The girl in the painting had no face.
Meilin had tried to give her one three times.
The first attempt had been too neat. The second made the girl look like a stranger. On the third, her hand had begun shaking before the brush touched the canvas.
Now the painting stood on her easel, waiting.
Eight days remained before the portfolio deadline.
She opened her box of paints, selected a small brush and mixed a warm brown on the palette. A little red. A little white. The colour was close enough to the skin tone she remembered.
Her hand hovered over the girl's unfinished cheek.
A memory slipped into place without permission: a girl laughing with her head thrown back, a fleck of green paint on her chin.
Then a different sound.
A sharp crack.
The brush fell into the tray.
Meilin gripped the edge of the table until the room settled around her. The paint had splashed across a sheet of old newspaper. Nothing more.
She took a cloth and wiped her fingers.
She could spend the next eight days fighting this one painting. She might even finish it.
But would she recognise the person she'd made?
A knock came at the door.
"Meilin? If you're dead, I'm claiming your good brushes."
Li Jimin.
"There are no good brushes," she called back. "I'm poor."
"Then I'll claim the apartment. It has excellent ventilation."
"The window doesn't close!"
"See? Excellent."
She opened the door.
Jimin stood with two wrapped canvases under one arm and a paper bag in the other. He took one look at the easel behind her, and the smile slipped from his face.
He said nothing about it.
"I collected your order," he announced. "And before you accuse me of ruining your financial independence, the shop sent the receipt to your email. You paid."
"Good boy."
"I'm older than your attitude."
"Unproven."
He set the canvases against the wall and glanced toward the painting. Not at the girl's missing face. At Meilin's hand, where a faint tremor hadn't quite stopped.
"You don't have to use that one."
"I need eight paintings."
"You need two more. There is a difference."
She hated how sensible he sounded.
"Since when did you become an art critic?"
"Since you started asking canvases to apologise for things they didn't do."
Meilin stared at him.
Then she crossed the room and turned the unfinished painting to face the wall. For once, it felt less like hiding it than giving herself permission to leave it alone.
Jimin reached into the paper bag and offered her a steamed bun.
"Eat before you throw that brush at me."
She took the bun.
"I was considering it."
"I know."
---
The supply shop was on the far side of Xia City, and Jimin insisted on driving because he had errands nearby.
Meilin insisted on the passenger seat.
"You only want the car," he accused.
"Finally, a man who understands me."
His midnight-blue coupe eased into traffic, the engine smooth beneath them. She listened as he accelerated through a clear stretch of road, then tilted her head.
"Your left rear tyre's a little low."
Jimin glanced at her. "It isn't."
"Then the alignment's wrong."
"It was serviced yesterday."
"By whom? Your enemies?"
At the next junction he checked the dashboard readings.
He went quiet.
Meilin smirked.
"Don't look so devastated. Even handsome cars have flaws."
"You know," he said, "some people appreciate a free ride."
"Some people deserve a functioning suspension."
They reached a narrow lane lined with workshops, parts dealers and little restaurants whose cooking smells escaped through open doors. Jimin stopped at a tyre specialist he trusted.
While the mechanic inspected the car, Meilin wandered toward the workshop next door.
An elderly man was trying to repair a battered delivery tricycle beneath an awning. The vehicle's yellow paint had faded to the colour of weak tea. Its front panel was missing, and a young apprentice held a torch while the old man worked.
The boy kept shifting the light, trying to help.
"Here?" he asked.
"Too high."
"Here?"
"Now you're lighting my ear."
Meilin laughed before she could stop herself.
The old man looked up. "Something funny, miss?"
"Only your assistant's excellent aim."
The apprentice grinned.
"Would you mind if I sketched you?" Meilin asked.
The old man regarded her with suspicion.
"Will it cost me?"
"No."
"Then why?"
She looked at his hands, blackened with grease, moving with extraordinary patience around a stubborn bolt.
"Because you're making something work again."
He snorted. "Not yet, I'm not."
"Even better. I prefer honest subjects."
The apprentice laughed. The old man waved his spanner in reluctant permission.
Meilin sat on an overturned crate a safe distance away and opened her sketchbook.
She didn't draw the whole tricycle. She drew the man's hands, the apprentice's awkward torchlight, the tilted wheel and the way two bodies leaned toward one small problem.
After a few minutes, the old man glanced up.
"Are you finished?"
"Not remotely."
"Then come back tomorrow. My back won't survive another hour."
Meilin shut the book, smiling.
"I might."
---
At Zhao Corporation, Director Huang was waiting outside the chairman's office.
He had been there long enough for the tea on the side table to go cold.
Chen Li passed without offering reassurance. In his experience, reassurance before a meeting with Chairman Zhao usually made people more nervous.
Inside, Zhao Jingshen was studying two versions of the same shipping authorisation.
One carried a valid signature.
The other had been generated using a reinstated access credential belonging to an employee who had left the company weeks earlier.
The fraudulent session had lasted less than a minute.
Long enough to change a departure record. Long enough to test whether anyone would notice.
Chen Li placed the technical findings beside him.
"No cargo was diverted after the alteration," he said. "The physical shipment remained on its approved route."
Zhao Jingshen turned the page.
"A test."
"That is Security's assessment."
"Who authorised the account?"
"The recovery request came through an executive privilege. We haven't established who used it."
Zhao Jingshen closed the folder.
"Revoke the credential. Preserve the logs."
"Already done, Chairman. Security has set a monitored decoy for further attempts."
A slight nod.
"Director Huang is outside."
"Send him in."
Huang entered with the expression of a man approaching an examination for which he'd misplaced the syllabus.
Zhao Jingshen placed the two authorisations before him.
Huang read them.
His colour drained.
"Chairman, I had no knowledge of the second document."
Zhao Jingshen said nothing.
"I swear I didn't authorise it."
Still nothing.
Huang looked toward Chen Li, who was suddenly fascinated by a point on the opposite wall.
"Who had access to your department's recovery requests?" Zhao Jingshen asked.
"Six people. Possibly seven, depending on—"
"Names."
Huang opened his folder with trembling fingers.
Zhao Jingshen waited.
He had no intention of accusing a man simply because the man was frightened. But he wasn't going to let fear conceal incompetence, either.
---
By evening, Meilin had taped the workshop sketch above a fresh canvas.
She started with the light.
Not the yellow of the torch itself, but its reflection against the old mechanic's knuckles. Then the dark curve of the wheel, the apprentice's bent neck, the narrow space between their hands.
Her brush moved steadily.
It wasn't a beautiful scene in any conventional sense. The workshop was cramped. The floor was stained. A pile of discarded parts crowded the background.
Yet there was tenderness in the way the boy held the light for the man.
Meilin stepped back.
There.
Something worth painting.
Her phone rang.
Ling.
"Please tell me you're eating."
"I'm painting."
"Those are different activities."
"Not if I paint a sandwich."
"Meilin."
She heard Jimin in the background. "Ask her whether she's worked on the other canvas."
"I'm not asking her that," Ling replied.
"Then tell her—"
"Jimin, stop managing my friend!"
Meilin grinned.
"Tell my extremely bossy younger brother that I listened to him. I'm making a new painting."
Silence.
Then Jimin, suddenly closer to the phone: "You are?"
"Don't sound so shocked."
"I'm not." His voice softened. "That's good, Sis."
Ling took the phone back.
"Now eat."
"Why does every conversation with you people end this way?"
"Because you keep trying to live on turpentine."
Meilin laughed and promised to order dinner.
After the call, she looked at the old canvas turned against the wall.
For the first time that day, it didn't seem to be accusing her.
She washed her brush, laid it aside and opened the notebook where she recorded her paintings.
Six completed. One underway. One still to begin.
It wasn't victory.
But it was movement.
---
Back at Zhao Corporation, Chen Li received an additional security report just as the last staff were leaving.
He read the final page twice.
Then he returned to the chairman's office.
"Sir."
Zhao Jingshen looked up.
"We traced the second use of the recovered credential."
Chen Li handed him the report.
"The connection originated from the Grand Imperial's guest network."
Zhao Jingshen studied the access record.
The timestamp fell during the charity gala.
He closed the file.
"Guest list," he said.
Chen Li was already reaching for his tablet.