Misplaced Summer - Part 7

Chapter Twenty: The Business Trip

The Monday morning meeting wrapped, and I locked in the week's travel. Wednesday: Ningbo. A smart-warehouse client in the eastern Zhejiang corridor — substantial volume on their end. If we closed it, the quarter's KPI was secured well ahead of deadline.

Coco volunteered. "Ethan, I've been running point on this account from the beginning. I've revised that proposal deck three times. Let me come with you."

I had no grounds to refuse. In fact, from a business standpoint, she was the optimal pick. The client's procurement director was a Mr. Zhou — mid-forties, the kind of middle-aged man who, on our last video call, visibly softened by three degrees the moment Coco smiled and said Director Zhou. She had this gift. When she smiled, it was very difficult for anyone to say no to her.

Including me.

"Fine. Wednesday, seven AM departure. Highways about three and a half hours. Have the final deck and the quote ready."

"Got it!" She flashed me an OK sign. Her nails were painted a soft nude-pink, like a small fragment of seashell under the office lights.

I pulled my gaze back to my screen and opened the weekly report template.

Tuesday night I packed a small carry-on at home. Su Man was on the couch watching a variety show, eyes on the screen. "How many days?"

"Day trip, one night max. Depends on how the meeting goes."

"Mm. Drive carefully."

"Mm."

I was zipping the charger into the side pocket when my fingers paused. Su Man hadn't asked who I was going with. She never asked. Not from lack of care — from trust. The kind of trust without seams, the same trust with which she buried her face in the hollow of my shoulder every night and fell asleep — unguarded.

I zipped the suitcase. The sound of the zipper traveled the quiet bedroom and felt unusually loud.

Wednesday morning, 6:50 AM. I parked outside Coco's apartment building and sent her a WeChat: Outside.

Three minutes later she came down.

Early November mornings were already cold. She had on a cream wool coat, collar turned up, a caramel-colored thin scarf around her neck. Dark gray slim-cut trousers and pointed ankle boots. Long hair loose over her shoulders, lifting slightly in the morning wind.

She pulled open the passenger door and slid in, bringing with her a wave of cool morning air, and —

A scent.

Very faint. Extremely faint. Some kind of flower, but I couldn't name which one. Not roses — that heavy sweetness. Not jasmine — that bittersweet white-flower note. More like... something I had never smelled before. Clean, weightless, the kind of fragrance that came through like a single thread of silk, winding gently around my nasal cavity from the moment she sat down.

"Morning, Ethan!" She held out a paper bag. "Stopped at the breakfast place downstairs and got you a jianbing. Double egg, double crunch — no cilantro, right?"

"...Right. Thanks."

I took the bag. Our fingertips touched briefly — hers were cold. Surface-cold, at least.

I set the jianbing in the cup holder beside the center console and started the car.

"Seatbelt."

"On it." She gave the strap a small tug, then lifted her laptop bag from the footwell, set it on her lap, unzipped it, and began flipping through documents.

The car rolled onto the elevated highway and merged into morning rush.

Navigation: 302 kilometers total, estimated three hours forty.

I tapped the audio shuffle. An unnamed piano piece came on — light, unhurried.

The first twenty minutes were uneventful. Coco sat quietly in the passenger seat, working through the printed proposal, occasionally drawing highlighter lines, murmuring numbers to herself. I drove, eyes forward, glancing at the side mirror to change lanes.

But the scent didn't dissipate.

The opposite. With the windows shut and the heater running, that ghostly, near-imaginary floral note diffused slowly through the sealed cabin. It wasn't perfume in the sense of having an identifiable point-source. It was more like warm water — seeping in from every direction, evenly. I couldn't even tell whether it was coming off her body, or off the upholstery, or out of the air vents, or off my own collar.

I twitched my nose.

Smell it properly.

The thought rose up and surprised me. Not a that's nice judgment — a more primitive, I want more impulse. The way you wander into an unfamiliar street and catch the smell of a noodle shop drifting out, and your feet slow without your meaning them to, your nose tilting up for another inhale.

That was the body making the decision for you.

My fingers tightened on the wheel.

Then I made a mistake.

My peripheral vision — not deliberate, genuinely not deliberate, just the habitual glance toward the right side mirror before changing lanes, and Coco was exactly there in that line of sight — passed across her body.

She was leaning forward slightly in the passenger seat, head bent over the documents. The opening of the wool coat had fallen open with the posture, exposing a V-neck cream-knit sweater beneath. The knit was thin, fine, soft, lying against her body, drawing a curve from collarbone to bust that was — flowing to the point of cruelty.

Her waist was thin. Not the hollowed-out thin of someone starving herself — an elastic, gathered, taut-bowstring-with-stored-energy thin. Below the waist, her trousers cupped her hips against the seat in a full, rounded shape.

I thought about how she had looked the day she started. She'd been bony then, wrists like chopsticks, shoulders too narrow for her blazer, the whole of her looking like a strong wind could carry her off. But now — at some point I couldn't pinpoint, she'd changed — her frame was still small but every inch of the line on her had been filled out to exactly the right degree. Not expanded. Tightened. Like an unripe fruit finally arriving at its fullest season.

One second.

I looked for one second.

Maybe two.

That second was enough.

A surge of heat rose, without warning, from somewhere low in my abdomen — fast, like a switch had been thrown. My body, before my brain had managed any kind of ethical assessment, had honestly and nakedly reacted.

I was hard.

Not a faint, ignorable half-state. All at once — like an inflation — fully, painfully, pressing against the inside of my trousers.

The blood reached my face faster than it had reached anywhere else.

I locked my eyes on the highway, both hands on the wheel, knuckles white. The road ahead unrolled gray and long, the soundproof barriers swept past on either side, the piano piece still playing its soft melody. Everything around me was normal, calm, ordinary — and inside my trousers was a soundless emergency.

No.

I cursed myself internally.

Li Yu. Are you actually an animal? The person sitting next to you is your subordinate, a girl four years younger than you. You're her direct manager. You have a wife. You slept curled around Su Man last night. She told you "drive carefully" when you walked out the door this morning. And now you're hard because you looked at her once? How are you any different from Jerry?

It didn't help.

Moral indictment was moral indictment, and what was happening below was happening below. There seemed to be no signal line between the two systems.

I bit the inside of my lip, then, while Coco was still bent over her documents and not watching, lifted my right hand off the wheel and pinched the inside of my thigh — hard.

The pain — sharp, drilling into muscle fiber — did clear my head for a moment. Only a moment. Once the pain dulled, the floral scent immediately filled the vacancy and re-occupied every nerve ending. If anything, it seemed to have used the gap the pain had torn open to penetrate a layer deeper.

I pinched again. Harder. Nails almost into the flesh.

Still nothing.

The state below was unchanged. If anything — I couldn't be sure I wasn't imagining it — slightly harder.

Fuck.

And right then, Coco lifted her head.

The motion was natural — like she'd finished a page and was about to flip, was just stretching her neck. She glanced at the road ahead, then turned her head and looked at me.

Just looked.

Her eyes traveled from my profile, dropped an inch — maybe two — then returned to my face.

The whole arc, less than half a second. As fast as a road sign whipping past the window — if you weren't watching for it, you wouldn't even register that it had been there.

But I felt it.

I felt her gaze touch down on the territory of my thigh like a red-hot wire, briefly, before withdrawing.

The tips of my ears caught fire.

Then Coco smiled.

A very small, very gentle smile. Not a mock. Not a tease. Not even the wickedly knowing, suggestive grin from the movie theater. Something — softer. With a hint of sweetness in it. The kind of smile cats make when they squint their eyes.

She didn't say anything.

She just smiled, and then —

closed the documents and tucked them back into her laptop bag.

Then her upper body leaned slightly left, crossing the center console, drifting toward my side. The floral scent intensified by a notch — not stronger, closer. Close enough that I could read its strata: the outermost note, that cool dew-like note; the middle, a thread of sweetness; the deepest note, the one I couldn't name, like body heat itself converted into a fragrance.

"Ethan."

Her voice had gone soft, the tail of the word lifting playfully.

"Mm?"

"There's still three hours. I worked on the deck till two last night. I'm dying. Can I sleep a bit?"

"You... go ahead." Eyes forward, voice as level as I could keep it. "Just recline the seat. The button on the right side — "

I hadn't finished the sentence when she moved.

But she didn't press the recline button.

She smoothed the hem of her coat. Unwound the scarf from her neck, folded it, set it on the center armrest. Then she turned her upper body fully toward me, like a small animal that had located a warm corner, and slowly, lightly —

laid her head down on my thigh.

The right thigh.

Her face was turned toward the windshield, her left cheek resting against the surface of my thigh. Her hair spilled off her shoulder, some hanging on the outside of my knee, some lying across my thigh, the silk-smooth feel of it transmitting through the trouser fabric.

Her head's weight settled onto me.

Very light.

Her whole body was light. Under a hundred pounds; the weight of a head was maybe twelve. Resting on my thigh felt like placing a warm cat there.

But that wasn't the point.

The point was — the back of her head was about fifteen centimeters away from the shameful bulge inside my trousers.

My breathing stopped.

Cleanly. As if a hand had closed around my windpipe.

I didn't dare look down. My eyes were nailed to the road, pupils probably blown. My hands gripped the wheel with a force that, applied to a soda can, would have crushed it into a disc.

Would she... be able to feel it?

The thought rotated in my head like a red-hot blade. Her head was on my thigh. The back of her skull was a hand-width from that place. Through the trouser fabric, yes, but if she shifted upward even slightly — even a fraction — she would, absolutely, brush against it.

Brush against that hard, hot, currently and shamelessly engorged thing.

She won't. I told myself. She's just tired. She worked on the deck till two — she said so. She just needs somewhere to lay her head. The passenger headrest is too high; the center console is hard; my thigh just happens to be — a convenient height.

Yes. That's all.

Don't flatter yourself. Don't put your filthy interpretations on her.

I drew a deep breath.

The floral scent poured into my lungs with that breath.

Useless. Completely useless. The breath didn't calm me — it threw oil onto a fire. Once the smell entered my lungs, it seemed to flow through my bloodstream directly to my lower abdomen — there was a fire down there now, and the thing inside my trousers was hard enough to ache, hard enough I felt as if it would push through the crotch fabric.

I was right now infinitely grateful that her face was turned forward and not upward. If she had been lying with her face to the ceiling — her line of sight would have gone directly to that tented humiliation.

"Ethan, your thigh is so warm."

Her voice from below, slightly muffled, half-nasal — already mostly asleep. As she spoke, her lips moved faintly; her breath against the trouser fabric warmed the muscle beneath.

"Mm," I forced out of my throat, hoarse, not my own voice. "Sleep."

"Mm..."

She made a small sound and then went genuinely quiet.

One minute. Two. Three.

Her breathing settled into the long, even rhythm of sleep. Her body relaxed; the weight transferred more fully onto my thigh. I dropped my eyes — finally — and stole a glance.

She was asleep.

Truly asleep.

She lay on her side with her cheek on my leg. Her long lashes rested quietly on her lower lid, casting a small fan of shadow. Her lips were slightly parted; warm breath drifted out at a regular, soft rhythm. The coat's collar had fallen even more open with the sideways angle, and I could see the line of her neck — from earlobe to collarbone, as smooth as a curve from a master ceramicist's wheel, the skin pale to the point of luminosity.

She was sleeping sweetly.

Not a crease in her brow. The corner of her mouth even faintly turned up, as if something pleasing were happening in the dream.

She hadn't tried anything.

She hadn't reached out in the dark of the movie theater. She hadn't pinned me with her foot under the hotpot table. She hadn't trapped me in her arms during the blizzard so I couldn't get free.

She had just — quietly, obediently — laid down on my thigh and fallen asleep.

This was the cruelest version of all of it.

If she had been doing something to me, I could have been angry. I could have used the anger as a weapon, built a wall in my chest with it — look, she's coercing me again, I'm being forced, this isn't on me. I could have framed myself as the victim, dumped all the blame on her advances, and continued playing the gentleman with a clear conscience.

But she wasn't doing anything.

She was just lying there. Quietly. Trustingly.

Like a kitten that had flipped its softest belly toward you.

And I — a twenty-eight-year-old married man, a department manager, a husband whose wife had said drive carefully — was hard as a steel rod inside my pants, my heart hammering toward a burst, my whole brain filled with the sensation of her warm breath against my thigh.

This was the real torture.

She was just lying there, quietly, softly, and torturing me with her existence — her hair, her body heat, her breath, that goddamn flower scent that crawled along the back of my scalp.

It was completely and entirely on me. My eyes had looked. My nose had inhaled. My blood had rushed there of its own accord.

I couldn't blame her.

She was just sleeping.

The highway extended straight to the horizon, trees and farmland on either side falling away at constant speed. The heater hummed. The piano had at some point switched to a cello adagio, the low melody pouring slowly through the cabin.

Coco shifted slightly on my thigh.

Not awake. The unconscious adjustment of someone in deep sleep — her head rotated a few degrees, the back of her skull sliding upward by about two centimeters.

Two centimeters.

Two centimeters closer to that place.

My breath broke a beat.

She didn't know. Of course she didn't. She was asleep.

But I knew. I knew precisely. I could feel the distance shrinking with mathematical clarity — fifteen centimeters became thirteen — like a countdown. Like a noose lowering.

I released my right hand from the wheel and pinched the inside of my thigh again.

Deeper this time. Nails sinking in. A sharp shock of pain.

In the pain, I widened my eyes and stared at the taillights of the car ahead.

And then the floral scent came washing back, gentle as tide, rinsing the pain clean and leaving only the fire down in my lower abdomen burning hotter.

I released the pinch.

My nails had left a dark red crescent on the inside of my thigh; through the trouser fabric I could feel the skin burning.

Down there was still hard.

Three hours.

Three hours of this.

Her head on my thigh. Her hair across my knee. Her breath warming my leg in pulses. That deadly floral scent pouring off her.

And she wasn't doing anything. Wasn't doing anything.

This was the longest three hours of my life.

The music shuffled and shuffled. The cello became a violin; the violin a jazz piano; the jazz piano a French chanson I couldn't identify. Outside, the scenery changed from elevated city to flat plains, plains to rolling hills, distant mountains showing their dark green silhouettes through morning mist.

In those three hours, Coco shifted twice.

Each shift, the back of her head ground a small distance across my thigh. Her hair fanned out and resettled, a sheet of black silk being shaken once. Her shoulder rose and softened, pulling the coat's collar even more open.

The second time she shifted, her face turned upward.

Her face to the ceiling. To me. If I had looked down, I would have seen her closed eyes, the bridge of her nose, her parted lips.

I didn't look.

I didn't dare.

Because if I had looked — if I had seen that completely defenseless, soft, clean sleeping face — I wasn't sure what I'd still be able to keep myself from doing.

I wasn't sure I wouldn't do something irreversible.

So I kept my eyes locked dead ahead. The wheel was slick with my palm sweat. The inside of my right thigh had three crescent fingernail prints.

The cabin's heater turned softly. The floral scent diffused silently. Coco breathed against my thigh.

She wasn't doing anything.

That was more terrifying than if she'd been doing something.

The navigation voice came on: In two kilometers, Ningbo East exit, please keep right.

I flicked the turn signal with my left hand.

"Coco," I said. My voice was sandpaper on cement. "Almost there."

Her eyelashes moved.

Then slowly, she opened her eyes.

Those eyes — bright, like amber that had just been rinsed in dew — focused on my face for one second. She was newly awake; her gaze still had that thin film of mist on it.

Then she smiled.

That smile. The smile that made me, for three full seconds, forget every moral commitment I had ever made.

"Ethan..." Her voice as soft as cotton candy fished from warm water. "We're here?"

"Yeah. Coming off the highway."

She slowly pushed herself up from my thigh, rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, her hair tousled at the sides of her face. She stretched — arms over her head — and the hem of her sweater slipped up from the trouser waistband, exposing a thin strip of waist-skin so pale it reflected light — then she dropped her arms and turned to me.

"Ethan, your thigh is so comfortable. Better than a pillow."

There was no innuendo in her tone. Just a sincere compliment from a newly-woken girl to a pillow.

"Next time we travel I'm sleeping on your thigh again." She added it through a smile, twisting back to grab her makeup bag for touch-up.

I didn't reply.

Because I was deploying my full attention to control a certain residual condition along my thigh, praying it would subside enough to be inconspicuous before we got out of the car.

Outside, the Ningbo city skyline was sharpening in the morning light.

And on the inside of my right thigh, three crescent fingernail prints throbbed faintly under the warm air.

Chapter Twenty-One: The Dinner

The client's conference room was on the seventeenth floor. Floor-to-ceiling windows opened onto the new-city skyline of eastern Ningbo.

The meeting went better than I'd expected. Coco's deck was rock-solid — every page of the slides was precise to two decimal places, the competitive comparison used four shades to distinguish strengths and weaknesses, even photos of the client's warehouse had been embedded with workflow analysis overlaid. Director Zhou flipped through the printed copy, his eyes brightening behind his reading glasses; the tech director and the CFO beside him nodded along.

When Coco stood in front of the projection screen presenting, her voice was crisp and clean, her logic chain hooked link by link, and every so often she tossed in a perfectly calibrated piece of dry humor that pulled the whole room with her. Sitting beside her, I could barely get a word in — and didn't need to. She alone carried the entire pitch watertight.

I watched her in profile — the projector light blue-white on her face, her eyes shining like two stars — and something complicated rose in my chest. Pride. A pang. And a little of something I didn't want to name.

This was someone I had trained.

After the meeting, Director Zhou stood up and patted Coco on the shoulder. "Coco, your proposal is genuinely strong — full of sincerity. Here's the plan: I'll run the contract through legal, should be signable next week. Don't rush off tonight. I'll arrange a dinner. Let's have a proper sit-down."

I glanced at Coco. She nodded slightly, the standard sweet make-every-client-soften smile already in place.

"Director Zhou, you're too kind. We won't be polite about it then."

The dinner was at a private-kitchen restaurant by Dongqian Lake. The private room was called Misty Rain Pavilion — an elegant name, in theory. The moment we pushed through the door, the line of baijiu bottles and the thick-glass shot cups already laid out on the table told me — tonight wasn't dinner. Tonight was drinking.

The client side had brought five.

Director Zhou took the center seat. To his left was the tech director, Old Chen — a balding man in his early fifties, with a string of greasy prayer beads slung around his thick neck. To his right were two deputy managers from procurement, both around thirty, evidently Zhou's loyalists, who looked Coco up and down several times the moment she walked in. The last was the CFO, Old Ma — gold-rimmed glasses, a snide kind of speech pattern; the first thing he did when he sat down was swap his cup for a smaller one.

Coco and I were placed in the guest of honor seats. She had changed into a wine-red, waist-cinched dress — packed in her carry-on, got to dress properly for a client dinner — with a square neckline that exposed a fine collarbone and a hand's-width of pale skin above the bust. Long hair gathered into a loose low ponytail, a few stray strands falling at her ears, small pearl studs in the lobes.

She sat there like a white camellia blooming on a banquet table.

Director Zhou raised the first glass. "Come, come, today's a happy occasion. Manager Li and Coco have come all this way from Hangzhou — first toast!"

The first round was normal. The baijiu went down hot, scorching; I knocked mine back. Coco raised her glass, took a small sip, smiled and said, "Director Zhou, I'm a lightweight, going slow on this one."

Director Zhou laughed and let it pass.

But from the second round, the wind shifted.

Old Chen — the balding one with the prayer beads — picked up his glass and walked around the table to Coco's side. When he bent down, his eyes scanned, openly, into the neckline of her dress.

"Coco dear, this proposal is beautifully done. Come, let me toast you personally. My thanks."

The cloying warmth in his tone tightened my stomach.

Coco rose with a smile and touched glasses. "Director Chen, you're too generous." She tipped back maybe half the cup, set it down, gave a small cough, dabbed the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand — playing up the burned my throat face.

Then the two deputy managers came over. One was a Liu, the other a Zhao. The two of them moved up in a coordinated tandem, one toast each.

"Coco, you're amazing. So young, doing proposals at this level."

"Come, knock one back. Refusing's like saying we're not your brothers."

Coco accepted cup after cup.

I sat watching, my chopsticks tightening in my fingers.

By the fourth round, Old Chen was back. This time he went further — he sat down in the empty chair next to Coco, turned his body sideways, his knee nearly touching her thigh. He raised his glass with one hand; the other rested on the back of her chair, fingers less than five centimeters from her shoulder.

"Coco dear, listen — if you can tweak your interface protocols, our team would integrate so much easier. Let's drink and talk about it."

He was not talking about technology. His eyes slid down from her face, stopped at her collarbone for two seconds, then slid further to the curve of her chest under the wine-red dress — like a slug crawling across a flower.

Coco's smile did not change. She lifted her glass, touched his, sipped, set it down, tone sweet:

"Director Chen, let me have our tech team reach out about the protocol stuff later. Let's eat for now — this Dongqian Lake fish head is so fresh."

She parried elegantly. The slightest motion deflecting heavy force.

But Old Chen did not let it go. He grabbed the bottle and refilled Coco's cup himself — to the brim, the liquor wobbling at the rim.

"Drink, drink, drink. How do young people do business if they don't drink? Come on, bottoms up!"

I set down my chopsticks.

"Director Chen," my voice dropped, "Coco really isn't much of a drinker. I'll take this one for her."

I reached for the brimming glass in front of her.

Old Chen's face changed.

His hand — the one that had been resting on the back of her chair, fingers five centimeters from her shoulder — withdrew, and instead he slapped the table. Not hard. But the sound was sharp in the private room.

"Hey, Manager Li," there was a new layer in his tone now — not anger, but the displeasure of a local boss who'd had his face crossed by an outsider on his own turf. "I'm drinking with Coco. Why are you in such a hurry? She knows how to speak for herself. Why are you deciding things for her?"

In the center seat, Director Zhou held his teacup. Said nothing. Did not intervene either.

Liu chimed in with a snicker: "Yeah, Manager Li, just eat your food. Coco can hold her own."

My hand stopped in mid-air, fingertips two centimeters from the cup.

Old Chen tilted his head at me, the prayer beads swinging on his thick neck. His mouth pulled into a curve that made my skin crawl.

"Manager Li, let me say something a little unpleasant. You're in sales — how is it you don't even know the rules at a dinner table? We're hosting you, we're showing you face. Don't — " he paused, picked up his glass, took a sip, and finished slowly, "don't be ungrateful."

Ungrateful.

The word hit me like a slap.

Blood surged toward my crown. The vessels at my temples were pulsing. My jaw muscles locked, my teeth grinding against each other with a small friction sound only I could hear.

The room went silent for two seconds.

Zhao tried to smooth it over: "Aiya, Director Chen, Manager Li's just looking out for his teammate. Come, come, everyone, let's eat — "

I didn't move. My hand stayed mid-air. My eyes stayed on Old Chen.

I am not an impulsive person. I'd been in sales for years. I'd dealt with every flavor of client — yelled at by the buyer, beaten down on price, stood up at meetings, drunk into vomiting. I had eaten all of it. Because it was work. Because it was numbers. Because it was the rice in the bowl.

But Coco was different.

Coco was mine.

The thought surfaced before I had a chance to examine the phrasing. What do you mean, "mine"? She was my subordinate, my hire, my team member. Nothing more. But in that instant, when I saw Old Chen's clouded eyes settling on her chest like flies, when I heard the word ungrateful coming out of that oily mouth — there was only one voice in my head:

She is mine. No one gets to push her around.

"Director Chen," I drew in a breath, withdrew my hand, braced my palm on the table to push myself up, "I do know the rules. But Coco is my coworker, and if she doesn't want to drink — "

A hand pulled lightly at my sleeve.

Very lightly. Light as a feather settling on my wrist.

I looked down. It was Coco's hand. Five fingers pinched the edge of my shirtsleeve, her pale-pink nails giving off a soft glow under the lights.

She had tugged me under the table.

Then she lifted her face to mine.

In those bright eyes, there was no hurt. No call for help. Not even tension. Only something quiet and warm, the kind of thing that softens a heart into a puddle.

"It's fine, Ethan." Her voice low, just for me. "I've got this."

The corner of her mouth lifted slightly — a tiny smile, just for me.

Then she released my sleeve, turned, and faced Old Chen.

She picked up the brim-full glass of baijiu and tilted her head back. Downed it.

Clack. She set the empty glass on the table.

Crisp. Clean. Without hesitation.

A beat of silence in the room.

Old Chen blinked once, then burst into delighted clapping. "Excellent! Coco's a champ! That's the spirit!"

Liu and Zhao joined the applause. Zhou nodded from the center seat and sipped his tea.

Coco set her glass down and brushed the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand. A faint flush bloomed across her face — pink, spreading from cheekbone to ear tip, making her look like a porcelain doll dyed by sunset.

She looked like she was getting drunk.

But she picked up the bottle.

"Director Chen," she smiled, pouring his cup full, her motion as elegant as if she were pouring tea. "I drank mine. Won't you reciprocate?"

Old Chen looked at the brimming cup. Hesitated a second. But Coco's eyes were on him — round, bright, smiling — and after one second of hesitation he found himself, as if pulled by an invisible string, picking up the glass.

"All right! I'll drink with you!"

He tipped his head back and poured it down. His Adam's apple bobbed four or five times. On the last swallow he choked visibly, his face going red.

Coco had already filled her own second cup.

"Come on, Director Chen, one more."

Her voice was sweet — honey wrapped around a blade.

Old Chen looked at his empty cup. Then at the full one Coco was holding out. His rationality was telling him to refuse — he'd had enough tonight; his stomach was churning with hot acid. But his hand did not obey. His hand reached for the bottle she was offering and refilled his cup himself.

He didn't know why.

He only sensed that — at some point he could not identify — the private room had become permeated with a scent he couldn't name. Faint. Floral. Not like any flower he had ever encountered. The scent made his head go warm, fuzzy — not the muddled fuzziness of alcohol, but a softer, gentler, I-don't-want-to-resist-anything fuzziness.

Coco said drink.

He drank.

Second cup. Third. Fourth.

She matched him on each one, tipping her head back and emptying the glass. Her face grew redder, her eyes brighter, as though the alcohol were burning inside her into a hotter, more concentrated fuel. There was not a trace of drunkenness in her movements — lift, clink, tilt, set down — every transition precise and fluid, like a machine running flawlessly.

But that wasn't what I was seeing.

I was seeing her drunk — face pink, voice carrying a slight soft tail to the words, the blink rate of her eyes slowing, like a sleepy fawn. My stomach was knotting with worry for her.

She was taking the hits for me. Using her own body to take them.

Old Chen had insulted me. She didn't let me step forward. She stepped forward instead, and reclaimed the floor in the most beautiful way available.

I was her boss. I was supposed to protect her. And she was protecting me.

The realization brought a sting to the bridge of my nose.

"Come on, Director Chen. Number five."

Old Chen's face had gone from red to purple. His eyes had begun unfocusing; his fingers trembled around the glass. He opened his mouth to say no more — but the three syllables seemed lodged in his throat, unable to come out.

He looked at Coco's eyes. Those eyes were smiling. Smiling so sweetly. Smiling in a way that made him feel that refusing this cup would be a betrayal of the most beautiful kindness in the world.

He picked up the glass.

The instant the liquid touched his tongue, his stomach spasmed violently. A surge of acid roared up his esophagus to the back of his throat — he was about to vomit. His body, instinctive, was trying to evacuate. He bent forward, mouth open, throat preparing —

Nothing came out.

The floral scent, in that moment, like an invisible hand, gently, tenderly, unanswerable-by-resistance, pressed down on his stomach. The vomit reflex was forced back. The acid retreated down the esophagus, back into the stomach. His body was convulsing, every abdominal muscle trying to expel what was inside, but that unseen hand held everything firmly down — not a drop made it back up.

Old Chen's eyes went wide.

Not because of the alcohol. Because of fear.

A fear he could not understand, rising from somewhere deeper than thought. His body no longer belonged to him. His stomach wanted to vomit, couldn't. His hand wanted to set the cup down, couldn't. His mouth wanted to say no more, couldn't. He was a puppet on strings, and the puppeteer was sitting across from him, smiling, holding up her glass.

"Director Chen?" Coco tilted her head, voice innocent with concern. "Are you all right? You look a little off. Want some water?"

Old Chen opened his mouth. He wanted to say I'm done drinking. He used every ounce of his strength to try to make his vocal cords form those words.

"I..."

Coco's eyes watched him.

"...one more."

He heard his own mouth say it.

Not what he had said. Not what he had wanted to say. But his mouth said it.

Coco smiled and refilled.

"That's the spirit, Director Chen!"

Sixth cup.

When Old Chen poured it down, a single muddy tear was squeezed from the corner of his eye. Not a tear of emotion. The physiological tear of a stomach in chemical agony. His lips trembled, baijiu beaded his chin, the prayer beads had slid behind his ear.

Coco turned to Liu.

"Brother Liu," she lifted her glass, smile sweet as the buttercream on a strawberry cake. "You said earlier — refusing to drink means you're not our brother. Then let me toast you. For the brotherhood."

Liu's smile froze on his face.

The earlier swagger of come on, drink up had inverted, exactly, into terror. Because he had just watched Old Chen's collapse — the fifty-something tech director slumped in his chair, face cycling from gray to purple, lips trembling, eyes like a drowning man's.

But Coco's cup was already extended toward him.

The floral scent — he finally registered it — wound around his nasal passages like a ribbon. It was lovely. Genuinely lovely. Lovely enough that refusing this girl any request felt like a sin.

He took the cup.

His hand was shaking.

"To it." Coco touched her rim to his and emptied her glass.

Liu looked at the transparent liquid in his cup, breathed in the strange composite of baijiu and that nameless floral note. His stomach was already protesting in advance. He'd had at least eight ounces tonight.

He raised the glass.

Down.

He regretted it the instant the liquid touched his throat. His stomach was a basin of sulfuric acid. Burn radiating from stomach wall through esophagus to the back of his mouth. He bent forward, palms bracing on the table edge, mouth wide open —

Couldn't vomit.

The same as Old Chen. The vomit reflex was held off by some force. The alcohol churned and burned inside him, but it would not come out. His abdominal muscles convulsed; sweat dripped from his forehead onto the tabletop's lazy Susan, splashing into small wet rings.

"One more, Brother Liu."

Coco's voice came from above him. Gentle. The tone you'd use to lull a child to sleep.

Liu raised his head. His face was streaked with sweat and tears. Coco was smiling at him, holding the bottle, its mouth angled toward his glass.

"I... I don't..."

"Hm?" Coco tilted her head, blinked.

"...drink."

The bottle tilted. The clear liquid streamed into the cup.

Zhao was sitting beside Liu, watching his colleague morph in the space of one minute from swagger-and-pour-the-drink perpetrator into ash-faced victim. His hand had moved, unconsciously, under the table, gripping the leg of his own trousers.

But Coco's gaze had turned to him.

"Brother Zhao."

She didn't need another word. Just his name. With the smile. With that floral scent that seemed to come from nowhere.

Zhao found himself standing.

He didn't remember when he had stood up. He only knew that, somewhere in those seconds, a brimming glass of baijiu had materialized in his hand, and Coco was clinking her cup against his with a crisp ting.

"Cheers."

He drank.

Then a second cup. A third.

Zhao's tolerance was even worse than Liu's. On the third, his eyes rolled back in his head, his body tipped backward, the chair legs scraped a sharp scream against the floor. He didn't fall — his hands dug like talons into the edge of the table, fingernails sinking into the cloth. His body was making its last attempt to expel the molten poison inside him.

It would not come out.

His stomach had a gate slammed across it. Every drop of liquid was trapped inside, burning the gastric wall, burning the esophagus, burning every nerve. He wanted to vomit. He desperately wanted to vomit. His body went through every preliminary motion — bending, mouth opening, abdomen contracting — but the final step, the one that pushed it out, would not complete.

As if something would not allow it.

Zhao began to cry.

Not loud crying — silent crying, desperate, mouth open without sound, tears and sweat blending and dripping off his chin into his glass.

Coco had already turned to the CFO, Old Ma.

Old Ma had been watching from the side the whole evening. He was the sharpest of the five — his small eyes behind the gold-rimmed glasses had been observing. He had seen Old Chen's collapse, Liu's despair, Zhao's tears. Something in him had begun to recognize that something was wrong.

This girl is not normal.

A girl who weighed under a hundred pounds had now consumed at least a liter and a half of baijiu, and her face was merely flushed; her eyes were still clear; her hands didn't shake, her legs didn't wobble, her tongue didn't slur. While across from her, three adult men whose combined weight exceeded five hundred pounds had all crumbled.

Wrong. Deeply wrong.

But he didn't have time to think further. Coco was already standing in front of him with her cup.

The floral scent rolled toward him like a wall.

Old Ma's brain went blank in that instant. Every analysis he had just been making, every alarm, every rational assessment — all of it was erased like writing on a beach as a wave came in. There was only the scent in his sinuses now — clean, sweet, warm — making him feel that the smiling girl in front of him was the most trustworthy person in the world.

"Director Ma," Coco set the bottle in front of him, her voice soft and light, "you haven't really been drinking. That's not very polite of you."

Old Ma's hand reached for the bottle.

He watched his own hand — the well-kept, gold-ringed one — as if it belonged to someone else, lift the bottle, fill his cup.

To the brim.

When he raised the cup, behind the gold-rimmed lenses there was a thin film of water in his eyes. Not emotion. The fear of an intelligent man recognizing that he was being operated by a force he had no possible defense against.

"Drink." Coco touched his rim.

He drank.

Then a second.

On the third, his glasses slid off his nose and clattered onto the table, one arm snapping. He didn't reach for them. His stomach was a churning sea, his esophagus host to a fire snake. He bent over, hands braced on his knees, mouth open like a fish dropped from water.

Couldn't vomit.

His abdominal muscles contracted in frenzy, his ribs heaving with every spasm, but the contents would not leave. As if someone had a hand on the stomach's exit — gently, tenderly, but absolutely closed.

"No... no more..." Old Ma finally managed to scrape out, his voice ragged, broken, like rusted metal on glass. "Please... please... no more..."

He had said please.

A CFO. The man who signed off on millions in budget at his company. The man who an hour ago had been carrying a small cup and dispensing snide commentary.

Had used the word please.

I looked at Director Zhou.

Zhou had drunk only a few sips the whole night. He was sitting in the head seat, his face going whiter and whiter. He had smelled the floral note too — but his reaction was different from the other four. Maybe it was age. Maybe it was decades in business teaching him some calluses. The scent seemed to influence him less. He had retained basic judgment.

Which precisely because of that judgment, made him more afraid.

Because he had seen every step of it clearly.

He had watched Old Chen — his subordinate of thirty years, a thirty-year drinker — collapse after the sixth cup like a fish hauled out of water, lips purple, eyes rolling.

He had watched Liu fold over the table, forehead pressed to the lazy Susan, shoulders jerking, unable to tell if he was dry-heaving or crying.

He had watched Zhao slide off his chair onto his knees, hands clutching his stomach, body curled into a shrimp.

He had watched Old Ma — the sharpest, coldest mind in the company — remove his snapped glasses, exposing wet, red, terrified eyes, repeating no more, please, please, no more.

And the girl — the girl who was five-foot-three and under a hundred pounds — sat amid the wreckage of the table, cheeks pink, the corner of her mouth turned up tenderly, holding a brimming cup of baijiu, looking as if she were enjoying a pleasant evening dinner.

Under the table, Zhou's hand had clenched into a fist.

Coco turned to look at him.

"Director Zhou," she smiled, raising her glass. "You haven't drunk with me yet."

Zhou looked at the glass. Looked at the smile. Looked at those bright, innocent, fawn-like eyes.

He smelled the floral scent.

Not strong. Faint. But enough.

"Coco dear..." His voice had a tremor in it now that he could not control. "Everyone's had plenty tonight, why don't we... call it here?"

Coco tilted her head.

"But Director Zhou," her tone slightly aggrieved, "Director Chen earlier said refusing to drink means I'm not giving face, and I've had so many. You're the host. Surely you have to make an effort?"

She extended the cup to him.

Zhou looked at the cup.

His hand was shaking.

He took the cup.

Twenty minutes later.

The private room looked like the aftermath of a battlefield.

Old Chen lay on his side across two chairs arranged into a makeshift cot, his suit jacket pulled open, the front of his shirt soaked — whether sweat or spilled liquor was anyone's guess. His eyes half-shut, mouth issuing a muddied groan.

Liu and Zhao were kneeling side by side at the trash bin in the corner of the room. They had finally been allowed to vomit — or rather, once Coco was no longer looking at them, the invisible restraint had dissipated on its own. Both were doubled over the bin, retching, sour ejecta spattering the floor and their own shoes. Liu had retched down to bile, yellow-green strings hanging at the rim.

Old Ma was curled into his chair, his gold-rimmed glasses gone somewhere, his whole body shrunk small, both arms wrapped around his stomach, lips moving soundlessly around something.

Zhou was the last to fall. He had drunk three cups. Only three. But those three on top of everything else had crushed his defenses entirely. He was slumped on the table, face buried in his folded arms, his back rising and falling heavily with each breath.

I sat in my seat watching all of it.

In my chest there was a strange, not-supposed-to-exist pleasure.

Let you pour her drinks. Let you look at her like that. Let you call me ungrateful.

Look around now. Who's ungrateful.

The pleasure shamed me — I was a sales manager, these were clients, clients we still had a contract to sign next week. I should have stood up to smooth it over, brought hot water, called the designated drivers, said Director Zhou, are you okay? That was what my professional discipline required.

I didn't move.

I sat in that chair, looked at the wreckage on the table, and let a dark, warm satisfaction rise in my chest such as I had never let myself feel before.

Because Coco had taken this for me.

And then I heard a small, soft sigh from beside me.

"Ethan..."

I turned.

Coco was leaning back against her chair, her face red as a boiled shrimp, eyes half-closed, lashes faintly trembling. Her low ponytail had come loose; her hair fell over her shoulders, a few strands stuck to her cheek. One of the straps of the wine-red dress had slipped off her shoulder, baring a rounded, luminously pale curve of skin.

She looked completely, utterly drunk.

"Ethan..." Her voice slurred, tongue tangled. "I'm so dizzy..."

My heart clenched.

How much had she drunk? I ran the math through my head fast. Six with Old Chen. Three with Liu. Three with Zhao. Three with Old Ma. Three with Zhou. Plus the opening rounds. At least twenty cups. At two ounces per cup —

Forty ounces of baijiu.

A girl under a hundred pounds. Forty ounces of baijiu.

My stomach felt as if a hand had wrapped around it.

"Coco!" I stood, the chair sliding back half a meter and hitting the wall. I crouched in front of her, hands on her shoulders. "How are you feeling? Should we go to the hospital?"

Her body slumped forward — collapsed against me.

Her face pressed against my chest, forehead at my collarbone. Her hair came loose and fell across my arm, slipping like satin. The floral scent — at zero distance now — wrapped me up like a cocoon.

She was light. The weight against my chest was unreasonably light. But her temperature was high — through the fabric I could feel the heat radiating off her skin.

"No hospital..." she said, indistinct, her nose grazing my shirt. "Ethan, take me back to the hotel..."

"Okay. I'll take you back."

No hesitation. Not for one second.

I slid one arm around her waist, the other under the bend of her knees, and lifted her — full bridal carry.

She was genuinely light. Lifting her felt like lifting a quilt that had been sunning on a clothesline — light, warm, smelling lovely. Her head fell naturally into the hollow of my shoulder, hair spilling down across my arm. One of her hands rested at my chest, her fingers unconsciously gripping the third button of my shirt.

As I carried her out of the private room, we passed each of the clients, slumped in their corners.

Old Chen rolled over on the chairs and let out a pained moan.

Liu raised his bile-coated mouth, looked at the girl in my arms with a hazed, frightened gaze. His lips moved as if to say something, but no sound came out.

I didn't stop.

I carried her through the corridor, into the elevator. The mirrored walls of the elevator reflected us — a man in a wrinkled shirt, a girl in a wine-red dress horizontal in his arms. She was tucked small against me, face in the hollow between my neck and shoulder.

Her breath drifted evenly against my throat. Warm. Carrying a thin acidity of baijiu and that ever-faint, killing floral note.

"Ethan..." she murmured, the sound muffled against my neck, like a kitten purring.

"Mm?"

"Are you mad... that I didn't let you take the drinks for me..."

My arms tightened around her.

"No," I said, voice hoarser than I'd expected. "You did beautifully."

"Mm..." She nudged her face against my neck, the tip of her nose drawing a warm line along my skin. "I didn't want them to bully you... you're my Ethan... no one's allowed to bully you..."

You're my Ethan.

The line landed like a pin into a soft, unguarded place in my chest.

The elevator doors opened. I carried her down the hotel corridor to her door.

"Coco, where's the key?"

"In my bag..."

I lifted her up slightly — she was so light the motion took no effort — to free a hand and dig through the small purse on her shoulder. My fingers moved past lipstick, tissues, phone, and found the thin keycard.

Tap. Green. Push.

The room was warm and yellow-lit. Standard business hotel king. White sheets neatly tucked.

I set Coco carefully on the bed.

The instant her body met the mattress, she sank into the bedding as though she'd finally found a place where she could let go fully. Her hair fanned across the white pillow, dark silk. The wine-red dress against the white sheet was a bloom.

Her eyes, half-open, watched me.

Drunk. Wet. Bright.

"Ethan..."

"Mm. Sleep. I'll get you some water."

I turned toward the kettle on the table.

Behind me came the rustle of her shifting on the bed, burying her face in the pillow.

"Ethan, you're so good to me..." Her voice muffled by the pillow, hazy as a dream-syllable. "In the whole world... you're the kindest to me..."

I stood at the kettle and watched the water heat, steam rising from the spout.

My hands were shaking.

Not from alcohol. I hadn't drunk much tonight.

It was something else. A thing I didn't dare identify, rising hot and acid from the deepest part of my chest, the kind of thing that made me want to cry.

She had drunk forty ounces of baijiu. To keep clients from pushing me around.

Under a hundred pounds. Forty ounces of baijiu.

I turned and looked at her. She had curled into a small ball in the corner of the bed, the wine-red dress rumpled, the strap still off her shoulder, exposing that aching curve of skin.

Her breathing had evened out.

She was asleep.

Or — at least — looked asleep.

I set the warm water on the nightstand and sat down in the chair beside her bed.

Outside, the night over Dongqian Lake was vast and still. Distant lights threw fragments of gold across the surface of the water.

I sat in the chair, watching the small curled figure on the bed, listening to her steady breathing.

The floral scent diffused through the quiet room, faint, nameless — like an invisible net.

I sat for a long time.

A long time.