At night, the studio was quieter than the rest of the building, a quiet so heavy it seemed to settle into the pores of your skin. Shiny particles of dust floated in the sharp beam of streetlight spilling from the single, high window, each speck moving as if pulled by its own will. Outside, the pedestrian art street was still, the heavy traffic from the evening now only a dull murmur.

Li Zhen stood in front of the block of marble with his chisel in hand, trying to think of nothing at all.

But the problem was... his "nothing at all" kept turning into someone.

He'd told himself he'd sleep in the studio for the night, trying to clear his head after the phone call. But the lie was so transparent it didn't even need to be said aloud. His father's voice had lingered long after the call ended, precise and cold, every syllable carrying a weight that pressed between his shoulder blades.

Not your best. The best.

And in front of him, the stone waited, patient and heavy.

For the first time in too long, Li Zhen worked without a plan. Without sketches, without a clear image in his head, and without the neat lines he was taught to map before the first strike. His wrist moved on instinct, the steel biting into white grain, producing a sound so familiar it felt like his own heartbeat.

Sharp, rhythmic, controlled.

A sound that should have steadied him, but instead, it felt as though each strike was leading him somewhere he never agreed to go.

Dust bloomed from the surface, turning the curls of his hair gray and hiding beneath his skin. Little by little, marble started to cling to Li Zhen with the same passion he held on to the piece in front of him, getting everywhere. It was in the air he inhaled, in the blood that flew in his veins, and in the creases of his knuckles, turning him half to stone.

Half man, half statue. Half memories of the past, half expectations for the future.

But his body was already beginning to betray him. A cramp locked tightly in his forearm, pulling all the way up to his shoulder blade, but still, he refused to put down the chisel. Each blow rattled through the bones of his hand until his thumb felt numb, until the skin at his palm split where calluses met raw flesh. Dust scratched against his throat, sinking thick and dry with every shallow inhale.

He remembered being told once that sculpting was a conversation between body and stone. But tonight, it felt like a punishment. As if each strike cost him something, blood for dust, his muscles for a curve.

And still, he kept carving.

Shiny pearls of moisture gathered at the hollow of his collarbone before sliding down under his shirt, but it was only somewhere between the third and fourth hour that Li Zhen finally noticed something was wrong.

The marble felt... softer. Not in texture, of course, since it was still stone, but the resistance felt different, almost yielding under his hands. The chisel moved in a sure path, carving into planes and turns he didn't remember deciding on, and while that was usually enough to drown out every restless thought in his brain, it still couldn't silence the strange, flickering sensation in the air. Every so often, between one strike and the next, Li Zhen could swear he caught the faint, heady sweetness of cherry liquor. Warm and intoxicating, clinging to his clothes like a phantom embrace.

And yet, it wasn't the same as now. These days, that scent was faint and diluted, like the last sip forgotten at the bottom of a glass, but what he felt was sharper, more complete. The scent he remembered from years ago, when it could fill a whole rehearsal hall just by him stepping inside.

Impossible, of course... he wasn't there. However, every time the scent faded, it left the back of his throat dry, like it had been real enough to miss.

But that wasn't the only weird thing. Whenever Li Zhen's movement paused, the shape in front of him seemed to breathe, with the shadows inside the half-formed folds looking too deep, too precise for that stage.

Maybe it was just a trick of the light, he told himself... Except when he blinked, the trick didn't go away.

Filled with confusion, Li Zhen took a step back, his green eyes studying every inch of the stone, as focused as if he wanted to etch it into his memory. But that curve of the shoulder and the tilt of the head, unfinished as they were, kept on giving the piece a strange familiarity. Since the beginning, his hands worked without plan and thought, shaping lines and shadows his mind refused to name. And somewhere between that ridge of a shoulder and the arch of a neck, the scent returned. Thick and sweet, the kind that clung to the inside of his chest.

But the cruelest part was that he was now certain.

He never intended for the slope of the cheekbone to come out so fine, nor for the lips to curl upward in that almost-taunt he had seen countless times across a rehearsal hall. Yet the stone seemed to demand it, his own hand correcting itself whenever he tried to blunt the details.

And when the nose began to take shape, sharp and proud, Li Zhen's stomach turned.

He could still stop, he told himself. He could still smash the chisel sideways, let the nose crumble back into anonymity. Just one blow, and he would disappear.

But Li Zhen couldn't. His grip trembled, the muscles in his arm jerking with the restrained motion. The thought of smashing it, smashing him, twisted something low in his chest, leaving his breath ragged.

It wasn't supposed to be anyone...

...But the longer he stared, the more Li Zhen's mind supplied details he hadn't meant to: the way silk draped over a long and narrow frame, the curve of an amused smile caught in mid-breath, a posture that dared the world to keep looking.

After the shock of realization passed, his jaw tightened. Li Zhen approached the block, forcing himself to blunt those lines, to make them belong to someone else entirely, but the material kept resisting under his hands, as though each strike was corrected the moment he looked away. The heat in the room shifted in a subtle, almost imperceptible way, as a faint sweetness curled at the edge of Li Zhen's senses, one he'd caught before and hadn't been able to name.

Chisel in hand, Li Zhen froze, eyes flicking toward the door, thinking he might actually be there. And yet, the studio was still, the air nothing more but dust and stone.

It was absurd, but his mind even supplied his voice, as clear as though he were standing behind him.

"Oh? You made me look monumental after all?"

Mocking, amused, but also faintly warm. A tone he couldn't stand, one that turned every barb into something that came dangerously close to affection.

Li Zhen clenched his jaw and struck harder, but the marble kept on resisting, unyielding. The phantom voice lingered anyway, curling between each blow like smoke:

"Careful, Ah Zhen. If you break it, you'll never forgive yourself."

Li Zhen's movements stopped for a heartbeat, only for him to let out a slow breath, telling himself it was only his tired brain playing tricks on him.

And yet, his next strokes fell on the stone too carefully, unconsciously treating the marble under his hands as something that could bruise.