January third.

The last day of the New Year's holiday.

It was also the day Zhang Xiaoyan moved.

She was up early. First she packed all her clothes into the suitcase, then folded up the bedding and put it into a woven sack. She hadn't been in Shanghai long, so there wasn't much luggage — apart from clothes and bedding, everything else was household stuff. Anything awkward to pack she gathered into a bucket, and the rest of the odds and ends went into her schoolbag.

Then she started mopping the floor and wiping down the table, and in no time that little room of ten-odd square meters was spotless — tidier than it had been when she moved in.

She was about to call her landlady when a message came through on WeChat.

It was from Li Tongwen.

"I'm here. Which building are you in?"

Zhang Xiaoyan read it and went straight to the window to look down. One glance and she spotted Li Tongwen not far off, so she pushed the window open in a hurry and called out to him.

Li Tongwen heard her and headed for her building.

Zhang Xiaoyan went down at a jog.

It was a run-down old complex. It had originally been resettlement housing, but the location wasn't great, so more than eighty percent of the apartments had been rented out by their owners, and the result was a mixed crowd and a mess of a place.

Every stairwell was papered over with flyers for lock-opening services and drain clearing. The plaster had crumbled and flaked where the salts came through, so most of the skim coat had come off the ceilings, and with no lights in the stairwell the whole thing was thoroughly oppressive.

Zhang Xiaoyan led the way and said, a little embarrassed, "I really could have managed on my own."

Li Tongwen answered at once. "I've got nothing to do over the break. An extra pair of hands saves time. Yuan Yuqi wanted to come too, but she thought the room you're moving into didn't look clean enough, so she's…