“Actually, today…” Ah Yu pushed the seafood porridge towards him, her fingertips brushing against the old scar on the back of his hand, where he had been cut by glass while moving the bookshelf for her. “I… I drew a picture for you.” She swallowed the words back down, looking down at the scallops in the bowl, her eyelashes casting shadows under her eyes. “It’s a picture of you writing code in the conference room, but… it’s not very good.”

Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the lights of the Huangpu River twinkled like stars, and the horns of cruise ships pierced the night, mingling with the fumes of the kitchen. Lin Yan watched Ah Yu's eyelashes tremble gently as she ate her porridge, and he recalled what Mu Hongyan had whispered in his ear that afternoon: "You always give your tenderness to strangers." But he knew that the girl who had given him the last umbrella in the pouring rain, the girl who had quietly placed a thermal lunchbox on his desk when he worked overtime until the early hours, was never a stranger—she was the only light outside his computer screen when he worked late into the night.

Ah Yu suddenly looked up, a grain of rice still clinging to the corner of her mouth. "Actually, I...bought movie tickets for tomorrow." She blushed before finishing, hurriedly lowering her head to eat her porridge, the spoon making a crisp sound against the porcelain bowl. Lin Yan suddenly reached out and wiped the rice grain from her mouth, his fingertips touching her warm cheek like a spring petal. At that moment, the vibrating work emails in his suit pocket and the distant noise of the banquet hall gradually faded into a blurry background. He heard himself say, "Okay, I'll go with you."

The cake in the oven suddenly made a "bang," and Ah Yu hurriedly got up to check, her bandaged ankle dragging on the floor with a soft thud. Lin Yan watched her limping figure and suddenly remembered the signature Mu Hongyan left on the contract when the project was signed. The strong handwriting, penetrating the paper, concealed a tremor that even she herself was unaware of—just like the unspoken tenderness hidden in his heartbeat as he looked at Ah Yu now.

As night deepened, the cream soup on the counter still steamed. Some stories, like this unfinished bowl of pasta, with their clumsy sweetness, simmered slowly over the gentle flame of time. And those scars hidden beneath the bandages, those unspoken confessions, will eventually transform into the warmest light in each other's eyes on some sun-drenched morning—just like now, as Ah Yu turned around, the aroma of cake wafting from the oven gently enveloped the thin, yet warm, undercurrent between them.