It really was very strange — she’d never heard of such a thing before.

Wei Lai said, “Just thinking about it makes me feel terrible… it’ll take a long, long kiss to recover. Come on, let me have a kiss.”

That was completely… nonsense.

He bent to kiss her, but Cen Jin dodged away with a giggle, pressing her fingers against the inner side of his left arm: “I have a question.”

“When your emotions are extremely, particularly intense — does this arm of yours tremble uncontrollably? Like… Parkinson’s syndrome?”

Wei Lai’s expression went flat: “I’m sorry, say that again?”

Cen Jin fought back laughter: “Could it be that the electric shock caused premature aging in this arm, so that whenever you have emotions it loses control? If that’s the case, it’s a medical condition — it has nothing to do with being ‘strange.’ You should see a doctor early…”

Wei Lai said, “Hold on…”

“I just shared with you a rather melancholy secret I’ve carried deep in my heart for many years, and your conclusion is Parkinson’s syndrome?”

He reached out and unhooked the arms she had wrapped around his waist: “Go on, get away from me — there’s no sharing secrets with someone like you.”

Cen Jin laughed so hard she couldn’t stop: “Don’t be like that — weren’t we going to have a kiss?”

Wei Lai said, “Forget it. No kisses for you tonight.”

He pushed her aside, flipped the curtain, and went into the washroom. Through the curtain layer, Cen Jin persisted: “Really no kiss?”

Wei Lai turned on the tap and shoved his head under the running water, saying somewhat indistinctly: “Miss Cen, could you please not disturb someone while they’re bathing?”

He had known she wouldn’t let it go. Sure enough, when he came out washed and clean, she was looking at him with a bright smile, patting the edge of the bed beside her: “Come, sit here. Let’s talk for a bit.”

Wei Lai went over and sat down, using the clothes he’d changed out of to dry his damp hair, eyes resolutely forward: “Miss Cen, I’m happy to talk, but please keep your hands to yourself.”

Cen Jin shifted over closer: “What’s wrong with hands?”

Wei Lai said, “We bodyguards are in the business of performing, not providing services of a more personal nature. If you harass me, I can file a complaint with the Saudi man about you. And another thing…”

“The Saudi man hired you to come negotiate. If he found out you spent a whole evening chatting with Hu Sha about personal matters, what would he make of that?”

Cen Jin propped one arm on the table, rested her cheek on her hand, and looked at him with an expression somewhere between a smile and something else.

She said, “Foolish man. The first round of negotiations is already over. Did you know?”

“What?”

Had there been negotiations? When had that happened? The first round was… already over?

Just as Wei Lai was about to say something, a gunshot suddenly rang out from beyond the cabin.

He changed color in an instant, swept an arm around Cen Jin’s waist, and quickly pressed her down beneath him. At the same time, he grabbed the fishing lantern and slammed it hard against the corner of the table.

With a crash, the glass casing shattered to the floor.

The light went out. The compartment had no window; it was instantly pitch-black. Someone screamed with a harrowing cry. Cen Jin’s rapid breathing sounded in his ear — she seemed to want to speak.

Wei Lai said, “Shh… let me listen.”

He concentrated on the sounds outside. For a short while, there was noise — but all in Somali, nothing he could understand. Then the screaming abruptly stopped. Silence.

This didn’t seem like a mutiny on the ship — if it were, someone would have already broken down the door. Hu Sha appeared to still be in control.

So the gunshot was…an accidental discharge?

He didn’t know how long they waited. Then came the sound of footsteps outside.

Wei Lai said quietly to Cen Jin, “Get into the corner by the door — that’s the blind spot. Everything else, follow my lead. Act as the situation demands.”

Cen Jin nodded and felt her way through the dark. Wei Lai took the Desert Eagle from his pack, held his breath, and crouched by the door.

The footsteps grew closer and closer.

The thin strip of light showing under the door suddenly went dark. Wei Lai yanked the door open and pressed the gun barrel squarely against the person’s chest.

It was Sha Di.

He was still chewing tea leaves. The shock nearly sent the mouthful of tea spraying out. He said: “Hey! Hey!”

His first reaction was genuine — didn’t look like someone with ill intentions. Wei Lai withdrew the gun and frowned at him: “What are you doing here?”

He quickly checked the corridor: no one to the left or right. No backup waiting.

“Patrolling the ship. When it’s at sea, three times every night — it’s the rule.”

“Where’s Hu Sha?”

“In the wheelhouse, playing cards.”

“There was a gunshot just now.”

“Yes.”

Damn, totally unruffled about it.

Wei Lai was puzzled. That was a gunshot.

“Accidental discharge?”

Sha Di shook his head: “No.”

“For Miss Cen’s reception, wasn’t a lot of food prepared? There was leftovers, and in the end Hu Sha said to take it out and share it among everyone.”

“Not enough to go around. Two men were fighting over a can. One of them fired.”

Wei Lai felt his scalp prickle: “Fighting over a can?”

“Yes.”

“Was someone shot? I heard screaming.”

“Yes. They threw him overboard.”

“He was killed?”

“No — he wasn’t dead yet when they threw him. But he’ll die eventually. There’s no medicine on the ship and no doctor, and even if there were, there’d be no saving him.”

Sha Di shrugged, as though commenting on something perfectly ordinary. At the end of it, he reached into his pocket again, pulled out another small pinch of tea leaves, and added them to his mouth.

When the door was closed, Wei Lai stood there feeling his head swimming, and there was a cold emptiness spreading in the area around his heart.

Shot over fighting for a can of food.

What was the code of value here — was a bullet really not worth more than a can?

He turned to Cen Jin, who was still crouching in the corner: “Did you hear that?”

“I heard.”

Wei Lai smiled bitterly. He slowly sank down to sit on the floor: “Doesn’t it seem incomprehensible?”

“Not really. They’d fire a gun over a ladle of water, over a single potato. As I told you — pirates have very poor self-discipline, they’re hot-tempered and very hard to manage.”

“Sometimes, you complete the negotiations on a ship without any casualties among the hostages, but the pirates themselves have killed off a bunch of their own — because any little thing sets off a brawl. The most absurd time I heard about: a hostage asked to use the bathroom, one pirate agreed, another didn’t, and the two of them had to fight it out.”

“Doesn’t Hu Sha intervene?”

These were his subordinates — and subordinates amounted to wealth, resources, backing, power. Didn’t he feel any pain at losing them?

Cen Jin laughed: “Do you know how the money is divided after a ransom is collected?”

“Hu Sha and the important leaders take the largest cut. The rest is divided equally among everyone who participated — meaning everyone on this ship gets a share. Say the Sirius is eventually settled at three million. Hu Sha and the others at the top would take two point five to two point six million. The remaining pirates would get around ten thousand US dollars each.”

“Whether there are twenty or thirty small foot soldiers, it makes no difference to Hu Sha’s cut. When the count thins out, he goes ashore and recruits a fresh batch — his reputation is big enough that people are eager to join him. New recruits are cheaper to boot.”

“As for the ones already on this ship,” Cen Jin lowered her voice, “don’t you think they’d actually prefer it if their comrades died in greater numbers? The fewer people, the larger each individual’s share.”

“Just wait and see — once the ransom is truly settled, there’ll be one more major brawl on this ship.”

Wei Lai shook his head, half laughing, half despairing: “What the hell kind of world is this?”

Cen Jin said quietly, “The real world. Just as real as needing to eat, sleep, and bathe.”

Wei Lai was quiet for a long time: “Ten thousand dollars each is not a small amount. Take that money and start a small business. Stop being a pirate.”

Cen Jin said, “Being naive again? They’ll take the money and buy alcohol, cigarettes, women, or drugs. In less than half a month it’ll all be gone. Then they’ll sail back out to sea empty-handed and set their sights on the next cargo ship.”

Unbelievably, there were people with even less of a plan than him. Wei Lai didn’t believe it: “They won’t save any of it?”

“What use would saving it be? In this kind of corrupt, chaotic environment, do you really think it could actually offer them a stable way out? If you’re not a pirate, the money gets robbed away fast. If you are a pirate, any brawl might be the one that kills you — so you might as well enjoy life to the fullest while you can.”

Wei Lai found himself with nothing to say. For a fleeting moment, the fierce face of the young boy pirate swam before his eyes.

He said softly, “These people… where is their way out?”

Cen Jin said, “The way out is simple enough in theory — first, establish a country. Have a strong government. Stabilize the economy. Protect the coastal waters. If fishermen have a livelihood to sustain them, who would want to be a pirate? So you don’t need to feel so heavy about it — this isn’t one of those ships that traffics people. You can’t help them. We come in, we do the job, and then we leave. We can’t save every soul we encounter, so we can only do what we came here to do — negotiate.”

Back to negotiations at last.

Wei Lai’s curiosity revived: “Is the first round of negotiations really already over?”

“It is.”

“What progress was made?”

“Guess.”

Wei Lai thought about it: “Hu Sha said he was willing to bring the ransom down to ten million. Does that count?”

Cen Jin gave a cold laugh: “Does that count? Hu Sha is a complete fox.”

She stood up in a relaxed, unhurried manner: “He was doing it deliberately — playing the emotional card, talking about how he owes you his life, making a great show of apparent anguish as he called out ten million. But what’s the highest figure for a Somali hijacking on record up to now?”

This was the classic move of someone afraid of being gouged — cutting himself first, drawing blood: Look, I’m already bleeding. I’ve already come down to as far as I can go. Do you have the heart to keep bargaining with me?

Wei Lai also stood up: “So what was your progress, exactly?”

Cen Jin leaned against the door: “Not much — just two points.”

It was her domain again. Wei Lai suddenly found this amusing: the tides do turn. All along this journey, from one ship to the next, sometimes she had caught on to something, sometimes he had sensed something was off.

“First — over the course of that meal, Hu Sha brought up the ship or the ransom eleven times, and every single time I deflected with something completely unrelated. I needed him to feel anxious, self-doubting, unable to read me, unable to sleep tonight. As long as he’s guarding this ship, he can’t go and hijack another. Every additional day he waits is another day wasted, another day for the underpaid pirates to grow more restless. I can sit comfortably at the negotiating table. His rear end has already stopped being able to stay in his seat.”

That tracked — Wei Lai recalled how every time Hu Sha had raised the topic of the ship, Cen Jin had effortlessly gone off on some tangent — off to the sea for a while, then the fish, she’d even brought up snowfall in Northern Europe. If this negotiating representative hadn’t been someone who’d saved his life, Hu Sha probably would have flipped the table and exploded by now. He’d never seen snow in his life; what did snow in Northern Europe have to do with him?

“And the second?”

“Second — from the time we boarded to the time we entered the cabin, I saw a great deal, and I found one particular detail that could cut straight into Hu Sha’s heart and pry open the negotiation’s real breakthrough.”

“What is it?”

“It’s not much fun if I tell you now. Watch how I perform tomorrow.”

Really…

Wei Lai wanted to burst out laughing. He pulled her close and folded her tightly into his arms: “Cen Jin, if you’d been born in ancient times and ended up in the imperial court, you would have been the most conniving consort in the palace.”

“And you? If you were the emperor, would you allow the realm to fall to ruin for my sake?”

Wei Lai thought about it: “That, I wouldn’t do. Ruining so many ordinary people’s lives for one woman — how embarrassing. But…”

“I could give up being emperor for you. Being emperor is exhausting, and you’d have to manage all those other women — with you, I think I have more than enough.”

Cen Jin laughed in his arms, and after a pause she said, “I’m tired. Carry me to the bed. I want a good sleep — build up my strength so I can properly skin the shark tomorrow.”

You say it so naturally, who do you think you’re ordering around?

Wei Lai was both exasperated and amused. After a moment he slipped his arm around her waist, his other arm sliding beneath the bend of her knees, lifted her crosswise, and carried her to the bed.

“Where do I sleep?” he asked.

“Wherever on the floor — just be sure to sweep away the broken glass.”

It sounded quite miserable.

Wei Lai leaned his head down: “You really won’t let me take a little advantage? I’ll be unable to sleep tonight.”

Cen Jin smiled: “You’re the one who didn’t want a kiss. What do you want to take advantage of now?”

Wei Lai smiled, reached out and ran his hand along her leg. The shawl’s fabric was light and thin and smooth, hugging the curves of her body. His hand moved slowly up — to her waist, her lower abdomen. Cen Jin’s breathing gradually grew rapid, her chest rising and falling unevenly.

Wei Lai suddenly veered away, bent low and kissed her by the ear, and said with a low laugh: “Goodnight, little girl. I wouldn’t want to keep you awake.”

Save your strength for the shark tomorrow.

When the shark is dealt with, we’ll drink, eat, and explore the many joys of life with the one we love — that’s not too late at all.