Wei Lai was silent for a moment, then poured himself a drink. He picked up the bottle and found it very light — when he’d drained the last of it, it was barely half a glass. He’d been listening so intently he hadn’t noticed Cen Jin had drunk that much.

The wine was going to Cen Jin’s head now, urging him to leave.

Wei Lai smiled: “You’re so eager for me to go?”

Cen Jin smiled too: “I’m not offering you a choice — I’m sending you off. You’re the last one I still have to see off.”

She rested her chin on the table, watching the drips of wax that had solidified along the candle’s edge, snapping them off one by one like she was counting: “I’ve got it all planned out. The villa lease runs until April. All the people I feel I’ve had some connection with, whether they still think of me or not, I’ve gone back to say a proper farewell…”

How strange the world is. Life entering its final countdown, with only the narrowest road left, and then he had appeared right in her path — her luck had always been just a little short. If he had come earlier, or later, either would have been better.

She hadn’t expected it herself. In so short a time, barely enough even to come to know someone, she had fallen in love with a person.

She braced herself and stood, found her footing on unsteady legs and made her way to the bed, murmuring: “And another thing — my evening gown, such a pity. So beautiful. They won’t let me bring it. When the time comes, I won’t even be able to dress up…”

She let herself fall onto the bed, still murmuring, and slowly curled into herself.

Wei Lai asked: “What will The Hand of God do with you?”

Cen Jin pressed a pillow over her ears. Her voice was muffled and reluctant: “Don’t know. A trial, I suppose. Like a courtroom — you present evidence, I present evidence…”

She fell asleep slowly.

In her saddest moment, she happened to have a very sweet dream.

She dreamed she was a tree. Dense leaves were all her attachments in life. Then overnight, a fierce wind swept through and snow blanketed the ground — branches snapped, leaves scattered. All she was left with was bare, naked limbs, like a plucked chicken, pitifully undone.

Far away, a line of woodcutters advanced in formation, their gleaming axes flashing in the cold sun, coming to cut her into firewood and burn her piece by piece.

Something stirred beneath the tree. She looked down and saw Wei Lai, carrying a bucket of paint, brushing each of her branches green, one by one.

She was puzzled: “What are you doing?”

Wei Lai said: “Shh, don’t make a sound. I’m making you look like a Christmas tree, so no one will hurt you.”

She said: “Aren’t you the Christmas tree?”

Wei Lai picked up a small gift and carefully tied it to one of her hanging branches: “You are too.”

…

It was then that the sound of a car engine reached her.

Cen Jin opened her eyes and took a few seconds to orient herself. The room was empty. The door was half ajar. Outside, a wet, white mist drifted in the pre-dawn light.

She suddenly understood, and stumbled out of bed to the door.

The space where the jeep had been parked was now empty — exactly like this moment inside her, both relieved and hollow all at once.

Cen Jin folded her legs and sat down in the doorway, and stayed there until sounds of life gradually returned. The innkeeper came by with morning coffee.

The innkeeper looked at her, then peered into the room, his face a page of unasked questions. Cen Jin ignored him, reached out and took both cups down, drank one straight through without sugar, and then the other.

Then she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and said: “I’m checking out today.”

She dug through her bag — no change of clothes to speak of. Unexpectedly she found a pendant chain with a small shell at the end. She tried it: it opened, and inside was a crudely made lipstick.

Cen Jin smiled. He had taken her evening gown, but left her an altered shirt. He had taken so much of her makeup, but left her a clumsily made lipstick.

And yet she felt genuinely pleased. It seemed like a fair trade.

She smoothed out the wrinkles in her clothing, carefully combed her hair in front of the mirror, then used her fingertip to apply the lipstick slowly, colour by colour across her lips.

By the time Dao Ba came in, she had already been waiting a while, using an empty wine glass to strike the other one, eyes closed, listening to the delicate clink of thin glass against thin glass.

A coolness pressed to the centre of her brow. A gun barrel.

Cen Jin smiled and looked at Dao Ba: “Is this the trick you always use? You think pressing a gun to my head will make my legs go weak so I’ll kneel down and confess, is that it?”

She pushed his hand aside.

“I have followed The Hand of God very closely — from almost the moment there were first whispers about it.”

Dao Ba gave a cold laugh: “Yes. Because you had a guilty conscience.”

Cen Jin ignored the mockery: “From what I’ve heard, you pride yourselves on being ‘fair, just, without rage, without blindness, without false conviction, without mercy for the guilty.’ You give a trial: only after a suspect confesses, and the evidence is solid, do you carry out the punishment.”

“Yes.”

Cen Jin said: “Is that really the case? At first I believed it, which is why I always felt that a trial like that would be acceptable — it was aimed at me personally and wouldn’t implicate anyone else.”

She fixed Dao Ba with a stare, her eyes slowly narrowing: “But what about my bodyguard? What crime did he commit? You didn’t ask a single question — you just went straight to hiring a sniper to shoot him. You detonated the speedboat in international waters — was that a trial? Even if you have piles of evidence against me, have you let me speak in my own defense? Have I confessed?”

Dao Ba was briefly at a loss for words.

After a pause he said: “I should explain this, Miss Cen. You may not be aware, but your case is special. The order from above is that you must stand trial — which means my task is to bring you back to Ka Long. I never intended to kill you. The explosives placed on the speedboat were only meant as a deterrent, but afterward things moved too fast, and the man with the AK was inexperienced and panicked…”

“As for Mr. Wei — I am deeply sorry. It is fortunate that no serious consequences resulted. That truly was the result of my own reckless actions, and when this is over I will report it fully and accept any punishment.”

“Miss Cen, our main members are the most unfortunate survivors among the refugees. Even the most legitimate law enforcement agency cannot guarantee perfection in everything. I hope you won’t use my personal errors to question the entire organization. We may occasionally go astray, but that is entirely different from your protected area becoming a den of harm.”

Cen Jin laughed: “Not bad. You speak to the matter, never lose the thread, never miss an opportunity to draw out an admission. If you’re ever let go by The Hand of God, try being a negotiator. So — I’m to be taken back to Ka Long?”

Actually, that suits her fine. Where it began is where it ends. She hasn’t been back in over three years.

As she stood to rise, she asked: “Why is my case special?”

“Because the person who has brought charges against you is a very significant figure.”

Cen Jin let out a bright laugh: “Is it the president? Does he feel embarrassed for giving me the wrong medal and want it back?”

Then something occurred to her: “Why do I feel like your attitude has changed from before?”

Dao Ba replied: “Because at daybreak, Mr. Wei came to find me.”

Cen Jin’s mind went suddenly blank.

She braced herself on the edge of the table. She felt like one of those inflatable figures with a slit cut in the side — all the resolve she had somehow scraped together to face Dao Ba quietly hissed out of her, and she felt light and insubstantial, without weight.

Even her own voice felt like it was drifting: “He hasn’t left?”

“He told me a different version of the story about the protected area. I don’t necessarily believe it, but speaking honestly — I can’t rule it out as a possibility either.”

“Additionally, Mr. Wei questioned our lack of impartiality, on the same grounds you raised earlier — the speedboat in international waters, and the sniper sent to kill him. He said that unless he could accompany proceedings throughout, he had reason to believe any trial would be conducted in secret.”

Cen Jin couldn’t take it in: Wei Lai hadn’t left?

“…He gave his guarantee that he would bring no weapons, and we agreed to let him travel to Ka Long. Miss Cen, please get your things together. The vehicles are waiting outside.”

Cen Jin followed Dao Ba out of the inn’s front gate. Parked near the entrance were two white minivans. Further away was the open-top jeep.

She walked toward it.

The palm-leaf cover had been lifted — likely soaked through from all the rain. Wei Lai was bent over under the hood, doing something — checking something, apparently. Then he straightened, and with a firm clap, brought the hood down.

He looked up and saw her.

Wei Lai smiled: “Did you sleep well?”

Cen Jin said quietly: “Why didn’t you leave?”

“I did leave — I drove away, didn’t I? The action of ‘leaving’ was completed. So — how did it feel, watching me go?”

How did it feel?

She didn’t want to go back to that memory. She only knew that now, suddenly seeing him smile at her like this again, nothing in the whole world mattered anymore.

Cen Jin said: “Is this what you call ‘walking away’? You left one step and came back the next.”

“Why did you come back?”

Wei Lai said: “Last night, after you fell asleep, I thought about many things. I finally understood why you were so fixed on six years ago — on wanting me to have come to save you.”

“We both know: going back to six years ago is impossible. But I can’t miss both six years ago and right now.”

“You don’t want to live. The Hand of God wants you dead. If I really had left, everything would have ended here. Only by not leaving is there any hope.”

“Of course I could have tricked Dao Ba and helped you escape. But escaping wouldn’t necessarily make you happy. I thought — maybe a trial would be good for you. Once it’s done, the knot would untie itself.”

Cen Jin reminded him: “What if the verdict is very bad?”

“Cen Jin — if what others are accusing you of isn’t something you actually did, why should you carry that crime simply because you had no other options? I talked with Dao Ba. If your version is true, you’re a victim too. You understand history and politics better than I do: the actual Class A war criminals from the Second World War weren’t all sentenced to death. Why should you have to die?”

Cen Jin said quietly: “Because there’s no evidence. Re Lei Mi is dead. Se Qi is dead. With no one left to testify, I could perfectly well be a calculating woman who made up a story to put everything onto the dead.”

Wei Lai shrugged: “Well, we’ll look for some then. Not having evidence isn’t the end of the world. Let’s make a deal, shall we?”

He extended his hand, and when Cen Jin didn’t move, he simply reached over and hooked his little finger around hers.

He said: “Like this.”

“No matter what comes, I’ll walk alongside you to the very end of the road. No evidence isn’t so frightening — there are only a few possibilities, aren’t there? You live — I’ll take care of you. You go to prison — I’ll be there with you. You die — I’ll bury you. Life or death, I’m here for both. Yes?”

Cen Jin smiled. She hooked his finger tighter without thinking. From Dao Ba’s direction came a horn — probably a signal that it was time to move. Wei Lai waved a hand in that direction: “In a moment.”

When he drew his hand back, it paused at her neck, lifting the chain and running his thumb along it. Then with one sudden motion he pulled hard with one hand, snapping it, and hurled it into the forest behind him.

Cen Jin stared at him in surprise.

Wei Lai said: “Stop convicting yourself before the verdict. Under those circumstances, it’s not clear that anyone else would have done better than you.”

He helped Cen Jin up into the vehicle. Just as it started moving, Cen Jin suddenly said quietly: “Wei Lai?”

“Yes?”

“That chain was white gold.”

The engine quieted. Wei Lai frowned: “Was it expensive?”

“A little.”

Wei Lai paused, and said: “Then we’d better go get it.”

Cen Jin watched him jump down from the vehicle.

She couldn’t help it — she burst out laughing, and as she laughed, the tears came.

She tilted her head back and looked up at the sky, washed clean by the rain.

What would come next, what the verdict would bring, whether any evidence could be found… somehow none of it seemed quite so important anymore.