The mall was not far from the museum, a ten minute walk through clean afternoon streets, the kind of walk that required no particular conversation and was better for it.

The city moved around them at its usual indifferent pace, yellow cabs cutting lanes, pedestrians flowing in and out of crosswalks without breaking stride, a food cart on the corner sending the smell of roasted nuts drifting into the cold air.

Guiying had his camera out.

He took a picture of a pigeon sitting on top of a fire hydrant with the composed dignity of something that owned the block.

He took a picture of a flower stall with buckets of ranunculus spilling color onto the pavement, pale pink and white and a deep burnt orange that caught the afternoon light in a way that made his fingers move before his brain had finished deciding.

He took a picture of the shadow of a lamppost cutting clean and diagonal across the sidewalk, the geometry of it pleasing in a way he couldn’t entirely articulate but didn’t need to.

Liuxian walked beside him through all of it and said nothing, which remained one of his better qualities.

The mall opened up around them as they entered, wide and bright and thoroughly committed to its own scale, ceilings vaulting high overhead with glass panels letting in pale afternoon light.

The lunch crowd had thinned to a comfortable level by now, the food hall on the second floor settling into the quieter rhythm that came after the rush, when the tables cleared out and the noise dropped to something manageable.

"What do you want?" Liuxian said, looking at the options arranged in a wide ring around the center of the hall.

Guiying’s stomach had been making itself known since somewhere around the Hopper painting. He looked at the food stalls with the focused consideration of someone taking the matter seriously.

"Something that isn’t congee," he said.

"Your stomach..."

"My stomach is perfectly fine," Guiying said. "My stomach wants noodles. My stomach has been thinking about noodles since the museum." He paused. "My stomach is, in fact, the most decisive it has been all day."

Liuxian looked at him for a moment with the expression of a man selecting which hill was and was not worth dying on, and then he found them a table near the second floor railing that looked out over the ground floor while Guiying went to order.

He came back with two bowls of dan dan noodles and a plate of dumplings he had added entirely on his own judgment, set everything down, and settled into his chair with the quiet satisfaction of someone who had made an executive decision and intended to stand by it.

Liuxian looked at the dumplings.

"Those weren’t discussed.." he said.

"There was no discussion," Guiying said, already picking up his chopsticks. "There was only your suggestion and my better instincts. The dumplings are the better instincts."

Liuxian picked up his chopsticks without further comment. Which was, Guiying had learned, as close to agreement as he usually got.

They ate in the easy quiet that had followed them through the whole trip, the kind that had stopped feeling like silence somewhere around the second day and had become instead simply the natural texture of being in the same space.

Below them the mall moved at its own unhurried pace, people drifting between storefronts, children pulling at their parents’ hands, a group of teenagers sitting on a bench in the particular boneless way of people who had nowhere to be and were making the most of it.

Guiying ate his noodles and watched the floor below and thought, without entirely meaning to, about the Klimt.

The gold shifting in the light.

The square format that held you in the center of itself rather than directing you outward. The way the attendant had said "he wanted the viewer to arrive at their own conclusion."

He thought about that for a long time, turning it over quietly while the noodles disappeared and Liuxian worked steadily through his own bowl across the table.

"What are you thinking about?" Liuxian said, without looking up.

"Nothing much.." Guiying said, trailing.

"You’re thinking loudly. I can almost hear your thoughts.."

"That is not a real thing."

"It is when you do it," Liuxian said, and picked up a dumpling.

Guiying looked at him. Liuxian ate the dumpling with complete composure and looked back with the patient expression of someone who had made a factual observation and was prepared to stand behind it indefinitely.

Guiying looked back at his noodles.

"The Klimt," he said, after a moment. "I keep thinking about the square format. The way it holds you in place instead of leading your eye somewhere." He turned his chopsticks slowly. "I want to try it when we get back. A series of square formats, no fixed subject, just see what it does to the composition. What it forces you to look at when you can’t be led anywhere."

"You should, sounds like fun." Liuxian said.

Guiying glanced up.

There was nothing performative in it.

Something settled quietly in his chest.

"Yes.." he said. "I should."

He finished the last of his noodles and leaned back in his chair and looked out over the railing at the mall below.

The afternoon light was coming through the glass panels at a lower angle now, the kind that meant it was later than he’d thought. It always went like that with good days.

Time moved differently inside them, burning faster and slower at once, and you never noticed until you looked up and found the light had shifted.

He was looking at the storefronts on the ground floor without thinking about them when one caught his eye.

He tilted his head slightly.

A men’s wear shop.

Clean window display, the kind that didn’t overcrowd itself, two or three pieces arranged with enough space between them to let each one breathe. In the center of the display, a jacket.

Dark charcoal, structured at the shoulder, the kind of cut that was severe enough to be interesting without tipping into costume.

The collar sat in a way that reminded him, very faintly, of the Edouard Voss pieces Liuxian favored, that particular European restraint that understood exactly how much to do and then stopped there.

Guiying looked at it.

Then he looked at Liuxian, who was finishing the last dumpling and checking something on his phone with the focused calm of a man whose inbox was never actually empty.

He looked back at the jacket.

"We’re already here.." he said knowingly.

Liuxian looked up from his phone. Followed Guiying’s gaze down to the ground floor. "We are.." he said.

"It would be wasteful," Guiying said, "to leave without at least looking."