Shen Weiqing had begun to notice the clockwork precision of Xiang Man's routine. Her daily updates arrived religiously around 2 p.m., rarely straying more than ten minutes in either direction. After a month of observation, he could even predict her work schedule—messages before 2 p.m. meant morning shift, after meant afternoon.
The photos she sent painted a careful portrait of care: her hands working through a massage for the elderly woman, the rhythmic motions of sweeping and mopping, and sometimes, furtive snapshots through the pharmacy window capturing Grandma Wang carrying fresh produce past the entrance. These last ones Xiang Man took during quiet moments, when the pharmacy stood still.
Yet her captions remained stubbornly mechanical: "Month X, Day X, Grandma Wang did X. Everything is fine." Nothing more, nothing less.
As time passed, Weiqing came to understand Xiang Man's nature. She wasn't particularly sophisticated, but her simplicity had its merits. Once committed to a task, she saw it through with unwavering dedication. True to form, not a single day had passed without her dutiful photo and update.
Weiqing never responded.
His days were consumed by his first experience overseeing a renovation site, where his unconventional demands often baffled the workers. They questioned everything—why carbon fiber instead of metal for the back panel? Why 12 centimeters for the mezzanine steps instead of the standard 15?
When his creative vision collided with their experience, tensions would rise. His face would harden as he insisted, "Even a millimeter off means starting over. The timeline isn't important." Yet moments later, he'd be crouched by the sandpile with the construction foreman, sharing expensive cigarettes he'd instructed his assistant to buy, trading stories between puffs.
Despite his privileged background, Weiqing was far from the sheltered young master some might expect. His years abroad had exposed him to life's full spectrum, teaching him to move effortlessly between worlds. Xiang Man's belief that he existed above "the mundane dew of human life" revealed more about her misunderstanding than his reality.
Ding.
"December 20th. Grandma Wang's electricity bill is due, everything else is fine."
Weiqing glanced at Xiang Man's message, transferred the money without reply, and set his phone aside.
Their paths had crossed only a handful of times, always at his grandmother's house, always by chance.
He had never encountered someone who feared the cold quite like her.
Most young women darting between office buildings wore light cashmere coats and loose scarves more for style than warmth, their hands wrapped around cups of milk tea or coffee for comfort. But Xiang Man was different. When Shen Weiqing arrived at his grandmother's house that day, he found her at the entrance putting on her shoes—fully armed against the cold with a scarf, knitted hat, and gloves.
It struck him as oddly anachronistic that in 2019, a woman in her twenties would wear those old-fashioned knitted gloves with strings that dangled down her chest. Her long black down jacket, though plain and austere, was immaculately kept.
As she bent to tie her shoes, she nearly collided with him in the doorway.
Her bare, makeup-free face offered a slight nod in greeting before she pulled her scarf up to shield herself and stepped into the biting wind.
His grandmother often spoke of how kind and beautiful young Xiao Man was.
But beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, and Shen Weiqing didn't find Xiang Man particularly striking. He struggled to even recall her features clearly. At best, she was delicate—and if he had to elaborate: slender, fragile, solitary, distant.
She seemed misplaced in her surroundings, like a stark piece of modern furniture in a classical room.
Her inability to blend in made her conspicuous.
That afternoon, Shen Weiqing lingered at his grandmother's house. Perhaps influenced by Xiang Man's bundled appearance, he kept sensing a chill in the air. When he mentioned it to his grandmother, she shrugged it off—it was just the reality of single-story living, unlike buildings with central heating.
Later that evening, after finishing work, he messaged Xiang Man to ask about heating options for single-story homes in her neighborhood and potential improvements.
It was his first unprompted message to her in over a month. She didn't answer.
When he checked his phone the next morning, he found her response.
"The neighborhood's switched from coal to electric heating, so temperature isn't the issue.
Grandma Wang just worries about electricity costs. The payment you sent last time—she's barely used a tenth of it."
A second message followed, formal in tone:
"Apologies for the delayed response. I was asleep."
Who still goes to bed at 10:30 PM in this day and age?
"Unless I'm working overtime or there's something unusual, I'm in bed before 11 PM and up at 5:30 AM," she explained. "During those hours, I won't be able to respond promptly. I hope you understand."
She maintained a strictly professional distance—treating him purely as a client.
Shen Weiqing found himself intrigued:
"You only sleep six hours?"
"Yes."
"Every day?"
"Yes."
Even on afternoon shifts, Xiang Man kept to her early rising. Once her body learned a rhythm, it stuck to it.
That morning, she woke as usual, pulled back the curtains, and looked outside. The sky hung dark blue, not yet touched by sunrise. In the murky light, the first snow of winter drifted down like scattered salt.
She pulled a cardigan over her long-sleeved pajamas, went through her morning routine, and headed to the kitchen to boil water and make breakfast. The door of the adjacent bedroom creaked open, and a man wearing glasses peered around the kitchen doorframe. "Good morning, roommate."
After a month of living next door, this was their first encounter.
Xiang Man returned his greeting with a brief "Good morning" and turned back to watch the kettle. But instead of leaving, the man leaned against the doorframe and pressed on with conversation:
"You're up early. Just waking up, or pulling an all-nighter?"
"Just waking up," she said.
"Me, I haven't slept yet." The bespectacled man grinned, dark circles prominent under his eyes. His voice carried a hint of pride as he explained, "I'm an independent designer. Night owl hours come with the territory. Our schedules must keep missing each other—that's why it took so long to properly meet. Don't you think?"
"Everyone's busy."
"Is that breakfast?" He watched as she retrieved a box of frozen custard buns from the freezer and placed them in a small electric steamer. His eyes lingered on her back before sliding away. "Can't cook?"
"No, I can't."
It was a lie. Xiang Man could cook, but she'd lost her taste for it. Years of cooking out of necessity had worn her down. Now that she lived alone, she preferred quick, cheap instant meals—simple, efficient, enough to get by.
"Hey, I can cook! Let me whip something up for you. What are you in the mood for? Maybe noodles?" The man tried to edge his way into the kitchen. Xiang Man stepped back instinctively, her body language defensive. "No need, thank you."
"Don't be so formal."
Xiang Man reached for the small steamer, intending to retreat to her room.
"Is it hot? Let me help." The man with glasses reached toward her.
"No, I've got it. Please move aside, thanks."
The new roommate made her skin crawl.
He was the second designer she'd taken a dislike to.
Maybe she just wasn't meant to get along with anyone from that profession.
Back in her room, Xiang Man sat at her desk, eating breakfast while reviewing the practice tests she hadn't finished the night before.
Before leaving, Sun Lin had given Xiang Man her handwritten notes for the Licensed Pharmacist Exam. "Don't look at me like that," she'd said. "Sure, we worked the same shift, but we both know we've been fighting over those commission bonuses for years. Still, that was just business. No hard feelings. I'm done with all this now, heading home. Take these and make something of yourself."
People love saying "everyone has their own path" when they really mean "dreams that never came true." When one road closes, they comfort themselves by thinking there are other ways to succeed. But only the person walking that path knows how bitter it really tastes.
Xiang Man took the notes. Sun Lin had needed two years to pass the exam. Xiang Man was determined to do it in one shot next year.
It was a big goal.
But not her only one.
On the white wall above her desk hung a paper listing what Xiang Man wanted to achieve before thirty:
Change her name ✔️
Get a driver’s license✔️
Try cosmetic surgery
Buy a house in a city she likes
Send money back to her family
In her mind, she'd arranged these by difficulty, easiest to hardest. So far, only the first two items had checkmarks beside them. If she could pass the pharmacist exam next year and become store manager, the salary bump would let her start on the third goal.
She stretched, pulling her hands from her sleeves. The ugly patches of calluses and chilblain scars stared back at her like cold, unforgiving eyes.
She looked at them for a long while before slowly hiding them back in her sleeves.
Her work rules strictly prohibited phone use during shifts, and during busy periods she couldn't spare a glance anyway.
With year-end approaching, every store was buried in inventory counts. Xiang Man worked late, not closing up until 10 p.m. After saying goodbye to Jiang Chen, she locked the door and pulled down the shutters. Her phone screen lit up with unread messages. The most striking was a new friend request—a girl's selfie as the profile picture—sent through the landlord's tenant group.
"Hi, I'm from the second bedroom."
Xiang Man paused to think. She recognized the short-haired, big-eyed tenant who'd been there a while. They'd exchanged nods in the kitchen and bathroom but had never connected online.
"Sorry to bother you, dear. Did you accidentally grab my nightgown while collecting laundry from the balcony? It's pink with ruffled cuffs."
"Haven't seen it. I haven't used the balcony for drying clothes in ages," Xiang Man replied.
"Okay, sorry to disturb you."
After clearing that up, she still had a stack of app notifications to sort through. At the bottom sat a message from Shen Weiqing, sent thirty minutes ago.
She opened it to find a photo of cold medicine capsules in his hand, stripped of their box. "How many should I take at once?"
Xiang Man instantly recognized the backdrop as Grandma Wang's kitchen cabinet.
"Don't worry about waking her up," Shen Weiqing added quickly. "It's for me, not her."
Xiang Man had been about to turn down her alley but stopped short.
The weather had turned brutal lately, bringing waves of people to the pharmacy for cold and fever medicine. She thought of Shen Weiqing's usual attire—always in a trench coat or cashmere. Maybe the wealthy didn't have to battle public transport or worry about the cold. Style trumped practicality for them.
"Caught a cold. Grabbed these while visiting the old lady this afternoon. She's got plenty," Shen Weiqing said.
Drawing on her pharmaceutical knowledge, Xiang Man zoomed in to check the manufacturer and dosage. "Take two," she told him. Then she pocketed her phone and hurried to catch her train.
She got home late that night, cleaned up, and fell straight into bed, not giving his response another thought. It wasn't until morning that she saw his message from before 11 p.m.:
"Are these expired?"
The foil only showed the medicine's name—no instructions, manufacturing date, or expiration date. All that vital information was on the discarded box.
Xiang Man's stomach dropped, an unfamiliar wave of guilt washing over her.
It wasn't an emotion she felt often.
When she called Shen Weiqing early that morning, she figured he'd still be asleep. But he picked up after just two rings.
"What?"
His voice came through raw and scratchy.
Xiang Man remembered what they said about designers living on inverted schedules. She couldn't tell if his voice was rough from the cold or from pulling another all-nighter.
That moment she took to think, that small gap of silence, wore through what little patience Shen Weiqing had left.
"Say something!"
"I'm sorry I missed your message last night," Xiang Man said, her voice steady as ever. "I couldn't see if the medicine was expired. Did you take it? Are you okay?"
"I just wanted to check on you," she added.
"Try asking that again."
Her detached tone made his head pound worse. After a fever-wracked sleepless night, he'd barely started feeling human again, and his temper was running hot.
He dragged himself to the dining room and gulped down cold water. The glass hit the table with a dull sound as he let loose at Xiang Man:
"What you really mean is - are you calling to see if I'm dead yet?"
0 Comments