As the appointed hour approached, Wei Lai left the bar. Ai Lin caught up with him in the dim corridor: “Wei.”
She was different from her usual self — no teasing, no irritation, no pique. Her expression was grave, tinged with a quiet helplessness and low spirits. She said: “You can’t keep going on like this.”
Women are natural advisors. With a young face, she spoke with the worn wisdom of someone who had lived a hundred years: “Do you have no plans for the future? You ought to save some money, marry a girl you like, buy a bigger place, live a settled life. I want to see you well. After all, you are the only man I have ever loved in my life.”
What Ai Lin said was true. In the course of admiring Wei Lai, she had one day experienced a sudden clarity — realizing, without warning or preamble, that she actually preferred women. No particular trigger, no gradual build-up. The only explanation was that she had simply come to her senses a little late.
Wei Lai considered for a moment. To decisively end a topic, sincerity was essential.
He replied: “I understand that diligence, ambition, and stability are universal values. But the world is vast — you have to allow some people to go off the rails.”
He stepped back, gave Ai Lin a bow — courteous and proper — then turned and walked away.
No blood relation, no obligation, and yet someone had genuinely mapped out a future for him. That warranted gratitude.
He had no plans. He took things as they came. Fortune spent would come again; he was happy to go off the rails, and had no wish to disturb the men and women who were living carefully and earnestly on those rails.
He stepped out of the apartment building and walked straight down the street. At the far end he turned left. The paving stones had been washed glassy by the light of the streetlamps. Under one of those lamps sat a battered Volkswagen.
Milu was standing beside the car, craning his neck in anticipation. When he saw Wei Lai, his eyes lit up — he nearly launched himself forward: “David’s coming! My Christmas tree!”
“Christmas tree” was Wei Lai’s nickname.
Wei Lai strode forward. The instant Milu drew close, Wei Lai caught him by the head with one hand, spun him around on the spot, and then walked right past him and into the passenger seat.
The car was comfortably warm — good for a long conversation, or a quick nap.
Milu climbed in, buzzing with excitement.
“Wei! You made it back safely! God only knows — I watched Into the Wild three times! One night I dreamed you died and I wept my heart out — I swear, when Yi Fu died I didn’t cry half as hard!”
Wei Lai had nothing to say to this. Yi Fu was Milu’s wife, mother of their son and daughter — but more importantly, Yi Fu was alive and well, and stood a solid chance of living another thirty or forty years.
Milu was Wei Lai’s agent.
An American Black man, thirty-five years old, with the look of a rapper. Talkative, inexhaustible energy. Passionately in love with China. He believed the most delicious food in the world was Chinese dumplings — because dumplings could have ten thousand different flavors!
He had a genuine gift for languages and had been especially dedicated to studying Chinese in recent years. Wei Lai rarely had occasion to speak Chinese, but in conversation with Milu he could switch freely between Chinese and English. And Milu was committed to mastering the most authentic Chinese slang — dropping a phrase here and there, which regardless of whether he understood it correctly, always somehow sounded endearing.
Once he asked Wei Lai: “Chinese people say, ‘nothing beats dumplings to eat; nothing beats your sister-in-law for fun.’ I understand why dumplings are good to eat — but why is the sister-in-law fun?”
Wei Lai was silent for a long while, then answered: “You filthy scoundrel.”
Another time he asked: “You people seem to disapprove of the brother-in-law and the sister-in-law getting too close — but aren’t they family? Shouldn’t family members cherish each other?”
Wei Lai was silent for a long while, then answered: “You filthy scoundrel.”
…
Milu’s Chinese and powers of inference grew stronger and stronger under the rain of Wei Lai’s scolding.
After four months apart, Milu’s affection for him descended like a sudden heavy snowfall in La Pu Lan — with no sign of letting up anytime soon. Wei Lai couldn’t be bothered to listen to him ramble, and his gaze drifted to the leather envelope propped on the dashboard: “Client file?”
Milu’s habit was to put client information in leather envelopes sealed with a wrap-around cord.
Wei Lai reached for it. Milu said: “No, no, not that one. This one.”
He pulled another from under the seat and handed it over with ceremony: “Chosen especially for you.”
The envelope looked exactly the same on the outside. Wei Lai tested its thickness — felt like a photograph.
He didn’t open it yet: “Chosen especially for me?”
“I understand you Chinese people. Old hometown, new tears — one look and you’re weeping.”
Understood. This client was probably Chinese — or at least ethnically Chinese.
Wei Lai unwound the cord. “Then you don’t quite fully understand us. We also have a saying — exploit the familiar — where one of your own fleeces one of your own, without mercy.”
He drew out the photograph.
The light inside the car was dim, but — perhaps it was an illusion — the moment he pulled out the photo, Wei Lai felt as if everything in front of him brightened for an instant.
He said, almost instinctively: “Beautiful.”
The photograph showed an ethnically Chinese woman in her mid-to-late twenties, leaning over a staircase railing smoking a cigarette. Her hair reached her shoulders, the ends slightly curled. She wore no particular expression; her eyes met the camera’s lens directly.
Her eyes held within them a world’s worth of depth.
In the blank space of the photograph, two characters had been written in marker: Cen Jin.
Milu glanced sideways at him: “Be careful — a man first falls for a dimple, and before you know it he’s brought the whole woman home as his wife.”
Wei Lai kept his eyes on the photograph: “Give me a little more credit than that. First — she’s not quite beautiful enough to make me lose my head. Second — I have professional ethics. Once I’ve taken a job, the client is a client, and I don’t develop any relationship with a client beyond money.”
He paused, then added: “Her gaze is not soft. She’s been through something.”
He propped Cen Jin’s photo against the dashboard.
The streetlamp light filtered in from outside, and the woman in the photograph was swallowed by shadow, her features blurring. Wei Lai asked: “This… Miss Cen — what is she like as a person?”
Milu was one of the most connected private-security agents in the industry, with two aces up his sleeve: Christmas Tree and Ke Ke Shu.
Aces could pick and choose their clients, could set their own rules — no matter how absurd those rules were. Ke Ke Shu’s rule, for instance, was: absolutely no clients with moles anywhere between the hairline and the navel.
Baffling. A person has a mole. What business is it of yours?
Compared to Ke Ke Shu, Wei Lai was far less trouble. He had only one rule: he would not protect anyone who was human scum.
His reasoning: spending sweat, blood, and possibly your life protecting human scum was to act against the natural order — contrary to the Chinese practice of respecting Heaven.
Everything Chinese was good, Milu nodded vigorously in agreement: absolutely, absolutely.
Now Wei Lai was asking what Cen Jin was “like as a person” — which meant he was inclined to take the job.
Milu had already rehearsed his approach: “Wei, people are complex… would you prefer to hear the bad things about her first, or the good?”
“The bad.”
“Then be patient — no matter how things seem at the start, by the time I’ve finished, you’ll definitely take the job.”
Wei Lai smiled slightly.
On what basis, definitely? Love is never eternal, passion never perpetual, nothing in this world is absolute.
Outside the car, the empty city was quiet; not a single pedestrian had passed in all this time.
“Miss Cen once had a fiancé. On the eve of their wedding, she was caught in bed with another man at a hotel. After the engagement collapsed, her former fiancé had a moment of despair and swallowed pills. Fortunately he was found in time and his stomach was pumped.”
This was a private matter; Wei Lai had no comment. If anything, he had less regard for the fiancé than for Cen Jin: a real man would never lack for a wife — the earlier he left a woman like that behind, the better.
Milu’s tone pivoted cheerfully: “But — God is fair. Her ex-fiancé met someone new in the hospital, and the following year they married. At the ceremony, he said he was grateful God had not let him die for the wrong person, so he could finally wait for true love.”
As he spoke, Milu slid over another photograph — the implication obvious: even if Cen Jin lacked moral integrity, God had already made amends to the poor man.
In the photo, a tall, handsome, bookish-looking ethnically Chinese man had his arm around his wife, who leaned against him like a little bird at rest, eyes full of love — a picture of warmth and harmony.
Wei Lai gestured for Milu to continue.
“Miss Cen… is also a suspect in a murder case.”
Milu paused deliberately at that, hoping to prompt him to ask. Wei Lai didn’t take the bait. He sat perfectly still.
Milu had no choice but to go on: “Fortunately the evidence was not strong enough, and she was quickly cleared of suspicion.”
“What case?”
“A wealthy French businessman, killed by a toxic injection. The safe at the scene was found wide open — the exact value of what was taken is unclear. Police determined it was a robbery-murder. Miss Cen was caught up in it only because she had been one of the visitors that evening.”
The phrase “only because” already revealed a bias: Milu was working hard to shake off every unflattering rumor attached to Cen Jin; even where she was touched by association, he framed it as being “dragged in.”
Wei Lai was actually more interested in the “toxic injection” detail: “What toxin?”
“I’m told it was… puffer fish toxin.”
Wei Lai was surprised.
Milu misread this: “I thought it was excessive too. Purified puffer fish toxin runs over two hundred thousand US dollars per gram on the international market. An ordinary lethal injection would work just as well — why bother?”
Wei Lai said: “Because… it’s cruel.”
Tetrodotoxin — TTX — is more than twelve hundred times more toxic than the already deadly cyanide. It paralyzes the nervous system, causes the disappearance of tendon reflexes, and ultimately kills by paralyzing the respiratory muscles. More terrifying still: TTX is blocked by the blood-brain barrier and cannot enter the brain. The victim, though unable to speak or move, remains completely lucid throughout the dying process — fully aware of everything happening to their body.
Fully lucid throughout… one couldn’t imagine anything more horrifying to contemplate.
There were apparently other unflattering things about Cen Jin — but in Milu’s view, they were common human failings, not worth mentioning.
He was eager now to bring out the brilliant side of Cen Jin.
“Miss Cen was once a member of an international aid organization in Africa. During the period of Somali warlord conflict, she helped the United Nations coordinate relief food distribution to refugees. She later went to Ka Long — and not long after she arrived, Ka Long was swept by the ethnic massacre that shocked the world.”
Wei Lai frowned. The Ka Long massacre — he seemed to have heard of it.
Milu gave a cold laugh: “You don’t pay attention. Whatever happens in Africa — wars, famines, conflicts, massacres — you all act as if it’s happening on another planet.”
Perhaps because he was Black himself, Milu spoke on this point with sudden righteous fury.
Wei Lai was beginning to remember. Ka Long was tiny — less than twenty thousand square kilometers, one of the smallest but most densely populated countries in Africa. It had two major ethnic groups — the Huka and the Kawa — with frequent ethnic clashes and an internal war that had broken out some years earlier.
“Wasn’t it the Ka Long massacre that was classified as a crime against humanity? That was six years ago, I think? I recall the United Nations later established a dedicated memorial day for it.”
Milu spoke through gritted teeth: “That’s the one. The United Nations did nothing. Western nations went collectively blind. The media described it as a tribal conflict, downplaying it utterly. The whole world abandoned Ka Long. In two months, over two hundred thousand Kawa people were slaughtered. Only a handful of international relief organizations risked their lives to help the refugees — groups like the Red Cross, Médecins Sans Frontières…”
Wei Lai felt a stir in his chest: “Miss Cen… didn’t evacuate?”
Milu nodded: “She stayed. With a small group of volunteers, she established a humanitarian protection zone inside an elementary school, stood her ground against the Huka armed fighters for over a month, and ultimately sheltered the lives of one hundred and seventy-five Kawa people. When she left Ka Long, the president awarded her the National Friendship Medal.”
Wei Lai sat up straighter, the ease dropping from his posture.
He had protected all manner of people — pillars of their industry, elite professionals, people described as “heroic figures” and “indomitable champions.” But those were titles and accolades, words given to people. Someone with Cen Jin’s actual background — this was genuinely the first time.
“She needs protection?”
“Two days ago, she received… a severed human hand.”