The Next Leap Through a New Brand and a New Film

Boston's winter revealed a rare gentleness on the first weekend of December.

There was no wind and no snow. Sunlight poured out from behind the clouds across the Charles River, bathing the fronts of the red-brick row houses along Commonwealth Avenue in a warm gold.

Su Jin stood before the floor-length mirror in her dressing room, choosing what to wear out today-

She didn't need to dress too formally to visit Shen Nian's studio, but Shen Nian was someone who worked with her eyes, and her sensitivity to color far exceeded that of most people.

What Su Jin wore to see her was a silent conversation in itself.

Her gaze passed over several neatly hung rows of clothes before settling on a cream-white wool knit top from Lemaire.

What made it special was the neckline-not a conventional turtleneck or crew neck, but a broad, flat collar that could be folded however she pleased. Like a petal gently lifted by the wind and allowed to fall again, it rested languidly across her shoulders, revealing her collarbones and a small patch of her chest.

The knit was a blend of merino wool and silk, its surface covered in an exceedingly fine fuzz. In the light, it took on a soft, almost unfocused halo, like mist that had yet to disperse over a lake in the early morning: thin and cool with moisture, yet warmed as soon as the sun touched it.

For bottoms, she chose a pair of dark charcoal wide-leg trousers from Joseph. Their creases were perfectly straight, and the substantial wool-blend fabric draped beautifully. As she walked, the hems would brush lightly over her feet with a delicate rustle, like wind passing through dry leaves.

On her feet were a pair of black leather mules from The Row. A single, exceptionally slender strap crossed each upper, tracing the most elegant curve of her instep. From ankle to toe, every inch of the curve was framed by the strap just right, no more and no less.

She wore only one piece of jewelry-a pair of minimalist silver earrings from Maria Black, the work of a Danish designer.

Two slender silver wires hung from her earlobes, each set at the end with a tiny, irregularly shaped freshwater pearl. They swayed gently when she turned her head, like two drops of water frozen in the air, or two shooting stars about to fall.

She stood before the mirror, looking at the woman reflected in it.

The cream-white knit gave her skin a soft, warm whiteness-not the cold white of porcelain, but the warm white of xuan paper after it had been sunlit. The faintest pink showed beneath it, like the inside of a seashell pierced by sunlight.

The broad fold of the collar fell right at her collarbones, rising and falling slightly with her breathing. The skin beneath them appeared and disappeared in the collar's shadow, like a painting with a deliberate expanse of blank space. The viewer couldn't help wanting to step closer for a better look, only to find that the blank space itself was the entire answer.

The dark charcoal wide-leg trousers made her figure look longer and slimmer. The hem of the knit naturally covered her waistline, leaving only the straight lines of the trousers extending from hip to ankle, like two parallel railway tracks vanishing at the edge of sight. One couldn't help imagining where the tracks led-to some definite destination, or simply stretching endlessly between heaven and earth.

She hadn't tied her hair up today. It fell over her shoulders, the ends slightly curled and gleaming dark brown in the morning light. A few loose strands hung beside her ears and swayed gently as she turned her head, their edges taking on a translucent amber where the light passed through them, like fragments of a church's stained-glass window.

She picked up the gray sculptural coat from The Row on the sofa. It reached mid-calf, and the instant she put it on, its exquisite softness enveloped her, as though she were being lifted by a cloud of warm mist. Within the mist was the warmth peculiar to cashmere, carrying an animal's body heat and the scent of sun-dried hay.

Finally, a touch of Margiela's Lazy Sunday Morning, and she was ready.

II

Shen Nian's studio was in an old industrial building in Boston's Seaport district.

The building had once been a cod-liver oil refinery. Its red-brick walls still bore traces of corrosion from salt spray decades ago, and its iron window frames had rusted dark brown, but the structure itself was exceptionally sturdy-

The brick walls over a meter thick and the massive cast-iron crossbeams had been designed to withstand the vibrations of heavy machinery.

Now they were just right for withstanding the almost violent strokes Shen Nian used when she painted.

A line had been spray-painted on the roll-up door in Shen Nian's own handwriting: "Come in, the door's unlocked."

When Su Jin pushed the door open, Shen Nian was standing before Los Angeles Night, palette knife in hand, adding something to the lower left corner of the painting.

Hearing the door, she turned and let her gaze rest on Su Jin for an instant. It wasn't an appraisal, but the instinctive reaction of a painter seeing beautiful light or color, as though confirming that a visual pleasure really existed.

Then she tilted her head and smiled, set the palette knife on a nearby shelf, and wiped her hands on her apron.

"You're here." She walked gracefully over to the worktable, pulled out a sketchbook, and handed it to Su Jin with a slight lift of her brows.

"Drafts for the poster. Take a look."

Su Jin took it and opened it to the first page.

The image showed a gray-blue sea covered in mist, with an almost invisible boat in the fog.

The horizon was set exceptionally low, leaving the sea to occupy only a quarter of the image. The remaining three quarters were sky-but the sky wasn't empty. It held the shadows of clouds, the shadows of seagulls, and the shadow of a person standing on the shore. The shadow stretched a long way, from the edge of the image out over the sea, like a bridge connecting land and ocean, or a sigh drawn long by the wind.

She turned to the second page.

The same sea, the same mist, but the boat was gone. An exceedingly thin line of golden light had appeared on the horizon, like the first glimmer of dawn before sunrise, or the last afterglow after sunset.

The shadow on the shore was still there, but fainter than on the first page, so faint it was almost merging with the mist, like someone retreating from reality into memory, then from memory into a dream.

The third page was the last.

The horizon had been pushed to the very bottom of the image, almost falling out of the frame, while the sky occupied ninety percent of the space. The sky was no longer gray-blue, but an immensely complex white-not blankness, but a white with depth, formed from countless whites layered together. Like a canvas painted over again and again, it concealed blue, pink, and the palest purple underneath, all covered by white, visible only in the slightest traces at unintentional edges.

Like a flash of tears at the corner of someone's eye as they struggled to restrain an emotion, swallowed back before they had time to fall. The shadow on the shore had vanished completely. There was nothing on the sea, only light-diffused through the mist, with no definite source, present everywhere.

Su Jin looked at it for a long time.

Her fingers lingered at the edge of the third page for about ten seconds, her fingertips brushing lightly over the paper as though touching the texture of that expanse of light.

She closed her eyes briefly, turned back to the first page and looked through it again. Then she shut the sketchbook and looked up at Shen Nian. "The third page."

Looking into her eyes, she said, "That's the one."

Shen Nian looked at her, the corners of her mouth curving. "The third page is my favorite too."

She paused, picked up a stick of charcoal from the worktable, spun it once between her fingers, and put it down. "You know, when I drew the third page, I wasn't thinking about the sea at Winter Harbor. I was thinking about you.

"The way you look reading papers in the MIT library-sitting by the window with sunlight falling on you from the side, your head lowered, hardly any expression on your face, but you can feel that something in her mind is turning at high speed.

"That state is this kind of white. It isn't empty; it's full. Full to overflowing, but you can't tell from the surface."

Su Jin said nothing.

She put the sketchbook on the worktable, walked over to Los Angeles Night, and stopped in front of it. The purple in the painting was deeper than the last time she'd seen it, and the golden cracks were wider. Light poured through the fissures, illuminating a small part of the black mountain range in the lower half.

In the golden light, the texture of the mountains revealed complex layers. They weren't simply black, but an interweaving of countless dark shades: deep purple, ink green, navy blue, charcoal gray. When the golden light fell on them, the colors came alive, like a piece of ore whose shell had been cracked open to reveal a dense mass of faintly glimmering crystals.

She stared at those layers for a long time, as though deciphering a map only she understood.

An absolutely brilliant idea suddenly occurred to Su Jin.

"Shen Nian." She turned around and braced both hands on the tabletop.

"Have you ever thought about turning your paintings into furniture?"

Shen Nian froze for a moment. "Furniture?"

"Your colors, your lines, your understanding of space." Su Jin turned and looked into her startled eyes.

"These things shouldn't just hang on walls.

"They can grow on tables and chairs, on sofa fabric, in the light and shadow of a lampshade.

"I know a friend in Milan who makes furniture. His workshop manufactures for many top brands. The quality is good, but it doesn't have a design language of its own.

"You have a design language, but no workshop. You could work together."

Shen Nian leaned against the worktable, both hands tucked into her apron pockets, and looked at her.

Her expression didn't change much, but light moved in her eyes-not light cast from outside, but light kindled from within.

"Are you saying I should make furniture?"

"I'm saying you should create a brand." Su Jin patted her shoulder.

"You and that workshop can become partners. You provide the designs, he provides the craftsmanship. I'll provide the money and the distribution channels.

"For the North America market, my boutique can be the exclusive agent.

"For the Asia market, Poly's client list is your pool of potential buyers."

She paused, the corners of her mouth lifting. "You decide the name. Keep it simple, one word."

Shen Nian pulled an old chair from beneath the worktable and sat down, pointing out the paint stains on her apron to Su Jin one by one. The ocher one had splashed onto it while she was mixing colors last autumn; the cobalt blue one came from accidentally knocking over her palette while painting the sea last month.

"I have a word in mind."

She looked ahead as she spoke, her finger tracing circles on her apron unconsciously.

"Moment."

Su Jin smiled. "What makes you say that?"

"I hope the brand can remind people of the countless beautiful moments in life."

The two women looked at each other and smiled.

"Right now my head is full of lines-should the back of a chair be curved or straight, should a tabletop be two centimeters thick or three, should a lampshade open upward or downward?"

She looked up. Her eyes were bloodshot, but the light beneath was bright.

"What I want to make isn't some 'artist crossing over into design' gimmick. I don't want to print my paintings on fabric and wrap it around a sofa. That's merchandise, not furniture.

"What I want is to make the things I use on canvas-how colors are layered, how lines flow, how empty space is left-grow into the furniture.

"Wood is my canvas, lacquer is my paint, and mortise-and-tenon joints are my brushstrokes."

Su Jin sat down on a low stool opposite the old chair. The two women faced each other across a worktable piled high with paint tubes and palette knives.

The gray daylight outside poured through the dusty window, cutting visible shafts through the air between them. Fine dust turned slowly within the beams.

"Then let's start with a chair." Su Jin's slender fingers moved slowly across the tabletop.

"One chair. A chair for one person. Let the curve of the back and the feeling of sitting in it show your design language-not drawn, but made."

Shen Nian tapped her knee lightly with a finger, as though confirming something.

"Your friend's workshop in Milan, what kinds of wood do they work with?"

"Walnut, oak, maple, cherry. Whatever wood you want, they can find it."

"Walnut." Shen Nian hardly hesitated.

"United States black walnut. Dark in color, with a fine grain, like ink spreading through water. It suits me."

She paused, drew a fresh sheet of sketch paper from the worktable, picked up the charcoal, and drew a curve-very lightly, very slowly, gliding from the left side of the paper to the right. Its arc resembled the gentle bend of a person's waist.

Su Jin watched the curve, imagining it growing out of the paper into a walnut board smoothed by a plane, its surface coated with a thin layer of hard wax oil, the pores of the wood breathing beneath her touch.

"If you get this one curve right, you have a good chair," she said.

"Everything else is superfluous."

Shen Nian looked up at her, the charcoal suspended in her hand.

"Moment."

Su Jin repeated the word, as though weighing it. "What if we added 'echo'?"

"A good piece of furniture is an echo of a moment in your life. Whatever you did, thought, or felt in that moment, the furniture remembers it for you."

"It also represents you, Shen Nian: what you never forget will surely find its echo."

"ME for short."

"ME..."

She put down the charcoal and braced both hands on her knees, leaning forward slightly, her eyes full of emotion and anticipation.

"All right. I'll make this chair first. Once it's done, you can take a look."

Su Jin nodded. "Next month, Hong Kong."

"Come with me for the auction of your Place of Return. After the auction, we'll go to Milan and meet the owner of the workshop."

Shen Nian stood and walked over to her. The two stood shoulder to shoulder before the enormous canvas.

III

After leaving Shen Nian's studio, Su Jin drove home. In her dressing room, she changed out of the soft, relaxed outfit she'd worn that morning and into something better suited to a long flight:

A black Balenciaga hoodie made of heavyweight cotton knit, as substantial as soft armor, but lined with a thin layer of fleece that felt warm and gentle against her skin;

A pair of light-blue straight-leg Acne Studios jeans, naturally faded at the knees, with the worn look that came only after years of wear;

And a pair of white Common Projects sneakers, their laces tied loosely, with a short length of white cotton sock showing at her ankles.

Her hair was tied into a high ponytail with a black elastic band, revealing her whole face and the small, sun-warmed patch of slightly reddened skin behind her ears.

In the afternoon light slanting through the car window, her face had a languid yet sharp beauty somewhere between weariness and wakefulness-the curve of her brow bone divided by the light and shadow outside the window, one part in the light, the other in shadow;

She picked up her car keys and went out.

She parked at the general aviation terminal of Logan International Airport, where the private plane was already waiting on the runway.

The flight took six hours. It was eight in the evening local time when she arrived in Los Angeles.

IV

Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos looked thinner than he did in photographs.

He wore a dark blue polo shirt with the collar hanging loosely open, khaki casual trousers, and a pair of canvas shoes.

He looked less like the CEO of a company with a market value of two hundred billion than an ordinary middle-aged man tending his lawn at home on a weekend.

But when he spoke, that relaxed air vanished. He spoke extremely quickly, his logic was tightly packed, and every sentence had a clear purpose, like a precisely thrown dart.

Dinner had been arranged in a private room at an Italy restaurant in Beverly Hills.

The restaurant was hidden deep in an alley with no sign. Its entrance was a rust-red wooden door, which opened onto a small gravel courtyard. A huge lemon tree grew there, several golden lemons still hanging from its branches, their skins gleaming waxily under the lights.

The private room was on the second floor, its windows facing the hills of Beverly Hills. Lights dotted the distant slopes, as though someone had scattered a handful of gold flecks across the sky.

Lu Shen had arrived ten minutes before Su Jin.

He sat on the sofa in the private room, holding a glass of sparkling water. He wore a navy-blue cashmere suit over a white shirt, no tie, the collar slightly open to reveal a small patch of skin beneath his Adam's apple.

When he saw Su Jin enter, he stood, his gaze lingering on her for a second. The pause held none of its former nervousness or anticipation, only a pure, instinctive appreciation of beauty, like someone unable to resist a second look at a fine painting before looking away, satisfied.

Su Jin had changed out of her gentle, relaxed outfit from the morning and chosen something more suitable for a business meeting.

A black double-breasted wool blazer from Saint Laurent, with sharp shoulders, a tightly cinched waist, and a slightly flared hem forming a clean trumpet shape.

Underneath was a white Equipment silk blouse, a small bow tied at the collar, formal and refined.

She wore black Saint Laurent smoking trousers with straight creases and ankle-length hems, paired with black suede Manolo Blahnik heels. The heels were eighty-five millimeters high, and the signature square buckles on the uppers gleamed discreetly in the light.

Her hair was gathered into a low bun and secured with a black tortoiseshell clip, revealing her whole face and the pair of Buccellati Opera earrings at her ears-openwork white-gold flowers that swayed slightly.

"Ted will be here in five minutes," he said with a smile, pulling out her chair.

Su Jin nodded and sat down, placing her bag beside her.

She glanced at the mountains outside the window, then at the tableware laid out on the table-three sets of knives and forks, three wineglasses, and a few rose petals scattered over the white tablecloth. They were from deep red roses nearing the end of their bloom, their edges already beginning to blacken, yet still possessing a decadent beauty under the lights.

Ted pushed the door open right on time.

He had the look of an elite white man in a movie.

His sharp gaze swept over the two of them. He shook Su Jin's hand, then Lu Shen's, before sitting down opposite them and opening the menu at once.

"The white truffle pasta here is excellent,"

he said, looking at Su Jin over the top of the menu. "But if you don't like it, we can order something else."

"I like it." Su Jin smiled.

Ted smiled too, and the atmosphere relaxed. He closed the menu and nodded to the waiter.

Then he leaned back in his chair and looked at Su Jin, undisguised curiosity in his eyes.

"Ms. Su," he said, "I watched your trailer. Three times."

Su Jin raised an eyebrow. "Did you like it?"

"I did." Ted nodded earnestly.

"But it wasn't your face that made me curious. It was your résumé.

"A visiting scholar at MIT, a Poly shareholder, president of a film and television company, a boutique in Paris, a mansion in Beverly Hills, and now a Netflix shareholder too."

He listed it all in one breath, then picked up his water glass and took a sip. "How old are you?"

"Twenty-five."

Ted set down his glass and made a short sound somewhere between astonishment and wonder.

"When I was twenty-five, I was renting videotapes from a video store in Arizona," he said.

"When you were twenty-five, you were already changing the world."

Su Jin didn't respond.

The server brought out the first course: thinly sliced beef with black truffle and Parmesan, plated as exquisitely as a still-life painting.

She picked up her fork, took a bite, and nodded. "Ted," she said,

"how far along is Netflix's Asia strategy?"

Ted picked up his fork too, speaking as he ate. "Our user growth for Asia content is the fastest anywhere in the world, but supply can't keep up.

"We're already doing very well with South Korea content, and Japan's doing well too.

"But China content-you know, because of policy, we can't get in.

"But there's something we want to do: use China actors, China directors, and China stories, then release the finished productions on Netflix worldwide.

"We wouldn't enter the China mainland market, just target overseas Chinese and audiences in other countries.

"Do you think it's feasible?"

Su Jin was silent for a moment. She set down her fork, picked up her napkin, and wiped the corner of her mouth.

"It's feasible. But on one condition."

Ted looked at her, waiting for her to continue.

"A co-production.

"Not the kind where Netflix puts up the money and the China team does the work. A real co-production, with collaboration starting at the creative stage.

"You have global data. You know what stories can interest audiences from different cultural backgrounds.

"We have storytellers who know how to tell a story that makes China viewers think, 'This is our story,'

"and foreign viewers think, 'So China stories can be this good too.'"

She paused. "I have a project that would work as a co-production."

Ted set down his fork. He leaned back in his chair, crossed his hands over his chest, and looked at her.

"Let's hear it."

Su Jin took a folded sheet of paper from her bag, unfolded it, and pushed it to the middle of the table.

There were only a few lines on the page, written in fountain pen. Like her, the handwriting was simple and clean, every stroke steady and sure.

"A suspense series.

"The story takes place in a Chinese community on the American West Coast. A Chinese female scholar who graduated from MIT disappears from her home, and the local police make no progress after three months of investigation.

"Her mother flies in from China. She doesn't speak English or understand United States law, but she starts looking for clues in her daughter's social networks: Weibo, Xiaohongshu, WeChat Moments.

"She discovers that her daughter's disappearance is connected to an unsolved case from ten years ago in Beijing.

"Two timelines, two countries, two judicial systems, one truth."

Ted looked at the few lines of writing and remained silent for a long time.

The server brought out the second course: white truffle pasta, covered with white truffle slices as thin as cicada wings. Their fragrance spread through the air, as intense as a dream. He didn't touch his fork, his eyes still fixed on the paper.

"This mother," he finally said, "who'll play her?"

"Lin Xiaozhou," Su Jin said. "A newcomer at my company."

Ted frowned deeply and looked up at her. "I haven't heard the name."

"You will." Su Jin met his gaze confidently.

"She doesn't need to be heard. She just needs to be seen."

Ted stared at her for a few seconds, then laughed.

He picked up his fork, twirled a mouthful of pasta, put it in his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. "Good. I'm interested in this project. What else?"

Su Jin took her phone from her bag, opened a page, and handed it to him.

On the screen was a proposal for a variety show, titled "The Creator Project."

The idea was to invite eight of the world's top designers-fashion designers, furniture designers, architects, graphic designers, lighting designers, sound designers-

to live in the same house and complete a design challenge each week, with viewers voting to decide who was eliminated.

The winner of the final episode would receive investment from Netflix to establish a design brand of their own.

Ted scrolled through a few pages and raised an eyebrow.

"It's a hybrid of 'Next in Fashion' and 'Project Runway,' but more international than either of them.

"The eight designers come from eight different countries, and the audience is global.

"The production costs for this show-"

"I'll cover them," Su Jin interrupted him.

"Netflix handles worldwide distribution. We split the proceeds fifty-fifty."

Ted put down the phone and studied her for a long time.

"Ms. Su," he said,

"do you know what your greatest advantage is? It's not your money, your face, or your MIT degree.

"It's that you show up in places you shouldn't be able to show up in at the same time. People in every circle think you're one of them, but you're an outsider to all of them.

"From that position, you see things most clearly."

Su Jin raised her wineglass and clinked it against his.

"So, are you doing this project or not?"

Ted laughed and drained his glass of red wine. "I'm in."

It was already eleven at night when dinner ended.

Lu Shen walked Su Jin to her car and opened the door for her. Once she was seated in the back, he bent down to look at her face.

In the dim yellow glow of the streetlights, there was no fatigue on it, only a quiet light, like a lamp turned down low-not dazzling, but bright enough.

"What's on your schedule tomorrow?" he asked tentatively.

"Back to Boston. The last mock competition before the final." She paused. "What about you?"

"Back to Beijing. Zhao Mingyuan needs my help reviewing the legal terms for the Windbreaking Pictures acquisition."

Su Jin nodded. "Have a safe trip."

Lu Shen straightened up and closed the car door.

The car slowly pulled out of the alley and merged into the Beverly Hills night.

He stood where he was, watching its taillights disappear at the intersection, then turned and walked toward his own car.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. It was a message from Su Jin: Thanks for today. Half the reason Ted came was you.

He looked at the words, a smile curving his lips, and replied: That's what a partner should do.

Su Jin rode home slowly in her newly acquired stretch Lincoln through the twilight.

Her house was halfway up a hill. From the porthole, it was just a tiny point glowing with warm white light.

But she knew that every window in the house faced the Pacific Ocean, that every bedroom offered a view of the entire sunset, and that at night the swimming pool became a black mirror, reflecting the moon and stars overhead.

She pushed open the door, crossed the foyer, left her suitcase outside the walk-in closet, and went into the master bedroom.

The bathroom lights were voice-activated. The instant she entered, warm yellow light came on along the seams between the ceiling and walls, illuminating the entire bathroom like a cocoon wrapped in light. The bathtub was already full.

The housekeeper had filled it remotely through the smart system before she landed. The water was kept at thirty-eight degrees, and a few pieces of dried hinoki wood floated on the surface, giving off a faint, fresh scent of the forest.

She undressed, twisted up her hair and secured it with a claw clip, then stepped barefoot onto the white marble steps beside the tub and slowly slid into the water.

The temperature was just right, a little warmer than her body but not hot, like the pressure of an embrace-not the tight kind that left you breathless, but a gentle one that surrounded you and made you feel caught.

The scent of hinoki spread through the steam. She closed her eyes and felt the water's buoyancy lift her body, her shoulders, spine, waist, knees-every joint that usually bore the weight of gravity was released in that moment,

like a piano with all its strings loosened, lying there quietly without making a sound.

She soaked for about twenty minutes, lying on her back with her head on the silicone pillow at the edge of the tub, watching the recessed light strips in the ceiling. Their warm white glow spread across it like a small patch of moonlight plucked from the sky and hung indoors;

then she turned onto her side. She could feel her body slowly relaxing in the water, like a lump of dough that had been kneaded for a long time and was finally beginning to rise, every air pocket opening to draw in warm, hinoki-scented air.

When she emerged from the tub, the hot water had steamed her skin to a soft, dewy pink that spread from her cheekbones down to her chest, like a painting washed with watercolor.

She wrapped herself in a white Frette bath towel and stood before the mirror, looking at her freshly bathed reflection. Her hair was fastened at the back of her head with the claw clip, and a few loose strands had slipped from her hairline and clung wetly to her temples, framing the face the steam had flushed slightly red.

In the bathroom's warm yellow light, her eyes were an exceptionally deep amber. The golden rings around her pupils stood out more clearly in the damp air, like agate soaked in water.

She smiled at herself in the mirror, the curve of her lips as light as a petal falling onto water. It wasn't a smile for anyone to see, only an expression of satisfaction with herself that came naturally after her body had relaxed completely.

She put on a robe, left the bathroom, and sat down on the khaki velvet sofa in the bedroom.

The housekeeper had already prepared dinner: a small plate of seared wagyu, sliced paper-thin, slightly crisp and charred at the edges but still tender pink in the middle, sprinkled with a few grains of fleur de sel and a small pinch of freshly grated wasabi;

a bowl of clear broth made with kombu and bonito flakes, transparent as amber, with a small piece of silken tofu and a few leaves of mizuna at the bottom;

a small plate of pickled seasonal vegetables-daikon, carrots, and cucumber, marinated overnight in rice vinegar and yuzu peel, sweet, tart, and refreshing;

and a small bowl of white rice, the grains plump and glistening, topped with a thin layer of sea urchin that still trembled slightly when parted with chopsticks.

She set the tray on her lap and ate slowly, bite by bite, stopping for a sip of tea after each mouthful.

The tea was sencha, brewed with water at seventy degrees. It was neither bitter nor astringent, with only the faint scent of sun-dried grass.

Halfway through the meal, she picked up her phone and opened Instagram.

Her account had twenty-eight million followers. Her last post had been three days ago.

After a moment's thought, she opened her photo album and browsed through her recent pictures.

One had been taken casually in the walk-in closet before she went out that day. It wasn't a selfie, but a picture of her reflection in the mirror: she was wearing that cream-white Lemaire knit top and Joseph's dark charcoal wide-leg trousers, her hair loose, holding a pair of silver Maria Black earrings she was about to put on.

The photograph had warm yellow lighting. The walk-in closet lights fell on the mirror and were refracted into a soft halo, giving her profile the texture of a classical oil painting-not the heavily retouched, poreless kind of texture, but one that breathed and held warmth.

You could see the path of the light across her skin, from cheekbone to jaw, from jaw to neck, every inch illuminated and then reclaimed by shadow.

She posted the photo with a single line:

A morning in Boston

After posting it, she put her phone on the sofa arm and continued eating dinner.

As the wagyu melted on her tongue, the sweetness of the fat and the saltiness of the fleur de sel burst forth at once. Stirred up by the wasabi's heat, the three flavors fought a battle in her mouth, then shook hands and made peace, sliding down her throat together.

She ate the same way she did everything else: focused, slowly, without wasting a single bite.

Her phone buzzed on the sofa arm.

She didn't look.

It buzzed again. She still didn't look.

She continued eating, putting the last mouthful of rice and sea urchin into her mouth, licking a grain of rice from her lips with the tip of her tongue, then taking a sip of sencha and letting its warmth spread from her throat all the way down to her stomach.

She put the tray on the coffee table beside her, leaned back against the sofa, and picked up her phone.

Her Instagram notifications had exploded.

The post had been up for fifteen minutes and had already passed six hundred thousand likes. Comments were pouring in at a rate of hundreds per second.

She casually browsed the comments, and several that had been voted to the top appeared-

"Eastern and Western beauty blend perfectly in her. I bet she's mixed-race.

"I think she wore Lemaire to discuss a new furniture brand. Lemaire's slogan is 'making comfortable clothes.' What would this brand's slogan be?

"Making chairs you never want to get up from?"

"Did you notice the earrings in her hand? Maria Black, a Danish designer. Every pair is handmade, irregular, and asymmetrical.

"That taste. I'm in awe."

"What she's wearing today: Lemaire plus Joseph plus The Row plus Maria Black.

"Four brands, four countries, four styles, and on her they look like a single outfit.

"That's what dressing well is-not knowing how to buy expensive things, but knowing how to put different things together and make them look like they always belonged together."

Su Jin looked at the comments, a smile curving her lips.

The screen cast a cool white light over her face, making her features more distinct. The curve of her brow bones, the straight line of her nose, the outline of her lips-in the phone screen's cool glow, they took on a crisp beauty entirely different from their warmth in daylight.

She put down her phone, stood up, and walked to the window.

The Beverly Hills night spread out beneath her. The countless lights of Los Angeles stretched from the foot of the hill into the unseen distance, like a shattered golden river.

Far away, the Pacific Ocean lay dark and silent. Only the occasional flash of a ship's lights reminded you that there was water there, waves, and tireless tides that had traveled all the way from the far side of the ocean.

She stood by the window in a white silk robe, her hair still wet. Droplets fell from its ends onto the shoulder of her robe, leaving a small dark patch.

She didn't wipe it away. She simply stood there, letting the December night breeze of Los Angeles slip through the gap in the window and brush her cheeks and neck, carrying moisture from the distant Pacific Ocean and the scent of eucalyptus on the hillside.

She stood for about ten minutes, then turned, walked back to the bed, pulled back the covers, and lay down.

The bedding was pale gray Frette linen, washed so many times that it had become exceptionally soft, with a gentle warmth against her skin, polished smooth by time and use together.

As she gradually drifted to sleep, the bedside lamp switched off automatically, and the bedroom fell dark.

The curtains weren't drawn completely. A shaft of moonlight squeezed through the gap and spread a silver-white band across the carpet, its end falling beside her pillow like a letter someone had left before she fell asleep.

She turned over and buried her face in the pillow.

A faint trace of gardenia-scented shampoo lingered on it. She breathed in deeply, then slowly exhaled.

Her breathing grew long and even, the rise and fall of her chest growing smaller and smaller, like the sea after the tide had gone out, the last few ripples slowly flattening against the beach and vanishing into the night.

She fell asleep.