Wei Lai felt that the negotiation, at this point, had reached its effective end.

That night, before falling asleep, he uncharacteristically refrained from pestering Cen Jin. After washing up, he lay down calmly on the floor, rested his head on the luggage bag, and carefully reviewed everything about the negotiation over the past stretch of time.

She must have long since figured out how to handle Hu Sha, which was why she had behaved throughout as though she couldn’t be bothered with the Sirius all along.

Cen Jin reached out and turned off the fishing lamp, then slowly lay down. The small compartment was dark and quiet, the breathing of two people clearly audible.

A heavy muffled thud suddenly came from the deck above — even being on the same ship, they remained in two separate worlds; they had never been able to figure out what these pirates were so enthusiastically up to.

Wei Lai said in a low voice: “I finally understand why the Saudis hired you for the negotiation. If it were me, aside from beating Hu Sha half to death to force his compliance, I probably couldn’t have thought of anything else. Is there some trick to negotiation? Could you enlighten me?”

When he could no longer make a living as a bodyguard on his youthful vitality alone, he could sell cosmetics, work in environmental protection, or occasionally step in to negotiate something on someone’s behalf.

Cen Jin gave a soft laugh.

After a pause, she said: “Before I boarded the ship, Hu Sha must have been both anxious and tense, single-mindedly convinced I was here to bargain him down and wrest the meat from his mouth. Even though I once saved his life, that was then and this is now — at this moment, I am the greatest threat to his vested interests.”

“So when I appeared, I had to immediately shatter the preconceptions he’d already formed. I needed him to feel I was here to help him, that this was an opportunity he couldn’t have sought out even if he’d tried, in order to break through the rigid atmosphere that had already taken hold. I also needed to reverse the impression of the Saudis in his mind: they weren’t deep-pocketed suckers paying out, but rather the benefactors who could help him build a new life.”

In other words, you have to overturn everything he’s taken for granted before you have any chance of leading him where you want him to go.

“As the negotiation has progressed to this point, I have already successfully shifted the entire subject: Hu Sha is no longer thinking about how much ransom to demand, but rather how to reach a cooperative arrangement with the Saudis… that ship will become his calling card and a gift representing goodwill.”

Wei Lai burst out laughing and said: “Damn…”

Something snatched from your hands, returned as a gift — and somehow it often earns you gratitude in return.

Probably because regaining something lost is the kind of surprise whose odds are far too slim.

He asked: “Next, should we strike while the iron’s hot and push hard to get Hu Sha to agree to the three million?”

Cen Jin closed her eyes, slowly shaking her head in the darkness.

“Hu Sha is the kind of person who is naturally suspicious and full of misgivings. He’s only suited to pressure — pushing to close the deal would actually backfire.”

——

The fourth day.

For reasons no one could identify, the sky was a murky yellow-grey from early morning. Wei Lai went up for a turn on the deck and saw many pirates leaning over the ship’s railing, shading their eyes with their hands and gazing into the distance.

Out there, the rust-yellow hue churned up by rolling clouds was growing heavier.

Wei Lai tried asking several people and couldn’t make himself understood. After much effort he found Sha Di, who was wolfing down a whole boiled fish and said: “Probably a sandstorm.”

Another sandstorm?

Wei Lai’s scalp prickled: “So what do we do?”

Sha Di thought he was overreacting: “Sandstorms blow through the Red Sea sometimes for a whole month straight. We have to clear sand from the ship every day — wake up in the morning to a thick layer, just finish clearing it, and another layer comes.”

“Will the waves get rough?”

“Probably,” Sha Di shrugged, flashing a grin, “but it’s rare for a ship to capsize — and even if it does, don’t worry, we have small boats.”

Is that how pirates comfort people? Wei Lai was speechless. The experience of being stranded in seawater — he had absolutely no desire to go through that again.

And unlike the straightforward efficiency of previous days, today’s negotiation wore on with unusual grinding friction.

Hu Sha’s decisiveness and ruthless, cut-throat judgment, compressed within the small dining room, had curdled into hesitation, vacillation, and anxious indecision. This ferocious pirate sat clutching his head, rambling on and on like a muddled old woman whose thoughts were in complete disarray.

“Jin, what if, what if something goes wrong, what if it doesn’t go as smoothly as you say — what do I do?”

Cen Jin was drawing, a spread of ten-odd pencils of varying lengths laid out at her side — deliberate on her part. It was the fourth day; according to her plan, she was meant to seem distracted, and Hu Sha was meant to be restless.

She answered: “Well, that’s true — nothing is ever completely guaranteed. People fall asleep in their own beds and sometimes simply never wake up.”

As she spoke, her pencil dragged and swept across the page, sketching the overbearing form of a hundred-metre wall of sand: a page filled entirely with a sandstorm, with only a small car in the lower left corner, its windows shattered. The dimensions of the drawing couldn’t show it, but she herself knew — there were two people inside that car.

She glanced at Wei Lai; he had clearly noticed the content of the drawing, and the look he returned carried a smile.

How wonderful — in this world there were certain things that required only a look, and he would understand.

Hu Sha paced back and forth at the edge of the table like a caged beast.

“I just hand the ship back to the Saudis like that, without a cent — how do I explain that to everyone else?”

Cen Jin blew pencil shavings from the page: “Who said anything about handing it back to the Saudis for free? Ransom still needs to be collected — if you don’t take some money out of this, do you plan on going abroad empty-handed?”

As it turned out, taking the money was still very much on the table. Hu Sha brightened — but immediately, another layer of unease rose in his heart: “But… if I take the money, will the Saudis be angry? If they get angry and refuse to make the introduction for me, then what? And what if they don’t keep their word — they get the ship back and then wash their hands of me entirely…”

He wavered again: maybe he should just demand more money. Money was tangible and real, but a better life — it was all so intangibly distant.

Cen Jin was carefully drawing something in a corner of the page: “Well, that depends on what other value you can still offer them. You shouldn’t let them grudgingly help you — you should make them eager, proactive, desperate to make this work for you.”

Wasn’t that just nonsense? The Saudis couldn’t stand him, so how could they possibly work for him — and do it “eagerly,” “proactively,” and “desperately” at that?

Hu Sha felt a cold sweat break out on his back; his inner agitation threatened to surge outward again. He suppressed it with effort, then suddenly shifted to a smiling expression and leaned over toward Cen Jin.

“Jin, give me a hint, stop going around in circles — we’re good friends, aren’t we?”

Wei Lai reflected with quiet admiration: able to both assert himself and bend to circumstance — no wonder Hu Sha had risen to be a pirate chief. Shamelessness is a kind of ability too, not everyone can manage it.

Cen Jin glanced sideways at Hu Sha: “Think carefully — what else can you do for them?”

Hu Sha wracked his brain anxiously.

“What else can I do… at most I’d stop raiding their ships from now on, but there are so many pirates out there — even if I don’t raid them, someone else will…”

Cen Jin said: “That’s wrong. You should be raiding them — and yet not raiding them.”

She pulled away the drawing and handed it to Wei Lai without looking up, her eyes fixed on Hu Sha.

Wei Lai stared at the page with a rueful smile: she had drawn a tiny bee with a terrified expression, and beside it a line of annotation — Wei Lai’s cherished little bee.

Women really do hold grudges.

And Hu Sha beside them was thoroughly baffled: “What does it mean to ‘raid them and yet not raid them’?”

Cen Jin’s lips curved slightly: “Pirates have unwritten rules — first come, first served. If you’ve set your sights on a ship, others accept their bad luck and generally won’t touch it again. So from now on — whenever a Saudi ship enters the Gulf of Aden, you send a vessel to shadow and follow it, and every time, for one reason or another, you never quite manage to make your move… do you understand?”

Hu Sha stared at her, his mouth slowly falling open: “You mean…”

Cen Jin smoothed out a fresh page with her hand: “What could possibly be safer than having pirates as your escort? The Saudis have thousands of ships passing through the Gulf of Aden every year — when they receive a gift like that, do you think they’d be grinning from ear to ear?”

——

The matter was as good as decided — yet Hu Sha still delayed, endlessly refusing to make the call, always fretting that there was something he hadn’t considered. By turns anxious, then ecstatic, then silent, then unable to stop talking — this fourth round of negotiation, conducted in fits and starts, one question answered at a time, dragged from morning to noon and from noon to afternoon.

Wei Lai stepped outside for a smoke, borrowing a light from Sha Di — the ship was rocking noticeably, the air was thick with the smell of damp earth, the sea a little ways off was shrouded in a yellow haze, and fine dust had already settled on the ship’s railing. He ran his fingers across it and came away with a faint layer of pale ochre grit on his fingertips.

Sha Di asked Wei Lai: “How’s the negotiation going? Will it wrap up soon? Can you get Miss Cen to speed things up?”

Wei Lai was a little surprised: “Are you all in that much of a hurry?”

Sha Di said: “We need the money! Once we have it, we can buy big barrels of wine, eat soft fragrant bread, and go find women…”

“The longer it drags on, the more fed up everyone gets. What was all that talk about the world’s largest oil tanker — twenty-five hostages, do you know how much they eat in a day? You have to post a lot of men on the ship to stand guard, and they need to eat too — that all costs money!”

He grumbled: “Hope we get paid soon, even a bit less would be fine. Does your Miss Cen even know how to negotiate? Tell her to be more aggressive. Last night, someone got into a fight with Hu Sha, blaming him for being too greedy. Said ten million is too much — Hu Sha got so furious he smashed the floor with his rifle butt and nearly fired it…”

What a pleasant surprise — so the pirate side wasn’t a solid block after all; each person had their own private calculations.

Wei Lai had a vague feeling that tonight would definitely produce a result. It was simply a matter of waiting for the moment when Hu Sha brought down his decisive hammer.

——

After dinner, the ship was already rocking quite badly. The sandstorm had begun its sweep across the Red Sea, and Sha Di said this was only the beginning — based on experience, midnight would bring the worst of the wind and waves.

The pirates began lowering heavy iron anchors into the water; the anchor chains scraped against the ship’s edge with a clanging, rattling din. Some scrambled about frantically to secure loose items that the storm could send flying, and outside the dining room there was a great commotion.

Hu Sha held the satellite phone in his hand. By the established protocol, the outcome of the negotiation was to be communicated to the Saudis by Cen Jin; only after that would the conversation shift to a direct exchange between the pirates and the ship’s owner.

Hu Sha seemed to have spent his entire lifetime’s supply of hesitation on this one day — he was still wavering even as he passed the phone to Cen Jin.

“Jin, do I have to negotiate all of that on my own?”

Cen Jin said: “I only handle the Sirius.”

Hu Sha murmured: “Can’t you help me sort everything out with the Saudis? If I’m the one talking to them, it always feels like it’s going to take enormous effort — complicated, roundabout, a very long time…”

Cen Jin gave a cool smile: “The best things always take a bit of effort to get. If it came too easily, wouldn’t that make you nervous?”

Hu Sha finally passed the satellite phone over.

Cen Jin dialed. Hu Sha held his breath, gripping the edge of the table, his palms rubbing across fine grit — only then did he notice that the dining room itself had already gathered traces of sand.

The instant the call connected, Hu Sha’s heart nearly leapt into his throat.

Cen Jin said one sentence to the person on the other end.

“I’m done.”

She rose to her full height and laughed, tossing the phone back to Hu Sha: “From here on out, it’s all your business. Good luck.”

——

It was plain to see that she was in high spirits. The ship’s erratic rocking and her own unsteady steps didn’t dampen her mood on the way back to the cabin; she stopped several times, leaning against the wall, asking him with something close to reckless abandon: “Did I perform well?”

Like a little girl fishing for praise.

Wei Lai had no choice but to smile helplessly: “Are you good enough? You’re drunk without even having touched a drink.”

That reminded her: “I need to get wine from Hu Sha.”

As was customary, during a negotiation the pirates would stockpile plenty of alcohol, ready for a grand celebration the moment the money came through.

She swayed her way back to the dining room. Wei Lai followed, half-amused and half-resigned; by the time he caught up, she was already coming back out, a bottle of lager beer in each hand, shaking them at him like a pair of grenades she was ready to throw.

Back in the cabin, she tried to open the bottles. The table corner couldn’t knock the caps off, and Wei Lai’s knife had no bottle-opener notch. Cen Jin was about to head back and ask Hu Sha for an opener, but Wei Lai said: “Let me.”

He took one bottle in each hand, placed the teeth of the two caps against each other, held the bottles horizontal, and yanked in opposite directions with a sharp, forceful pull.

A little beer foam sprayed out with the scent of it. Wei Lai handed her a bottle and clinked the neck of his against hers: “Congratulations.”

Cen Jin tipped her head back to drink. Wei Lai drank alongside her and watched her show no sign of stopping — she gurgled through nearly half a bottle. He finally couldn’t help it and grabbed the bottom of her bottle, pulling it away: “I know you’re happy… but could you slow down a little?”

Cen Jin laughed. She’d drunk too fast and too much in that one go; the heat of the alcohol surged back up, and a flush crept across her cheeks and down her neck. She wiped the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand, drew her knees to her chest on the bed, and took the bottle back, swirling it back and forth in her hand.

The foam rose inside the bottle. Wei Lai reckoned he probably couldn’t stop her: let her drink if she wants — this is, after all, a matter of real significance finally laid to rest.

Unexpectedly, a trace of wistfulness flickered in the depths of her eyes. She rested her head lightly against her knees and said softly: “The negotiation is really over.”

Wei Lai smiled, reaching out to stroke her hair: “The thing is settled, and now there’s an emptiness inside?”

Cen Jin murmured: “Do you ever make plans for a month? One by one, ticking things off, getting them done?”

“Never have. But finishing things one by one — doesn’t that feel pretty satisfying?”

Cen Jin said: “But the time passes too. Finish a month’s worth of plans, and the month is gone. Finish a year’s worth, and the year is gone.”

“What time doesn’t pass? This month has been full — there’s always next month. Nothing stopping you from making new plans.”

Cen Jin’s voice dropped to something barely above a whisper: “No. This month, it’s not full yet. There are still things unfinished…”

She lay back on the bed, slowly curling into herself — that same sleeping posture that spoke of deep insecurity.

Wei Lai took the beer bottle from her hand and set it at the foot of the bed, then leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead.

Strange — this should have been an atmosphere for celebration, but it had suddenly grown somewhat heavy.

Wei Lai left her to rest and went to shower first. The rough waves Sha Di had predicted seemed to have arrived early. Midway through washing, the ship suddenly lurched into a severe tilt; if he hadn’t reached out with quick reflexes and grabbed the showerhead, he would probably have tumbled out through the curtain.

But everything else on the ship — every other person and object — wasn’t so fortunate: a half-full bottle of beer rolled and clattered into the corner, the fishing lamp fell from the table with a clang — mercifully it didn’t shatter — and its glow swayed at floor level.

Even Cen Jin let out a sharp cry.

Wei Lai lifted the curtain to look — then burst out laughing, nearly laughing himself to tears.

She had apparently been lying too close to the edge of the bed, and had been pitched off in the most ridiculous manner imaginable. “Pitched off” might not even be quite right — it was her upper half that had come down, both hands braced against the floor in an ungainly scramble, with her two legs still sticking straight up in the air. She looked like a radish that had been planted upside down at a diagonal.

If she could choose, this would certainly be the single image she would most want erased from his memory for the rest of her life.

And he just wouldn’t stop laughing — Cen Jin flushed scarlet with mortification and erupted: “Get out of here!”

She had no dignity left to preserve anyway, so she clambered up and snarled at him: “Out! I need to shower!”

Wei Lai laughed until he couldn’t rein it in, then put on his shorts and came out, helpfully reminding her: “Hold onto the showerhead — if you tumble out halfway through, should I catch you or not?”

Cen Jin said: “Get out of here.”

Same words every time. Her writing could cut people to the bone comment by comment — yet in real life, her vocabulary for cursing turned out to be piteously sparse.

Cen Jin showered quickly. The ship was rocking far too violently and she genuinely feared she’d lose her footing and fall out from behind the curtain. She didn’t even bother drying herself properly before coming out wrapped in her draping cloth.

Just as she stepped out, there came another wave of rocking. She pressed her back flat against the wall, lowered her centre of gravity, and sat down into the corner.

The fishing lamp had rolled to her feet. She looked up — Wei Lai lay on the bed, seemingly grown into it as part of it, not moving no matter how the ship swayed.

Cen Jin found it puzzling: “How do you manage it?”

Wei Lai said: “If you had also spent three months sleeping on a smuggling boat, having endured waves far worse than this, your back would grow something like suction cups — anchoring you to one spot so firmly that no one could pull you loose.”

Cen Jin said: “Nonsense.”

Wei Lai extended a hand toward her: “Then come over here.”

Cen Jin let out a breath, waited for a moment when the ship steadied slightly, then slowly got to her feet, steadied herself against the wall, and moved over, reaching out her hand to him.

The instant their fingertips made contact, a sudden uproar of wild, revelling noise broke out from somewhere beyond the cabin walls. Cen Jin’s body gave a small start; Wei Lai closed his hand around her wrist and pulled her into his arms.

The pirates’ delirious shouting rose and fell like waves, each crest higher than the last, mingling with the sandstorm off the sea, battering this little compartment.

Cen Jin laughed, burying her face against his chest, listening to his strong, steady heartbeat: “Hu Sha must have sent the news down.”

Nothing refined or restrained about it — pirate celebrations had always been like this: shouting, screaming, crashing and smashing, the sound of glass shattering, the clang and clatter of iron against iron, and it wasn’t a proper celebration unless someone ended up with a bloodied head.

Wei Lai asked her softly: “Do you want to?”

Cen Jin didn’t follow.

She paused and looked into Wei Lai’s eyes, gradually piecing it together: “At a time like this?”

Suddenly slightly flustered, she pushed herself up from him and knelt sitting on the bed.

Wei Lai said: “A pirate’s ship. The middle of the Red Sea. Outside, a sandstorm fierce enough to whip up waves. A man and a woman in one cabin — not strangers, not knowing each other too well either. In one’s whole life, it’s rare to find a moment quite like this.”

Cen Jin bit her lip. The ship tilted again; Wei Lai reached out and steadied her waist.

The fishing lamp at floor level was jolted and turned upside down. Its dim yellow light pooled around her face; a few strands of half-dry hair floated lazily in the light. Her eyes flickered uncertainly, and it was impossible to see what world lay within them.

It only seemed a vast darkness — an endless sea, warmth with texture, meeting his gaze, slowly rising into an unexpected flutter that sent heat to the ears and made the heart quicken.

She extended her hand, slowly moving it toward — then stopping at — the tucked edge of the wrapping cloth around her.

She said: “Then I hope this storm can blow a little fiercer still.”

——