Chapter 22 - A Solitary Spring Cleaning
*Clink, clink.*
The sound of glass meeting glass echoed softly through the quiet, drafty room. A transparent jar swayed gently in the pale winter sunlight that filtered through the grime-streaked windows of the derelict building. On its side, a hand-written label was affixed with meticulous care, the ink stark against the glass: *Property of Si Jiang*.
Si Jiang watched the jar for a moment, his gaze lingering on it with a strange, reverent intensity. To anyone else, it might have been a discarded container, but to him, it was a vessel of his own submission, a treasure that anchored him to this place. He carefully placed the jar back onto its designated spot on the sofa, ensuring it sat perfectly level, before picking up a damp, grey rag to begin his chores.
In truth, there wasn't much to clean in the unfinished apartment. The furniture was sparse, and their world was small, confined mostly to the living area where they ate and slept. Many of the other rooms remained sealed off, their doors closed to the world, gathering thick layers of dust that Zong Yan never bothered to disturb. She lived like a ghost in a shell, and Si Jiang had become the spirit that haunted the periphery of her life.
Si Jiang himself was hardly a man built for domestic labor. In his previous life as the pampered Young Master Si, he had barely lifted a finger for anything more strenuous than a golf club or a champagne flute. But as the weather turned biting and the calendar crept toward the end of the year, a primal, cultural instinct began to stir within him. In ordinary households, the approach of the Lunar New Year signaled the time for a thorough spring cleaning—a shedding of the old to make way for the new.
In the Si family villa, such things had always been the province of a small army of silent, efficient domestic workers. Si Jiang’s memories of the New Year were not of soap suds and brooms, but of cold, cavernous halls filled with the scent of expensive incense and the stifling weight of expectation. When his grandparents were still alive, he would follow his parents to the ancestral estate. It was a grand affair, yet the air was always thick with tension. A dozen relatives would gather around a table laden with delicacies, each harboring their own hidden agendas and petty schemes behind masks of familial piety.
Once the clock struck midnight and the obligatory festivities concluded, the cycle of social performance would begin. He would be paraded from one banquet to another, offering practiced New Year greetings to business associates and participating in the hollow rituals of the elite.
The three of them—father, mother, and son—rarely sat down for a genuine, quiet New Year’s Eve dinner. As soon as the season of public appearances ended, his parents would vanish back into the machinery of the Si Group, leaving Si Jiang alone in the vast, echoing villa. He had always hated that silence. To escape it, he would seek out Chen Bai and their circle of fair-weather friends, drowning the loneliness in expensive liquor and the cacophony of nightclubs. In the glow of neon lights and the clinking of glasses, he could almost forget the emptiness waiting for him at home.
But when the night ended and the crowds dispersed, he would return to that hollow mansion, turning on every television in the house just to fill the void with artificial noise while he scrolled through a phone full of sycophantic messages.
Now, he was no longer Young Master Si. This New Year would be different—solitary, meager, and perhaps even colder—but it was a life he had chosen to embrace.
He moved through the living room, wiping down the few surfaces they owned with a focused, almost meditative diligence. When he reached the door to the master bedroom, he hesitated. The memory of the previous night—the warmth of the bed and the fleeting favor Zong Yan had shown him—tugged at his heart. He felt like a courtier who had been granted a single night of grace before being relegated back to the "Cold Palace" of his rug on the floor.
Taking a deep breath, he reached out and pushed the door open.
