They had agreed to stop by Ai Lin’s bar for a couple of drinks. After dropping Wei Lai at his apartment building, Milu suddenly transformed into a devoted homebody, saying: “Can’t stay out too late — our Yi Fu will worry.”

It was already past midnight, for goodness’ sake.

The bar wasn’t crowded. It had slid into the dead stillness of the small hours — a cigarette, a glass of something, and you could coast until dawn. Wei Lai couldn’t be bothered to go upstairs. He greeted Ai Lin and, knowing the place like the back of his hand, stretched out on the long sofa in the corner.

Ai Lin brought him a blanket, then carried over her calculator and account ledger, sat beside him, and went slowly through the books, murmuring the additions and subtractions under her breath, occasionally saying a number aloud.

This was the warmest kind of time — lying flat and steady, with sleep to be had, Ai Lin like a housekeeping younger sister, toiling away for a living.

Wei Lai chatted with her in a lazy, back-and-forth way.

“Your girlfriend — where is she? Last time I saw her, she was Bulgarian? Short, with a smile that looked like crying.”

“She went home. Said she couldn’t find work here, and then stopped keeping in touch.”

“Are you sad?”

Ai Lin thought for a moment: “Not particularly sad.”

“That’s good then.”

“I need to go back to Germany soon — my sister Sabina is getting married. My mother says she hasn’t seen me in a long time, too.”

“Going home is good.”

He said the words with his eyes half-closed, as if sighing. Ai Lin hesitated, then asked: “Wei, do you still remember your home?”

She knew Wei Lai’s story: his father had taken him, as a young child, onto a human trafficker’s smuggling boat, drifting at sea for a long time. Fever spread through the ship, a third of the passengers died, he survived until landfall — and then his father sold him.

“I don’t remember.”

“Do you miss home then?”

“If home doesn’t miss you, why would you miss home?”

Ai Lin said no more. She pressed the calculator keys quietly. March’s accounts were settled — neither good nor bad, like most of the ordinary days in life.

Was April worth looking forward to? April temperatures would climb a little, the snow and ice would melt slowly from south to north, and April had the beer festival, and the Hat Day celebrations…

Wei Lai fell into a dream.

He dreamed of the smuggling boat pitching through the wind and waves — passengers reeking, vomiting. A small hatch in the deck cracked open, letting light inside, falling upon a limp, already-being-dragged body. A trafficker stomped on the deck overhead, shouting in irritation: “Throw it into the sea! The body is riddled with disease — it’ll spread to the others!”

He shouldn’t have talked with Ai Lin about this right before sleeping.

Still, that ship — it would always find its way into his dreams at certain moments. People say that what a person has let go of represents the past, and what they cannot let go of is their fate. Wei Lai thought that ship might just be his fate.

Even if he lived to eighty, that ship would still be battered by wind and waves in his dreams, unable to find its way to shore.

He stepped up onto the deck. The crew called out and strained together, hurling that body into the sea. He bent to look — a thud, and the dark water’s surface burst open in a white flower.

And at the bow, Cen Jin sat composed on a high barstool, a canvas propped on an easel before her, the long hem of her gown billowing and snapping in the sea wind.

Wei Lai was puzzled: “Why are you here?”

Cen Jin turned to look back, and in an instant the world shook—

…

It wasn’t the world shaking — it was Ai Lin shaking him. Daylight had come. Not far away, at a table, there was still a last dying thread of smoke rising from an ashtray. Ai Lin pointed at his phone lying on the table, its screen insistently flashing green light, one pulse at a time.

Wei Lai, bleary-eyed, yawning, picked up.

“Hello?”

“Wei! You passed! They chose you!”

“What?”

He sat up and pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. In the moment right after waking, reality and dream are equally insubstantial. Ai Lin had gone off to fiddle with the coffee machine; its droning hum carried across the room.

“I’m talking about the Saudis — they called to notify me. In the end, they chose you.”

Wei Lai’s memory caught up, and with it came a flash of the hem of Cen Jin’s dress being lifted by the sea wind: what had she been painting at the bow?

“The Saudis couldn’t possibly have chosen me.”

“Right — I heard the Saudis disagreed, but Miss Cen paid them no mind. Wei, I think this is like marriage: no matter how much the parents object, the woman sleeping in your bed is the one who decides everything.”

What an absolutely ridiculous analogy.

Milu quoted a price that Wei Lai would find very difficult to refuse, then probed carefully: “Wei, will you take the job? If you don’t want to, I’ll turn it down.”

In reality, he had ten thousand words stuck in his throat: please, say yes, say you’re willing!

Wei Lai paused for a moment.

Hadn’t she said bodyguards were useless?

But after that — she had called out to him, said some things, and as she spoke, she had stood there like a black-and-white painting, crisp and clear.

Ai Lin walked over and set down a freshly made cup of coffee. He picked it up and drank it down in one go.

“I have conditions.”

Milu listened, nearly holding his breath.

“I’ll fulfill only a bodyguard’s duties — I’m not her errand boy. She’s polite to me, I’m polite to her. If she’s rude, don’t blame me for making things difficult for her.”

Milu said: “That goes without saying — it’s not a slave society. She pays, you work, equal exchange. She should respect your effort, and you should respect her money. That’s the rule.”

It seemed everything that needed to be said had been said, but Milu didn’t hang up. After clearing his throat, he carefully chose his words: “Miss Cen also put forward a request…”

He knew things couldn’t be that simple.

“She said, during this period, she hopes you’ll write something every day… some thoughts… about your impressions of her…”

Wei Lai spent quite a while digesting that sentence.

He wasn’t angry, but he found it absurd: “If Miss Cen finds negotiating with Somali pirates to be of particular historical significance, she can hire a documentary film crew to follow her along, or bring a biographer the whole way. I believe that is not, shall we say, within a bodyguard’s scope of duties?”

“It’s not that complicated! Wei, I confirmed — even one sentence counts. Like: she’s very annoying, her makeup doesn’t look good, she and I don’t get along.”

That would do?

Milu went on, rambling: “It’s just one sentence — very easy. Long or short, write whatever you like. Wei, the truth is, bodyguards are like supermodels — it’s a youth trade. You should think about transitioning eventually. Who knows, through this experience, you might discover you actually have a real talent for writing…”

Agent Milu — always so passionately spirited, igniting people’s dreams anywhere, anytime.

He hung up. Ai Lin came over to collect the coffee cup, and asked curiously: “What kind of person is this client?”

Wei Lai said: “Seems to be a ladybug.”

“Huh?”

“Need to write a ladybug life observation journal.”

Ai Lin somehow accepted this without a second thought, and even turned around and encouraged him.

“Rich people are like that. If I had money, I’d also hire you to protect my jellyfish, and writing a journal would be even better — I’d want to know what they get up to when I’m not around.”

What could they get up to? Such a small jellyfish tank, in its fixed, unchanging spot.

Wei Lai looked over at the two moon jellyfish drifting in the tank, translucent and pale.

Then again, who knows. Maybe the two of them were right now plotting: once we get out of here, how do we go hijack a ship in the Gulf of Aden for fun.

——

Later that same day, Milu took Wei Lai to meet with Bai Pao to sign the contract.

Bai Pao was staying at the Kan La Pu luxury hotel in the city — a 19th-century Eastern European-style building, its facilities, furnishings, and security all top tier. But it was precisely here that something went wrong.

The two Bai Paos had gone out for dinner and returned to find the door ajar. They pushed it open to discover the room in complete disarray.

There had been a burglary.

When Wei Lai and Milu arrived, the younger Bai Pao, Sai De, was loudly berating the room manager, the police were still on their way, and the older, more composed Bai Pao — Ya Nu Si — stood frowning in the middle of the room, seemingly wanting to tidy up but afraid of disturbing the scene.

Milu extended concern on behalf of their future partners: “Mr. Ya Nu Si, was anything valuable taken?”

“Some cash — a little over two thousand euros, just pocket money. Nothing valuable was kept in the room.”

Over at the other side, the room manager’s forehead was beading with fine sweat, repeatedly apologizing to Sai De: “We are also shocked — someone cracked the room’s electronic lock system and bypassed the alarm and surveillance… Thankfully no great losses were sustained. The hotel will make every effort to cooperate with the police…”

Milu murmured beside him: “These Bai Paos — you know how it is. They might as well write ‘I’m rich’ on their foreheads. Too easy a target for thieves.”

Something felt… off.

Wei Lai walked into the room. Cabinet doors and drawers were all flung open, the luggage had been knocked sideways, clothing had been rifled through chaotically, and quite a few scattered documents lay on the floor — one still bearing a shoe print on its back.

European size 43 to 44, a man’s shoe, the most common tread pattern — nothing of investigative value.

Wei Lai crouched halfway down and reached out to pick up one of the documents. Ya Nu Si reminded him: “Don’t touch anything — best to leave everything as it is until the police arrive.”

But Wei Lai picked it up anyway. It was one page of the still-to-be-signed bodyguard contract.

“Did you bring a lot of valuables on this trip?”

Ya Nu Si shook his head — they worked for the ship’s owners and had come here on business.

He picked up several more sheets. Beyond the contract, there was also an itinerary plan — drafted for him and Cen Jin: He’er Xinji flying to Nairobi, capital of Kenya, then directly into East Africa.

Wei Lai stood up: “May I have a word with you in private?”

——

The private place was the bathroom. Wei Lai closed the door and did a quick sweep of the room. Fortunately, the entire place was marble-finished, all the electrical points were recessed, and there was nowhere to hide a listening device.

This kind of setup… made Ya Nu Si a little nervous.

Wei Lai said: “My deduction may not be correct, but whether it’s correct or not isn’t the point.”

“Kan La Pu Hotel has been ranked in the world’s top 100. Its guests include major figures from the business world, political circles, celebrities, and socialites. Saudis hardly stand out in that crowd. If this were the kind of thief only after money, stealing from them would be far more worthwhile than stealing from you.”

“The hotel’s security isn’t poor — there are several checkpoints coming and going on different floors. Someone capable of cracking the electronic lock system and bypassing the alarms — would they really do all that for just over two thousand euros? That kind of money isn’t even worth the effort.”

Wei Lai handed him the document: “They were so cautious, and yet the surveillance cameras caught nothing — but a shoe print was deliberately left, as if to show they didn’t care about trampling these documents underfoot. Isn’t that just slightly too staged?”

Ya Nu Si had begun to sense the meaning: “You’re saying…”

“Miss Cen has received death threats. If I were the other party, I’d be very interested in knowing where she’s headed next, and where would be the most convenient place to strike.”

He smiled: “Perhaps my guess is completely wrong. But a bodyguard should suspect everything. That’s the duty of the role — from this moment on, I will treat every anomaly as a potential threat to Miss Cen and investigate accordingly.”

Ya Nu Si studied him for a long moment, then suddenly felt that Cen Jin perhaps had a better eye for people than he did.

“So?”

“So this route cannot be used. At least… not in the real plan.”