The pirates were quite perceptive and had divided themselves into groups on their own, guarding the four sides of the container’s perimeter. The one stationed at the entrance was the only one who could manage a couple of words of English — and he wore the finest footwear among them: a plastic sandal with the sole peeling off on one side.

Wei Lai had always been someone else’s bodyguard. This was the first time in his life that others had surrounded him with protection — even if it was only thanks to Cen Jin’s reflected glory.

He stood at the entrance for a moment, watching, then asked the pirate: “Got a cigarette?”

The pirate walked over, fished a pinch of strange-looking dried leaves from his pocket, and mimed putting them in his mouth: “Chew. Good.”

This was a type of Arabian tea leaf, which the pirates used as a stimulant.

Wei Lai took the leaves and said, “Thanks.”

Then added, “Keep an eye on things. I’m going to make a phone call.”

He went into the telephone booth and called Ke Ke Shu.

It took a while for the call to connect. While he waited, Wei Lai pinched a few of the leaves and put them in his mouth to chew.

Good, my ass — bitter and astringent. But he didn’t spit them out. Spitting them out felt like admitting defeat: I can always chew the flavor out of you, chew you into a mash of pulp.

Ke Ke Shu finally picked up. His voice sounded buoyant, as if he’d been drinking. In the background, there were strange laughs and the rhythmic staccato of gunfire.

Wei Lai asked, “Are you in the middle of something?”

“Just finished a small skirmish — drove off a small armed unit. Celebrating now; I’ve come off shift, come down for a drink. These guys get pretty wild when they play, firing rounds all over the place.”

Wei Lai felt an indescribable revulsion — he had never loathed war the way he did in that moment.

War was a flower whose every vein ran with poison. He had assumed that in a time of peace, this flower, even if not extinct, would at least cower and draw back — but now he understood: it was like a stubborn, tenacious ghost, always trying to bloom amid the blood and stench of battle.

“What is it? What do you need?”

Ke Ke Shu was drunk; his words were coming out a little thick.

“I remember you’re originally from Uda. Is that place… close to Ka Long?”

Ke Ke Shu let out a chuckle.

“Close — neighboring countries, separated by one very, very large river. I remember back then, there was a stretch of time when the river water suddenly turned red. A lot of people went to the riverbank to look. Someone even pulled a floating body out of the water.”

“Later I heard that a group of refugees tried to escape through the river route, but there were no boats… The Hu Ka people caught up with them, right there at the riverside… hacking… hacking…”

He let out a drunken hiccup.

Wei Lai felt something pressing down in his chest, heavy and suffocating.

“Back then, you must have heard a lot about what was happening. Did you ever hear anything about a protected zone, or volunteers who chose to stay behind?”

Ke Ke Shu said, “Ha — the protected zone.”

He sounded as though he were about to launch into a drunken dance on the other end of the line.

“These Westerners — they thought that because they had a face that looked different from Black faces, they could draw a boundary around a protected zone and everyone would show deference — that might have worked in other places, but here…”

“Wei, the Black slave trade — four hundred years, shipped to every corner of the world to be slaves. Do you really think, deep in their bones, they’d feel any goodwill toward white people?”

“And what happened in Ka Long back then exceeded everyone’s expectations worldwide — the UN later called it the darkest Si Yue Jian Shi – Chapter of the twentieth century. The darkest — oh, what’s darkest is the sky, with stars twinkling…”

Wei Lai had to cut him off: “Talk about the protected zone.”

Ke Ke Shu muttered away: “The protected zone… some held out, some were overrun. Actually, the one you’re protecting, the one called… oh, Miss Cen, she was quite tough. The things I heard about were French priests being killed, refugees hiding in churches being slaughtered…”

Wei Lai said quietly, “If Cen Jin went through something terrible there, what do you think it would have been?”

“Who knows — she’s a woman, ha, and she’s so beautiful…”

Wei Lai’s hanging hand tightened into a fist. The dried tea leaves ground to a fine powder in his palm.

He cut Ke Ke Shu off abruptly: “Don’t say any more. It’s all in the past.”

Ke Ke Shu was completely baffled: “What… what are you telling me? Hey, Wei — why did you call? Have we been talking? Was that me just now, talking to you?”

Wei Lai said, “If someone is unhappy, always dwelling on things from the past — how do you help her forget?”

Ke Ke Shu said, “Be twice as good to her, make her laugh, make her happy now — if she’s happy now, she’ll naturally forget the past. Like me — now I have money, a wife, a house, and I barely remember the time I had no underwear… Ha, Wei, have I ever told you, my first pair of underwear, I took it off an old man…”

Wei Lai hung up with a bang.

He sat in the dark for a long time.

When he returned to the room, he saw the pirate sitting cross-legged beneath the clothesline, chewing his tea leaves at an unhurried pace.

He walked to the bed. Cen Jin was already asleep.

He had never noticed before, but now he saw: when she slept, she lay on her side, her body curled inward on itself — the sleeping posture of someone with the least sense of security.

Wei Lai leaned down and gently drew her into his arms. Her breathing was soft and even; the tips of her long lashes brushed lightly against his lips.

He felt that she, as a whole person, was like something encased in an iron shell — hard, without warmth. Those who had been savaged by her commentaries saw her that way, the Saudi men saw her that way, Milu saw her that way.

But only someone who had kept vigil at the edge of that iron shell long enough would know: inside it lived a girl. Every once in a while, she would sneak out to breathe — quite endearing, and enough to make one’s heart ache.

Wei Lai moved close to her ear and said softly, “Cen Jin, whatever happened in the past — none of it matters.”

Cen Jin slept straight through until the following afternoon.

When she woke, the sun was slanting through the room at an angle. The surrounding village was as still as an abandoned ruin. For a moment she was disoriented, nearly forgetting where she was.

There was a figure moving past the window. She looked up — Wei Lai was taking in the laundry, his posture straight and tall, his shoulders and back broad. The warmth of his touch from the night before seemed to linger in her palms.

When she looked up again, Wei Lai was watching her. “You’re awake,” he said.

He gathered the laundry and strode inside.

Cen Jin got out of bed: “It’s so quiet.”

Wei Lai smiled. He pulled her over and gave her a gentle nudge toward the door: “See for yourself. Your four bodyguards are standing in four directions like iron towers. The whole village has barely had anyone daring to walk around all morning — they’ve even stopped quarreling.”

And then there was the policeman. He had been due back in the city first thing in the morning, but, risking a docked paycheck, he had stubbornly refused to leave, trailing after Wei Lai and asking: “These people really won’t rob anything? They’re leaving soon? When are they leaving?”

Wei Lai had told him: once Miss Cen wakes up, then we’ll talk.

The pirates had come on board.

Her awareness of this trip’s purpose was to negotiate — shattered into pieces by the speedboat explosion — finally reassembled itself.

As people always said, the way a woman’s mind works is peculiar indeed. Her very first reaction was:

“I’m down to one outfit and I’m going to negotiate with pirates. Three, five days of talks — people will laugh that I wear the same clothes every day…”

Would they really have the time to laugh about your clothes? Pirates probably wear one set of clothes for three or five months…

“And I’m wearing sandals…”

The pirates go barefoot. The one pirate actually wearing sandals has flimsier shoes than yours.

Wei Lai roughly went through whatever outer clothing she had left.

There was almost nothing — aside from the set she’d soaked in the sea yesterday, then washed and dried, there was only one pair of shorts and one pair of leggings. Those had been held back from the start because she’d thought they would be inappropriate to wear on the pirate ship. Everything else — the silk shawl, the lipstick, the button-down shirt, the tank top, the trousers…

All of it had sunk to the bottom of the sea.

Cen Jin glanced at Wei Lai: “I had a whole suitcase of clothes when I left…”

Here we go — women just love to dredge up the past.

“I must have been cursed the day I hired you as my bodyguard. The clothes just keep disappearing, fewer and fewer every day…”

She suddenly stopped talking.

Wei Lai stared at her: “Go on.”

She said nothing more, turning her head away.

Wei Lai laughed. The sunlight fell across her, and he could just barely make out the contours of her waist and figure through the fabric — the shirt looked enormous on her.

He reached out, grasped the excess fabric hanging loose at both sides of her waist, one side in each hand, slowly gathering it in — then pulled it sideways. Her body had no choice but to follow the fabric; she nearly stumbled into his arms.

Wei Lai said quietly, “I agree with your point of view… your clothes can stand to be a little fewer still. I’ll do my best.”

Cen Jin looked up at him: “Taking advantage of people feels pretty good, doesn’t it?”

Wei Lai corrected her: “Taking advantage of people is a two-way street. Without your encouragement, I’d never have gotten to where I am today. If you’d given me a slap across the face the first time I overstepped, I’d be walking three steps clear of you by now. Can you honestly say today’s situation isn’t partly your doing? Hmm?”

Cen Jin stared at him for a few seconds, then finally smiled.

A little embarrassed, she buried her face in his chest.

Wei Lai bent his head: “What are we to each other, exactly? Hmm?”

Cen Jin said, “What you said yourself — two willing parties.”

Her murmured voice was almost like talking to herself: “Forget what came before, don’t ask about what comes after — just enjoy everything to the fullest. With the one you love, do the things that bring joy…”

Wei Lai had a vague sense this was also a lyric from a very old Hong Kong film.

With the one you love, do the things that bring joy — ask not whether it is fate or doom.

Are you my doom, or are you my destiny?

The feeling was that the village practically saw them off with an outpouring of gratitude — it fell just short of beating drums and gongs.

The policeman walked with them all the way, wanting to make sure the pirates truly left and would not harass the village. Wei Lai thought quite highly of him: no weapon, spending his days dealing with petty squabbles and small disturbances, yet when the moment came, he turned out to have real courage.

As they left the village, Wei Lai happened to glance at a house along the road: a local woman was leaning out curiously to look. The moment she met his gaze, she gave a startled flinch and quickly covered her face with her headscarf.

Something stirred in Wei Lai’s mind. He said to Cen Jin, “Wait for me a moment.”

He pulled the policeman along and doubled back into the village.

There were many women in the village; by local custom they were draped from head to toe in colorful or sheer fabric. With so many women around, he should be able to get them to part with a couple of new pieces.

As luck would have it, he managed to collect two — one black, and one in a reddish-brown with dark gold patterns. When he tried to pay for them, the woman flatly refused to take any money, nervously calling out something in the local language. The policeman translated: “Just go, please — just go!”

Wei Lai shook his head in rueful amusement and put the wraps into his bag.

Here was a truly extraordinary situation: the actual pirates hadn’t taken so much as a pin or a thread from the villagers, while he had just enjoyed a little run of eating, staying, and taking, all without paying.

When he reached Cen Jin, she looked at him curiously: “Where did you go?”

Wei Lai said nothing. Once they were on the speedboat, he took out the reddish-brown wrap and handed it to her: “Cover up a bit. Don’t get too much sun.”

Cen Jin took it and spread it open. When she tilted her head back to look, the sunlight filtering through the wrap was sifted into threads of gentle gold.

She asked: “A gift for me?”

Wei Lai said, “You’re wearing my clothes and taking my gifts. You might want to consider, Miss, how you’re going to repay me.”

Cen Jin said, “So I’ve worn your clothes and taken your gift — I’ve already been thinking about having you for myself one day. I don’t know how to repay you. Should I write you an IOU? In any case, with so many debts already, one more isn’t going to worry me.”

Wei Lai burst out laughing. The tea-leaf-chewing pirate, not understanding what he was laughing at, started the engine with a look of utter bewilderment.

In what seemed like the blink of an eye, the village at sunset and the shore behind it were left far in the distance.

The speedboat was larger than the previous one — probably to make Cen Jin more comfortable, as it moved at a noticeably slower pace and the hull was far less rough. Partway through the journey, someone even handed each of them a can of cola.

Wei Lai found it odd. Cen Jin said, “Take it. For them, having a cola to drink is quite a luxury — it’s probably a gift from Hu Sha. A good opening for the negotiations.”

Wei Lai smiled, pulled the tab, tilted his head back, and drained more than half of it in one go. The carbonated liquid pricked at his stomach, and a feeling that was almost like exhilaration rose through his entire body.

…

No one knew how long they had been traveling, nor how the pirates read direction on the water. All they knew was that by the time the sky had gone dark, a large, dark fishing vessel appeared directly ahead.

No lights, no sound. It looked a little like a ghost ship, and a little like a sea creature surfaced and silently waiting for prey.

The lead pirate bellowed a few words in that direction, then raised his gun and fired a burst into the sky.

Like a signal: the ship lit up — lanterns, flashlight beams, and the vessel’s own running lights. It was the most common kind of battered iron-hulled large ship on the Red Sea. The masthead lights at bow and stern swayed high up in the night, like two eerie eyes.

As the speedboat drew closer, Wei Lai made out the people on board.

At least twenty or thirty of them, gathered in clusters of two or three — all Black men, some sitting, some standing. Some looked vacant-eyed; others had hard, dangerous stares. Some cradled heavy machine guns, their bright yellow ammunition belts coiled in loops around their necks. Others were eating granulated sugar, pinching it between their fingers so that it trickled down onto the deck in a soft, steady fall.

An eleven-or-twelve-year-old boy pirate bared his white teeth menacingly at the speedboat, and was promptly slapped by the large man beside him — apparently being told to settle down.

Wei Lai laughed.

He had arrived at a new world he had only ever heard of and never seen before.