The second day. Hu Sha formally set up the structure for negotiations.

After breakfast, the dining room was cleared and rearranged. All irrelevant items were removed, leaving only a table, two chairs, and fresh water and beer on the table.

Two against two, as before.

Hu Sha cleared his throat: “Jin, today we need to discuss serious matters. Regarding the ship…”

Cen Jin let out a yawn: “I didn’t sleep well last night — the ship swayed too much. But you all live on the ship year-round, so you wouldn’t notice that, would you?”

Wei Lai nearly laughed out loud. When Cen Jin wanted to go off-topic, she could make anyone want to spit blood — he was almost beginning to feel a little sorry for Hu Sha.

Hu Sha had no choice but to respond: “You just got on the ship — of course it’ll take time to adjust. But after a few more days of negotiations…”

Wei Lai could already feel the comedic timing: Hu Sha was indeed a fox, managing in just a few words to twist the conversation back toward negotiations.

Cen Jin cut him off, casting a glance toward Sha Di: “Let him step out. I’d like to talk about some private matters today.”

More private matters? A flash of impatience crossed Hu Sha’s eyes. He restrained it and restrained it again, but in the end he let Sha Di leave.

What Cen Jin wanted to talk about was genuinely personal: “How old are you this year?”

Hu Sha opened his mouth, but before he could say a word, Cen Jin had already continued on her own: “I remember, when you came in for treatment back then, you were 33 or 34? That’s been six years now, so you must be around 40?”

“That’s not so young anymore. Being a pirate is physical work — your energy and stamina are starting to fall behind a little, aren’t they?”

Hu Sha endured patiently: “Jin, it’s been six years, after all. People get older.”

Cen Jin gestured seemingly casually toward the door: “But everyone else on this ship, apart from you, they’re all young and vigorous, aren’t they.”

Hu Sha was unruffled: “They’re younger, sure. So what?”

“More ruthless than you.”

Hu Sha let out a big laugh: “More ruthless than me? Jin, are you joking? One bad mood from me and I can crush any of them.”

Cen Jin waited for his laughter to subside, then spoke unhurriedly: “It doesn’t take all of them to be more ruthless than you — just one or two is enough. Everyone knows that to take your place, they have to out-ruthless you. How did you become the pirate chief in the first place? Wasn’t it by acting harder than the man before you, and seizing the right moment to take him down?”

Hu Sha’s laughter grew a little strained. That was true — among pirates there was no such thing as courtesy, succession, or designated heirs. Getting to the top meant being the one who struck harder and meaner.

Cen Jin didn’t miss the subtle shift in his expression: “Young people have big appetites and always want to climb higher. Your degree of ruthlessness sets the bar — whoever replaces you has a template to work from, and will make sure to exceed it. Have you ever thought that one day you too might be taken down by someone coming up from behind?”

Hu Sha said nothing for a while, then shrugged: “Jin, this kind of thing is always happening. It’s what being a pirate is. There’s no point talking about it — why don’t we discuss…”

Cen Jin turned the conversation again: “But let’s suppose you’re very lucky and everyone on this ship obeys you completely — does that mean you’re free from danger from then on?”

She began counting on her fingers.

“First: the naval escort fleets in the Gulf of Aden keep growing stronger — their firepower and force far outmatch the pirates’. One bad turn of luck and you die in the fighting, or you get captured and imprisoned for life.”

“Second: you hijack ships so frequently that it humiliates the Somali government. They’ve been hunting you, looking for every way to catch you.”

“Third: you’ve killed hostages and collected large ransoms, and you’ve made enemies of many ship owners. Will they let it rest? Perhaps one day they’ll send a squad to come after your life.”

Hu Sha could no longer sit still: “We pirates fear nothing!”

Cen Jin didn’t even look at him: “Fourth: you’re the most famous pirate, you’ve hijacked the most valuable ships — will other pirates think about robbing you? As far as I know, including yours, there are at least four armed pirate organizations in Somalia.”

Hu Sha was starting to show anger: “So what? Since the beginning of time, pirates have always faced enemies on every side!”

Cen Jin affected surprise: “Oh, you know that.”

She poured herself a glass of water. Amid the quiet trickle of water, Hu Sha’s impatience was gradually tamed. He made yet another attempt to redirect the topic: “Jin, shouldn’t we…”

Cen Jin said, “Let’s suppose again…”

Wei Lai couldn’t hold it back any longer. He turned to face the cabin wall, laughed hard for a few seconds, then turned back — a picture of detached composure.

“Let’s suppose again that your luck holds, and you avoid all these dangers… where will you be in ten years, when you’re fifty?”

Hu Sha didn’t follow: “What?”

“Will you still be a pirate?”

Hu Sha laughed loudly: “I’d be too old for that! Jin, what kind of fifty-year-old pirate would there be out on the Red Sea.”

Cen Jin’s smile carried a deeper meaning: “Then where will you be when you’re fifty?”

Hu Sha froze. He had never once thought about this question.

Cen Jin answered for him: “You can’t simply walk away. Everyone knows you’ve hijacked countless ships and assumes you’re sitting on a fortune — the moment you fall on hard times, they’ll come to bleed you dry. You’ve killed hostages, so you’ll always be on the government’s wanted list. You can’t flee abroad, because you have no diplomatic status…”

Hu Sha had heard enough. He shot abruptly to his feet, leaned forward, and brought both hands down hard on the table: “What exactly are you trying to say?”

Wei Lai’s brow furrowed. He stepped forward two paces.

Cen Jin laughed coldly, enunciating each word: “I’m saying — I pity you.”

“You sit here playing the important man, negotiating with me, calling yourself the most ferocious shark on the Red Sea — and really you’re nothing but a dead fish with no future. Either you die in a brawl on this ship, or you die by assassination, or you get caught and thrown in prison, or you end up destitute and starving. What use is the ransom? You might be alive to take it, but you might not have the luck to spend it…”

Hu Sha let out a roar. He used the table to push off from, and lunged straight at Cen Jin.

Cen Jin sat without moving, the corners of her lips curving upward. Wei Lai moved with swift, sharp precision — stepped forward, and sent a kick into the side of the table.

The table edge scraped against the floor with an ugly grinding sound. The table was kicked over two meters, the water glasses and beer on top crashing and shattering across the floor. Hu Sha sprawled face-down across the table top, features contorted, looking like a landlocked tortoise that had never learned to swim.

The dining room door was kicked open. Sha Di, alarmed by the noise, rushed in in confusion. Cen Jin’s eyes went cold. She said sharply, “Get out!”

Sha Di startled, stopping dead in the doorway. He didn’t dare go further in, but he didn’t dare leave either.

Hu Sha rolled off the table. He pulled the beautiful gold-plated revolver from his waist, cocked it with a sharp click, and strode toward Cen Jin. Wei Lai stepped in front of him. Hu Sha let out a heavy rumbling sound in his throat, tilted his head back to look up at Wei Lai, and pressed the gun barrel hard against his chest.

Wei Lai said, “Hey, hey — can we calm down?”

Pirates really were hot-tempered, even a notorious pirate chief of his standing.

Hu Sha’s eyes were bloodshot, his thick lips curled back. The covering drape at his neck had been pulled loose in the commotion. Wei Lai saw the scars — a deeply jarring sight.

The air in the dining room froze.

This deathly stillness seemed to stretch on. Then Cen Jin laughed softly.

She stood, walked to stand between the two men, gently pushed Wei Lai aside, and calmly pressed herself against the barrel of the gun.

The muzzle was now pressed against her throat. The red garnet bead on the white gold chain — the color of a cinnabar mark — grazed the dark edge of the gun barrel.

Wei Lai’s eyes locked onto the hand Hu Sha had resting on the trigger.

Cen Jin said, “Want to fire? Go ahead.”

She walked forward.

Hu Sha was thoroughly disconcerted, and seemed to realize his own impulsiveness. He stepped back: “Jin! We are friends — we’re talking about the ship, aren’t we? I want to…”

His back hit the counter at the edge of the dining room. He had nowhere left to retreat.

Cen Jin reached out and took his gun. Wei Lai tensed slightly, afraid she might fumble it or that any slight movement from Hu Sha might cause it to fire.

Hu Sha cooperated with her, as it turned out.

She took the gun, turned it over to examine it, then set it down on the counter with a clank.

Then said softly, “But you still have other choices.”

She looked into Hu Sha’s eyes, lowering her voice: “I’ll give you a ransom. I’ll give you the chance to wash your hands of all this and retire. I’ll get you to make peace with the government and require that they grant you a full pardon for everything from the past. You’ll become a guest of honor to the government, you’ll receive a diplomatic passport, take your money, leave Somalia completely — find a country that is peaceful and not at war, buy a house, buy land, take a wife, have many children, enjoy three square meals a day without fear, keep flowers, keep a pet, and live your fifty, sixty, seventy years in comfort and peace.”

Hu Sha didn’t understand: “What?”

Cen Jin laughed. She reached out and adjusted the drape around Hu Sha’s neck, covering the scar back up: “Think carefully about what I’ve said… that’s enough for today’s negotiations.”

Then she looked back at Wei Lai: “Let’s go. Let’s go outside and see the view.”

Up on deck, a pervasive smell of fish hung in the air.

The ship was disguised as an ordinary cargo vessel. During negotiations, the other pirates couldn’t stay idle, so the weapons were set down and they were genuinely fishing. There were those fishing with lines and those hauling nets. A large pile had already accumulated on deck, and people were busy gutting and cleaning all manner of sea creatures. The blood on the ground spread out in wide sheets mixed with water, and sea crabs were valiantly using their claws to push aside bloody fish heads and entrails as they struggled to crawl their way out.

Cen Jin walked around the mess on the ground and climbed the gangway ladder up — the ladder led all the way to the top of the wheelhouse. The view was excellent up there: a kind of quiet embraced by noise on all sides.

The cloud cover was thick. No sunlight. The sea’s surface was not its usual brilliant shade — it was a deep, almost somber dark blue. Looking out to the far horizon, there was not another ship in sight. This made the vessel underfoot feel lonely — yet strangely safe.

Cen Jin faced into the sea wind and worked at untangling her hair. The harder she tried, the more tangled it got. But she was endlessly persistent about it, until finally she simply shut her eyes and let go — let the disheveled strands of hair toss freely against her cheeks, her forehead, her lashes.

Wei Lai laughed at her: “You’re in a good mood.”

He looked downward: Hu Sha had come up on deck now, wearing a troubled expression, glancing up in this direction from time to time, clearly suspicious — but knowing better than to come and disturb them.

Cen Jin said, “Of course. I know there are people who want to kill me, but Hu Sha’s ship is probably the safest place on this entire journey.”

Wei Lai teased her: “I thought you had a big heart and no fear of death. Turns out you do worry about safety.”

Cen Jin said, “The person most afraid of dying isn’t necessarily the person with the least courage.”

“Then who is it?”

Cen Jin was quiet for a moment: “Perhaps the person with the most to hold onto.”

Something deep within Wei Lai softened in that instant.

He smiled: “It makes me think of something.”

“During training, the senior instructor said that people who have things to hold onto are actually not well-suited to be bodyguards.”

“A bodyguard has to be single-mindedly focused, putting ‘self’ at its lowest value. When necessary, for the client’s safety, they must be able to set even their own life aside.”

“So they preferred to recruit people with no roots — people like me, people like Ke Ke Shu.”

The profession had an apt metaphor: when someone with roots meets with an accident, it’s like a great wind uprooting a tree — the gaping hole left in the earth is a heartbreaking sight. But these rootless ones are like tumbleweeds — the wind blows them away and they’re gone, leaving the ground clean.

People are such sentimental and brutal creatures. Tell someone a person has died, and they’ll shrug and say, oh, someone died. But if the news comes alongside images of anguish and a family broken by grief, they’ll ache alongside it, and cry.

“So a bodyguard’s exit only comes in one of two ways: either they die or are crippled — or they find something to hold onto, a family, and the life that felt meaningless suddenly means something. Roots grow, sink into the earth, and they’re no longer adrift on money alone.”

Cen Jin asked him, “Do you have something to hold onto?”

Wei Lai smiled.

He had thought about this before. There was nothing in his life that quite qualified as something to hold onto: Milu, Ke Ke Shu, Ai Lin — all of them were favorable winds and gentle rains and good weather encountered on his broken vessel’s journey, worth cherishing in memory. But the vessel was the vessel, and the weather was the weather.

Do you have something to hold onto?

Wei Lai reached out his hand and slowly covered her hand where it rested on the ship’s railing. Her hand shivered in his palm.

Then, as though it were a joke: “Me? Then — would you give up being a bodyguard for me?”

“Yes.”

Cen Jin hadn’t expected such a direct answer. For a moment she had no words.

Wei Lai tightened his hand around hers.

What was strange about that — it was simply how things were. As natural as the sea’s tides, as plants withering and blooming, as reaching for an umbrella when it rains, or adding a layer of clothing when snow falls.

Cen Jin said quietly, “Wei Lai, you don’t even know what kind of person I am.”

Wei Lai smiled. The sea wind came in, carrying a faint salt-and-fish smell on the air. The most significant moments of his life seemed always to take place on the sea.

“Cen Jin, after the negotiations are over — come with me.”

Cen Jin smiled. And as the smile went on, it turned to silence. She looked up at him, and there in her eyes was a whole world, veiled behind a layer of liquid brightness.

She said, “Are you sure? We’ve only known each other… barely half a month.”

Wei Lai smiled again.

“People say a child should grow up with their parents, so they can develop into a whole and healthy person. But I don’t remember my mother, and my father sold me.”

“People also say that education in childhood is critical and shapes a person’s entire life — but while other children were reading and making friends, I was threading a sewing machine, chewing on nutritionless crusts of bread, and getting my fingers pricked through by a needle.”

Cen Jin smiled — the smile growing gradually soft with tears, and the tears made the smile more tender.

“And people say money is hard to come by and should be saved, against natural disasters, illness, and misfortune — but I took my money and paid for a battered icebreaker in the Arctic Ocean, watched the aurora, slept in a tent, then came back to He’er Xinji as a pauper.”

“I’ve spent my whole life going against everything ‘people say.’ So how long it takes to decide on someone, whether I like her, what I’m willing to give up for her — I don’t follow any rules, and I don’t want anyone’s advice.”

“After the negotiations — will you come with me?”

“Yes.”

She agreed so readily that Wei Lai, for once, didn’t know what to do with himself.

“You agreed that quickly? No hesitation, no playing hard to get, no making things difficult for me?”

Cen Jin smiled and moved forward, leaning gently into his arms.

The sea wind carried her disheveled hair across his face. From below on deck came the sound of the pirates stirring up noise, quickly silenced by someone’s sharp rebuke.

Wei Lai felt that his vessel had, in this moment, drifted into the gentlest of shallows.

He said quietly, “Just like that, you’re coming with me — you’re not even going to ask where I’m taking you?”

She shook her head from within his embrace.

No asking.

Whole-heartedly welcoming this most willful and reckless of adventures, and in this adventure, you are the only horizon.

She said, “After we get off the ship, I’ll go with you. Until…”

Until you no longer want to take me with you.