The third day of negotiations.
Cen Jin felt that she needed to wear something different. She got up in the morning and went through her bag — picking things up with her left hand, putting them down with her right, rifling through the same few items over and over.
A clever woman can’t cook without rice.
She picked up the white T-shirt and jeans that had been soaked in seawater, washed, and hung out to dry — the outfit that had carried her through the first two rounds of negotiations.
They were already wrinkled beyond all recognition.
She said, “If Hu Sha writes a memoir about the Sirius negotiations someday, and mentions me in it — will he write: that female negotiating representative who went days without changing her clothes, and wore sandals…”
Wei Lai continued for her: “…and talked the ransom down from twenty million to three million. Believe me — that achievement will outshine walking into Hu Sha’s negotiations in five different formal gowns combined.”
Cen Jin smiled and, feeling there was nothing else to be done, picked up the clothes and prepared to go change behind the curtain.
Wei Lai said, “Hold on.”
He fished out his own denim shirt from his bag: “Wear this.”
Cen Jin gave him a sideways glance: “Anyone can tell it’s a man’s shirt. I can wear it loosely as a nightgown, but wearing it to negotiations — won’t people laugh at me?”
Wei Lai took the clothes out of her hands and pushed the shirt into her arms: “Listen to me. Wear this one. I have an idea.”
Cen Jin studied him for a moment, then accepted it with guarded trust.
When she came out, she had the denim shirt on, buttoned perfectly straight, not a button missed — fastened all the way up to the collar, making her look as though she’d been stuffed into a sack.
Wei Lai sat on the bed and stared at her for a long moment: “Do you have any aesthetic sense at all? Come here.”
If you added a black-framed pair of glasses, you’d be a dead ringer for the most insufferable female disciplinarian in any old Hong Kong film.
Cen Jin was annoyed: “You have it!”
Wei Lai laughed: “I have the most plainly honest male aesthetic — I only know what way I like you best.”
He pulled her close, reached up, and began undoing buttons.
He undid two, looked for a while, frowned — apparently not satisfied — and undid one more. He pulled the collar sideways. His eyes caught the image that made his throat tighten: the rumpled shirt open around half-revealed, softly rising contours.
Cen Jin looked down at herself: “You’re seriously going to let me sit in front of Hu Sha like this?”
Wei Lai’s expression changed: “What are you thinking? In front of Hu Sha, only one button undone. Understand?”
Then why did you undo so many just now?
Cen Jin raised her hand to twist at his mouth in annoyance. Wei Lai dodged away with a grin, then swept his arm around her body and pulled her close. He bent his head and kissed where she was half-exposed — the warmth and wetness made Cen Jin draw in a sharp breath; she struggled and cursed at him: “Stop it… I still have to… negotiate…”
The words that followed broke apart into a hoarse, stumbling one-by-one, her body gone soft with no way to pull free.
After a good while, Wei Lai finally released her. He slid a hand inside her shirt and slowly guided the shoulder strap back onto the shoulder that had slipped down in her struggling, then said: “See that? In front of someone with bad intentions, don’t undo three buttons — otherwise the consequences can’t be predicted.”
Cen Jin clenched her teeth: “Get out of here. I don’t need you helping me with my clothes.”
Wei Lai laughed and coaxed her: “Don’t — I promise to behave from here on out. Really.”
He bent down, took the hunting knife from his bag, tilted his head and bit open the sheath with his teeth, and made a cut along the hemline at the bottom of her shirt, then cut horizontally across the width. He grabbed the corner and tore all the way around.
From the rough tear, the fabric frayed into little white threads and scraps. Cen Jin guessed what was coming: “Are you going to cinch the waist with it?”
That would show the waist, but wrapping a strip of fabric around it sideways would look ridiculous.
Wei Lai said nothing. He cut the strip in two, reached for one side of the excess fabric at her waist, and used the knife to punch through a paired hole.
Cen Jin worked it out and reached over to take the strip from him. She threaded it through the hole from the outside, pinched the fabric into a gather, tied it off, then shifted the knot to the inside of the shirt.
By the time she’d finished her side, he had already tied off the other.
A very masculine way to do things — knife-punched holes and rope-tied knots, rough and direct and unrefined, looking like something at a glance, not holding up under close inspection — and yet there was something about it, an inexplicable sensuality.
Cen Jin smiled. She found she liked it.
More than all the evening gowns she owned, the ones made with meticulous tailoring, studded with brilliant crystals and elaborate embroidery.
Wei Lai reached out and cupped her chin: “Don’t go provoking Hu Sha again — his temper is too volatile.”
Cen Jin was unconcerned: “I do need to be careful. But if he needs something from me, he’ll be more and more careful around me — yesterday I gave him a choice. If it were you, which would you pick?”
“Do you even need to ask? Any person would want to live to old age in peace. Only…”
Cen Jin raised an eyebrow: “Only what?”
Only — giving you a ransom, giving you the chance to retire and walk away clean, getting you government pardon, giving you diplomatic status, giving you a peaceful second half of life…
That wasn’t an opportunity. It wasn’t something any single person’s power alone could achieve. Tempting as it sounded, it was almost illusory.
Hu Sha wasn’t a fool. Who would believe you, little girl.
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That day’s negotiations started from breakfast.
Everything was from cans — tuna and baked beans, along with the rare treat of coffee: small sachets of instant, mixed with an enormous amount of white sugar. With each sip, the tongue met with many half-dissolved grains.
Cen Jin had read Hu Sha right. He was preoccupied, but more measured and careful than the day before.
He had little appetite. Several times he seemed on the verge of saying something, but held back each time. At last he found a moment and adopted a casual tone: “Jin, what you said to me yesterday — you were joking, right?”
Cen Jin kept her head down, her spoon scraping up the last few beans at the bottom of the can: “I came here from another continent, nearly got blown to pieces — just to make a joke? Do I seem like someone who loves telling jokes?”