The weekend air carried the scent of wet stone and cut grass, the sort of ordinary autumn breeze that made the campus seem harmless. After the heat of yesterday’s rumors, the place felt almost too quiet, as if the gossip had retreated underground, simmering in waiting where no one could see it.

Li Zhen didn’t recheck the forum since he had no desire to watch strangers dissect his life like a butterfly with its wings pinned. Instead, he buried himself in the studio until the dust clung to his skin like armor, until his muscles throbbed with the kind of exhaustion that passed for surrender.

And yet, even silence had its tricks. Whenever his hand slipped, or whenever his shoulders sagged, his eyes strayed back to the half-shaped marble. And what stared back at him wasn’t a statue.

Not yet.

It was simply… someone.

Someone he hadn’t meant to call into being.

But he couldn’t bring himself to smash it.

Not yet, at least.

Before stepping out, Li Zhen grabbed a white dust sheet from the corner and drew it over the sculpture. The fabric fell stiffly across the half-formed figure, swallowing its contours until nothing recognizable remained. Only a covered block of stone stood there now, mute, hidden, and waiting. However, the thought that he was there, quietly suffocating under the white cover, still made Li Zhen's chest tighten, so he could only leave before it strangled him.

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

When Li Zhen stepped out of the studio, the air was cool and heavy with silence. As if compelled by something unseen, his steps once again turned as they reached the corridors of the Drama wing, now nearly deserted in the late afternoon. But a soft hush had replaced the usual cacophony of voices and musical instruments, only one faint sound slipping through the cracked door of the rooftop studio. It was low, almost wavering, and not at all a performance. Instead, it sounded more like a hum, belonging to a voice stripped of its usual polish.

Li Zhen paused, his hand resting against the frame. He should’ve kept walking, but the sound tugged at him, curious and wrong at once. In the end, he pushed the door just wide enough to see.

Xu Jinli sat on the edge of the piano bench, not even touching the keys. A score lay abandoned across the lid, his hand resting lightly on the paper as if it weighed too much, too heavy to move. For once, the bare sunlight that was coming from the high windows didn’t flatter him; instead, it acted like a stage spotlight, hollowing him, catching on the pale angles of his cheekbones and sinking shadows under his eyes.

The room smelled faintly of chalk and varnish, as if a thousand rehearsals had left their memories behind. Somewhere below, a guitar riff floated up, muffled by walls, but here, it was only the sound of his breathing and the thin scrape of paper when his fingers shifted.

No stage. No students. No spectators.

Only the man, alone under the spotlight, quieter than Li Zhen ever remembered him being.

The silence inside the room pressed like hundreds of viewers holding their breath at once, though there was no one else there. Even the walls seemed to listen, lined with old posters curling at the edges, faded from years of sun and dust. In one corner, a forgotten costume trunk sagged open, with feathers and sequins spilling out like the remnants of some brighter extravaganza. However, all of it felt wrong on Xu Jinli’s frame now, too heavy and too loud for someone sitting so still.

For a long moment, Li Zhen stood there, his gaze steady. It felt intrusive and almost voyeuristic in essence, but he couldn’t leave. The sharp edges of Xu Jinli’s stage self, the smirk, the painted eyes, the drawl that turned every sentence into theater, were all gone...

...Gone like discarded rags, or costumes that simply went out of fashion.

But it was the first time in years he’d seen him without them.

“Are you sure you're not sick?” Li Zhen finally asked, his voice blunt in the way it always was when concern forced its way out sideways.

Xu Jinli startled faintly, his eyes flicking up. For one unguarded moment, he looked as if he’d been caught in something fragile and private, something he'd rather bury. But then, like glass fogging over, the familiar curve of his smile returned, practiced and easy.

“Ah Zhen,” he said, voice lighter than his posture. “You’ll make me blush, worrying like that.”

“You’re really pale. Something wrong must have happened yesterday,” Li Zhen pressed, stepping closer.

“Pale is fashionable,” Xu Jinli countered, too quickly. His laugh was low, but it cracked faintly at the end, not quite convincing, and his hands also betrayed him. One twitched against the paper, the other touched his face, only to hover near the black collar around his throat, fingers brushing the clasp as though to reassure himself that it hadn't come undone.

Li Zhen’s frown deepened as his instincts pulled sharper. He stepped closer, close enough that the faint warmth of Xu Jinli’s sleeve brushed his arm again. Instinctively, he waited for it: that rich cherry liquor note, the scent that used to linger even after he left a room.

But there was nothing.

No sweetness. Not even a trace of it. Only the stale coolness of the empty room.

His breath caught, sharp in his chest.

When Li Zhen stood close enough for his shadow to overlap his own, something inside Xu Jinli tightened, a faint tug at some unspoken bond that had never been reciprocated. It was an ache he carried like a second pulse, hidden beneath fabric and paint, and one glance from Li Zhen was enough to make it throb alive again. Xu Jinli tilted his head toward him, eyes dark in the dim light. For once, there was no mockery in them, only a quiet, searching weight, steady in a way that felt too vulnerable and raw. But it wasn’t only fatigue. If the spotlight were to tilt even so slightly, revealing the man behind the mask, the truth would have been so much harsher: Xu Jinli's thoughts gnawed at him restlessly, fraying his posture from the inside out. Ever since yesterday, the sense of being watched clung to his back like a damp cloth. It had jolted up something old and ugly, memories of another time he’d been cornered, stripped of his beloved stage, and left without anyone to anchor him. Back then, there had been no steady presence at his side, no one whose silence could ground him the way Li Zhen’s had done only a day ago.

But the echo of that fear still wouldn’t settle.

His mood swung sharply, his nerves raw, and even his pheromones had started misfiring, veering too unstable for medication to smooth away. So Xu Jinli kept them locked down, locked out, until the air around him felt blank and sterile, because it was safer than letting anyone glimpse the chaos inside. His fingers brushed the collar at his throat again and again, comforted by the clasp’s firmness, the only thing holding back what might spill loose.

The silence stretched, and in it, Li Zhen felt the edges of memory: their university nights when everything smelled like flowers and liquor, when Xu Jinli’s voice had curled around his name like honey. Back then, he’d thought it was only friendship, or just another artist longing for a muse... Or maybe something he couldn’t categorize at all, so he buried it under the weight of someone else’s hand placed on the back of his neck.

But it wasn’t the first time Li Zhen had seen that expression. Once, years ago, Xu Jinli had lingered outside his dorm late at night, his shoulders trembling with fatigue he tried to disguise as laughter. Back then, Li Zhen had looked away, thinking it was none of his business. Now, the weight of that same mistake pressed sharper, as if time had circled back to give him a second chance to ask what happened. But soon enough, he remembered another instance, faint but stubborn: an older Xu Jinli had shown up to his studio in the dead of winter, breath fogging and fingers red from the cold. He laughed, saying he "was just in the neighbourhood,” but the laugh had also been too thin, too practiced. Li Zhen had turned back to his chisel, pretending not to notice how long Xu Jinli lingered in the doorway. Even his classmates teased him for being too “oblivious to see what’s right in front of you,” but at that time, he’d only shrugged it off. Now, the memory scratched at him, refusing to stay buried.

He hadn’t understood it then. He still didn’t.

But the bond never left.