The weekend was like a pool of still water on the surface, hiding a restless current beneath.
Zong Yi locked herself in the study of her apartment, staring at rows of data models and competitor financial reports on her computer screen. She tried to drive certain images and sensations out of her mind with absolute rational logic.
"Irrational decision variables…" she murmured, repeating Yan Hanxie's request while typing on the keyboard.
But she kept making mistakes.
Articles about the rival company's CEO—his obsession with feng shui and blind faith in fortune-telling masters—appeared on the screen. The stories were so absurd they seemed to belong to another world.
Yet they reminded her, inexplicably, of another set of beads. Another wrist. Another warmth.
Irritated, she pushed the keyboard away and walked to the window.
Night had already deepened. Only scattered lights remained in the residential complex.
She raised her left hand.
The skin inside her wrist bone was still smooth. Yet when the night was quiet, the phantom sensation always returned—the heavy wooden weight, the invasive warmth.
Monday arrived as promised, bringing a gray sky and oppressive humidity.
When Zong Yi stepped onto the twenty-eighth floor, she was half an hour earlier than usual.
The usual morning calm had been replaced by an unusual solemn tension.
The assistants outside the president's office looked tense, even their breathing subdued.
"Director Zong," Li Wei whispered, holding a folder as she stepped closer. "President Yan… seems to be in a particularly bad mood today."
Zong Yi did not slow her steps. "Are the meeting materials ready?"
"They're ready, but…" Li Wei hesitated. "President Yan came in very early and rejected all the review reports submitted last week by the East China division and the marketing department. She told them to redo everything."
"Vice President Sun went in earlier. He came out in less than five minutes—his face was completely pale."
Zong Yi's brows drew together slightly.
Yan Hanxie was always demanding, but such ruthless, almost nitpicking behavior this early in the morning was unusual.
She didn't say anything. She simply nodded and walked toward her own office.
The cross-department coordination meeting that morning felt frozen solid.
Yan Hanxie sat at the head of the table. The Buddhist prayer beads on her wrist looked dark and heavy under the meeting room's cold white lights.
She barely spoke. She only listened, occasionally lifting her eyes to sweep over whoever was reporting. Her gaze was cold and sharp, carrying undisguised scrutiny and impatience.
When the R&D manager started stammering about a technical bottleneck, she suddenly snapped the steel pen in her hand onto the table with a sharp crack.
"What I want is a solution, not a description of the problem," she said. Her voice wasn't loud, but the temperature of the entire room seemed to drop instantly. "If you can't do it, then bring someone who can."
Cold sweat immediately formed at the speaker's temples.
Zong Yi sat diagonally across from her and could clearly see the faint bluish shadows beneath Yan Hanxie's eyes, as well as her tightly pressed lips that had lost their color.
The prayer beads were pinched between Yan Hanxie's fingers, rolling unconsciously—forcefully—between them, the joints of her fingers turning slightly pale.
The meeting ended hastily under the oppressive pressure.
Everyone left as if they had been granted amnesty.
Zong Yi was packing up her things and about to stand when Yan Hanxie said, "Director Zong, stay."
The others leaving cast sympathetic or curious glances at her.
The door closed.
Only the two of them remained in the meeting room.
Outside, the sky had grown darker. Thick clouds piled up as if they might crush the glass windows.
Yan Hanxie didn't move. She remained seated at the head of the table, her gaze resting on the gray sky outside while her fingers continued to roll the beads.
Zong Yi stood where she was and waited.
"The report?" Yan Hanxie finally spoke. Her voice was slightly hoarse.
Zong Yi placed the prepared folder in front of her.
Yan Hanxie didn't open it immediately.
She withdrew her gaze from the window and looked at Zong Yi. Her eyes were slightly unfocused, as if she were looking through her at something else.
"I didn't sleep well last night," she suddenly said, her tone calm, as though stating a fact unrelated to either of them.
Zong Yi paused, unsure how to respond.
"I had a dream," Yan Hanxie continued, her fingertips flicking a bead. "I dreamed I was kneeling before the Buddha. The string of beads for which I had offered an eternal lamp suddenly snapped."
"One hundred and eight beads. They scattered everywhere with clattering sounds, rolling all over the floor. No matter how I picked them up, I could never gather them all."
She tugged slightly at the corner of her mouth, but it didn't look like a smile.
"Then I woke up and realized it was still perfectly intact on my wrist." She lifted her wrist and looked at it under the light. "But it still feels like… something isn't right."
Zong Yi remained silent.
She looked at the beads on Yan Hanxie's wrist and at the rare, undisguised fatigue between her brows—along with a trace of confusion that was almost fragile.
It was completely different from the Yan Hanxie she knew, the one who was always composed and calculating.
"It was just a dream, President Yan," she heard herself say stiffly.
"Yes. Just a dream." Yan Hanxie lowered her hand, her gaze focusing again as the trace of confusion quickly faded, replaced by a deeper, more complicated emotion. "But some things—once they break, they break. You can't pick them back up."
"Just like…"
She stopped there and didn't continue. Instead, she opened Zong Yi's report.
The meeting room fell silent except for the rustling sound of turning pages.
The clouds outside grew thicker. The room had become so dim that the overhead lights had to be turned on.
The harsh white light fell down, making their outlines appear stiff and sharp.
Yan Hanxie read slowly and carefully.
Standing beside her, Zong Yi could smell a faint scent coming from her—something slightly different from before, mixed with a trace of… medicine?
She suddenly noticed that Yan Hanxie was wearing a darker shade of lipstick today, as if trying to cover the poor color of her lips.
"Here," Yan Hanxie suddenly said, dragging her fingernail across a section of the analysis. She used a little too much force, and the paper made a faint tearing sound. "Based on the assumption that 'Qiming Tech's' CEO's three major recent decisions all aligned with the advice of his feng shui consultant, you deduced that the probability of their next market strategy leaning toward the southwest region is 78%…"
She looked up at Zong Yi.
"You used a Bayesian model?"
"Yes. Combined with their past decision data and newly acquired background information about the consultant," Zong Yi replied.
"The data sources?"
"Partly from commercial intelligence channels, partly from public interviews and social network analysis." Zong Yi paused. "All information has been cross-verified and assigned credibility weights."
Yan Hanxie didn't speak. She simply looked at her.
Her gaze was deep, carrying evaluation—and a kind of conflict Zong Yi couldn't understand.
After a long moment, she closed the report, leaned back in her chair, and closed her eyes, pressing her fingers firmly against her temples.
"Zong Yi," she said with her eyes closed, "do you believe in fate?"
The question came abruptly.
After a moment of silence, Zong Yi replied, "No."
"I didn't believe in it either." Yan Hanxie's voice was low, almost like she was speaking to herself. "But sometimes the more you try to hold on to something, the more you try to prove something… the more you run into things that make you start to doubt."
She opened her eyes. They were streaked with red veins.
"This report is very good. Better than what I asked for." She pushed the folder back toward Zong Yi. "Proceed with this direction and refine the execution plan."
"Yes."
Zong Yi picked up the report. After hesitating a moment, she said, "President Yan, do you need to rest? Your schedule this afternoon—"
"As planned." Yan Hanxie cut her off, her tone becoming cold again. "You may go."
Zong Yi said nothing more and turned to leave.
Just as she opened the door, Yan Hanxie's voice came from behind her, even softer than before, almost drowned out by the noise from the corridor.
"Sometimes I wonder… if that night I hadn't been drunk, if I hadn't let you take me home, if I hadn't taken that string of beads…"
The door closed behind Zong Yi, cutting off the rest of the sentence completely.
She stood in the corridor, holding the approved report in her hands, but her chest felt as though that unfinished sentence had stuffed a lump of cold, damp cotton inside it—heavy and suffocating.
Outside the window, the sky finally gave way.
Rain began slamming against the glass in rapid, chaotic bursts.
—
That entire afternoon, the rain fell heavily, sometimes easing, sometimes intensifying, with no sign of stopping.
Yan Hanxie's schedule was packed—one meeting and appointment after another.
Through the glass wall, Zong Yi occasionally saw her stride past, straight-backed and efficient, as if the moment of confusion and vulnerability in the morning meeting had never existed.
Only the prayer beads on her wrist seemed to move more frequently.
By the time work was nearly over, the rain had turned into a downpour. The sky was as dark as night.
Zong Yi finished handling her last few emails and prepared to leave.
Her phone vibrated.
It was a message from Yan Hanxie's assistant, containing only one short line:
"President Yan asked you to wait for her in the parking garage so you can leave together. The rain is too heavy. Her car is being serviced, and the driver had an emergency."
Zong Yi stared at the message, her fingertips cold.
Slowly, she typed back: "Received."
The elevator descended to the underground parking garage.
The doors opened, and damp, chilly air mixed with dust and gasoline rushed toward her.
The motion-sensor lights turned on one after another, illuminating the empty, silent parking area.
Yan Hanxie's parking spot was empty.
Zong Yi walked to her own black SUV. She didn't get in. She simply leaned against the door and waited.
From deeper inside the garage came the faint sound of water dripping from a pipe.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
The steady rhythm was irritating.
After about ten minutes, the elevator doors opened again.
Yan Hanxie stepped out.
She had apparently just finished work as well. She carried only a small handbag.
The shoulders of her dark navy coat were marked with darker patches where drifting rain had dampened the fabric.
When she saw Zong Yi, she walked straight toward her. Her steps were slower than usual, revealing an exhaustion she couldn't quite hide.
"Let's go."
She opened the rear car door and sat inside, her movements natural, as if this were the most ordinary thing in the world.
Zong Yi pressed her lips together and got into the driver's seat.
The car started.
The engine hummed quietly as the headlights cut through the dim parking garage and then into the waterfall-like rain outside.
The windshield wipers ran at maximum speed, yet the road ahead was still difficult to see.
Traffic crawled slowly. Red taillights blurred into hazy halos in the torrential rain.
Inside the car, it was unusually quiet.
Only the violent sound of rain pounding against the roof and windows filled the space, along with the faint hum of the air conditioner.
Zong Yi focused on the road ahead, her back straight.
In the rearview mirror, Yan Hanxie leaned against the seat, eyes closed, her brows faintly furrowed. Her left hand rested on her knee, her fingers unconsciously winding around the prayer beads.
Streetlights and neon signs slid past outside the window, casting shifting lights and shadows across her face.
When they drove through a stretch of road where water had accumulated, the car jolted slightly.
Yan Hanxie opened her eyes.
She didn't look outside.
Her gaze fell on the rearview mirror, meeting Zong Yi's accidental glance for a brief moment in the reflection.
Zong Yi immediately looked away, focusing back on the road.
A very faint sigh came from the back seat.
"Zong Yi," Yan Hanxie's voice sounded distant through the rain, "are you afraid of me?"
Zong Yi's fingers tightened around the steering wheel.
"Why would you ask that, President Yan?"
"I just suddenly wanted to know." Yan Hanxie watched Zong Yi's tense profile in the rearview mirror. "Are you afraid of me as a person… or afraid of the things I've done to you?"
Rain lashed violently against the windshield, isolating the world outside. Inside remained only this sealed space filled with the sound of rain and the breath of two people.
"You are my superior," Zong Yi answered stiffly.
"Only your superior?" Yan Hanxie rolled a bead between her fingers.
Zong Yi didn't reply.
Silence spread amid the rain.
The car entered a tunnel. The roar of rain abruptly weakened, replaced by the dull echo of tires against the road.
The lights along the tunnel wall formed a flowing ribbon, sweeping quickly across the interior of the car.
In this brief pocket of relative quiet, Yan Hanxie suddenly spoke again, her voice very soft but clearly reaching Zong Yi's ears:
"If I said… I regret it a little?"
Zong Yi's heart suddenly tightened.
"Regret that night, that I shouldn't have used that method," Yan Hanxie continued, her tone calm as if she were talking about someone else's story. "Regret that these past few days, I shouldn't have pushed you like that. Regret… that maybe I shouldn't have started."
The tunnel reached its end, and the car rushed back into the violent rainy night. Blinding white light and chaotic noise returned instantly.
Zong Yi's throat tightened.
She stared at the red taillights ahead, distorted by the rain, her vision slightly blurred.
"President Yan, you're tired."
"Yes… tired." Yan Hanxie leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes, resting her wrist across her forehead. The prayer beads slid down and swayed gently.
"Maybe I really should sleep well, visit Buddha, and calm my mind."
She didn't speak again.
Inside the car there remained only the rain, and an endless, suffocating silence.
Zong Yi drove the car into the underground garage of Yan Hanxie's apartment building.
She parked and turned off the engine.
"We're here, President Yan."
Yan Hanxie opened her eyes and sat upright. She didn't get out immediately, instead looking at Zong Yi.
The rain seemed to have weakened somewhat, but the sensor lights in the garage were still pale and cold.
"Thank you," Yan Hanxie said, her voice a little hoarse. She pushed open the door and stepped out.
Before closing it, she paused and turned slightly to look at Zong Yi in the driver's seat.
"Zong Yi."
Her gaze rested on Zong Yi's expressionless face for a long time before she quietly said,
"Drive safely."
Then she closed the door, turned around, and walked toward the elevator lobby.
The sound of her high heels echoed through the empty garage, gradually fading away.
Zong Yi didn't move.
She held the steering wheel, listening as the footsteps disappeared, listening as the elevator arrived, listening as it ascended.
Then slowly, she lowered her forehead against the cold steering wheel.
Outside the car window, the rain—at some unknown moment—had grown heavy again.
—
T/N: If you're enjoying this translation, feel free to check out my Patreon. If you're unable to support financially, you can still subscribe for free and receive chapters two hours earlier, along with updates and announcements. Paid tiers offer early access and daily chapters.
Thank you so much for reading!
patreon.com/Baenz