me sit here in silence while he worked."
Xu walked to a corner cabinet and opened it slowly.
Inside was a pendant. One of the first his grandfather ever carved. Not perfect. Not polished.
But whole.
He held it out to her.
"I didn't come here for years," he said. "Until you arrived."
She looked at the pendant, then at him.
"Why me?"
He didn't answer right away.
Then:
"Because you carved space into silence. Not just sound."
They stood in the center of that old studio, history echoing gently around them, and for the first time since their paths had crossed, Shen Xifan spoke with complete clarity.
"I don't want to return to the city," she said.
He said nothing.
She stepped closer.
"I don't want to act again."
Closer.
"I don't want to be anyone but the version of me that waited for the rain to stop."
Now she was in front of him.
And when she lifted her hand — not to touch his cheek, but to hold the pendant between them — he leaned forward, just slightly, so that his breath met hers.
"Xu Songzhuo," she whispered.
He closed his eyes.
"I want to stay."
And when he opened them, she was still there.
Still her.
Still real.
Still choosing him.
They didn't kiss.
Not yet.
But when they returned to the studio hand in hand, a soft wind passed through the courtyard.
And the first plum blossom of the season fell between them.
Whole.
Unbroken.