There were only so many ways An Yao could repay Yan Muzhou's kindness.
He lacked for nothing. If she treated him to a meal, it would just be like tonight—a waste of his time.
After all, if he spent that time on a serious negotiation or a business dinner, the profit or value he could gain would far exceed the cost of any meal she could afford.
An Yao nodded. "It feels like you've always been helping me. When I really think about it, I do feel quite guilty about it."
Yan Muzhou could probably sense the sincerity in her tone. His gaze lingered for a moment before he said lightly, "Last time I already told you not to feel burdened. It's the same now—you don't owe me anything."
An Yao: "…But the truth is, I do owe you quite a lot."
Most importantly, when she was in her teens, she hadn't been satisfied with what she had—she'd wanted even more.
"If you really can't let it go in your heart."
Yan Muzhou paused, his tone still calm. "Then don't do what you did a few years ago—the moment you got the chance, you spread your wings and flew away completely."
An Yao's face grew a little warm. She instinctively turned her head to avoid his gaze and mumbled, "I didn't completely 'fly away.'"
Actually, on important holidays like New Year's Day and Chinese New Year, she had sent Yan Muzhou greeting messages—though they were the kind filled with a bunch of pasted emojis and text that clearly looked like copy-pasted mass forwards.
She'd been conflicted herself. If she sent nothing, she worried Yan Muzhou might sense something, or think she was heartless.
But if she sent a proper, sincere greeting, An Yao was afraid she'd fall into the same trap again, plunging into a new round of inner torment.
Yan Muzhou didn't dwell on the past few years either. He just said calmly, "Come back and visit often. Don't treat yourself like an outsider."
An Yao opened her mouth, almost wanting to ask whether "outsider" meant to him, or to the Yan family.
But the words were on the tip of her tongue, and she felt it wasn't really necessary. Instead, she switched to something to lighten the mood: "Mm, I didn't think it through before. I've seen those public service announcements on TV since I was little—no matter how busy young people are, they should make time to visit the empty-nest elderly."
Yan Muzhou glanced at her. "I'm only a few years older than you. 'Elderly' is a stretch."
An Yao smiled. "Close enough."
She turned her head and looked out the car window at the pitch-black sky—nothing but darkness, empty and void.
Thinking back to Yan Muzhou's metaphor for her, comparing her to a bird that spread its wings and flew away.
An Yao also recalled a movie she'd seen long ago, where the protagonist said that there was a kind of bird in the world without feet. It could only keep flying and flying, sleeping in the wind when tired, as if its whole life it could only land once—at the moment of death.
She felt she was like that kind of bird too—unable to see the road behind her, and unable to find the end ahead.
Once, she had regarded Yan Muzhou as a destination where she could land, or a platform where she could dock. But the facts had proven that her hopes were in vain.
Perhaps at best, he was just a gust of wind—when she was tired, it blew her around for one more loop in the sky.
An Yao's thesis and graduation project submission deadlines were still far off—she had a few months to prepare, so she wasn't too anxious.
After getting a wealth of advice from Meng Shaoyun, she began preparing her graduation project while reorganizing her thesis ideas.
But because her year-end internship work was too busy, her progress remained slow.
As Christmas approached, Sheng Xintong, the intern who had barely started working a few days ago, began slacking off again. She was invited by friends to spend Christmas in Northern Europe and once again vanished from the group.
An Yao felt that Sheng Xintong's desire to pursue Yan Muzhou wasn't particularly strong either—at best, it was a sporadic three-minute enthusiasm, something she only considered when she had nothing better to do.
Its priority ranking was actually fairly low.
By Christmas Eve, although the publicity department had plenty of work, morale was restless. Most people had plans and handed even more tasks to An Yao.
Even interns from other groups couldn't bear to watch and secretly gave her tips, hinting: "The capable are always overloaded—actually, we should follow the opposite rule. Anyway, no matter how much we do, the salary is the same, and there's no chance of becoming a regular employee. At most, we'll leave a good impression on the leaders."
An Yao said, "…It's fine. I won't be here much longer anyway, so let's leave it as is for now."
Sometimes she felt that whether in her studies or at work, she was still influenced by Yan Muzhou's habits—always being particularly "diligent" and striving for perfection.
She remembered that when he tutored her in physics and math during high school, he never let her memorize formulas for shortcuts. Instead, he guided her through deriving each one from scratch.
An Yao had once thought it was completely unnecessary, since she was an art student and just needed to score reasonably well in each subject.
But later, when solving problems and taking exams, she realized that understanding the formulas was essential—her thinking became much smoother, and it actually yielded twice the results with half the effort.
During the college entrance exam, the cultural course cutoff for Nancheng Academy of Fine Arts was higher than for typical pure art schools, but An Yao still met it, giving her more options.
At 6:30 PM, just half an hour after the official clock-out time, An Yao turned around and found that almost everyone in the department had already left.
Even during the year-end with heavy overtime tasks, everyone still wanted to celebrate Christmas.
An Yao stretched her wrists and was about to continue working overtime when she received a message from Yan Xuexin.
[Any plans for Christmas Eve? Want to go to a bar together tonight? I'll introduce some new friends to you—they're really nice!]
An Yao replied: [I'll pass, I still have to work overtime…]
Yan Xuexin: [Working overtime on Christmas Eve too? How are you becoming just like my workaholic brother.]
Yan Xuexin: [Then let me grab dinner with you. I'm meeting them pretty late anyway, and I haven't figured out dinner yet.]
An Yao stood up, estimated her workload, and decided to go out for a little break.
An Yao: [Okay, are you far from the Economic Development Zone?]
Yan Xuexin said it wasn't far, and the bar they were meeting at that night was also in the Economic Development Zone.
After choosing a restaurant, An Yao took a cab there.
It was located on a pedestrian street a few kilometers from the company, considered one of the more central commercial areas in the Economic Development Zone, with several lively bars nearby.
They met at the restaurant, and Yan Xuexin first asked about how she was doing. When it was An Yao's turn to ask her back, she let out a sigh: "I'm not doing great. My first physical store started trial operations last month, and I've already spent this much, but the revenue hasn't even reached a fraction of it."
An Yao saw the number she gestured and was startled: "That much?"
Yan Xuexin nodded with a pained expression: "But my brother said from the start that opening a physical store right now is just burning money, especially in the early stages. The only thing to look forward to is the advertising and promotional value."
An Yao thought for a moment, then said, "Well, in the long run, maybe you'll still be able to earn it back."
Yan Xuexin: "I can only say there's a possibility. Anyway, the money is burning so fast it's making me see red. I've noticed you're quite similar to my brother in some ways—both of you are… very forward-thinking."
An Yao smiled faintly. "Your brother definitely has foresight; otherwise, Yaowei wouldn't have developed so well over the past few years. But I actually don't have that trait."
Otherwise, she wouldn't often feel lost about the road ahead.
Yan Xuexin raised an eyebrow. "Of course you do. Don't forget when I was in my senior year of high school, I almost got tricked into going abroad by that scumbag, and you went to the airport to stop me."
Yan Xuexin had always remembered that incident vividly because it had been so dangerous for her.
In her senior year, her grades were mediocre, and she couldn't get into any good schools domestically.
Rather than having her family throw money around to pull strings, she thought it was better to just study abroad.
But initially, Elder Yan and her father both disagreed. Their views were old-fashioned—they believed a girl shouldn't go so far away. After all, the family had the means to support her for life, so she could just find any school in China and coast through to get a diploma.
Yan Xuexin herself wasn't particularly ambitious, but she strongly resented their dismissive attitude toward her.
Around that time, her boyfriend at the time said he had connections abroad. As long as she turned eighteen, he could help her handle the entire process to get into a school in Nevada, USA.
Not long after her eighteenth birthday, Yan Xuexin gave her ID documents to her boyfriend, successfully completed the paperwork, and secretly booked a flight without telling her family.
She even kept it from Yan Muzhou, only revealing to An Yao that she was planning to go abroad.
When An Yao heard this, she was certain the boyfriend had ill intentions and urged her not to go.
But at that time, Yan Xuexin wouldn't listen to anyone. She was determined to leave—once she got abroad, she figured she'd be out of reach, and no one could do anything about her.
In the end, on the day she was set to depart, An Yao skipped an entire day of classes, waited at the international departure security checkpoint from morning until night, and earnestly talked her out of it.
Later, it was An Yao who accompanied her to see Yan Muzhou, and then had Yan Muzhou persuade Elder Yan and her father. In the end, the family agreed to let her study abroad.
It wasn't until after Yan Xuexin broke up with that boyfriend and went abroad that she heard from some newly met international student friends that the man was a "chip runner" in Las Vegas—someone who lured wealthy but naive young people from China into gambling and took a cut from the profits.
Every time she thought about it, she felt a lingering fear. If An Yao hadn't stopped her at the airport, she would have been deceived, and the consequences would have been unimaginable.
Probably because of that incident, even though An Yao had clearly distanced herself from her after starting college, Yan Xuexin still regarded her as a very important friend.
An Yao rubbed her nose awkwardly. "Actually, it was because you were so desperate to leave home at the time. Otherwise, you definitely would have seen that he wasn't a good person."
She remembered that during their relationship, Yan Xuexin paid for all the expenses. The guy only had the advantages of being handsome and sweet-talking, and he'd even asked her for quite a few expensive gifts.
Yan Xuexin: "That's not necessarily true. I was so young then, and I'd never seen bad people before. I was naive and believed everyone."
"But you were even younger than me, and you often fooled around with me, yet you still managed to sense something was wrong. I was actually quite surprised."
An Yao was silent for a moment, then said, "Forget it, that was a long time ago. Don't think about it anymore."
Perhaps it was because she had seen plenty of bad people since childhood—like that bunch of relatives in the An family—that she tended to assume the worst of people even at a young age.
That really couldn't be counted as a virtue.
Yan Xuexin: "Right, right, all dark history, let's not talk about it!"
After dinner, Yan Xuexin went to a nearby bar to have fun, while An Yao took a cab back to the company to continue her unfinished work.
Although it was a workday, it happened to be Christmas, and traffic was still jammed at nine in the evening.
When An Yao arrived at the base of Yaowei headquarters, she looked up.
Sure enough, the vast majority of the lights were off—few people would choose to work overtime on Christmas Eve.
But there was actually a light on at the top floor. An Yao had a decent sense of spatial orientation, and based on the position, she deduced that the lit office belonged to Yan Muzhou.
The Yan family had no tradition of celebrating Western holidays, and for Yan Muzhou himself, whether it was Christmas Eve or Christmas, it was probably just an ordinary day.
An Yao thought the same way. In this regard, they were quite similar—neither was particularly enthusiastic about holidays, or rather, they both lacked a sense of ritual in life.
She returned to her workstation, busied herself for over an hour, and finished all the work.
The subway was about to stop running. An Yao checked the ride-hailing app in advance and saw that traffic was still jammed outside.
A drive that usually took ten-odd minutes now showed forty minutes.
An Yao decided to stay a little longer. Looking down, she saw the cardboard box beside her workstation.
Inside was the penguin mascot costume they would use for their performance at the annual party.
The day the costume arrived, she happened to be in the city delivering something for Yara and missed the group fitting rehearsal.
Since the penguin dance was simple, a colleague later sent her the video and told her to practice on her own time, and no new rehearsal was organized.
An Yao thought for a moment, then took the penguin costume out of the box. Not wanting to haul this heavy lump back to her place and back again, she carried it to the restroom to try it on.
Probably because the cleaning staff had also clocked out, the restroom's cleanliness was hardly suitable for trying on such a bulky, large-volume mascot costume.
An Yao carried the penguin costume again and went to the more secluded fire escape on the east side.
Being on the thirty-fifth floor, and on Christmas Eve, no one would be using the fire escape stairs at this hour.
The costume didn't require much changing—she just needed to slip into the mascot suit and put on the headpiece.
After struggling into it, An Yao found moving around extremely laborious, stiflingly hot, and her field of vision was largely obstructed.
She grew increasingly admiring of those part-time workers on the streets who wore mascot costumes handing out flyers.
But the size fit well enough. An Yao opened her phone's front camera, set it to 0.5x zoom, and roughly checked her appearance.
Just then, she heard footsteps coming from the fire escape.
The motion-sensor light on the floor above flicked on with a click.
In her nervousness, An Yao felt even hotter, sweating profusely inside the penguin suit.
Other departments didn't know about their performance yet. In this situation, wandering around the fire escape in such an outrageous outfit in the dead of night—she'd probably become news across the entire group by the next day.
She didn't have time to take it off either. Just as she was about to make a run for it, she heard a familiar, cold, sharp voice.
"Who's there?"
An Yao stopped in her tracks.
Recognizing that it was Yan Muzhou's voice, she took three seconds to decide to stop.
Otherwise, he would definitely check the surveillance footage.
An Yao, wearing the penguin headpiece, heard the footsteps drawing closer.
She felt like she was about to evaporate—both nervous and mortified, she only wanted to leave this beautiful world behind.
Yan Muzhou came down from the stairwell landing and, upon seeing this figure lurking in the dim fire-escape passage late at night, was genuinely startled.
To be fair, it was indeed eerie.
He furrowed his brow and asked in a low voice, "Which department are you from? What are you doing here in the middle of the night?"
An Yao bit her lip, pulled off the penguin headpiece first, her face flushed bright red. She glanced at him, then quickly lowered her head. "Uh…"
Yan Muzhou caught sight of the face hidden beneath the penguin headpiece, paused for two seconds, and suddenly laughed. "An Yao? What act is this—performance art?"