Every time his self-reflection reached its conclusion, he would inexplicably think of Ding Zhitong, realizing how similar his current avoidant personality was to hers back then.
After a flight of over two hours, the plane landed in Ho Chi Minh City.
The city was equally complex and noisy, with more vibrant architecture, more motorcycles, and a hazier atmosphere. Seeing the PM2.5 warning on the plane, Ding Zhitong felt somewhat disappointed, realizing this place was also unsuitable for running.
However, the next day, after visiting a factory in the suburbs, the local manager said he wanted to treat them to a meal and took them to a seaside location 200 kilometers from Ho Chi Minh City. As the sea breeze blew, the sky turned blue again.
As they got out of the car, her phone vibrated. She looked down to see Gan Yang asking: “Ding Zhitong, do you want to go running with me?”
She smiled without replying, knowing it was his arrangement.
That evening’s dinner was at a small seaside restaurant, with tables set on a concrete embankment next to recently returned fishing boats. Steamed crabs were served with barnacles still attached to their shells.
The sunset had already faded, the pink-orange afterglow turning deep blue as night slowly fell. As the meal progressed, drinks were inevitable. Li Jiaxin could handle it, while Ding Zhitong was content to be idle, joining for a couple of drinks before climbing down the concrete embankment steps to the beach below.
She was wearing canvas shoes that day, afraid of getting them wet, so she took them off, holding them with her fingers, and walked barefoot on the sand. The sand wasn’t very fine but felt real, and the seawater wasn’t cold. She stood there watching the tides wash up repeatedly until someone approached from behind. She turned to see Gan Yang.
Neither knew who initiated it, but they began walking along the waterline.
Ding Zhitong brought up the story she heard on the plane, asking, “That interpreter from Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, did you have a relationship with her?”
Gan Yang was taken aback, asking, “Why do you say that?”
Ding Zhitong replied, “She seems interesting. If I were you, I would have liked her.”
“Really?” Gan Yang responded ambiguously.
Ding Zhitong teased him, saying, “I thought we had reached a point of complete honesty.”
Gan Yang thought for a moment, then answered, “If you want to hear it, I’ll tell you.”
So it was true! Ding Zhitong nodded, saying, “I want to hear it, tell me quickly.”
Gan Yang sighed, feeling that her way of treating him was sliding towards being a close friend, yet suddenly remembered the past when, after their first time making love, she had also lain beside him inquiring about his ex-girlfriends.
That should have been around the end of 2011.
One day, the interpreter met him at the hotel entrance and suddenly stopped to look at him, saying, “I just realized you’re quite good-looking.”
Gan Yang didn’t know how to respond. He was wearing five-yuan shorts and ten-yuan flip-flops, holding a half-eaten banana, and said “Thank you” with mixed feelings – pleased at the compliment but wondering how bad he must have looked six months ago.
Sometime later, as the factory building was completed, several engineers came from China to debug the equipment.
Gan Yang treated everyone to a meal. After the dinner, the former shoe factory owner suggested experiencing “Vietnamese culture.” At first, the engineers were hesitant, but eventually, they all knowingly went along, leaving only Gan Yang and the interpreter to return to the hotel.
As they left the restaurant, the interpreter complained to him, “Why are all men like this? Even those who seem quite honest back home lose their humanity when they come here.”
Gan Yang didn’t know how to respond. The criticism was too broad – he was also a man, and although he didn’t go, the former factory owner would probably come back with receipts for reimbursement.
The interpreter seemed to realize this and casually reassured him: “I don’t mean you, you’re an exception…”
Gan Yang was complimented again, but his brain responded honestly: “I haven’t been feeling well lately.”
“Oh…” The atmosphere suddenly became awkward, and the interpreter glanced at him.
Gan Yang knew his words might lead to misunderstandings, but trying to explain further seemed even stranger and unnecessary.
Seeing his silence, the interpreter seemed to understand something and gave him a sympathetic look.
Meanwhile, the first batch of recruitment also began.
The local union was contacted through the interpreter’s connections, as one of the union’s “fathers” had a daughter studying Chinese at Hanoi University of Foreign Languages, who was the interpreter’s junior.
The girl was brought to the factory by the interpreter. She was short like most locals but very beautiful with a curvaceous figure.
The former factory owner’s eyes changed when he saw her, staring as he asked for her phone number. The girl didn’t mind, saying she wanted to practice her Chinese oral skills, and added them all on ZingChat.
A few days later, the former factory owner indeed invited her out again, under the pretext of a group dinner. During the meal, the girl was gentle and enthusiastic, speaking broken Mandarin, subtly mentioning that she was about to graduate and wanted an internship at the factory. The former factory owner, as the factory manager, naturally agreed readily.
Gan Yang watched from the side, occasionally joining in the conversation, but once she left, he found an opportunity to remind him, “Remember her father’s position, don’t cause any international labor disputes for me.”
Though said jokingly, the listener clearly understood it wasn’t a joke, immediately nodding and responding, “I understand everything you’re saying, but this time I’m serious.”
Although he emphasized “really,” Gan Yang still didn’t quite believe it and paid close attention for a while after the girl came for her internship.
The former factory owner did keep his word, always inviting a group of colleagues when dining out, and behaving properly. The girl got along well with everyone, often chatting with Chinese colleagues to practice her Chinese, and sometimes coming to Gan Yang.
Until one day, things took a strange turn.
The girl messaged him on ZingChat, saying she was writing an assignment about Lu Xun’s “The New Year’s Sacrifice” and had some questions.
Gan Yang hadn’t attended high school in China. He had read Lu Xun but had never done reading comprehension exercises. With the principle of serving the “union father” well, he opened Baidu and said, “Go ahead and ask.”
The girl asked, “In the story, Xianglin’s Wife was bought by He Laoliu as a wife. Do Chinese people still buy wives now?”
Gan Yang answered, “Of course not nowadays.”
But she sent a mischievous emoji, saying, “But you buy Vietnamese brides.”
Gan Yang felt awkward, thinking the conversation would turn towards abstract topics like international relations.
Instead, the next message was: “Would you buy me?”
Gan Yang was stunned, and before he could reply, she added: “For free.”
At that moment, he realized he didn’t feel like he had encountered good fortune in love, but quickly calculated in his mind how many people he would offend if he answered this question wrong – the union leader, the former factory owner, and the interpreter…
After calculating, he carefully joked: “You’re a very nice girl, I like you a lot, but unfortunately I’ve already been sold to someone else, also for free.”
“Who?” The girl didn’t give up, continuing to ask.
The answer was on the tip of his tongue.
Gan Yang wanted to say, Ding Zhitong.
But that was too long a story, bound to lead to more conversations, and not thorough enough as a reason for rejection.
In the end, he typed out the name of the interpreter from Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, feeling sure it would shut the girl down.
Indeed, there was no further reply from her side.
Gan Yang congratulated himself on his quick thinking, just like all those cold, rational, and indifferent capitalists.
But in the following minutes, his mind was filled with slow, silent images – that apartment in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the deep blue North American winter sky outside the window, and inside the room, he was holding Ding Zhitong, falling onto the bare mattress.
He remembered having just said to her: “Then you give me money, I’ll sell myself to you, at a special discounted price, and even with interest-free installments. Just say whether you want it or not?”
And she didn’t answer, just turned to look at him, reaching out to caress his cheek.
He then stopped smiling, his gaze deepening, both hands on her waist, pressing onto her to kiss her.
…
Counting back, that was almost four years ago. He hadn’t expected to still remember it, and the images in his memory remained so clear. He didn’t know what kind of problem this was, as it had been exactly three years since they broke up. She was already married, would sleep in on weekends with her husband, until they were really hungry, play rock-paper-scissors in bed, and the loser would go out to buy breakfast… Thinking about these things, his imagination became extraordinarily rich, but every possibility in his imagination told him it should be over.
After chatting with the union father’s daughter, he went to inform the interpreter about this matter. The interpreter expressed full understanding and pretended to be his girlfriend for a few days before he left Vietnam.
The pretense gradually became reality, and they were together for a while. Unfortunately, by then the Vietnamese factory was already completed and operating, so he didn’t go there often. The interpreter took on other jobs and continued working there.
They rarely met, but he felt this arrangement was good because he was busy at that time. The rare times they met were always pleasant, and once apart, as long as she didn’t contact him, he could go days without communicating.
Until one day, he suddenly realized this gap seemed too long, only to find that he hadn’t logged into ZingChat at all. When he did, he discovered he had been unilaterally declared broken up with.
The interpreter had changed her status to: “I wanted an ocean, but you could only give me a cup of water.”
He saw it and thought she meant he hadn’t given her enough time.
But the former factory owner had a different interpretation, saying, “She means you didn’t love her enough!”
Is that so? Isn’t it? Gan Yang couldn’t help but fall into deep thought.
There was regret, and there was self-reflection. He later went to Myanmar, Cambodia, and Indonesia, but never encountered such a good interpreter again.
But at the end of every self-reflection, he would inexplicably think of Ding Zhitong, realizing how similar his current avoidant personality was to hers back then. Although he knew it was meaningless, he would repeatedly ask himself if their outcome would have been completely different if they had met at a different time or under different circumstances.
“The dead look of an avoidant personality?” Ding Zhitong repeated as she walked, then turned back to look at Gan Yang, deliberately asking, “What does that mean?”
Gan Yang was just behind her, hands in his pockets, looking at the moon and smiling.
“What happened after that?” Ding Zhitong asked again.
He answered honestly: “There were others later, but the process and results were about the same. I felt it wasn’t fair to anyone, so I decided not to date for a while.”
Ding Zhitong laughed, saying, “You know, I thought the same thing…”
But Gan Yang immediately refused: “You don’t need to tell me, I don’t want to torture myself.”
“But you asked me about Feng Sheng,” Ding Zhitong thought he was pretending.
“That’s different,” Gan Yang replied without explaining.
But Ding Zhitong could guess his meaning and still said: “Marrying him was my own decision. Later, we separated because both of us didn’t do well enough, not because of you. You don’t need to feel guilty about what happened back then. So many years have passed, and I can still be friends with him. Of course, I can be friends with you too.”
“Friends?” Gan Yang stopped walking. “Is that really how you see it?”
Ding Zhitong was about to say, “I think that’s how it is,” but he had already gently pulled her into his arms.
Their bare arms touched, then their bodies, then their lips.
Unlike the kiss outside the serviced apartment in Hong Kong. In the darkness, they could only see each other’s eyes and the moonlight outlined silhouettes, hearing only the sound of waves, breathing in the slightly salty taste, as fine moisture and heat penetrated every pore. The seawater seemed to suddenly rise, washing over their feet, momentarily making them feel as if they were about to be submerged. As if by instinct, he held her close, and she also clung tightly to him, even experiencing the weightlessness and breathlessness of being underwater. Their hearts swelled, beating heavily, as if any faster would cause pain, yet never quite reaching that point, leaving them immersed in this strange sensation.
They kissed for a long time as if they had never been apart, until faint, scattered voices could be heard in the distance.
Ding Zhitong pushed him away, taking a few steps back, and said, “I’m used to morning runs. See you tomorrow morning.”