A quiet evening.
Luoli was asleep by nine, worn out from a day that had involved, by his own account, "a lot of running."
Beichuan stayed after, which had become normal enough now that neither of them commented on it.
They sat on the couch, not doing much of anything. The TV was on, muted, more for the light than the content. Her tea had gone lukewarm in her hands.
"You're quiet," he said.
"I'm always quiet."
"Quieter than usual."
She considered denying it, then didn't bother.
"I was thinking about the café," she said. "Nana texted today. Said the boss finally got a new espresso machine. Apparently it's been a whole ordeal."
"That sounds like her."
"You've never even met her."
"I've heard enough about her to have an opinion."
A small smile crossed her face, there and gone.
"I miss it sometimes," she admitted. "Not the job. Just — the simplicity of it. Fixing a frozen PC felt like a real, finishable problem. Everything now takes months. Committees. Approvals."
"You could go back to something smaller."
"I could." She turned her mug slowly in her hands. "I won't. But I could."
He didn't push it further. That was one of the things she'd noticed about him lately — he let a thought sit instead of needing to resolve it immediately.
Quiet stretched between them, comfortable in a way silence rarely was with anyone else.
"Can I ask you something," she said eventually.
"Go ahead."
"Do you ever think about how strange this is? All of it. Two lives. A kid we didn't plan for, in the way people usually plan. A version of both of us who never even met."
"Every day."
"And?"
He thought about it honestly, not rushing the answer.
"And I still think it's the right outcome," he said. "However it happened. Whatever it cost to get here."
She looked at him for a long moment.
"That's a very controlled answer for something that big."
"I've had time to sit with it. You get used to strange things, eventually, if you have enough time."
"Have you?"
"Getting there."
She set her mug down on the table.
"I don't know if I have," she admitted quietly. "Some days it still feels like I'm borrowing someone else's life. Someone else's kid. Someone else's — " she gestured vaguely between them. "This."
"You're not borrowing anything."
"You don't know that."
"I know Luoli calls you Mom and means it completely. I know you've raised him for years, every hard part of it, alone, before I even knew he existed. That's not borrowed. That's earned, several times over."
She didn't say anything for a moment.
"You're good at this," she said finally. "Saying the right thing."
"I've had a lot of time to think about what I'd say to you, if I ever got the chance again."
The room was quiet.
Outside, the city carried on, indifferent and steady the way it always was.
She leaned her head against his shoulder, an unplanned, small movement, the kind she wouldn't have allowed herself a few months ago.
He didn't say anything about it. He just let her stay there.
The muted TV flickered light across the room.
Neither of them moved to turn it off.