Spring came late that year.
The city had already folded away its coats, but the air still carried the chill of unended winter — that gray pause before things begin to bloom again.
In the upper floors of HanLi Tower, life moved in mechanical rhythm: glass doors sliding, elevators humming, screens glowing blue.
Yet for Ayla Rehman, time had begun to warp.
It started with the smallest things —
a color, a scent, a sound.
The beep of the elevator made her flinch.
The smell of wet asphalt left her dizzy.
Once, while sorting files, she dropped a folder when she heard a tire screech outside.
For a second, the office dissolved — replaced by smoke, rain, a woman's scream.
Then nothing.
She blinked, breath short, her pen trembling.
Every night, the same dream returned.
A red flower bracelet.
A child's laughter echoing through sunlight.
Then — glass breaking.
A spinning sky.
Darkness.
She would wake up with her left arm aching — the same arm that carried the flower-shaped birthmark.
Sometimes it burned faintly, as if remembering something before she did.
At the office, she tried to keep steady. Jianhao had grown quieter around her since that night at the cemetery — not softer, not kind, but watchful.
There were moments, brief and disorienting, when his eyes followed her like he was searching for something he couldn't name.
He never asked questions.
Neither did she.
But silence can hold its own kind of gravity.
That Thursday morning, a rare visitor arrived at HanLi Tower — Madame Li Hua, Jianhao's grandmother.
She was one of those women who carried history in her eyes: small, elegant, dressed in jade and silk, with the authority of someone who had once commanded empires behind men's names.
When she entered the boardroom, the staff bowed slightly.
Even Jianhao stood to greet her, a gesture of quiet reverence few had ever seen him give.
"I was passing by after the charity gala," she said with a faint smile. "And I thought my grandson should remember to eat something that isn't coffee."
Her assistant laughed politely, and Ayla — who had been bringing in reports — froze at the doorway.
For a moment, the older woman's gaze drifted toward her.
And everything stopped.
The jade bracelet on Madame Li's wrist stilled midair.
Her eyes — once sharp, amused — widened in recognition she could not explain.
She reached out with a trembling hand.
"You… child, you look—"
Ayla blinked. "Madame Li?"
"You look so familiar…" The words fell like a whisper. "So very familiar…"
The room grew awkwardly quiet. Jianhao's expression hardened instantly — an instinctive defense.
"Grandmother, she's new to the company," he said evenly. "You must be confusing her with someone else."
But Madame Li didn't hear him at first. Her gaze lingered on Ayla's left arm — where the faint mark peeked from beneath her sleeve.
Her voice dropped lower.
"That mark…"
Ayla stepped back slightly, flustered. "It's nothing — just a birthmark."
"A flower," the old woman murmured. "A red flower…"
The silence was so complete that Ayla could hear her own heartbeat.
Then Jianhao broke it — brisk, sharp, controlled.
"That's enough, Grandmother. Miss Rehman has work to do."
Madame Li blinked, realizing the tension she'd stirred. She gave a faint, apologetic smile.
"Of course, of course… forgive an old woman's memory. It plays tricks."
But even as Ayla left the room, she could feel the weight of the woman's eyes still on her — not curious, but searching.
That afternoon, the air in the office felt heavier.
Jianhao's voice was colder than usual in meetings, but his gaze, once or twice, slipped toward Ayla with a flicker of something else — not anger, not even confusion, but unease.
When the day ended, he stood alone by the window of his office, the city stretching below like circuitry.
He told himself his grandmother's reaction meant nothing.
Coincidence. Just another resemblance.
But his mother's voice — long buried — rose again in memory:
"If something feels familiar, it's because the heart remembers before the mind does."
He turned sharply, shutting the thought down.
That night, Ayla stayed behind, the office empty except for the rain.
She sat at her desk, the lamplight soft on her papers. Her notebook lay open, her pen hovering.
She wasn't even aware she was drawing until the shape appeared — the same delicate flower, five soft petals, a curl of stem.
The same flower she'd seen in her dreams.
She didn't know why it felt sacred. Or why, as she finished the last line, her hand shook.
Something deep inside her whispered — You've drawn this before.
Far across the room, behind the half-closed blinds, Jianhao's silhouette stood still.
He had returned for a forgotten file, but when he saw her sketching, he froze.
That flower.
He knew it.
He had seen it once — long ago — in a child's hands, under sunlight, in a garden that no longer existed.
And for the first time since he built his world of steel, Li Jianhao forgot how to breathe.
The next morning, sunlight spilled into HanLi Tower, all gold and glass — a city that never remembered yesterday.
But Ayla did.
Her dreams had been vivid again: a car swerving, a flash of silver, the bracelet snapping from her wrist. She woke with her pulse racing and her pillow damp with tears she couldn't explain.
At her desk, she tried to lose herself in work, typing reports with practiced precision. Yet her mind kept drifting — to Madame Li's trembling voice, to that word familiar.
By mid-morning, Jianhao called her to his office.
He didn't look up from his screen when she entered.
"Sit."
His tone was clipped, unreadable.
The room was immaculate as always — monochrome, polished steel, the faint scent of cedarwood. The skyline stretched endlessly behind him, the glass reflecting both of them like ghosts sharing one frame.
He signed the last document with a smooth flourish and finally lifted his gaze to her.
"My grandmother's comments yesterday," he began, "seem to have… unsettled you."
Ayla straightened slightly. "Not at all, sir. She was very kind."
He leaned back. "You looked pale."
"It was just… unexpected," she said softly. "She thought she recognized me."
"She's old," Jianhao said, too quickly. "Her memory isn't always reliable."
The defensive edge in his voice didn't match his expression.
He was studying her — not like an employer, but like someone looking for a reflection in still water.
"Do you have family here in Shanghai?"
Ayla blinked. "No. I grew up in Qingdao for a while, then… other places. My parents passed away when I was ten."
Something flickered in his eyes — just for a heartbeat. A quiet stillness.
"I'm sorry," he said at last.
"It's alright," she murmured. "I don't really remember them. Just flashes."
She hesitated, then added almost absently:
"Sometimes, I dream of a garden. And a woman with a red flower in her hair."
Jianhao's hand froze midair.
"A flower?"
"Yes. She used to call me… what was it…" Ayla's voice faded, searching the fog of memory. "Little flower."
The pen in Jianhao's hand slipped — fell against the desk with a quiet clink.
For an instant, all his walls — years of restraint, of logic and distance — faltered.
Because that was what his mother had called that girl.
That little girl in the garden, years ago, the daughter of someone his father once cared for — before everything burned and shattered.
A flower-shaped birthmark.
A red bracelet.
A scream in the rain.
He stood abruptly.
"That's enough," he said, his tone colder than intended.
Ayla flinched slightly but nodded, gathering her papers.
"Of course, sir."
He turned away toward the window, his jaw tight.
When she reached the door, he added — barely above a whisper —
"Don't let old dreams distract you, Miss Rehman. They have a way of turning into ghosts."
That night, the building was emptied again.
Ayla stayed behind, finishing reports, but her thoughts were elsewhere. She opened her notebook again, tracing the flower she had drawn yesterday — and beneath it, almost without realizing, wrote a name.
"Li."
She didn't know why her hand had written it. She didn't even know the meaning — only that it felt right, like something buried inside her was trying to speak.
The city lights shimmered below like scattered stars.
Somewhere in the quiet, a storm gathered — the kind made not of thunder, but of memory.
Meanwhile, Jianhao sat alone in his penthouse, the skyline reflected in his glass of whiskey.
He pulled open an old box from his safe — untouched for years. Inside were photos: a woman with laughing eyes, a small child beside her, holding a toy shaped like a flower.
He stared at the child's face. The photo had faded, the colors bleeding into sepia.
But the eyes — those wide, gentle eyes — looked almost identical to hers.
His hand trembled.
He pressed the photo flat against the table, whispering to no one:
"It can't be you."
But the echo remained.
And the next day, when he walked into the office and saw Ayla's calm smile as she greeted him — it grew louder.