Jin Yue did not appear.
Jun Kai stood at the edge of the eastern book street long after the morning crowd had thinned, arms crossed, gaze fixed on the narrow entrance of the shop where Jin Yue had once spent nearly an entire afternoon reading without speaking a word.
Nothing.
The bell above the door chimed as customers came and went. None of them were him.
Jun Kai exhaled slowly and turned away.
That made the fifth place today.
By the third day, the search had stopped feeling reasonable and started feeling obsessive. Jun Kai was well aware of that. He was also well aware that he did not care.
The abandoned pavilion near the old wall was empty. The stone bench still bore faint marks where someone had once sat for hours at a time, but no quiet figure lingered there now. The apothecary's back alley...another dead end. Even the riverside market, loud and chaotic, offered nothing but familiar faces and unfamiliar indifference.
Jin Yue had vanished from his routines.
