Chapter 234: While He’s Gone

*Runze’s POV*

The sitting room is very quiet for a house full of people.

Mrs. Wen has been moving in and out all morning, setting down plates and cups and small dishes that I pick at without tasting. Ling Yue sits at the other end of the sofa, his legs tucked under him, his phone face-down on the cushion beside him. I appreciate the solidarity even if neither of us says so out loud.

Grandmother occupies the armchair nearest the window, a book open across her lap.

She has been on the same page for forty minutes.

I know because I have been watching her without meaning to, the way you watch something when your mind has nothing else to hold onto.

Her posture is impeccable as always. Spine straight, chin level, the picture of composed authority. A few minutes earlier, she had looked directly at me and told me not to be frightened.

"You’re a Wuchen. What is there to be afraid of?"

Everything would be fine, she had said. The Wuchen family had survived far worse than a board meeting. This was nothing, so I ought to conduct myself accordingly.

Then she turned back to her book.

Then her foot started moving.

It is subtle... just her right heel, lifting and dropping against the floor in a slow, continuous rhythm.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Quiet enough that it might go unnoticed in any other room, on any other morning. But the sitting room is very quiet today, and I notice, and a moment later Ling Yue notices too, because his eyes drop slowly toward the floor and then lift back up to meet mine across the sofa.

We look at each other.

Grandmother turns a page without reading it.

Under any other circumstances, I think, this would be genuinely funny.

The woman who just delivered a composed lecture about fear being unbecoming of this family is sitting twelve feet away tapping her heel against the floor like a telegraph machine. But my own chest is wound too tight to find it funny, so I simply look away, pick up the cup of warm water Mrs. Wen placed in front of me, and hold it with both hands without drinking.

The clock on the wall moves slowly.

***

By mid-morning the sitting room has begun to feel like a waiting room.

I get up.

I don’t announce it, I just get up and head upstairs to the study.

It’s quieter up here. No soft tap of Grandmother’s heel, no distant murmur of staff, just the faint sounds of the estate and the pale morning light coming through the window.

The sketchbook is on the desk where I left it. I sit down, pull it toward me, and open it to a clean page. Pick up the pencil.

Set it against the paper.

Nothing comes.

I stare at the blank page. Normally my hand moves before my mind catches up. Lines become walls, shapes become rooms, and something empty becomes something worth standing inside. It is the one place where the noise in my head goes quiet.

Not today.

Today the pencil just sits against the page, and I sit behind it, and the paper stays blank.

*How is it going?*

*What’s happening in there?*

*Is he alright?*

The same three questions cycle back before I can stop them. I don’t know what is happening inside that boardroom. I don’t know what Han said or what Bael said back or whether the vote has happened yet or whether it went the way it was supposed to.

I pick up my phone.

The message thread with Bael is open, it has been open since this morning, sitting at the top of my recent conversations. The last message I sent stares back at me, delivered but not seen.

*Please call me when you’re free.*

Sent at nine forty-seven.

I set the phone face-up on the desk beside the sketchbook. Bael is in a boardroom full of people trying to take everything from him. He is not free. I knew that when I sent the message.

I look at it anyway.

"Guess he’s not free yet," I mutter to the empty room.

I set the pencil down. My eyes are heavy in the particular way that comes not from peace but from a body that has run out of things to brace against.

I don’t want to sleep. If I sleep I won’t hear the phone.

I stare at the ceiling instead.

I’m still staring at it when the screen lights up on the desk beside me.

Not a message.

A call... a video call?

Bael.

I grab it so fast the sketchbook slides off the desk entirely. I accept before the second ring finishes, pushing myself upright, my heart already beating too fast.

The screen connects.

Bael is sitting in his office chair, jacket still on, tie straight. The wall behind him is plain and familiar. His expression is even, the set of his jaw relaxed, no tension around his eyes. He looks exactly the way he looked when he walked out the door this morning, as though the last several hours cost him nothing.

He has documents in his hand, clearly mid-review when he called. Somewhere off-screen I catch the faint murmur of another voice. Shen Rui, I think, though I can’t make out the words.

"Bael—" My voice comes out thinner than I intended. "H-how is it going? What happened? The board meeting—"

Bael looks at me through the screen. One corner of his mouth lifts.

"Hmph. What do you think?"

I search his face, the set of his jaw, the line of his shoulders, that almost-smile, and something in my chest loosens all at once.

"You won," I say. It comes out less like a question and more like something clicking into place. "They’re not — they can’t remove you?"

"Of course they cannot."

A breath rushes out of me. I press my free hand flat against the desk, suddenly aware of how tightly I’d been holding myself together all morning.

"So stop worrying," Bael says, his voice dropping into the lower register he uses when it’s only the two of us. "It’s handled."

"I wasn’t—" I start, then stop, because he is looking at me through the screen with that expression. The one that means *I know exactly what you were doing*. "...I was a little worried."

"I know."

He shifts the documents in his hand, glancing briefly at something off-screen before his eyes return to mine.

"I still have work to finish," Bael says. "I’ll be home tonight. We’ll talk properly then."

I nod. I want to ask a hundred things... what happened, what comes next, what Han’s face looked like when the vote failed... but I can see the papers in his hand and I know this isn’t the moment.

"Okay," I say instead.

Bael holds my gaze through the screen.

"Rest," he says. "And make sure you eat properly before I get back."

I open my mouth. Close it again.

"Promise me," he says.

"I promise."

The corner of his mouth curves, just slightly, warm and quiet and entirely for me. Then his eyes drop back to the documents in his hand, and the call ends.

***

I sit completely still for about four seconds.

Then I’m on my feet.

I take the stairs faster than I should, one hand on the banister, already calling out before I’m halfway down.

"Grandmother! Ling Yue!"

I hit the bottom step. Ling Yue is already standing, his phone forgotten on the sofa. Grandmother has closed her book, actually closed it this time, her finger no longer marking the same page she has been pretending to read for the past hour.

They both look at me.

"Bael called," I say, slightly out of breath. "The board meeting. He won! They can’t touch him."

For a moment, nobody moves.

Then Ling Yue lets out a breath so long and audible it borders on theatrical, dropping back onto the sofa with his hand over his chest like a man narrowly avoiding a personal disaster.

"Finally," he announces to the ceiling. "I have been stress-eating Mrs. Wen’s pastries since this morning and I would like everyone to know that I consider that entirely your husband’s fault."

A laugh escapes me before I can stop it — sudden and genuine, the first real one since yesterday.

Across the room, Grandmother sets her book down on the side table with quiet precision. She smooths the front of her dress once. Then she picks up her teacup, takes a measured sip, and says, in a tone of complete composure, as though she had never once tapped her heel anxiously against the sitting room floor:

"Of course he won. He is a Wuchen."

Ling Yue and I look at each other.

I press my lips together so hard my cheeks hurt.

"Yes, Grandmother," I manage.

From the kitchen, the sound of Mrs. Wen already moving pots and pans drifts through the quiet house. Somehow, she always knows.