Chapter 12: Rain Falls at Midnight, She Disappears Without Warning
1628 Words
Lin Yuanzhou was unsettled all day at Old Zhou's restaurant.
He nearly ran a red light while making a delivery and got honked at furiously by a white driver. Old Zhou saw he wasn't doing well and told him to go home early and rest.
"Are you sick? You look terrible." Old Zhou pressed the back of his hand to Yuanzhou's forehead to check his temperature.
"I'm fine. Didn't sleep well last night."
"Then go home and sleep. If you still feel bad tomorrow, don't come in — the shop won't miss one pair of hands."
Yuanzhou mumbled an acknowledgment, got on the scooter, and headed back.
The rain had let up a little, but it was still falling. Seattle rain was like that — once it started, it never knew when to stop, like someone left a faucet running in the sky.
His head was full of Shen Zhi's face from last night. That pale, terrified look. The fear in her eyes. The stifled crying in the early morning. And this morning, standing behind the register, her hand shaking.
He told himself to stop thinking about it. Not his business.
But the more he tried not to think, the more it pushed into his mind.
Back at the bookstore, he locked the scooter and looked up at the second‑floor window. The curtains were drawn — he couldn't see inside.
He pushed open the door. The bookstore lights were on, but no one was behind the register.
"Shen Zhi?" he called.
No answer.
He went upstairs. The apartment door was unlocked. He pushed it open. The living room was empty. Shen Zhi's bedroom door was open.
He walked over and looked inside.
The bed was neatly made, the blanket folded. On the desk, several medicine bottles were still there, but fewer than before. The wardrobe door was open — a lot of clothes were missing. On the floor sat a backpack, unzipped, revealing a few pieces of clothing and the white resistance band.
She'd left?
Yuanzhou stood in the doorway, his heartbeat starting to race.
He turned and went to the kitchen. On the stove sat a bowl of noodles — congealed, cold, a film of oil floating on top. It looked like she'd made them before leaving, but hadn't eaten them.
Next to the bowl was a note.
The note had been torn from a notebook, the edges uneven. The handwriting was sloppy, completely unlike Shen Zhi's usual neat script.
"I'm going away for a few days. The rent is in the drawer. Don't look for me."
Just those few lines. No mention of where she was going, no mention of when she'd be back, no explanation.
Yuanzhou turned the note over. The back was blank.
He set the note on the coffee table and sat down.
The apartment was eerily quiet. The rain was loud, but his ears were full of his own heartbeat.
He pulled out his phone and scrolled to Shen Zhi's number — the one he'd copied from the sticky note on the counter. He stared at it for a few seconds, his thumb hovering over the call button. He didn't press it.
"Don't look for me."
She said not to look for her.
Yuanzhou tossed the phone onto the sofa, stood up, and walked to the living room window. The window he'd fixed — sealed tight, no rain seeping in. But the dark water stain on the sill remained, impossible to wipe away.
He stared at the window for a long time.
Three days ago, she'd stood here, leaning against the wall, watching him apply the sealant. Said, "Your workmanship is pretty good."
Two days ago, she'd sat on the sofa eating char siu, said, "You're not the kind of person who accepts fate."
Last night, in the early morning, she'd cried in her room.
And today, she was gone.
Yuanzhou turned and went back to his room, lying down on the bed.
He stared at the water stain on the ceiling — the one shaped like a map of Seattle. He remembered the first day he moved in, lying here, telling himself, "Not my business."
But now it was his business.
He didn't know when it had started. Maybe the night of the egg fried rice. Maybe the first time she said thank you. Maybe when she leaned against the doorframe watching him fix the window.
Either way, it was his business now.
He picked up his phone and sent Shen Zhi a WeChat message.
"Where did you go?"
After sending it, the message showed as "Read."
But no reply.
After five minutes, he sent another.
"Are you safe?"
Read. No reply.
After ten more minutes, he sent a third.
"Let me know when you get there."
Read. Still no reply.
Yuanzhou set the phone aside and closed his eyes.
He began running through possible places Shen Zhi might have gone.
She'd said before that aside from the bookstore, she didn't go anywhere. No friends, apart from Tina. Tina was her only social contact.
He picked up his phone again, scrolled to Tina's WeChat. She'd added him the day she came over, saying, "Message me anytime if you need anything."
He hesitated, then sent a message.
"Tina, is Shen Zhi with you?"
A few seconds later, Tina replied: "No. Why?"
"She's gone. She left a note saying she's going away for a few days, but didn't say where."
Tina sent a string of question marks, then immediately called him on voice.
Yuanzhou answered.
"What's going on? What happened to Zhizhi?" Tina's voice was urgent, not her usual bubbly self.
Yuanzhou quickly summarized what had happened last night — the phone call, Shen Zhi's pale face, the crying. Tina was quiet for several seconds on the other end.
"She got a phone call last night, and after that she wasn't right," Yuanzhou said. "Today I came back and she was gone."
On Tina's end, he heard the rustle of someone searching through things.
"I'll try calling her."
"I already did. She didn't pick up. Read my messages but didn't reply."
Tina hung up the voice call. A few minutes later, she called back.
"She's not answering me either. I sent her a message — she read it, but didn't reply."
"Has she done this before?" Yuanzhou asked.
Tina was silent for a moment. "Once before. Last year."
"What happened after?"
"She came back after three days. Didn't say anything. I still don't know where she went."
Yuanzhou gripped his phone, his knuckles white.
"Do you think something's happened to her?" he asked.
Tina was quiet for a long time on the other end.
"I don't know." Tina's voice was a little hoarse. "Zhizhi is the kind of person — if she doesn't want you to know something, you'll never know. She hides herself very deep."
"So we just wait?"
"Do you have any other choice?"
Yuanzhou didn't. He had no contact information for Shen Zhi's family, no idea where her hometown was, didn't even know her full name — he wasn't even sure "Shen Zhi" was her real name. All he knew was that she ran a bookstore, had an old injury in her leg, took antidepressants, and was afraid of a phone call.
What he knew about her was pitifully little.
"Wait for her to come back," Tina said. "She always comes back."
"Always?"
"Yeah. Always."
Tina hung up.
Yuanzhou sat on the sofa, staring at Shen Zhi's open bedroom door.
The wind blew the curtain, making it flutter.
He walked over and closed the window. It shut tightly — the wind couldn't get in.
But he knew there was a person who could get in from outside.
The person on the phone last night.
"How do you know where I live?"
That person knew where she lived. That person had scared her so much she'd fled in the middle of the night.
Yuanzhou stood in Shen Zhi's room, looking at the remaining medicine bottles on the desk. The ibuprofen and muscle relaxants were still there. The antidepressants and sleeping pills were gone — she'd taken them with her.
He reached out and touched the desktop.
Cold.
She'd been gone for a long time.
Yuanzhou closed Shen Zhi's bedroom door and went back to the living room.
The rain had picked up again, pounding on the window like someone desperately knocking on a door that would never open.
He sat on the sofa and opened his notebook. On the last page, beside the profile, he'd written before: "She has a friend named Tina. She smiles when Tina's around."
He picked up his pen and added another line beneath it.
"Tonight she left. I don't know where she went. I don't know when she's coming back. I don't know if she's coming back at all."
After writing, he stared at it for a long time.
Then he closed the notebook.
In the darkness, only the rain remained. The window he'd fixed — not a single drop leaked through. But her room was empty. And his heart felt empty, too.
Yuanzhou lay down on the sofa. He didn't go back to his own room.
He was afraid that if Shen Zhi came back in the middle of the night, he wouldn't hear her knock.
He placed his phone on the coffee table, screen up, glowing. In the WeChat conversation, his three messages still hung there.
Read.
Read.
Read.
Not a single word of reply.
He turned the phone face down on the table.
He closed his eyes.
The rain fell past midnight, showing no sign of stopping. The apartment was filled with the sound of his own breathing.
Shen Zhi's bedroom door stood open, dark, like a wound that couldn't speak.
- Writer
