Old Han refused to smile.
"People will think I'm a fool," he declared.
Jiang Meilin lowered her sketchbook. "I'm painting your hands, Uncle Han."
"Then why are you looking at my face?"
"To make sure you aren't about to throw that spanner at me."
The apprentice laughed. Old Han pointed the spanner at him instead.
Meilin had returned to the workshop with a camera, a fresh page of sketches and Jimin, who claimed he'd come to check the repaired wheel alignment.
"Your car passed inspection yesterday," she reminded him.
"I'm a thorough man."
"Your mechanic must adore you."
"His accountant does."
The old man snorted and went back to work.
Meilin crouched beside the doorway, watching the apprentice steady a small work light while Old Han loosened a rusted fastener. The boy's wrist trembled under the weight of the lamp, but he refused to lower it.
"What's your name?" she asked.
"Bao."
"Do you like fixing cars, Bao?"
He hesitated.
"I like finding out why they stop."
Old Han gave a grunt of approval, too absorbed in the fastener to realise he'd done it.
There.
That was the moment Meilin wanted.
Not the grime. Not the tricycle. The two pairs of hands meeting over a problem, one weathered and certain, the other young and still learning.
She asked their permission before taking photographs. Old Han waved her on with an impatient grunt; Bao wanted to know whether his hair looked all right.
"Magnificent," Meilin assured him. "A national treasure."
Jimin peered at the camera.
"His hair looks like mine after you drive."
"Then you should stop letting me drive."
"You'd steal my keys."
"A hurtful accusation. Entirely accurate, but hurtful."
Bao laughed so hard the light slipped. Old Han caught it without looking.
"Both of you," he barked, "either help or get out of my way!"
Meilin caught the movement in her last photograph.
She thought she might finally have what she needed.
---
At Zhao Corporation, Chen Li laid three documents on the chairman's desk.
The gala's guest list.
A list of hotel staff authorised to enter the private reception floors.
And a network-access report supplied by the Grand Imperial's security team.
"Everyone on the guest network used the same outward-facing address," Chen Li explained. "We cannot identify a person from that alone."
Zhao Jingshen examined the third page.
"The device?"
"A short connection. It left before the hotel could complete its routine device inventory. Security is preserving the remaining logs."
"Cameras?"
"The hotel's legal team is arranging access to the relevant footage."
The chairman tapped the entry that mattered.
The login had reached a test account inside Zhao Corporation's logistics system. It hadn't redirected a shipment, but it had proved someone could alter an official record without immediately setting off an alarm.
An experiment.
And experiments were usually conducted before something larger.
Zhao Jingshen slid the papers back across the desk.
"Keep the scope narrow."
"Yes, Chairman."
"Don't involve the hotel guests."
"Understood."
An access point was not an accusation. It might have been used by a guest, an employee, a contractor or anyone with the password. Whoever had done this had already demonstrated an ability to make one identity appear to be another.
Chen Li collected the files.
He paused at the door.
"The foundation's organisers have asked whether you'll attend next year's gala."
"No."
"Shall I tell them you'll reconsider?"
A glance.
Chen Li inclined his head. "No, then."
---
Meilin returned home with the smell of motor oil caught in her hair and the satisfying certainty that the workshop painting was beginning to work.
She stood before the canvas and compared it with the photograph.
The old man's hands were wrong.
She had made them too clean, too graceful, as though years of labour had smoothed the knuckles rather than enlarged them.
With the tip of a clean rag, she lifted a narrow strip of paint from one finger.
Then she painted it again.
Rougher. Slower.
Better.
By lunchtime, the apprentice's face was still little more than shadow and reflected light, but she liked the direction it was taking. A painting didn't need to reproduce every feature of a face to tell the truth about a person.
Her phone buzzed.
JIMIN: How's my masterpiece?
MEILIN: The car or the painting?
JIMIN: Both.
MEILIN: One needs more work. The other needs a better owner.
JIMIN: Cruel.
She laughed, then glanced at the deadline pinned above her desk.
Seven days.
Six completed paintings. One almost ready for final corrections. One still waiting for a beginning.
Her gaze travelled toward the covered canvas in the corner.
Not that one.
She'd already decided.
Auntie Yu appeared outside the open window, scolding a delivery boy who had left a crate of vegetables in the rain.
"Do you think the cabbages enjoy bathing?" she demanded.
The boy hurried to move it. Auntie Yu snatched an old umbrella from beside the door and held it over the crate herself until he returned.
Meilin picked up her sketchbook.
The old woman had one sleeve rolled up and the other hanging loose. Rain had caught in the silver strands at her temples. She looked furious with the weather, the delivery boy and the entire vegetable trade.
Yet she refused to let a single cabbage get soaked.
Meilin smiled.
There was her eighth painting.
---
That evening, Ling arrived carrying a box of different delicacies and enough opinions for three people.
"You've made the boy look as though he's been doing this for twenty years," she said, examining the workshop canvas.
Meilin folded her arms. "Explain."
"His wrist. It's so relaxed. Didn't you say he was struggling to hold the light?"
Meilin leaned closer.
Ling was right. In concentrating on the old mechanic's hands, she'd made the apprentice's grip far too certain.
"Since when did you understand painting?"
"I understand struggling. Particularly when you give me directions."
Meilin snorted and reached for a brush.
Ling placed the box beyond her reach.
"Food first."
"This is blackmail."
"Correct."
They ate on the floor beside the easel, surrounded by brushes, rags and sheets of paper. Ling had removed her earrings and tucked her hair into a loose knot, looking nothing like the woman who'd sailed through the Grand Imperial in a green gown.
"Are you happy?" she asked suddenly.
Meilin looked up.
"About the sale?"
"About all of it."
Meilin considered the question.
The sale had been wonderful. The portfolio invitation was terrifying. The days ahead promised cramped hands, late nights and at least one argument with her landlord about paint splashes.
And somewhere in the corner waited a canvas she still couldn't bear to finish.
"I think I'm trying to be," she said.
Ling accepted that answer without pressing.
"Good. Just don't mistake being busy for being all right."
Meilin looked at her friend.
Then she selected the largest beef-filled bun from the box.
"That's an unfairly wise thing to say while bribing me with beef."
"I contain multitudes."
"You contain my dinner."
"And that," Ling said, "is why you're lucky to have me."
---
Chen Li was preparing to leave when the internal security lead called.
The remaining authorisation record had finally been recovered from the access-control archive. It was a small detail, buried beneath routine administrative entries, but it explained how the dormant employee's credentials had been restored.
Or appeared to explain it.
Chen Li opened the attached record.
A delegated executive approval.
He read the name.
Then read it again.
A minute later, he was back in Zhao Jingshen's office.
"Chairman."
Zhao Jingshen looked up.
"The account-recovery request was approved under my authorisation."
Silence.
Chen Li placed the report on the desk.
"I didn't approve it."
Zhao Jingshen studied the timestamp and the digital approval reference.
His assistant had been beside him at the gala when the recovered account was used. But this approval had been recorded earlier, under credentials that should never have left a controlled device.
Someone had borrowed Chen Li's authority.
Zhao Jingshen closed the file.
"Disable your access."
"Already requested."
"Secure your devices."
"Security has them."
The chairman nodded once.
Chen Li had worked beside him for years. Zhao Jingshen would not convict him on the strength of a record that could have been forged.
But neither would he ignore what the record meant.
Someone had reached close enough to wear his most trusted assistant's name.
And that person had only been testing the door.