Song Mingmei asked, “Do you think there’s anything about you now that doesn’t deserve his love?”
Gan Yang paused for a long time at this point, long enough for Ding Zhitong to recall the past, that wrong decision, and everyone who was hurt because of it. She remembered the scene in “Night Shanghai” where Wilson asked her, “Tammy, what year did you go to Hong Kong?” And she answered, “2010.” Then, there was Gan Yang’s sudden glance at her.
“What happened next?” she asked, staring at the monotonous street view through the windshield, not allowing herself to dwell on those thoughts.
“After that, I flew back,” Gan Yang chuckled softly, his tone tinged with self-mockery. “Although I was very upset, I was still quite afraid of dying. The first thing I did when I got home was to have a gastroscopy.”
“How was the result?” Ding Zhitong asked, realizing how silly the question sounded as soon as she said it, given that he was sitting perfectly fine beside her.
Sure enough, he replied, “It was just a stomach ulcer. The doctor said it wasn’t even at the point of needing surgery, just needed to take medication and follow the doctor’s advice. I felt so melodramatic at that time. It had only been a little over two years, and no one had asked me to carry heavy loads, mine coal, plow fields, or plant rice. It was just a bit of pressure from repaying debts, yet I had let myself become so worn out…”
Perhaps she had held back for too long, but this self-deprecating remark caused Ding Zhitong to break down instantly.
She choked up, bending forward to cover her face, but was held back by the seatbelt. In the darkness, she reached to unbuckle it, her hands shaking, the clasp refusing to release. Gan Yang leaned over to help her and then pulled her into his arms. She cried on his shoulder, yet her shoulders remained tense, her hands pressed against her chest as if to push him away. She even thought about speaking to him in the tone of a stranger, as she had been doing: “Do you think Feng Sheng lied to you? He didn’t. I had already gone to Hong Kong at that time, but we hadn’t divorced. And that house, we did go to see it. He very much wanted to buy it, but in the end, we couldn’t…”
Sabotage, deliberate destruction. Jeopardize, to put in danger. She recalled these two words again. After all these years, she was still doing the same thing, making no progress.
“Shh—” But Gan Yang just held her, one hand on her back, the other stroking her hair as if comforting a child.
After all these years, he had changed, becoming steady and patient, better than her.
It was this realization that made Ding Zhitong try to calm down. She shouldn’t still be the same as before; she had learned too many lessons.
She wiped her face with her fingers, pushed Gan Yang away, and sat up straight, saying, “You should take me back. I have a meeting tomorrow.”
Gan Yang looked at her as if he wanted to say something more, but in the end, he just turned to start the engine.
It wasn’t until the car was on the road that Ding Zhitong softly added, “Let me think about it properly. Can we talk later?”
“Don’t you want to hear more about Dr. Chen’s matter?” Gan Yang asked her.
“No need,” Ding Zhitong refused, repeating, “Let’s keep business as a business.”
Gan Yang nodded, smiling quietly as he looked at the road ahead, then reached out with one hand to give her a pack of tissues.
Ding Zhitong took one, turned her head, and saw her reflection in the car window, which made her blush. She didn’t dare to look at Gan Yang again until they arrived back at the hotel.
The car stopped under the portico outside the lobby. The doorman opened the car door, and she got out, walking inside.
“Ding Zhitong—” Gan Yang called out to her from behind.
She instinctively turned back and saw him lowering the car window to tell her, “I’ll wait for you.”
He should have said “See you tomorrow” here, but she understood his meaning. This was a response to her earlier words; he was willing to wait for her to think things through properly.
Ding Zhitong nodded, turned, and walked back into the lobby. In her mind, however, was that kiss on the stairs of the Kang Village dormitory many years ago, when Gan Yang let her go and said to her: Tomorrow, we’ll continue.
Early the next morning, the same GL8 came to pick them up, and the group went to see Dr. Chen.
The house was built in the mountains, in a Chinese style, with osmanthus and crabapple trees planted in the courtyard. The owner, in his seventies, was still serving as chairman. He spoke Mandarin with a local accent and invited them to drink tea as soon as they sat down.
Although it was just an informal meeting, Ding Zhitong had done a lot of preparation.
She knew it was wrong to initially treat LT Capital as a financial buyer. Their investments in sports-related online businesses were not for quick entry and exit to make a quick profit. Considering that they belonged to an industrial group and had close connections, they were likely executing a strategic acquisition plan.
She had discussed this repeatedly with Li Jiaxin, and they both thought it looked like they were planning for online sales. The concept of traditional manufacturing plus the internet was everywhere. But for some reason, just because LT also had a Gan Yang, she always felt there was more to it than that.
The introduction about M Bank at the beginning was the same old story, but the latter part was more difficult.
If it were a sell-side M&A pitch book, merely listing the potential buyers’ operations, products, executives, and financial information would be enough to make a book as thick as a brick, sufficient to demonstrate the banker’s professionalism and sincerity. But buy-side M&A was completely different. There was little valuation information on potential sellers, and sometimes it was impossible to get exact data. No matter how much effort was put in, the other party might not even see it.
After Ding Zhitong finished speaking according to her original plan, the room was silent for a while. Once again, she felt that there was more to it than this, and even began to regret not letting Gan Yang continue last night. Why worry about face when trying to win business?
Dr. Chen was very polite and didn’t seem inclined to send them away. He refilled their tea and began to tell Ding Zhitong a story.
He talked about his childhood when his family ran a fabric shop in Vietnam. In 1968, during the war, there were fires and ruins everywhere in Saigon. The fire department rushed from one place to another, unable to keep up with the fires. The fabric was the most vulnerable to damage; a single spark could set it ablaze. The family watched helplessly as everything was lost. Later, he followed his parents to Malaysia, still in the fabric business. When he grew up, he went to Hong Kong for education, and after graduation, he opened a garment factory specializing in European orders. In 1975, when war broke out in Vietnam again, relatives fled Saigon. The boat ticket cost twelve gold bars per person, a price only wealthy local Chinese could afford, but it meant leaving with nothing, and many people died at sea. Then came the 1987 Hong Kong stock market crash, another cycle. But it was these people who, after each brush with death, would always find ways to start businesses again, as if the money-making genes in their blood never stopped burning.
Ding Zhitong had done her homework; Dr. Chen had published a biography, and these stories were all in the book. She initially thought this was just an old man’s fondness for reminiscing, repeating stories from the past, but as she listened on, she realized it was more than that.
Dr. Chen said to her, “What can you do when you have nothing? Start over, that’s how we all got through those times. It’s a pity that the third generation, like mine, all study art or teach at universities, thinking money doesn’t matter. They’ve long lost that spirit.”
At this point, the old man pointed at Gan Yang and said, “But he’s different.”
Gan Yang had been sitting nearby, playing with the tea set, pouring water back and forth. Hearing this, he just smiled.
“When I wanted to buy his factory, do you know what he said to me?” Dr. Chen asked Ding Zhitong, with an intriguing expression on his face.
Ding Zhitong shook her head, expecting the old man to reveal the answer immediately.
Instead, Dr. Chen turned to Gan Yang and said, “You should take them to visit the factory. They’ll understand after seeing it.”
When she first heard this, Ding Zhitong thought it would just be a tour of a few factories near Quanzhou, doable in half a day. It wasn’t until that afternoon when she received the itinerary from Gan Yang that she realized he was planning to invite her to Vietnam as well.
At this point, she finally realized that she had been thinking too simplistically. Dr. Chen relied heavily on Gan Yang, and it was impossible to proceed with this matter without him.
Should she go or not? She hesitated on how to respond, but in the end, her decision was based on a gambler’s instinct.
Although investing too much time in an uncertain project would affect her performance, she decided to give it a try.
After the Quanzhou trip, Ding Zhitong returned to Hong Kong and had HR arrange a business visa for Vietnam on her behalf.
Later, when chatting about this, Song Mingmei teased her, saying: “What does it mean to get close to someone with billions? This is exactly what CEO Gan is doing!”
Ding Zhitong tried to defend herself: “I went purely for business, it’s just a working relationship.”
Song Mingmei only replied with two words: “YeAh right.”
She also dug up that private message Gan Yang had sent on “Mochi” in 2010. When Ding Zhitong saw the screenshot Song Mingmei sent, it was just an extremely brief sentence: “It’s been a long time since we’ve been in touch. How is Ding Zhitong?”
A wave of warmth surged through her heart and eyes. She exhaled at the phone screen, watching Song Mingmei continue typing: “Do you know how many pages I had to go through to find this? I was going to scold you, but after finding it, I was afraid you’d scold me instead.”
Ding Zhitong understood her meaning, thinking that it was because she hadn’t seen this private message that they had missed out on many more years together.
Don’t overthink it, you know it wasn’t possible at that time. This isn’t anyone else’s fault, it can only be blamed on me. She reminded Song Mingmei, and then finally asked the question she had been pondering for a long time, half serious, half joking: “Actually, even without the events of ’08, with two people being so different in every way, it probably would have ended early anyway. Now, it’s because the breakup was so sudden that he feels unsettled. Business people are always talking about money, which seems dirty, but talking about feelings seems expensive. After much thought, the memories from campus are still the most beautiful. But how can the current me give him those memories anymore?”
After sending this message, the “typing” status at the top of the window continued for a long time before she finally saw the reply:
“Ding Zhitong, you’ve indeed made some shitty decisions, but we were all in our twenties back then, who hasn’t? Do you think there’s anything about you now that doesn’t deserve his love? I’ll say it again, you just need to ask yourself if you still like him.”