Zi Han had made a decision.
She was going to eat in her room.
This was not a complicated decision. The math was actually quite simple: Ming Ye had seen her face in that alley. Ming Ye now knew that she had, however accidentally, inserted herself into his evening.
Dinner at the table meant she may cross paths with him. Crossing paths with him meant eye contact was possible. Eye contact meant interaction was possible. Interaction meant—
Ughhh. She screamed internally.
Ming Ye hated already the original Zi Han so this whole evening may actually lead to more hate. So what was the best option? Eliminate any chance of them crossing paths for the next one week or at least till he forgets whatever stupid heroic deed she had tried to do.
The heavens or whatever was out there was trying to screw her over, however she would not let it.
Zi Han informed Yi Ran of her decision to eat in her room while plating her food. She would have just plated her food and gone straight to her room, however she didn't think it was polite to do that especially with Yi Ran sitting at the dining table. Yi Ran looked up from her phone for approximately one second, said "mm," and looked back down.
Zi Han took that as approval and left.
Yi Ran was on her second cup of tea when the dining room door opened.
She looked up, expecting a maid or maybe Zi Han. But it was someone unexpected, it was Ming Ye.
She blinked.
Ever since she had married Ming Chen, she could count on one hand the number of times Ming Ye had voluntarily sat at this table for a meal. The number was zero. He ate on his own schedule and in his own time. If Yi Ran were being honest , and she was usually honest with herself if no one else was going to be, the clearest emotion Ming Ye had ever directed at her and her daughter was disgust. She had at first wondered what she had done to require such emotion from him, but after a while, she swept it under the rug. As long as he didn't harm her and Zi Han she didn't really care.
Yi Ran watched in surprise as Ming Ye pulled out a chair and sat down at the dining table.
Was he finally ready to acknowledge her as his stepmother?!
Yi Ran watched him reach for the serving chopstick and blinked. "You're eating here?"
Ming Ye glanced at her lazily. "Was I not allowed?"
"That's not what I meant," she said quickly, a little flustered. "Of course you are."
She watched as his eyes flicked across the room for a brief second, then he asked,
"Zi Han isn't joining us?"
The question was so unexpected that Yi Ran answered quickly without thinking. "She took her food upstairs. Said she had studying to do."
Only after she answered did she wonder.
Why was Ming Ye asking after Zi Han? Hadn't he practically ignored her throughout?
Something flickered in his eyes for a moment then he smiled. "I see." And began eating.
Noticing this smile Yi Ran looked down at her tea confused as to why the sight of his smile unsettled her.
Upstairs, Zi Han placed her tray on her desk and shifted a pile of printed journals aside to make room.
She ate quickly, barely tasting anything, then washed her hands and returned to her laptop. As she clicked the laptop to life several medical articles filled the screen.
Even in this new world, the direction of her thoughts had not changed. In her previous life, she had dedicated years to researching biological repair for spinal cord injuries and degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. She had started with Lion's Mane Mushroom. She was fascinated by its ability to stimulate Nerve Growth Factor but fascination had slowly turned into frustration. After years of research and testing the lab results had been promising but unstable. She couldn't depend on something that was unstable. Then she found something better.
A deep-cave fungus whose mycelium structure had mimicked neuronal pathways with unsettling precision. It responded to stimuli almost intelligently. She had named it Muist , a private joke really. Memory. Moss.
She had thought, if she could isolate the mechanism, if she could understand how it builds those structures, then maybe...maybe a biological patch will become possible. Something that could bridge a damaged spinal cord. Something that could slow what Alzheimer's erodes.
And she had been close. Too close. Then she had died before proving anything.
In her previous life, her research had consumed everything. She had given it her sleep, her meals, her social life, not that she'd had much of one, and ultimately, it seemed, her actual life. She bore no resentment toward it. Preferably, she would like to continue her research in this world, she just hoped she would be able to find the Muist or something similar to it.
Zi Han leaned back in her chair, scanning a recent paper on synthetic neural scaffolding. Technology here was more advanced in certain biotech sectors. If funding existed… if samples could be sourced… if—
There was a knock on her door, interrupting her thoughts.
"Come in," she said, eyes still on the screen.
The door opened and Ming Ye stepped inside.
He was dressed in dark trousers, a loose grey shirt, sleeves pushed up, with his hands in his pockets. His gaze moved around the room once.
For a brief, embarrassing second, her pulse jumped. Her body reacted before her mind reminded it that she was not in danger. She straightened slightly, forcing her breathing to slow. Then she felt slightly irritated. While she did feel fear and anxiety, the rest of her, which was frankly tired from a very long day of things she hadn't asked for, produced a feeling that was somewhere between tension and irritation and was doing its best to show up as neither.
Her face remained composed however.
But Ming Ye noticed the almost imperceptible twitch near her ear.
He always had been annoyingly observant.
"You're studying?" he asked, stepping farther into the room. His tone was casual, but his eyes were not.
"Mm."
He glanced at her laptop screen before she minimized it. "Mushrooms?"
"Just reading."
He hummed softly, as if storing that information away for later.
The silence stretched in a way that made the room feel more tense than it already was.
And Zi Han, she was getting really anxious.
Why wouldn't he just leave? Why?!!!
Ming Ye found his lips curling up as he watched different emotions flash through her face though her face remained cold. This in itself was strange.
The Zi Han he knew, the one from six months ago, a year ago, was not as composed as she was now. Every emotion had simply existed on her face the moment it arrived, fully formed and completely legible. Fear most of all. She had never bothered to hide it, or perhaps she couldn't hide it.
He wondered, with genuine and unhurried curiosity, when exactly she had learned.
"What do you want," Zi Han said. Her voice was flat. Not rude but flat. However he could sense a bit of resentment in her tone.
Ming Ye smiled.
"I wanted to thank you," he said. "For earlier." A small pause. "Sister saved me, after all."
Zi Han looked at him for a moment.
"You don't need to thank me," she said. "I would have done the same for anyone."
The answer sounded reasonable. It also felt like a wall she was trying to build between them.
Ming Ye tilted his head.
Then he moved quite unhurriedly, completely unbothered by the way she went very still as he crossed the room, until he was close enough that she had to look up to keep his face in her line of sight. He leaned down, bringing himself to her level, his eyes level with hers. He was close enough that she could see the faint shadow his lashes cast.
Her breath hitched before she could control it and she hated that he may have heard it.
"Anyone?" he repeated softly, almost amused. "That's a bit disappointing."
Up close, his eyes were very dark. She had noticed that before in the hallway, but here, in the lamplight of her room, they were different. They were empty, as if they were void of any emotion.
Zi Han said nothing because she could not immediately think of a response that would improve the situation. Holding his gaze was already tiring enough.
After what felt like hours, Ming Ye straightened and walked toward the door, his hands sliding back into his pockets. His hand found the handle. He paused.
"Good night, sister."
The door clicked shut behind him.
Zi Han sat at her desk and did not move for a long moment.
Then she looked down at her notebook, where her last written line , mycelium neural mimicry, Muist compound cross-reference sat waiting for her to continue.
She picked up her pen.
Put it down.
Picked it up again.
He came to my room, she thought. He came to my room. He leaned in. He said—
She looked at the article she had been reading.
She looked at it for a long moment.
She could not remember what it said.
She closed her eyes, pressed two fingers to the bridge of her nose, and sat very still in the quiet of her room, listening to the sound of his footsteps fade down the corridor.
Why is he like this? WHY is he like THIS. Something is definitely wrong.
She opened her eyes.
This is fine, she may just be overthinking things, she thought, with absolutely no conviction whatsoever.
She picked up her pen, looked at the article, and read the same sentence four times before she gave up and went to bed.