Mu Wan followed Liu Qianxiu inside.
Light from the corridor stretched through the open doorway in a long rectangle before the door closed behind them with a soft click.
Mu Wan glanced back toward the entrance.
When she had come yesterday, it had been empty too.
“Why isn’t Zhouyi sitting by the door waiting for you?”
Behind her, Liu Qianxiu finished closing the door.
“Waiting for what?”
Still holding the bouquet, Mu Wan changed into the slippers he had given her.
“For his owner to come home.”
Liu Qianxiu switched on the lights.
The apartment brightened.
It was still spacious and sparsely furnished, yet for some reason it no longer seemed empty to Mu Wan.
Liu Qianxiu went to get the first-aid kit.
“Only people wait,” he said.
Mu Wan paused.
Only people waited for someone to come home.
And today, she had been standing outside his door waiting for him.
Put like that, the relationship between them suddenly sounded rather ambiguous.
By the time Mu Wan recovered from the thought, Liu Qianxiu had already returned with the first-aid kit.
His expression had not changed at all.
Mu Wan smiled and let the thought go.
At his gesture, she sat down on the rug beside the low table.
The woven surface was slightly coarse beneath her, and the scent of agarwood was stronger here.
Only then did she remember the flowers still in her arms.
She held them out to Liu Qianxiu.
“For you.”
Liu Qianxiu lowered his eyes.
Mu Wan sat on the rug looking up at him, the warm lights of the room scattered like tiny stars in her dark eyes.
She smiled.
“Thank you for taking care of the kittens.”
Then she added, “And for making me Yangchun noodles.”
The bouquet was large.
Liu Qianxiu took it, his fingers tightening around the wrapping paper with a faint rustle.
Then he sat cross-legged opposite her, flowers resting in his arms.
“You’re welcome.”
He looked down at the bouquet.
“And thank you for the flowers.”
A handsome man holding beautiful flowers.
The combination was almost unfair.
Mu Wan stared at him for a moment too long.
He looked like the subject of an oil painting that had just received its final brushstroke.
Nothing excessive.
Nothing misplaced.
Perfectly composed.
Liu Qianxiu’s presence was so distinctive that Mu Wan sometimes forgot to pay attention to his actual face.
Sitting this close, she found herself studying him more carefully.
His features were refined without being ostentatious.
Natural.
Quiet.
He reminded her of a still lake beneath a forest, and beyond both, distant mountains half hidden by pale mist.
The longer she looked, the more there seemed to see.
He was nothing like the flawless male celebrities Mu Wan met in her work.
Actors made their living partly through their faces. With time, even exceptional beauty could slowly lose some of its freshness.
Liu Qianxiu seemed to be the opposite.
Whatever made him compelling felt as though it had been sealed away like clear wine in an unopened jar, growing deeper and richer with time.
The living room was enormous.
There were only two people in it.
Yet Mu Wan suddenly felt as though the space between them had become very small.
Liu Qianxiu lowered his head and began treating the scrape on her knee.
Soft light rested across his face.
His expression was focused.
Gentle.
He was a cool person.
Mu Wan had always thought so.
Cool from the inside out.
Yet sitting here beside him, she could see unmistakable gentleness in his face.
The room was so quiet she could hear the faint whisper of air from the vent.
Something warm seemed to rise inside her chest.
It brushed against her throat.
Lightly.
Restlessly.
Almost like the cotton swab in Liu Qianxiu’s hand passing over her wound.
“You’re not cold at all,” Mu Wan said.
She bent one knee and leaned back on both hands to steady herself.
The coarse cotton-linen weave left faint impressions against her palms.
Her voice was loose and lazy, as though she were chatting with someone she had known for years.
The relaxed posture pulled her neckline slightly to one side, revealing the clean line of a pale collarbone and the slender curve of her neck.
Liu Qianxiu looked up.
Mu Wan was smiling.
Her beauty was vivid even when she was expressionless.
When she smiled, something softer appeared beneath it.
A sweetness touched with sensuality she seemed entirely unaware of.
Red lips.
Pale skin.
Delicate features.
At this distance, every detail seemed sharper.
Liu Qianxiu lowered his gaze again.
He secured the gauze over her knee and finished treating the wound.
Then he placed the supplies back into the first-aid kit.
“Cats are the exception.”
Mu Wan’s eyes shifted.
Now that he was finished, she lowered her knee and copied his posture, sitting cross-legged opposite him.
One of them remained perfectly calm.
The other looked increasingly amused.
Mu Wan’s lips curved.
“Meow.”
The small sound drifted softly through the room.
Her voice was slightly husky, carrying the warm richness of a woman’s voice.
“I’m a cat.”
Liu Qianxiu’s throat moved once.
Mu Wan did not notice.
She tilted her head.
“Can this cat mooch another dinner?”
Liu Qianxiu studied her for several seconds.
Then he rose from the rug and walked into the kitchen.
Dinner was tomato and shrimp pasta.
Mu Wan looked at the two plates with mild surprise.
“You can eat seafood?”
The real question was obvious.
Daoist Liu doesn’t have dietary restrictions?
Liu Qianxiu apparently understood.
He pulled out a chair and sat down.
“I’m not a monk.”
Mu Wan stared at him.
“…”
After dinner, Mu Wan checked on Datou and Ertong before heading home.
The rain had stopped again.
Without the soft sound of rainfall, the night seemed unusually silent.
After showering, Mu Wan lay in bed and stared at the light hanging from the dark ceiling.
There was only one fixture in the entire bedroom.
It hung there alone.
Just like her.
Late at night, thoughts had a habit of going places they avoided during the day.
Mu Wan stared at the light.
Liu Qianxiu’s words returned to her.
Only people wait.
Why only people?
Perhaps because only another person could truly make someone’s loneliness feel less empty.
Mu Wan remained still.
For years, she had never needed anyone waiting for her.
At least, that was what she had believed.
But after discovering what it felt like to sit across from someone at dinner, to hear another person moving through a kitchen, to wait outside a door knowing someone would eventually come home...
The silence around her no longer felt quite the same.
Only people wait.
And perhaps being waited for was another way of knowing you were no longer alone.
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