"Is it all strong liquor?" Zhuang Yi didn't look up when he asked. He had already taken out a pencil, the kind with a blunt, practical tip, and began to jot quick notes on the questionnaire as if he were tallying data points rather than poking at someone's private life. The sound of the pencil scraping against paper was faint but steady, and in the quiet of the study it somehow felt louder than it should have, like a metronome counting down Xun Yuming's patience.
Xun Yuming froze for half a beat, then his brows drew together tightly. The question was too blunt, too pointed, and it landed exactly where he hated being touched: not his skills, not his research, not his surgical technique, but his character. "I'm not an alcoholic," he said, each word carefully controlled, as if raising his voice would make him lose the argument before it began. "If that's what you mean. I would never entrust a patient's safety to… an addict." He said addict like it tasted bad, like it offended not only him but the entire idea of medicine he had spent his life swallowing and becoming.
Zhuang Yi didn't respond with comfort or rebuttal. He only shrugged slightly, the movement lazy and unreadable, as if the label didn't matter. That silence made Xun Yuming's temper flare hotter than any accusation would have, because it left him arguing with air, forced to defend himself without even knowing whether he was being prosecuted. "Believe it or not," Xun Yuming added, voice stiff with defiance, "I'm not an alcoholic."
Zhuang Yi let the statement hang, then calmly turned the page, as if "alcoholic" had never been the target at all, only the doorway. "Have you ever felt guilty," he asked, pencil still moving, "or remorseful about your 'frequent drinking behavior'?"
Guilt?
The word hit Xun Yuming like a slap delivered in slow motion, no physical pain, but a sudden, humiliating heat rising from his chest to his face. For a moment he couldn't even decide what kind of anger he was feeling: anger at the question, anger at himself for answering honestly on the form, anger at the entire situation that had dragged him here like a misbehaving child being made to sit in a chair. He had come to complete a formality and leave. Instead he was sitting opposite Zhuang Yi, watching a pencil carve judgments into paper, and realizing with a chill that honesty, his stupid, stubborn honesty was now being used as evidence.
"I have the right to drink," he snapped, the protest coming out sharper than he intended. "Doctors can drink too. I'm an adult." It sounded like something a teenager would yell during an argument, which only made him more furious, because he could hear how ridiculous he sounded and still couldn't stop.
"I know," Zhuang Yi said simply. He even smiled, small and polite, the kind of smile people used to soothe patients before a needle. Then, without any pause that would allow Xun Yuming to recover, he flipped to another section as if changing subjects mid-incision.
"Let's talk about your relationships," Zhuang Yi said, voice calm and professional, the way he might say Let's talk about your appetite.
Xun Yuming's scalp tightened. His mind screamed warning bells. Relationship questions in a psychological assessment were normal, sure, but coming from Zhuang Yi they didn't feel clinical. They felt like a knife being placed back into an old wound just to test whether it still bled.
"Are you single?" Zhuang Yi asked.
"Is there a problem with being single?" Xun Yuming's fingers clenched around the armrest. He pinched the outside of his thigh hard enough that pain shot up his leg, sharp, grounding, embarrassing and it dragged him back from the edge of losing control. "Yes. I'm single. It's written in my profile." He said it the way someone might say Yes, I'm guilty, just to get it over with.
Zhuang Yi's pencil paused briefly, then continued. "How long?"
Xun Yuming's jaw tightened. "Is this related to the psychological assessment?!" His voice rose despite himself, and he immediately hated that it sounded like panic.
Zhuang Yi didn't answer the challenge. He only wrote a few strokes, calm as ever. Xun Yuming watched the pencil move and imagined it writing something humiliating, lonely,needy,unstable. His mind filled the blank space with insults before Zhuang Yi even had the chance to provide them, and that anticipation made his anger twist into something messier.
"Have you ever been in a relationship?" Zhuang Yi asked again, in the same steady tone, as if he didn't already know the answer.
"What do you think?" Xun Yuming stood up so abruptly his chair legs scraped the floor. The sound was harsh, ugly. "What exactly do you want?" he stammered, the words tumbling out in frustration and embarrassment. "Do you think this is interesting?"
Zhuang Yi remained silent. He wrote two large characters in the margin with a decisive hand.
Xun Yuming lunged forward before he could stop himself and snatched the questionnaire, as if catching a glimpse of the verdict would let him change it. In the margin, bold and blunt, were the words: Anxiety.
A hot flush crawled up his neck. He couldn't even read the smaller notes beneath before Zhuang Yi reached out and took the paper back with a quick, firm movement. Then, with the same hand that had just been scribbling, Zhuang Yi pressed Xun Yuming's shoulder down, not violently, but with a quiet force that made it impossible to ignore.
"If you don't cooperate," Zhuang Yi said, voice colder now, "I can't give you an evaluation."
The words landed like a surgical clamp tightening. Because Xun Yuming knew exactly what they meant in practice: no evaluation meant no approval, no approval meant no surgery, and no surgery meant he would be stripped of the one thing he could do without hesitation. For him, operating wasn't just a job. It was the only place where his hands didn't shake, where his mind didn't stutter, where he didn't have to argue or explain or defend himself. Take that away and he would feel, truly...cornered.
He would rather die.
The standoff stretched. Xun Yuming's breathing grew shallow, his throat tight, until finally he sat back down. His movements were stiff, as if he were forcing his body to obey. "I had a relationship in college," he said after a long pause, voice low. "We broke up not long after."
Zhuang Yi nodded slightly, pencil poised again. "Have you tried dating anyone else since then?"
Xun Yuming stared at the desk edge, at the grain of the wood, at anything except Zhuang Yi's face. Zhuang Yi's features should have made him look cool and aloof, narrow eyelids, long eyes, sharp nose, clean jawline, but the dimples at the corners of his mouth always complicated him, giving him the ability to look gentle even when he wasn't. And right now, when his expression was stern, those dimples disappeared, leaving only a quiet distance that felt sharper than anger.
"No," Xun Yuming admitted, voice cracking slightly. "No."
"Why not?"
"I…" He swallowed, and the confession felt ridiculous and raw in his mouth. "I haven't met the right person. And I want to focus on my work."
Zhuang Yi wrote something, then looked up and smiled, almost as if amused by how predictable he was. "Giving up love for your career," he said lightly. "Still the same as before."
Xun Yuming's heart jumped hard enough to make him dizzy. He turned his face away quickly, as if looking at Zhuang Yi for even a second longer would make him say something worse, something he couldn't take back. The questions continued, moving from habits to mood, from sleep to stress, from work pressure to the award itself. At one point, when Zhuang Yi asked how he felt after winning the prize, Xun Yuming answered too quickly, too honestly, too much like someone reacting rather than thinking.
"It hurts," he blurted.
Zhuang Yi's pencil paused. "Because you got the award by ranking? Because it fell to you?"
Not entirely.
Xun Yuming didn't answer out loud, but the silence stretched in a way that made the unsaid feel heavy. He sat there while the sun outside slid lower, the light in the study shifting from gold to amber to a dim, tired gray. One by one, the streetlights outside the villa flickered on, turning the window into a reflection of the room, two men, a desk, a stack of papers, and an old history between them like a third person sitting in the corner.
By the time the evaluation finally ended, it was already dark.
Zhuang Yi walked him to the door, checked his watch, and asked with a casualness that almost sounded considerate, "It's past eight. Have you eaten lunch?"
Xun Yuming stood on the steps outside the gate, blinking at the road as if he'd been dropped into a new place again. The mountain neighborhood looked peaceful under the lights, but he felt disoriented, his head full of questions he couldn't untangle. He shook his head. "No. Which road leads back to the hospital?" His sense of direction had always been terrible; once he stepped outside, the turns all looked the same, like he was trapped inside a maze built from identical streets.
Zhuang Yi closed the door behind him with one hand, the motion smooth and unhurried. "I'm going to eat on the way," he said. "I'll take you down the mountain."
"Let's go then." Xun Yuming followed two steps behind him, keeping distance out of habit, as if closeness might be mistaken for permission. The roadside lights stretched in long lines, orange glows floating in the dusk. Below, the city was already noisy, but up here the street was strangely quiet, as though sound didn't want to travel between them.
Neither spoke. A breeze passed occasionally, carrying the faint trails of car exhaust and the smell of leaves. Their shadows, long and dark, moved across the pavement. From a distance, it might have looked like they were walking side by side, but Xun Yuming knew the truth: he was always half a step behind, always catching up, always afraid of stepping too close.
A soccer ball suddenly flew out from a nearby courtyard, fast and careless, and smacked into Xun Yuming's leg. He stumbled, tripped, and collided into Zhuang Yi's shoulder. Zhuang Yi, who had been waiting for a car to pass, turned his head and said without softness, "Watch where you're going."
Xun Yuming straightened, startled, his mind still somewhere else, half in the study, half in the past.
A little boy ran out, scooped up the ball, saluted like a tiny soldier, and shouted, "Sorry!" before sprinting away again as if chased by guilt.
"Watch where you're going," Zhuang Yi repeated, but this time his hand caught Xun Yuming's arm, tugging him a little to the side. The tone was helpless rather than sharp, as though he'd already decided scolding was useless. "What are you thinking about?"
Xun Yuming blinked, came back to himself, then took two steps away, reclaiming space like it was dignity. He pointed vaguely ahead, relieved to see the busier main road glowing in the distance. "I know the road from here," he said, voice lighter with relief. "I'll take a taxi later. There's somewhere to eat over there. I'll go..."
"I'm going there too." Zhuang Yi raised an eyebrow. The question in his eyes was simple, but it felt like a trap. "Together?"
Xun Yuming hesitated. Saying yes felt too intimate. Saying no felt too obvious. In the end, he chose the path he always chose: the one that didn't embarrass him more than necessary.
"…Alright."
Zhuang Yi led him through the intersection and into a narrow alley lit by rows of night stalls. Smoke rose from grills. Oil crackled. Vendors shouted. The air smelled of chili, fried dough, skewers, soup. Xun Yuming's brows furrowed tighter with every step, and he leaned closer so the vendors wouldn't overhear him, whispering as if sharing a crime.
"Eating these… isn't healthy."