"Ugh, she's here again." I turn towards the direction Li Sha is looking in and notice a familiar woman in a white dress. The woman's face is has no makeup except for a spot of mascara and a hint of lip gloss. Her clean and innocent appearance would never allow one to imagine that she's a stalker who can't accept rejection. But she is one and like a bulldozer she's been coming to our store for...

"Boss isn't even interested in her and he's told her this clearly. Yet she keeps coming!"

"Is he...popular?" I ask, my eyes fixed on the books I'm shelving.

"With a face like that what do you think?" Li Sha asks raising a brow. I feel a pang in my chest, he is very beautiful. 

"Do you...like him?" I ask reaching for another book.

"Me? No way. Besides, I'm already taken~" She hums. At this I feel something loosen within me but I shrug it away. 

"I'm done shelving."

"Are you?" She asks, snapping out of her revere. "We've been pretty slow today so why don't you go help boss in the back?"

"He's here?"

"Yup. And usually he'd be making rounds around the shop rather than sticking to the back but..." She darts a dark look towards the white dress lady. "Anyway, you can help him back there...hey, where did you go?" She asks looking around, realizing that I've already left. "Wow he moves fast." She shrugs.

Meanwhile, I'm rapidly making my way towards the back room, turning past shelves until I see the door. I reach for it and open it, only to pause. A slender figure stands in the center of the room like a solitary bamboo pole, sunlight pooling around him through the singular window, giving the impressing of a halo. For a moment I stand entranced, until my eye catches sight of something. I launch myself forward, pushing him out of the way just in time as several unstable books fall from the highest shelf.

As they fall with a thud, dust rises up around us. I pause for a second, felling something warm and soft surrounding my face. Yet, despite it's softness I can feel firmness underneath-cough! I jerk backwards, off of Chen Mingzhu. What was I just doing? What the hell was I just doing? 

"Are you okay boss?" I ask, gazing at the ground, my ears burning.

"Thanks to you." He replies with a faint smile. I meet his gaze for a second, before my eyes dart away. "Uh, what were you doing there boss?" I say, trying to find a conversation topic to distract myself. 

It's silent. I glance over at Chen Mingzhu. He's gazing off into the distance. The way he looks now, it's like he's not here but somewhere off into the distance and one day he'll just disappear...

I feel my chest tighten and open my mouth to speak. 

"Have you heard of the dragon and it's pearl?" I blink, hearing him speak first.

"Yeah...I heard the local storyteller a few days ago."

"Well, what do you think of it?" He asks, looking up at me. Under his focused gaze, I feel a sudden pressure. As a top student I rarely, if ever, feel pressured to answer the teacher's question in class yet now I seem to understand what my classmates mean when they complain about it. 

"Uh...well, it's about warning against human greed..." I inevitably find myself parroting Li Sha. 

"-But what about the dragon and it's pearl?" Chen Mingzhu interrupts me.

"What?" 

"What do you think about the relationship between the dragon and it's pearl?"

"...Relationship?" I scratch my head. I mean in Li Sha's words the pearl turned a boy into a dragon but...

"The idea that two people are destined for each other." He speaks again. 

I blink. "Boss I didn't know that you were such a romantic." Instantly, Chen Mingzhu's eyes, that had initially been fixed on me, lower and with a sigh, he turns back towards the bookshelf.

"Forget it."

I feel my heart sinking within my chest and I desperately want to call out to him, to ask him to stop, to explain. It's as if I've just failed some sort of test. Why...? His gaze is no longer on me. Instead it's on the selves and I feel a sense of loss that pierces through me. 

Bang! The door opens and Li Sha stands there. "She's gone if you want to come out boss!" She proclaims, pushing up her glasses with her finger.

"Alright, thanks." And with that, Chen Mingzhu leaves. 

"What are you just standing there for?" Li She asks me.

"...I'm coming."

"Alright." She turns and strides out of the room. Just as I'm about to follow her, a sudden thought hits me and I turn back towards the shelf. There, in a corner is the red book Chen Mingzhu was preoccupied by before the incident. And on the spine in gold lettering I see The Dragon's Pearl. 

I blink, before turning to join the others.