Free Web NovelChapter 141: Chapter 141: Sunday Routine
The walk was Bael’s idea, except it wasn’t supposed to be a walk.
He’d said run... casual, like he was reading off a list — weather’s clear, it’s been a while, we should run. I’d said okay because it has genuinely been a while and my body has been restless. But then Mrs. Wen overheard from the kitchen doorway and looked at me specifically, not Bael, and said running might not be ideal right now, that a walk in the garden would be nicer. Pleasant voice. Complete full stop.
Bael had said "a walk then" like that had always been the plan.
So here we are.
It’s cold, the path still damp, the sky doing nothing interesting. Normal Sunday. I was outside two days ago for the exam so I’m not surprised by any of it, the cold, the gray, the specific quiet of the estate grounds on a weekend morning. I know all of this.
I walk this path sometimes.
What I am less accustomed to, apparently, is Bael taking my hand.
He did it somewhere around the first bend. No warning, no particular lead-up... just his fingers closing around mine like that was simply the next thing that was going to happen and he’d already decided.
I didn’t pull away. I’m still not pulling away. His hand is warm, it’s always unreasonably warm, and I am extremely aware of it in a way that I keep telling myself should not be this distracting at this point. He’s held my hands before. This is not new information. My heart does not need to be doing whatever it’s currently doing.
I look at the path.
The path is good, the path requires nothing from me.
My phone buzzes in my right pocket.
I leave it.
It buzzes again.
Bael glances down briefly, says nothing. I fish the phone out with my right hand — left is occupied, obviously — which requires slightly awkward pocket navigation that I execute without comment. I unlock the screen.
I see the name and my brain does a short, strange skip before I even consciously register why.
*Wei Jian.*
I pick up the phone slowly.
*Wei Jian: I heard from Professor Liang that you came on Friday for the qualification exam. I honestly wasn’t expecting that.*
Then another one right after.
*Wei Jian: When you left the program, I didn’t know what to think. I was worried for a while. But I’m glad you didn’t give up on it. Architecture, I mean. You were always too good at it to just walk away.*
Then a third.
*Wei Jian: By the way... DingShan, second place? I entered that competition too. Got sixth. And then Professor Liang literally spent the better part of a Tuesday class going through your load distribution logic on the projector. In front of everyone. You can imagine how that felt.*
I read through all three messages, then again.
Wei Jian.
It lands differently than it would have even a few months ago. Not painfully... that’s the strange part. There’s no stomach drop, no that specific cold feeling in the chest. It’s more like pressing on somewhere that used to hurt and finding that it’s mostly healed over. The shape of the old thing still there, just not sharp anymore.
The original Runze spent two years loving this man.
I know every detail of it — the studio table they always shared, the way he’d lean over to explain something with that patient, careful voice, the specific slow torture of someone being kind to you in all the ways that don’t count. Two years. Then the engagement announcement. Then Eclipse Bar and everything that came after.
I know it the way I know most of the original Runze’s life. Completely from the inside, worn into me by now.
But it was never my two years.
*I was worried for a while.*
That sentence does something small I can’t quite place.
Not because it belongs to me... the person Wei Jian was worried about isn’t exactly me ... but I’ve been living so long inside the aftermath of that person that the line gets blurry sometimes. I don’t know anymore where his grief ends and whatever I’ve built on top of it begins. I stopped trying to figure that out a while ago. fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com
"Who’s messaging you?"
I look up.
Bael is watching me. Not sharply, just that particular attention he has, the kind that doesn’t announce itself. His eyes drop to the phone then come back to my face, easy, curious.
I lock the screen.
"Someone from school," I say. "Same department."
How would I even explain it? There is no version of a further explanation that makes sense in this context, while walking in this garden, with his hand still around mine.
Bael nods, looks at the path ahead. We keep walking.
A few steps pass.
"Did you see him?" he asks. "When you went on Friday."
The fact that he quietly registered *him* ... not making anything of it, just noting it, filing it somewhere... does something specific to the back of my neck that has nothing to do with the temperature.
"No," I say. "He just heard through Professor Liang that I came in. So he messaged today."
"Mm."
The garden keeps being the garden around us. Somewhere nearby, water trickles quietly through one of the ornamental fountains, a bird near the old maple is making noise. Bael’s thumb moves once across the back of my hand, slow and absent, like he’s not thinking about it.
Maybe he isn’t.
I’m thinking about it.
"Were you close?" Bael asks. "When you were still at the department."
I think about it honestly.
The original Runze was close to him. As close as you can be to someone who doesn’t realize what they mean to you. The kind of closeness that exists entirely on one side, that you keep feeding quietly because the alternative is admitting it’s never going to be returned.
I know exactly how that went. I know it in the way I know most of the original Runze’s life now — completely, specifically, from the inside. And I understand why the name still has some weight to it even for me, because I’m made partly from someone who loved Wei Jian badly and for a long time.
But that was never my story.
"We just knew each other," I say after a moment. "We were in the same department."
Which is true, technically. The original Runze and Wei Jian shared studio tables, reference books, late nights before critiques. Wei Jian was the kind of person who explained things carefully and remembered details about people and never once realized what any of that did to someone who was already halfway gone on him.
I know all of it. I’ve been carrying it long enough that sometimes I forget it wasn’t mine to begin with.
But the feeling itself... that particular quiet ache of wanting someone who isn’t looking back... that one I actually understand.
I just don’t feel it anymore.
At least not for Wei Jian.
That realization lands somewhere warm and settled in my chest, and I don’t examine it too closely.
Bael nods.
He looks at the path.
And then, just barely, just at the very edge of his mouth... something happens. Not quite a smile, the suggestion of one. The faintest shift, like a question he’d been carrying quietly just got answered and he’s deciding not to make anything of it.
I face forward.
The cold air is doing absolutely nothing useful right now. My face is warm in a way I cannot account for and do not want to examine.
"Why?" I ask, after a moment. Aiming for casual. Landing somewhere near it. "Why do you ask?"
Bael doesn’t answer right away. He looks at the stone bench near the far hedge, he looks at the wall, he looks at the tree.
"Time to head back," he says.
"That’s not an ans—"
"It’s getting cold." He squeezes my hand once, brief and easy, and turns us back toward the house. "Come on."
The temperature has not changed, the path is perfectly fine in both directions. He is not fooling anyone.
I go with him anyway.
We walk back the same way we came, his hand still around mine, the garden settling into its quiet around us.
I look at the house through the trees, the pale windows, the familiar roofline, and I think about Wei Jian’s messages and the original Runze who would have needed to sit down somewhere upon reading them, and then I think about Bael’s expression just now, that not-quite-smile, and my chest does something I refuse to investigate.
I don’t say anything.
Neither does he.
We walk the rest of the way back in silence that isn’t uncomfortable, his hand warm around mine the whole time, and somewhere before we reach the door I give up entirely on making my face behave and just let it do what it’s doing.
Bael is carefully, deliberately, looking straight ahead.
Which, somehow, makes my face even warmer.
