The last candle flickered in Mei’s window, casting dancing shadows on the art deco wallpaper of her Shanghai apartment. Outside, the neon signs of 1947 painted the Bund in artificial daylight, but here in her sanctuary, she preferred the gentle glow of wax and flame.
“Still clinging to your old-fashioned ways?” Chen Ming’s voice carried a hint of mockery as he lounged in her velvet armchair, smoke curling from his gold-plated cigarette holder.
“Some things are worth preserving,” Mei replied, adjusting her qipao with deliberate slowness. “Not everything needs to change with the times.”
“Like your heart?” His eyes gleamed with familiar intensity.
“My heart isn’t some trinket to be bartered away in your business dealings, Ming.” She turned to face him, the candlelight catching the jade pins in her hair. “Though I suspect that’s exactly how you’ve always seen it.”
“You wound me,” he chuckled, but the laughter didn’t reach his eyes. “Haven’t I given you everything? This apartment, your boutique, your independence?”
“Everything except what I actually wanted.” Mei moved to the window, watching the boats drift along the Huangpu River. “Do you remember what you said to me that night at the Peace Hotel?”
“That was five years ago.”
“You said love was a luxury we couldn’t afford in times of war.” She touched the cool glass. “The war is over, Ming.”
He rose, crossing the room with measured steps. “You haven’t changed, Mei. Still the romantic schoolgirl who believes in fairy tales.”
“And you’re still the pragmatic businessman who reduces everything to transactions.” She felt his presence behind her, close enough to smell his expensive cologne. “Perhaps that’s why we work.”
“Do we?” His hand brushed her shoulder, tentative for the first time she could remember.
“Like a candle and darkness,” she smiled, turning to face him. “One cannot exist without the other.”
The candlelight caught the vulnerability in his eyes, something she’d waited years to see. “I’m not good at this, Mei. This… softness you want.”
“I don’t want you to be soft,” she reached up, touching his face. “I just want you to be real. Just once.”
In the silence that followed, the candle guttered, throwing wild shadows across their faces. When he kissed her, it wasn’t with his usual calculated precision, but with the desperation of a man finally letting go of his carefully constructed facades.
“I love you,” he whispered against her hair. “God help me, I’ve loved you since that first night at the Peace Hotel.”
Mei smiled, feeling the walls between them finally crumble. “I know,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for you to catch up.”
The candle burned low, but neither moved to light another. Sometimes, Mei thought, the sweetest moments happen in the space between light and dark, in that precious instant when pretense falls away and truth emerges, naked and beautiful in its simplicity.
Outside, Shanghai continued its relentless march toward modernity, but in that room, time stood still, preserved like a flower pressed between the pages of a beloved book.