Shang Zhitao never expected Dony to be on a business trip in the same city. She had just finished work when a colleague from the branch office invited her to eat chuan chuan, then added, almost as an afterthought, "Dony's here too." Something about the colleague's expression seemed off.
Zhitao paused. "What's he here for?"
"Something about following up on a project proposal."
"Oh."
Zhitao knew Dony couldn't have deliberately followed her to Chengdu. Her trip had been arranged only the day before she left, so this had to be a coincidence. Still, the coincidence left her uneasy.
"I'll head back to the hotel first and write up my report. I'll come find you all after."
Zhitao had already prepared her excuse to escape, but the colleague looped an arm through hers. "Eat first, write later! The work will still be there!" And so Zhitao was hauled off to the chuan chuan restaurant. The others had already arrived, seated around two small tables. Dony spotted her and waved her over. "Flora, sit here." He shifted over to make room. Zhitao hesitated, then went and sat down.
Dony joked to the group, "I keep feeling like Flora's afraid of me. Am I some kind of monster?" He looked at her as he said it.
"Of course not," the other colleagues laughed, covering for her. "Flora's just shy."
Zhitao pulled her lips into a brief smile and got up to mix her dipping sauce. Dony followed behind her and asked, in a tone that sounded casual enough, "Which hotel are you staying at, Flora? The company's usual one?"
Zhitao nodded. "Yes."
"We can head back together later, then."
"Sure."
She gave that answer and returned to the table. When the others started drinking, Zhitao turned her cup upside down on the table. "You all know I can't drink. Not today either!"
She asked the waiter for a bottle of mineral water and kept it close at hand.
All of this, she owed to having a good teacher.
Luan Nian had told her: if you can't drink, don't touch a single drop.
Luan Nian had also told her: when a girl's out in public, she drinks her own water.
Zhitao felt as though Luan Nian were sitting right beside her, keeping watch. Dony didn't push her to drink. He only complimented her. "Flora looks like such a good girl."
As he said it, his hand landed on her knee, seemingly by accident. Zhitao shifted her leg aside without any fuss and said to the colleague across from her, "I feel like something spicy. Let's trade seats."
To a hunter, her sidestepping looked like nothing more than playing hard to get, the way a young woman might act coy in front of a man with good conditions to raise her own value, before eventually giving in.
But what the young woman was actually thinking was: a maggot like you doesn't deserve to sit beside me. Whatever you have, if you're low class, you're low class.
Zhitao got through the meal calm and clear-headed, watching her colleagues lose their composure one drink at a time. Dony held his liquor well. All that alcohol passed straight through him without so much as changing his color. He watched coldly as the female colleagues came undone, and when his gaze returned to Zhitao, there was something unreadable in it. He took out his phone and sent her a message: "Come sit in my room for a bit later?" His intentions were plain now.
"No thanks, Dony," Zhitao replied.
"Just to have some tea." When a man had designs on a woman, tea and coffee always made the best excuses. It was theater with no substance behind it.
"I have tea in my own room."
This pointless exchange needed to end. Zhitao looked up from her phone and said to the colleague beside her, "You've had too much. Let me walk you back?"
She helped the woman up and out, leaving the rest of the group behind. Once outside, the colleague leaned against Zhitao for a few steps, and then, as soon as they turned out of the alley where the restaurant sat, she straightened up on her own.
Zhitao looked at her, a little startled.
The woman looked somewhat helpless. "I didn't actually want to drink."
"Why not? I remember you can hold your liquor."
"Because... there's a wolf at the table." She didn't spell it out, but Zhitao sensed they were talking about the same wolf.
After parting ways with her colleague, Zhitao went back to the hotel, locked the door, pushed her luggage against it, showered, and finally lay down on the bed. The work itself hadn't been tiring, but that dinner with Dony had worn her out. She hadn't even managed to eat much. It was only in these past few years, out in the working world, that she'd come to understand there really were people who were rotten to the core.
She texted Luan Nian: "Has your fever gone down? Are the other symptoms better?" She didn't expect a reply.
He called her instead, which had never happened before. Zhitao was so caught off guard when she picked up that she blurted, "Why are you calling?"
"Weren't you the one complaining that I never reply to your messages or call you back?"
"..." He'd actually heard what she said. That felt good. Zhitao's small vanity flared with satisfaction, and she gave a couple of sheepish laughs, a bit guilty, a bit like a child fishing for attention. "So are you feeling better?"
"No."
"Didn't you take your medicine?"
"I did."
"Then what's going on?" Zhitao grew anxious. "Should you go to the hospital? Maybe you need an IV? I got sick once before, ran a fever for days, nothing helped. Sun Yu took me to the little clinic downstairs and had me get a shot in the backside, and I was fine that same night!" When she got anxious she talked too much, and Luan Nian listened to her chatter on, wondering to himself how a woman could have so much to say.
She talked a lot, but somehow he didn't find it annoying.
Luan Nian normally disliked people who talked too much. It struck him as noisy. He liked a world that was quiet and orderly.
"Is Sun Yu the roommate who's starting a business?" he asked. Zhitao sometimes mentioned her roommates, just a line or two here and there, like Sun Yu twisting her ankle, or Zhang Lei getting a promotion, or Sun Yuanzhu having to stay up in the northwest so often. She also had an upperclassman named Yao Bei who often took her out to eat. Luan Nian never interrupted when she talked about these people, but over time they'd taken on clear shapes in his mind. Sun Yuanzhu, for instance, a well-read, kind young man from a good family, apparently had no shortage of girls falling for him. Zhitao included.
"Mm!" Zhitao thought of the favor she'd promised Sun Yu and worked up to how to bring it up.
Luan Nian caught the meaning behind her pause. "If you have something to say, just say it."
"It's just, Sun Yu, isn't she still looking for investors? I remember you were on the phone with a friend one day, someone who works at an investment bank... I..." Zhitao still felt too embarrassed to get it out, worried it would be too much trouble for him.
"Were you eavesdropping on my calls?" Luan Nian teased her. He'd never bothered hiding anything from her, taking whatever calls came in whenever she was around.
"I wasn't eavesdropping..." Zhitao hurried to explain. "You were right next to me on the phone, and I'm not deaf..."
A low laugh came through the phone. Zhitao stopped talking, realizing he was teasing her, and her face went a little warm.
"Shang Zhitao."
"Mm?"
"Does Sun Yu's company have an intro deck? Or a project proposal? Whatever you've got, send it to me."
"Really?"
"Why wouldn't I mean it?"
"No reason! I'll send it right now!" Zhitao hadn't expected him to agree so fast. Afraid he'd change his mind, she went straight to her laptop, found the file, and sent it over. "Sent it."
"Okay, let me take a look." Luan Nian propped himself against the headboard, pulled his laptop over, opened the file, and his brows rose. "Sun Yu's in matchmaking?"
"...Uh... what's wrong with matchmaking... isn't it a pretty good market... I think... I told you about it before, right..."
"Give me a second." Luan Nian flipped through the materials. They were put together well, clearly thought through. Finding some investment shouldn't be too hard. Further in, he came across a section on past case studies, and one photo in particular, apparently from a matchmaking event. Zhitao was shaking hands with a man who held a rose, and she was smiling like a flower in bloom. Luan Nian's brows knit without his noticing.
"Is what Sun Yu's running a matchmaking service, or a matchmaking scam?" There was a note of mockery in it now.
"Huh?"
"Who exactly attends these offline events of theirs?"
"Single people. Everyone's single."
Luan Nian's eyes landed on the photo of Zhitao's hand clasped with the man's. "So handing over a rose and shaking hands means it's a match?"
"Mm... yeah... and once it's a match, the organizer gives out contact information, and then you can chat, go on dates..."
Fuck.
Luan Nian's fever must have really been getting to him. A surge of heat shot straight to the top of his head, and he felt the urge to strangle Shang Zhitao. Chatting, dating. Why the hell were you always so busy, then?
Seeing that he'd gone quiet, Zhitao assumed he was thinking it over and asked, "So do you think the materials are decent? Sun Yu is really reliable, and so is her partner and team. If the deck's good enough, could you ask your friend for a favor?"
"What kind of favor? Aiding and abetting a tyrant?" Luan Nian's tone had turned distinctly unfriendly.
"...How is that aiding and abetting anything? This is giving single men and women a channel to meet people, helping everyone find their destined partner..." Zhitao rolled out every line Sun Yu had ever drilled into her. "This is a service to humanity." She even complimented herself internally afterward, glad she hadn't tuned out all of Sun Yu's preaching after all, since she'd managed to put it to use exactly when it counted.
Luan Nian finally understood, in full, what Zhitao's vanishing weekends had actually been for: spending time with her roommate, going to matchmaking events to meet men, going on dates. He'd thought she was a thoroughly well-behaved girl, and it turned out this girl transformed the moment the weekend arrived. Weaving between strange men, apparently plotting out her own romantic prospects the whole time.
He'd well and truly been fooled by that demure exterior of hers.
"Why aren't you saying anything? Are you tired? Maybe you should get some rest early?"
"Not tired." He'd been riled fully awake by her.
"Oh. So will you help, then?"
"Mm."
Luan Nian looked over the materials, decided it was a decent project, and forwarded it to a friend named Song Qiuhan without much thought. Song Qiuhan worked at an investment bank and looked at projects like this from time to time.
"Thank you."
"Mm."
"So, go take your temperature again now, see if the fever's gone down?"
"You sound just like my mother."
"I'm worried about you..."
"Save it." Even as he said this, Luan Nian went and got the thermometer, tucked it under his arm, and sure enough, the fever had climbed again.
Zhitao got hungry and got up to find some of the welcome fruit in her room to eat. The apple made a crisp, clear crunch, unusually loud over the phone in the middle of the night.
"Haven't eaten?" Luan Nian asked.
"I ate, just didn't have much appetite." Zhitao left out the whole matter of Dony. But Luan Nian wasn't a fool. He knew Dony was on a business trip in Chengdu too, so he asked, "With Dony?"
Zhitao thought it over. "There were a lot of people there."
Luan Nian knew perfectly well that when it came to Dony, Zhitao was deliberately avoiding the subject. He kept asking. She kept dodging.
"Dony's no good. If any of your female colleagues think Dony's being friendly with them because he wants a relationship, tell them to save their energy. Dony thinks far too much of himself. None of the women at that company are good enough for him. All he wants is to keep switching partners for novelty." Luan Nian's words weren't kind, and he meant every one of them for Zhitao to hear. He knew she wasn't that kind of person, but her repeated evasions had planted doubt in him all the same.
To Zhitao's ears, it sounded like he might as well have been talking about the two of them. Him and her, one drifting shadow above the clouds, one blade of grass on the plain, chasing after novelty. Strange, wasn't it, that they were headed into their third year together and Luan Nian's novelty still hadn't worn off?
She took another bite of her apple and said to him, "I don't know who Dony has feelings for, since I'm not close with any of them. And I don't know which female colleague might have feelings for Dony either, since that's got nothing to do with me. Whether Dony wants a relationship with someone or just wants to sleep with them, only the people involved would know that. In other words, I'm staying out of it."
...
What kind of thing was that to say? Luan Nian felt his temperature climb again. He grabbed the thermometer, and sure enough, 38.4. If he kept this phone call going, he wasn't far from dying. Whoever said long phone calls were good for you was clearly sick in the head. What was the point of chatting all night when you had no reason to?
He hung up without another word, done dealing with Zhitao.
Furious all over again.
Zhitao, oblivious to the danger she was in, sent him one more message: "What if Dony's just looking for true love?"