He went directly to find Huang Yingshi: “Forgive me for being so forward, but do you have an employee named Jiang Du?”
He had named her directly. Out of social courtesy, Huang Yingshi smiled and asked, “Does Mr. Wei know Xiao Jiang?”
Xiao Jiang, Xiao Jiang — such an ordinary way to address someone. A company could have a Xiao Zhang, a Xiao Wang, a Xiao Li, and of course a Xiao Jiang too. Yet how remarkable that nickname was. Jiang Du was no longer a young girl; like him, she had grown up by many years.
Wei Qingyue said he knew her — they were high school classmates. He had just caught a glimpse of someone passing by who looked like her, but he wasn’t entirely certain.
High school classmates? Huang Yingshi was surprised. She had never heard Jiang Du mention it, and so quite naturally, she told Wei Qingyue a little about Jiang Du’s situation.
Aside from its interview programs, the company also ran several new media accounts that followed closely on trending topics. There was a dedicated team responsible for writing content for the public-facing channel, and overseeing the quality of those articles was precisely Jiang Du’s job. Three to four articles were published per week, with a very strong average weekly readership. In the eyes of Huang Yingshi and her colleagues, Jiang Du was shy and averse to conversation — unless workplace communication was strictly necessary, she said as little as possible, presenting a very classic case of social anxiety.
In the hotel parking lot, the driver, Old Luo, was still waiting for him. Wei Qingyue raised his wrist to check the time and frowned. Had his watch stopped? The time wasn’t moving at all. He wondered whether today was cursed, or whether the hotel’s feng shui was bad — every instrument for measuring time seemed to have broken down.
He called Old Luo and asked him to come up and take the watch to a shop for repair. Wei Qingyue had a compulsive relationship with time; his watch was essential to him. Without the time, he had no way to find his bearings in the city. The time on his watch had to exist at every moment.
The smog showed not the slightest intention of dispersing.
Wei Qingyue came looking for Jiang Du. In an adjacent room, several interns were discussing the cover image for the current issue and speculating about how the footage would end up being edited. He spotted a girl with a permed, woolly curl — a very slender figure, wearing a black dress, with thin and pale arms just as he remembered. She was explaining to the newest intern how to use an artificial intelligence system to select images — a system that was, in fact, a product developed by Lingdong Technology, the company Wei Qingyue worked for.
He only saw her from behind, and from the arms alone, he knew it was Jiang Du.
Wei Qingyue rapped his fingers against the surface, and the people inside looked up one by one, glancing in his direction, then apparently nudging Jiang Du.
Turn around and look at me. Turn around and look at me. See me. Wei Qingyue recited this in his heart, again and again.
Jiang Du finally turned around, and a smile rose onto that refined face — a face that now carried the flavor of a young man.
He saw a flash of panic in Jiang Du’s eyes. Clearly she had recognized him, which was not difficult at all. The seas had shifted and the clouds had changed form, but Wei Qingyue was still Wei Qingyue. All these years, he had kept the same hairstyle from his school days; his height had barely changed; his figure hadn’t altered by a single inch. He had done everything in his power to preserve his original appearance — so that Jiang Du would be able to recognize him at first glance.
Even if only to increase the odds that, on some busy street, she might catch a glimpse of a familiar silhouette and he would catch up to her.
But there would always be some degree of change. He was a man now, no longer young.
“I’m looking for Miss Jiang — would it be convenient for her to come out for a moment?” Wei Qingyue paid no heed to the curious gazes of the others. When he spoke those three words — Miss Jiang — he bit down on them with some weight.
Jiang Du’s face had grown very small — almost smaller than in her girlhood, perhaps because of her hair, which was fluffy and dense and clustered around a face that was clear and fair, touched with a light trace of lipstick.
She raised her eyes to look at him, and for an instant, time vanished. When she saw Wei Qingyue walking closer with that unchanging, slightly long hair, every dream she had dreamed in her girlhood came flooding back — bittersweet and vivid. She felt as though she had bumped against the light overhead, but the light was like the kind from her childhood home — dim, yellowed, an old bulb — and at the slightest touch, every shadow in the room swayed, as if caught in a gust of wind.
Jiang Du made a great effort to keep her expression looking calm, wearing the graceful lightness of an adult meeting an old acquaintance with a smile. She told the interns she was stepping out for a moment, and then followed Wei Qingyue toward the emergency exit.
“Long time no see, Miss Jiang.” Wei Qingyue still pressed down on the form of address. He extended his hand. Jiang Du seemed unprepared for this sudden reunion — her expression looked more like one of helplessness — and besides, her face had gone red, and her eyes had filled with a mist of unshed tears.
---
“After all these years, you’re still pretending not to recognize me?” Wei Qingyue looked at her with a smile. His hand hung in midair, and rather than retracting it with any trace of dejection, he reached directly down to take hold of her hanging hand, gripping it with gentle pressure. “I’m Wei Qingyue. Have you forgotten who I am?”
Jiang Du felt in that instant as though her entire soul had been seized.
The two of them remained in the awkward posture of a handshake. Jiang Du pressed her lips together; the mist in her eyes grew heavier and heavier. She stared at his face without blinking. Wei Qingyue said nothing and did not look away, waiting patiently as she took him in. His eyebrows were still that dark, his nose still that straight; the angles of his face had shifted slightly — sharper now, more defined. Time had been at work sculpting those features.
The world grew very quiet.
At last, Jiang Du slowly allowed a tiny smile to bloom — thin as a sliver of hope, unfurling at the corner of her mouth. She gave a gentle nod. “I remember you,” she said softly, and withdrew her hand, her whole body trembling with an involuntary, barely perceptible quiver.
“Good. Are you free tonight? Come have dinner with me?” Wei Qingyue’s tone was that of a question, but his manner carried an authority that brooked no contradiction.
Jiang Du’s heart turned achingly sour at a speed that defied belief. She looked at him, speechless, as though trying to determine whether this was a dream living beside her, or whether the real world had simply become this way.
If it was a dream, she hoped she would wake up soon. She couldn’t help glancing outward — were the tall buildings still there? Was the sky still there? Could she make out the flow of traffic, and the traffic lights cycling through their colors?
“I’m free,” Jiang Du said, her chest rising and falling in a gentle swell. Dream or not, she was going to say yes to him first.
“Good. What time do you finish? I’ll come pick you up.” Wei Qingyue made the decision unilaterally, pulling out his phone. “Give me your contact information.”
He didn’t pause to consider whether this approach was too abrupt — severing a twelve-year connection and then expecting to pick it back up again within a single minute.
As she typed in her number, his fingers moved in a way that was almost imperceptible, and when he glanced up, he met the deep, dark, beautiful depths of Jiang Du’s gaze.
She seemed to genuinely not know what to say to him — even more silent than before. Wei Qingyue very much wanted to be angry with her, to ask her: What on earth happened? Why were you nowhere to be found all these years? Why did you never once reach out to me of your own accord?
But the moment he saw Jiang Du, all the resentment that had accumulated over those many years dissolved, miraculously, in the space of a single second.
He had an inauguration ceremony to attend that afternoon, organized by the Intelligent Industry Research Institute at T University, co-hosted by several major corporations and well-known automakers, launching an artificial intelligence training camp.
“I’ll be in touch.” Wei Qingyue said this while his phone was already ringing. He offered a quick “excuse me” and took the call right in front of her. Jiang Du, mindful of propriety, gestured gently to indicate she would leave first.
Wei Qingyue answered the call with one hand and caught her by the wrist with the other, his gaze saying plainly: Don’t go.
The gesture had no regard for boundaries whatsoever. He wasn’t afraid of putting off a girl he hadn’t seen in over a decade.
Jiang Du had no choice but to stay where she was. She said nothing, standing as though at the bottom of a deep sea. Whatever he was saying, she hadn’t registered a single word of the content — only his voice. She was simply listening to that voice.
Wei Qingyue talked on the phone while keeping his eyes fixed on her, his gaze not shifting by so much as a fraction.
This was nothing like what he had planned. All that nonsense about a gradual approach, or playing hard to get — he felt that every elaborate reunion scenario he had mentally rehearsed over the years was utterly foolish. He was twenty-eight. Nearly a third of his life had already passed. What was there left to squander? Life was short. Both he and she were people approaching thirty, standing on the ruins of their youth. If you wanted something, you should say it. If you wanted to do something, you should do it at once. Not another second of life should be wasted.
The phone was finally lowered from his ear. Wei Qingyue said, “I have to go, but I’ll come pick you up on time.”
Jiang Du’s heart pounded as she tried to match his pace: “Do you know where our company is?”
“I do.” Wei Qingyue was smiling. “Wait for me. I’ll definitely be there.”
Jiang Du gave another small nod. She was a person of few words: “Then I’ll wait for you.”
The reunion felt abrupt, and yet so natural.
At the afternoon inauguration ceremony, members of the Economic and Technological Development Zone committee, professors from the research institute, and chief researchers were all in attendance. Wei Qingyue brought his company’s head of research and development. Centering on the chosen topic, he shared with everyone the company’s technical vision and gave a concrete demonstration of a 3D model.