Shen Xifan woke to the sound of plum petals brushing stone.
Not a storm, not a shout, not the muffled vibration of her phone on a hotel nightstand.
Just the wind shifting outside her open window, and a faint bloom of morning light crawling across the edge of her floor.
She blinked slowly.
Her shoulder didn't ache.
Her throat didn't burn.
And for the first time in years, she didn't brace herself before sitting up as if her body no longer expected news that would undo her overnight.
It was just morning.
And nothing hurt.
The air smelled like rice steam and drying leaves.
She pulled on her cardigan, still soft from yesterday's sun, and stepped barefoot into the courtyard. Xu's lantern, which she'd quietly returned to his doorstep two nights ago, was still hanging; unlit, but polished.
She smiled.
The market was quieter than usual.
Yuling waved to her from the stall beside Madam Jin's, holding up a small sketch of the storefront they'd spoken about last week. The lines were neater now, the balance stronger.
"Still crooked on the east wall," Xifan said as she passed. "But less sleepy than before."
Yuling grinned. "Then it matches you."
Xifan raised a brow. "Sleepy?"
"No.. straighter. Less tilted. Like you woke up and remembered how to walk forward."
The words hit her chest in the gentlest way.
She didn't reply.
Just nodded once, gratefully.
She returned home with sweet buns and a new pencil case for her sketchbook.
Xu was already in the studio, sleeves rolled, turning a blank stone over in his hand. When he looked up and saw her; bun in one hand, pencil case in the other — his smile came slowly.
But it stayed.
"Do you ever sleep?" she asked.
He wiped his hands on a cloth. "Not when I'm waiting."
"For what?"
"For light like this," he said, nodding toward the corner where the sun hit the windowsill just right. "It's only like this once a month. The kind that makes jade glow from the inside."
She looked.
The stone in his hand shimmered faintly; not like glass, not like fire. Like memory.
She crossed the floor slowly.
Stood beside him.
He didn't move.
And for the first time since they'd met, she reached for the stone without asking — her hand brushing his as she took it.
The heat of it, the texture, the way their skin touched — none of it startled her anymore.
It felt inevitable.
He said, quietly, "This one's not for a pendant."
She turned the stone once in her palm. "What is it?"
"Something for two hands."
Her breath caught.
Not from surprise.
But from the fact that he'd said it aloud.
She set the bun on the table.
And stayed.
The man didn't knock.
He waited by the bridge.
Xu Songzhuo saw him from the studio window just after noon — a tall, clean figure dressed in a city-cut jacket, arms loosely folded behind his back, looking not impatient, but expectant. The kind of man who didn't fidget. Who carried his presence like a business card.
Xu recognized him at once.
Ji Wenhao.
His grandfather's former client. A quiet collector of jade, paintings, and power.
Xifan was upstairs when Xu stepped out.
She'd been reorganizing the studio's supply drawers, tucking sketching tools and brush cloths into labeled trays — not because he'd asked her to, but because she'd simply begun to treat the space like her own.
When she heard the outer gate click, she glanced out the high window and saw them:
Two men on opposite sides of the bridge.
One facing away from town.
One facing back toward it.
Wenhao smiled the moment Xu approached.
"You've changed," he said.
"Time does that."
"I meant your posture."
Xu said nothing.
The silence was its own agreement.
"You're not wearing the Xu pin," Wenhao noted, gesturing to the collar of Xu's plain linen shirt.
"I'm not representing the Xu studio."
"And yet your pieces are still being quoted at gallery showings. You know that, don't you?"
Xu's jaw tightened slightly.
"I don't carve for showing anymore."
Wenhao's voice softened. "People miss your lines, Songzhuo. That curve on the 'Moon Over Fen River' panel? I saw it copied in Hangzhou last month. Poorly."
"Then let them copy it."
"You've been hiding," Wenhao said, a touch more directly. "But I hear you're not alone anymore."
Xu stilled.
It wasn't a threat.
But it wasn't kindness either.
Wenhao tilted his head, measured. "She's staying?"
Xu met his gaze. "That's not your concern."
"Maybe not. But if your name rises again, the world will want to know whose hands helped lift it."
The words weren't cruel.
They were true.
Xu understood what Wenhao meant.
The world didn't like reemergence without narrative. And love — quiet, real love — never made headlines the way mistakes did.
He didn't answer.
Wenhao didn't expect him to.
He clapped Xu once on the shoulder, light and precise, like placing a seal.
Then walked off, back toward the far side of town where cars waited beneath gray umbrellas.
Xifan was still at the studio window when Xu returned.
She didn't pretend not to have seen.
But she didn't press.
"Should I go?" she asked gently.
Xu paused mid-step.
Then shook his head.
"You already did."
She blinked. "What?"
"You already went somewhere," he said, stepping into the studio, "and came back changed."
He walked past her, brushing her shoulder lightly with his sleeve.
"And I don't need to lose you again."
She followed him without speaking.
And when he turned slowly and saw that she was still standing there, bun forgotten on the table, hands lightly dusted with charcoal from earlier sketching
He reached up.
Touched her cheek.
Just once.
And let the moment hold.
It began the way the best things often do in Water Moon Town
Not with thunder.
Not with declarations.
But with quiet.
The light shifted around them as if it too had been waiting for the right moment.
Xu Songzhuo's hand was still lightly resting against Shen Xifan's cheek. He hadn't meant to touch her. Not really. But when she had looked at him — open, steady, still breathless from saying "Should I go?" — he couldn't not.
His thumb brushed just once beneath her eye.
She didn't flinch.
Her skin was warm from the sun, her breath soft from something not quite fear.
He didn't move.
And neither did she.
There was something holy in that pause.
Not sacred like a shrine.
Sacred like mutual knowing.
The kind that only exists between people who've already lost something once and don't want to name it again until they're sure it won't be taken.
Xifan's eyes searched his.
For doubt. For hesitation.
She found neither.
But she did find something quieter: a question.
Not Can I?
But Are you still here?
And so she answered it the only way she knew how.
She leaned forward.
Slowly. So slowly.
So that he could turn away.
So that he could step back.
So that he could un-choose her, if he needed to.
He didn't.
When her lips met his, it wasn't urgent.
It wasn't fragile either.
It was a meeting of breath, of time, of two people who had spent weeks saying everything except this and now, with no one watching, with the whole world quiet but for the creak of plum branches and the faint hum of afternoon, they let themselves feel.
Xu inhaled softly through his nose.
His hand shifted from her cheek to the back of her neck, gentle, steady, never gripping.
He tilted his head, just slightly.
And kissed her back.
There was no gasp.
No grabbing.
Just breath deepening.
And staying.
She kissed him like someone who remembered what it felt like to be watched for performance and had finally found someone who didn't need her to perform.
He kissed her like someone who had waited not just for a moment, but for a person, a person who would meet him in stillness, and never ask him to speak faster than he wanted to.
When they finally pulled apart, her forehead stayed against his.
Neither opened their eyes.
The studio was silent but for the wind stirring the open window.
A few plum petals had fallen onto the floor.
He said her name, then — not whispered, not reverent.
Just true.
"Shen Xifan."
She smiled.
Eyes still closed.
And said:
"I hear you."
Then they both laughed — quietly, breathlessly — like children who had stolen back a secret the world had tried to erase.
They didn't kiss again right away.
They didn't need to.
The moment had stayed.
And so had the light.
It happened slowly.
Not the kiss that had already happened, still lingering in the corners of the studio like warmth from a late fire
but the after.
The moment after two people admit something they've only ever carved around in silence.
The moment after closeness no longer needs an excuse.
It happened in the way Xu reached to open the back window wider, letting in the scent of the plum tree now shedding its petals in full.
It happened in the way Xifan didn't ask whether she could stay longer — she just folded her legs beneath her and returned to sketching as if her place had always been there.
For the first time, the studio smelled like her.
Not incense. Not dust.
But steamed rice and faint jasmine and paper that had once been carried under her arm on a walk from the market.
Even the tools seemed quieter now, like they, too, were waiting for her next move.
Xu carved in rhythm again.
Not because he needed to finish a piece.
But because this was how he spoke when words were too fragile to hold everything.
Chisel. Pause. Chisel.
Across the table, Xifan was redrawing the edge of the woman in her carving — not from memory anymore, but from feeling. The shoulders a little looser now. The spine straighter.
In the middle of it, she asked:
"Was it always going to be like this?"
He looked up.
She clarified, gently:
"You and me."
Xu wiped the jade dust from his palms.
Then said:
"No."
"But I hoped."
That night, they shared tea on the steps of the courtyard, knees just barely touching.
She leaned against his side as the last light sank behind the rooftops.
He didn't pull her closer. He didn't need to.
She was already there.
Later, when she returned to her own house reluctantly, gently — Xu stayed in the studio.
Not to work.
But to make space.
He cleared out a drawer.
Just one.
Lined it with a soft cloth.
Placed a bundle of new sketch paper inside, and her spare pencil case.
Then beside it a small hand towel folded carefully in thirds.
Her hair tie.
One of her teacups.
Not an invitation.
Not a confession.
Just a quiet way of saying:
This is yours too.
By the time the wind picked up again, carrying the scent of rain from the far edge of the canal, the studio had changed.
Not by much.
Just enough.
Now, it remembered two people.
Now, it held the light longer than before.