The alarm clock shattered Shen Yusi’s sweet dreams.
She fumbled for her phone, silencing the noise. The screen lit up: 【Evening – China Art Museum Commemorative Exhibition】
Remembering the task at hand, Shen Yusi, who rarely woke up easily, quickly scrambled out of bed.
Tonight, the art museum was hosting a highly exclusive internal preview. Only top-tier artists were invited, and tickets were nearly impossible to get.
Thanks to her Auntie Shu, the editor-in-chief at the TV station, she managed to sneak into the filming crew.
As dusk settled, the business van drove through streets just beginning to light up.
Outside the museum, Yu Shushu was waiting, craning her neck for their arrival.
A familiar car turned the corner, came to a stop, and the door opened. A girl descended who looked startlingly like an old friend.
Yu Shushu’s fingers unconsciously rubbed together. The evening breeze seeped into her palm, bringing a chill.
“Auntie Shu?” Shen Yusi called out.
Yu Shushu snapped back to reality. “Mm. It’s getting late. Hurry and follow me inside.”
She walked briskly, and Shen Yusi followed closely.
Halfway there, a sharp, stabbing pain shot through Shen Yusi’s right eye.
She resisted the urge to rub it and quickly opened her phone’s front camera, discovering that her contact lens had slid off its center.
Catching a glimpse of a restroom sign, she said, walking towards it, “Auntie Shu, my eye is bothering me. I need to fix it. You go ahead to the exhibition hall. I’ll be right there!”
Yu Shushu glanced at her watch. “Okay. Remember, when you come out of the restroom, turn left. Take the second corridor, then turn right. That’s Hall 9.”
“Got it!” Shen Yusi replied distractedly.
The stinging pain blurred her vision. She rushed into the restroom, carefully removed the contact lens, threw it in the trash, and then opened a shopping app to leave a bad review.
Once the redness in her eyes faded a little, Shen Yusi looked at her blurry reflection in the mirror and sighed. Over three hundred degrees of nearsightedness – how was she supposed to see the exhibition?
She walked out of the restroom. The hallway was empty, and the words on the signs were just blurry patches of color.
A vast space with intersecting corridors, easy to get lost.
Left turn… or right turn?
What did Auntie Shu say again?
She had been in too much of a hurry to hear properly.
Tonight was the TV station’s event. All the staff were gathered in Hall 9. Now the hallway was deserted, not a single person to ask for directions.
Just as Shen Yusi was getting anxious, a tall, slender figure turned the corner ahead.
“Hello! Please wait!” she called out, as if seeing a lifeline.
Lin Yingzhou stopped and turned sideways.
He had come today with his grandfather for a filming event. Suffering from a severe cold that just wouldn’t let up, he couldn’t take it anymore and had excused himself early.
From a short distance, a figure charged into his view.
Red hair… red dress…!
The intensely vivid color wove into a bloody net, plunging down towards him.
Lin Yingzhou’s pupils constricted. His throat tightened. He instinctively took a half-step back.
“Hello, could you tell me how to get to Hall 9?” The girl’s voice sounded as if it were coming through a layer of water, indistinct and muffled.
Lin Yingzhou’s fingers trembled uncontrollably. A suffocating feeling choked his throat.
Dr. An’s words echoed in his mind. “You have to try to get used to the small amounts of red in your life instead of always avoiding them…”
He forced himself to look at that blinding patch of color. His retinas felt like they were being pricked by tiny sparks. “Sorry… I didn’t quite catch that. Could you say it again?”
Shen Yusi hesitated for a moment. The man in front of her was wearing a medical mask, leaving only his eyes visible. In that moment their eyes met, she could actually see… fear? Revulsion? in his gaze.
It was so strange. She felt a shiver for no reason, thinking it must be her imagination.
Shen Yusi repeated herself. “Excuse me, how do I get to Hall 9?”
That patch of red was burning on her, a natural stimulus for him. The pain stabbed straight to his eyes.
Lin Yingzhou’s speech sped up uncontrollably, the words almost tripping over each other.
“Go forward… thirty feet and turn left. After that, sixty feet… take the right fork in the path.”
His sudden acceleration caught Shen Yusi off guard. Thinking he must be in a hurry, she quickly thanked him, turned, and walked away quickly.
Almost at the same moment, Lin Yingzhou’s vision went black. Dizziness washed over him. He stumbled, one hand bracing himself against the wall, his kneecap hitting the marble floor with a dull thud.
The noise behind her made Shen Yusi pause. She looked back in confusion.
She saw the man half-kneeling on the ground in clear pain, hand pressed flat, fingers white-knuckled with strain. He took two short, rapid breaths before starting to cough violently. The edges of his medical mask were damp with cold sweat.
“Hey! What’s wrong?” Shen Yusi’s heart clenched. She immediately crouched down, reaching out to help him.
Seeing the red hair closing in again, Lin Yingzhou felt like his head was about to explode. He squeezed his eyes shut, using all his strength to push her hand away. His voice was hoarse. “…Don’t come near me!”
Those beautiful eyes were unnaturally bloodshot.
Shen Yusi froze, bewildered and unable to ignore his strange resistance. “But you look terrible. Should I call an ambulance? Or do you have medicine with you?”
“No!” He practically ground the words out from between his teeth, his hand clutching the fabric over his chest, veins bulging. “Please, just… stay away from me.”
“…” For a moment, Shen Yusi was at a loss.
Out of basic human decency, worried something might happen to him, she was willing to be late for the preview just to help him up.
But that didn’t mean she was some bleeding-heart busybody.
She tried to help him, and what attitude did he show?
Treating her like a plague? He’d get better just by her keeping her distance? Utterly ridiculous!
Fine. She’d done her part. Shen Yusi got up and walked away, not wanting to bother anymore.
After taking a dozen steps, her pace involuntarily slowed.
The image of the man’s trembling figure lingered in her mind.
That reaction… was it an asthma attack?
But why would an asthma patient wear a mask, not afraid of suffocating?
Or maybe a heart condition?
What if something really happened… that was a human life…
Shen Yusi threw caution to the wind and ran back.
But she found the tall, thin man was gone. The hallway was completely empty.
Shen Yusi looked around in astonishment.
The man who seemed weak enough to collapse a moment ago was nowhere to be seen at all.
Could it be… that by keeping her distance, he really was fine?
This bizarre situation only deepened her suspicion, but time was tight. She shook her head and hurried towards Hall 9.
In the restroom nearby.
Lin Yingzhou yanked off his damp mask, revealing a deathly pale face.
He bent over and furiously splashed cold water on his face.
The water streamed over his skin, stubbornly carrying a faint, metallic, rusty scent.
The veins on the back of his hands, braced against the counter, stood out. The sound of water roared in his ears, and the splashes seemed to bleed into a pool of red.
He pressed his eyes tightly shut, ordering himself to stop replaying the image.
It took a long time for his breathing to steady.
In the mirror, his pupils were filled with angry red veins.
Straightening his disheveled clothes, Lin Yingzhou walked out of the art museum and got into the back of a Bentley Mulsanne. His voice was hoarse. “The hospital.”
Inside the psychological clinic, the light was soft.
Dr. An could barely hide his shock. “You’re saying… without your glasses on, you faced a woman covered head-to-toe in high-saturation red, and… you didn’t avoid it immediately, leading to an acute stress reaction?”
Lin Yingzhou had an ingrained traumatic stress disorder triggered by large areas of red.
Since traditional therapies had little effect, Dr. An took a risk with a gradual exposure therapy – getting him used to small, everyday red stimuli step by step.
For this reason, Lin Yingzhou had stopped wearing his special red-weakening glasses a long time ago.
The occasional, light shades of red in daily life were manageable.
Even if he encountered a deeper red, he could avoid an attack by quickly looking away.
The earlier desensitization training had shown some progress. He hadn’t had an episode in a long time. The hope of recovery seemed within reach.
That’s why, when that jarring red burst into his sight, he didn’t look away as he normally would.
He wanted to know his limits.
“Mm.” Lin Yingzhou took a deep breath, staring at his still-pale knuckles.
Dr. An understood his eagerness, but the consequences were clear. “Challenging your limits so abruptly will only undo all the progress we’ve made. Next time, you must avoid it immediately!”
“…I understand.” Lin Yingzhou lowered his eyes, but his mind uncontrollably conjured the image of the girl who had so brashly barged into his field of vision.
Was she also a guest at this event?
Inside Hall 9, the lights were bright, and voices were low. Shen Yusi quietly squeezed next to Yu Shushu.
“Your eye is okay?” Yu Shushu asked softly.
“Mm, it’s fine.” Shen Yusi’s eyes quickly scanned the core area of the crowd, but she didn’t spot the man in the white shirt.
Had he really gone to the hospital by himself? Remembering his frail, rejecting demeanor when it happened, Shen Yusi pouted. Whatever, as long as he wasn’t dead.
She pulled her thoughts back and focused again.
Many industry leaders had come for the shoot, the center of attention being Lin Yunzhi, the Dean of Yun University’s School of Fine Arts.
He was also the Chairman of the Chinese Calligraphy Association, the Director of the China Art Museum, and held a bunch of other impressive titles.
Even the followers with the least impressive backgrounds around him held professor titles.
Shen Yusi understood that Yu Shushu’s real intention in bringing her was to get her face seen among these art-world elites.
The cameraman was capturing footage of the bigwigs critiquing the paintings.
Being nearly blind, Shen Yusi couldn’t see any details. She quietly pulled out her phone, planning to use the camera’s zoom feature.
The screen was still on the selfie camera.
Just as she was about to switch it, a corner of the screen reflected an ink wash painting hanging behind her.
She instinctively turned to look.
The entire painting was in black and white, depicting a snowy, cold mountain. The brushwork was bold and unrestrained, with masterful use of negative space.
From a distance, it was grand and imposing. Up close, the brushstrokes hid a delicate caution.
“Interested in this painting?” a gentle voice sounded beside her.
Shen Yusi’s heart skipped a beat. She turned to see Lin Yunzhi standing next to her, she had no idea when he had arrived.
With his question, the surrounding attention instantly focused on her.
Suddenly becoming the center of attention, Shen Yusi was surprised but not flustered.
She wasn’t a Chinese painting major. She couldn’t produce a well-reasoned critique, but art is connected. If she had to say something, she probably could.
She glanced at the great master standing before her and the lesser masters behind him. Shen Yusi decided it was best not to show off before an expert.
She said candidly, “I don’t have a deep understanding of Chinese painting. I just find this piece… very striking. I couldn’t help but look a little longer.”
Lin Yunzhi, who had been listening to flattery all day, was amused by her directness. “An honest one. Brought by Chief Editor Yu?”
“Yes.”
Someone immediately chimed in. “This must be Yingzhou’s work, right? Look at the boldness of the strokes!”
“Yes. Among the painters exhibiting today, Yingzhou is the youngest. A very promising future.”
Lin Yunzhi waved his hand dismissively. “Just a child’s pastime.”
“Dean Lin is too modest. If a pastime can produce such work, it speaks volumes of his family’s artistic tradition. Truly admirable.” The others naturally laughed and played along.
Listening to the conversation, Shen Yusi moved closer to the painting. She squinted, trying to make out the signature in the corner.
– Lin Yingzhou.
Surname Lin?
No wonder.
With an elder like Lin Yunzhi, it would probably be hard to paint poorly.