The elevator doors closed with a soft chime, and the two women dissolved into giggles, tugging Tao's sleeves, pouting playfully.
"She really doesn't like you," one of them slurred, leaning against his shoulder.
"Is she your ex?" the other asked. "She looked so angry. Mmm… jealous maybe?"
Tao didn't answer.
He was watching the number light blink overhead, each floor ascending with that same slow hum. His hands were tucked in his pockets, and his smile — faint, unreadable — hadn't shifted since Yinlin spat out her answer like venom.
I'd rather jump off the roof.
It had thrilled him.
She wasn't indifferent. She wasn't immune.
He'd touched something. Bruised a nerve. She hated him — and that meant she still reacted.
Still burned.
And that was enough.
In the suite, the girls threw their bags onto the velvet lounge and reached for the whiskey decanter like it was a prize.
"Handsome ge~" one cooed again, voice syrupy with drink, "what do you want to do first?"
"Play chess," Tao said, calmly pouring himself water.
They both blinked.
"What?"
He nodded toward the antique glass chessboard near the fireplace. A decorative piece, rarely used. "Play. Winner gets double."
The women laughed — then stared.
"You're serious?"
"Deadly."
One of them pouted. "But I don't even remember how the horse moves."
"That's the knight," he said absently, already turning away.
They complained, whined, cursed softly as they knocked over pawns and tried to cheat under each other's noses. Pieces clacked awkwardly as one of them slurred, "Is this checkmate? Wait — what's a rook again?"
Tao didn't care.
He was seated on the couch, long legs crossed, his gaze distant — back in the hallway.
Back to her.
Yinlin.
Still in that uniform. Still sharp-tongued. Still capable of piercing him in one glance.
Even after all this time, she had that same expression — the one from years ago, when she used to scold him for being late to class, or sneaking off from tutoring.
That fire. That bite.
She thought he was trying to humiliate her tonight.
But she was wrong.
He didn't want these women. Didn't need their touch, their perfume, their shallow praise.
He only needed one thing.
Her eyes on him.
Her guard slipping.
Her resolve cracking.
Slowly, over time. Like water carving stone.
He sipped his drink and watched the chess pieces tumble across the board in drunken chaos.
He couldn't wait to have her in his arms again. His, and all of her world become him again.
**************************
The apartment was quiet when she returned that night, save for the soft rustle of Mei's breath as she slept under her blanket fort.
Yinlin moved haggardly through the living room, switching off the lamps one by one, but the tension that had coiled in her chest since leaving the penthouse refused to loosen. That man—Xu Tao—he spoke to her with such conviction, as though she'd once whispered his name with reverence. As though her body should have remembered what her mind forgot.
It disturbed her.
What disturbed her more was how much she almost wanted to believe him.
She pulled the old metal storage box from the top of the closet—dusty and dented, filled with scraps of a life she couldn't fully claim anymore. High school notebooks, faded polaroids, postcards she never mailed. At the bottom: two photobooks from her final years in school. She had kept them only because her aunt insisted they were sentimental.
She turned pages with numb fingers.
Uniforms. Pigtails. Classrooms filled with girls posing in peace signs. Clubs. Sports day. Graduation.
None of it felt real.
Her eyes skimmed over dozens of names and faces, classmates smiling through time. And then—
A boy.
Page 47. Class 3-A. Back row, third from the left.
Sharp brows, sun-tanned skin, a crooked smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.
Name: Xu Tao. Role: Class Representative, Basketball Team Captain. Nickname scribbled in pen at the edge: "老大" — Big Brother.
She stared at the photo for a long time. Long enough for the silence to grow heavy.
The same name. The same arrogant tilt of the head. But the eyes—those were different. Softer. Less cruel. Not the cold, glinting stare that pinned her in hotel corridors.
She fumbled for her phone and called her cousin, Yangyang, who still lived in their hometown.
"Yinlin? You okay?"
She hesitated. "Do you remember... in high school... did I have a boyfriend?"
There was a pause. Then a small laugh. "Of course. Everyone knew you two were inseparable. You even carved your names on the old library bench. He was always waiting for you after classes."
Yinlin's grip tightened on the phone. "What was he like?"
"Mm... kind. Gentle. Not very talkative, but smart. He always gave you his umbrella. Remember when you caught the flu during finals? He brought you soup every day. You said you were going to marry him."
Yinlin swallowed. "Do you remember his name?"
Another pause. "Wait… what's with the sudden interrogation?"
"Just… please."
"I only remember his nickname," Yangyang said, frowning over the line. "You always called him 'Ah Tao'. Ah Tao this, Ah Tao that. It's both annoying and adorable." said her with a laughter.
Yinlin didn't reply.
After she hung up, she turned back to the yearbook.
She stared at the boy's face again, her thumb hovering just above the paper, afraid to smudge what little certainty remained. The photo was grainy, faded at the edges, as if time itself had tried to erase him. She traced the outline anyway, committing the shape of a stranger to memory. The Xu Tao she should have known looked unfamiliar—like a chapter torn from a book before she ever learned to read. A story she was never allowed to remember, yet somehow expected to grieve.
What unsettled her most was not the absence of memory—but the presence of feeling.
Unbidden, another image surfaced.
The elevator. The soft chime of closing doors. Tao standing between two women, their laughter careless, intimate. Their hands rested easily on his arm, their bodies angled toward him as if they belonged there. As if they had every right.
Something in Yinlin recoiled.
It was irrational. She knew that. She told herself so immediately, firmly. She had no claim—no recollection, no proof, no right. Whatever history existed between them had been taken from her, buried beneath blood and fractured bone. Memory was the only thing that granted ownership, and she had none.
So why did it feel like something of hers was being handled by strangers?
The thought startled her. She pushed it away at once, ashamed. It was a senseless reaction, a misfiring instinct, a shadow of something long dead. It did not deserve a name. She would not give it one.
Still, the image lingered—his ease, their closeness, the way the space around him seemed already occupied.
The room wavered, the edges of her vision softening.
She didn't cry.
But something inside her tightened and twisted, sharp and sudden, like a hand closing around a wound she was not meant to remember.
How could someone look at her as if he recognized what she had lost, when she herself couldn't? How could he speak to her with that quiet certainty, as though her presence still belonged somewhere in his life, when she had no memory of ever standing there?
And why—why did his touch feel like a claim she had never agreed to, yet somehow knew how to violate?
Yinlin turned to the mirror. The woman staring back at her looked worn, fractured at the edges. She lifted her hair to expose the long scar along her scalp, pale and merciless. A boundary drawn across her life. Before and after.
What had she given up for this mark?
Had she lost someone she once loved deeply enough to feel this now—a sense of possession without memory, grief without a name? The thought hollowed her chest. She could feel the absence clearly, sharply, but no matter how hard she searched, there was nothing there to hold onto.
Instead, there was Wei.
She had married him at twenty-four, when her life was fragile and newly assembled. He had loved her gently, without demanding a past she could not give. He was patience, steadiness, devotion. He was the man she remembered. The man she chose. The man she owed her loyalty to—even now.
Not the one whose presence stirred claims she could not justify.
Guilt followed swiftly, heavy and unforgiving. She put the yearbook away as though it were something dangerous, something that could still hurt people. Her hand lingered over the framed photograph of her late husband, her fingers brushing the glass with reverence and quiet shame.
"I'm being unfair to you," she whispered. "I'm sorry… for feeling things I shouldn't. I'm sorry, my love."
The apology remained unanswered, echoing only in her chest.
That night, Yinlin lay awake, staring into the dark. Guilt settled beneath her ribs, entwined with grief she understood and a claim she did not. Memory had been taken from her—but possession, it seemed, had not asked for permission.
Sleep came late and left her no peace.