It happened suddenly. After a brief discussion, Bai Pao brought Wei Lai along to see Cen Jin.

They arrived in the evening. A hourly cleaner let them in. In the sitting room, a man was just picking up his bag to leave.

He was an East Asian — short and stocky, with a round face bearing the practiced, cordial smile of a man used to greeting all manner of guests. Bai Pao was conspicuous enough to draw anyone’s eye, yet this man kept looking at Wei Lai. Wei Lai looked back at him: both had the sense the other was Chinese.

As they drew closer, Wei Lai caught a distinctive smell — hot cooking oil, dishwater, green onions, and fresh ginger all mingled together.

“Chinese? A chef?”

The man lit up with delight: “A fellow countryman — I knew the moment I saw you, you looked Chinese too.”

He quickly produced a business card: “Come visit sometime — tell them you’re my friend, you’ll get a discount.”

Indeed a chef: Lin Yong Fu, head chef at Hua Xia Tian Fu restaurant.

Overseas Chinese restaurants always gave themselves grand names — things like China Tower, Dragon Palace, Great Shanghai. Milu leaned in to look at the card and enunciated clearly in Mandarin: “Do you have dumplings there?”

The chef stared at him in wide-eyed disbelief, as if he couldn’t quite believe this Black man was speaking Chinese.

Wei Lai asked: “Do you know Miss Cen?”

“Miss Cen has dined at our restaurant a few times — it suited her palate very well. She arranged with me to come here and cook for her.”

He held up his bag as he said so; bottles and jars clinked together inside — probably the usual oil, salt, sauce, and vinegar.

“When did this start?”

“Just recently, really.”

He had someone covering his shift at the restaurant. Lin Yong Fu was in a hurry to get back and couldn’t chat long. On his way out the door, he remembered something and waved at Milu from a distance: “We have dumplings — and steamed buns too!”

Wei Lai asked the hourly cleaner a few questions. The person cooking for Cen Jin wasn’t only Lin Yong Fu — Cen Jin also favored Western food and Japanese cuisine, and a senior Western cuisine technician as well as a head Japanese chef would also come when called.

All of this had started recently, too.

The cleaner led them to the dining room.

The dining room was large, with dim marble-toned decor, and at its center stood a long, minimalist pure-white table. Instead of legs, the table was supported by two artistically rendered human figures — heads raised, shoulders bearing the weight, lifting the tabletop as if carrying the weight of the world, strained and monumental.

Only the single overhead light directly above was on, its glow seeming to drift, enveloping the dining table — and enveloping Cen Jin.

She wore a single-shouldered evening gown in deep ocean-blue shining satin, the asymmetrical tilt of it carrying a kind of slanted beauty, the lines of her shoulder, neck, and collarbone as precise and refined as something drawn.

The necklace hadn’t changed — it was still the same one.

Hearing the sound of people, she looked up. When she saw Bai Pao, she quickly covered a small fine white porcelain bowl on the table with a lid.

But Wei Lai had already seen it — inside the bowl was a piece of something glossy-red, just a small portion, tied around with a fine white string to prevent it from falling apart. It was Dong Po Rou — the famous braised pork belly.

There was also a serving of crab roe tofu, a small clay-pot of Buddha Jumps Over the Wall stew, a small dish of oil-braised bamboo shoots, and a bowl of white rice.

Portions small but exquisite — all celebrated dishes in Chinese cuisine, a true banquet for any discerning palate. That Chef Lin had clearly put real effort in.

Bai Pao relayed Wei Lai’s suggestions to Cen Jin. She raised no objections, simply said “alright” and “no problem,” and signed the bodyguard contract while she was at it — three copies in all.

One copy for each of the three parties. Wei Lai flipped to the signature page. His and Bai Pao’s signatures had already been added at the hotel. Cen Jin’s was freshly signed, the ink not yet dry. She had signed in Chinese, but the last stroke of the character “Jin” ended with a habitual pause of the brush, giving it the look of the character “Ling.”

The effective date was two days from now — which was also the day of departure.

Document in hand, Bai Pao visibly relaxed, as if sensing that things were coming together. Wei Lai, however, was the opposite. He asked: “Does Miss Cen have any bodyguard arrangements for these two days at her residence?”

Ya Nu Si paused, then shook his head.

“Given what we know about that ship — I’d recommend you arrange two. The hourly cleaner is here for four hours a day; in the evenings there’s only Miss Cen alone in here. Something could very easily go wrong.”

Ya Nu Si realized his own oversight and felt a chill of fear. He instructed Sai De to make arrangements as quickly as possible.

Wei Lai then turned to Cen Jin: “Would it be alright if I looked at your bedroom?”

Cen Jin raised no objection and got up to show him.

The bedroom was equally large. Wei Lai went to the window to assess the exterior view, then turned to look at the position of her bed.

There were several good fixed vantage points in the distance — ideal spots for a sniper. Her bed was positioned poorly: in the dead of night, with the right angle selected, any shot coming through could hit someone lying on the bed.

Wei Lai drew the curtains and gave her a few recommendations.

— Keep the curtains closed from now on. Continue going to the bedroom as usual in the evening, but after the lights are out, go sleep in another room.

— All entry and exit points in the villa — keep only the front door, lock everything else completely.

— If possible, pay the hourly cleaner extra for these two days and ask her to stay in the house as a live-in companion.

Cen Jin only said “alright” and “fine” to each suggestion, but looking at her expression, it seemed more like she was just going along with things.

On his way out, Wei Lai asked: “Does Miss Cen have any guests scheduled for today?”

“No — I didn’t expect you all to come.”

On the way back, Wei Lai asked Milu: “Don’t you find this Miss Cen a bit strange?”

“I do.” Milu had been holding this back for a long time, just waiting for someone to light the fuse so he could burst out with it: “The moment I walked into the dining room, she was sitting there — the light that dim, shining on just her alone — gave me a fright.”

For that instant, there had been an illusion: she resembled a quiet ghost, translucent and thin, not quite real, lacking a little of what you might call the “breath of the living.”

The car stopped at a red light. Milu watched the pedestrians on the roadside — a little girl with golden hair was crying and quarreling with her mother, and a man who’d just come out of the supermarket, arms full of a paper bag, stumbled, sent everything scattering across the ground, and crouched down to pick it all up with a look of frustration.

That’s right — that’s how people should live: rushed and noisy, frazzled and scattered. But that Miss Cen — she lived as if she had nothing to do with this world.

Wei Lai said: “Both times I’ve seen her, she’s been wearing an evening gown — don’t you find that unusual?”

Unusual? Milu actually thought it looked unusually attractive.

“Not just the evening gown — her makeup is always immaculate too. But in reality, neither occasion was particularly important. The first time was for the interview, with many outsiders present — that could be explained, barely. But today, she herself said she wasn’t expecting any guests.”

“Didn’t she invite that chef?”

A woman wouldn’t go to such elaborate lengths of refinement for a chef. Wei Lai’s idea of normal was someone more like Ai Lin — too lazy to put on makeup when not going out, letting her hair bounce around however it pleased.

Milu thought for a moment: “Could it be she actually had a visitor and just didn’t want to tell you?”

That was also possible.

Wei Lai was quite curious: what kind of visitor would make her dress so elaborately to receive?

It should be a man, he thought.

——

Over the next two days, Wei Lai stopped inquiring about anything on Cen Jin’s side of things, leaving all communication to Milu — this was his usual habit. From the moment a contract took effect, everything had to be like soldiers with bits clenched, horses with hooves muffled, arrows nocked in bows. So before that moment arrived, he had to decompress completely.

He cleaned his apartment.

He went to the Rock Church, and stood for a while beneath the walls built from blasted-apart boulders. He felt as if the rocks might collapse and bury him at any moment — but they didn’t.

At the open-air free market at the South Harbor, he ate salted fish, smoked ham slices, and bought nectarines, and apples as well.

He took the ferry to the sea fortress island. This time of year, the island was cold and desolate.

He also went to Hua Xia Tian Fu for a meal.

The restaurant used inexpensive materials to create a visually grandiose impression — a lightbox sign wreathed by a gold-painted Chinese dragon, a red-faced Guan Er Ye enshrined inside, a rockery landscape of Lake Tai stones at the entrance with two old men playing chess on top, and at the base a square pool about a foot across, with a few koi fish inside.

A few staff members were arranging freshly arrived green potted plants along the edge of the rockery.

Mountain, water, green plants — symbols of deep roots, prosperity, and unceasing growth, wishing the business a roaring, flourishing success.

Wei Lai ordered mapo tofu, cold three-shred salad, oil-flash prawns, and pan-fried steamed buns. It wasn’t peak dining hours, so there were few customers. Lin Yong Fu came out warmly to keep him company.

Was the food to his taste? Come again whenever you like — if you enjoyed it, bring friends next time; in a little while, a big shipment of fresh seasonal vegetables, meat, and eggs would arrive, and then they could make dishes of the season — the freshness of those flavors was something really special, he absolutely must come and try them.

Wei Lai expressed regret: “I won’t be able to come for a while — I have a long trip coming up.”

Lin Yong Fu was equally regretful: dishes braised in thick sauce and spices were available year-round, but the fresh, seasonal flavors — those only came around for a short window.

When settling the bill, of course a discount was applied, and a peace lily plant was pressed upon him as a gift.

A small blue-and-white porcelain pot, soil-planted, with lush green leaves. Above the leaves, two spathes of pure porcelain white rose on their stems, slightly furled, like the silk canopy of Guanyin Bodhisattva’s heavenly crown.

Lin Yong Fu said: “It’s a spare one — not worth anything, but it’s a lucky plant. You said you have a long trip ahead — look at this peace lily, it’s like a sail. We call it ‘smooth sailing,’ for safe travels.”

Wei Lai accepted it, caught between amusement and helplessness: “Isn’t it a bit inconvenient to travel with?”

“How could you travel with it — leave it at home, have a friend look after it. Plants are mysterious like that: if you’re safe, it grows well.”

He lowered his voice: “Going on a long trip is like flying a kite. You need something back at home, holding the string — and as long as it keeps holding on, it’ll call you back.”

Wei Lai thanked him.

The pot was small. Wei Lai cradled it in his palm, first rode a tram for a stretch, then walked back to the apartment.

Because of Lin Yong Fu’s words, many thoughts drifted through his mind.

— Back then it was also a long departure: a smuggling vessel sailing the seas for far-off shores, the kite string let out — it must have snapped long ago, midway across the journey. And so he felt no longing for home, and home felt no longing for him.

— Perhaps it really was fate: on this journey there were two of them, and this peace lily had put out exactly two spathes.

Back at the bar, Ai Lin took the peace lily, turned it this way and that: “You want me to look after it? I can’t take care of plants. What if I kill it?”

“If it dies, I die. Do what you will.”

Ai Lin was annoyed: “Stop talking nonsense.”

She placed the peace lily beside the jellyfish tank, rested her chin in her hands, and looked at it carefully. The spathes were lit by the glow of the jellyfish tank, turning a faint translucent green; the moon jellyfish drifted in their unhurried, elderly-slow way.

Wei Lai said: “Keeping a plant isn’t hard — whatever you do for the jellyfish, do the same for it.”