Chapter 232: Covered Her Mouth

Shichen kept his hand around Zhiyi’s, though he leaned back enough to give her room.

She was still watching him, waiting for an answer he couldn’t hide behind the drawing. He could hear Zeyu opening a cupboard in the kitchen, and for a moment he wished they were somewhere he wouldn’t have to wonder who might walk in.

"I wanted to," Shichen admitted. His thumb rested against the side of her finger without moving. "But I wasn’t going to kiss you before I knew whether you wanted me to."

Zhiyi looked down at their hands.

He tried to give her time, although he was painfully aware of how close they had been a moment earlier. The pencil had left a dark mark across the unfinished drawing when he leaned forward. He noticed it now and resisted the urge to look at the page instead of her.

"I liked being close to you," Zhiyi said at last. She raised her eyes to his face, her voice quiet but clear. "But I don’t know whether I want to kiss you yet or not. I hadn’t thought about it until you held my hand."

Shichen nodded, loosening his fingers so she could move hers if she wanted.

There was disappointment, of course. He had imagined kissing her often enough to know exactly what he was being asked to wait for, but she hadn’t pulled away or asked him to leave.

"Then we can leave that for another time," Shichen told her. He smiled a little as he glanced at the book on his knees. "I’d still like to finish this, if you haven’t changed your mind about watching."

Zhiyi settled back against the cushion, keeping her hand in his until he needed it for the drawing.

When he let go, she placed it where it had been before, then adjusted her fingers after checking the marks already on the page.

"Is that close enough?" Zhiyi asked. "I don’t remember exactly where my thumb was."

"That’s fine," Shichen replied, turning the book so she could see. "You don’t have to hold perfectly still. I can work around you."

He picked up the pencil and began again. For a while, neither spoke, and he found the quiet easier now that she knew.

She watched him draw the curve of her thumb, then asked how he decided where to make the shadows darker. He showed her on a spare corner of the page, passing her the pencil when she wanted to try.

By the time Zeyu returned with a folder, Zhiyi had a gray smudge on her little finger.

She held it up for Shichen to see, smiling, and he laughed as he reached for a tissue from the table. He wanted to take her hand again, but he passed her the tissue and let her clean it herself.

Zeyu stayed to look at the finished drawing, leaning against the arm of the sofa while Shichen placed the earlier portrait inside the folder.

Their conversation drifted back to the game, and Zhiyi explained her idea about the gate with enough detail that Zeyu opened the laptop to check.

Shichen remained beside them, his sketchbook open on his knees. When Zhiyi glanced over to include him in the argument about which switch to try, he moved his chair closer and looked at the screen.

Over the next three weeks, she gave him plenty of reasons to bring that chair back.

Sometimes she asked to see what he was drawing. On other evenings, he found her beside the lamp with his sketchbook waiting on the table.

She always asked before opening it, even after he told her she could, and she had a habit of returning to the same pages to ask something she had wondered about afterward.

Her portrait stood on the dresser in the room she shared with Hanchuan. The first time Shichen saw it there, he forgot what he had come to ask.

Their days began to feel fuller as Zhiyi spent more time out of bed. Qinghe brought his book, and Zeyu learned to save their game before meals instead of insisting they could finish one more room.

Shichen heard her laughing from the sitting room one afternoon and stopped in the corridor to listen before going in.

Outside, the trees along the approach lost the last of their leaves. Wind carried ash against the entrance, and the road remained empty for days at a time.

When they finally left for Luming again, Shichen found himself looking back at Xiling until the bend hid it.

Zhiyi sat beside him in the mobile base, her ankle still propped on a cushion.

She had asked for the sketchbook before they left, and it rested open between them now, showing a garden Shichen had drawn during the work at the hotel. He remembered sitting beneath a tree while workers carried materials through a side entrance.

"Was there water here?" Zhiyi asked, pointing to the narrow pond beside the path. "You’ve drawn a reflection beneath the bridge."

"There was," Shichen replied. He leaned closer to see where her finger rested. "I sat there to eat lunch. It was quieter than the building."

She looked at the drawing a little longer before closing the book and placing it safely beside her. Shichen watched her turn toward the window as the first burned trees appeared along the road.

Their black branches stood bare against the bright sky, and fallen trunks lay where the fire had dropped them.

Zeyu slowed well before the bend where they had turned back on their earlier attempt. Hanchuan leaned forward to watch the road with Jingwei, while Qinghe secured the bottle he had been drinking from.

The fallen tree that had blocked the approach was gone. Someone had cut it into sections and dragged them aside, leaving pale wood exposed at the ends.

Shichen could see tire marks through the ash beyond it, some crossing others near the shoulder.

"Someone’s been clearing the road," Shichen said, looking toward the higher ground. "Those cuts weren’t made by the fire."

Zeyu continued slowly until the hotel entrance came into view.

A patch of roof had collapsed near the front, but the main building still stood behind it. Clothing hung from an upper window, and several containers had been placed beneath a strip of shade along the wall.

A man stepped out of the gatehouse when he heard the engine. He stood watching them for a moment, then shouted toward the building and hurried to the open gate.

Shichen leaned forward as the man began pulling it closed. Behind the bars, a woman came running from the hotel, waving both arms toward the mobile base.

Before Jingwei could open the speaker, someone caught her from behind and covered her mouth.