She rolled her eyes. Zhu Li Qiang had the same sentiments as Xue Jinxu. 'I'm not a kid.'

She knew his intent was good so she gave in. "Mostly in Hangzhou. I have to go back."

"Please pull out your team."

"Okay. When are you leaving?"

"Today."

"That soon?"

"Yeah."

There was yet another silence at the other line.

"Be safe, Man Rui."

"I will. You, too Zhu Li Qiang."

When the call ended, Teng Man Rui felt an inexplicable heavy feeling in her heart. Zhu Li Qiang's voice was too cheerless. 'It's not as if I won't come back. I will! Why are they too sad about it? Hangzhou is where my life is. I've been gone for too long already.'

She was seated on a bench in the Beijing airport near her boarding gate. She will be boarding the plane any minute.

Her flight took two and a half hours. By night time, around six in the evening, she landed in Hangzhou.

Teng Man Rui went straight to her home. It had been vacant for a little short of a year. She switched the lights on and revealed a dusty apartment. 'I have lots of cleaning to do tomorrow. Maybe I can just hire a cleaner.'

She left her suitcase and bags in her bedroom, and then went outside again for a walk. She found the empty dusty house too stifling.

'I need fresh air.'

'Oh, Hangzhou.'

As she traversed alleys and parks and streets in a mult.i.tude of turns, past memories came flooding by. Her lips wore a slight smile. 'How long has it been?' Melancholy got the better of her.

'It's where we started our love story. It's also where we ended it.'

She walked some more. At around eight in the evening, she settled at a bar overlooking the majestic West Lake and ordered tea.

She sighed. 'Oh, Hangzhou. The place I settled in when I was such an innocent naïve young girl so green and inexperienced, so frail and frightened, to try my luck and establish independence. It's where I met you, fall in love with you. It's where we built our dreams. But… It's where you changed too. You changed. And perhaps, I changed too, eventually. Consequently. Because I grew alongside you...'

'Eventually, we lost our innocence together, you and I. Eventually, we were overcome by circ.u.mstances. In the end, it's better to just part ways.'

'But, it all started in Hangzhou…'

She was lost in her own thought bubble. The tea she ordered came and even cooled down a bit. The clock kept on ticking. She was unmoving. The surrounding people wouldn't know just where her thoughts had taken her already. She was taken to the past long gone. She was on time travel. When she took a sip of her tea, it was almost at ambient temperature. She didn't mind at all.

Her weary heart wanted answers. Her weary heart wanted to be freed.

'I want to start a new life too.'

'Away from you, without you.'

'How am I going to do that?'

'I want to remember our story for the last time, then let it go.'

She bit her lower lip. Two teardrops fell from each eye. She smiled bitterly. 'I want to stop shedding tears for you.'