[Yu Ning: You didn't have to settle the bill for us...]
[Qing Jue: I told you you'd get a discount. 100% off.]
[Yu Ning: No need for that, we'll just take a 10% discount.]
[Yu Ning: We'll transfer it back soon.]
Qing Jue stared at the screen on the mahogany table, a ghost of a smile dancing across his face. Her first few messages to him were a blunt interrogation about the bill.
How dull... he thought, though the slight curve of his lips suggested otherwise.
He let the phone go dark, his gaze sliding back to the mountain of meeting briefs in front of him.
He had stayed overnight at the office again. After a thirty-minute nap following a very late lunch, he'd woken to her notification. Behind him, the floor-to-ceiling windows offered a panoramic view of the city, the neon lights glaring into the room.
Inside, the office was bleak.
The air was sterile, the only sound he could hear was the air-conditioning unit blowing cool air into the room.
Stuck in a constant cycle of consultations and market forecasts, his days whirred by like a record player, repeating a never ending film.
His eyes burned. Setting his glasses aside, he revealed a pair of deep bronze eyes that looked glassier than usual under the dim room lighting. He sniffled, a dull congestion settling in his nose, the first sign of a body reaching its limit.
Blinking slowly, his lashes fluttered as he stared into the dead space of the room. He leaned forward, hunching over the desk to rest his head in his palm.
His free hand reached out, mindlessly picking at the corner of a manila file.
The edges were fraying, worn down by his constant, restless fidgeting.
After an unknown amount of time, the shrill ring of his phone pierced through the silence.
Qing Jue picked it up without looking at the ID. The first thing he heard was Yuan Feng's voice, low, gruff, and unusually drained.
"Qing Jue, let's head out for drinks."
Qing Jue remained silent for a beat, his mind slowly recalibrating from the dry text of the briefs.
"Fought with your girlfriend again?" he rasped, his voice thick with the remnants of sleep.
On the other end, Yuan Feng heaved a heavy, jagged sigh. That was enough of an answer.
"I've been working overtime lately," Qing Jue countered, though his protest felt half-hearted even to his own ears. "Maybe another time."
"Qing Jue," Yuan Feng said, his tone turning distant, almost hollow.
The weight in his friend's voice made Qing Jue pause. It must have been a spectacular disaster of a fight.
"Just send me the location," Qing Jue resigned, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his palm as he forced himself to stand.
Ending the call, he dragged his heavy limbs toward the private bathroom attached to his office room.
He splashed cold water on his face, staring at his reflection until the bronze in his eyes sharpened. As he stripped out of his crumpled office attire, a cynical thought crossed his mind.
It seemed his life had narrowed down to a binary of two things: drinking and working.
Qing Jue stood beneath the skeletal branches of a sycamore tree, the smoke from his cigarette spiraling into the biting November air. A single wireless earpiece was wedged in his ear, while the other dangled carelessly against his brown wool scarf and black trench coat.
The temperature had plummeted, autumn was losing its grip, and the winter chill of Shanghai was settling in.
Having left his glasses in the car, his face looked much softer, his hair un-styled. He looked every bit the twenty-two-year-old he was, finally blending into the sea of university students and trendy youths drifting down the street.
A silver coupe veered into a nearby slot, the engine cutting with a sharp growl.
Yuan Feng emerged looking like a man who had been through a centrifuge. His coat and trousers were still perfectly tailored, but his hair was a chaotic mess, as if he'd been running his fingers through it in a panic for hours. His eyes were hollow, stripped of their usual arrogance.
Qing Jue took a final, long inhale, watching his friend's languid approach. He didn't say a word, simply offering a steadying pat on Yuan Feng's back as they turned toward the Eclipse Bar.
Recognizing the owners' silhouette, the door staff parted like a curtain, allowing them to bypass the noise of the main floor and climb toward the third floor. A bottle of chilled Prosecco arrived almost instantly, the pale liquid hissing as it hit the glass.
"What happened?" Qing Jue asked, his gaze fixed on the movement of the crowd below.
"She told me I wasn't spending enough time with her," Yuan Feng began, the words tumbling out in a weary rant. "I brought her a bunch of gifts to apologize, but she just started screaming."
Qing Jue took a slow sip, listening to the familiar cadence of a high-society breakup.
"We were shouting at each other, and she just... she blurted it out. She's been seeing someone else."
A common story.
Qing Jue hummed, his expression neutral. He wasn't surprised. He'd seen the expiration date on this relationship months ago. In their circle, romance was often nothing more than a transactional aesthetic.
Yuan Feng needed a beautiful accessory to adorn his arm at galas, and his girlfriend required a benefactor to keep her lifestyle in the latest limited editions. It was a symbiotic arrangement of vanity, a shallow cycle of "decoration for decoration" that Qing Jue found increasingly exhausting.
"This is why I don't date anymore," he commented, the cold glass chilling his palm.
"You act like you're ten years older than you are," Yuan Feng scoffed, before tilting his head back to drain his glass in one desperate gulp.
"It's too quiet up here. Let's go down," Yuan Feng complained, his eyes already wandering toward the pulse of the music below. He didn't wait for an answer, grabbing his empty glass and heading toward the stairs.
That was his nature: he filled the voids in his life with the noise of other people.
Qing Jue remained unmoving, the shadows of the third floor swallowing him.
This is so repetitive, he thought, the bubbles in his glass going flat.
His life felt like a high-definition loop of the same rooms, the same drinks, and the same hollow conversations.
His phone buzzed on the table. He picked it up, expecting a work email or a text from Yuan Feng, but the notification was from WeChat.
[Yu Ning has sent you 630.00 RMB]
Qing Jue stared at the grey bubble, perplexed. He leaned back, his thumb hovering over the screen for a split second before exiting the app.
At the far end of the same street, the neon pulse of Anfu Road was beginning to fade into the background.
Song Yan had finally reached his limit, his arms draped with enough shopping bags to look like a pack mule for the elite.
Shu Hua walked beside them, her eyes catching the glow of Yu Ning's phone as she finalized the transfer to her "acquaintance."
"If something is too good to be true, it usually is," Yu Ning stated simply, her voice flat.
Shu Hua and Song Yan didn't argue.
Deep down, Yu Ning knew that she just simply didn't want to owe him anything.
Whether he was being genuinely courteous or calculated by footing the bill, she had decided that keeping her distance was the only way to stay whole.
To her, men like Qing Jue were like the neon lights of the Bund, beautiful to look at from a distance, but blinding if you got too close.
She pocketed her phone, walking towards Song Yan and Shu Hua.
She had no idea that her unintentional push would be the very thing to pull her forward into the blinding lights.