I should have been on my guard the first time Su Miao came to the clinic. Her eyes lit up as she described the man who’d saved her, and her cheeks flushed whenever she mentioned the restaurant in the south of the city.
But I trusted Huo Xianci too much. I trusted that, even in the thick of gunfire, he’d pull out his phone first to let me know he was safe. I trusted that, after staying up all night on a case, he’d still go out of his way to buy my favorite croissants.
Until our anniversary, when I saw that surreptitious photo in the gossip group.
Beneath the warm yellow lights, he gazed at her with the focused intensity of a hunter watching its prey, while the rose-gold gleam on her wrist was impossible to miss.
I sat in the restaurant we went to every year, waiting. All I got was a text from him about an “urgent case.”
I drove around to the restaurant everyone was talking about and saw Su Miao leaning on his shoulder. Through the glass, she smiled at me.
I knew that smile all too well: a taunt from someone certain of victory.
Huo Xianci always said that when you’re working a case, you must never let emotions cloud your judgment.
Now it was my turn.
I calmly called the medical team heading to Tibet and heard my own steady voice say:
“Teacher, I want to go somewhere as far away as possible.”
