The lobby of the building was nearly empty, its marbled floors reflecting the faint shimmer of afternoon light seeping through the tall glass panes. The faint hum of the air conditioner droned above the muted clatter of shoes and whispered gossip. A few employees lingered by the reception counter, pretending to flip through files while casting fleeting glances at their phones, their murmured voices dripping with speculation.
When Wu An stepped out of the elevator, silence followed her like a loyal shadow. Her heels clicked—a slow, deliberate rhythm that cut through the air. The faint scent of jasmine and cold rain trailed behind her; a scent that seemed to quiet the room even more effectively than her glare ever could.
The so-called "lazy workers" scrambled into motion, fumbling with pens and files, trying to look busy. But they couldn't hide their startled expressions. Everyone knew better than to test the patience of the company's most formidable executive.
Wu An barely looked at them. A simple shake of her head—half disapproval, half resignation—was enough to make them flinch. Without a word, she crossed the gleaming lobby and pushed open the heavy glass doors that led toward the parking lot.
Outside, the late afternoon light had dulled to a pale gold, stretching long shadows across the asphalt. A faint breeze lifted the hem of her dark trench coat as she descended the steps. The parking lot was half-empty, echoing faintly with the hum of distant traffic. Her sleek black car—an imported model she rarely allowed anyone else to touch—stood waiting near the exit ramp.
And beside it, holding her car keys like a trophy, stood him.
Li Chenrui.
A face too composed to be new, and too familiar to be comfortable.
He leaned casually against the driver's side door, sunlight grazing the sharp line of his jaw. His smile was effortless, almost lazy—as if standing beside her car was the most natural thing in the world.
Wu An stopped a few paces away, the faintest crease forming between her brows. Her eyes, sharp as glass, assessed the man in silence before her lips parted.
"What are you doing here?"
Her voice was calm, controlled, but laced with a note of suspicion—the kind that carried weight even when spoken softly.
Li Chenrui straightened, pocketing the keys with an infuriatingly casual air. "I was tasked to be your driver for today," he said, as if that explained everything.
She raised a brow. "I don't have a driver. And where's Fei-Fei?"
Her gaze swept the parking lot, scanning for her ever-present assistant. Nothing—no familiar figure, no sound of hurried footsteps. Just silence, and Li Chenrui's steady, unbothered breathing.
"I'm sorry, Ms. Liu had an important business to deal with," he replied smoothly. "Hope you don't mind."
Wu An scoffed softly, folding her arms. Oh, she minds.
The corner of her mouth twitched—not in amusement, but in disbelief. "Mind?" she muttered under her breath. "You shouldn't even be here."
She pulled out her phone and dialed, pressing it to her ear. The line rang three times before Fei-Fei's familiar, overly cheerful voice filtered through, layered with the faint sound of bustling noise on the other end.
"Hello, Qingqing? Is there anything?"
"Where are you?" Wu An's tone was steady, but the patience in it was thinning fast.
"I'm sorry! I didn't do it intentionally," came the singsong excuse. "It's destiny, I swear. My shoe broke, and I think I sprained my ankle. Mr. Li happened to see me and offered to help."
Wu An closed her eyes, exhaling through her nose. Destiny, she thought. The only thing destined is your next pay cut.
"And you couldn't tell me beforehand, huh?" she asked, voice dry with disbelief.
"It's not my fault! There's something I needed to do. Please—trust me."
Wu An almost laughed. "Trust you?" she echoed under her breath, biting back a scoff. "Fei-Fei, you've been reading too many drama scripts."
There was a pause. Then she said flatly, "I'm deducting your month's pay by five percent. Hope you can deal with that."
And before Fei-Fei could whine a defense, Wu An hung up.
She slipped the phone into her coat pocket and turned back to Li Chenrui, who was still smiling as though he hadn't just witnessed her threatening to decimate someone's paycheck.
"I'm sure she told you today's schedule," Wu An said.
Li Chenrui nodded, unfazed. "Yeah. And tomorrow's too."
The corner of her mouth lifted—not quite a smile, more a challenge. "I'll take that jab personally. Since you know everything, let's go."
Without another word, she walked around the car and slipped into the passenger seat. The door shut with a soft thud that echoed faintly in the still air.
Inside, the car smelled faintly of leather and new polish. She adjusted the seatbelt, opened her tablet, and began scrolling through documents—anything to avoid looking at him. Yet she was aware of every small sound: the faint rustle of his shirt as he settled into the driver's seat, the click of the ignition, the quiet hum of the engine coming alive.
He drove with unnerving calm, one hand steady on the wheel, eyes fixed ahead. Through the tinted windows, the city blurred by—golden towers, pale clouds, streaks of blue and gray blending like watercolor.
Wu An pretended to focus on her tablet, but her eyes kept darting toward him in the faint reflection of the glass. He didn't seem nervous. He didn't even seem new.
If anything, he seemed… prepared.
There was something about the quiet confidence in his movements that unsettled her. A faint echo of recognition she couldn't place.
Her thoughts flickered briefly—toward the chaos of the morning meeting, the cold tremor that had gripped her chest when Mr. Rong's hand had struck Mrs. Ling. The way her breath had stilled. The way Dai Fei's steady hand had grounded her before anyone else noticed.
She exhaled slowly, her jaw tightening.
The silence in the car was thick, almost intimate. The kind that made you aware of your own heartbeat.
Outside, the city gave way to quieter streets lined with sycamore trees swaying in the wind. Afternoon light filtered through their leaves, splintering into patterns of shadow that played across the windshield.
Wu An's phone vibrated once—an incoming message.
She glanced down. Fei-Fei: "Please don't kill him. He's just trying to help."
Wu An's lip twitched. She typed back one line:
Then pray I don't change my mind.
Li Chenrui must have noticed her faint smirk because he finally spoke, his voice steady, measured, yet annoyingly calm.
"You don't seem like someone who enjoys being chauffeured."
"Observation noted," she replied, not looking up.
He chuckled quietly. "You also don't seem like someone who enjoys hospitals."
Her hand froze mid-scroll. Her head turned, slowly, her eyes narrowing.
"What makes you think that?" she asked.
He shrugged lightly, eyes still on the road. "You sighed before getting in the car. The same sigh people give before doing something they'd rather not."
She stared at him for a long moment, then turned back to her tablet. "You talk too much," she said.
He smiled faintly. "Occupational hazard. First-day nerves, I guess."
"Mm." Wu An's tone was sharp enough to slice glass. "If your nerves make you this talkative, you won't last a week."
But her voice—despite its frost—carried something softer beneath. A weary exhaustion that even she couldn't hide.
___
The ride felt unbearably long.
The car moved at a crawl, the kind that tested patience and composure in equal measure. Outside, the city flowed past in slow motion—glass towers shimmering under the afternoon sun, endless streams of traffic inching along, pedestrians weaving between the cars like restless ghosts.
Inside, the air was silent save for the low hum of the engine and the soft rhythmic clicking of Wu An's fingernails against her iPad screen.
She had always hated long rides. They gave her too much time to think, and thinking was something she tried to avoid these days.
The faint scent of leather filled the car, mingled with the clean tang of mint—probably from Li Chenrui's cologne. She tried to ignore it, focusing instead on the tablet before her, though her gaze barely registered the lines of text she scrolled past.
Her patience snapped first. "If my calculations serve me correctly," she said, still staring at the screen, "the route to the hospital isn't excruciatingly long."
Her tone was soft but edged like glass, the kind of statement that carried a warning inside it.
From the driver's seat came a quiet chuckle. "I just got my driver's license," Li Chenrui said lightly. "I hope Ms. Wu won't get mad."
Wu An paused mid-tap. Her eyes slowly lifted, expression unreadable. "Just got?" she repeated, her voice a perfect blend of disbelief and disbelief's weary cousin, resignation.
He tilted his head slightly, glancing at her reflection in the rearview mirror. "Any problem?"
She stared at him for a long beat, then exhaled—a deep, resigned sigh that made the window fog faintly in front of her.
"No," she muttered, returning to her tablet. "None worth discussing."
Her fingers resumed their gentle rhythm on the screen, but her mind was elsewhere. She had no time for this—no patience for chitchat, no tolerance for small talk. There were contracts to approve, board reports to finalize, and a dozen fires waiting to be put out back at the company.
This… this appointment was an inconvenience.
Mira Sinclair was not her concern—never was, in her mind.
Yet, no matter how she reasoned with herself, she knew why her assistant had pushed her here. Mira Sinclair wasn't just any doctor. She was that kind of doctor. The kind who asked questions Wu An didn't want to answer—the kind who looked too deeply, who pried open the parts of her that she had buried under years of control and work and quiet fury.
Her reflection stared back at her from the window. Cool. Composed.
Unshaken.
But beneath that calm, her heartbeat was steady only because she forced it to be.
The drive stretched on. The golden light of the sun began to soften, bleeding into the faint haze of evening. The city's rhythm shifted—cars honked less, the chatter of the streets dimmed, and the quiet grew heavier.
By the time the car turned onto the hospital's long, tree-lined driveway, the air outside had cooled. Leaves rustled faintly in the breeze, brushing against the windows like whispering fingers.
Wu An's expression hardened.
The hospital loomed ahead—a pristine white structure framed by manicured hedges and a circular fountain that gurgled softly under the fading light. Everything about it was immaculate, calm… sterile. The faint smell of antiseptic hung even outside the entrance, biting against the breeze.
Wu An's lips tightened.
It was everything she hated—that pale emptiness, that sharp scent of cleaning agents, that hollow sense of safety built on too much silence.
It was ironic, really. She'd once invested heavily in this hospital. Helped build it, even. A place that was supposed to symbolize care and recovery—yet to her, it only symbolized loss.
Because every time she saw that white façade, she remembered.
The cold hallways. The slow drip of an IV. The steady beeping of monitors counting down someone's last moments.
The things she tried for years to forget.
The car rolled to a stop in front of the entrance.
"We're here," Li Chenrui said gently, his voice breaking through her thoughts.
"I know." Her tone was faintly strained, but she didn't look up from the tablet.
For a moment, she didn't move. Her eyes were fixed on the screen, though it had long gone dark. Then, with a quiet sigh—half frustration, half surrender—she whispered, almost to herself, "Can't believe I'm here."
She hadn't meant to say it aloud. But somehow, Li Chenrui heard.
He didn't respond—just turned his gaze toward her, studying the small flicker of hesitation that crossed her usually impenetrable face. It was there only for a heartbeat, but it was enough to tell him that this woman, sharp as a blade and colder than winter glass, carried weight she rarely let anyone see.
Wu An finally opened the door, the sharp click of her heels echoing against the concrete as she stepped out. The air smelled faintly of rain—thick clouds were gathering over the hospital's mirrored windows, their reflection bending across the wet asphalt.
She adjusted her coat, brushing imaginary dust from her sleeves, her movements precise and unhurried.
"I'll call you when I'm done," she said curtly, stopping to look at him from over her shoulder.
Li Chenrui nodded once. "Understood."
Her gaze lingered on him for a moment longer—just long enough for something unreadable to flicker behind her eyes. Then she turned and walked toward the hospital doors, her figure straight and unyielding, her hair catching the soft wind as the automatic doors opened to swallow her into the bright, sterile lobby.
For a while, he stood there, watching her disappear into the light.
Then, under his breath, he muttered, "You don't have my contact info."
A faint smile ghosted across his lips as he exhaled slowly and looked around the hospital grounds.
The scent of disinfectant and blooming lilies mingled uneasily in the air. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed faintly, its echo fading into the hum of the city.
He slipped his hands into his pockets, glanced once more at the direction Wu An had gone, and turned down another corridor—taking a different entrance into the same hospital.
Whatever he was here for, it wasn't just to drive her.
---
The ward was quiet—too quiet. The kind of silence that didn't soothe but suffocated, pressing against the walls like invisible fog. Everything was sterile, white, and unnervingly symmetrical. The faint scent of disinfectant floated through the air, mingling with something else—lavender perhaps—an attempt to soften the coldness of the place.
Wu An's heels clicked against the marble floor, a crisp clock, clock, clock that echoed softly through the corridor. Each sound felt like a reminder to breathe, to stay grounded, to not let her mind drift back to the memories clawing at the edge of her sanity. She didn't know why she was nervous. It wasn't her first time in a hospital, yet something about this place—the muted lights, the faint hum of an air conditioner, the hollow stretch of space—felt like a prelude to a nightmare she hadn't yet dreamed.
The door she stopped before was made of pale mahogany, painted white as if to erase its original warmth. A single golden nameplate gleamed faintly in the overhead light: Dr. Mira Sinclair.
She stared at it longer than she should have, fingers tightening around her purse strap before she finally turned the handle and stepped inside.
The room was spacious, softly lit, with beige curtains filtering sunlight into a thin, drowsy glow. A scent of sandalwood lingered—faint, deliberate, grounding. A vase of dried flowers stood by the window, their muted petals whispering of careful restraint. The shelves were lined with books—clinical psychology, human behavior, even a few novels. On one of the couches sat Dr. Mira Sinclair herself, a woman in her late thirties, her calm face illuminated by the light of a small reading lamp.
She looked up from the book in her hand—likely fiction, judging by the floral bookmark—and offered a faint smile. "You're late." Her tone was calm, neutral, the kind of voice that stripped away defenses.
Wu An let out a short, tired breath—half-sigh, half-scoff. "Blame bad choices, a stupid assistant, and an extremely slow driver. But it's fine, isn't it?" she said, dropping her bag onto the couch before sitting down. Her words carried that effortless sarcasm she often used to hide exhaustion.
Dr. Mira placed the book neatly on the table beside her and stood, smoothing out the invisible creases on her navy skirt. "You came to my session, Miss Wu. That means you're not here for small talk like last time, right?"
Wu An gave a tired shrug, her eyes wandering across the room. The soft ticking of a wall clock was the only sound between them. She wasn't sure why she was here—or rather, she didn't want to admit why. Talking wasn't her strength. She had built empires on logic and control, not feelings. But even empires cracked when the foundations trembled.
"I'm not sure," she muttered under her breath.
Dr. Mira smiled gently, sensing hesitation. "Start wherever you feel comfortable. I won't interrupt."
The therapist's voice was warm, smooth—crafted by years of experience in coaxing words from guarded hearts. Yet, Wu An's instincts screamed to stay quiet. She didn't trust easily. People promised confidentiality all the time, but she had learned that secrets had a way of bleeding into the world. And she—more than anyone—had too many scars to risk exposure.
Seeing her silence, Dr. Mira leaned forward slightly. "Trust me," she said softly. "Only you, me, and your heart will know what we discuss today. You have nothing to worry about."
Something about that phrasing—your heart—made Wu An pause. For a moment, the tension in her shoulders eased. She wasn't ready to speak, not yet, but the therapist's calm presence was disarming.
"Let me ask instead," Dr. Mira said, her tone turning professionally inquisitive.
Wu An gave a slight nod.
The therapist rose and crossed the room to her desk. The quiet slide of a drawer opening seemed to echo in the space. She returned with a notepad and pen, her movements unhurried. The small creak of the chair as she sat back down was oddly grounding.
"Let's start from the basics. Do you usually have nightmares?"
Wu An nodded faintly, eyes unfocused.
"Can you tell me when they started?"
A pause. Then, with a voice barely above a whisper, she said, "Since I can last remember." Her gaze dropped to her trembling hands, then to her purse—as though its gold clasp suddenly fascinated her.
"Do they come from past mistakes or something else?"
"Something else," she answered quickly.
"Care to explain what that something else is?"
Wu An shook her head. The silence stretched again, filled only by the hum of the air conditioner and the faint ticking of the clock. Dr. Mira didn't press further.
"All right," she said gently. "Let's move on. Did anything happen today that might have triggered the nightmares?"
Wu An tilted her head back against the couch, closing her eyes. "Nothing specific. I fired someone, blacklisted another, jailed a third… punished a few others. Routine."
A corner of Dr. Mira's lips lifted slightly. "You sound like an empress with an iron fist."
"Maybe I am," Wu An said dryly.
The air thickened again, as if the walls themselves were waiting for something to break.
Dr. Mira scribbled a few notes, then looked up. "The last time you came here, you seemed… detached. I remember asking something, and you didn't respond. You looked as if you were somewhere else entirely."
Wu An's eyes flickered. "I just wanted to leave," she said quietly. "I needed to get out. I don't know why. I just… needed to." Her voice began to trail off, soft and uneven, as if her thoughts were slipping through her fingers. "I don't know… I don't know…"
Dr. Mira leaned forward, her tone gentle but firm. "Parents. What about them?"
The reaction was immediate—a flinch so sharp it was almost visible. Wu An's hand tightened on her purse strap. Her eyes darted away.
Dr. Mira noted the response, her eyes thoughtful. "I see. From that reaction, I assume things didn't—"
"They're dead," Wu An interrupted, her voice cracking slightly. Her breath came unevenly, like each word cost her something.
"Dead, or in denial?" Dr. Mira asked softly.
"Just dead. No denial."
Dr. Mira hesitated for a moment, then continued carefully. "Siblings?"
"Dead," Wu An replied flatly.
"All of them?"
"All dead," she repeated, her tone final. "You don't need to talk about them. I believe you're professional enough to know when not to cross a line."
Dr. Mira gave a soft smile, jotting something down. "Of course. We'll stop there. I think we can focus on your healing instead—on the insecurities, not the sources."
Wu An exhaled shakily, some tension melting from her frame. "Thank you," she murmured, genuinely relieved.
As the session went on, the conversation drifted to lighter topics—routine, work stress, the oddities of insomnia. But Dr. Mira's sharp eyes missed nothing. Every pause, every deflection, every flicker of discomfort told her more than words ever could.
By the time the hour ended, Wu An felt a strange sense of calm—as if the silence that had weighed her down for years had finally met its match.
And as Dr. Mira closed her notebook with a soft snap, her gaze lingered briefly on Wu An's bowed head.
She had already seen enough.
The real story was just beginning.