Zhuang Mingqi had originally come out to walk the dog, but somehow, he ended up walking Shen Zhengning to his company building.

They had arrived early, so the convenience store wasn't very crowded yet, and the shelves were fully stocked. Therefore, Zhuang Mingqi deigned to enter. After picking and choosing for a long while, he grudgingly took a palm-sized tuna onigiri and stood before the self-checkout machine, waiting for Shen Zhengning to pay for him.

The scene was a bit like a child following their parent out to buy snacks. Of course, Zhuang Mingqi would never say this thought out loud—out of curiosity, he had looked up what a "baby bowl" was after getting home that day. Following that thread, he found his way onto Xiaohongshu. Two hours later, he put down his phone, so shaken by the "pampered wife literature" and the sharp reviews that he suffered from insomnia for half the night.

The onigiri, fresh from the microwave, was a little hot. When Shen Zhengning placed it in his hand, he even reminded him, "Careful, it's hot."

Zhuang Mingqi nodded subconsciously, his mind still in a daze. He wondered, had he ever had a time like this, following behind an adult and receiving a favorite snack with a heart full of anticipation? If he had never experienced it, he wouldn't have made such an association for no reason. But that memory was simply too distant, so fuzzy it felt like something from a past life.

"Alright, you should head back," Shen Zhengning said, bending down to pat Silver's head and earnestly saying goodbye to the dog before blowing the fur off his hand. "I'm heading upstairs. Send me a WeChat if you need anything."

He gave this simple and clear instruction, neither probing further nor offering guidance. The two of them said their farewells as usual, and then went their separate ways to do their own things.

This subtle and silent routine had a surprising stability. Like Shen Zhengning himself, it gently yet firmly dictated the rhythm of their interactions. There was no need for long-winded speeches, only the most basic affirmation: you can be aloof and distant, you can be fickle and unpredictable, you can freely explore and feel all the world's resentments, hatreds, loves, and passions... even if no one understands, you are still free.

—If you run into a problem you can't figure out or a mental block you can't get over, then come ask me.

Zhuang Mingqi watched his back disappear into the elevator and suddenly realized his heart seemed to be beating a bit fast, its "thump, thump" becoming very noticeable.

He frowned, feeling it for a moment, and suspected he might have low blood sugar again. Annoyed, he ripped open the plastic seal on the onigiri's packaging.

Shen Zhengning used the microwave in the breakroom to heat up his now-lukewarm McMuffin and made himself a cup of black tea. On his way back to the office, he ran into Gao Qihui and another vice president, Yang Heqing. He paused briefly and took the initiative to greet them, "Good morning, President Gao. Good morning, President Yang."

Unexpectedly, Gao Qihui acted as if he hadn't heard, walking right past him without a glance. Yang Heqing didn't reply either, though he did turn his head to look at him, but his attitude was not that of a normal superior toward a subordinate.

Shen Zhengning: ?

In his six years in the workforce, the only thing he had learned was "don't overthink things." When he noticed a superior was unhappy, he never reflected on whether he had done something wrong. Instead, he immediately began to speculate darkly: 'Did the company's capital chain finally break? Don't tell me the court is sending people over at nine to seize assets, fast-forwarding straight to bankruptcy and liquidation?'

Unfortunately, reality rarely went as one wished. No divine justice descended at nine o'clock, and his work for the rest of the day fell into a very bizarre pattern. Bugs appeared everywhere except in the code—processes got stuck, files went missing, approvals were denied... It was clear his ability wasn't the problem. Shen Zhengning suspected he was a victim of Mercury in retrograde.

He was still mulling this over when he went home from work and, as agreed, paid a visit to Zhuang Mingqi's house.

Zhuang Mingqi, who had come out to meet him, was leaning lazily against the courtyard gate with a trench coat draped over his shoulders. Most of his body was cloaked in the night, with the light illuminating a small part of his side profile. His skin had a slight gray tone, like meticulously carved celadon jade.

When he first met him, Shen Zhengning had thought he wasn't well-socialized. Later, he discovered the guy was probably just shy around strangers. Once they became familiar with each other, he was actually quite humane, even getting to the point of "my humble door now opens for you."

The moment the door opened, Silver immediately pounced, hugging his leg and begging to be petted. Shen Zhengning bent down, picked up the Samoyed, and carried the cotton ball of a dog inside. While changing into slippers, he had Zhuang Mingqi grab a wet wipe to clean its paws, asking casually, "Have you had dinner?"

Zhuang Mingqi: "Forgot."

Shen Zhengning: "Go eat."

He didn't waste words either. Letting go of Silver to let it run around the living room like a little train, he glanced around Zhuang Mingqi's home and asked, "How do you usually feed Silver? Is he on an irregular schedule like you?"

Zhuang Mingqi was silent for two seconds. Under the light, his dark, long lashes lifted slightly. "Are you in a bad mood?"

He used a questioning tone, but his voice was very certain. Shen Zhengning turned his head in surprise, a strange sense of gratification welling up within him. 'Could it be?' he thought, 'that I've unlocked this breed's hidden achievement: "considerate"?' He adjusted his mood slightly. "How could you tell?"

Zhuang Mingqi pointed to the corner of his own eye. "Here. When you deliberately tense your face, a vein bulges." There was even an imperceptible trace of pride in his tone. "Besides, whenever you're in a bad mood, you start talking sarcastically. It's pretty easy to tell."

Shen Zhengning: "...Now I'm really getting angry."

Zhuang Mingqi, however, started laughing. It was rare for him to smile so openly and without restraint. In that instant, it was truly like ice and snow melting, a thousand peach trees blooming—so dazzlingly beautiful it was hard to look away. If not for his rather wicked sense of humor, he might have even stood a chance against the smiling angel Samoyed.

"So who made you unhappy?" Zhuang Mingqi took two cans of beer from the fridge, handed one to Shen Zhengning, and popped his own open with one hand. He took a sip, tilting his head back, and asked with great interest.

Shen Zhengning glanced at the beer, then at him. "What is this?"

Zhuang Mingqi: "Beer?"

Shen Zhengning: "I can read, thank you."

Zhuang Mingqi tilted his head at him innocently, seemingly not understanding what he meant. Shen Zhengning exhaled slowly, repeatedly chanting to himself not to stoop to his level. "We were just talking about dinner."

"Oh," Zhuang Mingqi said. "Beer is very high in calories."

A fleeting glimpse of the snow-cave-like refrigerator was still imprinted on his retina. Shen Zhengning had no choice but to be more direct. "It's almost November. You shouldn't be drinking iced beer."

"Okay, last can," Zhuang Mingqi agreed readily, still looking at him with curiosity.

Shen Zhengning also opened his beer, frowning from the cold. "It's nothing major. Just felt like work wasn't going smoothly today, and I haven't found the cause yet... What's with that expression? Are you enjoying my misery as entertainment?"

Zhuang Mingqi pouted. "I thought I'd get to hear another one of the great detective's reasoning stories. I got my hopes up for nothing."

Shen Zhengning said expressionlessly, "I'm guessing you're looking for The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes."

"..."

Zhuang Mingqi seemed to be figuring out a formula to deal with Shen Zhengning. He didn't speak, just sat at the small bar, propping his face up with one hand. He adjusted his position to be slightly lower than the other man, lifted his eyelids to glance up at him, lowered them for half a second, then looked up again, just like that, gazing at him expectantly, one glance at a time.

A soft, loose, ivory-colored sweatshirt hung on his straight shoulders, revealing a long neck and deep collarbones. The sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, giving him a very gentle and domestic look. The bones of his wrists were distinct, but the scar on the inner side was like a tiny flaw on a piece of white jade, stark and conspicuous against the pale blue veins.

"Alright," Shen Zhengning said, having achieved the excellent result of holding out for 10 seconds under his pleading gaze. "Let me observe a bit more. I'll tell you when I figure it out."

The corners of Zhuang Mingqi's mouth curled up in a sly, triumphant smile. Then, following Shen Zhengning's gaze, which he hadn't retracted in time, he looked down at his own wrist, his chin tilting up another 20 degrees. "Don't worry, I've never done anything stupid. It's just in a bit of a weird spot."

"Mm, I know."

He lowered his gaze and responded gently, his voice devoid of any excess emotion, but Zhuang Mingqi felt as if he had been patted on the head by his gaze.

Of course, Shen Zhengning could tell that it wasn't a scar from slitting his wrist, but rather an abrasion formed from repeated rubbing, which had faded a lot over time. But he also knew that marks like these, appearing only on the inside of both wrists and similar in position and shape, couldn't have been caused by ordinary ropes, nor by a one-time or two-time incident.

Only the long-term, repeated practice of restraining the hands and feet after laying someone flat to prevent them from struggling would form such scars.

Silver, who had been running around the house, suddenly screeched to a halt, turned around, and trotted quickly to Zhuang Mingqi's feet with its tail wagging. It began to circle him, occasionally standing on its hind legs to nudge his hand with its snout, letting out soft "whimpering" sounds as if to console him, 'Human, you can cry on my broad chest.'

Like light snow falling into pure white fluff, the bit of gloom pressing on both their hearts melted away without a sound.

Shen Zhengning said, "Don't worry, I'll help you take good care of him."

The job of a proxy poop-scooper wasn't too troublesome: every morning, he would take a picture while walking the dog and send it to Zhuang Mingqi. While Shen Zhengning was at work, Zhuang Mingqi would check on Silver from time to time via the home security camera. When he got off work in the evening, Zhuang Mingqi would video call to remotely supervise the feeding and dog walking, and they would also update each other on their current situations.

Compared to his actual job, which was plagued by misfortune, house-sitting the dog was a perfect job in every way, except for the lack of a salary.

Zhuang Mingqi: "So why are you having so much bad luck anyway?"

His tone dragged on a bit at the end, carrying a soft laziness that came from letting his guard down after a tense day. Shen Zhengning chuckled. "Forget it, I won't trouble you with it. We can talk about it slowly when I get back."

Zhuang Mingqi was having none of it. "You promised me."

"It's a long story," Shen Zhengning warned. "Then I'll tell you. Don't blame me if you're so upset tonight you stare at the ceiling with insomnia until three in the morning."

This past June, Shen Zhengning's direct supervisor, Xu Yongjing, had hinted to him that the company was preparing to promote him to Deputy Director of the department. The upper management's evaluation of him was pretty much a sure thing; they would send out the notice as soon as it passed the office meeting. However, when Shen Zhengning opened his email this morning, he saw the new appointment notice from Human Resources and was stunned to find another colleague's name written as the new Deputy Director.

The atmosphere in their department had originally been quite good, but all morning, the entire office was as silent as the grave. Shen Zhengning found an excuse to go to the deputy general manager's office. He managed to remain calm and asked with great sincerity, "President Xu, I understand that there are many considerations at the company's decision-making level, but this result has truly shocked me. I want to know where the problem was."

Xu Yongjing was also a bit embarrassed. After all, he had given Shen Zhengning a heads-up, and Shen Zhengning's work was indeed outstanding. Now he had to eat his words, which made both his promise and the company's decision seem like a joke. "Zhengning, I understand how you feel, and I highly recognize your abilities... but, the company's decisions aren't made by me alone, right? It was mainly a consideration of... personnel stability. We still hope that the employees our company cultivates can have long-term, stable development within the company..."

This explanation was easy to understand; it was one of the most basic phrases in corporate jargon. Shen Zhengning was about to instinctively argue that he had no intention of leaving, but in that brief half-second, a sudden guess struck his mind like a bolt of lightning, making his hair stand on end for a moment and strangling the explanation in his throat.

"...This is a bit unexpected." He lowered his eyelids to half-cover his pupils, presenting a harmless, placid appearance. He was speaking almost entirely on instinct. "I didn't expect it to be... for this reason. Would it be convenient to ask which executive raised this point?"

Seeing his receptive attitude and that he showed no signs of angrily flipping the table, Xu Yongjing assumed he had hit a nerve and that Shen Zhengning had indeed been thinking of leaving. He relaxed his shoulders slightly, leaning back deeper into his boss's chair, and said pretentiously, "You know, meetings involving personnel appointments are sensitive and need to be kept confidential..."

Shen Zhengning's attitude became even more humble as he explained politely, "Rest assured, President Xu, I have no dissatisfaction with the company's decision. I'm just worried that there might be some misunderstanding about me among the leadership. No matter where I develop in the future, I'll still be in this industry, and I hope to leave a good impression on my superiors."

"I know you want to prepare for both possibilities. Looking for a better job while still employed is human nature. Everyone knows what's up, we all understand." Xu Yongjing lectured him earnestly, "But this kind of thing needs to be kept hidden, done quietly on the side. It doesn't look good if it's brought out into the open. To put it bluntly, wouldn't that be like two-timing, right? President Gao was also worried that if we gave you the promotion, you'd just turn around and leave. Then the company's efforts would be fruitless. How would we compensate for the loss?"

Shen Zhengning had long since become immune to this kind of rhetoric, letting it go in one ear and out the other without taking it to heart. Only when he caught the two crucial words did he focus slightly, his heart sinking a little with a twisted feeling—a bizarre mix of 'so that's how it is' and 'just as I thought'.

Zhuang Mingqi didn't know the full context and only half-understood, but he grasped why Shen Zhengning had issued an insomnia warning. "Aren't they just blatantly bullying you? What grudge does that guy surnamed Gao have against you? Or is he your competitor's godfather?"

"That's where the problem lies," Shen Zhengning said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "I have never offended him, and before today, I never planned on resigning."

"Then why did he say you were going to resign?" Zhuang Mingqi asked, puzzled. "And you even went along with it and admitted it."

Shen Zhengning said slowly, "Only once, in order to fish for information, did I ever mention to someone that I had the intention of job-hopping. That person was the information security engineer who resigned because of the information leak incident, who was also Ye Tongsheng's former colleague."

That was a name that felt like a curse, one that still sent a chill down the spine.

"He implied to me that a high-level executive in the company was involved in this matter, which is why the internal investigation ended inconclusively. He and another engineer resigned as scapegoats, but their subsequent careers were not affected," Shen Zhengning said. "Gao Qihui is the supervising leader of the Information Security Department and also the head of the internal investigation. I have had no direct contact with him. The only way he would know I was planning to resign is if that person tipped him off."

"If it ended there, it could still be explained as 'Gao Qihui is a righteous man, compensating the victims on behalf of the company.' But he used this as leverage to suppress me, wishing I would have a hard time at the company and pack my bags and leave as soon as possible. The intention behind that is very much worth pondering."

Zhuang Mingqi's lips moved as he cursed silently.

"He knows I'm looking into the truth behind the information leak. He's doing this to warn me not to be a busybody."