“You must, you must keep running.”
Soon, the day of departure for Vietnam arrived.
Gan Yang was on a connecting flight, not seated in the same row as them. He naturally came over to suggest switching seats with Li Jiaxin, saying he had something to discuss with Ding Zhitong. Li Jiaxin readily agreed, and Ding Zhitong didn’t object. She had planned to talk to him face-to-face anyway. However, with people in front and behind, some things were still inconvenient to discuss.
As the plane began to taxi, she followed her usual routine: setting a one-hour alarm on her iWatch, wrapping herself in a blanket, dimming the overhead light, and pulling out her eye mask from her bag.
“What are you doing?” Gan Yang watched her from beside.
Ding Zhitong apologized, explaining, “Business trips are the most tiring. Meetings during the day, overtime at night – it’s like there’s no time to sleep. My trick is to sleep well on the plane.”
Gan Yang, assuming she was still avoiding a private chat, deliberately asked, “You sleep even when sitting with clients?”
Ding Zhitong was unfazed, replying, “I always check in online in advance, trying not to sit with clients. If they charter a private jet, there’s no choice – we all sit face to face, and no one gets to sleep. But we’ve known each other for so many years, you surely don’t mind, right?”
Gan Yang laughed, shaking his head, and said softly, “Go to sleep then.”
Sitting so close, his words seemed to brush against her ear, almost causing her heart to flutter.
Ding Zhitong remembered him saying this before, in Ithaca or that apartment on the Upper West Side in New York. She would sneak back to see him after a business trip or come home late after working overtime. Perhaps both scenarios had occurred so many times that she couldn’t pinpoint the exact memory. Nevertheless, she put on her eye mask, embroidered with “Good Night” on a black background, as if responding to him.
Gan Yang initially thought she was pretending to sleep, but after a while, he leaned in to check and found she was asleep. Looking back, he saw Li Jiaxin also sleeping in the row behind. They were indeed from the same team.
Although he couldn’t talk to her, it was a rare opportunity to look at her closely. She was still very thin and fair-skinned. The black eye mask created a stark contrast, making her skin appear even more snow-white. Her hair had grown a bit longer, falling to her collarbone, still as fine and soft as before. She hadn’t changed much outwardly, but the overall impression she gave was entirely different.
Gan Yang found it hard to believe that the once delicate girl who seemed so fragile he wanted to fold her up and hide her in his palm, who would lose sleep over the slightest worry or a lit room, had become this person who could do ten pull-ups and fall asleep on a plane at will.
Even stranger was that he had thought he was just nostalgic, wanting to rekindle a youthful romance left unfinished. If that were truly the case, he shouldn’t have wanted her to change, preferring her to be exactly as she was when they first met. Yet, seeing her changed after so many years didn’t disappoint him in the slightest.
The flight lasted an hour and fifteen minutes. Ding Zhitong slept for a full hour, neither leaning towards him nor needing him to adjust her blanket. When her alarm went off, she woke up and went to the bathroom to touch up her makeup. By the time she returned to her seat, the seatbelt sign had just lit up, and the flight attendants began announcing the descent. After disembarking, with no checked luggage, they went straight through customs to immigration. While queuing, she opened her laptop, checking and replying to emails.
Gan Yang watched this entire sequence, knowing without asking that it was the result of countless repetitions. He realized he was still worried about her being tired, still felt concerned for her, but also knew she didn’t need it.
However, upon leaving Hanoi International Airport, it was Ding Zhitong’s turn to be amazed.
They were hit by a wave of heat from the Indochinese peninsula. Although the latitude was similar to Hong Kong’s, the air conditioning wasn’t set nearly as cold, and there were more semi-open spaces. Gan Yang was familiar with the place. He changed his SIM card, messaged the driver on Zingchat, and soon led them to a Prado heading into the city.
As they gazed at the distant skyscrapers of the new district with their scattered lights, the car drove through dilapidated neighborhoods, bustling streets, and past three-wheeled carts selling an abundance of tropical fruits by the roadside – a stark, cyberpunk-like contrast. Even though it was late, every intersection was still filled with swarms of motorcycles zooming by, a dense mass of speeding vehicles that felt both familiar and strange. Even the music playing in the car was a mix of the familiar and unfamiliar – the melody was Xiao Gang’s “Sunset,” but sung by a female voice in Vietnamese.
The driver knew some English, and Gan Yang knew some Vietnamese. With the help of Google Translate, they introduced the newcomers to the city along the way. Ding Zhitong learned that the city’s area had expanded several times in recent years, that the old quarter now had the most expensive land prices in all of Vietnam, and that Ba Dinh District housed almost all government offices and foreign embassies. But what impressed her most was Gan Yang’s casual remark: “When I first came here, it wasn’t like this. There was only the old city…”
The driver asked, “Which year was that?”
Gan Yang replied, “2010.”
At that moment, the neon lights swept across the car interior, and he briefly glanced at Ding Zhitong.
Ding Zhitong looked back at him. 2010 – in November of that year, he had come here after leaving New York. She had thought he had told her enough, but now she found herself wanting to know about his experiences afterward, even more than the past events related to her.
The car stopped in front of a hotel in the Old Quarter. The three of them checked in and went to their rooms.
This time, it was Ding Zhitong who messaged Gan Yang first: “Do you have time? Let’s talk for a bit.”
He replied almost immediately: “Meet at the terrace bar.”
“Bar?” she asked deliberately.
Gan Yang responded: “Let me boil some water and bring my thermos.”
Ding Zhitong smiled at the screen, but ultimately changed the meeting place to the rooftop pool, where she ordered two fruit juices at the pool bar while waiting for him.
November was already the dry season here, with temperatures in the twenties Celsius and a cool, dry night breeze. Looking down from the height, she saw the low-rise dwellings of the old town, haphazardly stacked and spread out, with pinpoints of gentle light escaping from countless windows – a world apart from the new district in the distance.
Gan Yang had rushed through a shower before coming, wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and running shoes, his hair still carrying a slight scent of shampoo.
Ding Zhitong had planned what to say to him, but upon seeing him, she found herself asking, “Are you going for a run?”
Gan Yang sat down, nodded, and asked in return, “What about you, do you still run?”
Ding Zhitong nodded too, then after a pause added, “I thought you only had time for the gym now…”
She didn’t mention how many marathons she had run, but then she heard Gan Yang say, “My first marathon finish was in 2013, in Yangon, Myanmar.”
She was unexpectedly struck by this statement, perhaps because his marathon journey had been so extraordinarily arduous. From 2007 to 2013, six years, from New York to Yangon – who could have imagined?
Perhaps Gan Yang felt the same way. For a moment, neither of them spoke.
But then she saw him shaking his head disappointedly, saying, “Ding Zhitong, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.”
“Forgotten what?” Ding Zhitong asked, still uncomfortable with him using her full name.
Gan Yang said, “You were the one who made me promise.”
“???” She didn’t understand.
“‘Gan Yang, there’s something you must promise me,'” he mimicked her tone. “‘You must, you must keep running.'”
Ding Zhitong suddenly remembered. It was when she was still in training, in that small serviced apartment on Wall Street. She had been touching his chest and abs when she said those words. She smiled, blushing, with a hint of tears in her eyes, never imagining these three feelings could occur simultaneously.
“Really,” Gan Yang took a deep breath and continued, “That year when I returned to Quanzhou from New York, it was because of those words that I started running again.”
In the autumn of 2010, Gan Yang had a gastroscopy and learned he wasn’t dying. He went back and joked with Zeng Junjie, saying that he used to look down on his father, but Gan Kunliang had one quality worth emulating – his strong psychological resilience.
Back in the day, even as a fugitive, his father had lived well. When caught, he had only a few dollars left but was still dressed smartly and maintained a rich array of entertainment activities and romantic entanglements.
Zeng Junjie immediately understood and took out his phone to book a water mill sauna, wanting to take him for a full Dongguan-style experience.
“That’s not what I meant…” Gan Yang refused.
Zeng Junjie assumed he was just being shy and persuaded, “Look, you haven’t had a girlfriend for over two years, right? Do you know that if an adult male doesn’t… you know… for three months, his testosterone levels drop to that of a child? If it goes on too long, you might never recover.”
Gan Yang laughed, asking, “Where did you hear that?”
“I graduated with a degree in Sports Science from the Institute of Physical Education. Would I make this up?!” Zeng Junjie insisted.
For a moment, Gan Yang looked at him without speaking, as if truly considering whether to go to the sauna with him. But when he finally spoke, it was a different question altogether: “So, do you think I can start running again now?”
Zeng Junjie was taken aback and cursed, “I called you a pervert, and you are one. I invite you to a sauna, and you ask me about running. Do you have any normal male desires left?”
But after his outburst, he still gave a proper answer: “Jog slowly, within your limits. The air quality is pretty bad though, so it’s better to run on a treadmill indoors.”
Seeing his chubby friend so serious for once, Gan Yang was suddenly moved. But in his mind, he heard another voice speaking:
You have to keep running.
Gan Yang, promise me you won’t stop running.
You must, you must keep running.
Although at the time, Ding Zhitong had only been teasing him about eating too much and becoming a fat uncle in the future, looking back now, it stirred deep emotions within him.