Li Xun stood at a busy intersection in the heart of the city.

Traffic poured through the night like a golden river, stretching as far as the eye could see.

“So?” A man emerged from a shadowed corner — looking younger than he probably was, slight and wiry, with a pair of prominent, protruding eyes that, the moment they shifted, suggested something shifty moving behind them.

Li Xun said nothing. Hou Ning went on: “I can read it off your face anyway — same thing I told you before, which you didn’t believe. Come on, let’s get food. I’m starving to death.”

At the far end of the street there was a small noodle shop. Business was thriving at this hour — the place was packed inside, and tables had spilled out onto the pavement.

It was a family operation, run for many years by a husband and wife. The husband stood at the front by the large iron pot, towel draped across his neck, boiling noodles. His wife worked the floor — delivering orders, collecting payments, busy and cheerful.

It was just past eight-thirty. Office workers from nearby buildings had finished for the evening and were filtering in for a meal. The theme at nearly every table was the same: complaints about work and about bosses.

By contrast, Li Xun’s table was unusually quiet.

Two bowls of beef noodle soup sat on the table, but Li Xun hadn’t touched his. He smoked and watched the street — the people passing by, the flow of traffic.

Hou Ning ate his way through half a bowl, then propped his laptop open on his knees and began typing with impressive speed.

“That’s the company you wanted to go after?” He didn’t look up, addressing Li Xun directly. “I already looked them up. They’re quite large now.” He paused. “Their reputation is awful, though. Nothing but abuse online.”

Li Xun said nothing. He kept his eyes on the distance.

Hou Ning lifted his gaze from the screen, studied him for a few seconds, then closed the laptop. “Li Xun, come with me.”

Li Xun slowly turned.

Hou Ning looked at him and said: “You’ve just been to see those old classmates of yours. I can tell from how you look what kind of reception you got. You can’t hold it against them — that’s just how the world works. The first time I went in, when I got out, my own parents wouldn’t acknowledge me — all because of that small debt. Doesn’t matter how it happens. When you’re on the outside and things go wrong, the people closest to you are the first to walk.”

Hou Ning gave a short, humorless laugh. His face was especially lean — when he smiled, creases fanned out across it, and combined with those bulging eyes, he looked rather like a monkey.

He tapped the laptop tucked under his arm. “But what they don’t know is that I made that much money back with a few keystrokes.”

Li Xun’s gaze went flat and cold.

Hou Ning leaned forward across the table. “Li Xun, money is money, no matter where it comes from. You think your old classmate’s money is clean? If it were, he wouldn’t have half the country cursing him. ‘Friends’ — what a joke. The louder they shout about loyalty, the faster they sell you out. But that’s all in the past. A person has to look forward. Leave this place with me, go abroad — after that, no one can touch us, and we’ll have more money than we know what to do with.”

Li Xun never answered him. He was looking toward a fixed point in the distance. Hou Ning followed his gaze and made out, at the far end of the dark street, the lit-up face of Jili Company’s building — newer than its neighbors, and for that reason more imposing.

The expression on Li Xun’s face darkened. He ground his cigarette out on the table, stood, and walked out. Hou Ning let out a sound of protest, grabbed his laptop, and went after him.

Hou Ning’s limbs didn’t seem to cooperate well with each other — he was fine walking, but running exposed a certain ungainliness. He barely came up to Li Xun’s chest, and had the thin, undernourished look of someone who had never quite filled out. He appeared less imposing than a middle-school student.

“What are you going to do? Tell me and I can help!”

Li Xun’s legs were long and his stride was wide. Hou Ning fell behind within moments, breathing hard. He gave up the chase and hurled his voice at the retreating figure instead.

“Li Xun!”

Li Xun didn’t slow down. He disappeared into the darkness of the night.

*

A sports car was parked outside the entrance to a villa complex.

The night had grown late. The street lighting inside the estate had been dimmed to its evening setting, but it still caught the blaze of the car’s body — vivid red, luminous as flame.

It was the second sports car Jin Cheng had bought that year. Counting his previous vehicles, he now owned seven in total, five of them red.

In truth, Jin Cheng had no particular fondness for red. But when he bought his first sports car, the timing happened to coincide with “Light Red” topping every chart, and at his manager’s insistence he had picked a red car for the occasion. His fans had since enshrined red as his signature color, portraying him as a man like a living flame. After so many years, he had somehow come to genuinely believe it himself.

“I’m going in.” Ren Di roused herself from the passenger seat, undid her seatbelt, and moved to step out. Jin Cheng caught her by the shoulder and pulled her into a kiss.

Their lips parted. Ren Di frowned.

“You’ve been drinking a lot.”

“You drank more than me.”

“But I didn’t drive.”

“It’s this late — who’s going to check? And even if they did, what of it — that’s what publicists are for,” Jin Cheng said, unbothered.

Ren Di had no patience for it. Jin Cheng held on, wheedling, his mouth at her ear. “…Every rock band has to drink heavily, that’s part of the deal—”

Ren Di was tired and irritated. She pushed him off.

“I’m going.”

Jin Cheng had another gathering to get to. He drove away.

Ren Di didn’t go inside immediately. She stood at the gate and lit a cigarette.

It was just turning autumn, and the air was still thick and close. She wanted to undo her collar for a breath of air, but she’d drunk too much and her hands kept trembling — she failed several times before giving up and simply tore the button off.

Ash fell in the scuffle and burned her hand. Ren Di swore under her breath.

When she looked up again, she saw a figure step out from the shadows between the trees ahead.

Ren Di went still. She spent about ten seconds deciding whether this was real or a drunken hallucination, then slowly opened her eyes wider.

Li Xun moved into the light of a streetlamp. She saw him clearly now. She dropped her cigarette to the ground, kneaded her dry, stiff hair, then stamped her foot once, hard, in pure release — and swore loudly:

“Damn it!”

The night wind came through. Something in her chest felt fractionally lighter. She turned back and opened the gate, waving him toward her.

“Come in. Talk inside.”

She kicked the obstacles out of her path in the doorway, and went to the refrigerator to dig out something to drink.

“When did you get out?” she asked.

“Not long ago.”

Ren Di worked in music, and was acutely sensitive to sound. She could hear that Li Xun’s voice had grown darker and more weighted than before. Her feelings were complicated. She tipped a few swallows back and looked at him again properly.

“You haven’t changed much,” she said.

Li Xun smiled — and made no comment on the observation.

Ren Di asked: “Have you seen Zhu Yun?”

Li Xun was in the middle of lighting a cigarette. The flame came and went. He looked up and said, evenly: “No. I don’t want to.”

Ren Di’s brow creased.

Li Xun exhaled a slow breath of smoke.

“What I came for is something else.”

Ren Di said nothing.

She had lied just now, in fact. Li Xun hadn’t “barely changed.” He had changed entirely. He was like the night — cold all the way through. Even the faint trace of a smile at the corner of his mouth carried a chill.

She looked down and saw her own face, distorted, reflected in the side of the bottle. Perhaps she looked just as different to him. From the start, they had always been alike — both reckless, both unrestrained, both selfish in their own way.

Which was perhaps why there was a particular, unspoken understanding between them.

“You found out about Gao Jianhong,” Ren Di said, without inflection.

Li Xun shrugged — an admission.

Of course it was that. She had known the moment she guessed. Ren Di set the bottle aside and felt a brief, dry flicker of amusement. “The first place you went after getting out was that company?”

Li Xun made a low sound of agreement, flicking ash directly onto the floor.

Ren Di was quiet for a moment, then looked away and spoke without feeling. “I don’t have much contact with him. Everything I know is secondhand. When they first graduated, his game project happened to collide with Fang Zhijing’s, and at some point the two of them ended up merging operations. The company was sued in its early days — charges didn’t stick. Eventually it went nowhere.” She paused, then added: “Zhu Yun tried some things. But at the time she was abroad, and too far removed to do much.”

Li Xun leaned against the wall, head slightly bowed, smoking.

“Let me call Zhu Yun,” Ren Di said.

Li Xun smiled. “I didn’t come here to catch up.”

His voice sounded like it had been worn out of stone.

He pushed off from the wall and stubbed out his cigarette.

“Do you remember what you said in the bar that time?”

The question came out of nowhere, but the moment Ren Di heard it, the specific night, the specific bar, the specific words rose before her immediately and with complete clarity. He had provided funding for her band back then, and that evening she had promised to repay him with a portion of the earnings once they turned a profit.

“You want money?” Ren Di said.

“Yes.”

She paused, then confirmed: “You came here tonight just to collect money?”

Li Xun looked at her. Six years had settled fully into his frame — he was tall and broad now, all hard lines, his bones like blades sheathed inside him.

“Yes,” he said.

“What do you want it for?” Ren Di asked.

“Not your business,” Li Xun said.

Ren Di looked at him in silence. He stood there with that deceptive air of nonchalance — surface calm, and underneath it, something verging on madness. She knew him far too well. He had gotten out of prison and still hadn’t gone to see Zhu Yun. The first place he’d gone was that company. He knew exactly what he wanted. That company had once been his entire vision and his entire future — and now it was in the hands of his enemies.

“Li Xun, calm down,” Ren Di said, frowning.

Li Xun laughed quietly. “Which of my eyes looks unclam to you?”

He kept people at a distance of a thousand miles.

Something that had begun to loosen in Ren Di’s chest closed back up again — tighter than before. She drained the rest of the bottle in one go, and when the empty bottle came down on the marble kitchen counter without enough control, it hit with a loud clang.

“Li Xun, don’t play these games with me!”

The alcohol was rising now, and so was her temper.

“Back then, you blinded that man named Fang on a moment of blind rage — and then you refused to get a lawyer, refused to let anyone help you, sat in prison for six years, and forbade anyone from visiting. You only thought of your own pride. Did you ever stop to think about anyone else? Now you’re out, and before you’ve said two words, you’re off to get yourself killed again. What do you want the money for — to hire someone to kill him?”

Li Xun said nothing. Ren Di pointed at him and went on:

“Fine. However much money you need, I’ll give it to you. And I’ll tell you this — you had better make sure you take them all down with you when you go. That way at least you won’t be around to disturb Zhu Yun’s peaceful life.”

Li Xun had kept a blank face throughout, right up until that last sentence. Then, finally, something in his expression cooled.

Ren Di saw the shift, and felt an unreasonable satisfaction.

“Don’t believe me?”

Li Xun stared at her, cold and still.

Ren Di held his gaze without flinching. After a long pause, Li Xun’s mouth curved just slightly.

“Done?”

“No.”

Ren Di lifted her chin, planted herself in front of him, and looked up directly into his eyes.

One word at a time, she said:

“Li Xun — I have been wanting to say this to you for a long time. You are a selfish son of a bitch.”

The corner of his mouth curved further.

“Done now?”

Ren Di turned and went back to the refrigerator for another bottle.

“The band’s money isn’t mine to handle. My personal savings are all with Jin Cheng. Tell me how much you need, and I’ll get it for you in cash tomorrow.”

Her back was to Li Xun as she opened the bottle. She heard the sound of the door behind her. She turned around — Li Xun was gone. On the coffee table, he had left a single thin slip of paper.