It was the tail end of an uneventful night, and Luan Nian was standing outside Jiang Lan's building.
"Come up for some tea?" Jiang Lan asked. She was a woman who'd weathered enough to understand exactly how these things worked. If you wanted something, you went and got it, no matter who it was you wanted it from.
"We're both adults. I know exactly what you're offering." Luan Nian lit a cigarette. "But there's no need. Lingmei isn't mine to worry about. Even if this contract goes through, all it means is more overtime for my team."
Jiang Lan studied him. He had a sharp, guarded face, not the kind of man who looked easy to handle, and she liked that.
"Contract signed, advance paid." Jiang Lan smiled suddenly. "If you actually came up with me, I'd be the one who got scared." Getting what she wanted took a certain skill, and she seemed to have already worked him out. Luan Nian didn't respond to being pushed or pulled. He was playing a long game and wasn't in any hurry.
"Thank you."
"Don't mention it."
Jiang Lan turned and started toward the entrance. At the stairs she looked back at him, a faint smirk on her mouth. "So he really won't come up?"
Luan Nian just shrugged and got into his car.
It was nearly midnight, half the weekend already gone. He drove home, showered, cracked open a bottle of iced soda, and sat down to get through his emails before bed. Shang Zhitao was persistent, he had to give her that. Another message about the investigation had already come through: "Hi Luan, are you still up?"
What was the rush? Did she think he'd wire the payment in the middle of the night just because he'd signed off on it? Was there something wrong with her head? He called Zhang Ling, who from the sound of it was also out somewhere, the background loud and chaotic.
"Alex."
"Hey, Luan. Mission accomplished?"
"I want a replacement."
"What?"
"I want the marketing rep on our account replaced."
"Why?" Zhang Ling sounded a little drunk. "What's she done?"
"Because she's an idiot. You know I can't stand people like that."
"There's nobody else in marketing right now. They're all out of town chasing other projects. Just put up with her for a few more days and I'll swap her out when they're back." Zhang Ling brushed him off, the way he always did. He knew Luan Nian too well: anyone Luan Nian decided he didn't like got pushed out one way or another. But Shang Zhitao was steady and hardworking, and if she got pulled off this account now, it would follow her.
Luan Nian didn't bother arguing. He opened his laptop and sent the approval back. Before he'd even closed it, a message came in from Shang Zhitao: "Got it, thank you for staying up." She'd clearly been waiting on the other end the whole time. If Shang Zhitao had one real strength, Luan Nian had decided, it was patience and an even temper. He wasn't the type to be worn down by kindness or stubbornness either, but dealing with someone this oblivious was giving him a headache.
"Is there anything else that needs me?" he asked.
"There is, but it can wait. It's late, I don't want to keep you from resting..."
"So I get to deal with it tomorrow instead?" Luan Nian wasn't trying to make things difficult for her. If it wasn't handled tonight it would just be waiting for him tomorrow, and he had no intention of losing his Sunday to it. He called her directly and heard her answer, voice a little flustered.
"What else needs handling?" He didn't bother with pleasantries, just asked straight out.
"There's the venue for the company's annual meeting, that still needs to be finalized..."
"I'll sort that out with Alex on Monday."
"And Planning wants the Q3 material progress and budget spend confirmed."
"Have Kitty deal with it."
"That's everything for now... sorry to bother you so late."
Luan Nian went quiet for a second, swallowing down his irritation. "It's fine."
"Good night." Shang Zhitao's voice sounded a little hollow saying it. She knew the messages tonight had been an imposition, but she hadn't had a choice, not with her boss and Finance both pushing her. She said good night and waited, the way you were supposed to, for him to hang up first.
Luan Nian tossed his phone aside and drank some of the iced soda water, the bubbles popping against his tongue and clearing his head. When he glanced back down, the call was still connected. Shang Zhitao hadn't hung up?
"You're still on the line? What, were you eavesdropping?" The question came out before he thought about it, and Shang Zhitao rushed to explain, "It's just workplace etiquette, waiting for you to hang up first..."
Workplace etiquette. Fuck. Luan Nian cursed silently, wondering if this employee's brain had gone soft. What she said was true enough, but couldn't she have found some other way around it? He pushed the irritation back down. "Right. I hung up late." He ended the call, then laughed under his breath, more annoyed than amused.
What kind of person thinks like that.
Shang Zhitao finally drifted off to sleep. The next morning she woke to the sound of voices chatting somewhere outside her room, and found herself, all at once, fond of this little apartment. Her roommates were good people, easygoing and cheerful, close to what she'd always pictured. She felt lucky to have landed somewhere this comfortable to come home to after work. None of the horror stories she'd read online about renting had happened to her, aside from the apartment not quite matching what the agent had described.
She got up, got dressed, grabbed her washbasin, and pushed open her door. Sun Yu and Sun Yuanzhu were sitting out there fiddling with a computer. The two of them shared a surname and were cousins.
"You're up," Sun Yu said. Shang Zhitao nodded, and her glasses slid down her nose.
"Are the frames loose? I'll take a look at them in a bit," Sun Yuanzhu said, glancing at her pushing her glasses back up.
"Okay, thank you!" Shang Zhitao went to brush her teeth and wash her face. Her skin was good enough that a basic routine left her looking bright and fresh. She sat down across from the cousins with a slice of bread and a glass of milk. It was her favorite combination, one she never got tired of.
"There." Sun Yuanzhu hit the restart button and slid the computer back over to Sun Yu.
"That's it! Thank you." Sun Yu looked pleased.
"Don't mention it." Sun Yuanzhu went back to his room, came out with a small toolbox, and turned to Shang Zhitao. "Let me see your glasses." She handed them over. He pulled out a tiny screwdriver and had the hinges tightened in a couple of turns.
"Try them now."
She put them back on. Sure enough, they stayed put. She smiled at him. "Do a lot of guys keep a toolbox like that around?"
"Maybe."
There was something different in the way Sun Yuanzhu looked at her, a little softer than before. He still remembered the night they'd first met, how badly he'd scared her with his rolling suitcase, and he still felt bad about her fleeing into the dark like that.
"I'm meeting some college friends later to play a board game. Want to come?" he asked.
"Legend of the Three Kingdoms?" Shang Zhitao's eyes lit up. She used to play it all the time with her classmates.
"That's the one. You in?"
"You coming too?" she asked Sun Yu.
"Let's go!"
The three of them, all single and free on a Sunday, felt a small thrill just at the idea of relaxing together for once. They took the subway to the meeting spot and found a mixed group of men and women already gathered.
Shang Zhitao had guessed Sun Yuanzhu's university was a good one, but she hadn't expected it to be the top school in the country. His friends were friendly too. One of the women went off to order coffee for her and Sun Yu, and the group settled in to have some fun.
Apparently even the country's best students played card games, and they were good at it.
Shang Zhitao drew the loyalist role and picked Sun Shangxiang as her character. Sun Yuanzhu was the lord and took Liu Bei. Right at the start he handed her the weakest weapon in the deck, and the table erupted. "Sorry about that, my lord, that was a dumb move on my part!"
Shang Zhitao went red and clutched her hand of cards. In the first round someone hit her with a barrage of fire attacks and she was down to a single point of health almost immediately. Then someone else played a card sending the southern barbarians to invade, and she was completely out of health. Sun Yuanzhu handed her a peach to heal, and the table jeered again. "A eulogy for the lord!"
Then her luck turned. Her hand filled up with weapon cards. Sun Yuanzhu gave her two more, and she swapped out her equipment piece by piece, finally arming herself with the Zhuge Crossbow and the Red Hare horse. She took out four players in a row, wiping out one of the rebels in the process, and used two more cards to heal Liu Bei as well.
That's how it goes with young people. No matter how mild and easygoing someone seems, there's a version of them that turns decisive in an instant, and it's not something they can hide. Everyone at the table looked between Sun Yuanzhu and Shang Zhitao and quietly decided the two of them were something else.
Shang Zhitao wasn't paying attention to any of that. All she cared about was winning. In this game everyone narrated their own moves, and every time she healed Sun Yuanzhu she'd call out, "Here you go, my lord~" No one could deny how charming that was. Sun Yu was a different story entirely, playing aggressively as Lu Meng, hunting for the traitor and hoarding every card instead of using it, all while heckling everyone at the table. "Hey, hey, hey, Sun Shangxiang, come sleep with me too!"
The whole table burst out laughing.
If luck could be ranked the way people ranked everything else, Shang Zhitao figured hers had to be top tier. In such a short time she'd met so many interesting people that most of her loneliness had already faded. No matter how hard the week had been, at least this weekend had given some of that back to her.