[Outside the Lin Family Mansion — September 15, Morning]
The café opened at six.
The barista came in first and worked the lights up one by one — the pendants over the counter, the strip above the pastry case, the two in the back that had been flickering for a month.
The espresso machine took twelve minutes to come to temperature. The bread delivery landed at six-ten, three bags stacked by the side door, still warm from the oven two blocks over.
By six-thirty the room smelled like steam and butter. By six-forty the first customers were at the counter.
The girl at the third table had been there since before the lights came on.
She never ordered anything but black coffee, and she never drank it. The cup sat at her left hand and went cold at the pace any cup of coffee went cold.
Her right hand stayed on a notebook with a black cover. The notebook was thick — the kind of thick that came from being written in for a long time rather than bought that way. She wrote in small letters, tight against the margin.
The staff had stopped saying good morning to her years ago. She had never answered them anyway. She just pays. They serve her.
Neither of them spoke.
As usual, she was looking at the window again.
Across the street, a mansion sat behind a high grey wall. The gate was black iron, and the driveway beyond it was long enough that the house itself was only visible in pieces — a corner of pale stone, a second-floor window where a curtain moved sometimes, the slope of a tiled roof.
The front door was in a direct line of sight from the third table, and the third table was the only table in the café that could see it.
"The kitchen light was on again last night..."
She whispered under her breath as the pen moved, leaving very small characters on the paper.
"The light was on between midnight and four in the morning…"
She watched the tip of the pen. Then the window. Then the pen.
"He must have been cooking, for four hours straight. Then at least three hours of sleep…"
She paused for a moment, looked at the characters on the paper, and continued.
"He's going to ruin his health if this continues…"
"And I'm powerless… I can't even get close enough to him… let alone warn him about that."
The door of the mansion was still closed. The curtain on the second floor hadn't moved since the lights came up in the café.
She closed the notebook.
Behind the counter, the barista was pulling the first shot of the morning and the machine was making the sound it always made. A couple at the front table were arguing quietly about a wedding.
The regulars drifted in — the one with the briefcase, the one with the baby, the one who always read the same newspaper, the student who only ever passed by for a single coffee.
The hand on the notebook didn't move.
She had been coming here long enough that the leather of the seat had a shape for her. The barista knew not to ask.
The clock behind the counter said six-fifty-three.
Across the street, the door of the mansion stayed closed.
"Another twenty-two minutes."
Her hand returned to the notebook. Not to open it. Just to rest against it.
She waited.
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Seven-fifteen came and went.
The door across the street had a schedule.
The schedule was reliable to the minute. He left at seven-fifteen, every morning, carrying a cloth-wrapped container with him as if it was some treasure, and then the door would close behind him at seven-fifteen and ten seconds.
A valet would bring the car around and load the container and his phone inside. Twenty seconds later the car pulled out of the Lin mansion and turned right, toward the exit of the high-end community.
This morning, the valet brought the car around on schedule. It idled at the foot of the steps. But the door stayed shut, and Lin Feng did not come out.
Seven-sixteen.
Her pen moved to the notebook. Then away from it.
"A minute is nothing." She did not write it down. "A minute is nothing."
Seven-eighteen.
Her hand anxiously adjusted the coffee cup, even though the cup did not need adjusting.
"He's never more than two minutes late."
The pen found the paper and did not write.
"Something's wrong."
Seven-twenty-two.
The couple at the front table had finished arguing about the wedding and were on to the flowers. A new customer came in, one she didn't recognize, and the barista looked up and looked away. The pen made a small tick against the paper, one beat, then another. She stopped it.
"Something is wrong."
She catalogued everything she knew. The kitchen light, midnight to four. Light off at four. No light since. The curtain on the second floor had moved twice, both before six. No delivery at the gate. The car, idling at the steps with no one in it.
"Maybe he's sick?"
Her chest went tight at the word.
"He can't be sick."
Seven-twenty-eight.
Seven-thirty-two.
Seven-forty-five.
Seven-fifty-nine.
Then, the door finally opened.
She saw it before she registered seeing it. Her hand was already going to the notebook, the pen already finding the paper, and she caught herself with the pen an inch above the page and forced her eyes back up.
A hint of worry appeared on her face.
He stepped out into the morning. He wore a dark shirt without a logo, jeans that looked like jeans and not like designer jeans, and he was carrying the cloth-wrapped container in his left hand.
Forty-four minutes late.
He stood on the top step for a moment and looked at the sky. Then he came down the driveway at an unhurried pace, past the idling car. The gate slid open for him, and he stepped onto the sidewalk.
He turned left.
She was already writing.
"Seven-fifty-nine. He finally emerged. Carrying lunch—"
Left.
The pen stopped.
The community exit was to the right. Everything was to the right. Left led deeper into the community, and past that, the golf courses and the other high-end places. And just across the road was —
The café.
He was crossing the street.
She stood up.
The chair scraped against the tile — loud, in a morning that had been quiet — and the couple at the front table looked over.
She did not look at them. She was already reaching for the bag, for the notebook, for the pen that had rolled when she stood.
She then took some cash out of her wallet and didn't bother to count it, leaving the bills scattered across the table.
The side exit was through a short hallway past the restrooms.
The staff did not stop her. The door was a push bar. The alley beyond it was narrow and she was through it in four steps, and around the corner in three more, and behind the decorative hedge at the building's far edge with a clear sightline to the café entrance.
She crouched.
She could hear her heartbeat in her ears.
Through the hedge, across the street, he was already at the café door.
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He pushed the door open.
The bell above it chimed — she couldn't hear the chime from this distance, but she knew the sound, had heard it every morning for five years — and he stepped inside.
The staff looked up. She saw the cashier straighten behind the counter and the barista pause mid-pour.
He did not order anything.
He walked through the room, past the front table where the couple had stopped talking, past the pastry case, past the espresso machine, to the third table by the window.
He stood there.
He looked down at what she had left behind. The cup of cold coffee. The open notebook she had forgotten to close before she ran. The money scattered across the wood. The chair she had pushed back at an angle.
He smiled.
It was small. Private. The kind of smile that belonged at the corner of a mouth more than on it.
Her eyes widened.
"The notebook! I actually left my notebook!"
Her hand pressed flat against the wall of the hedge planter. The brick was cold.
"What should I do? What should I do? Now he knows that I'm still stalking him!"
Through the window she watched him bend down and pick up the bills one by one. He folded them together. He set them on the table in a neat stack. Then he picked up the notebook, closed it without looking at the page, and set it on top of the money.
He did not take anything. He did not leave anything. He turned and walked back out.
The bell chimed again.
He stepped onto the sidewalk. He shifted the cloth-wrapped container from his left hand to his right. He looked once — just once — at the hedge.
She did not breathe.
He looked away.
He turned south, toward the park three blocks down. The park with the cherry blossom trees.
She followed.
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She hid behind the trees.
Her right shoe caught on a root. She steadied herself, pressed against the trunk of the next tree, and waited. He didn't turn around. He walked at the same pace he had walked from the café — unhurried, steady, like a man on a route he had done before.
He entered the park.
He passed the fountain. He passed the flower beds. He passed the playground where the first children of the morning were beginning to arrive with their grandparents.
He stopped in front of her bench.
He didn't look around. He knelt — once, briefly — and set the cloth-wrapped container in the center of the seat. He adjusted the cloth. He stood. He took his phone out of his pocket and typed for perhaps ten seconds, then put the phone back in his pocket.
He walked away.
He did not look at the trees.
She waited until he was past the fountain on the far side. Until he was past the gate. Until she could count to thirty with her eyes closed and not hear footsteps.
Then she came out.
She looked at the bench. The wooden slats. The carved initials from strangers. The shallow dip in the third slat from the left where she always sat.
The container was in the middle of the seat.
She reached for it.
The cloth was warm.
Not warm from the sun — the bench was in the shade, and the morning was still cool.
It was warm the way food was warm. Warm in the way that it felt like it had been cooked in the last hour.
She felt the heat through the linen, through her palm, steady and low, and her hand did not want to let go.
She unwrapped it.
A stacked bamboo container. Three tiers.
The top tier: osmanthus cakes. Six of them. Arranged in a neat spiral, still steaming.
The second tier: xiaolongbao. Eight of them. Translucent skin, each one crimped in the same eighteen-pleat fold she had watched him make through the kitchen window every morning for four years.
The third tier: candied lotus root. A neat row of slices, glazed with what had to be osmanthus honey because the scent was already in the air between her face and the food.
Her phone buzzed.
She flinched.
The phone was in her pocket where it always was. She pulled it out. The screen was lit with a notification, and the notification said Lin Feng.
She stared at the screen.
Lin Feng had blocked her for two years.
"Lin Feng… He unblocked me?"
The thought arrived intact.
"When?"
She tapped the notification.
[Lin Feng: You need to eat breakfast. I know you skip it every morning. This is for you.] Received: 8:21 AM
She read it.
Her chest did not know what to do with it.
She read it again.
"He knows."
The phone buzzed again in her hand.
[Lin Feng: And Xiao Yue — you don't have to hide anymore. If you want to talk to me, you can. I don't think you're weird. I'm glad you've been watching. It means you care.] Received: 8:22 AM
She read it.
"He's… glad?"
The word sat on the screen. A plain word. Four letters.
She read the message again.
"Wait! He also called me by my name!"
"He called me by my name!"
The last time his mouth had made that sound had been in the hallway outside their classroom back in high school two years ago, and the word that had come after it had been —
You're mentally ill...
And now he had typed her name into a phone and he had sent it to her and he had said glad.
Xiao Yue pressed the phone against her chest.
There were no tears that fell down her cheeks.
Instead:
"Does that mean I don't have to hide anymore?"
She stood on the path in front of her bench. The container was on the bench. The phone was pressed against her chest.
She looked at the bench.
She sat down.
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Xiao Yue picked up the xiaolongbao with her fingers because she did not have chopsticks.
The skin was still warm. She bit into it, and the broth was rich and clean and tasted like the kitchen she had been watching through the window for four years.
Then she looked at the food.
"This meal was intended for Su Qingxue… wasn't it?"
The thought came plain, with no heat behind it.
Four years of watching him offer these exact dumplings at exactly this hour, for exactly that woman.
Four years of that woman taking them without thanks, eating some, throwing the rest away.
Xiao Yue chewed. Swallowed. Then reached for the second xiaolongbao.
"It's mine now."
She ate it.
"This is mine now."
She ate the third, and the fourth, and the fifth. The skin gave under her teeth and the broth was hot on her tongue and the wagyu was soft enough that it fell apart on its own.
She had not eaten breakfast in years.
Drops of water fell on the lunch box.
She touched her cheek and found it wet.
She ignored it. The osmanthus cakes were next.
She took one. The cake was small, lighter than it looked. She ate it slowly. The scent was fresh, not preserved. She ate a second one more slowly.
The candied lotus root came last.
She took a slice. She chewed. She took another slice.
The osmanthus honey was on her fingers, and she licked it off without thinking about licking it off.
Then she stopped. The lunch box was finally empty. Yet drops of water were still falling on it.
She placed the lunch box beside her, wiped her face with her arm and leaned back against the bench.
She turned her head through the cherry blossom branches, across the park, down the length of the street where he had come from. The Lin family mansion was visible. The corner of pale stone. The second-floor window where the curtain had moved twice this morning before six.
"That incestuous whore lives in that house too," she said calmly.
"I wonder if Lin Feng also approached her today… No, that's the wrong thought."
"That stalker must have approached him today by herself."
Xiao Yue re-wrapped the container in its cloth.
She folded the linen the way he had folded it — bottom corner first, then the two sides, then the top tucked under. The heat was nearly gone from the cloth now. She pressed the last fold flat with her palm.
She stood.
She put the bag over her shoulder and picked up the container.
She took a step toward the main path. Then stopped.
The notebook.
She had left it on the table.
She turned and walked the other way.
The café was three blocks north. Xiao Yue walked with the container in her right hand and the sun came through the cherry blossoms and fell across the path in front of her.
As she breathed, the air felt lighter. The sun on her skin was gentler. Her steps were lighter than usual.
She returned to the café. The cash was gone from the table.
Only her notebook remained, and the woman at the counter had kept an eye on it.
She picked it up. She bowed to the barista, then to the cashier. Then she left.
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[Xiao Yue] ★★★★★★★
[7-Star Heroine — Full-Depth Advanced Computing Engineer]
[Star Points: 22M/1,000M]
[Affection: −99]
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[End of Chapter]