It was the kind of Friday that looked harmless, nothing more than sharp sunlight, crisp air, and the quiet shuffle of students leaving early to escape weekend classes. But there was something else in it too, something restless, humming just under the normal rhythm of campus life.

Li Zhen noticed it before they even reached the admin building: Xu Jinli kept glancing over his shoulder. Not in the subtle, practiced way of an actor playing paranoia, but quick, flicking movements, his eyes narrowing as though he really had caught something out of place.

“Senior, did you forget something?” Li Zhen asked.

“No,” Xu Jinli said lightly, but his head tilted again toward the far end of the courtyard. “Just… feels like we’re being watched.”

Li Zhen followed his gaze, but there was nothing there. Just an ordinary corner of the building, its windows throwing white light onto the flagstones. Still, he felt it too, that tiny prickle in the back of his head that no amount of logic could smooth away.

As they kept walking, a shadow seemed to slide after them along the walls, its shape stretching unnaturally when the light hit it at the wrong angle. It wasn’t heavy enough to be a real threat, more like the kind of thing you didn’t talk about in case it turned solid... And yet, there were things more pressing at the moment.

Friday. 

The deadline Shen Yan had so sweetly threatened them with.

If they didn’t sign the collaboration papers today, she would “do them the favor” of forging their signatures. Also, she had said it in such a cheerful, businesslike tone that even Li Zhen could no longer suspect she was joking. 

And it wasn't just that. 

Since his return to his alma mater, a small corner of its official website had begun to simmer like a pot left unattended. 

Posts about the “ghost professor” and the “runaway sculptor” multiplied overnight, but on that particular morning, they had grown teeth: blurry screenshots, half-invented stories, speculations about what exactly Li Zhen was doing back on campus, and why Xu Jinli seemed so involved with him erupted like mushrooms after rain, threatening to bring the entire thread down once more.

Li Zhen had scrolled through it once, against his better judgment, but he only lasted three comments before shutting the screen off like it burned him. Xu Jinli, however, walked beside him with his phone out, grinning as if he’d been handed a free comedy ticket.

"Did you see the way he looked at him in the cafeteria?!" Xu Jinli read aloud, his voice dripping with exaggerated drama. "Like he wanted to strangle him. Or kiss him. Or both."

Li Zhen’s jaw cracked as he opened his mouth to reprimand him: “Stop reading that.”

“Oh, here’s a good one.” Xu Jinli stopped on the steps of the admin building, tilting his phone so the sunlight caught the screen. “Someone called me a campus siren. Isn’t that flattering? It’s been a while since anyone accused me of devouring souls.”

“You should stop feeding the rumors.”

“And you should stop pretending you don’t care.” Xu Jinli leaned close enough that his sleeve brushed against Li Zhen’s arm. “Besides, they’re not wrong. You do stare at me in a weird way.”

Li Zhen moved toward the door, refusing to dignify that with an answer. But the contact lingered. His shoulder still hummed with the impression of fabric and warmth, and yet, no scent followed.

No cherry liquor. 

No trace of the sweetness that used to cling to Xu Jinli like his second skin.

Li Zhen frowned in a subtle but sharp way. Either Xu Jinli had drowned himself in suppresants, or his pheromones were now weak enough that the autumn breeze swallowed them whole. Either way, the absence felt louder than any scent could have.

Beside him, Xu Jinli tilted his head, distracted once more. His dark eyes flicked over his shoulder once, twice, then again, too quick for it to be casual. The noon sun was bright, the pavement sharp with shadows... shadows that looked ordinary, and yet Xu Jinli’s neck prickled as if one of them had detached itself and followed.

Something cold crawled down his spine, featherlight but insistent. He knew that sensation: the stage-curse of being stared at. Even in an empty theater, he could feel when the audience was holding its breath, but the sensation now was worse, like whoever watched them had no breath at all.

Li Zhen caught the movement. “What now?”

“Nothing,” Xu Jinli said too lightly. His voice still had its usual velvet lilt, but his hand betrayed him, lingering near the black collar at his throat, fingers twitching like a man resisting the urge to guard himself.

Li Zhen studied him, his brows furrowing. Xu Jinli’s face looked composed, but a faint tension still crept through the corners of his mouth, a tiny catch in his breath.“You don't look so well,” he said bluntly. “Are you sure you're not sick?”

Xu Jinli let out a laugh, sharp, theatrical, and loud enough to scatter the heaviness clinging to him. “Darling," he giggled, "if I were sick, it could only be a dramatic fever, one that would have me collapse into your arms with roses in my hair. Hardly appropriate for a Friday trip to the admin office.”

With that, he moved toward the door, his every gesture exaggerated to hide the way his shoulders were too tight, the way his gaze still flickered sideways as if checking the shadows clinging to the wall.

Inside, his stomach knotted. 

But on the outside, Xu Jinli smiled like it was all a joke.

.......................

Inside Shen Yan's office, the light was dimmer, filtered through old blinds that striped the floor in uneven slashes. In here as well, stacks of folders and precarious towers of contracts made the room feel narrower than it was, the ceiling lower, as if the paper itself was heavy enough to press down on people.

Shen Yan sat at her desk, pen poised, looking entirely too pleased with herself. “Ah, the famous pair of unwilling collaborators,” she greeted, her voice sounding like sugar-coated poison. “Come in, come in. Don’t trip over the paperwork, some of it bites.”

Li Zhen stepped in first, expression carefully blank. Xu Jinli followed right after him, his smile turning up just enough to count as cordial. “Would it have killed you to give us another week?” he muttered, but his eyes still darted once toward the corner where sunlight didn’t quite reach. The shadows there seemed thicker, as though clinging together instead of dispersing, and he could swear he saw it twitch as soon as he looked over.

“Yes,” Shen Yan said, glancing up with a smile that could have passed for sympathy if one didn’t know her. “It would have killed me, my patience, and possibly my will to live.” The blinds sliced the light into bands across her face, but instead of making her look ominous, it only seemed to delight her. She tilted her head into the stripes as though she was adjusting her posture in front of the camera, smiling like a ringmaster who knew the performers were about to misbehave.

“Have a seat.” Shen Yan gestured, her lacquered nails flashing in the half-light. “The papers are all here. All you need to do is sign.”

Xu Jinli’s gaze snagged again, unwilling. In the reflection of the cabinet glass, the blinds’ striped shadows bent out of alignment, curling like fingers against the panes. But when he blinked, they straightened back, polite and ordinary. His throat went dry, feeling that the stage-curse was attacking him again... the feeling of someone that had no eyes and no breath, only intent. Xu Jinli curled his hand tighter around the back of the chair until his knuckles whitened, feeling that only Li Zhen’s solid presence a step away could keep him from bolting from the room in panic.

As for Li Zhen, he pulled out his chair without hesitation, but Xu Jinli still lingered a moment too long, his gaze attracted to the shadows pooling beneath Shen Yan’s desk. It looked like deformed limbs, stretched in waiting, and when she placed the contracts on the desk, the shadows twitched, making his chest tighten as though someone had tugged invisible strings at his ribs.

“Senior Xu,” Li Zhen said flatly, breaking the moment. “Sit.”

That single syllable yanked him back. Xu Jinli dropped into the chair with a flourish, one elbow jabbing at Li Zhen's side as if the entire pause had been nothing but a bit of drama. “Aren't you quite bossy?” he teased, lips curling. “I’d almost think you enjoy giving me orders.”

It was barely a touch, the kind of incidental contact most people wouldn’t even register, but Li Zhen’s senses sharpened automatically. Once more, he found himself waiting for it: that faint cherry liquor note, rich and dark, the scent he remembered from years ago that always layered under Xu Jinli’s performances like an aftertaste that lingered.

But still, there was nothing. 

The silence where the scent should have been was beginning to feel louder than the scratch of pen on paper, louder than the tick of the wall clock. Li Zhen shifted minutely in his chair, unsettled by absence itself.

Shen Yan’s gaze flicked between them, sharp as glass, then softened into something far more dangerous: amusement. As Li Zhen's attention turned towards the paperwork, she leaned her chin into her palm, watching them like a cat playing with two blind mice. There was no need to comment cruelly about the situation, but that didn't stop her from finding it entertaining either. The shadows in the office kept thickening in the corners, but Shen Yan's giggles carried warmth and brightness, as if she found the whole atmosphere hilarious.

And soon enough, the conversation turned to deadlines, concepts, and signatures. 

Xu Jinli leaned over the desk, pen twirling through his fingers like a blade. He scrawled his name with an elaborate flourish, even going the extra mile and adding an unnecessary heart at the end, just to watch Li Zhen’s mouth tighten.

“Your turn.”

As for Li Zhen, he signed without fanfare, each stroke precise enough to pass for an engraving on a headstone. And yet, his fingers cramped around the pen as soon as he pressed it to the paper. The skin along his thumb was still raw from that night’s slip of the chisel, a faint sting bleeding into the smooth drag of ink. However, he signed anyway, strokes steady, pretending not to notice the small red dot blooming at the corner of his cut. As he focused on the documents, Xu Jinli’s eyes kept flicking toward the walls once more, where the blinds painted uneven streaks of shadow across the cabinets. Each time someone moved, the stripes bent, warping like bars on a cage.

Still, he smiled, playing the role of the trickster. No one in the room knew how tightly his fists clenched, or how his knees bounced under the desk like a drumbeat he couldn’t silence.

Li Zhen frowned. “You’re twitching,” he said under his breath, not even looking away from the paper. “If you’re sick, I'll take you home after this.”

Understanding the veiled concern, Xu Jinli forced a laugh, burying the paranoia that was threatening to take over his body deeper in his guts. “Darling," he whispered, "I've never been sick."

"Not even with stage fright.”

But his free hand still hovered, unconsciously, near the collar at his throat.