Su Yao woke up too early again.
Not in the productive "wake up and feel refreshed" way—no. She woke up the way someone wakes up when a nightmare chased them until the edge of sleep and then shoved them off a cliff. Her heart was beating too fast. Her blanket was twisted around her ankle like it was trying to drag her back to bed. And her hand—her right hand—was clenched around her bracelet so tightly the beads left little dents in her skin.
She stared at the ceiling for a long time.
Why was it cold in her dream?
Why did the air smell like dirt?
Why did the small hand in her dream feel so… real?
She swallowed and sat up slowly. The apartment was quiet, like it always was in the morning—just the hum of someone's rice cooker down the hall, the muted thud of footsteps from the floor above, and the faint glow of Shanghai sun fighting through pollution.
She touched the bracelet again.
One bead.
Two.
Three.
And then she froze.
Because a picture flashed through her mind—so fast she couldn't grab it. A tiny girl kneeling in dirt. A boy with red ears from the cold. A big, leaning camphor tree behind them. A winter wind that felt too sharp.
Her lips parted without thinking. A whisper escaped her.
"…Lele?"
She didn't know why she said it. She didn't know where it came from. But hearing her own voice say it made her chest tighten.
She rubbed her temples. "No. No, no, no. Su Yao, you're just stressed. This is all stress. Work stress. CEO stress. Cardiovascular stress."
She flopped back on the pillow and pulled the blanket over her head just as someone knocked on her door.
"YAOOOOO!" Shanshan called from outside. "Open up! I brought caffeine and cheese buns! I'm being a GOOD FRIEND!"
Su Yao threw the blanket off her face and scrambled to the door, opening it with a tired groan. "You're too loud for morning."
Shanshan shoved a hot drink into her hands. "You look like someone who saw a ghost."
"Maybe I did."
"What ghost? Corporate ghost? Ex-boyfriend ghost? Childhood trauma ghost?"
Su Yao sipped the coffee and refused to answer.
Shanshan gasped dramatically. "IT WAS A GHOST."
"Please shut up," Su Yao muttered into her cup.
But she smiled—just a little—because Shanshan always made her feel less like she was drowning.
Work started normally enough, or at least as normal as things could be when the ENTIRE office now knew she had been personally reassigned to the CEO's project.
People tried to pretend they weren't staring.
They were terrible at pretending.
Someone in accounting literally made a detour past her desk for NO reason. The intern from IT kept dropping pencils near her chair. Even Fang Min, Mister I-Am-Perpetually-Overworked, hovered by her desk pretending to "check on her onboarding progress."
She just wanted to bury herself under her table.
But she forced herself to focus. She had been assigned to today's data normalization tasks with Wu Kexin's group. It required precision and attention, and for a few minutes, she managed to get absorbed in the numbers.
Until—
Tap tap tap.
She looked up.
Tang Yichen was at the door.
And EVERYONE in the room suddenly sat straighter.
"Ms. Su," Tang said in that calm, collected voice that could make a small child confess to crimes. "CEO Xiao would like to see you at three."
The air went dead.
Su Yao swallowed. "O—okay."
She could feel eyes drilling into her back the moment Tang left.
Wu Kexin coughed. "Focus, everyone."
But the damage was done.
The gossip oxygen level in the room tripled instantly.
By three o'clock, Su Yao was convinced her soul was going to try climbing out of her body to escape embarrassment.
She held her notebook against her chest like a shield as she walked to the CEO's floor. Her hands were cold. Her thoughts were loud. Her heartbeat was rude.
As she entered the conference room, she immediately recognized him.
Xiao Le wasn't even doing anything dramatic—he was just sitting there, reading a digital file—but somehow his presence filled the space like a cold front. The room felt too quiet. Too clean. Too… him.
"Sit," he said.
She sat. Too fast. Hit her knee on the table. Tried not to cry.
Tang placed a manila folder in front of her. "These were recovered from a storage archive during last week's system migration."
Su Yao opened it.
And everything inside her went still.
Photographs.
Old photographs.
Yellowed edges.
Faded colors.
A camphor tree leaning over a dirt road.
Children in oversized coats.
A tiny school with peeling paint.
And then—
A boy.
A very small boy.
Thin.
Cold.
Hair messy.
Eyes bright like someone taught him how to smile despite everything.
Her breath caught.
Something inside her cracked open a little. Just a little, but enough to make the room tilt.
"I… know this place," she whispered.
Xiao Le looked at her sharply.
"How?" His voice was quiet, but it carried an intensity that made her stomach flip.
She shook her head. "Not know, but… I think I remember it." She touched the camphor tree photo with trembling fingers. "I used to… dream about this tree. But I thought it was nothing."
He watched her without blinking.
The weight of his gaze felt like a hand pressing lightly on her chest—not hurting, just reminding her she had a heart.
"Do you remember anything else?" he asked.
She hesitated.
She wanted to lie. She wanted to say no. She wanted to keep her weird dreams and strange flashes locked up where they couldn't embarrass her.
But something about the photos made lying feel wrong.
"…There was a boy," she said softly. "A very small boy. I don't know who he was. But he looked so cold—like he shouldn't have been outside. And I remember giving him something. A bun? Or a bracelet? Something warm."
Her voice cracked at the end.
She hated that.
She hated that she sounded fragile.
Xiao Le's jaw tightened. His fingers curled slightly against the table.
He didn't interrupt.
He didn't look away.
He didn't flinch.
He just absorbed every word like he had been starving for them.
After a moment, he said, "Would you… want to visit the village?"
Su Yao's head snapped up.
"What?"
"I've arranged a visit this weekend," he said in that calm, steady tone that somehow made everything worse. "If you want answers… seeing the place might help."
Her mouth opened and closed like a fish.
Was he serious?
A trip?
To her childhood village?
With him?
Her brain screamed. Her heart screamed. Her ancestors probably screamed too.
But deep inside—beneath the panic and the embarrassment—something pulsed.
Hope.
"…Okay," she whispered.
And the moment she said it, something shifted in the air.
Xiao Le's expression softened by one degree. Just one. But it was enough to make her breathing stop for half a second.
He nodded. "I'll send the details."
She stood up too quickly and almost tripped again. Tang held the door for her, and she mumbled a thank you that sounded like she was being chased by wolves.
She didn't breathe until she was back in the elevator.
Did she really just agree to go to a village with the CEO?
She pressed her forehead against the cool elevator wall.
"Oh my god," she whispered.
"Oh my GOD."
When she finally got home that night, she collapsed onto her bed and buried her face into a pillow.
Her phone buzzed.
Shanshan: "ARE YOU ALIVE? WHAT DID HE SAY? WHY 3PM? DID HE SCOLD YOU? DID HE PRAISE YOU? DID YOU CRY? DID HE CRY??"
Su Yao: "I think I accidentally agreed to a trip."
Shanshan called instantly.
"YOU WHAT—?!"
Su Yao groaned. "It just happened!"
"Trips don't 'just happen' unless you're being kidnapped!"
"I don't think he's kidnapping me!"
"Are you sure?! He's rich enough to make it look like an internship!"
Su Yao threw her pillow at the wall. "SHANSHAN IT'S FOR WORK—maybe. Or memories. Or— I don't know, okay? I don't know!"
She ended the call and curled up, clutching her bracelet.
Her head felt heavy. Her chest felt weird.
But beneath all the confusion… something warm was blooming.
Something she hadn't felt in a long time.
Something she didn't know how to name yet.
Across the city, Xiao Le stood alone in his office, looking at the same photographs she had touched.
He traced a small boy's face with his thumb.
Then he whispered, almost too softly to hear:
"Little Bean…"