Su Hui lowered his eyes, gazing at the milk foam floating on his coffee. His thoughts were detached, his teeth clicked together, and finally, he opened his mouth. “I… I’m doing very well.”

Perhaps because his answer sounded too much like a non-sequitur, Ning Yixiao smiled.

But he was very used to Su Hui being this way—he had always been like this: erratic, illogical, due to his illness. This lack of change gave Ning Yixiao a slight, strange sense of security.

His assistant, Carl, having heard about the massive blunder with the hotel booking, rushed over without finishing his meal. Unable to reach Ning Yixiao by phone, he came to the hotel and spotted him through the floor-to-ceiling glass window.

To his surprise, Ning Yixiao was smiling. In all the time they had worked together, he had never seen his workaholic boss, who rarely showed expression, reveal such a smile. It was as if he had become a completely different person.

“What have you been doing these years?” Ning Yixiao asked, his demeanor relaxed.

Su Hui’s silence felt heavy and suffocating; it took him a long time to return to himself. “…Treating my illness.”

Ning Yixiao nodded in understanding. He stared at Su Hui’s lowered eyes and asked again, “Are you doing better now?”

“I’m fine.” Su Hui said the words against his heart. He turned his face to look at the road outside the window again, murmuring, “Much better.”

He looked like someone who wanted to stand up immediately, leave this place, and walk away.

Ning Yixiao chuckled lightly. Even though he didn’t quite believe it, even though he had already seen Su Hui’s trembling hands, and even though he knew better than anyone that this was a side effect of his medication, he responded very politely. “Is that so? That’s good.”

No, perhaps he wasn’t the person who knew best anymore.

Ning Yixiao couldn’t help but think of how Su Hui had looked lying on the bed earlier, the sound of his voice echoing in his ears.

Liang Wen. That was the name he had blurted out.

“Earlier, it seemed you mistook me for someone else.”

His fingers tightened against the side of his cup, yet he kept a smile on his face.

Su Hui was exhausted, finding it difficult just to sit there properly. His hands braced against the booth, and he barely heard Ning Yixiao’s question.

Ning Yixiao assumed he didn’t want to talk about it and smiled. “Sorry, am I asking too many questions?”

Su Hui heard this and shook his head sluggishly.

“Because it’s been a long time, I’m just a little curious,” Ning Yixiao said.

Su Hui seemed very cold; he wrapped his coat tighter around himself and took a sip of coffee. As he parted his lips, wisps of white steam escaped, like fog obscuring his decadent, gloomy, beautiful face.

But at the same time, when he moved the cup away, a trace of milk foam stained his lips, and his eyes looked innocent.

Su Hui was just such a contradiction.

Ning Yixiao also took a sip of coffee, shifting his gaze away from him.

He looked out the window. The grey sky seemed as if it would collapse at any second; the wind was strong, and every passerby seemed to be clutching their worries tightly.

In the silence, Su Hui finished the remaining half of his latte. The warmth and the caffeine seemed to steady his spirit slightly. He looked at Ning Yixiao. The man hadn’t changed much in six years, but he was clearly doing better.

He still had the same handsome face that one could spot in a crowd instantly, though he wore expensive coats unlike those of the past, looking aloof and unreachable.

“Ning Yixiao.”

Hearing his name, Ning Yixiao felt a bit dazed; he wasn’t used to being called by his full name by this person.

Turning back, Ning Yixiao stared at Su Hui’s pale face and found that his water-logged eyes were also looking at him. He couldn’t read the emotions within them; it looked very much like repentance.

But whether it was repentance or not, Ning Yixiao no longer wanted to delve into it. In the dozens of seconds he spent looking outside earlier, he had figured out a lot. He didn’t want to repeat the cycle of overthinking Su Hui’s heart; he knew his understanding of it was always wrong—six years ago, and six years later, it was the same.

There had always been a sentence stuck in Su Hui’s throat. He had thought that if he could ever see this person again, everything else wouldn’t matter, everything could be moved past, but this one sentence he had to ask.

During the time they sat there, he had been struggling, and when his energy finally recovered just a fraction, he finally gathered the courage to ask.

“You… my letter…”

“I read it.”

Ning Yixiao didn’t let him finish. He gave the answer with a flat mouth, showing a coldness that was completely different from before, as if he had been pierced by something.

Su Hui’s drifting thoughts suddenly made a misplaced connection, returning to the summer, thinking of the lawnmower in his garden, how the bodies of the green grass were severed in an instant, leaving only the raw, grassy scent.

The broken grass on the ground could only accept; it could not continue.

“I don’t really want to talk about these things now.” The smile returned to Ning Yixiao’s face.

He changed the subject as if nothing had happened, putting down his cup. “By the way, you used to say you liked Iceland. It’s been so many years, did you go?”

The hallucinations from the medication seemed to persist. Su Hui felt he was a stranded fish that had lost its spine—very weak, very powerless.

He barely managed to pull at the corners of his mouth to give Ning Yixiao a smile. Suddenly, the coffee he had just stirred appeared before his eyes; he saw the floating whirlpool, rotating, rotating, as if it could swallow him up at any moment and bury him inside.

“Mm.”

“Is it beautiful?” Ning Yixiao looked at him.

Su Hui nodded a beat late. “Very beautiful.”

“Are you here for travel too?” Ning Yixiao asked again.

Su Hui was quiet for a moment. “I’m here… for work.”

As he spoke, he noticed that one of Ning Yixiao’s hands remained buried in his pocket.

Fortunately, Ning Yixiao seemed intent on letting him off the hook; he didn’t continue the questioning.

“That’s true,” Ning Yixiao pulled his hand out. “Seattle isn’t really worth making a special trip to travel to.”

Su Hui couldn’t say anything else. As if Heaven itself knew he needed rescuing, the manager who had been so deferential to Ning Yixiao walked over, bowed again to apologize, presented a gift card as compensation, and said a few social niceties that Su Hui disliked but were necessary.

At least he could leave.

Su Hui stood up, gripped the handle of his suitcase, and said very softly, “Then, I’ll be going.”

Without looking back, he walked straight ahead.

But Ning Yixiao was quick on his feet, and Su Hui’s stride was too unsteady. After only a few steps, he was caught up, and in the end, they left the hotel entrance together.

It had begun to snow outside, heavily—nothing like what Su Hui had expected. He reached out his hand instinctively to catch a snowflake.

He had heard that it rarely snowed here, but it wasn’t an impossible probability; you could encounter it occasionally.

It wasn’t like his and Ning Yixiao’s situation—six years, only able to meet through such an extreme development of events.

Ning Yixiao turned his head, like an old friend reunited after a long time in a foreign land, and said the standard farewell: “I didn’t expect to run into you.”

The snowflake in Su Hui’s hand had already begun to melt. “Me neither.”

“Is that so?” Ning Yixiao smiled suddenly.

“I’m quite honored. I thought you had already forgotten that a person like me even existed.”

Having said this, he nodded toward someone not far away, and with a carefree tone, advised Su Hui: “I’m off. It’s snowing; be careful on the road.”

Su Hui stood on the spot for a minute. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to leave—his legs simply wouldn’t move.

He stood in the swirling snow, but before his eyes was the night six years ago, the night he left Ning Yixiao. It was just like this—he had forgotten to say goodbye.

When Ning Yixiao returned to the car, his assistant, Carl, had been waiting in the driver’s seat for a long time.

Usually, Ning Yixiao had near-demanding requirements for punctuality. This time, he was clearly going to be late, and Carl was anxious, fearing he might blow up.

“Shaw, straight to the banquet?” Carl glanced at his watch. “The drive is about 45 minutes. The chef for tonight’s banquet is a very famous one in Seattle. I checked the menu; they were considering scallops and shrimp, but I put in a word beforehand, saying you don’t like seafood, so they urgently switched it to venison…”

Finding that he had been talking for a long time without receiving a response from Ning Yixiao, Carl looked at him through the rearview mirror and hesitated before calling his name again.

In the mirror, Ning Yixiao’s face was pale, his brows knit tightly. His eyes were fixed on the car’s rearview mirror, his expression showing a rare, simmering hostility.

Carl was considering whether to try calling him once more when Ning Yixiao opened the car door and stepped out.

“Shaw?” Carl was puzzled and hurriedly opened the driver’s side door to follow him out.

In his experience, Ning Yixiao rarely lost emotional stability. Even when encountering extremely tricky, hopeless situations at work, Ning Yixiao was always calm, like an AI lacking emotional expression.

“You stay in the car.” Ning Yixiao looked down at his watch. “I’ll hail a cab to the banquet myself.”

Carl was even more confused. “A cab?”

“That person from just now…” Ning Yixiao paused, his expression shifting, “…you follow him by car and report his whereabouts to me.”

“Follow? That’s il…” Carl froze on the spot, but Ning Yixiao had already walked to the roadside and hailed a taxi that happened to be driving toward them.

“You don’t need to attend with me; I’ll let you rest later.” Having said this, Ning Yixiao stepped directly into the car.

Despite his internal reservations about his boss’s order, Carl followed Ning Yixiao’s instructions, entered the car, and drove in the opposite direction, his eyes scanning the streets for the sight of the beautiful young man from earlier.

Ning Yixiao sat in the backseat of the taxi, staring at a stain left on the back of the front seat, saying nothing. The driver tried to make conversation, but seeing his grim expression, he sulked and lapsed into silence, driving in quiet.

The sky outside the window had darkened. The snow danced quietly between the city’s night curtain and the neon lights, as if attempting to cover everything.

Countless thoughts flashed through Ning Yixiao’s mind, but he couldn’t grasp a single one, only feeling that his former self had been somewhat laughable.

After being apart for so many years, Su Hui felt zero curiosity about him. The only question he asked was about that letter, as if he had finally run out of patience for the continuous interrogation of his past and had delivered one final, fatal blow.

The most laughable part was that now, seeing Su Hui’s fragile state, a part of his body still couldn’t bear it, still thought he had been too harsh, that he shouldn’t have been so aggressive.

The driver had the air conditioning on; the temperature inside the car was not low. Ning Yixiao heard the news on the car radio: the host was reporting that Seattle would face the heaviest snow and lowest temperatures in history this year, reminding citizens to take precautions.

Ning Yixiao wanted to sneer. He rolled down the window, looking at the swirling white outside with no expression.

He remembered the heavy snow of six years ago clearly, just as he remembered the back of Su Hui covered by the snow. He remembered himself standing on the side of the road, frozen through, his body stiff, unable to take even a single step.

For him, this “cold winter” in Seattle that required special reports wasn’t even worth mentioning. He had been trapped in that snowstorm all along, and to this day, he had never managed to escape.

When he reached his destination, Ning Yixiao received a call from Carl.

“Shaw, I followed him the whole way. At first, he was walking—he walked very slowly. Then he got on a bus. In the end, he got off near a high-end apartment building and walked there.”

Hearing no interruption from Ning Yixiao, Carl continued: “When he arrived, a man was waiting for him downstairs.”

The silent Ning Yixiao finally spoke. “What kind of man?”

His voice had become somewhat terrifying, very low, as if suppressing a great deal of emotion. Carl’s throat tightened, and he described him with a sense of dread: “Um… he’s an ethnic Chinese, quite tall, looks about the same height as you, probably twenty-seven or twenty-eight.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Carl’s heart felt unsettled.

“Shaw…”

“They met, and then?”

The question was somewhat vague, so Carl had to describe everything he saw: “That gentleman seemed to ask something, then patted him on the shoulder, hugged him, and then they went upstairs together.”

“Anything else?”

“No,” Carl said truthfully. “I didn’t follow them up; it is, after all, someone else’s privacy.”

His words sounded like a hidden warning. Ning Yixiao let out a short laugh; it sounded like contempt, or perhaps self-mockery.

“You did the right thing.”

Carl felt a surge of inexplicable fear. Today’s Ning Yixiao was very strange. To be more precise, since seeing that person after the hotel’s blunder, Ning Yixiao had become incredibly strange. In the years he had worked for him, he had never seen him smile like that, nor had he ever seen him speak like this.

“Is there anything else you want me to do?”

“Yes.” Ning Yixiao entered the elevator and pressed the floor button.

“Look up a person named Liang Wen.”