Xiao Mei's plan for repayment was a meticulously crafted blend of darkness and tenderness.
After closing, she walked over to Guo Wei, who was lost in thought, holding her tablet. "Senior, I need you to assess a commission."
On the screen was her own file:
*Client: Xiao Mei. Request: Erase history of appearance-based inferiority complex. Budget: None (to be paid in installments, 15% of salary over the next three years).*
"But the client's qualifications are too poor. The system rejected it three times," she said, looking at him. "Why did you invest in me back then?"
Guo Wei remained silent. Xiao Mei opened another file.
"In the last three months, your success rate on 'emotional betrayal' commissions is 71%. Mine is 82%."
She played a recording. A client was sobbing about his wife running off with her fitness coach.
Xiao Mei's voice was icy: "Data shows 73% of coach-client relationships end within three months. You need to become his 'irreplaceable client' before he finds his next target. I have a plan."
Guo Wei's pupils contracted slightly. This was his method, but she executed it with a purer ruthlessness.
"You taught me," she said. "I'm just doing it more like you than you do now."
"But on those 82% of cases, I kept thinking—what would *you* do? And my answer always had something extra compared to what I'd come up with myself."
"What?"
"Warmth. You make the clients feel they're still human. I can't do that. I only make them feel like a bad debt."
Guo Wei smiled bitterly. "You want me to help you find warmth? I'm practically frozen myself."
"No. I want you to see how the asset you invested in operates."
She slid an old folder towards him. Inside were handwritten notes:
*"Day 1: Senior said the tea I made was just the right temperature."*
*"Day 47: Senior taught me: when a client cries, hand them the contract, not a tissue—tears wrinkle the paper."*
*"Day 112: First independent commission completed. Senior said, 'Well done.' Recorded it. Listened 17 times."*
The last page:
*"Day 1,089: Senior's light is fading. My light was lit by him. If his light goes out, what is mine? Stolen fire?"*
Guo Wei's hands began to tremble.
"Your warmth didn't disappear. It transferred," Xiao Mei's voice was very soft. "To me. To the people who survived because of you. Now it's stuck. We have to fix it."
"How?"
"Do what you taught me—break down the problem."
She drew three circles on her tablet:
1. Shame (Hui Hui and Ah Lun)
2. Emptiness (Self-worth collapse)
3. The System (Family, debt, the ranking machine)
Then she drew a large circle enclosing them and wrote:
*"Observation Conclusion: Senior Guo Wei is conducting a 'hostile takeover' of himself. He is the acquirer, the acquired, and the redundant asset about to be laid off."*
Guo Wei stared at the words, unable to breathe.
"But a takeover can fail if there's an 'emotional bad debt' not accounted for in the calculations." She pointed at herself.
"I am that bad debt. By all rational calculations, I should have been optimized out long ago. But I'm still here, telling you: your investment in me back then was the most unprofitable, irrational, most 'unlike-this-world' thing you've ever done."
She paused.
"And that act saved my life."
She placed a key on the table.
"The key to my apartment. It's not an invitation for anything, just… when you don't need to go home, you can come here. No surveillance. No assessments. No 'family risk rating'."
"You can be a pure, utterly broken, but still living person. That is my repayment."
Guo Wei looked at it for a long time, then finally picked it up. The metal was cold, yet it seemed to carry a trace of warmth.
"This investment… I might never recoup the cost."
Xiao Mei smiled, for the first time looking like a living, breathing person.
"I know. That's what makes it valuable."
That night, Guo Wei didn't go to Xiao Mei's apartment.
But he hung the key on his keychain, next to the house key he hadn't used in two weeks.
In the darkness, he held it, like holding a slender, tangible thread.
On the other end of the thread, someone was saying:
"I remember what you were like. I'm here, waiting for you to remember."
For a drowning man, this was already the warmest piece of driftwood he could grasp.