I was tidying Lu He's bedroom when my knee clipped the edge of the trash can.
It tipped. Something spilled onto the hardwood.
A crumpled tissue, half-unraveled. Inside was a torn Okamoto wrapper. Fresh. The foil still caught the morning light.
A sudden, cold ringing hollowed out my ears.
* * *
My phone buzzed against the nightstand—my mother.
I had been coming over to his apartment almost every day since he tossed me his spare key last month.
We hadn't put a label on it. We didn't need to. I thought the quiet domesticity was our answer.
My mother ran through her usual interrogation before dropping the final, casual blow:
"Zhao Yue is back."
The rag in my hand froze against the desk.
I scrambled to take the phone off speaker.
Through the crack in the door, I caught sight of Lu He on the living room sofa. His thumb was hovering over his phone screen, perfectly frozen. His profile remained set in that familiar, untouchable apathy.
He couldn't have heard.
I pressed the receiver to my ear, lowering my voice to a whisper. "Wasn't her wedding next month?"
My mother sighed. "You haven't heard? Caught him in bed with someone else. Called the whole thing off on the spot."
Two short sentences. The air went thin in my lungs.
Zhao Yue. My cousin. We were practically raised in the same house. Hearing what happened to her naturally stung.
But she was also something else.
She was the only girl Lu He had ever publicly claimed in four years of college. Back then, I was just the classmate he kept around. A shadow in their periphery.
* * *
When they first got together, I drew back. But at every family dinner, Zhao Yue would pin me with that warm, brilliant smile and thank me—for introducing her to someone like him.
It didn't take a genius to read the subtext. She was marking her territory.
Then she left for grad school abroad. Cut him loose without a second glance.
Lu He shattered after that. I was the one who swept up the pieces, sitting through the stench of alcohol and vomit until he could stand on his own again.
I thought I had earned this space beside him. I thought my devotion had bought me a different kind of ending.
* * *
My mother's voice spiked, shrill enough to bleed through the receiver. She was still ranting about Zhao Yue's fiancé.
I plastered my spine against the wall, peering through the crack in the door.
Lu He was on the carpet, playing with the cat.
His head was bowed, long fingers trailing down Tuanzi's spine in a slow, methodical rhythm. He looked entirely insulated from the wrecking ball swinging through my world. Untouchable.
Tuanzi purred, draped over his knee like liquid silk.
Six months ago, I had shoved that eight-month-old ragdoll into his arms when I finally gathered the nerve to confess. It was right after I heard Zhao Yue had gotten engaged.
He had taken the kitten. Named her Tuanzi on the spot—because she was soft and round, he had said. Just like me.
I had thought the warmth in his eyes was permission. But before the words could leave my throat, he had cut me off.
"Jia Jia. Give me a little more time, okay?"
I should have realized it right then. His pause hadn't been hesitation. It had been a tomb.
Even with Zhao Yue wearing another man's ring, Lu He was still keeping the seat warm for her.
"Jia Jia, are you listening?" My mother's voice snapped me back.
"Yeah," I breathed, my eyes still locked on the living room.
Lu He had picked up his phone. And then, he smiled.
Not his usual polite curve. A real, unguarded smile that cracked through his apathy like a physical ache.
My stomach plummeted.
His lips moved.
"Yueyue."
I heard my mother still talking, but the words stopped reaching me. My temples throbbed. The air went stagnant.
Tuanzi trotted into the bedroom, bumping against my leg.
I slumped onto the edge of the bed, my eyes dragging back to the trash can I had knocked over earlier. The torn Okamoto wrapper. The crumpled tissue.
I grabbed a handful of clean tissues from the nightstand and buried the wrapper under them, shoving it deep into the bin. Fast and mechanical, as if burying a corpse.
My mother's voice crackled through the silence:
"Oh, right—your aunt told me Zhao Yue wanted to clear her head. She booked a flight to your city yesterday. Should have landed last night. Did she call you?"
Last night.
The timeline clicked together with the sickening thud of a guillotine.
* * *
The dead air from last night suddenly made perfect sense.
I had called him twelve times. He hadn't picked up once. Not a single text of explanation this morning.
Zhao Yue hadn't called me when she landed. She had called him.
I hung up on my mother mid-sentence.
When I walked out of the bedroom, my legs felt disconnected from my body. Lu He was already standing by the sofa, his phone shoved into his pocket.
Before I could open my mouth, he gave the order.
"Something came up. You need to head back."
The dismissal was so casual it felt like a physical slap. He didn't even look at me when he said it.
I stared down at the hardwood floor. My nails bit into the soft meat of my palms.
* * *
Six months ago, after my botched confession, I had buried myself under my duvet for three days straight, determined to excise him from my system.
I had almost succeeded.
Until two months ago. I had strayed off a hiking trail as the sun set.
When Lu He finally found me in the dark, he had dragged me into his chest with crushing force. I still remember the scalding heat of his breath against my neck, the frantic tremble in his arms as he buried his face in my hair.
"Jia Jia... Jia Jia."
I had thought the terror in his voice meant he couldn't live without me.
That was when he gave me the spare key. That was when I let myself believe I finally mattered.
But Zhao Yue was single again.
And just like that, the illusion shattered.
I looked up at the man standing inches away from me. The frantic warmth from the mountain was completely gone, replaced by the polite, untouchable glacier he had always been.
The past two months hadn't been an awakening. I had just been a brief, convenient distraction while he waited for his real life to resume.
* * *
The click of the front door unlocking snapped my spine straight.
Zhao Yue stood in the entryway. She took in the scene—me frozen by the sofa, Lu He standing a few feet away—with an expression I knew intimately. A cocktail of discomfort, knowing guilt, and a suffocating, gentle pity.
The remaining oxygen in my lungs evaporated.
She cleared her throat and immediately offered a flawless, unprompted alibi: her flight landed late, Lu He generously offered the couch, and she was only back now because she forgot something in the guest room.
She hit the words guest room perfectly on the downbeat.
Lu He didn't blink. "I'll grab it."
I stood rooted to the floor, listening to this clumsy, transparent play they were putting on for my benefit. A harsh, scraped-hollow laugh clawed at the back of my throat, but I swallowed it down.
Then my eyes fell to her hands.
Dangling from Zhao Yue's manicured finger was a familiar metal keycap.
The spare key.
A high, thin ringing started in my ears. The privilege I thought was exclusively mine had just been handed out like complimentary mints.
Lu He re-emerged from the hallway with a small paper bag. As Zhao Yue reached for it, his hand shot out, catching her wrist mid-air.
"The ER doctor said it was a mild reaction. Why is it still red?" His brow furrowed. His voice dropped an entire octave—low, thick, and desperately gentle.
A voice I hadn't heard once in our two months of playing house.
Across Zhao Yue's pale wrist was a smattering of tiny, barely-there red dots.
She tilted her head, giving him an indulgent smile. "It's fine, Lu He. The swelling is already down."
His grip loosened, his shoulders dropping a fraction. "Good."
They stood two feet apart in the center of the room. The air between them was so thick, so violently charged, it practically squeezed me out of the apartment.
I watched them from the outside, numb.
For two years after their breakup, he had been a walking corpse. Cold, unreachable, letting me scrape his pieces off the floor.
Now, she was back, and the corpse was breathing again. The aggressive, suffocating gravity he pulled her in with made one thing brutally clear: he was never going to let her walk away twice.
* * *
A heavy weight bumped against my calf. Tuanzi was weaving through my legs, letting out a sharp, demanding meow.
I moved on autopilot, bending down to fill her ceramic bowl. When I straightened up, Lu He's hand was still hovering near Zhao Yue's wrist.
I was done. I scooped up my tote bag from the armchair.
As I reached the entryway, I paused. I dug into my coat pocket, pulled out the heavy brass key he had given me exactly sixty days ago, and placed it on the shoe cabinet.
A clean break. No final, humiliating speeches required.
My hand was on the doorknob.
"Zhao Yue is allergic to cat hair."
The voice struck my back like a physical blow.
I turned around slowly. Lu He was looking at me, his face wiped entirely blank. His tone was casual, as if asking me to take out the trash.
"Take Tuanzi with you."