Darkness greeted her.
Mu Wan turned on the lights, set her keys on the cabinet, and the metal clink echoed sharply in the quiet.
The apartment was small. It should have felt cramped.
Instead, it felt empty, wide with loneliness.
Mu Wan glanced around, suddenly bored by the stillness, and went into the bedroom.
The bedroom was empty too. Lifeless furniture. Nothing else. And Mu Wan realized, with a strange clarity, that her home hadn’t felt this hollow before.
She walked to the bed and sat down. The mattress sank around her, swallowing her body like a soft trap. The place inside her that had been warmed and filled in Liu Qianxiu’s kitchen collapsed again, as if it had never been supported.
The contrast was new.
Too sharp.
Three kittens. A bowl of broth noodles. One man. Steam fogged the air. Marble is cool under fingertips.
The images spun slowly in her mind.
Lin Wei had been right.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t afraid of loneliness.
It was that she’d treated loneliness as normal.
“It’s just a bowl of noodles,” Mu Wan muttered, annoyed at herself for being so sensitive. She laughed once, then got up and went to shower.
The next morning, she had no work.
She slept in as usual.
Around ten, voices outside her door pulled her awake. Recognizing the familiar tone, Mu Wan rolled out of bed, long-limbed and fast, and opened the door.
Outside, Auntie Wu was chatting with the neighbor across the hall. Hearing the door open, the older woman turned, her cheerful expression pausing.
“Just woke up?”
Mu Wan reached out and took the vegetable basket from her hands, smiling. “I’ve been awake a bit. Just didn’t get up. Why didn’t you knock?”
“I just got here,” Auntie Wu said, ending the conversation with the neighbor and following Mu Wan inside.
Auntie Wu was in her sixties, a longtime helper from the Mu household. She’d watched Mu Wan grow up. Mu Wan’s mother had once done her a kindness, and after Mu Wan’s mother passed away, Auntie Wu continued to look after Mu Wan. In the years since Mu Wan moved out of the Mu family home, Auntie Wu would visit whenever she had time, cook a meal, tidy the place.
Auntie Wu followed her into the kitchen. The apartment looked the same as the last time she’d come. Auntie Wu’s eyes flicked around with suspicion, making two slow rounds before she recovered.
Mu Wan leaned her shoulder against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching her.
“There’s no one here.”
Caught, Auntie Wu gave a shy little smile. Then she tested the question anyway.
“Then… what about yesterday’s one?”
Mu Wan remembered running into the neighbor when she and Liu Qianxiu had carried the cat bed downstairs. That neighbor and Auntie Wu had been chatting very enthusiastically outside. Clearly, the topic was theirs.
“That was Doctor Liu,” Mu Wan explained. “He came to my place to take the kittens.”
Auntie Wu’s concern for her was obvious. Mu Wan had never really hidden her feelings from her.
The light in Auntie Wu’s eyes dimmed.
She pulled ingredients from the basket, muttering, “You’re not young anymore. All these years, have you liked anyone? Wouldn’t it be good to have a companion, someone to eat with?”
That last line made Mu Wan’s lips press together slightly. Something in her mind swayed, warm and inconvenient. She watched Auntie Wu lay out vegetables and asked, “Why are you suddenly pushing this today?”
Auntie Wu had always hoped, but she’d never pressured Mu Wan.
Auntie Wu looked up, sigh heavy in her voice. “Mu Qing brought her boyfriend home yesterday.”
At the name, Mu Wan’s mind tightened shut.
Mu Qing was her uncle’s daughter, her cousin. They were only two months apart in age. Mu Wan had grown up living with her mother in the Mu household. A widowed woman raising a child came with ugly gossip. Her mother was still “Mu family,” but Mu Wan, even with the surname, had always been treated like an outsider. The entire household disliked her.
Mu Wan and Mu Qing were the same age, yet received completely different treatment, especially after Mu Wan’s mother died. Once Mu Wan could support herself, she moved out.
But children in the same family were always compared. Mu Qing had spent her childhood losing out to Mu Wan in those comparisons. As a girl, she’d cried about it. As she grew older and was trained like a socialite, she learned to hide her emotions.
Auntie Wu kept talking.
“Her boyfriend is the future successor of Shen Group. They met while traveling abroad. The man’s way of speaking… he’s impressive.”
She sighed again, a little bitter. “After all these years, she finally managed to beat you.”
Mu Wan looked down at Auntie Wu, expression calm, almost indifferent. She put on a half-smile, pretending to be offended.
“How is that beating me? Maybe I’ll find someone even more impressive.”
“Where are you going to find someone more impressive?” Auntie Wu shot her a skeptical look.
Mu Wan joked, light and careless. “The Shen family only looks good because they’re backed by the Liu family. I’ll just find someone from the Liu family.”
Auntie Wu studied her, seeing the humor in her eyes, and softened.
“No need for impressive,” she said. “Just find someone who treats you well. If you find that person… you’ll have family again.”
Mu Wan’s smile stopped.
A beat passed.
She didn’t continue the topic.
Auntie Wu set out the ingredients neatly and asked, “What do you want to eat?”
Mu Wan glanced over what she’d brought, her tongue touching her lower lip briefly, and said quietly,
“Yangchun noodles.”
The author has something to say:Liu Daochang: Patriarch of the Liu family think about it~
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