Saturday, 10:58 AM.
He stood outside her building for two minutes before going up. Told himself it was to compose his thoughts. It wasn't working.
He knocked.
The door opened.
She was in home clothes, hair loose for once, a mug of something in one hand.
"You're early," she said.
"Punctual."
She stepped aside to let him in.
The apartment was quiet without Luoli in it — smaller-feeling, somehow, in a way he hadn't expected. He noticed the drawing from before, taped to the fridge. Two figures. One tall, one small.
She sat on the couch. Gestured for him to do the same.
He didn't, at first.
"You wanted to talk," she said, watching him.
"Yes."
He'd rehearsed this. Something calm. Something clear. I need to tell you something about who we were before. Simple. Controlled.
Instead what came out was—
"Do you remember a bookshop on Heping Road? Small one. You used to complain the owner never dusted the shelves."
She went very still.
"...I don't know what you mean."
"You bought a copy of something there once. Wouldn't tell me what. Kept it in your desk drawer for two years."
Her mug had stopped halfway to her mouth.
"How do you—"
"I remember the ring too," he said, quieter now. "I remember I never got to give it to you. I remember the call I missed, and the one I didn't, and I remember standing in a hospital hallway being told—"
His voice caught. He hadn't expected that.
He stopped. Steadied himself.
"I remember everything," he said. "Not pieces. Not dreams. All of it. Since the corridor, since I heard you say that thing you always used to say when you were debugging something at midnight."
Silence.
She set the mug down very carefully on the table, like she didn't trust her own hands with it.
"...Say it," she said. Voice low. "The thing I used to say."
"'Rework it. Debug it. No time like today.'"
Her breath left her in something that wasn't quite a laugh and wasn't quite a sob.
"I thought I was losing it," she said. "Every time I caught myself thinking about you. I told myself it was just this body. Old feelings that weren't mine."
"They were yours."
"I know that now."
She looked up at him.
"There's more," he said. "About Luoli."
Something in her expression sharpened — the mother in her surfacing instantly, alert.
"He's not just yours," Beichuan said carefully. "This body — this version of me — he's the father. Biologically. Before either of us arrived here."
She went pale.
"...What?"
"I only found out recently. It wasn't—" he hesitated. "It wasn't something either of them chose freely. There was a scheme. A trap. Neither of the original two were ever together, not really. But he's mine. Ours, now, I suppose, in every way that actually matters."
She sat with that for a long moment, staring at nothing.
"He's really yours," she said slowly. Not a question anymore. Just settling into it.
"Yes."
She looked at him then — really looked, the calm composure finally cracking at the edges.
"I don't know what to do with any of this," she admitted quietly.
"You don't have to know yet."
"That's very unlike you. Patient."
"I've had a lot of practice waiting for you."
Something in her face softened — not a smile, not quite, but close.
The apartment was quiet around them. Sunlight through the window. Her mug going cold on the table.
Neither of them moved to fill the silence.
It didn't need filling.