Luan Nian suddenly understood what was troubling Shang Zhitao.
She was probably thinking that her age advantage was slowly disappearing. In the past, Luan Nian had been with her, she assumed, mostly because she was young. After all, almost everyone said men liked young women. But now a twenty-two-year-old newcomer had burst onto the scene, someone the world saw as a great beauty, with connections and talent, who was also caught up in various rumors about her and Luan Nian at the company.
Shang Zhitao was probably thinking: sooner or later, Luan Nian would end up with some other twenty-two-year-old. Because most men were like that.
Luan Nian had heard a bit of the gossip about him and Song Ying, but he hadn't taken it to heart.
For once, Luan Nian understood what Shang Zhitao was really thinking. He didn't even realize it himself, but he was beginning to truly empathize with her.
"Don't you already have the answer in your own heart?" he asked her. "You could use your brain once in a while. This one isn't even hard."
"Not hard?"
"How about this, then: twenty-six-year-old Shang Zhitao goes home, and twenty-two-year-old Song Ying comes traveling with me instead?"
"..."
Seeing Shang Zhitao turn and walk off, Luan Nian thought Miss Shang's temper had really grown of late. He sighed and pulled her into his arms. "Where are you going?"
"To the car. The wind's too strong."
"I thought you were off to trade me in," Luan Nian teased her.
"Dream on!" Shang Zhitao laughed. "You can't say anything nicely, but I understood you anyway. You were talking about right now. Right now, you're traveling with twenty-six-year-old Shang Zhitao. You like twenty-six-year-old Shang Zhitao."
"You've gotten smarter," Luan Nian praised her. "You're finally using your head." He gathered her into his arms. "Let's watch the scenery a while longer. Luke hasn't run himself out yet."
At the sound of his name, Luke barked happily and dashed off again. Luan Nian's coat wrapped around Shang Zhitao, leaving only her head exposed, and around them stretched breathtaking scenery, the two of them and the dog tiny against the vastness of heaven and earth. The world was wide and wonderful, yet people were forever troubled by its mundane affairs, and in the end all that remained was a handful of earth, a single grain in a vast sea. Better to be happy in the present.
"Then can you just tell me the answer directly?" Shang Zhitao started being unreasonable, a trick she'd picked up from Luan Nian. She felt she was growing greedier by the day. She needed Luan Nian to say it plainly, yes or no, love or not love. She needed a definite answer. Because certainty was also a kind of security.
Luan Nian rested his head against her neck, his breath brushing the fine, near-invisible down on her ear as he spoke. "I choose you."
Shang Zhitao's heart soared. She tilted her head away from him, giggling. "That tickles." She turned around, cupped his face in her hands, and planted a loud kiss on him. "I choose you too. Even if you're already in your thirties."
"What?" Luan Nian pinched her cheeks. "Say that again?"
"It's fine, everyone gets old eventually." Shang Zhitao kissed him again and pulled him into the car.
Shang Zhitao's head started to ache. Seeing her frown, Luan Nian teased her. "Some altitude tolerance you've got, reacting before we're even at three thousand meters."
"And you're not?"
"I have some too, but it's mild, almost nothing." Even as he teased her, he was worried, and he changed course for Golmud.
"We'll rest a day in Golmud. You need time to adjust." Luan Nian started rattling off instructions. "No strenuous activity. No running, jumping, or fast walking either. No drinking. Is the headache bad?"
Shang Zhitao shook her head. "Not too bad."
"Nauseous? Tightness in your chest?"
"A little."
Luan Nian found a hotel in Golmud and checked them in. As soon as they were inside, he told Shang Zhitao to rest.
"Go lie down." He pulled back the covers, got her into bed, and gave her a tablet of ibuprofen.
"Then we won't make it to Lhasa the day after tomorrow." Shang Zhitao looked a little dejected.
"What's the rush, Lhasa's not going anywhere," Luan Nian said. "Your health matters more. If twenty days isn't enough, we'll make it twenty-five. What else were you saving your vacation days for?"
"Would you leave me behind in Tibet?" Shang Zhitao tended to imagine the worst when she felt unwell. In her mind, Luan Nian abandoned her in Lhasa and drove off alone. He seemed just heartless enough to do something like that. After all, he was Luan Nian.
"What's wrong with you?" He flicked her forehead, then climbed into bed and pulled her into his arms. "Sleep for a bit. When you get up, we'll walk around Golmud. It's not a bad city."
"Mm." Shang Zhitao gripped the front of his shirt, and as she drifted toward sleep, she murmured, "I love you so much, you know that?"
"I know."
Once Shang Zhitao was asleep, Luan Nian checked his phone and found Chen Kuannian had dropped a batch of videos into the group chat, the three of them riding a boat and drinking coffee in Giethoorn. Three men, all dressed sharp, looking like models on a photo shoot. Chen Kuannian even needled him: "Tsk tsk, without our fashionable President Luan around, this trip's missing a little something. Good thing the girls here are as reliable as ever."
Luan Nian scoffed and tossed a few photos from the road into the chat.
Chen Kuannian stirred things up again. "Don't tell me you went alone? Not even one photo together?"
"You don't deserve to see one," Luan Nian replied.
The group chat erupted. Luan Nian laughed, then turned to find Shang Zhitao sweating a little. He pushed the covers down and pulled her arm free, tapping her nose with a fingertip as he scolded her quietly. "You should be grateful you came to Tibet with me. Anyone else and you'd have left your life here."
"Not checking in?" Dr. Liang sent a message too.
"All safe."
"That's it? Where are the photos? I want to see Flora."
"There aren't any," Luan Nian wrote, but then he remembered the drone footage. He got up and dug through the videos and found the clip of the drone taking off, with Shang Zhitao waving below. Watching it, he suddenly thought she was lovely to look at, even though the distance blurred her face; standing there beside him with Luke running around them, the whole scene came together like a painting. He trimmed a short clip and sent it to Dr. Liang. "No face, but it'll do."
Dr. Liang studied it for a long while, then asked, "Why does she look so much like the Shang Zhitao from that matchmaking site?"
"You remember what the profile picture looked like?"
"Your mother never forgets a face, thank you very much."
"It's her. Thanks."
Dr. Liang was suddenly a little moved. She showed the video to Dad Luan. "Look, this girl really does seem lovely."
"Have you even met her in person?" Dad Luan disliked how emotional women could be, forming opinions before they'd even met someone.
Dr. Liang got worked up. "What's wrong with you?" Luan Nian took after his father, that mouth of his truly didn't know how to say a kind word. She'd been sparring with him her whole life, and in the end neither of them would ever back down, nor could either live without the other.
Dad Luan snorted. "I'm only advising you not to get too worked up, and not to hope for too much. Your son's been botching things since he was small."
"..." Dr. Liang trailed after him. "And whose fault is that, if not yours? If he really botches it, you can watch your son grow old alone!"
Unaware his parents were talking about him, Luan Nian went back to bed and held Shang Zhitao as they slept a while. By the time they opened their eyes, it was already past six in the evening, and Shang Zhitao felt a little better.
"Since you're feeling better, let's go out and look around."
"Sure." She sat up abruptly, and Luan Nian pressed her back down. "Trying to kill yourself?"
"Didn't I tell you to move slowly?"
"Didn't I tell you not to get worked up?"
"What's the rush?"
Luan Nian lectured her one line after another, until finally Shang Zhitao couldn't take it anymore. "Luan Nian, why are you so nagging..."
He shot her a murderous look, and she shut her mouth at once.
She slowly slid back down, deciding to be obedient.
Neither of them felt like heavy meat, so they found a place serving yak bone broth, paired with flatbread and pickled vegetables, and a few thin slices of yak meat on the side. The broth was rich, and after one sip, beads of sweat appeared on the tip of Shang Zhitao's nose. "It's good."
"If you like it, we can come back tomorrow."
"We're not leaving tomorrow?"
"I don't want you collapsing on the road. One more day to adjust, no rush. Tomorrow I'll take you around. There's plenty to see nearby too."
"Okay. Luan Nian, you know what? I think I should tell you something."
"What?"
"I like traveling with you."
Shang Zhitao thought she should learn from Lumi and Sun Yu: when you feel love, you should say it. Don't be afraid of being turned down, don't be afraid of being laughed at, and don't worry about sounding sappy. If none of us are willing to say loving words while we're young, are we supposed to wait until our hair has gone gray to bring flowers to the one we love? That would be romantic too, but what would be left to remember from a life spent waiting?
"Is that all? Any other sweet talk?" Luan Nian asked her.
"I like you. I like every path you choose, I like taking risks with you. I like all the beautiful scenery along the way, because I got to see it with you." Shang Zhitao's face flushed slightly. "Can you say something nice too? I want to hear it."
Luan Nian took a sip of soup without even lifting his head. "Same as above."
What kind of sweet talk was "same as above"? And yet Shang Zhitao couldn't help liking it. She took a sip of her own soup and imitated his flat, lifeless tone. "So sweet."
After dinner, Luan Nian took her and Luke wandering through the unfamiliar city, drawing plenty of glances along the way. Shang Zhitao stopped at a fruit cart to pick out some fruit, and after she paid, the old vendor pulled a different piece of fruit from his money pouch and handed it to her, gesturing something they couldn't understand. A young passerby explained for them. "He's saying you're pretty, and that the two of you make a good match."
No one had ever told Shang Zhitao that she and Luan Nian made a good match.
In the city where everyone knew them, they had to pretend to be strangers, and people always assumed the person standing beside her was someone else. This was the first time, in an unfamiliar city, that he held her hand and someone told them they made a good match.
Seeing that Shang Zhitao seemed a little moved, Luan Nian said, "The old man has a good eye. I don't make a good match with just anyone." It sounded arrogant, and it was. In his two previous relationships, his girlfriends had both been great beauties too, yet people watching them would rarely say they made a good match; more likely people would say they were just fooling around. With other women, people assumed it was casual. With Shang Zhitao, no matter how you looked at it, it didn't look casual at all. It looked like two people being serious, heading toward the best possible life together.
Because of that word "match," Luan Nian's mood soared, and he bought a great deal more fruit to hand out to anyone who wanted some, looking very much like he might buy the old man's entire cart. Luke sat obediently, watching his wealthy father put on a show, playing the part of a dog with expensive taste to the fullest.
They stayed two nights in Golmud, and Shang Zhitao was largely recovered, so the two of them set off again. Shang Zhitao had assumed that someone as wild as Luan Nian would push hard while traveling. But he wasn't like that. He loved adventure, but he didn't chase goals too hard; he was thoroughly unhurried. If Shang Zhitao felt unwell anywhere, he simply stopped. There was never any rush.
They fell into a rhythm, stopping every hour and a half so each of them could spend half an hour on work. Shang Zhitao's project proposal for the northwest had already passed review, and a third-party company had begun modeling, so her workload was somewhat lighter. Still, she had to stay involved in the modeling process, worried that a wrong parameter might affect the actual implementation. Luan Nian had it harder; many things still waited on his decisions, and most of his work involved phone calls. The rest of the time, he rarely checked his phone. Sometimes he'd toss it to Shang Zhitao, and when a message came in, she'd read it out to him, and he'd dictate a reply for her to send.
The day before they reached Lhasa, Luan Nian was driving the final stretch. Shang Zhitao was still handling his messages, and she saw one from Yilia. It read: "luke, I was talking with my dad last night, and he mentioned in passing that their group is redistributing their ad budget next year. Should we bid?"
Shang Zhitao read it aloud to him. Luan Nian replied, "Yes."
A few seconds later, he added another line. "Through proper channels."
Shang Zhitao sent the reply for him, then glanced over at him. She understood a little better now that on matters like this, men in his position were always careful never to leave a gap. A message would never say something like, sure, is there any shortcut, or could you help smooth things over.
"When I say through proper channels, I mean through proper channels," Luan Nian said to her as he drove. "I don't bother with other means. There's no point."
"But you're always having meals with Jiang Lan..."
"Jiang Lan is a friend," he told her. "A meal is just a meal. Nothing ever goes beyond that."
Another message came in from Yilia. "Okay. How about we get my dad to join a meal sometime, so we can dig into the details a bit more?"
"Sure," Luan Nian said.
Shang Zhitao sent the reply and handed the phone back to him. "You can look through the rest yourself later."
"Why?"
"It feels awkward. Like I'm prying into your privacy."
"You watch my house through the camera every day. Do I have any privacy left?" He needled her, and she turned to look at Luke. "There's the culprit."
Luan Nian glanced at the foolish dog through the rearview mirror. In just a few days on the road, the once-white dog had turned pale gray, though he had no idea, grinning happily and obliviously. "Since Luke misses you when you're up in the northwest, I let you watch."
"I know, Luke misses me, and luke misses me too." Shang Zhitao looked pleased with herself.
This time, Luan Nian didn't laugh at her. Instead, he said in a low voice:
"Yes."
Shang Zhitao glanced at him, then looked back out at the scenery, the corners of her mouth curling upward, until after a moment she couldn't hold it in and laughed out loud on her own.
Luan Nian eyed her suspiciously. She looked back at him, her eyes unusually bright, maybe from being so close to the sun, and pressed a hand to her own chest, saying with great seriousness, "Just now, I truly, genuinely felt that your heart isn't hard at all."
Not hard. And very soft.
He was a gentle person too. His gentleness simply didn't show itself in the usual ways.
Others rarely saw it. But Shang Zhitao did.
That was rare indeed.