She had only just started lowering her chin, not even halfway through the nod, when Yin Che had already turned to the second page. The rustle of paper was quiet, but the pressure of her fingertips pinching the corner was steady and precise. She did it all in one smooth motion, leaving Zhou Yuwei no opening to add another word. Zhou Yuwei’s chin froze halfway down, her eyes locked on the stack of documents in the other woman’s hands.
Yin Che spread the entire proposal across her desk and tapped the red text in the client feedback section. Her voice was clipped. “The client wants to see the revised version at nine tomorrow morning. The original designer quit last week.”
She raised her eyes and looked evenly at Zhou Yuwei, her expression giving nothing away. “You made the cover. You fix it.”
She reached out and took the documents. The paper was heavier than she’d expected, and a chill traveled from her fingertips straight to her heart.
Zhou Yuwei lowered her head to the second page. Besides the red comment in the client feedback section, someone had drawn a thick, hurried circle around the entire key visual. Beside it, they had written, “The key visual is too conservative and lacks memorability.” Her fingertip traced the circle. The paper had the rough texture of ink the printer hadn’t fully absorbed, and the desk lamp slanted across the page, making the ring of red words look painfully bright.
A yellow sticky note was tucked into the last page of the document. It was in Yin Che’s handwriting: “Rearrange the main image. Don’t change the brand colors.” The letters were tiny but formed with painstaking clarity. Zhou Yuwei stared at the note for two more seconds, her thumb unconsciously rubbing the edge of the paper. A thought suddenly surfaced—before handing over the document, this woman had reviewed it herself, and she’d looked at it very carefully.
Zhou Yuwei swallowed. The words “This isn’t a matter of whether I can revise it. I made it in the first place” almost slipped out, but she forced them back down and squeezed out, “Can I change the color scheme too?” Her voice was barely audible, and the last note trembled.
Yin Che studied her for two seconds, as if deciding whether the question deserved an answer, then said two words: “Change everything.”
Zhou Yuwei lowered her head and answered, “Okay.” When she looked up again, Yin Che had already reached the corner of the partition by her workstation. She turned to leave, took two steps, then stopped and looked back. “Don’t even think about going home tonight.” Her tone was flat. It was impossible to tell whether she was apologizing or simply stating a fact.
Zhou Yuwei watched her walk away and thought, Does this woman keep the same blank expression even when announcing bad news? Is she like this outside the office too?
Zhou Yuwei swallowed again. The words “I didn’t make this” were instantly forced back down, replaced by a nod. This time, at least, she finished it properly.
The entire string of thoughts in her head had already made three laps around the same track. This is literally my design. Of course I can revise it. But am I proving myself right now, or throwing myself straight into the fire? When the spotlight comes on, will it also reveal what I’m hiding beneath this suit?
She shoved all of it down, clicked open the file, and placed her fingers on the keyboard. They were steady—so steady that even she found it unfamiliar. Her heartbeat, meanwhile, pounded all the way up into her ears, buzzing like someone had turned on a tiny fan inside them.
She dug out her old notebook. She remembered those three pencil notes perfectly. The first was the title font size, the second was the ratio of white space, and the third was the hierarchy between the main and secondary headings. She looked over the entire composition again, then fixed every place she’d wanted to change back then but hadn’t dared touch because there hadn’t been enough time.
Once she enlarged the font, the space between the main title and subtitle suddenly began to breathe. She stared at the screen for two seconds. This version flowed better than the original. She pulled the margins around the color blocks inward by another half centimeter, stabilizing the composition’s center of gravity. Even the line spacing in the tiny text at the bottom seemed to let out a sigh of relief.
The system showed that the last revision had been made three months ago, and the author field displayed Zhou Yuen’s account. Yet Zhou Yuwei felt that the version on the screen looked more like her than anything else in the world.
“The director’s handpicked new hire gets a major client project on his first day.” Ke Minghan had appeared beside her workstation at some point, the pen in his hand still spinning between his fingers. He drawled, “Who’s going to take the fall if something goes wrong?”
Yin Che had already reached the door of her office. Hearing that, she didn’t slow down or look back. She only tossed out one word: “Me.”
The office door closed behind her. The sound wasn’t loud, but it was decisive, like it had cut the conversation off at the source.
The corner of Ke Minghan’s mouth lifted. It was hard to say whether the curve was a smile or something else. His fingers stopped spinning the pen for half a second before he pulled his hand back. Then he added, “The new guy’s got it made,” and sauntered back to his seat.
Zhou Yuwei didn’t respond. Her fingertips were already on the keyboard, pressing that remark and all the other noise in her head down beneath the sound of the cursor moving from one color swatch to the next. She couldn’t stop the thought that came with it: She didn’t know whether her luck was good, but one thing was certain—this life of hers was staying up all night until nine tomorrow morning.
Before Ke Minghan got too far, he glanced back at her. His gaze lingered on her back for two seconds before moving away. Zhou Yuwei didn’t turn around, but she felt those two seconds clearly, like a finger poking the back of her head. This probably wasn’t over yet.
At seven that evening, most of the lights on the entire floor had gone out. Only a few workstations were still lit.
Lin Xiaoyu had already packed her bag and was about to leave, but she put it back on the chair, dragged another chair over, and leaned close to Zhou Yuwei’s ear. In a whisper, she said, “I’m staying to keep you company. And to watch the show.”
Zhou Yuwei had no time to answer. Her eyes stayed glued to the screen as she dragged the color blocks back and forth with the mouse. She shifted the white-space ratio a little farther to the right, and once the layers separated, the entire cover flowed better. She casually picked up the coffee she’d gotten from the break-room machine and took a sip, her thumb habitually hooked beneath the cup’s handle instead of resting over it like everyone else’s. It was too sweet—the machine’s default setting. She frowned, lowered her head, and continued revising without giving it another thought.
She didn’t dare look toward the desk diagonally across from her. Yin Che was sitting there, the glow of her screen reflected on her face, another document beside her as she worked on her own project. Neither of them said a word.
The back of Zhou Yuwei’s neck stayed tense, as if an invisible string were pulling it taut. The slightest movement would tighten the string further. She stared at the screen and revised the design, but no matter how hard she tried, the corner of her eye kept drifting toward the front diagonal, only to snap back at once.
Lin Xiaoyu watched her repeat the motion more than ten times before leaning over and whispering, “If you keep refusing to turn your head like that, is your neck trying to become a zombie?”
Zhou Yuwei shot her a look and whispered back, “Keep your voice down.” Lin Xiaoyu held in her laughter, her shoulders shaking, then turned back and resumed munching on her potato chips.
At eleven, Zhou Yuwei finally couldn’t hold it any longer. When she stood, she kept her steps light, following the workstations’ partitions to the farthest restroom. Only after locking the door did she dare take a real breath. Her shoulders slumped, her back pressed against the stall door, and her whole body slid down half an inch.
She lowered her head and looked at her hands. Her fingertips were still faintly numb from typing for so long, and her knuckles felt stiff. When she spread her fingers, her palms were slick with sweat.
In front of the sink, she stared at the unfamiliar short-haired face in the mirror for several seconds. She brushed a damp strand of hair back beneath the brim of her cap, then tightened her expression again and walked out. She was moving too quickly and nearly collided with a cleaning lady carrying a mug. She backed up twice and apologized, but her voice accidentally dropped back into an extremely low register, leaving the woman staring at her in confusion.
It was close to midnight when her phone vibrated on the desk. She grabbed it and walked toward the break room, pretending to take a call. In reality, the speaker was only playing the canned female voice from her voicemail. As she walked, she answered twice—“Yeah,” and, “Got it.” Halfway there, she suddenly changed course, turned into another corridor, and took a long loop around. Only then did she realize the original route passed right by the floor-to-ceiling window of Yin Che’s office. If she walked past that window, Yin Che could see her entire face with a single glance.
On the way back from her detour, Zhou Yuwei slipped her phone into her pocket. Her palms were drenched in sweat. She silently cursed herself: What kind of spy movie am I acting out? I’m taking a fake phone call, and somehow it feels like a full-blown espionage thriller.
When she returned to her seat, the coffee on her desk tasted different. She picked it up and took a sip, only to discover that at some point, the original sweet coffee had been replaced with a sugar-free one. The cup had a new sleeve, and the side was still slightly cool, as if it had only recently been brought in from outside.
She didn’t even realize she’d frowned, much less that someone had noticed the exact moment she did.
A thought surfaced: Who touched my coffee? Could it have been Lin Xiaoyu? But Lin Xiaoyu was currently asleep with her head on her desk, potato-chip crumbs clinging to the corner of her mouth. She hadn’t even touched the coffee. Zhou Yuwei thought about it for two seconds and came up with nothing, so she decided the break-room machine must have been in a good mood today, finished the sugar-free coffee, and bent over her revisions again.
At three in the morning, the office was so quiet that all she could hear was the air conditioner and the faint glow of a few monitors. Lin Xiaoyu had long since fallen sound asleep with her head on the desk, a half-eaten bag of potato chips still resting on her keyboard.
Yin Che got up and walked over. She stopped behind Zhou Yuwei and leaned down to look at the screen, so close that Zhou Yuwei instantly went rigid. She even softened her breathing, not daring to move the mouse another inch. She could feel the faint warmth of Yin Che’s breath against the back of her ear. The distance between them was absurdly close—so close that Zhou Yuwei was afraid even swallowing would be audible.
But Yin Che’s gaze didn’t stay on the screen the whole time. Midway through, it drifted over and paused near Zhou Yuwei’s ear and neck. Zhou Yuwei instinctively drew her neck in, thinking her hair must have come loose. She reached up and touched her ear before lowering her hand again.
That gaze lingered for a long time, so long that the hairs on the back of Zhou Yuwei’s neck rose one by one. Yin Che casually clicked the hierarchy adjustment on the second page, as if confirming something, before finally speaking.
“This version is better than the original.”
Four words. No unnecessary adjectives, and no follow-up question about how she’d changed it.
Zhou Yuwei’s eyes suddenly burned, and her nose stung first. She clenched her back teeth and forced the breath back down, her fingers tightening beneath the desk until her knuckles turned white.
This was the first time since joining the company that anyone had praised her work to her face. But they were praising Zhou Yuen. The name she had signed was clearly hers, yet hearing it now felt like hearing someone else’s. She was crouched beside that name, unable to say even a single word—This is mine.
The words jammed in her throat and turned over and over. You have no idea how many times I revised this before daring to touch the hierarchy. You don’t know that this is actually mine alone. She stared at the screen and blinked twice before forcing the moisture in her eyes back. Her throat produced the shortest “Thank you, Director” imaginable, her voice so low that the final note still trembled.
Yin Che straightened, picked up her own documents, and turned away. She said nothing else. Her footsteps soon vanished beyond the partition.
Zhou Yuwei stayed where she was, staring at the praised version on the screen for a long time. The cursor sat motionless in the exact center of the key visual, while the screen’s glow washed her entire face pale. The time in the lower-right corner changed to 3:07. Only then did she slowly unclench her hands. The marks were still pressed into her knuckles, and the thin layer of sweat in her palms had already gone cold.
She got up to wash her face in the restroom. The cold water splashed against her skin and cleared her head somewhat, but the face in the mirror still held a trace of lingering redness.
When she pushed open the door, the entire hallway was dark except for the green emergency-exit light. Air-conditioning drifted down in a thin stream from the ceiling. For a moment, she actually forgot which way she was supposed to go. Two identical doors stood side by side in front of her. Cold tile seeped up through the soles of her shoes as she stood between them, stunned for a full three seconds.
She looked up.
At the end of the hallway, Yin Che stood perfectly still, watching her.
The entire length of the corridor stretched between them. The green emergency light traced a faint edge around Yin Che’s silhouette. Her expression was impossible to make out; all Zhou Yuwei could see was the direction of her eyes, fixed steadily on her.
Zhou Yuwei’s feet seemed nailed to the floor. Her heartbeat suddenly boomed like someone was beating a drum in the hallway. She didn’t know how long Yin Che had been standing there, or how much of the expression she shouldn’t have been showing still remained on her face when she’d walked out of the restroom. The air-conditioning blew down from overhead, cool against the back of her neck. She instinctively tugged the brim of her cap lower, as if trying to hide her entire face in shadow.
Yin Che didn’t speak or walk over. She only gave Zhou Yuwei one last look, then turned and walked quietly in the opposite direction.
Zhou Yuwei remained where she was. Only after the sound of those footsteps had completely disappeared around the corner did she realize she had been holding her breath the entire time.