Chapter 14: Chasing Ghosts
The keynote speaker’s words dissolved into a distant hum. Vy sat in the front row of the amphitheater, her notebook open on her lap, her pen held so tight her knuckles were white. The neat lines of her earlier notes had devolved into a frantic, subconscious sketch: the column of the Place Vendôme, repeated over and over, each one stabbed through with a sharp, intersecting line.
She had reviewed nothing. The woman on stage, a renowned urban economist, might as well have been speaking a dead language. All Vy could see was the casual intimacy of that hand on a black-sleeved arm, the golden light framing them like deities.
The applause was a sudden, jarring noise. Vy flinched, then joined in mechanically. The crowd rose, a rustle of wool and crepe. She gathered her things, her movements slow, deliberate, forcing herself back into her body. She had a job. She needed to get a quote from the speaker for Carson. She filed out with the others, a somber procession towards the post-lecture reception.
The reception was in a vaulted stone cellar beneath the Sorbonne, all exposed beams and candlelight. Waiters circulated with trays of wine. Vy took a glass of water. She needed her head clear. She needed to find the speaker, ask her intelligent question, and then she could leave. She could go back to her lemon-polish room, put in her earbuds, and listen to an economics podcast until she fell asleep. That was the plan.
She was scanning the room for the economist’s grey bun when a different profile made her blood stall.
Across the cellar, leaning against a rough-hewn stone pillar, was Sun Yining.
She was not dressed for a scholarly reception. She wore a simple, impossibly cut sheath dress the color of charcoal, her hair twisted into a loose, elegant knot. She held a glass of red wine, untouched, and was listening with a polite, distant smile to an older man who was gesticulating widely. She looked utterly out of place, a sleek panther in a room of scholarly owls.
Vy’s feet rooted to the ancient floor. She couldn’t breathe. How? Why?
As if sensing the weight of her gaze, Yining’s eyes slid across the crowded room and found hers. The polite smile vanished, replaced by something raw and immediate. She straightened, murmured something to the man, and began moving through the crowd.
Vy turned. She walked briskly, not towards an exit—that would mean pushing through the thickest part of the throng—but towards a small, arched doorway that led, she hoped, to a restroom or a storage closet. Anywhere. She pushed the heavy oak door open and slipped through.
It was a narrow, dimly lit corridor lined with stacked chairs. The sounds of the reception muffled to a dull roar. She leaned against the cool stone wall, pressing her palms flat against it.
The door opened again. The golden light from the cellar spilled in, outlining Yining’s silhouette.
She stepped inside and let the door swing shut, plunging them back into near-darkness. The only light came from a single, dusty sconce further down the passage.
“Running away again, meimei?” Yining’s voice was soft, but it filled the confined space.
Vy said nothing. She could hear her own pulse in her ears.
Yining took a step closer. The scent of her—not jasmine from the Ritz, but her own clean, familiar scent of sandalwood and rain—washed over Vy. “I got your text. The one you didn’t send. The one you wrote standing by the column.” She took another step. “I saw you. A blur, and then you were gone.”
“You were busy,” Vy managed, her voice a dry crackle.
“With work.”
“Is that what you call it?”
Yining went very still. In the weak light, her expression was unreadable. “Ah,” she breathed, the syllable heavy with understanding. “You saw Kao.”
The sound of the name, spoken aloud in that intimate dark, was a physical blow.
“It’s not what you think,” Yining said. She didn’t move closer, but her presence seemed to expand, filling the corridor.
“I don’t think anything.” Vy’s lie was transparent, even to herself.
“She’s a friend. An old friend. We were on set together today. That’s all.” Yining’s tone was factual, but there was an edge to it, a frustration. “You flew across an ocean to a symposium, Vy. You didn’t call. You didn’t text. You just… appeared like a ghost and then vanished.” She did take a step forward now, closing the final distance between them. “What did you expect to find?”
Vy’s back was against the wall. Literally. The rough stone dug through her blazer. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “Clarity.”
Yining laughed, a short, pained sound. She set her wine glass down on a stack of chairs. “Clarity. From me.” She reached out, her fingers not touching Vy, but resting on the wall beside her head, caging her in. “You get on a stage with your models and your data and you can predict the economic future of a rural co-op. But this?” Her other hand came up, mirroring the first. “This terrifies you. Because there’s no spreadsheet for it.”
Vy was trembling. From the cold stone, from the proximity, from the awful, shining truth of the words. “I saw you with her. You looked… seamless.”
“We’re not,” Yining said, her voice dropping. “We never were.” She leaned in, her lips brushing the shell of Vy’s ear. Her breath was warm. “You want to know what I was thinking, when I saw you across the square? I was thinking, ‘That ghost has the posture of a girl who spent too many hours in a library.’ I was thinking, ‘Her coat is too thin for this weather.’ I was thinking, ‘She’s the only real thing in this entire made-up scene.’” She pulled back just enough to look into Vy’s eyes. “And then you ran.”
Vy’s resolve, her careful, constructed professionalism, crumbled. A small, broken sound escaped her throat.
Yining’s gaze softened. The intensity didn’t vanish, but it transformed. The teasing edge melted into something warmer, more sorrowful. “Oh, meimei,” she murmured, the old endearment a balm and a wound. “You are so brave and so very scared.”
One of her hands left the wall and came to rest lightly on Vy’s waist, over the crisp cotton of her shirt, just above the hip. The touch was electric, a current straight through the layers of fabric. “Let me see you,” Yining whispered, her eyes searching Vy’s face. “Not the researcher. Not the ghost. Just you.”
Vy’s mind was static. All that existed was the pressure of that hand, the scent of sandalwood, the plea in those dark eyes. She gave the smallest, almost imperceptible nod.
Yining’s fingers curled, gathering the fabric of her shirt and blazer. She leaned in again, her forehead gently touching Vy’s. They stayed like that for a long moment, breathing the same air in the dusty dark. The noise from the reception was a world away.
“Your hotel,” Yining murmured. “Where is it?”
“Rue Cujas,” Vy breathed. “It’s… small.”
“Mine is big. And empty.” Yining pulled back, her hand sliding from Vy’s waist to grasp her hand. Her fingers were cool, sure. “Come with me.”
It wasn’t a question. It was an offer, a bridge thrown across a chasm of missed connections and misunderstandings. Vy looked down at their joined hands, then up at Yining’s face, which was suddenly, terribly vulnerable. The magnetic KOL was gone. In her place was just a woman in a dark corridor, asking.
Vy thought of Lin, of the professional path laid out for her. She thought of the spreadsheet waiting on her laptop, of the grant report due. She thought of the fake jade bracelet in the drawer of a different hotel room.
She tightened her grip on Yining’s hand.
They left through a service exit, emerging into a damp Parisian alley. Yining didn’t let go of her hand as she hailed a taxi. She gave the address to the Ritz in flawless, effortless French.
The back of the taxi was a capsule of silence. Vy stared out the window at the blurring city lights, hyper-aware of the warmth of Yining’s thigh beside hers, their still-joined hands resting on the seat between them. No words were spoken. The decision hung in the air, fragile and immense.
The taxi pulled up under the glowing awning. The doorman opened the door. Vy stepped out, her student’s shoes sinking into the plush carpet of the entrance. The lobby was a spectacle of gilded opulence, a far cry from her own modest courtyard view. Yining led her through it with a casual ownership, nodding at a concierge, her heels clicking on the marble.
The elevator was mirrored. Vy caught a glimpse of herself: hair slightly disheveled, eyes wide, standing next to Yining’s poised reflection. They looked like strangers from different dimensions accidentally sharing a lift.
The doors opened on a hushed hallway. It glowed with the soft, golden light of chandeliers, the polished marble floor reflecting their footsteps. The air was thick with the scent of jasmine and expensive perfume. A murmur of Mandarin and French drifted from a suite down the hall.
Yining stopped at a door, slid her key card, and pushed it open. She stepped inside, pulling Vy gently after her.
The suite was vast, silent, and dimly lit by the city lights through tall windows. A lavish sitting area, a bedroom visible through an open door. It was terrifying in its grandeur.
Yining let go of her hand and turned, leaning back against the closed door. She studied Vy in the soft gloom, her expression unreadable.
“So,” Yining said, her voice a low thread in the quiet room. “Here we are.”
Vy stood in the center of the extravagant room, feeling like an artifact placed under a too-bright light. The momentum that had carried her here from the stone corridor suddenly drained away, leaving only a vast, echoing uncertainty.
Yining watched her, waiting.
The chasm between the column in the square and this silent room felt infinite. One step, Vy thought. Just one.
Just one.
Vy’s feet seemed to unlock from the marble floor. She took a single, shuddering step forward into the suite’s deeper gloom. The city’s glow through the windows outlined the lavish furniture in ghostly shapes. Her heart was a frantic thing against her ribs.
“It’s very quiet,” she said, her voice too loud in the hushed space.
“I sent the staff away,” Yining replied from her post by the door. Her tone was casual, but her gaze was anything but. “Didn’t want an audience.”
Vy took another step. The plush carpet swallowed any sound. She stopped by a large sofa, her fingers brushing the cold, slick leather. “For the ghost, or for the KOL?”
“For us.” Yining pushed off from the door. She moved silently, a shadow detaching itself from the wall. She didn’t approach directly, but drifted toward a sideboard where a crystal decanter glittered. “Wine? Or something stronger? You look like you could use it.”
“I’m okay.” The lie was automatic. Her mouth was dust.
“You’re not.” Yining poured a single glass of amber liquid, the glug of it obscenely loud. She didn’t drink it. She just held the glass, swirling it gently. “You’re in the lion’s den, meimei. All your spreadsheets are back on Rue Cujas.” A faint smile touched her lips. “It’s just you and the big, bad wolf now.”
“You’re not a wolf.” Vy’s protest was weak.
“No?” Yining set the glass down untouched and finally turned to face her fully. The distant light caught the planes of her face, her dark eyes pools of unreadable intent. “What am I, then?”
The question hung between them, vast and dangerous. Vy’s mind flashed with images: the charismatic streamer on a rooftop, the vulnerable voice on a midnight call, the distant figure laughing with a beautiful woman in a golden square. They were all her, and none of them were the complete picture.
“Complicated,” Vy finally whispered.
Yining let out a soft breath, almost a laugh. “That’s one word for it.” She took a slow, deliberate step forward. Then another. The distance in the large room seemed to shrink with each movement. “Your friend Lin. She would have a better word, I’m sure. ‘Predator,’ maybe. ‘Distraction.’” She was close now, close enough for Vy to see the subtle weariness under her eyes, the faint tension in her jaw. “She’s not entirely wrong.”
“Don’t talk about her,” Vy said, a spike of unexpected loyalty piercing her haze.
“Why?” Yining’s head tilted. “She’s part of this equation, isn’t she? The safe, sensible future. The one that makes your professors nod with approval.” Another step. They were almost touching now. Vy could smell the wine on her breath, see the individual lashes framing her eyes. “The one that doesn’t involve getting pinned in dark corridors by messy, inconvenient women.”
The memory of the stone wall against her back was visceral. Vy’s breath hitched. “I came here.”
“You did.” Yining reached out. Her fingers didn’t grab, didn’t pull. They simply skimmed the line of Vy’s jaw, a touch so light it could have been imagined. Vy’s skin erupted in goosebumps. “Your heart is pounding so hard I can see it in your throat.”
Vy couldn’t speak. She could only feel—the whisper-soft touch tracing her jaw, the dizzying proximity, the terrifying freedom of having walked through that door.
“Tell me to stop,” Yining murmured, her thumb brushing the corner of Vy’s mouth. Her voice was a low vibration in the silent room. “Tell me this is a mistake. Tell me you’re going back to your sensible hotel and your sensible life.”
Vy’s lips parted, but no sound came out. The words wouldn’t form. Every cell in her body was screaming the opposite.
A slow, genuine smile spread across Yining’s face, one Vy hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t performative or teasing. It was warm, relieved, and fiercely tender. “That’s what I thought,” she whispered.
Then she closed the last, infinitesimal gap between them.
The first kiss was not a claiming. It was a question. It was soft, a mere brush of lips, testing. Vy froze for a half-second, her mind a whiteout of panic and want. Then her body answered before her brain could interfere. Her hands came up, not pushing away, but clutching the soft wool of Yining’s dress at her hips. She kissed her back.
It was like stepping into a current. The softness deepened. Yining’s mouth moved against hers with a sure, devastating patience. One hand cradled the back of Vy’s head, fingers tangling in her hair. The other settled firmly on the small of her back, pulling her in until their bodies aligned. The chill of the suite vanished, replaced by a radiating heat that started at their joined lips and spread through Vy’s chest, down her limbs.
She moaned.
The sound was soft, involuntary, a release of all the coiled tension from the airport, the silent calls, the watching from afar. It was a sound of surrender, and of discovery.
Yining inhaled sharply at the sound, a quick, startled gasp against Vy’s mouth. The hand on her back tightened, pulling her even closer. The kiss changed. It became less a question and more an answer, deeper, hungrier. Vy responded in kind, her shyness dissolving in the heat of it. She tasted of wine and something uniquely her, a dark, warm flavor that made Vy dizzy.
When they finally broke apart, they were both breathing raggedly. Vy’s lips felt swollen, sensitive. Yining rested her forehead against Vy’s, their noses brushing, sharing the same air.
“Okay,” Yining breathed, the word a vibration between them. “Okay.”
Then her lips were on Vy’s again, and again, shorter kisses peppering her mouth, her jaw, the frantic pulse point on her throat. Each one sent a new, electric jolt through Vy’s system. Her hands, still fisted in Yining’s dress, started to explore, sliding up to feel the strong lines of her back through the fine fabric.
Yining’s own hands were moving, too. One slipped beneath Vy’s blazer, pushing it off her shoulders. It slid to the floor with a soft thud. Her fingers found the first button of Vy’s simple cotton shirt.
She paused, her mouth hovering over Vy’s. “This?” she asked, her voice thick.
Vy nodded, incapable of speech. The button came undone under Yining’s precise fingers. Then the next. The cool air of the suite kissed the newly exposed skin of her chest, making her shiver. Yining’s warm palm followed, sliding over her ribcage, coming to rest just below the curve of her breast.
The touch was so intimate, so far beyond anything Vy had ever experienced, that a fresh wave of trembling took her. It wasn’t fear. It was a shocking, profound ache.
Yining felt it. She slowed, pulling back just enough to look into Vy’s eyes. In the dim light, her expression was fierce with tenderness. “We can stop,” she said, every word deliberate. “Any time. You say the word.”
Vy looked at her—really looked. She saw the famous face, yes, but she also saw the woman who missed her voice, who called from Paris at four in the morning, who was offering her a choice, right now, in this ridiculous, gilded room. The last of her resistance crumbled.
“Don’t stop,” Vy whispered.
It was all the permission Yining needed. Her mouth found Vy’s again, more insistent now. Her other hand came up to finish the work on the buttons. The shirt fell open. Vy’s bra was simple, practical cotton, utterly out of place in this opulent scene. Yining didn’t seem to care. Her lips left Vy’s mouth and trailed a line of fire down her throat, over her collarbone.
She kissed the sensitive skin above the lace of the bra. Vy gasped, her head falling back. Her fingers now clutched at Yining’s shoulders for balance. Yining’s hands smoothed over her bare waist, her thumbs tracing the dip of her hips.
Then, with a certainty that unraveled Vy completely, Yining found the clasp at her back and released it. The bra loosened. Yining didn’t pull it away. She simply eased the straps down her arms, her movements reverent, slow. The fabric slipped away.
Vy was bare from the waist up, standing in the Ritz Paris, exposed and utterly vulnerable. She should have felt cold, but she was burning.
Yining’s gaze swept over her, dark and full of awe. “You’re so beautiful,” she murmured, the words a raw scrape of sound. “So real.”
Her touch followed her gaze. Her hands were warm and slightly rough as they cupped Vy, her thumbs stroking over her nipples. The sensation was so sharp, so overwhelmingly good, that Vy cried out, a short, sharp sound that echoed in the quiet suite.
A low groan escaped Yining’s throat. She bent her head, her mouth replacing her hands. The wet heat of her tongue, the gentle suction, the flick of her thumb—it was a symphony of sensation that short-circuited Vy’s higher brain functions. Her knees buckled.
Yining caught her, strong arms wrapping around her, holding her up. She walked her backward, never breaking contact, until the backs of Vy’s thighs hit the edge of the massive bed. With a gentle press, Vy sat down, the plush duvet yielding beneath her. Yining knelt on the floor in front of her, looking up at her with eyes that seemed to drink her in.
“Lie back,” Yining instructed, her voice husky.
Vy obeyed, sinking back into the impossibly soft mattress. She watched, her chest heaving, as Yining peeled off her own charcoal dress in one smooth, practiced motion. She was wearing nothing underneath.
The sight of her, all lean muscle and golden skin in the city-light, was almost too much. Vy had seen her body in curated photos, in swimsuits on livestreams. This was different. This was real, immediate, and breathtakingly hers to see.
Yining joined her on the bed, settling over her, their skin meeting from chest to thigh. The full, warm weight of her was anchoring, glorious. She propped herself on one elbow, her free hand tracing the lines of Vy’s face, her neck, her shoulder.
“You’re sure?” Yining asked one last time, her body a question mark over Vy’s.
In answer, Vy reached up and pulled her down into a searing kiss. It was all the confirmation she needed. Yining’s hand slid lower, over the flat plane of Vy’s stomach, past the waistband of her trousers. Her fingers found the button, the zipper.
As they gave way, Yining’s mouth traveled down Vy’s body, mapping her with kisses and gentle bites. She nudged Vy’s legs apart with her own and settled between them. Her breath was hot against the thin fabric of Vy’s underwear.
Vy’s head thrashed on the pillow. She was floating, a creature of pure sensation. The world had narrowed to this bed, this woman, this gathering storm inside her. All the tangled threads of the past months—the longing, the jealousy, the academic pressure, the ghostly apparitions—were pulled taut, winding into a single, incandescent point right here, right now.
Yining hooked her fingers into the waistband and drew the last barrier down. Vy kicked them off, her skin humming with anticipation and a nerve-jangling vulnerability. She was completely naked, completely open.
Yining looked up the length of her body, her eyes black with desire. “Watch me,” she said, a quiet command.
Then she lowered her head.
The first touch of her tongue was soft, exploratory. Vy jerked as if electrocuted, a choked gasp escaping her lips. Yining’s hands pressed her hips down into the mattress, holding her steady. She did it again, firmer this time, a long, slow lick that made Vy’s back arch off the bed.
She moaned, a deep, guttural sound she didn’t recognize as her own.
Yining responded with a hum of pleasure, the vibration against Vy’s most sensitive skin sending fresh shockwaves through her. She found a rhythm, languid and relentless, using her tongue, her lips, the gentle pressure of her fingers on Vy’s inner thighs. She was a meticulous study in touch, learning what made Vy gasp, what made her hips buck, what made her fingers clutch desperately at the sheets.
The coil inside Vy, wound tight for so long, began to tremble. The pressure built, a sweet, aching crescendo that drowned out every other thought. The Ritz, Paris, Lin, MIT—it all melted into a haze of sensation. There was only this: the silken slide of Yining’s hair against her skin, the hot insistence of her mouth, the sound of her own ragged breathing and the soft, wet sounds between her legs.
“Yining,” she begged, the name a broken prayer.
Yining’s answer was to slide a finger inside her, slowly, deeply. The added fullness, the perfect curl of her finger, was the final key. The world shattered.
Vy came with a force that tore a scream from her throat, muffled by her own arm as she bit down on it. Her body bowed off the bed, every muscle locked in a seismic release. Waves of pleasure, electric and overwhelming, rolled through her, one after another, until she was nothing but a trembling, boneless thing against the soaked sheets.
Yining gently withdrew, crawling up her body to gather her into her arms. She held Vy as she shook, pressing soft kisses to her damp temple, her shoulder, whispering quiet, unintelligible words against her skin.
The aftershocks subsided slowly, leaving Vy hollowed out and blissfully weightless. She turned her face into the crook of Yining’s neck, breathing in her scent, feeling the rapid thump of her heart against her own.
For a long time, they just lay there, tangled together in the silent, gilded room. The city’s light slowly shifted outside the window, marking the passage of a night that had changed everything.
Vy was drifting on the edge of sleep, sated and stunned, when Yining’s voice, rough and quiet, broke the silence.
“I meant it, you know,” she whispered into Vy’s hair. “In the corridor. You’re the only real thing.”
Vy didn’t answer. She just tightened her arms around Yining, holding onto the feeling, the reality of her, as the first grey light of a Parisian dawn began to bleed into the sky.