Wei Yuan’s voice carried a tone of sudden realization. “Oh right, her name is Jiang Zao. It’s been so many years since graduation that I forgot for a moment.”
Then he let out a puzzled hum. “Hm?”
“You two barely spoke a word to each other in college, did you? With your personality, you shouldn’t even remember her.”
“No helping it. Photographic memory.”
“Haha, yeah right.”
Xie Lisheng kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead. He chose not to reveal everything, saying only, “I’ve run into her at work lately. It jogged my memory, so I figured I’d ask you about her.”
Wei Yuan chuckled. “Why ask me?”
“She used to trail after you like a shadow back in school. Who else would I ask?” He cut straight to the point. “What was she like personality-wise?”
No sooner had Xie Lisheng asked than he realized it was a pointless question. Jiang Zao had been head over heels for Wei Yuan in college, her eyes practically glowing green with infatuation. Of course she’d only shown him her best side.
Sure enough, Wei Yuan replied the next instant, “It’s been a while, so I might not recall the details perfectly, but she was a really good girl.”
“Pretty obedient, quick learner too. By the time I graduated, she’d already become vice minister, right?” As the memories surfaced, Wei Yuan recalled more. “But… I remember she was always by herself.”
Xie Lisheng gripped the steering wheel as he drove. “What do you mean, ‘by herself’?”
“You know… she didn’t seem to have any friends.”
“People with personalities like yours or Chen Kuang’s might prefer going solo, but at least you’ve got us. She never got close to anyone, though. With such a soft temperament, she should’ve made friends easily.”
“Of course, maybe I didn’t know her that well. Perhaps she had her own circle.”
“Why are you asking?”
The car window gleamed transparently, reflecting Jiang Zao’s usual wooden, slow-witted expression like a fleeting image. Xie Lisheng deftly sidestepped the question. “I’m bored out of my mind. Missed hearing your voice. Can’t I use that as an excuse to call?”
Wei Yuan fell silent.
He clearly wasn’t buying it. Then he teased, “If you’re looking to borrow money, better hit up Chen Kuang. I heard from Zhao Yangcheng that his stock trading has him on track to out-earn all of us combined.”
“Where’s that guy off to now, living it up in some city? Us poor saps slaving away back home are green with envy.”
Xie Lisheng’s chest tightened with a flicker of irritation. “Who the hell knows. Got such a brilliant mind and wastes it on nonsense—always yapping about wanting to die.”
“I say, make him come back and punch the clock for a couple days. That’d fix him right up.”
Wei Yuan responded with his usual empathy. “He had it rough in school. Let the guy catch a break. He never said he was done with Yunsheng forever, did he? Without him, your backend team wouldn’t grind out anything anyway.”
Xie Lisheng dropped the subject. “What do you know? Go do your job. I’m hanging up.”
Before Wei Yuan could complain, he ended the call.
Wei Yuan’s few scraps of info left Jiang Zao as much an enigma in Xie Lisheng’s eyes as ever.
There was something contradictory about her, as if she were hiding a secret she desperately didn’t want discovered—yet at the same time, it didn’t seem like a big deal.
That impression was reinforced the next morning.
Xie Lisheng was heading to a meeting with the Research and Development Department. As he passed the meeting floor, he spotted the Planning Department in the midst of a topic selection session in Conference Room No. 2.
He hadn’t meant to look around, but a casual glance as he walked by caught the person presenting the PowerPoint at the front of the room.
He saw the exaggerated gauze patch plastered across her face.
Even after the chaos at the Police Station had dragged on until one or two in the morning the night before, she was in top form for work the next day.
She was clearly the type who hated drawing special attention. Even knowing that massive wound dressing would spark stares and gossip, she refused to let personal drama disrupt her schedule.
He had told her to take time off, but here she was anyway.
It was just a PowerPoint presentation. Anyone else could have handled it.
What a stubborn streak.
Sure, it came off as a bit foolish—rigid, no flexibility, allergic to slacking off.
Especially when it came to work, though.
He respected people who treated every little thing with utmost seriousness.
Xie Lisheng didn’t stop or slow his pace, but it took his gaze a long moment to pull away.
~~~
The injury on her face hadn’t improved overnight. When Jiang Zao looked in the mirror that morning, she nearly scared herself. So she’d fashioned a patch from medical cotton to cover the wound and spare everyone else the fright.
She had a lot of speaking parts in the meeting, and every time she opened her mouth, it tugged at the gash. The pain was enough to bring tears to her eyes, but she had to grit it out. The whole session was pure agony.
By the end, when the meeting broke up, Li Li remarked that her face was ghostly pale with red-rimmed eyes to boot. It had everyone thinking the Planning Department was torturing its staff.
After the fiasco the night before, Jiang Zao hadn’t dared return to her shared rental. Fearing some revenge visit, she’d packed her things and crashed temporarily at Li Li’s place.
Li Li lived pretty far away, but luckily she had rented an entire one-bedroom apartment for herself, and Jiang Zao was temporarily crashing on her living room couch.
Jiang Zao had never really had any friends through high school or college. This was the first time she had ever felt that profound sense of security from a friend stepping in to help without a second thought. It nearly brought tears to her eyes, but she held them back, afraid it would come off as too dramatic or overly sentimental.
“It really should be iced. Why don’t we grab an ice pack from the convenience store during lunch break?” Li Li linked arms with her as they waited for the elevator, her voice laced with concern. “It’s so hot out. You can’t keep covering that wound like this.”
Jiang Zao’s face hurt too much to speak, so she just nodded and patted Li Li’s hand reassuringly.
Once inside the elevator, Jiang Zao shoved both hands into her pockets and felt the new earbuds she’d just unboxed that morning—her first time using them. She couldn’t help but think of the man who had bought them as compensation for her.
She recalled the words he had said to her in the car last night.
~~~
The midnight city was utterly silent, the roads already quiet enough on their own. With no one speaking inside the car, only the faint strains of a song drifting back and forth between them in the wordless space, the atmosphere carried an undercurrent of tension.
Jiang Zao clutched her belongings, her eyes darting around, unsure where to settle. In the end, her gaze landed on the sports car’s screen, where Zhang Xueyou’s “Loving You More Each Day” was playing.
Out of boredom, she followed the scrolling lyrics with her eyes, mentally comparing the Cantonese pronunciation to the written words.
When the line “When everything around you is like the wind, it’s you who lets me find my roots” synced with the subtitles, the driver suddenly spoke up.
“You seem to care a lot about the fact that I don’t like you.”
Jiang Zao froze, her gaze shifting to his profile. “…I don’t.”
“You don’t care?” He shot her a sidelong glance. “Then how do you explain saying you thought I was happy to see you get hit?”
Jiang Zao: “…I was just saying that off the cuff.”
Xie Lisheng: “Off-the-cuff remarks are the most honest.”
Jiang Zao: “…”
“Last time too—you asked your question and walked off.” He flicked on the turn signal as he spoke. “Without even waiting to hear if the other person had more to say.”
She didn’t get it. “Didn’t you already give me the answer?”
“You don’t want to know why?” he asked.
Jiang Zao’s head throbbed a little. She shot back, “Once someone’s made it clear they dislike you, do you really need to dig into the specifics? Isn’t that just asking for trouble? I’m not a masochist.”
“Sometimes you just dislike someone for no reason. Like, your personalities just don’t mesh?”
He corrected her leisurely, “That’s not precise. You only talk about zodiac compatibility when it comes to marriage.”
Jiang Zao: “…Fine, whatever.”
It’s exactly that about you that I hate.
Xie Lisheng glanced up from the rearview mirror, observing how she turned her head away, clearly not wanting to continue the topic.
“I have a few things I want to say. Bear with me, even if you don’t want to hear it.”
Jiang Zao propped her chin on her hand and said nothing.
“Maybe I’m just the type who’s quick to look down on others, and you weren’t even the worst offender.” Xie Lisheng felt no shame in admitting his own prickly personality, finally laying out what he hadn’t finished saying by the riverside that day. “I’ll admit it—I used to look down on you. I didn’t want to lie to you.”
“You’ve liked Wei Yuan since high school at least, right? I know that’s the same school we all went to.”
The corners of his eyes were as flat and emotionless as his tone, cool and cutting. “Wei Yuan’s no idiot. Do you really think he never noticed because he never reacted?”
Jiang Zao’s eyelashes fluttered as she stared out the window.
“Back then, to me, you seemed pathetic—turning timid and servile because of a crush, wasting your time and feelings on someone who would never reciprocate. There was nothing admirable about it.”
“I was just going off my own worldview. I couldn’t understand or accept someone who puts others above themselves.”
“But.” Xie Lisheng slowly eased on the brake, bringing the Panamera to a precise stop just before its front wheels crossed the white line.
He turned to Jiang Zao, his fox-like eyes calm and pitch-black. “I also said—that was back then.”
Jiang Zao knew he was looking at her. Her grip tightened on her bag strap, a sudden wave of nervousness washing over her. “Now… is it any different from back then?”
“…As if you like me so much now.”
Xie Lisheng rubbed the steering wheel, his lips curving in a teasing smirk. “Do you want me to like you that badly?”
Jiang Zao pouted, fighting the urge to roll her eyes. “…Please don’t read too much into it.”
“People change. I’m not the same as before.”
She shook her head, denying it outright. “No, you’re exactly the same.”
He looked puzzled.
Jiang Zao was blunt. “Still hate you.”
Xie Lisheng burst out laughing, seemingly delighted by her attitude.
“I’m laying out my past attitude toward you with no holds barred. Feel free to curse me out or keep hating me.”
He extended his right hand toward her in a proactive handshake. “Can we just write off that little incident from before?”
~~~
The elevator doors slid open slowly, light flooding in.
They had arrived at the floor where the Planning Department was located.