The question lingered longer than it should have.
Not because it tempted me—
But because of what it revealed.
If we asked properly this time—would you listen?
They finally understood the difference between taking and requesting.
It had just taken them too long.
I didn't reply that night.
I slept.
Deeply. Undisturbed.
The kind of sleep that only comes when you are no longer bracing yourself for disappointment.
By morning, the message was still there.
Unanswered.
Unchased.
That alone was an answer they weren't used to receiving.
Gu Chengyi arrived at the office earlier than usual.
He hadn't slept.
The question had been drafted, deleted, rewritten—each version softer than the last, each one stripped of entitlement he hadn't realized he carried for years.
For the first time, he wasn't calculating outcome.
He was calculating damage.
"How much did we underestimate her?" his assistant asked cautiously.
Gu Chengyi paused.
Then answered honestly.
"Enough to believe she'd always be available."
The words tasted bitter.
Han Zhe handled it worse.
He hated silence when it wasn't his.
By noon, he'd nearly sent three messages he never would have dared before.
We didn't mean it like that.
You know us.
Let's talk.
Each one sounded like an excuse when he read it back.
He deleted them all.
Frustration gave way to something colder.
Regret didn't come from losing her affection.
It came from realizing how easily he'd dismissed her humanity.
Shen Yu waited.
That, too, was new.
He reread the message he hadn't sent days ago—the apology he'd deleted because it felt premature.
Now he rewrote it.
Short.
Unarmored.
If you ever choose to speak to me again, I'll listen first.
He didn't send it.
Not yet.
Because asking properly also meant accepting no.
I spent the day doing ordinary things.
Reviewed a contract.
Corrected a budget line.
Taught a junior analyst how to push back politely without burning bridges.
Power, I was learning, lived in the unglamorous consistency of competence.
Not in grand gestures.
That afternoon, the unknown number buzzed again.
We won't approach you publicly.
No pressure.
No timeline.
I smiled faintly.
They were learning.
Slowly.
Painfully.
I finally typed back.
One sentence.
Listening isn't the same as access.
Then I turned my phone face-down and went back to work.
The reply reached them separately.
Gu Chengyi read it twice.
Then once more.
"She's setting terms," his assistant said.
"No," Gu Chengyi corrected quietly. "She's setting boundaries."
And worse—
They were reasonable.
Which meant rejecting them would be justified.
Han Zhe stared at the message and laughed once, breathless.
"Damn," he muttered. "She really changed."
No.
She'd always been like this.
They'd just never paid attention when it didn't serve them.
Shen Yu closed his eyes briefly.
Listening wasn't enough.
Access wasn't guaranteed.
And reconciliation?
That was no longer the goal.
The goal was respect—
Earned without expectation of reward.
That night, I wrote one more rule in my notebook.
Access is earned by consistency, not history.
I closed it.
For years, they had believed proximity was permanence.
Now they were learning what absence truly cost.
And the truth was simple—
Asking properly didn't mean I would listen.
It only meant I might not walk away immediately.
The rest?
That was on them.