"Has no one ever told you…This kind of pickup line is painfully outdated?"
Selene shot him a sideways glance,deliberately lowering his voice,trying to make it sound more like a boy's.
Alessio blinked in brief surprise,then the corner of his mouth curved into a smile.
"You're a boy?"
There was no shock in his eyes, no retreat—only a kind of easy understanding.He tilted his head slightly.
"Then should I be inviting this 'gentleman' to dinner... or this 'lady'?"
"You don't think I'm weird?"
Selene's lips twitched upward before he could stop them.His emotions were still raw,
but this man's earnest awkwardness was just ridiculous enough to make him smile.
"Why would I think you're weird?"
Alessio said softly,his smile gentle.
"You're a lovely girl."
"Come on."He extended his hand again.
"And... thank you for the private room."
This time,Selene didn't refuse.He reached out—and let that long, steady hand pull him up from the bench.
The two of them sat down.As the waiter brought out the first dishes,the air between them gradually eased.
"Actually," Alessio said while pouring tea,"I saw you earlier today."
"You were dressed as a guy then,so I wasn't sure if it was you.But now that I've had a closer look—I'm certain."
Selene blinked, caught off guard.
"You're...?"
"This morning.In the elevator at Crimson Crest.You looked kind of out of it, and I reminded you that we'd reached the first floor."
Alessio gave a small smile.
"Ah… sorry," Selene rubbed at his temple, a bit embarrassed.
"I'd just finished my severance meeting.I guess my head wasn't really there."
"Were you part of Ethan qin's project?" Alessio asked.
Selene looked up, surprised."How did you know?"
"I was in the team next door," Alessio said gently.
"I heard your whole group got cut."
"Yeah."
Selene let out a sigh, picked up a piece of eel sushi, and bit into it.Even with food in his mouth, he kept grumbling.
"It's ridiculous. Ethan Qin bailed on the whole thing,left us all to take the fall—
and upper management didn't even blink before axing the entire team."
"And the best part? It was my first day back from vacation.Walked in the door, straight to a severance meeting."
Alessio watched the shift in his expression—from earlier sorrow,to irritation,and now, something with a flicker of life again.
His tone, too, had changed.No longer cautious or hesitant,he now sounded like someone complaining to an old friend.
Alessio quietly refilled Selene's teacup,and handed him a fresh wet towel.
"Do you think the project could still be salvaged?" he asked.
Alessio lifted his cup of freshly steeped barley tea,blew gently across the surface,his tone casual—curious, but never pressing.
Selene poked absently at the sushi on his plate with his fork,letting out a small, wordless hum.
"Our team's built up over three years of work in both tech and art,"he said softly.
"If we'd just been given a little more time,we could've at least delivered a solid vertical slice."
His voice picked up momentum,gaining more clarity with each word.
"Ethan Qin's original vision was to go head-to-head with StellarFrame's Eclipse Protocol,so the project was massive in scope and the art direction was insane. Meticulously detailed, borderline obsessive."
"Honestly? With what he was aiming for,there was no way it was ever launching in under two years."
"But it's not like we didn't have a plan."He set down his fork, his tone picking up speed.
"If we just restructure the current assets,shift toward a lightweight, content-driven casual model—it could totally come back to life."
"I even drafted a few revision proposals myself."
Alessio's lips curved into a smile,almost hidden behind a sip of tea.He was just about to respond when Selene's emotions swelled again, sharp and sudden.
"But that new CEO? Absolutely insane."His voice rose.
"So what if he and Ethan Qin had a falling-out,why take it out on us?"
"The whole team got axed without so much as a word of explanation."
"He just dumped all that resentment straight onto our heads, didn't he?"
Alessio blinked, his expression tightening for a brief second.
He composed himself,then smiled as he gently steered the conversation elsewhere.
"By the way... I still don't know your name."
"Selene Lin," he replied, sipping his cola through a straw,glancing sideways at Alessio with mock annoyance.
"You're kind of weird, you know that? Chatting for this long and only now you ask?"
"Selene Lin..."Alessio echoed softly,the name lingering on his tongue.
For just a moment,his expression stilled.
The name stirred something,like a long-forgotten memory slowly rising from dust.
A flash of imagery crossed Alessio's mind:a classroom bathed in light,a white school shirt,sunlight spilling across the schoolyard,and a slightly slender figure moving quietly through it all.
It had been so many years ago.Even the names were faded with time.But now, standing before him,the person in front of him overlapped—almost eerily—with that old, hazy silhouette.
He looked again,studying the figure across from him,trying to reconcile it with that lingering ghost of a memory.In the end, he gave a faint shake of his head,brushing aside the ridiculous thought.
"Something wrong?"
Selene tilted his head,noticing the subtle shift in Alessio's expression.
"No, nothing."
Alessio smiled quickly,his composure returning,the strange stir in his chest tucked carefully out of sight.
He shifted the conversation with ease,his tone becoming more focused.
"Our team's been assigned some of your group's leftover assets," he said.
"If you're interested, you could compile the revision plan you mentioned earlier.Let me take a look. If it's viable,I'd like to formally invite you to join our team."
Selene paused,then lowered his head and quietly chewed the last piece of eel roll.
"Let me think about it," he said.
"I'm not really looking to jump into another job right away.I kind of want to stop for a while… take a proper break."
His voice dropped slightly,the words slowing down—as if he were trying to carve out a small space to breathe.
He swallowed the bite in his mouth,then took a sip of cola,as if finally cooling some unspoken part of himself.
Then he looked up at Alessio and smiled,a faint, weary smile that still carried a glimmer of light.
"But, since you treated me to dinner tonight...I'll put together a proposal for you."
Alessio looked at him,and for the first time,there was something different in his gaze—a warmth that hadn't been there before.
"I'll be looking forward to it,"he said softly.
The night in Lin Guang City had deepened,and the once-bustling streets had settled into quiet.The noise had faded,leaving only the occasional passing headlights slicing through the stillness in fleeting arcs of light.
Selene Lin stepped out of the restaurant,parting ways with Alessio.As he walked past the main dining hall again,he couldn't help but glance toward the spot where Dorian Xu and the woman had been seated earlier.It was empty now.
Alessio got into a taxi and gave him a parting wave.Selene returned the gesture politely,watching the car pull away until its taillights vanished into the night.
All the emotions that had built up during dinner—the brief relief brought by food, conversation,and a stranger's quiet warmth—had already begun to dissolve,like sunlight briefly touching the surface of frozen water,only to shatter and disappear with the breeze.
Now that he was alone again,the small comfort he'd found over dinner was quickly replaced by sadness.
He made his way toward the subway station,his gaze drifting upward to the night sky.
The tail end of summer hung in the air,tinged with a faint, sticky heat.The river shimmered with scattered reflections,but the sky above was growing darker still.Only a few faint stars remained,dim and distant,barely visible beneath the overwhelming glow of the city.
And yet—even so,those faint stars still pulled him back to some quiet corner of memory—to the days in Italy.
Selene tilted his head to look up at the night sky.
Back when he and Dorian Xu were still in the early days of their relationship,they would take trains together, rent cars,even hike into the countryside and into the mountains—all because he had loved photography.
Back then,he would chase after light and shadow in quiet, remote places,believing that the lens could capture truth,and that truth could prove they had once, truly,been there for each other.
The stars were brighter in those days.The Milky Way spilled down from the heavens like a necklace strung with pearls.
Dorian had sat beside him under that sky,smiling as he said:
"If I could, I'd take a photo of every star we ever saw together.So that even if one day we're no longer together—I could prove you once looked at this sky with me."
When he'd said those words,his eyes had shone—bright as the stars above them.
Selene remembered laughing, playfully hitting him on the arm,calling him dramatic.
But he also remembered in that single, fleeting moment,he'd truly believed in the word forever.
—But how far is forever, really?He couldn't even recall when they'd last taken a photo together.
After Dorian returned to China,after Selene followed him back to Lin Guang City,all those "we'll go again next time"and "once I'm not so busy"had long since crumbled—one by one,like fallen leaves crushed under the weight of time.