The knock came with the force of a battering ram.
Syra, halfway through sketching Lou's back from memory (again), nearly dropped her pencil. She blinked at the studio door. Three rapid thuds, followed by a high-pitched voice and a very familiar, very dramatic sigh.
"If you don't open this door in five seconds, Syra Alizadeh-Li, I'm climbing through the skylight like a very beautiful, very angry raccoon!"
Syra groaned. "Lin."
The door swung open before she could move. Jia stood calmly in the doorway holding two paper bags, her usual serene expression betrayed only by the amused quirk at the corner of her mouth.
Lin burst in behind her, sunglasses still on despite the overcast sky, a cold bubble tea in each hand. "We're kidnapping you."
Syra blinked. "I'm working."
Lin waved one of the bubble teas like a priestess wielding incense. "You're spiraling. There's charcoal under your fingernails and you're humming the same three bars of that Yo-Yo Ma piece again. Classic depression loop."
"I am not depressed," Syra muttered. "I'm focused."
Jia set down the food on the counter. "You're wearing Lou's hoodie. Inside out. And backwards."
Syra glanced down. Oh.
Lin leaned in, dramatically sniffing the air around her. "And unless that's a new scent from Diptyque called 'Tormented Lover,' I'm going to assume that studio sex is happening again."
"Out," Syra deadpanned, pointing toward the door.
But Lin only grinned and flopped onto the studio couch, legs flung over one armrest like she owned the place. "We're not here to judge. Well, I'm not. Jia probably is, but in her usual soft-spoken, morally superior way."
Jia shrugged. "I'm only judging the lack of hydration and fruit in your diet."
Syra collapsed into the armchair, half-laughing despite herself. "Why are you really here?"
Jia handed her a bag. Inside: warm mantou buns and a container of lotus root salad. Lin peeled off her sunglasses with flair. "Because Auntie is asking for you again."
Syra stilled. "Lin's aunt?"
Jia nodded. "Your high school teacher. The one who—"
"Introduced you to art as therapy when you were sixteen," Lin finished, softer now. "She's been calling me every week. She's been asking why you haven't visited."
The air shifted. Syra's fingers curled around the edge of the paper bag.
"I thought she was in Suzhou now," she said quietly.
"She moved back two months ago. Retired finally. She teaches a weekend community class, and last Saturday she looked me dead in the eye and said, 'If Syra doesn't show up soon, I'll find her myself, even if I have to haunt that melancholy little studio of hers.'"
Jia tilted her head. "We voted. It was either a haunting or a field trip."
"You voted?"
Lin grinned. "It was unanimous. Three to zero. You're coming. Now."
---
The drive to Lin's aunt's small gallery-school hybrid was filled with Lin's unhinged commentary and Jia's dry one-liners.
"You know," Lin mused, sipping her bubble tea as she crossed her ankles on the dashboard, "if Lou Yan ever dumped you—"
Syra raised a brow. "Nice start."
"—I'd give you a week to grieve. Then I'd personally march up to him and propose marriage myself."
Jia didn't even glance up from her phone. "He's out of your league."
"I have cheekbones, Jia. And a dream. That's all any woman needs."
Syra snorted. "Lou doesn't even know he's attractive. He looks at people like he's about to reincarnate them."
Lin fanned herself dramatically. "God. That's exactly the problem. The hotter they are, the less they know it. He could sell enlightenment in tiny glass bottles and I would buy it in bulk."
Jia murmured, "You did buy five jars of honey from his monastery's website."
"That's called spiritual support," Lin sniffed. "You wouldn't understand."
---
When they arrived, Lin's aunt—Madam Qian—was already waiting at the door.
She looked older, but not weaker. Her spine still straight, her presence still magnetic. Her eyes lit up when she saw Syra, and she stepped forward without hesitation, cupping Syra's face like no time had passed.
"You finally came," she whispered. "Your eyes look less lost now."
Syra tried to respond, but the lump in her throat wouldn't budge. She swallowed hard. "I've been… painting."
Madam Qian nodded. "I can tell. Your aura doesn't tremble anymore."
Lin leaned toward Jia. "Her aura used to tremble?"
"You used to tremble," Madam Qian said without turning, and Lin shut her mouth instantly.
Jia beamed. "I like her."
They entered the quiet gallery classroom, the walls lined with student paintings and old ink scrolls. It smelled like jasmine and turpentine. Syra took it all in—the long tables, the wooden floors, the memory of safety tucked into the corners.
"We saved your seat," Madam Qian said, pointing to the third stool by the window.
Syra exhaled slowly, as if something inside her had been waiting to breathe again. She walked to the stool, sat, and for the first time in months, felt something close to peace.
"Paint," Madam Qian said gently.
And Syra did.
Syra's brush slowed with each pass of oil over canvas, the colors bleeding together in a harmony that surprised her. Madam Qian sat silently in the corner, sipping chrysanthemum tea from a porcelain cup as she watched her former student work. It had been over a decade since Syra last painted in the older woman's presence, yet her voice still echoed in her mind: "Paint your wounds, not your pretty." And so she did.
When Syra finally stepped back from the easel, breathless, Madam Qian was already standing, her eyes fixed on the canvas. "There she is," she whispered.
Syra blinked. "Who?"
"You." Madam Qian set the cup down and turned to her. "I worried you had vanished somewhere beneath the gallery lights and the Lou boy's devotion. But this," she gestured at the painting, "is your soul."
Syra looked down at her hands, smeared with burnt sienna and titanium white. For a moment, she felt like that girl again—frail and broken, staring at a blank canvas while the world spun on without her. And then Madam Qian opened her arms.
Syra folded into her like she used to in high school—quietly, fiercely.
---
They stayed for lunch at Madam Qian's cottage, nestled behind a crumbling courtyard garden blooming with wild ginger and stubborn marigolds. Lin and Jia did most of the talking, bantering like a comedy duo as Madam Qian dished out thick slices of jujube-stuffed mooncakes.
"So you mean to tell me you live in a penthouse with the man whose cheekbones could slice meat," Lin huffed around a mouthful of yam, "and you're not waking up every day thanking your ancestors for delivering him shirtless into your kitchen?"
Syra flushed. "Lin."
"I'm just saying," she leaned back, fanning herself. "That man walked into the studio once and I got shin splints from clenching."
Jia snorted her tea. Madam Qian raised a brow but didn't interrupt. Syra laughed so hard she nearly dropped her chopsticks.
---
Back at the studio that evening, Syra found herself propped against the doorway, arms crossed as she watched Lou Yan in his natural habitat: silently, steadily restoring order to her chaos.
He had come in without fanfare, kissed her cheek, and begun to work. Now, he was folding her last set of washed linens with a precision that would make a military officer weep. The pantry shelves were lined with clean-labeled jars of lentils, quinoa, goji berries, herbal teas. Her fridge had been transformed into a shrine of health: homemade bone broth, neatly stacked glass containers, a rainbow of pre-chopped vegetables.
Her sketchbooks had been dusted and arranged by size. The laundry was done. The rickety shelf by the back wall no longer leaned like a drunken poet—he had fixed it with two screws and quiet resolve.
Syra swallowed. "You do realize I'm going to be completely useless without you, right?"
Lou didn't look up from aligning her color palettes. "I'm counting on it."
She moved toward him slowly, aware of every brush of their sleeves, every angle of his body. His strength was effortless, encoded into the line of his shoulders and the way his forearms flexed when he lifted a crate.
It had been exactly two weeks. Two weeks since she fainted in his arms. Two weeks of tender meals and even more tender boundaries. Two weeks of Lou Yan sleeping beside her and doing absolutely nothing.
Which, frankly, was driving her insane.
Worse, there were moments she knew she was seducing him without trying—pulling her hair into lazy buns that left her neck exposed, slipping on his oversized T-shirts that fell scandalously off one shoulder. And sometimes, she tried. Softly tracing his wrist while he worked, curling into his lap with faux-innocent questions about "pressure points."
Every time, Lou would find a way to redirect.
He'd place a mango in her hand and say, "Eat."
Or ask about a forgotten sketch.
Or kiss her forehead with unbearable restraint and mutter, almost to himself "Not yet."
---
That night, she caught him staring. He was watching her from across the studio, a towel slung over one shoulder, his eyes heavy with something unspoken. She was barefoot, curled on the sofa in his white shirt, sleeves rolled to her elbows, charcoal smudged across her cheek.
"You're killing me," he said softly.
"Then why aren't you doing anything about it?" And she blushed profusely for thinking out loud.
Lou crossed the space between them in three steps, stopping just short of her knees. His hand reached out, brushing a bit of charcoal from her temple. His thumb lingered on her cheek.
"Because I want the first time after that night to mean something more than relief," he murmured. "I want it to be safe. For both of us."
Syra stared up at him, her pulse thrumming. And suddenly, she wasn't frustrated. She was grateful. No one had ever protected her from her own pain before. No one had ever waited.
She touched his hand, lacing their fingers together.